Altruism prolongs life and makes us happy

Emergencies, collective panic, fears that bring people together many scared I's and they become a gigantic but more reassuring Us, they also serve this purpose: to make us aware of as much as you need to be altruistic, an essential lever even for the survival of the species.

ALTRUISM

Let's take the recent coronavirus tragedy as an example. To whom have we each turned to face any kind of problem, to resist and move forward? To others. And we've almost always found them receptive, just as our open-mindedness, our predisposition for others, has broadened its horizons.

ADVANTAGES OF ALTRUISM

Covid-19 would not have been stopped without doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, a whole species of generous and altruistic men and womenBut the list of categories, which then correspond to individual real people, is very long. We want to talk about the cashier Of the supermarkets that are always open? Of the pharmacists who welcome hundreds of people with their requests every day? Of the caregivers who are saving the lives of a generation at risk, the elderly?

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CORONAVIRUS ALTRUISM

But even the most immediate individual behaviors have adapted to the disaster they are facing and a belief has spread from the streets to the condominiums, from the villages to the cities: to beat the virus we must be altruisticUltimately, even the rigorous and laborious observance of rules, for a people like Italians, resistant to the use of this word, is a form of altruism. A way to see others and share a problem with a possible solution. Albert Camus, who combined his talent as a writer with a keen capacity for observation of societies and peoples, and author of a highly timely book entitled "The Plague," wrote about the relationship between emergency and altruism: "What is true for all the ills of the planet is also true for the plague. It helps men to rise above themselves." And above themselves, each of us can only discover the other. Even on a landing when two neighbors decide to help each other out grocery shopping during the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus.

So, the panic of a virus pushes us like a wave towards the beach of altruismAnd why, asks Anglo-Saxon journalist Laurie Penny in an editorial published in the American monthly Wired, "people haven't panicked about global warming, yet it's a much bigger crisis than Covid-19"? Penny's answer is clear: the difference lies in the fact that the pandemic is an immediate disaster that occurs and develops in real time; climate collapse is happening graduallyBut be careful, coronavirus can be cured; in an increasingly unsustainable world, it disappears. A significant difference. In this respect, the rediscovery of altruism is a value. Not even that difficult to cultivate and not waste.

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BENEFITS OF ALTRUISM

Also because to become altruistic you can very little is enough, very littleAnd once we've acquired this good habit, which also translates into the ability to not waste the best parts of our feelings and nature, not losing it becomes easier. For a very simple reason, apparently opposed to the roots of altruism: Doing something for others is good for ourselves first and foremost.. It even helps us to overcome a bad mood or the long darkness of a trough, gives us a pleasure, a euphoria, a joy, which also comes from being accepted and recognized as people capable of a free, and not hairy, gesture, generosity. Altruism, according to various scientific studies, with this strength, with this energy in terms of benefits, even reaches the point of extending our lives.

Are we naturally selfish or altruistic? Are we born with a propensity to help others, or are we instinctively driven to think only of ourselves? This question has divided science for centuries, with opposing interpretations, and has become a real puzzle. What is certain is that we have entered a phase in history in which we must rediscover the value of community, of being together, of sharing, after decades of unbridled selfishness. And all of this necessarily leads down the path of altruism.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON ALTRUISM

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ALTRUISM

To give a boost to solidarity, we need to leverage the group, teamwork, as the American biologist David Sloan Wilson explains in his book 'Altruism: Culture, Genetics, and Well-Being' (Bollati and Boringhieri editions). You can be altruistic for many reasons, even of a selfish nature, but what really matters are the actions themselves that benefit others. That is: altruism generates strength, and therefore convenience. Not only in human relationships, but also within the scope of social life, of relationships in a condominium, in a neighborhood, in a city. Just take this example: if you have a community relationship, of good coexistence with the neighbors, it will be easier to share some services with them, including carers for the elderly, and a better quality of life in the area.

In his book, Wilson effectively dismantles all the fundamentalisms of selfishness, starting with the theories of those who consider it a necessary springboard for competition and the market to function. He also distances himself from the overzealous, rhetorical altruist, full of empty words, who can cause many disasters.altruism, on the contrary, it should be spread with lightness and depth: without ideological dogmasAnd in the certainty that it improves our quality of life. Everywhere.

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HOW TO BECOME ALTRUISM

The topic is one of the most debated in Western thoughtIs man born altruistic and becomes selfish as a function of his social relationships, or vice versa? Who was right between Jean-Jacques Rousseau e Thomas HobbesThe first, let us remember, argued that human beings are born, by nature, cooperative and supportive, and are then corrupted by society, even by a banal survival instinct. For the second, however, the opposite is true: we are born with the germ of selfishness andindividualism and it is society, through relationships with others, that teaches us how to become altruistic.

THE ALTRUISM GENE

A turning point in scientific research occurred in 2011 when the journal PLoS One has published the results of a series of tests conducted by the team of Professor Reut Avinun, director of the Department of Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. According to Avinum research we have a «altruism gene», complete with label, AVPRiA, which regulates a hormone in our brain through which every act of altruism corresponds a feeling of physical well-being and even joyAt this point the enigma of altruism would be definitively solved.

ALTRUISTIC AND SELFISH

But perhaps, without disturbing science too much, we can conclude that the diarchy between opposites It is part of human nature itself, where for example good and evil coexist. And so altruism and SelfishnessTwo pieces of our ongoing conflict between black and white, victim and executioner, murderer and missionary. The choice is ours, rather than science's.

ALTRUISM PHRASES

INTELLIGENT SELFISHNESS

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