Stefan Klein - Survival of the Nicest: How Altruism Made Us Human and Why It Pays to Get Along

About the Author

STEFAN KLEIN, PhD, has studied physics and analytical philosophy and holds a doctorate in biophysics. After several years as an academic researcher, he turned to writing about science for a general audience. From 1996 to 1999 he was an editor at Der Spiegel, Germanys leading news magazine, and in 1998 he won the prestigious Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism. Today Klein is recognized as one of Europes most influential science writers and journalists. His interviews with the worlds leading scientists are a regular feature in Germanys Zeit Magazine. His books, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, include the #1 international bestseller The Science of Happiness, The Secret Pulse of Time, and Leonardos Legacy. A frequent speaker and university guest lecturer, he lives with his family in Berlin. Translator DAVID DOLLENMAYER is emeritus Professor of German at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Berlin Novels of Alfred Dblin. He is the recipient of the 2008 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translators Prize and often translates for the New York Review of Books.

PRAISE FOR

Survival of the Nicest

This wonderful book could be read as a scientific explanation for a moral imperative to be kind to others. But it is so much more! Stefan Klein, an enticing storyteller, marshals the evidence for the value of altruismnot only to ones family but, much more interestingly, to ones self and ones tribe. Altruism is truly contagious!

Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Laureate, poet, and Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus, Cornell University

A scholarly tour de force about why generosity makes good sense, Survival of the Nicest is also compulsively readable. Klein argues convincingly that helping others is one of the best things we can do for ourselves.

Elizabeth Svoboda, author of What Makes a Hero?: The Surprising Science of Selflessness

A thought-provoking and comprehensive review of the research on altruism, Survival of the Nicest validates humanistic principles and has far-reaching implications for todays worldespecially for US politics and culture. An inspiration!

Rebecca Hale, president, American Humanist Association, and co-owner of EvolveFISH.com

An important contribution to the field of altruism and altruistic behavior and to a better and nicer world. I highly recommend this book.

Samuel P. Oliner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Humboldt State University, and founder and director, The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute

In Survival of the Nicest, Stefan Klein poses three questions central to social science and ethics: (1) How is unselfishness possible? (2) What moves us to help others? And (3) why are some people more helpful than others? His wide-ranging answers to these questions suggest that altruism is born into us and that selflessness actually both makes us happy and will transform the world.

Kristen Renwick Monroe, Chancellors Professor, University of California, Irvine, and author of The Heart of Altruism

ALSO BY STEFAN KLEIN

Leonardos Legacy: How Da Vinci Reimagined the World

The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Lifes Scarcest Commodity

The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happyand What We Can Do to Get Happier

Survival of the Nicest

How Altruism Made Us Human and Why It Pays to Get Along

STEFAN KLEIN
TRANSLATED BY DAVID DOLLENMAYER

NEW YORK

Survival of the Nicest: How Altruism Made Us Human and Why It Pays to Get Along
Copyright Stefan Klein, 2010, 2014
Translation David Dollenmayer, 2014
The Mask of Evil, originally published in German as Die Maske des Bsen.
Copyright 1943 by Bertolt-Brecht-Erben / Suhrkamp Verlag, from Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Translation for this edition by David Dollenmayer.

Illustrations courtesy of Karen Giangreco, after Hermann Hlsenberg, Berlin.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Originally published in 2010 in German, in slightly different form, by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Klein, Stefan, 1965
[Sinn des Gebens. English]
Survival of the nicest : how altruism made us human and why it pays to get along / Stefan Klein ;
translated by David Dollenmayer.
pages cm
Translation of: Der Sinn des Gebens : warum Selbstlosigkeit in der Evolution siegt und wir mit Egoismus nicht weiterkommen.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61519-090-4 (cloth) -- ISBN 978-1-61519-181-9 (ebook)
1. Altruism. 2. Cooperation. 3. Evolutionary psychology. I. Title.
BF637.H4K57 2014
155.7--dc23
2013024044

ISBN 978-1-61519-090-4
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-181-9

Cover design by Alison Forner
Cover image and image on pages Rossella Apostoli | Alamy and Sabri Deniz Kizil | Shutterstock
Text design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen and Son Ltd.
First printing January 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Elias

Contents

PART I:

CHAPTER 1:

CHAPTER 2:

CHAPTER 3:

CHAPTER 4:

CHAPTER 5:

PART II:

CHAPTER 6:

CHAPTER 7:

CHAPTER 8:

CHAPTER 9:

CHAPTER 10:

CHAPTER 11:

EPILOGUE:

Introduction

SOME POEMS ARE LIKE OLD FRIENDS. COMPANIONS through the years, they keep us fascinated even when we dont entirely understand them. Thats what the following lines were like for me:

On my wall hangs a Japanese woodcut
Mask of an evil demon, lacquered in gold
With empathy I see
The swollen veins on its brow, suggesting
How stressful it is to be angry.

I was seventeen when I read Bertolt Brechts The Mask of Evil for the first time. Like so many young adults, I was angry at the world and longed for a better one. Of course I understood the poems literal meaning; from my own experience I well knew the strength required to quarrel and the energy wasted in being angry! Worse than the unpleasant feeling itself is that it separates you from other people. Fury is a prison. Each object of our anger is one less person we can join forces with.

But Brechts word for angry, bse, designates more than just a feeling. Its a moral judgment as well, for it also means evil. This is almost certainly what Brecht had in mind when he entitled his poem