1 . Recently, I was walking with some parents when we came across a five-pound note lying on the ground. We stood around it for a moment, a bit awkwardly, until someone suggested putting it on a nearby bench. Then one of the parents remarked that we’d probably have behaved differently — that is, we would have just taken the money — had we been alone.

This relates to a classic question in studies of human generosity: do we behave more selfishly when we aren’t being observed? The debate goes on across the psychological and biological sciences, as well as in popular culture, about whether kindness can exist in a competitive world.

Yom Kippur is a Jewish (犹太人的) religious holiday when Jewish people fast and ask for forgiveness for the wrongs they’ve committed. One of the points of Yom Kippur is to behave better regardless of who is watching. There’s an evolutionary beauty to the teachings of Yom Kippur, which are the products of thousands of years of cultural changes and evolution.

The Maasai people of Kenya practice osotua: relationships between people that operate based on need. When someone forms an osotua relationship with another, they enter into an unwritten contract to help their partner in times of need. And hunter-gatherer groups, which can represent the circumstances our species evolved in, have many similar examples.

Cultural evolution helps to explain the existence and complexity of these systems. Cultural changes are far faster than biological evolution, allowing intelligent species like humans to develop behavioral adaptations for managing complex social environments. Osotua, or any other practice that helps to maintain good treatment of others in society, is the result of tens of thousands of years of cultural trial and error. The customs passed down over time are those that help us to develop as cultural groups.

The study of those changes has helped us to understand how we successfully spread around the world as cooperative groups. Biological evolution has helped humans be more cooperative, but cultural changes have accelerated this process.

Cultural evolution helps us to overcome our selfish natures. Try to understand rules before you ignore them — and next time you find a fiver on the ground, you might think about the awkward situation your discovery represents.

2 . What comes to mind when you think about chocolate? A candy bar at Halloween? Ice cream on a hot day?

For Ibrahim, a 12-year-old boy from the West African country of Ghana, chocolate is not about sweet treats; it is about bitter work.     1     But if they did, we would learn that Ibrahim spends his days growing and harvesting cocoa beans, from which chocolate is made. We would also learn that he is just one of more than two million children who perform this difficult labour instead of attending school.

To change the harmful practices like this, some farms use an approach called Fairtrade.     2     It aims to create a different relationship between buyers (chocolate companies) and sellers (cocoa farmers) by encouraging farmers to join together to form a shared business called a cooperative. Because farmers work together instead of competing with each other, they can demand a higher price from the buyers.     3    

Consumers like you can play a role as well. You can buy Fairtrade chocolate if possible, pressure candy companies to change their labour practices, or ask local stores to sell Fairtrade products.     4     It is a programme recognizing schools that provide Fairtrade products in cafeterias or include related lessons in curriculum (课程).

Chocolate has a hidden story that affects children like Ibrahim—children who want a happy future just like you do.     5     By enjoying Fairtrade products or simply spreading the word, you can make chocolate as sweet for all children as it is for you.

5 . Parents have been urged to stop pretending Father Christmas is real in case the “lie” damages relations with their children. Making up stories about Santa risks destroying a child’s trust and is morally unbelievable, according to two experts.

Psychologist Professor Christopher Boyle and social scientist Dr. Kathy McKay also criticize the idea employed by parents—Santa Claus judges children to be nice or naughty. Writing in a well-known journal, they argue, “If they are capable of lying about something so special and magical, can they be relied upon to continue as the guardians of wisdom and truth?”

Defending the claims, Prof Boyle said, “The morality of making children believe in such myths has to be questioned. All children will eventually find out they’ve been consistently lied to for years, and this might make them wonder what other lies they’ve been told. Whether it’s right to make children believe in Father Christmas is an interesting question, and it’s also interesting to ask whether lying in this way will affect children in ways that have not been considered.”

Dr. McKay, from the University of New England in Australia, said there was clear evidence from the world of make-believe in movies and TV that adults looked for a chance to be children again. “The persistence of fandom(影迷) in stories like Harry Potter and Star Wars indicates their desire to briefly re-enter childhood,” she said. “However,” she added, “if adults have been lying about Santa, even though it has usually been well intentioned, what else is a lie? If Santa isn’t real, are fairies real? Is magic? Is God?”

They conclude, “Many people may long for a time when imagination was accepted and encouraged, which may not be the case in adult life. Might it be the case that the harshness of real life requires the creation of something better, something to believe in, something to hope for in the future or to return to a long-lost childhood a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?”

7 . A human head will set you back about $640. An arm is less: that costs roughly $ 430. A leg, by contrast, is $1,600. But overall, human body parts come surprisingly cheap: getting an arm and a leg rarely costs an arm and a leg. There exists a surprisingly lively international trade in dead bodies for medical dissection(解剖). This trade is rarely discussed and relatively lightly regulated: there is no one head, or body, that directly oversees the imports of heads and bodies. This trade is also important, for it allows doctors to practise on real, dead humans before they practise on real, live ones.

It is not essential to use dead bodies to teach medical students: computer models exist. But for all the digital brilliance there are still things that flesh and blood can do that computers cannot—such as making these medics faint and offering more muted feelings. Looking at a model “isn’t quite the same as seeing the real thing in front of you”, says Dangerfield, the president of the British Association of Clinical Dissection. To hold a human skull in your hands is, Hamlet-like, to be unexcited rather than awed. A head, emptied of human, is surprisingly small; the bowl you use is more substantially sized.

Bodies help with practical considerations as well as emotional ones. Textbooks tend to offer knowledge that is just that. Similarly, computer models, like the human kind, tend to have square jaws and broad shoulders. Reality is much messier. Textbooks will tell you that there are three branches coming off the aorta(主动脉) but, says Dangerfield, it is “really common to see four or to see two branches”.

The demand for bodies, then, is there—but in many countries it is not matched by supply. There are American companies providing bodies trade services. But to use their services is, for British doctors “a last-resort sort of situation”. Until recently, however, they had little alternative. That is changing. In Nottingham City Hospital, there is a centre, created in 2011 by a shoulder surgeon, Angus Wallace.

8 . My grandparents were always busy with food. My grandmother could pull out the feathers of a chicken in less than half an hour. They picked vegetables from their garden. Animal fat was saved.     1     Nearly a decade after my grandmother died, I found myself in a kitchen, pulling out the feathers of a chicken.

It took hours and made my fingers hurt. After an adult life spent buying rather than growing food, as a so-called new farmer, I finally began to understand my grandparents.     2    

My grandparents’ generation spent a third of their income on food.     3     Food is no longer seen as public goods, but as public given resources. The ecological cost of this progress is now clear. The health costs are starting to be noticed.

But until I began talking to the farmers around me, I had not understood the human costs faced by those asked to produce milk sold for less than bottled water.     4     Called “ regenerative farming”, it was being driven by a new generation of farmers trying to find a new kind of power in the face of loss of climate change and rising fuel and transport costs.

    5     Those plants and animals worked together to help the soil become rich again. They kept living roots in the ground all year round, building up the soil’s biology and taking in carbon.

Research has found that regenerative farming not only benefits the land, but profits can be 78% higher than conventional farms.

9 . The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas has issued a recent report in order to recommend ways to increase food donations, reduce food waste, and fight hunger, which may help Kenyan leaders meet 2030 food waste reduction goals.

Food donation can reroute eatable food—that would otherwise give off greenhouse gasses in a landfill—to those experiencing hunger. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, 3.5 million Kenyans, roughly 37 percent of the population, face severe hunger. At the same time, the Policy Atlas reports roughly 40 percent of food produced within Kenya goes to waste. But Broad Leib, Deputy Director of Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), sees some promising changes. “While progress is not happening as quickly as needed, Kenya’s food loss index has been steadily reduced from 1,744 metric tons in 2017, to 1,531 in 2018, to 1,446 metric tons in 2019, indicating a steady improvement and national commitment to food loss reduction,” reports Broad Leib.

According to the Policy Atlas, motivating food donation with rewards is particularly important, which helps food donors and food recovery organizations make up for costs necessary for recovery, storing, processing, and transporting food for donation.

“A major driver of food waste is inconsistent or unclear date labels that cause confusion among all actors along the value chain and limit the ability of businesses to donate food. This increases the likelihood that much safe food will go to waste,” Broad Leib tells Food Tank. However, he acknowledges Kenya’s current dual (双的) date labeling laws. While food may lose its freshness over time, it is still eatable before expiration (到期). Dual date labeling on packaged foods reduces bewilderment by defining dates for both safety and quality. This helps reduce considerable waste and responsibility for donors.

Broad Leib believes that the private sector can also play a significant role in decreasing food waste in Kenya. It is vital for consumer education campaigns. FLPC’s research shows that public-private initiatives can help raise awareness among consumers and donors around issues of food waste and food donation.