Do you believe there is such a thing as a completely altruistic act?

No. All acts are selfish.

Just one. About 2000 years ago (give or take a few) this Thursday

No. If anything, one gets warm fuzzies from the supposedly altruistic act.

@tinyfaery I can’t disagree more with you there, though I like you regardless.

I don’t. Even if it looks like the person is doing it all for someone else, that person may get the good feeling inside when he does something good. That is the reason he does it. That, and possibly the attention he gets from it.

What mr m said.

Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew the rewards he’d reap. How is that not selfish?

No. I believe all acts stem from a sense of self but not necessarily selfish or reciprocal intent.

I’ve volunteered for three years but I gained more from the experience than I gave. Whenever I help a friend he says thank you. I work for my wife and daughters but I receive unconditional love in return. I carelessly throw a rock away in a pond and the puddles are beautiful.

I believe that a person can be raised into a culture that not only promotes altruism, but is so fundamentally selfless that a person has no thoughts of themselves at all. It could be argued that since the boundary between ‘self’ and other is arbitrary, there is no reason that a person or a society as a whole might not have abandoned that distinction entirely, not only ideologically but emotionally and instinctively as well- it may be that this boundary does not even need to be erased, but instead will not even exist without being learned. I’m not quite sure how far I am willing to take that reasoning in its practical application to the human mind. It is possible that a person will instinctively adopt a sense of self and selfishness, and that it is only through the satisfaction of that selfishness that he can be induced to adopt a new culture of selfishness.

My argument in favor of the existence of altruistic acts is that just because you feel good after doing something doesn’t mean that’s why you did it in the first place.

No- at least in the case of humans. We have evolved altruism- though, of course, our thoughts can transcend what evolution has primed us to do, the primary purpose of altruism is an inherently “selfish” one- to, ultimately, enhance the survival of yourself or your kin.

It’s almost impossible for humans to commit any act without a conscious or unconscious motive. In the case of altruism, that motive may range from the reinforcement of feeling good about the act to the fear of religious strictures.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic: “My argument in favor of the existence of altruistic acts is that just because you feel good after doing something doesn’t mean that’s why you did it in the first place”
Well gosh darnit then, I’ll have to become a believer and say, Yes, even though it’s going to mess up one of my oldest in the world poems :)

Completely anonymous charity, and not even telling anyone about it.

Anonymous Blood, bone-marrow and tissue donor.

Leaving your body to science.

@Zen
I’d argue that none of those are complete altruism, as you feel good about doing them, and that’s a benefit to you.

Psychologists will tell you humans don’t do anything unless it fills a need. Even appearing altruistic fills a need. If something fills a personal need, it’s not altruistic.

@crisw With all due respect, I’m going to chalk this up as “semantics,” and not fuss too much over it.

:-)

Sometimes doing the right thing makes a person feel like shit, and if that right thing is an altruistic end, but to the detriment of the person taking the action, then yes.

Let’s say a person realizes that they find children sexually attractive. They know they are a threat to others. The right thing to do is admit what is wrong and get themselves treated, and possibly rejected from society, possibly murdered by people who find out. Their act could be seen as altruistic, weeding themselves out from society before taking advantage of a child, to preserve the society at a detriment to themselves. What is selfish or self-congratulatory about this scenario?

I have a hard time believing that this individual “feels good” about the act they took, patting themselves on the back for doing the right thing. If they have the conscience to get themselves treated, they’re going to be too busy feeling like absolute shit for what they are to give themselves props for doing the right thing.

Thoughts?

I’m with @3or4monsters on this one.

The first ten or so times I saw this question as I glanced at the main page, I thought it said “altruistic cat.”

I think that consciously, people can be totally altruistic, but subconsciously, they’re definitely doing it because it feels good to help people, and so they aren’t 100% selfless.

Doesn’t make the act any less meaningful. If someone donates an organ, and it saves my life, I’m not going to be pissy about the fact that they didn’t do without any benefit to themselves.

On the side where you do get a good feeling when you walk away, no – then in the very real sense that you do get the warm fuzzies, after – then no. It doesn’t mean that the act wasn’t done for the right reasons, though.

So, if you did something supposedly altruistic, and all you got was invective and hatred, would you do it again? If you give someone a twenty, and they scream at you? If everyone you gave a twenty to screamed at you, would you still give out twenties? If you helped someone across the street, and they found out you were black, and told you to get your stinking hands off them, right there in the middle of the street, wouldn’t you think twice before helping an elderly white woman in a Southern town again? Would you do it if you got rejected again and again, despite the fact that you were actually doing a helpful thing?

If you can answer yes to those questions, then I’ll believe in true altruism.

@3or4monsters But, the reason the person does not act on their desire is because not acting feels better than acting on it. The person gets something out of it either way.

I believe there is such a thing as completely altruistic motives.

@daloon – There is something that I do that isn’t always met with happiness – and if it were, I would think the person would be in such a state of shock that she shouldn’t be seeing me, yet. I am met with fear, a certain level of shock and lots of tears. Not from what I’m doing, but the situation. I go home feeling spent, tired, emotionally drained and devastated. I do it again, every week. My day on call, I do it. I can’t imagine a time when I won’t. After much examination, it’s not altruistic, it’s for me. Not for glory, only a few people know our names, but for me, for healing.

There are some things that are done, that aren’t pleasant, that are still not altruistic, but are necessary.

If someone derives pleasure in helping someone else, I stil think the act can be considered altruistic. In some sense everything we do is that which gives us the most pleasure at the moment, but the question relates to the nature of what it is that gives us pleasure. Otherwise you end up saying that everyone is equally as selfish, which does not make much sense.

Yes from an awakened standpoint all acts are absent of self.

Only an act performed suddenly and without a prior thinking can be called truly altruistic.

@Maldadpermanente
So one pretends to forget the imagined self :)

@Maldadpermanente, there’s ALWAYS prior thinking. It may be in a flash, he may be so trained that the action is second nature to him, but there’s always prior thinking. It’s what makes the stranger run into the burning building to save the baby and not (ex.) run to the store up the block. He THINKS about what he has to do. It’s what makes the Emergency Room physician do the right things when a burn victim comes in. He thinks about what he has to do.

If the need to help others is greater than the personal desire to feel good, or serve your own interests, then the act is altruistic.

I think humans are far too complex to assume that their motives can ever be completely singular. There is always going to be some part of their mind with a different opinion on what their actions mean.

the philosophical arguement against altruistic is if it makes you feel good, it isn’t altruistic. This is like trying to decide whether we want to take another breath, since the last one felt so good. Breathing is a natural function that happens without thought. An altruistic act is just as natural, and the side effect that it feels good is not the “reason” for the act.

@YARNLADY
if it makes you feel good, it isn’t altruistic.
That can be just as full of self as well. It’s the flip side of the same coin. You can be just attached to some martyr complex self.

@SeventhSense You have used the argument I am denying, not my own assertion. What you say, the reverse can be true, has nothing to do with the assertion that there can be an altruistic act.

@fireside said I think humans are far too complex to assume that their motives can ever be completely singular.

This. This is so true, I agree with this x100.

@YARNLADY
Yes, my apology it’s late. Bedtime… Good night.

@YARNLADY: Altruism is not the same as breathing at all. It’s not an involuntary act. It is an act of will. You have a choice. You have no choice with breathing. You live; you breathe. You don’t breathe; you don’t live. One can live perfectly well with nary an “altruistic” act.

If altruistic acts always felt bad, not just in the difficulty of doing them, but also in the lack of recognition, or, indeed, if they were met with vituperation and hatred, would people keep on doing them? Essentially that puts you in a very precarious position. You are saying, “this is good for you, even though none of you believe it.” That’s an extraordinarily arrogant point of view.

I believe that without social approval, an act cannot be considered altruistic, and that, further, people can only do altruistic acts if they are met with social approval. Altruism only makes sense in the context of a society or a group of individuals. It necessarily is an act of ingratiation to the group in addition to helping the group or an individual in the group. If it isn’t something that the group believes will help it, it can’t be altruism, unless you claim that you know better than everyone else.

Since altruistic acts must benefit the group, and the group must actually be grateful for it for that act to be considered altruistic, then you can not do an altruistic act without benefit to you. You might argue that one does not think of the benefit to you, but I don’t see how you can take away the knowledge that when you do these acts; if you do them properly, people will approve, and it will raise your standing in society—i.e., enhance your prestige. Obviously, if one took away the prestige for “altruism,” then people who insisted on doing these things would be considered insane. Indeed, some people already believe that altruism borders on insanity, since they believe the only sensible way to live is to only be out for your personal good.

If a person is considered insane when they act in a way they believe will benefit the community, but no one else does, can it be altruistic? I suppose that, if later on, it was found that that action did help, in retrospect, the person could be considered a hero, and removed from the insane asylum. However, “I told you so,” seems to me, to rarely be greeted with appreciation.

@daloon; The general idea of your argument is reasonable, but there are a few flaws. You say that an act must have the approval of the group or it arrogantly assumes that it knows what the group wants. But just as a thought experiment, let’s say that there is a tribe of people living out in a desert somewhere, suffering greatly from drought. They desperately need water, and have no way of acquiring it save to pray for some rain. You come along and suggest that you shoot up a rocket to seed the clouds with silver iodide. They say that you will only piss off their god further, and tell you to sod off. You shoot your rocket anyway, on the same night that they hold an elaborate ceremony praying for precipitation. Your rocket works, and they get their rain. But they are ignorant of the fact you even shot your rocket, or if they saw it, they attribute the rain to their ceremony, and perhaps even believe there would have been more rain were it not for your stunt. So they hate or at least ridicule your efforts, but you have not arrogantly imposed your own desires on them- they got exactly what they wanted, because the mechanism by which the goal was achieved was never important. So, surely your actions were altruistic.

As a less amusing but more realistic example, if a politician were to impose a financial measure to fix the economy that was lambasted as a waste of money by almost everybody (OK, we’ll have to assume that the majority doesn’t rule, here), and his plan works, but everyone else believes that the economy would have healed without his aid, then he acts altruistically, without thanks, and does so without arrogantly imposing a goal- everyone wants the economy to be fixed. Again, he was arrogant about the mechanism, but he only gave people what they wanted.

So, your argument does not preclude the possibility that an altruistic act, free of arrogance, can be done without reaping social benefits, although it does hold true as a rule of thumb for the majority of cases, in which people generally come to realize that you are to be thanked for helping them realize their goals.

@Jayne Interesting examples. I wonder, who can say the actors in these scenarios are altruistic? If no one says it is altruistic, is it? I guess that’s the old tree falling in the forest problem. Still, wouldn’t the individual who acted think they were doing a good thing even though no one else thought so? So they’d be the ones to call themselves altruistic. Which is arguably arrogant. The same is true for the politician, except that he or she might eventually get the credit for saving the economy. (I asked my I told you so question to try to get at this issue.

I think your politician would eventually get his props. I don’t know about your silver iodide cloud seeder. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do it unless he could convince himself it was a good thing, and that he could be arrogant enough to do it, believing his education made him able to ignore the wishes of the people, since they are so stupid. Still, perhaps one can be arrogant and altruistic, although if he ever told the story, I’d say he wasn’t altruistic. It really is, “if someone performed an altruistic act, and no one knew about it, would it be altruistic?”

I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years. I figured out that the only way an act can be truly altruistic is if there is NO prospect of a beneficial outcome for the “altruistic” person. I thought through a number of possible scenarios and I came up with what I can think of as the only true altruistic act:

An atheist who is convinced that there is no afterlife, who kills themselves or allows themselves to die for someone else’s sake or benefit, and because they are convinced there is no afterlife, there is no potential benefit they could get from the act.

All other potentially “altruistic” acts, as far as I can see, hold the potential for a reward for the perpetrator.

@jo_with_no_space, the benefit is how they feel about THEMSELVES when they decide to kill themselves, not after.

@Mr_M I see your point, but the point I would make is that at the point of suicide, they don’t KNOW that they will definitely save or benefit another. Plus, you could argue that there’s no way to prove whether they felt positively or not once they’re dead.

At any rate, how great is someone going to feel when they’re about to kill themselves? Just a point.

The enlightened mind realizes the fundamental nature of mind. The imagination of separate self is simply an imagination. All is one mind. So the act of an awakened buddha is such that all acts can be altruistic for he has no attachment. If he acts towards the betterment of any part of the collective, he is naturally serving himself as well since he is part of the ONE BODY of humanity. The difference is he acts without an “actor”. The self “actor” is concerned with apppearances, relinquishing, profiting and gaining. When the left hand knows not what the right hand does, figuratively speaking, all acts are pure and without karma. And the fundamental ground of consciousness is bliss, so all acts are pleasing. Furthermore it’s not the attachment to self that brings enjoyment. Attachment to self is what causes suffering.

@SeventhSense – Given that premise, I would think that the concept of altruism would also go away.
If there is no actor then there is no action, thus all simply is.

@fireside
Exactly. As well as all other concepts.

@SeventhSense Except you are seperating yourself by comparing an enlightened mind to a non-enlightened mind. Aren’t you attached to the idea of the enlightened mind? Seems a bit judgy to me.

@tinyfaery
No there is no separation. All are enlightened. Most don’t realize it. The distinction is just to show a new awareness. You could say-“Didn’t know my head was on my shoulders but OH! there it is”.
You could say John Lennon/Sargent Pepper—->Lennon/Imagine- same Lennon but?

@SeventhSense “If he acts towards the betterment of any part of the collective, he is naturally serving himself as well since he is part of the ONE BODY of humanity.” Isn’t this ego and being selfish?

“The enlightened mind realizes the fundamental nature of mind” This a definitive distinction. The enlightened mind does blah, blah, blah, as opposed to?

@tinyfaery
From the standpoint of analytic reasoning yes.

@SeventhSense – I would most certainly not say that “All are enlightened” from my experience. All have the capacity, that is true.

@tinyfaery – “If he acts towards the betterment of any part of the collective, he is naturally serving himself as well since he is part of the ONE BODY of humanity.” Isn’t this ego and being selfish?

The act of service towards others is a worthy cause, even if one gives of themselves to in some way feel more fulfilled. It doesn’t have to mean that the act is done out of egotism and self-love. There are certainly those who do pride themselves on their humility and charity, which to me is a contradiction. But there are also those who don’t.

@fireside
No, all are enlightened. Likewise, whether you see your reflection or not in the mirror has no bearing on your having a head. It’s always been there.

I would like to expand upon @daloon ‘s point and give a different slant to it. In any altruistic act there is a kind of cost/benefit analysis, where the benefit is done to whoever is being helped and the cost is incurred by the helper.

To take the example of helping the woman across the street. This is a small benefit to the person being helped and I would only being willing to pay a small cost for it. So if I knew that the woman was going to resent my act then the cost of having to put up with her reaction makes the act for me not worth the effort.

On the other hand, if the woman was in a life threatening situation and there was a way for me to save her life at no risk to myself then the benefit to the woman is large and it would not bother me if she were unappreciative or even resentful.

@SeventhSense – I tend to think of us as mirrors, so if the mirror is covered over with dross then it is not reflecting the light.

@fireside
Go deeper. We are the light. There is no separation

@SeventhSense – While I agree with your premise, I think it belies the work required on the part of the individual to reach that understanding. Cleaning the mirror sets a more realistic expectation than simply recognizing the light.

Attachment to forms

Practical assessment of the state of delusion in today’s society.

<——quite attached to female forms

The 4 noble truths are pretty straight forward.
We’re caught in a cycle of suffering due to the fact that everything exists in a state of perpetual flux and we are attached to things that have no lasting value. The way out is to realize and embrace our true nature by following the 8 fold path. Only then can we achieve an enlightened state and escape this cycle.

So while we all have our divine self, we are not all enlightened. It’s something we have to work for.

How did this turn into Buddhism 101? I took that class over a decade ago.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic ;
I think I’m listening to an episode of the TV show Life

@judi – cool avatar

@fireside; Thanks. It is a water color painting I recently had commissioned.

@Judi—Water color? wow, even cooler now!

Mother Theresa. Dalai Lama. Ghandi. A select few others

The rest are (probably) selfish. But this doesn’t detract from the goodness of their deeds.