Why do you give? -- It's a natural thing to do. To see the smile in other people's faces.
Because it feels good and because that's what God taught us to do.
Make people happy and make yourself happy! Because I like to see the expression
on people's faces when they receive it. We see humans and we need to share ...
we need to connect and that is why. Because it's good for the soul.
It truly is, isn't it... -- That takes a long time to answer... for 12 years I worked with children
children in conflict and post-conflict zones. The reason I give is: a) they're children
and b) if I can help them there's less chance they are then sitting
next to you on the underground with their explosive backpack on.
Giving is all around us, and ideas of the gift pervade our individual and collective lives.
But why do we give? Are there different kinds of giving and how does
giving change us? My name is Jessica Scott and in exploring these questions,
I want to look at the relationship between humans animals and theology
as we deepen our understanding of the gift.
I'm here with Shermara Fletcher from St.-George-in-the-East.
Shermara is part of the Open Table team. Could you tell me a bit about the Open Table?
The Open Table is a community of housed, ex-homeless are currently homeless
sharing food together.
So we're outside Shadwell DLR in Tower Hamlets and we've just set up
Open Table. So as you can see, it's for the whole community, for homeless and non-.
And just a table of food, fellowship, sharing ... And what inspires you to give in this way?
It's the fact that we live in this first world capitalist country
I said if we are so economically advanced, why are people sleeping on the street?
We are building more homes and helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder
Trump used the foundation as kind of a checkbook for himself.
He used the charity's money
to save his businesses $260,000. 51 00:02:20,310 --> 00:02:23,280 He also used the charity's money
to buy portraits of himself. I'd like to talk a little bit about party donors.
It seems a little bit like these gifts have strings attached.
Is that sometimes the case? So I think there's a huge problem with party funding.
I'm quite radical on this. I would actually ban large donations for politics
because I think that's the easiest way that even if somebody says here's a million pounds
and it's fine I don't really want anything in exchange. Even if that's true,
no one will believe it and there's no real way to know how powerful it is.
People have talked about greenwashing, and the ways that companies
with terrible track records have given money to particular charities and therefore
appeared in the public to be doing a good thing - what do you make of that?
Yeah, so there is this growth in green washing, and you know, I actually think increasingly
people can see through it. They can say, look you are in fact a fossil fuel company
or a tobacco company and actually the fact that you also sponsor
this nice athletics thing - yeah so what ...?
I decided to do something worthwhile, it's going to be far away - then there are people around the corner, so start there first.
With the Open Table it's helped the giving not to be about me, so I'm able to
recognise when I am being ripped off and give anyway
When Jesus said, turn the other cheek when someone hits you that's a form of power.
If someone's just hit you and then you give them the other cheek what you've
basically said is that didn't hurt, You know I'm going to fulfill my mission anyway,
and that's a power in itself, An example of just how hardwired this whole
notion of sharing or giving might be is the way in which children almost
from as early as they can walk love to offer gifts. They will come and bring something to you
to show and are usually quite happy if you take it from them.
So it's not necessarily just showing. They are giving. Increasingly what you see are
how many more similarities there are across species than differences.
I wouldn't be surprised if you went, say, 104 00:04:48,590 --> 00:04:52,009 amongst corvids,
you might find exactly the same kind of sharing behaviors as you would amongst
human children. I'm here with the psychologist and dancer Nicky Clayton.
Nicky, among the birds that you study, how does giving play out? Gift giving plays out
in at least two ways. Amongst the corvids the males during
the breeding season feed the females, and the other kind of gift-giving that we've seen
is that crows will bring gifts to people that feed them.
Why do corvids give? I think the importance of it is for attaining and maintaining a
social relationship with another. The amount of food and object sharing that they do
seems to determine the strength of the pair bonds and is used to keep
the pair bond going throughout their lives.
So you recently wrote a paper about meerkats in which you described them as
"indiscriminate altruists." What did you mean by that?
Most adults don't reproduce. They help to raise the pups of a couple of
individuals who do. And the main way they do this is by feeding. So they'll go and
dig up the scorpion, and rather than eating themselves they'll give it to all the pups.
So we wanted to know whether they do this more often when they're more
closely related genetically to those pups. And the answer was, no, they appear
to be indiscriminate in this respect "Simples!"
There's been a narrative of animals and humans as well being competitive
animals selfishly driven. Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene," really
accentuated this idea of survival of the fittest, but I think the
crucial thing is that this doesn't need to be in conflict with the idea that
animals or humans also cooperate. So there's nice data from wild chimpanzees
showing they get an oxytocin surge when they share food. So sharing
feels good to them. Bonobos, for example, will share food
voluntarily for which they don't get any reward. So there's an experiment:
one bonobo in one cage has the opportunity to release a banana
for another bonobo in another cage. They won't ever have a chance to meet,
this removes the reciprocity issue, and they still do do it. I think in
modern society we often focus on individual goals, and I think actually
apes can teach us the value of the group. So this was all donated by a local primary school
called Harry Gosling, and this is all of our produce
which will last us for the next three months. So again another act of giving.
The school actually contacted us and heard about about what we're doing in the local community
and said, we would really love to give to this project. So the year two children
came together and also wrote little notes to the homeless people.
It was quite hard hitting. So a lot of the homeless people when they read the notes from the children,
they actually started to cry. They were just so honest
authentic and they were just wishing them the best.
It's deeply challenging to know at the end of a night that I'm gonna go home and some of the people I'm
with are not. But I think we need to be willing to
begin to engage at levels that make us uncomfortable make us think. And when it
comes to Christian theology why is the idea of the gifts so central?
There is quite a bit of interest in theology in the idea of the nonzero-sum which is
that more of this doesn't mean less of that. So we think about Jesus: he's not
less human for being divine. Our action is not diminished for the fact that
God's involved in it. One person's benefit is not diminished from the fact
that someone else also benefits. I think it's an attractive vision of how
things can or should be. -- Clearly there is at the very heart of the faith the sense
of being willing to pour out our lives. One of the problems about the sacrifice ideal
is it can be used to justify the oppression of people who say,
you should be giving yourself up! It can be dangerous also when it's politicised and used
to persuade people to go off and give their lives in war. -- You've
spoken a bit about the spiritual dangers of really wholeheartedly embracing that
thoroughly altruistic vision, but what did you mean by that?
W.H. Auden, the poet, said once that if God has just put me
into the world to serve others, then what are the others for? Those who are
selfish have a vision of the world where they're at the centre and everyone else
is just to be used. But I think there's also a problem with putting yourself at the
centre thinking everyone is just there to be helped. I think a kind of Christian
vision of community is actually a community that anyone can
join then you've got to learn how to receive that love as well as to give it.
What's significant about having a table and sharing it with people who are homed
and those without homes? What's significant about it is that it's very
reciprocal. We are open to receiving from the homeless people as well. Sometimes
they'll buy things and put it down. The words that strike me the most is "to all"
and giving to all and receiving from all. Everybody has a capacity to give.
It's our attitude to other people and the willingness to cooperate and share that
is more fundamental to being human than our symbolic skills,
our language skills. What's the greatest gifts that you've been given?
I have to say love. I think love, trust and respect from those that you love.
That is probably the best gift in the world. Perhaps that and I suppose the other one
is the gift of a healthy life. What's the most memorable gift that
you've been given? -- In my life? My husband and children. -- Me and my wife. -- Light. -- Her.
It's of course my teddy bear. And his name is Poo Teddy David Gabriel Vincent Palmer
Carlson Brancho the First. And I got him when I was nine. -- It's our grandchildren
Truly our grand... We've got four gorgeous grandchildren. We all have the power to give
and when we give, whether our love our time, or attention, new relationships
might begin to emerge. What do you think:
when we give, does it matter we take as well?
[Music]