Tit for tat, tit or just because?

I work in a research lab where we have a rectangular table with one side against the walk. At our weekly meetings, I sit in a certain spot which happens to place me in a corner. An Asian guy sits next to me. After a few weeks of meetings, I noticed something about him. Something odd. Like extra-sensory perception or something, he always knows when I’m about to leave my seat, even before I do. With eyes glued to the screen of his laptop, he is able to stand and move his chair out of the way with enough time left for him to wait on me to ascend from my chair. After several months of observation, I’ve managed to conclude that what I first thought was sheer oddity is actually chivalry.

Outside of the historical origin of chivalry, how does it really work though? Cognitively speaking, does his brain think ‘do what she wants you to do’ or ‘do what you should do’? When a man insists on opening a door for a woman, does he because he wants to make her smile? Or is he doing it because she’s the weaker sex and her energy should be reserved for making dinner when she gets home? Does it matter?

It surely does.

I had a dream a few nights ago. Someone in it was explaining to me the difference between kindness with an ‘agenda’ and kindness without an ‘agenda’. The person said that “the difference is in the stalk” and went on to explain what the ‘stalk’ was. In this case, the stalk is a pattern. It’s referred to as a stalk because should the acts be represented as plots on a graph, a linear form would be noticed. The absence of a stalk would mean no significant relationship. That is, acts of kindness would randomly exist.

The unnecessarily convoluted (but simple) message my subconscious was trying to communicate to me was that those among us who are genuinely kind, display this kindness without taking into account the chance of receiving a reward. True kindness occurs naturally, persistently and irrespective of imagined or actual outcome. Random acts of kindness however, may be contingent on an external or internal influence.

The Asian guy in my lab with his extra-sensory ability seemingly has kindness wired in.