Gitalongs: SELFISH ALTRUISM

When my father informed me that altruism was actually selfish, I was horrified!  He maintained that the only reason we do nice things for others is out of duty or to make ourselves feel good. It took me years to admit that, indeed, when I am intuitively and spontaneously pleasant and generous it’s because I like being that way. It makes me feel better to be that way. It makes me happy to see other people happy. My life is easier, more pleasant.

Is this realism or cynicism? I reluctantly concede that perhaps Dad had a point. Maybe the closest we can come to the total altruism of giving up our life for another -  as on a cross or the Titanic, or in military combat - is Enlightened Self-Interest? Are we only doing good to do well?
It could be argued that Jesus had a message and a mission that could not be effective unless he walked his talk. Those heroes who let the women and children into the lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking might have been tormented by a life-time of guilty visions of the children and women stranded aboard a sinking ship. Many a soldier lives with grief and guilt that he survived when the buddy beside him did not. Some are haunted by the possibility that they could have saved their comrades had they thrown themselves onto a sputtering grenade knowing that others did just that.

Dad claimed that this selfish altruism detracts not one whit from the heroism of those who died that others might live - it merely explains it and brings it down to Earth as the most noble extreme of enlightened self-interest. But it does not make me happy to see heroism, the behavior of others, or my own behavior in this light. Perhaps in every day life Dad’s argument has weight, but the protective instinct we experience that leads us to respond to danger by putting another’s welfare ahead of our own often is not a thought process, not a decision, but a spontaneous, selfless impulse of love and caring.

The best I can do with this argument is propose that selfish altruism exists at the other end of a self-interest continuum from heroism as yet another one of life’s paradoxes. What do you think?


Selfish Altruism by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com 



*From Wikipedia:Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest.[1][2][3]
It has often been simply expressed by the belief that an individual, group, or even a commercial entity will "do well by doing good".[4][5][6] Enlightened self-interest might be considered to be unrealistically idealistic and altruistic by detractors and practically idealistic and utilitarian by proponents.