T
there such a lack of compassion in the world?’”
“Our human nature has been distorted,” the Archbishop began. “I
mean, we are actually quite remarkable creatures. In our religions I am
created in the image of God. I am a God carrier. It’s fantastic. I have to
be growing in godlikeness, in caring for the other. I know that each time I
have acted compassionately, I have experienced a joy in me that I find in
nothing else.
“And even the cynic will have to admit that it is how we are wired.
We’re wired to be other-regarding. We shrivel if there is no other. It’s
really a glorious thing. When you say, ‘I will care for only me,’ in an
extraordinary way that me shrivels and gets smaller and smaller. And you
find satisfaction and joy increasingly elusive. Then you want to grab and
try this and try that, but in the end you don’t find satisfaction.”
• • •he modern world is suspicious of compassion because we have
accepted the belief that nature is “red in tooth and claw” and that we
are fundamentally competing against everyone and everything. According
to this perspective, in our lives of getting and spending, compassion is at
best a luxury, or at worst a self-defeating folly of the weak. Yet
evolutionary science has come to see cooperation, and its core emotions
of empathy, compassion, and generosity, as fundamental to our species’
survival. What the Dalai Lama was describing—explaining that
compassion is in our self-interest—evolutionary biologists have called
“reciprocal altruism.” I scratch your back today, and you scratch my back
tomorrow.
This arrangement was so fundamental to our survival that children as
young as six months have been shown to have a clear preference for toys
that reflect helping rather than hindering. When we help others, we often
experience what has been called the “helper’s high,” as endorphins are
released in our brain, leading to a euphoric state. The same reward
centers of the brain seem to light up when we are doing something
compassionate as when we think of chocolate. The warm feeling we get