Everyone’s heard at one point or another that Humans are naturally greedy. Fueled by possessions, the pursuit of wealth and overall power. I’ve always been one to disagree with this view. To me, Human altruism trumped greed, and I’ve gone far enough to say many a time that “human beings have only gotten so far by being naturally altruistic”, but therein lay the irony.
We all have our reasons for piracy. Albeit a lack of legal alternatives, a voice of protest to big corporations, or just plain not wanting to spend what little money many of us have. But why do we seed? What makes someone want to risk attending expensive court cases against a foe with seemingly limitless resources? I always brought it down to sheer human altruism, but given thought, I am beginning to doubt this is the case. People seed because we realise it benefits not only the peers who are downloading, but ourselves. Given time, we too inevitably become the peers. It’s a simple case of the ethic of reciprocity.
“Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others.”
– Isocrates
Looking back at what I said earlier; Human beings have only gotten so far by being altruistic. Looking at that now seems like a huge contradiction in itself. It says our society has only gotten so far by helping each other, which is definately true, but it also brings about the obvious point that we do this solely to benefit ourselves, helping a society we too are a part of. Realising by helping our neighbor, they in turn will help us. This may seem like quite a corrupt and deceitful means of motivation, but it also lay in truth, and I believe nature. Helping someone with a seemingly small task ensures that given the chance in the future, they too will help you. This same principle can be applied to bittorrent and piracy.
The same fundamental reasoning can be seen throughout different facets of nature. Meerkats designate members of their group to keep a watchful eye on the surroundings and to alert the rest of the group to any dangers in the area. It might seem exceedingly simple, they just want to help keep their relatives safe and alive, but meerkats are also territorial animals, and it’s a lot easier to fight off another tribe when you have the numbers. Protecting the tribe protects yourself. Cleaner fish have a similar mentality, by helping bigger fish and what could be considered their predators, they get such benefits in return. Hosts of the cleaner fish don’t attack them, even after the cleaning has concluded, and often chase away predators of the cleaners.
This, of course, is a generalisation. I do not question that indeed quite the number of people seed for prolonged periods of time, not for some tracker bonus, but out of sheer help for thy fellow man, with no sought after reciprocation. I would like to think I am one of those few, but I do not deny, taking this into account, that it may all be a facade for which even I can not admit to fully advocate, but may be just as much a part of my human nature as anyone else’s, something we do not fully condone, but is there.
Very interesting comment, I’m a biology student and are familiar with the terms altruism and reciprocity, and so far our society is based on the latter, not the former. Altruism in nature does not exist except in rare, isolated cases that area often the result of some genetic error.
i don’t know much about altruism in biology, but how would one define the phenomena whereby male penguins looking after their eggs huddle together in huge packs and following some algorithm over the course of their time in the cold everyone gets an equal opportunity at being warm on the inside of the pack and cold on the outside while sheilding others from the weather. i do agree altruism may give way to a “help me and i’ll help you” mentality – but isn’t that in itself the goal? When we _need_ help we are usually not in a position to assess what kind of help, we’re usually floundering and sinking slowly until the time someone who is in a position to help reaches out to us. i think we realise this and work hard to build a ‘buffer’ so that we can get help when things go wrong and we need it. I have more recently started to believe that true altruism is as much as giving in to others helping you as much as being ‘altruistic’ and helping others. if i’m exposed to the ‘cold’ of the copyright lobbyisits, then its only to give others their chance at being warm because only united together can we succeed. Evolution is not always competitive, i would argue it is never competitive, but co-operative, symbiotic and synergistic.