But do you see the United States "holding the door" open for anyone when it comes to energy?  Or China?  Japan?  Russia, India, Iran, Venezuela?  Are any of these places "holding the door" open for other countries when it comes to energy?  [Actually, as it happens, the Venezuelans are....]

Are the Saudis and other profligately rich Middle East producers going to start giving away some of their oil for free to very poor countries who desperately need it?  Are the Russians going to "play nice" and stop their energy-related bullying of the Europeans?  Is the United States going to desist from hypocritically bullying the Russians for bullying the Europeans?  Are the US and Venezuela going to desist from calling each other the "New Hitlers?"  Are China and Japan going to start "playing nice" in the East China Sea anytime soon?  Are all of these countries, and others besides, going to desist from their self-serving wrangling about where to build new pipeline routes across Eurasia?  Are the rebels in Nigeria going to desist from their terrorism, and is the government of Nigeria going to "play nice" and give in to their legitimate demands?  And so on and so forth....

Where is anyone "holding the door" for anyone else here - other than as relatively minor matters in the grand scheme of things?  [And those who do "hold the door" for others, like Venezuela, are denounced for doing so on top of it all!!]

Odograph, I'm not in any way taking issue with your general point, but the example you gave is culturally limited, and I thought you might like to realize that. For example, in Hong Kong, people never hold doors open for others, and they are quite glad to shut the doors of the evelator in your face as you charge towards it (I once managed to enter an elevator that had been shut thus once - they couldn't go anywhere, my foot was stuck in the outer door - and I then greeted everyone present therein with the loud appellation 'Sh*theads!'. Yeah, it was a cultural thing. That's the point.)

The irony is this: re lifts, you are on the receiving end more often than otherwise, so it would actually be rational to hold open the lift door for strangers. You lose one second, but on balance you gain up to five minutes, if everyone behaves otherwise. Of course, no one behaves otherwise, so everyone spends their lives quickly shutting the elevator doors in strangers' faces for the benefit of one or two seconds.

In Hong Kong, you are told this sort of behaviour results because people are 'busy'. In fact, it is simply a form of rudeness or indifference, cultivated because everyone is generally subject to the same sort of behaviour.

Again, nothing to do with your general point. But something to remember for any of you who are headed East. Hold the lift door open for a lady and you will be greeted with (a) very profuse thanks or (b) the sort of indifference reserved for the obviously insane.

This whole thread dealing with whether people are naturally altruistic or not is missing one important factor. The people helping each other in the ice storm or hurricanes ( We lost power for 3 months after Iniki) or other maladies that afflict us from time to time all have one thing in common. They all fully expect that things will soon return to "normal". The power will come back on, the grocery store will get refilled. The military will provide temporary clean water and food until things get back to "normal".
When there is no reasonable likelihood that "normal" will return, oil prices will get higher and higher, food will get more expensive and less available, unemployment will rise, electricity will get more expensive and/or unavailable, and the expectation is that this situation will not improve, then we will see how basically altruistic human beings truly are.