The Wisdom of Magpies

 

The proverbial thieving magpie

Friend Xerxes believes magpies can teach humans a thing or two. In an Australian experiment, magpies fitted with tracking devices pecked them off one another. This, to Xerxes, was a display of altruism, shaming humans, who fetishize competition instead. We ought, like the magpies, to learn to cooperate.

He blames the human love of competition, surprisingly, on Darwin, not on Adam Smith.

What the magpies did was cooperation, but not true altruism. Cooperation is not altruistic, as it implies a quid pro quo. As Darwin himself could no doubt point out, herd animals derive a survival benefit through cooperation. By cooperating, they increase each individual’s chance of survival.

Altruism: OED: “Behaviour of an animal that benefits one or more others (typically of its own species), but which carries a cost for the individual concerned.”

True altruism would therefore be conduct that actually reduces the ability of an individual organism to survive, while increasing the ability of another organism to survive. Such cases have been found in nature, but the Australian magpies do not qualify. A magpie incurs no significant cost by pecking something off a fellow. He might do as much out of curiosity.

Xerxes’s larger point is to claim that cooperation, which he identifies with collectivism, is more moral than individualism, which he identifies with competition.

This does not work when you realize that, in microeconomics, cooperation or collectivism means a cartel in restraint of trade. 

Sometimes cooperation is more moral than competition; sometimes competition is more moral than cooperation. Do you cooperate with a rapist? With a bully?

On the other hand, individualism, which can involve either cooperation or competition as circumstances require, is reliably more moral than collectivism. Collectivism is the central premise of fascism, expressed in the fasces itself. A lynch mob is a collective endeavor.

Flag of the Italian Fascist Party

The problem is that only individuals have a conscience; groups or collectives do not. The pull of the group—peer pressure—is a force operating against conscience. Altruism, when it occurs, almost necessarily occurs at the individual level. Even if a moral leader leads a group to act for the greater benefit, he or she is not acting morally: it is not moral to demand self-sacrifice of others.