Like Clockwork Orange: Systemic Problems with the Altruistic Capital of Nava Ashraf

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the SFU public lecture by Nava Ashraf entitled Human Nature & Human Development. Although economics is not my field nor is it one of my personal interests or passions, I was nudged to go for two specific reasons: One, I am currently reading and reviewing the book The Wealth of Religions, which is giving me a novel and interesting viewpoint on how economy and religion often shape and influence each other. Secondly, since the abstract mentioned inherent, implicit and unconscious assumptions humans make, I assumed that she would be delving into the field of psychology, particularly psychoanalysis, a subject area I feel most at home and most comfortable with.

In fact, Canadian economist Nava Ashraf is quite known and distinguished in her domain: She has received a PhD in Economics from Harvard and has done both field and lab experiments across the globe in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Moreover, she has awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal for service by the Government of Canada, while she is the youngest person to receive the Order of British Columbia. Her theory of altruistic capital sounded most promising as it proposed to motivate people to create and make positive social impact in the world. As a result, I expected to gain essential insights and learn many a thing in the process of the lecture.

The first half of the talk was fascinating enough and did not disappoint. Ashraf started off with the idea of self interest that is supposed to characterize human nature but added the caveat and limitation that most of our assumptions and ideas are biased and often hidden, even from ourselves. These biases emanate not only from social and cultural contexts, but they are also part and parcel of each individual’s make-up. 

Hence, most of our choices are driven not necessarily by rational and conscious self interest, but they happen due to and are by-products of amalgamations of past and previous experiences, emotions, conditioning, and even trauma.

To illustrate this, she used the metaphor of a person riding an elephant (a supposed improvement to Plato’s unruly and wild winged horses). We as the rider have very little conscious control over how and where the animal may move; for the most part, we do not notice, or rather we tend to ignore and overlook our lack of choice and control in the matter.   

To prove this, she mentioned that the neocortex, the part of the brain that deals with higher functions, such as conscious thought and language is not only involved with thinking about the future, but it is also closely tied and connected to memory; hence, the potential offspring of our future thoughts and ideas equally serves as a warehouse of our very own past experiences and emotions.

And here lies the proverbial rub: whenever we think about the future, our view of it is then tweaked, tinged and distorted by our past. This means that, unbeknownst to us, we are looking ahead through glasses fit with lenses that may have been influenced and shaped by personal trauma.

No wonder then we cannot have a clear view and understanding of what to do or where to go next and are as lost and helpless as the rider on the elephant: We are caught up in a vicious cycle. For instance, a depressive mind will only have a distorted and depressed view of the future, and this would only increase feelings of immobility, stagnation, and helplessness.

How to combat that? The best way to get to the roots of the problem, in my view, would be depth psychology or psychoanalysis; however, Nava Ashraf settled upon and presented something more along the lines of cognitive behavior therapy. By using mental imagery and visualizing a better, a more expansive and optimistic future, one would be able to light the path ahead. This can work to an extent, but it is not an actual solution to the problems; at worst, it might just be a diversion or distraction from the real issues still festering unhindered in the unconscious.

But it underlines the fact that when it comes to goals and motivations, such as quitting smoking or losing weight, it is not necessarily a matter of self control or will power but more about not being able to visualize a future that is substantially different from the past. One way to aid ourselves in that process would be to use commitment devices. This has paid dividends in getting rid of unwanted and harmful habits.

Again, it becomes noteworthy that although Ashraf may have started off in psychoanalytic territory, she quickly moved away and entered more and more firmly into the realm of behaviorism, and as a result, she kept alienating me. But more about this a bit later. For now, I agree that habits can be replaced or substituted by other habits, whereas persistence and consistency would be necessary ingredients for this to occur.

One way of nudging the elephant to do your bidding is to set up realistic and manageable tasks and goals. As an economist, she naturally chose the example of money as an additional incentive. She gave the example of websites where you can put away a lump sum of money as a back-up investment on your health. This money would be locked for a given amount of time. When you manage to come out successful, that is, you get that nasty habit under control and / or continue with the healthy habits within the assigned time period, the money would be given to a charity of your choice.

However, and this part of it is borderline brilliant, if you do not comply or succeed, the money will go to an anti-charity, such as a donation to the NRA (or if you sympathize with the latter, just replace it with an antifa organization or an abortion clinic). That way, you will be motivated to do well, not merely based on concerns for your health and well-being, but you shall receive an extra push and motivation because you have no desire to sponsor your perceived enemy or a personally unwanted organization.

How these types of incentives could lead to more productivity, Ashraf demonstrated with a field experiment she conducted in an African town. At the time, they were promoting the new health initiative of female condoms designed to prevent and protect against HIV / AIDS transmissions. To access a relatively large amount of people, they recruited barbers to promote and sell the product. 

The barbers were divided into four different groups and categories: the first one was promised a relatively low commission for each sale (about 10%), while another group were to be given a quite high commission (80 to 90%). The third group were simply unpaid volunteers, while the latter group was promised non-monetary rewards, such as a point / star system for all the sales within the designated time period.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was not the second group that excelled – people were not that just driven by monetary rewards - but it was the final group in which they received not money but recognition and admiration for their efforts and that led them to significantly outperform all the other groups. In other words, giving more money or a raise may increase productivity, but giving one’s employees acknowledgement and recognition for their efforts pays even more dividends.

Ashraf concluded from this that humans are not solely and blindly driven by self-interest, but that altruism may play a significant underlying role as well. When people feel valued and appreciated for their work and efforts, they will go the extra mile and engage in higher and more enduring productivity. In that sense, altruism can be conceived as a capital, which Ashraf entitled altruistic capital, which can then be invested in or accumulated, whereas inversely, it can also be depleted.

She pointed out that although there are different altruistic types, people who like to help more than others, it is not a fixed status or position, since it can be altered or modified. As a result, altruism is akin to a skill or habit that can be acquired, learned and propagated both within the individual and within society. Put differently, we can train people to become more altruistic in their behavior.

One of the things that encourages a habit to persist, whether good or bad, is its repeated exposure. In neuroscience, there is the common understanding that neurons that fire together, wire together. This means as long as you repeat a certain action or skill, with practice it will become easier to follow through. If you learn how to swim and practice it on a regular basis, both your skill as well as motivation level can increase due to this repeated exposure; it simply becomes easier and more natural for you to follow through with that action.

Moreover, the same can be said with or applied to bad or unwanted habits, since by willingly not engaging in them or by replacing them with another activity, such as nicotine gums instead of cigarettes, we slowly but surely gain control over that habit in question. This boils down to a simple case of habit formation and the fact that we generally learn by doing, by actively and consistently engaging in any given activity.

Thinking of habits and repeated exposure, it comes to mind that we generally spend most of our time at work. Hence, our character is often formed by our work (“you are what you do”) and the workplace shall be influencing our outlook on various behaviors and issues, including values and altruism. If our work encourages us to be altruistic on a constant basis, such as the fields of health care, social work, or psychology, then we would tend to be more altruistic in other areas of our lives as well.

In that sense, we can also train ourselves for altruism by creating specific “zones of kindness” (my words but Ashraf’s ideas) in which we treat other members in a friendly and considerate manner. This would extend from family, spouse, children and pets to friends and acquaintances and to the community in general. 

Again, by repeating acts of kindness, we would propagate them, and it will become our new habit. Eventually, that would spill over into areas of work as well as influence empathetic shifts in the general outlook and perspective of society and culture.

The threat or danger to altruism would occur when we experience significant gaps or dissonance between the values that we state and actual values we embrace both on a personal as well as on a societal level. When that occurs, we may have a depletion or erosion of altruistic capital.

This is also where my criticism lies. Ashraf starts off by talking about how we orient ourselves towards our future and that there are inherent biases that impede us from reaching our full potential due to often unacknowledged or unprocessed negative past experiences. Then she moves towards cognitive behavior therapy, how we can change our thought patterns and visualize a happier and more promising future, and she ends with behaviorism in which our actions influence our perspectives.

But in a way, we are moving from a conception of humans as complex beings to ones that are, at worst, hamsters and pigeons in Skinner’s lab. Evidently, Ashraf is an economist and not a psychologist (she says she has worked with psychologist Emily Holmes in that regard), but she is using psychological terms that could lead to some faulty conclusions, if not downright dangerous conceptions. Human nature is much more complex than what she gives it credit for, but more importantly, she is taking altruism and distilling and turning it into an impersonal and detached form of capital.

It is interesting that she used the expression of “serving” others quite a lot during her talk. She mentioned on various occasions that we ought to serve others as well as our community. In a personal aside at the end of her lecture, she shared that she and her family had been facing religious persecution and that they were welcomed by the government of Canada, a country and community they decided to serve in return for its hospitality. 

This sounds very good and admirable but constantly and repeatedly serving others also implies being subdued to the other as is evident in the sense of being a servant. The serving individual will be indeed serving the master, with the latter essentially being the one that has sole control and command over the capital.

A question came up at the end of the talk that embodied this queasy feeling quite well. For example, at the McDonald’s workplace, they have the tradition of the employee of the month. This is a way of motivating workers to compete and to do better than others, but to my knowledge, it comes with little or no monetary and tangible rewards. Taking that model then, it would suit capital owners and employers to use altruism not out of any altruistic reason or motivation but simply to get their workers to do more for the company and to increase profits and earnings.

In fact, we must keep in mind that altruism itself often occurs out of self-interest. By caring for others, we basically hope to cover our own backs so that one day when we need help, we will receive assistance from the other, a kind of unspoken but implicit quid pro quo agreement. 

The second issue here is that I disagree that humans can be subsumed to and defined by their behaviors only; in reality, there are conscious and unconscious agents, factors, and motivations at work. Their actions are often driven by unknown or unacknowledged forces as was initially stated, namely at the beginning of the talk.

As a result, altruism cannot be simply perceived as a habit, but it is much more complex than that. It is something that is exemplified - if not glorified - by major religions around the world simply because it has such spiritual resonance and goes beyond petty and ephemeral acts. Catholic good acts, for instance, are meant to increase one’s chances for reaching heaven, so there is a spiritual dimension to one’s altruistic deeds. Altruism does not and cannot operate in or out of an emotional vacuum.

And yet, Ashraf has stripped all the spiritual connotations here, and although she finished the talk with a Baha’i quote, her refusal to address that dimension of humanity shows that it is a blind spot of hers. It certainly did not help that she both rejected the term karma (“I wouldn’t call it that,” she responded brusquely to one of the questions on the topic) as well as – and this hurt me even more personally on many levels – an utter rejection or denial of Maslow’s hierarchy (also another more than valid question asked by one of the attendees).

This soulless and lifeless view of altruism does more harm than good, and I would even go further and call it appalling. It has the outward appearance and trappings of beneficial and morally sound behavior, but inside it is hollow; it is as threatening as a wolf in sheep’s clothing as it tries to capitalize and appropriate genuine feelings of altruism for its own material good.

Altruism is much more complex and multi-faceted and cannot be reduced to a simple skill or habit. It is a powerful emotional connection and relationship with others and not an element of service nor a technical skill to hone or train for. You do not become a good parent simply by studying a manual or pretending to be one; you become so because you genuinely love and care about your child. 

Inversely, there are also many who claim to love their child, but then their behavior betrays their actual and real feelings and motivations. Moreover, there are also those who say they love humanity but use philanthropy as a disguised self-interested means, as a form of tax evasion, for instance.

In fact, all of this reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. The protagonist Alex is evil, and he shocks us by his monstrous and immoral actions, but what is even worse is the way the authorities try to “relieve” or “cure” him of his wrongdoing. Its end may have been good, but its means are as despicable as conversion therapy. 

By basically conditioning and programming Alex to vehemently hate adversity, he loses the core of his humanity in the process and becomes a mere puppet without the ability of discernment, the discernment between what is good and bad, between an ethical and an unethical act. Without this distinction, morality and personal responsibility would no longer make sense, but also without it, we would not be human anymore. We would be machines merely acting out and upon what others tell us to do, without genuine thought or emotion.