The Washington Post reports today on recent work by neuro-scientists:
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
The writers make the usual nod toward a prominent Western thinker:
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.
Now I like Francis as much as the next person. We have a statue of him in the back yard, tucked under a birth tree surrounded by hostas. But let's get Mencius into the story here, please! The innate goodness of human nature is central to the Mencian perspective. One of my favorite passages:
...without a heart of compassion we aren't human, without a heart of conscience we aren't human, without a heart of courtesy we aren't human, and without a heart of right and wrong we aren't human. A heart of compassion is he seed of Humanity. A heart of conscience is the seed of Duty. A heart of courtesy is the seed of Ritual. And a heart of right and wrong is the seed of wisdom.
These four seeds are as much a part of us as our four limbs. To possess them and yet deny their potential - that is to wound yourself...(3.6)
In other words: we are hard-wired for moral empathy.
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