Monday, March 06, 2006

Built-in Altruism?

Phatgnat linked to this BBC article: Altruism 'in-built' in humans. It seems pretty light on facts, but I find this train of thought fascinating. One of the problems I've found with the lifestylism concept is that values are so relative. If you're aligning your lifestyle with ugly values, the resulting lifestyle will be ugly. But what if we're inherently good?

2 comments:

Sebastien said...

Hey Jeremy, hope all is well! Wondering what your thoughts are re: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000889.html

Jeremy said...

Hey Seb, thanks for the link (and for dropping in). I'll post more about Hugh's article eventually, but at first glance I think he probably nailed it.

One of the things I like about this representation is that he doesn't lapse into the old stereotype of the artist having to wait tables or dig ditches to pay the bills...in most of the examples he's using, the artist is doing related (but not passion-inducing) work to pay the bills, which is probably more accurate for more people. Many of us try to at least find work in in the right field for us, if not the ideal job description within the field that will pay us to do what we love.

What do you think?