An evening with Professor Donna Orange: Altruism, envy, shame and evolution

Tonight I was fortunate to have had an opportunity to listen to a lecture by Psychoanalyst, philosopher and author, Professor Donna Orange. We also had an opportunity to chat over a glass of wine afterward. There were a few gems discussed that I believe are worthy of wider dissemination, in the service of pleading for more altruism and compassion in our interactions with Others.

First, ENVY and SHAME. Professor Orange empathically made a point that Envy is dangerous; not only to the envious but also because it hypertrophies our focus on those whom we perceive have more: more money, more fast cars, more attractiveness, more etc. This means that those with less, i.e. those who need our support and help most, are rendered INVISIBLE to us.

And thats not all. Shame is the flip side of envy. So even if those with less entire our field of visibility, they are at risk of receiving all our unwanted psychological projections: all our disowned, unacceptable qualities become attributed to THEM, thus transforming them in our eyes into the dreaded other, whom we then actively and conveniently discriminate against and persecute.

An audience member then argued from a fatalist perspective, stating that the above is all nice and good, but is against our evolutionary heritage. We are evolved to attune to individual survival needs, and hence are wired to compete not co-operate. Those outside ourselves will always be perceived as Other, to be crushed so we can advance ourselves. We are essentially, like the dinosaurs preceding us, doomed to war and persecution.

Yours truly then piped up that all the above carries a degree of truth, and there is clearly a survival instinct within each of us that does necessitate competition. However we are conveniently forgetting that human beings are also necessarily wired by evolution with sociality and co-operativeness to aid our survival. This eventually gave rise to the evolution of conscious awareness and reflective functioning through language. We are evolved to survive, but are also evolved to care and empathise for others. Language can facilitate increasing awareness of this through dialogue and action.

And this circle of caring, this field of inclusiveness which has its evolutionary roots in kinship then reciprocal altruism, can be expanded through dialogue with The Other, over and over again. This dialogue facilitated interaction then becomes increasingly embedded as shared experience, which can then facilitate and deepen our attunement, empathy and thus increase the probability of us reclaiming the aforementioned harmful projections.

Epigenetics clearly shows that our behaviours learned in our lifetime can indeed be transmitted to our progeny, and perhaps this is the core of our responsibility: to promote empathy and care for others. To balance and override innate competitive tendencies with co-operation.

Which brings us back to envy and shame: we are all prone to these destructive complex emotions there is no doubt. However, we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to courageously and empathetically admit this to ourselves, so we can begin to transform these internal Ghosts (as Professor Orange reminded us of the metaphors used by Hans Loewald) into respected Ancestors thus laying them to rest.