Is it because of isolation that the wealthy are less giving?

The poor are more generous than the rich, writes Prof Dipankar Gupta, to the extent that they will risk their lives to save others. He narrates the story of how during a fire in Shahadara, Delhi several unrelated people rushed into burning buildings to rescue many trapped inside. This was also noticed in the US where the poor donated more to charities after the Great Recession, than the rich. The rich give more in absolute terms but as a percentage of income the poor are much more generous. The rich tend to donate to universities while the poor help those around them. Thus, Harvard has $37.6 billion in endowments, Yale has $25.5 billion and Princeton and Stanford tie on $22 billion. "There is this old sociological nugget that goes as follows: in the everyday presentation of self, the higher one rises socially, the fewer friends one has," writes Prof Gupta. A study in Britain found that those winning jackpots quickly lost their friends and became lonely. Prof Gupta thinks that "absolute kindness creates heroes from nowhere". "They are usually ordinary, unremarkable people, more often than not, strangers to those affected and, most significantly, rarely ever posh, not even from the confirmed middle class," he writes. Perhaps, such sacrifice is possible when there is no time to think. It is a regular experience in India that no one stops to help an accident victim, often with tragic results. In a recent incident, also in Delhi, a rickshaw-puller stole the mobile phone of an accident victim and fled the scene without helping him. The man died. After every such incident the media howl in indignation saying the we are,"Self-righteous insensitive quislings with a grossly exaggerated opinion of ourselves, with delusions and empty slogans of greatness." The rickshaw-puller who stole the mobile phone of a man bleeding to death and the men who raped Jyoti Singh Pandey on a Delhi bus were also poor. So are they heroes, as Prof Gupta thinks, or absolute scoundrels, as the evidence shows. Perhaps, the answer is not so easy. Human beings are capable of extreme valor and also extreme brutality. Strangely, studies show that altruism is apparently in our genes. If so, why is there so much brutality in Iraq and Syria, and not from ISIS only? Surely, some of these men will be loving fathers to their own children? So, is the gene present in only a few, or can we switch the gene on and off? A man presented a moral dilemma to his 2 year old child, in which a train would run over one person, if sent down one track, and 5 people if sent down another. The toddler's solution was illuminating. He moved the single person to the other track and ran the train over all 6. Perhaps, it is easy for poor people to be altruistic because they can help only a few but the rich can help a lot of people, so they freeze. Trouble is, you cannot arm-twist a man to be kind.