Abigail (Abby) Marsh

But what I always tell people is think about the interactions you have.

Think about the people around you in your real life that you spend time with and that you interact with.

How have those interactions been?

Have those people genuinely been pretty helpful, pretty cooperative, willing to help each other out in a pinch?

And when you do that, I think most people think, oh my gosh, I'm really lucky.

I spend my life surrounded by a lot of really nice people.

That's certainly true.

Humans, we believe, evolved to live in societies of 100 to 150 people where they very rarely would have encountered strangers.

And when they did, it was just as likely to be a dangerous interaction as one in which there would be any cooperation.

And it's only quite recently in the course of our species history that we've even had the capacity to know what is happening to people on the other side of the world and people that we've never met before.

Never mind help them.

And so I think in that context, it's really remarkable just how much time and energy and money people spend trying to help people who don't live in their town, don't live in their country, they've never met, they never will meet.

But still that person's welfare matters enough that people, many people, are willing to give and help.

Absolutely.

I think many people aren't aware of just how strange it was considered when blood donation first became a thing that anybody would want to open up their veins and let blood be taken out by a stranger and given to another stranger.

And in fact, you know, there are many places in the world where people really don't give blood in this way.

but I think in part because people are becoming generally more altruistic and certainly more toward a widening group of people over time.

And as that is happening, things like blood donation are becoming more normative.

And so it's become sort of a matter of course for many people that, oh,

blood donation is something you do.