Is global altruism desirable? Is it even possible?
"Dunbar's Number" suggests tribal limitations
My personal thoughts are... I'm undecided. Global altruism it is a stated goal of most religions. As many non-religious people have been fending off accusations of being amoral, this may be a sticking point. It could be that people are not psychologically capable of it. Or, being so adaptable, it could be a limitation we are capable of genuinely overcoming. But... should we? Why?
I'm reading about gene-culture coevolution for school. Basically, there was a debate in biology a few decades back about what exactly was the base unit of natural selection. The likely candidates included species, kin groups, individuals, and genes. Genes won out (see Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene), as long as the debate kept to pure biology and natural selection. In other words, appearances that natural selection favors behavior that benefits the group, or even the individual are illusionary.
Things get mighty thick when one tries to apply evolutionary theories to understanding human behavior. We have evolved to the point that a new type of selection (besides natural selection) has gained a medium to exert itself, and has done so. This is culture. It has not over-ridden natural selection, but it has diverted it's course. Hence the term "gene-culture coevolution".
Anyway, the passage in the book I'm reading that got my attention said something to this effect. Cultural selection has allowed for genuine group selection (which was proposed but disproven on the biological level). The catch is that, as an analogue to Dawkins' biological "selfish gene", culture has created "the selfish group". People can act altruistically within their group (Dunbar's number ~ 150 people), but that group will behave selfishly towards other groups. To me, this sounds like a dead ringer for human behavior.
In conclusion, there are lots of ways I could go about framing this problem. I challenge anyone, religious or nonreligious, to say that they really feel all the suffering in the world. Also, I'll be happy to try to explain anything I wrote better, if anyone would like me to. It will be good for me to do so.