Altruism?

It bugs me to no end when people accuse other people of being "selfish" or "self-centered." The way I see it, everyone is selfish. Everyone is fundamentally self-centered. If you spend all your time helping poor people, you're doing it because you get something out of it. It makes you feel good about yourself.

Am I nuts, hopelessly cynical? Do you believe in true pure altruism? Does it exist?

Yes.

I don't know. Let's give it a try. Buy me something.

Note to self, stick to Silliness.

I don't know if everyone is completely self-centered, but I sure am. On the other hand, I'm self-centered in a way that doesn't fuck other people over, which is usually what people who complain about selfishness are mad about.

Okay, in all seriousness... Yes, I think most animals are self-centered by definition. But I think that one of the hallmarks of society is the ability to look past your own existence to think about the plight of others. Of course, you can always argue that there's something someone's getting out of it - inflated sense of self-importance, blah blah blah - but I do think that there are situations where people don't premeditate their goodness and simply react in an altruistic manner. A good example is seeing someone on a bridge about to commit suicide - without thinking, you grab them even though logically you're just as liable to fall in with them. That's altruism. And if you believe Joseph Campbell at all, that's the moment that you transcend physical existence and have a truly "spiritual" moment.

I'll buy that. And based on the roadtrip you and Stiles did, I was hoping you'd chime in. The man on the bridge moment though is an interesting example because of how extreme it is, and how instinctive the reaction to it is.

Interesting.

I'm not sure I'd call our trip altruistic. It would be hard to label any pre-meditated action truly altruistic - but we could argue that for years and get no where.

Yeah, I was more thinking about the fact that you may have seen examples of altruism along the way from others. Not saying you guys were or weren't.

The Man On The Bridge is a good example. Is it instinctive or is it society? I think if left to their own human desires and cut off from the societal values we're (for lack of a better word) burdened with people will take the selfish road every time.

Even if an act is committed selfishly, a good act is a good act in my opinion. I don't care about motives. That being said, I don't usually praise people either. Way to go helping that baby out, I've already forgotten.

There's a movie called "The Paper" which is about some guy who works for a newspaper and is seriously in love with his job, at the same time he has a pregnant wife. So his wife is fed up with him blowing her off to work around the clock. She confronts him thusly (I'm paraphrasing because i don't feel like looking up the quote)

Wife: If there was a man with a gun and he put the gun to my head and said he would either kill me, or blow up the newspaper, what would you choose?

Husband: That's ridiculous, you! I'd choose you of course!

Wife: Well that's just the point, because it's never a man with a gun in some dramatic moment, it's a million little decisions, and choices.

Ever since I saw that scene, I've discounted the "grand flourish as representative of character."

That's why the man on the bridge example is so interesting to me. Becuase I agree with what Idjitt is saying, but I think it has to exist on a smaller more regular scale, to be meaningful.

Totally agree, it just bugs me when people are like "so and so is soooo self centered" it's like, "oh and you're not?"

Right. I think the sort of "reactionary" altruism was largely over by the time we were in the area - we were there two weeks after Katrina came through. A lot of the really devastated areas we visited simply had no one there except utility workers, clean up crews, journalists and insurance agents. But seeing the thousands and thousands of volunteers from all over the country (the world, really) in the EOCs and churches definitely made me think about altruism, motivations, etc. The cynic would say that the volunteers (who by a wide majority were religiously-affiliated) were there in an effort to "buy their way into heaven" or some such thing, but it's hard for me to say if what they're doing is altruistic or not as well. Are they doing it just to appease that icky feeling of uselessness a lot of people get with this sort of thing - basically a selfish effort to make themselves feel better about themselves? Or are they really responding in a truly selfless way to help their fellow man. I dunno.

I think it's true that people almost always act in their self-interest, but I'm not sure that's really the same thing has being self-centered. You can act in your own self-interest a good portion of the time but still take the needs and feelings of others into consideration over your own. It's a balancing act, and some people are weighted heavily one way or the other.

i don't know a single person who isn't self-centered.
self-preservation is important.

Yeah, and it's also an exercise in dicey semantics too, I suppose.

I don't believe in pure altruism. Still, I don't think that precludes us from critiquing selfishness or excessive self-involvement in others. It isn't a black & white issue; there are different degrees of selfishness. Some, I think, are more tolerable than others.

There's a specific post in another thread that got me thinking about this, and I don't want to bring it up because then, this conversation is going to devolve into that conversation and I don't want to get fixated on it or my head will explode.

The issue of "some more tolerable than others" starts getting really subjective. And potentially discriminatory.

[Edited on Oct 21, 2005 by FridgeMagnet]

How is it discriminatory? I think the same thing can be said about any number of personality conflicts. Personally, I'm probably more self-centered than most and have a bit of empathy for people who are similar to me in that regard. There are some friends of ours that I can tolerate really well despite this "flaw", while it just makes kitschy want to pry their eyes out with a melon baller.

I don't believe in altruism. Even giving up your life can be done for selfish reasons, if it's your nature to find the alternative sufficiently distasteful.

Of course there's still a world of difference between the person who'll smash an old lady's brains out for the money in her purse and the atheist aid worker out in the field. I imagine it comes down to how internalized your value system is, which is really just another way of saying how selfish you might be.

Nature or nurture though? And if it's nurture then how to go about getting the "right" outcome? Is "right" the same for all cultures?

[Edited on Oct 21, 2005 by quagmirething]

On a philosophical/religious note, the instinctual moral act Joseph Campbell is talking about was called Ren by Confucius and Mencius.

I agree with Idjiit that we are capable of acting in an purely altruistic manner. Examples are perhaps more rare than I would like because most people are acting in ways that are altruistic and self-fulfilling at the same time. Still, we don't always recognize the little acts that are purely altruistic. If drastic acts like the example of the man on the bridge can be purely altruistic, then we should probably believe that a number of little acts we commit are capable of being altruistic.

When people argue that one can only act selfishly, I tend to distrust the claim on a number of grounds. First, it is non-falsifiable in the way it is most often argued. No example possible is accepted as a counter-example by most of the people with whom I have discussed/argued this topic. In many cases, proponents of the theory argue circularly. Second, the argument seems to confuse choosing to do an act with wanting to do act (or gaining some selfish ends) in the more radical articulations.

Utilitarianism anyone?

oh why don't you go read atlas shrugged or something

objectivism, that is. look here.

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

sounds good to me

Ayn Rand was a fucking nutbag who thought that people who enjoyed listening to Beethoven were immoral. She can suck a dick in hell for all I care.