Altruism
Monday, October 6th, 2008
I am a cynic in the sense that I think that people intrinsically have underlying selfish motives whether they be conscious or unconscious. I have doubts in pure altruism, meaning that I think that most if not all acts have a selfish motive. While some acts may have been acted on in the interest of another, I doubt that those acts do not also have a selfish motive. To me, this can even be the “good” feeling you get from helping another. People will argue that when they perform such an act (which they call an “altruistic” act), they were only concerned about the others well-being. Yet, these same people have high regards for performing altruistic acts, and they get a high from attempting to do so. To me, this is yet another selfish motive that renders the act altruistic-less or at least not purely or only altruistic.
At minimum, we all have an underlying instinct for survival. We are instinctively motivated by this to preserve our own well-being. This primitive instinct seems to be at the heart of most of our selfish acts. Arguments will come up with examples like how a soldier in war might throw himself upon a grenade to save his platoon. How I see it is that this soldier was conditioned to believe that doing so is the right thing to do, and so he does so, because of the feeling he gets from doing the right thing.
I think that “selfishness” has an undeserved bad reputation and so called “altruistic” acts are held in an unwarranted high regard. I’m not trying to take credit away from anyone for anything like that, it is just my observation.
I agree with you. I think just about everything we do serves us in one way or another. Giving tithe, going to church, telling our parents we love them, etc.
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I agree too.
Not to wax too political, but I think this is the main reason why capitalism works so well: it harnesses our fundamental selfish motives into win-win situations.
Do follow the development of String Theory? The theory that if proven will create a link between Quantum Physics and the Theory of Relativity- essentially a formula that describes everything in the universe.
If this theory is proven- and some think it may be in the next five years… then it will proven all humans are connected in the most literal sense. The implications are that nothing, even the most base act is truly individual or selfish- since String Theory would suggest that if I do something to make myself feel good- it would affect everyone in the entire universe positively as well… on a physical level.
Cool post. Made me think.
Please forgive excessive typos. It’s 6 am in my world.
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brazen teacher, yes I follow string theory a bit. I don’t think that it renders selfishness null though. If it is true, just because an act in which one does something to make ones self feel good, and that act happend to effect “everyone in the entire universe positively as well,” still doesn’t mean that the motivation for that act wasn’t selfish. It just happened to benefit “everyone in the entire universe positively as well” but it doesn’t mean that it was ones intention, interest, or motivation to do so. They could have very well have still been motivated by how it benefits them. It just so happens it benefited everyone else as well, even if that wasn’t the motivation.
Travis Morgans last blog post..Altruism
If your hand (one part of your body) cleans a bleeding gash on your leg (another part of the same body) so that the leg does not get infected, get gangrene which would spread throughout the whole body, and then cause this body to become ill and die (thus killing the hand as well)… does this make the hand selfish?
This is my analogy in regards to String Theory. If we are all connected in the most physical, base sense… then would not the same apply? Are we not two parts of the same body of energy? (hypothetically speaking if this theory is true of course.)
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Being that I’m a zen buddhist I believe that the only bad human quality is ignorance. pure altruists like mother Theresa or Gandhi comes from renunciation to ones self – ego Ignorant altruism like Bill Gates foundation is done just for stroking of ones ego.
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I’m an bit of an altruist so I will try to defend the concept. First, I’ll say that I don’t believe everyone has good intentions. No, my general belief is that everyone is both selfish and altruistic, some one more then the other. However, i believe that there are people who are purely altruist and that they are as rare as those who are purely egotistic.
For an example for those who are purely egotistical, think of a psychopath. They do nothing but for themselves and at times, this can come to harm those who interact with them. they seem to ignore the whole concept of helping people without gain to them and that is generally why they are caught.
Now, on the opposite end of the scale, think of the police. They join to help people in need and to keep criminals from hurting others. They have a very tough training regime, not that good pay and could die at any time. Yet they still do so. Not everyone can become a cop and those that do generally are not doing it solely because they like it.
If they wanted, they could become a lawyer or go into something else less rigorous. Not to say that there aren’t bad cops but most of them do have good intentions, even those who are biased and have bad to them. Cops also get a very bad reputation, they get scorned and looked at negatively.
I went to a program where the people there actually told me they have had people both in police work and they had a fireman there. I had always had a very good idea of them, cops help people and firemen are saving people from fires at the risk of their lies. But then I hear of them being called lazy and numerous other things when they could die in their job at any time. They don’t have to go into the jobs they go into and save our sorry butts. Yet they do, pure altruism.
Also, I’ll explain why I believe everyone is altruistic. You may try to explain this to genetics but this of every human’s choice to save children. Most people, if they see a child in danger, would go save them right? Why would you do that, you’re strong, healthy, can make more kids. Animals will abandon their children to survive and may even kill the children of other animals. When a lion takes over another lion’s pride, they kill the cubs. When antelope run away from predators, the old, crippled and young get left behind. Many other species will abandon children if they have to. We never do.. Why?
We want to save the kids, we don’t want them hurt. It has nothing to do with survival or instincts. You don’t think you are going to get a prize for saving a kid right when you do. You think of saving the kid because it is right. It is a societal norm for humans, yes, but it is also altruistic.
That’s my argument…. For now…
I agree, altruism doesn’t exist in humans. When humans do something for another, it’s all reciprocity. We hope to get back what we put out there…”good Karma” if u will.
But according to my Bio prof., altruism exists in animals, where one will give up its life to help the relative survive for the better of the family.
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After watching my sister tend to her dying child for seven years and emerging a broken woman, I can’t help but disagree, in part, with what you say.
My experience has shown me that there are acts of love that hold no reward whatsoever. I cannot find the selfishness in my sister’s sacrifice.
How does parental love fit into your cynical philosophy?
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Midwest Mom said: “My experience has shown me that there are acts of love that hold no reward whatsoever. I cannot find the selfishness in my sister’s sacrifice.”
Isn’t the act of love rewarding, and then therefore selfish? (Please keep in mind, ’selfish’ tends to have negative connotations, but that’s not what’s implied here.)
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I wonder whether you would make a distinction between something like parental love having positive benefits and being motivated by those positive benefits.
I think, on the surface, it is easy to say “the act of love is rewarding,” but when you are loving your child and that child is suffering, it is more like your heart is being constantly ripped from your chest and you have to watch everything in slow motion — it is excruciating.
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Understood about what you’re saying. But if your child is suffering, would you rather be there to hold them or not, regardless whether or not holding them will have any direct benefit to them?
jadedconformists last blog post..5×14=25
I would rather hold them…
Midwest Moms last blog post..Halloween Decorations On the Cheap
I agree true altruism is hard to find – selfishness gets in the way. Same may be said of many noble virtues like love, but does that mean they are not worth pursuing, even in imperfect degrees?
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@ Mulled Vine:
It’s not more or less imperfect than anything that is what it happens to be–it’s perfectly what it is. I agree–it’s worth pursuing, and I’m not sure that this post was an argument against doing so. ;)
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I don’t understand your first sentence. Pefectl what it is? Is that so deep that it seems redundant? (Puzzled frown)
I thought you were defending the virtues of selfishness. I think there are very few of those, even if they are perfect at being what they are or whatever it is you said. ;-)
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I agree, HAHAHA…I was just about to say “As a matter of fact”…hahahah. I agree with what you said wholeheartedly. I often wonder if this thing called consciousness is even a good thing…I mean it will eventually (as far as I can see) get us all blown up….I watch the animals..They just do what is in front of them to do…I really beleive the closer we are to Mother Nature, the more content we would be….Anyway, if tending the sick child didn’t make me feel like I was doing the right thing I most likely wouldn’t do it. In the animal kingdom sometimes walking away is the right thing. Doing what I conceive to be the right thing makes me feel whole. If I was taught walking away is the right thing, then I would walk away & eventhough my heart would hurt, I could still live with myself…bottom line…self always comes into play.
My great uncle died by jumping on a grenade to save his platoon, I make no attempt to figure out why he did this, I do not believe I can come upon the solution, does the fact that it was his grenade matter? Does it matter that he meant to throw the grenade at someone else? All I can say is this world confuses me to the extreme and we are all trying to make sense out of it.
selfishness is basic and boringly one dimensional, anyone with an antenna for body language and behaviours like focus and attention, we all know how dull a self centered person is. Their world is closed, they are their own boring focus and it’s a big wide world full to the brim of amazing information and opportunities. Random acts of kindness touch us all… i can’t elaborate right now but i hope you get what i mean.. the child is the centre of the universe, we all were then we evolved past that… to varying degree’s… a person who can’t extend himself to reach out in some altruistic way is bereft, don’t you feel that… it’s to do with a passionate love for life and the people in it…..
@Nyx “there are people who are purely altruist” I will pull this out of context not because I feel able to correct you particularly, but because of the profound lack of sense in ever putting an ‘are’ between ‘people’ and some concept that tries to define human behavior.
At any given moment we are all acting in a way that can be defined in one or more ways. Should we not avoid labels since at different times we act for different reasons, or without conscious reasons, and who else can know about this anyway? Sometimes there will be compelling reasons for labeling an ACTION, and for claiming that an individual often acts like this.
To bring fundamental physics into the matter is pure sophistry in my opinion.(Dr.Awsom at his most generous) most generous
ye bob, well we all have our own personal limitations, can we imagine that someone else has more compassion than ourselves? and don’t mistake me for a middle class person, i don’t give a fuck about ‘are’, replace that with fuck for all i care. But one thing i do know is that somewhere in most of us is a pure feeling of altruism. Whether we are too self oriented to act on that is another question. You with your big nerdy brain could be perfectly right in what you say… but you would have to speak my language for me to get your point… less words and a point would do.
The ‘point’ is bb that all decent people act with altruism one day and selfishly the next, but we can’t always know what their motives were. Would you agree that even if an act is selfish it can still have a good result? I, personally don’t need to ‘imagine someone has more compassion than myself’ Lots of people have, and I know it. Unselfishness and altruism are the greatest of human qualities in my nerdy opinion. I hope that was your language.
yes well decent… that’s a word that comes with a personal context, i would never say ‘all decent people’ i would not be in that category, to say that or actually be considered decent… your meaning eludes me. But i do have a firm grasp on altruism and to me it’s irrelevant if we are selfish, we are supposed to be, it’s intrinsic…. embrace it. But i must say for anyone to be able to dig deep and really feel compassion for others on a pure altruistic level then that is a gift worth having.
I have no idea why so few people seem to have that kind of compassion but i do believe it would predominantly be present in most… i could probably put that more clearly…
You’re right about ‘decent’ I don’t think it HAS any actual meaning; perhaps people who are considerate, kind, honest to their friends, generous when they can be, MOST of the time, average in many ways? As a label it’s as silly as any other, but means SOMEthing. I also think most people would grow up to be compassionate – if life didn’t knock it out of them. Thanks for bothering to reply, our host TJM is the one with brains I think.
ye …. well he probably has a big brain, but so do you… doesn’t mean he’s got it right though…
with the decent thing… well i just have issue with conditioning.. living in our box.. talking from our conditioning, it bothers me. so does academic conditioning.
I think people are born with varies degrees of compassion, like any other quality. It’s just a particularly good quality to have.
Your are lucky bb that conditioning bothers you, it bothers me too, but too be fair, being conditioned to something does not mean it’s bad. I was trained to be honest in all things by simple, honest, kindly parents. In practical terms it didn’t do me many favours in life, but I wouldn’t wish it to be otherwise (except when I’m cold and hungry)
@TJM Evolution could not have occurred without the PRIME motivator being a selfish one. But it deserves a ‘bad reputation’ in a social context. I know you will agree that societies not led by strong people willing to fight for their interests, are lost. But the really senior quality must be altruism at the personal level.
On a irritatingly ‘nerdy’ note I believe there is no intrinsic meaning in such terms as ’selfish’ ‘altruistic’ ‘good’ etc. So it’s easy to be misunderstood.
Unfortunately the well educated middle class seem to be the most well trained to be decent upstanding citizens ie totally conditioned to uphold the greater good and BEHAVE. And furthermore it’s more obvious in America.
Most people outside Australia have not seen their prime minister call their opponent a ‘fucking galah’ on national TV. Or heard any of the bizarre ideas of boris johnson the london mayor or the previous mayor ken livingstone… who said things like… lets give all children and teenagers in london free travel. They never policed the overground which allowed all the poor to travel free.
Would you come across a gang of teenagers swearing and flicking spitballs around a public bus anywhere in America? well it’s exhilarating to see wild children from council flats expressing themselves so openly with no hostility or repercussions back to them, these kids grow up to be musicians (every single london band ever), comediens (katherine tate probably all of them), artists (tracy emin)…
anyway just some thoughts on conditioning… but really conditioning has nothing to do with altruism, you see it everywhere. and America does have the most positive culture… and that’s probably conditioning at it’s best.
Its all in the training. I watched something on video a couple days ago…Oh yeah..It was the 2009 science fair video with a whole bunch of scientists talking about why we care.
They showed groups of apes and groups of children on video. Anyway, it showed how ready little children are to help someone reaching for something as compared to apes who were disinterested..little children would run over and gratefully be helpful. I wonder if they would have gotten the same reactions out of feral children brought up by animals? I doubt it.
WE train out children to be helpful. They smile just as we do when they do something which we call good. The laws of the jungle are different and most animals have to learn quickly to fend for themselves including humans brought up by animals.
I think somewhere along the line our ancestors ate a rare herb & figured out 2 was better than one. After that our brains started growing. As far hunter gatherers are concerned..The more the merrier. It would be nice if we could find more of that herb..Or would it?
oops I am Kathy C…also freethinkin lady..sorry to confuse.
yes i get what you are saying… but i’m talking about over conditioning… crushing the human spirit. Well in the UK the british are encouraging a sort of freedom of expression that allows all these council kids to excel in life. They have more creative freedom than a middle class polite child. What i am saying is the middle class sucks. It bleaches out the creativity, stifles imagination and closes people to other ways of seeing and being. yes i know these are all generalizations … but it’s still pretty obvious.
Sorry..I was backing up to the general subject. I agree with you here also.
My father left us when we were kids to follow his American dream. He and his rich new wife had a beautiful home built in a nice part of Redondo Beach Ca. I go to visit a couple time a year. We sit around in little groups of their friends while they chat politely and munch on tiny cookies & tea.
Being what I consider a street kid used to a completely different set of life rules I feel very restrained in their environment. I am very uncomfortable around the controlled behavior they exhibit. I don’t have fun. I feel no emotion from them, nor do I see any imagination. They are like robots to me..no kidding.
When I see how I might have turned out I am happy for the life I lived..never knowing if there was going to be a jar of jelly to go with the peanut butter enabled me to see life for what it really is. If I would have gone to live with him I might have become one of the zombies myself.
He died this year, but I visit his wife twice a year..Try to get her to see the other side…The side where the Artists and poets live, where people are not so normal.
I wrote a poem about this very same subject back in 2007 I think then another about my feelings for the middle/upper class in 2008…I will share them here: By Kathy C (me). It is called… “Window”..
“Flakes of ancient paint fall as ivy ascends upon far away pillars.
Silent winds catch Kaleidoscope wings sending iridescent glitter into the unknowable heavens.
I on one side, ominous nature the other, separated by panes of delusion called reality.
Blinded by majority perceptions & left to disintegrate among the embers. Death is freedom, as simple as a breath of sweet air.
I wrote this after thinking about my neighbors & how they don’t understand poor little ol me….Hee hee….written 10/22/08…….
Over yonder…across the sea
Mesha stands in the factory
Spinning the thread & weaving the loom
Tiny child in basket.. alone… in the light of
the moon
14 hrs a day with very little pay
not to mention another baby on the way…while…
here I stand in front of the mirror
designer clothing mean more to me than Mesha
& her family.
Things, more things in my shopping cart
Capitalism my focus, but I’ve lost my heart
Oh so sweet the American dream…Is it really
really what it seems?
It would be nice if I could search my soul, but
I lost it a long , long time ago
In a nutshell…The further away from our true natures we move, the more mental illness we exibit… the more animated, unreal, fake we become.
thanks for sharing your poems…. i do love the weird and the wonderful…*
Life is like a play, and we are the actors. We learn from babies how to get things for ourselves through trial and error. We learn quickly how to get the most from our personalities and our money..
Some learn being funny will get them the most…some lean being sweet seems to get them more..some people are demanding, but it works for them…Some people learn that getting people to feel sorry for them works best…..
How much do our words really mean? I mean did we become caring because of words, or do our words just make us feel like we are more caring? Are we really more caring? I mean we look the other direction when it come to farmed animals bread for eating..I mean its a race to the slaughter..and…we whistle as we get ready to eat the meat.
WE tear down the environment around us with the same whistle and oh oh how happy we are when that dough comes rolling in at the expense of all kinds of wild life who no longer have homes and food to eat.
How often do we do for others without finally getting what we want in return? How long do we continue to give without reciprocation?. We all have our own monkey spheres just like the apes and monkeys and outside that it is all statistics.
We are all over conditioned..brainwashed. There is not a single one of us exempt, otherwise we would all be jumping in the puddles, swinging from the trees, and dancing to the music.