During some large portion of human history, it has been considered strange to give away a majority of one’s wealth.
Customs relating to this vary quite a bit. In cultures with a strong potlatch tradition, for example, gift-giving is the primary way of displaying status and it’s not at all unusual to give away most of one’s wealth.
I’m not ready to make sweeping declarations about what has been normal for most of human history, or at least for the portion of it where talking about wealth would have made any sense.
I’ve no doubt there are exceptions, but, when posed with the following question, how do you think the majority of humans who have ever walked the Earth would reply?:
Which word best describes your feelings about the act of giving away >50% of your possessions to benefit absolute strangers?
A. Normal
B. Abnormal
Further, “wealth” has always had some meaning, even before humans. If we define wealth as “stuff we need or want”, then the animal kingdom is full of this sort of wealth, and they tend to defend their wealth as a means to provide for themselves and their young with vigor.
It is perfectly natural to hoard wealth for yourself and your kin. It was point that movements like The Giving Pledge, or say, very large, anonymous charitable gifts seem to be anti-natural in this way.
I’m aware that what appears to be pure altruism may only be signalling, or some other mechanism for personal gain… But I do believe there is (possibly) something like rational altruism taking place where people are realizing that (1) every dollar past X million/billion is essentially worthless ’cuz you’re gonna die and you can’t use it all, (2) immense amounts of inherited wealth aren’t as 100% positive as you might think so leaving gobs of money to family is not optimal & (3) other people’s lives suck because they have no money or food and no way to get money or food.
There is also a group of people for whom this seems to make no sense. They see every red cent as having utility since they can find ways to pass it on (in some form) to their family.
when posed with the following question, how do you think the majority of humans who have ever walked the Earth would reply?:
As I just said, I’m not willing to make that generalization; we don’t have enough good data about prehistoric culture, or for that matter many historical cultures, to talk about it this specifically. A cladistic analysis of gift-giving behavior might be more tractable, but I don’t have the data for that either.
(Granted, given the shape of the population curve, it might be—though I don’t remember, and haven’t looked it up—that the majority of humans ever to walk the earth lived in historical times. But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re getting at.)
Further, “wealth” has always had some meaning, even before humans. If we define wealth as “stuff we need or want”, then the animal kingdom is full of this sort of wealth, and they tend to defend their wealth as a means to provide for themselves and their young with vigor.
I’m using “wealth” to indicate the kind of goods that can be usefully hoarded, which IIRC are primarily discussed as a post-Neolithic phenomenon. I’m not anthopologist enough to speak authoritatively on how things might have worked in the Paleolithic, but it should be clear that there are physical limits on how much you can hoard if you’re leading a nomadic forager lifestyle, particularly without pack animals. I’d also expect people’s cultural reasoning about generosity to differ under this sort of regime.
I’m no anthropologist, but giving away the majority of one’s wealth isn’t the norm. If not self-evident, I’m not sure what else about human behavior is. You need resources to live, and the desire to live is a pretty hard wired drive inside any species that made it this far.
Customs relating to this vary quite a bit. In cultures with a strong potlatch tradition, for example, gift-giving is the primary way of displaying status and it’s not at all unusual to give away most of one’s wealth.
Incidentally, I’ve heard a reasonable argument that the so-called “gift-giving” cultures are largely an artifact caused by (mis)translating their languages words for different types of economic exchanges as “gift”. This mistranslation was started by early settlers who didn’t want to admit they were paying tribute to the natives. Later it was continued by anthropologists who believed or at least alieved the whole “noble savage” myth.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it an economic exchange in the same sense that we’d use for the phrase, but a prestige system denominated in (essentially randomly allocated) gifts doesn’t seem all that much more or less noble to me than one denominated in dollars.
Customs relating to this vary quite a bit. In cultures with a strong potlatch tradition, for example, gift-giving is the primary way of displaying status and it’s not at all unusual to give away most of one’s wealth.
I’m not ready to make sweeping declarations about what has been normal for most of human history, or at least for the portion of it where talking about wealth would have made any sense.
I’ve no doubt there are exceptions, but, when posed with the following question, how do you think the majority of humans who have ever walked the Earth would reply?:
Which word best describes your feelings about the act of giving away >50% of your possessions to benefit absolute strangers?
A. Normal B. Abnormal
Further, “wealth” has always had some meaning, even before humans. If we define wealth as “stuff we need or want”, then the animal kingdom is full of this sort of wealth, and they tend to defend their wealth as a means to provide for themselves and their young with vigor.
It is perfectly natural to hoard wealth for yourself and your kin. It was point that movements like The Giving Pledge, or say, very large, anonymous charitable gifts seem to be anti-natural in this way.
I’m aware that what appears to be pure altruism may only be signalling, or some other mechanism for personal gain… But I do believe there is (possibly) something like rational altruism taking place where people are realizing that (1) every dollar past X million/billion is essentially worthless ’cuz you’re gonna die and you can’t use it all, (2) immense amounts of inherited wealth aren’t as 100% positive as you might think so leaving gobs of money to family is not optimal & (3) other people’s lives suck because they have no money or food and no way to get money or food.
There is also a group of people for whom this seems to make no sense. They see every red cent as having utility since they can find ways to pass it on (in some form) to their family.
As I just said, I’m not willing to make that generalization; we don’t have enough good data about prehistoric culture, or for that matter many historical cultures, to talk about it this specifically. A cladistic analysis of gift-giving behavior might be more tractable, but I don’t have the data for that either.
(Granted, given the shape of the population curve, it might be—though I don’t remember, and haven’t looked it up—that the majority of humans ever to walk the earth lived in historical times. But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re getting at.)
I’m using “wealth” to indicate the kind of goods that can be usefully hoarded, which IIRC are primarily discussed as a post-Neolithic phenomenon. I’m not anthopologist enough to speak authoritatively on how things might have worked in the Paleolithic, but it should be clear that there are physical limits on how much you can hoard if you’re leading a nomadic forager lifestyle, particularly without pack animals. I’d also expect people’s cultural reasoning about generosity to differ under this sort of regime.
I think you are over-thinking it.
I’m no anthropologist, but giving away the majority of one’s wealth isn’t the norm. If not self-evident, I’m not sure what else about human behavior is. You need resources to live, and the desire to live is a pretty hard wired drive inside any species that made it this far.
Incidentally, I’ve heard a reasonable argument that the so-called “gift-giving” cultures are largely an artifact caused by (mis)translating their languages words for different types of economic exchanges as “gift”. This mistranslation was started by early settlers who didn’t want to admit they were paying tribute to the natives. Later it was continued by anthropologists who believed or at least alieved the whole “noble savage” myth.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it an economic exchange in the same sense that we’d use for the phrase, but a prestige system denominated in (essentially randomly allocated) gifts doesn’t seem all that much more or less noble to me than one denominated in dollars.