Whatever happened in Cologne never never happened

[Marblehead]

Altruism is a delusion.

[Brian]

 

If my memory serves me well Castro also took advantage of the United States generosity to empty the lunatic asylums at the same time.

Both prisons and asylums, brought by the military to the port at Mariel. Most of the Marielitos, as they came to be known, found their way to Miami, which quickly became the murder capital of the world. My father was in charge of homicide for the Dade County "Metro" sheriff's department at the time. These "refugees" were perhaps the most savage and viscous people to ever hit the U.S. -- absolutely no valuation of life and not worried about prison because a U.S. prison was like a five-star hotel compared to their previous experience. Most of them were dead within a few years.

[Karl]

Dictionary.com definition of altruism:

 

1. Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.

 

I agree that altruism, carried to its extreme, can lead to bad outcomes.  Whether that is just preaching or acting in a naive self-righteous way that, ironically, leads people to get harmed.  I think that the people we both find problems with are those who use altruism and multiculturalism as dogmas and chess pieces in their own selfish desire to appear "holier-than-thou" or perhaps more "politically-correct-than-thou."  One can even argue that these are not even true altruists, but rather "patrons of altruism" who are actually selfish in a more obscure way than most others.

 

Altruism is a good thing, but true altruism would look at the refugee crisis in regard to how it effects other citizens in their country just as much, if not more, than helping others from outside.  Helping others is only good if we help ourselves and those we are close to first, otherwise it is hypocritical and dangerous.

 

There is no such thing as unselfish concern. We aren't robots, our actions are entirely selfish. That doesn't exclude us having empathy, compassion, charity, sympathy or pity, but none of those are altruistic.

 

[futuredaze]

Have you ever looked at something and loved it, or felt concern about it, without thinking about yourself?  For a minute?  A second even?

 

To say we are ALWAYS altruistic is, surely, a delusion.  I agree.  I am concerned with people I love, and others that I might not even love so much, because by helping them, it helps myself too in some way.  I am aware of this yes.

 

In evolutionary psychology there is the concept of "reciprocal altruism," which is basically that we help people because they might help us back.  This suggests there is ego in "altruism", so it is not true altruism by definition.  It shows that ego and altruism are not necessarily opposing forces, but linked together in some way.  I believe, (and I'd like to find research to support or disprove this, if any exists yet) that early experiences shape our ability to help others, and most people do it with some expectation or reward (extrinsic motivation) when they are older, whereas rare others sometimes (not always) do it for the joy of doing it (intrinsic motivation).  If true, this suggests that true altruism can exist, but it is built on egoism and only happens infrequently even in these rare individuals.

 

What about moving a beetle from the path so it doesn't get stepped on?  If nobody is watching somebody move the bug, they are not really thinking about their own interests at all when they move the beetle.  Of course, if a lot of people in modern times would do this today, they would take a selfie with the beetle or boast about it to some of their friends.  That would show they had egoistic intentions, but what about the person who just moved the bug and did not mention it, or did not think about it much after the fact?

 

Can we love without our egos as a reference point?  I think so, but I also understand that others may not be fortunate to have had this experience.  Sure, you can say it is a delusion, but I can argue that.  From a certain standpoint, the color green is a delusion created by the neural matrix of consciousness, yet that does not make it any less real to us.  If somebody can never be 100% altruistic, does that mean that there is not a spectrum to altruism and that behavior can fall on a spectrum of this?  Even with those in power, who are usually very corrupt and lustful, does it not seem that all cultures have their share of decent people who come to power?

 

I'm not making the argument that it is "better" or "worse" to be altruistic.  Nor do I think one can be impeccable and always selfless... nor should we even aim for that extreme.  What I am saying this: is to try both, and then decide.  I think many people have had moments of empathy and love when they forgot about their ego's needs for just a few moments.  Does that make them altruistic people?  No.  Does it mean they had an altruistic experience?  Maybe.

Edited February 7, 2016 by futuredaze

[redcairo]

The Amherst video: I had watched that some time ago. I recall thinking that I felt a bit bad for the student, only because he is a well spoken young man with a brain and I believe that he genuinely wants to BE good and DO good.

 

It is a difficult situation to be in, in today's world: nearly everything cultural says live for the day and yourself, except the things that say you're so privileged you don't know jack but first-world problems. Yes of course, but still here we are, we have to operate based on the experience we have.

 

The author is saying if you really want to help someone, "give up your college here," so some poorer person can have it, then you're giving away something of yours not just something that'd be someone else's. The point is totally valid, objectively, gods the socialists wanting to "give away other peoples' stuff" is obnoxious, heh. But it's unfeasible and really, the kid honestly just wants to 'do the right thing' and making that like "the only option" does not seem just. If I said I wanted to help the overall cause of homeless veterans someone telling me "move out and become homeless so someone else can have your house" doesn't seem like a reasonable answer which I feel is the analogy to what that young man was told.

 

It is difficult to know what is the right thing sometimes.

 

I spent the entire day Sunday reading about rape and alleged rape and I swear I feel I know and believe less about it, and have more ambivalence about it and its definition and what is 'right' on the topic, than I did before. One thing is clear though: the ridiculous notion of "a rape culture" being the US has absolutely no reality or sanity when compared to the ACTUAL rape cultures such as those this thread topic overlaps with and which mysteriously are treated completely differently than the topic and behavior is when the alleged perpetrators are locals instead.

Edited February 8, 2016 by redcairo

[redcairo]

ALTRUISM. To go back a few posts...

 

Communication can be a subtle thing. This word is one of those words that is fundamentally misunderstood by its very nature. Altruism is a decision (even when actively-lived-in-the-moment). It is not about what a given thing "is." Until humans are binary machines there will not be anything that "is" one thing vs. another like black and white. Rather it is about what something "means" to a human and hence why they are making that decision -- which is a spectrum of experience because meaning inherently is subjective and individual.

 

Sometimes, the spectrum is between the meaning and experience of two people (for example, defining what is 'fair' or what is 'rape' is a spectrum, not a polarity, despite our bizarre cultural redefinitions).

 

And sometimes the spectrum is limited to the meaning of only one human being part of the equation such as "altruism" (regardless of whether other people are involved in the outcome of the decision. They might not be). You can operate for the good of an abstracted ideal for example.

 

But it is always your decision, which means that on whatever level you wanted that thing more than you wanted anything else. This doesn't speak to the joy or suffering of the decision. Merely that "it was always what you wanted."

 

There is no such thing as a decision for someone else -- it is impossible unless you are possessing someone like a spirit to make a decision "for" them, all decisions can only fundamentally be for yourself -- but your list of motives is your own and how you perceive and rank the seeming good for someone or something else may be part of your decision. Or not.

 

Fundamentally, free will is absolute. Even with a gun to your head it is still your decision. Everything we do is because we choose to do it. This has nothing to do with how much we enjoy, or expect to enjoy, the decision and its results. Altruism isn't about what we do it's about "the motive of what we mean when we do something."

 

Some people make decisions that make them suffer. I've spent much of my life making decisions that have often put the good of someone else before my own. I graciously did not murder my second stepmother when a teen solely because I loved my father so much, and knew how much he would grieve both over her death and over my behavior, even though a secondary, less powerful motivator of not wanting to spend my adulthood in prison was also present. I graciously refrained from insuring my ex and pushing him into traffic despite that I had more than enough base for justified murder in many cultures and that it would likely have been the best thing for our child as it turns out and I suspected all along. Gee nobody appreciates my altruism.

 

I spent most my life a single mom and graciously, and sometimes not graciously at all, have made decisions putting what I perceived to be her good above my own. Sometimes it really was her good. Sometimes it was not and now she is an "entitled" 20 year old (with a tendency to emotional bullying via alleged victimization -- and she's not even in a four year college, where she would fit right in with that mindset!) whom I pray recovers some character and maturity from my less than stellar though well-intentioned parenting.

 

I have been involved with any number of seemingly solely altruistic causes over my life, because -- well I don't know why, four planets in Virgo or something, or perhaps it's that I had to consciously design a personality worth having when a very young adult and the one I made for myself seems a little better to me than the ones most people appear to have come by as an accident of genetics, inattention and experience. One of the (by my arbitrary definition) 'better' elements is that I am a kinder person because I chose to be and choose to be. All that benevolent not-murdering and such, don't you know.

 

You can make an altruistic decision with the most glorious of intentions. You can suffer utterly for it, day after day, and still re-make it because you genuinely believe it is a GOOD thing to do, a kind thing that serves a person, a group, an ideal, humanity, your own future, or whatever-else. It might be a bad thing. It might only be good in your head that your children, now in their 30s, are still locked in the basement for their own protection. And it might be bad in your head that you put your own health and happiness first when in fact that might be the best thing you could do for literally everyone around you -- coincidentally including yourself.

 

Any word that implies a human behavior, emotion, decision or experience "is" vs. "is-not" a given thing, is inherently an oxymoron and must be interpreted, in its role of communication in the language of our culture, within the subjective or as part of a spectrum. IMO. And I think this matters because we define a great many things including relationships, justice, and more, by how we understand and apply our words.

Edited February 8, 2016 by redcairo

[Karl]

I disagree entirely.

 

That words can mean multiple things does not imply that they cannot be defined accurately. That people throw around concepts without a clue about the underlying definition is just mental laziness and a poor excuse. Altruism isn't a sliding intention, it means to give selflessly. That is to say without the existence of an independent self, as if one was incapable of caring one way or another and somehow managed to perform the action whilst being completely oblivious of performing the action.

 

Altruism is a very dangerous kind of word. It contains within it the seeds of an entire philosophy that denies identity and existence. It treats man like an amoral robot that must contain his obsessions and desires. That he must simply act in the interest of the common good because he is living in a delusion and knows nothing.

 

Words have power, they communicate ideas and can do so whilst the user is unaware of the philosophy that has been accepted. It has polluted their consciousness and they have not raised the slightest objection to the premises on which it is based.

 

The entire point of the AYP practices was to produce a condition under which one performed action less action, thoughtless thought. This is no more than practised, unthinking obedience, surrender and slavery of the mind. Just stop thinking and do. Thinking is what makes it all so unpleasant say the practitioners. All that mental activity and churning just drown out the truth.

 

Accepting the poisoned Apple was the lesson of Snow White. Let's not go about mentally eating things that look like harmless ideas and begin to examine and define them more exactly before we swallow them down.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Karl

[Apech]

I disagree entirely.

 

That words can mean multiple things does not imply that they cannot be defined accurately. That people throw around concepts without a clue about the underlying definition is just mental laziness and a poor excuse. Altruism isn't a sliding intention, it means to give selflessly. That is to say without the existence of an independent self, as if one was incapable of caring one way or another and somehow managed to perform the action whilst being completely oblivious of performing the action.

 

Altruism is a very dangerous kind of word. It contains within it the seeds of an entire philosophy that denies identity and existence. It treats man like an amoral robot that must contain his obsessions and desires. That he must simply act in the interest of the common good because he is living in a delusion and knows nothing.

 

Words have power, they communicate ideas and can do so whilst the user is unaware of the philosophy that has been accepted. It has polluted their consciousness and they have not raised the slightest objection to the premises on which it is based.

 

The entire point of the AYP practices was to produce a condition under which one performed action less action, thoughtless thought. This is no more than practised, unthinking obedience, surrender and slavery of the mind. Just stop thinking and do. Thinking is what makes it all so unpleasant say the practitioners. All that mental activity and churning just drown out the truth.

 

Accepting the poisoned Apple was the lesson of Snow White. Let's not go about mentally eating things that look like harmless ideas and begin to examine and define them more exactly before we swallow them down.

 

"for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

 

"There is a fable that when the badger had been

stung all over by bees, a bear consoled him by a rhapsodic account of

how he himself had just breakfasted on their honey. The badger replied,

peevishly, "The stings are in my flesh, and the sweetness is on your

muzzle." The bear, it is said, was surprised at the badger's want of

altruism."

[Karl]

"for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

 

"There is a fable that when the badger had been

stung all over by bees, a bear consoled him by a rhapsodic account of

how he himself had just breakfasted on their honey. The badger replied,

peevishly, "The stings are in my flesh, and the sweetness is on your

muzzle." The bear, it is said, was surprised at the badger's want of

altruism."

 

Ive never read Eliot but I intended to this year. I have two books 'the mill on the floss' and one other I can't remember in my Amazon wish list. Your post has reminded me I should pick one of them up.

[Chang]

"for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

 

'And what is good, Phaedrus,And what is not good—Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?'

 

The answer should be "No" but unfortunately with most of humanity this is not the case.

[Apech]

Hitchens on George Eliot:

 

 

"She is central to my argument that literature can depose religion as an ethical resource. It's astonishing to me how she knew so much about the human soul in a way that I don't think anyone else knew about motives and actions except Shakespeare."

[Marblehead]

Funny.  I agreed with (Thank You) Redcairo's post above and then "Thank You"ed  (agreed with) Karl's responding post in which he disagreed with Redcairo.

 

I guess I viewed them each from different perspectives.

[Apech]

Funny.  I agreed with (Thank You) Redcairo's post above and then "Thank You"ed  (agreed with) Karl's responding post in which he disagreed with Redcairo.

 

I guess I viewed them each from different perspectives.

 

 

I thank you'd you for that post even though you keep changing your mind

[Marblehead]

I thank you'd you for that post even though you keep changing your mind

Remember?  I reserve the right to change my mind.

[Apech]

Remember?  I reserve the right to change my mind.

 

Don't change your mind about that though, will you.  

[redcairo]

More coffee, maybe. :-)

 

> Altruism isn't a sliding intention,

 

Not sure of the 'sliding' term added there, but it certainly does involve intention, profoundly, since the word is defined by one's "behavior" and/or "devotion" {emotion or the use of resources}.

 

> it means to give selflessly. That is to say without the existence of an independent self,

 

There is no such thing in such a literal sense: the emergent property of identity, let alone autonomy, fundamentally implies a Self from which to intend and decide and behave/act. You have given it the word selfless and then redefined selfless to such an extreme polarized literal it no longer even applies to human beings.

 

You want to define the construct of language but it exists to serve humans. When you lose this context it's like losing the awareness of the spirit rather than the letter of the law.

 

> Altruism is a very dangerous kind of word. It contains within it the seeds of an entire philosophy that denies identity and existence. It treats man like an amoral robot that must contain his obsessions and desires. That he must simply act in the interest of the common good because he is living in a delusion and knows nothing.

 

Ha! Such drama!

 

I do not see within it anything of the sort.

 

("It means you intend to do something good for someone or something else, even at your own expense."

 

"No, no! It means you defy your very existence and sacrifice the integrity of your Being to the nothingness of ignorance that demands you repress your very soul!"

 

OMG! Ok actually maybe LESS caffeine... for one of us LOL...)

 

"Altruism" does not deny anything nor imply the expectation of anything: it merely recognizes intent and behavior.

 

> the user is unaware of the philosophy that has been accepted. It has polluted their consciousness

 

Ohhhh pollution of consciousness... Really you must be such a kick at social gatherings. ;-)

 

> The entire point of the AYP practices

 

I have no idea what that is. I was referring only to a word. Not to someone's doctrinal religious practices or whatever it is.

 

> Just stop thinking and do. Thinking is what makes it all so unpleasant say the practitioners. All that mental activity and churning just drown out the truth.

 

Cannot speak to the thing above I know zip about.

 

However in a Zen sense I think there is a lot to be said for telling the logical brain to shut the F--- up, allowing oneself to "be in the moment" and engage, without "thinking about" something during that -- because the latter is a forcible "separation" required for analysis. This is something I have had to work on much of the last two decades as I am left-brain (sic) given to 'think about' things rather than live them, which is very destructive if not totally preventative to many mystical experiences, I have found. It's a behavior of insecurity, the inability to let go of that.

 

> Accepting the poisoned Apple was the lesson of Snow White. Let's not go about mentally eating things that look like harmless ideas and begin to examine and define them more exactly before we swallow them down.

 

All you need is a soapbox and a preacher's collar, so you can lead us to your re-definition -- as if it's better.

 

Trivia:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/altruism

Full Definition of altruism

:  unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others

:  behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

 

That definition requires decision, and does not anywhere imply that the altruist must be an amoral robot who knows nothing and denies their own identity and very existence. Pretty sure.

 

RC

[Chang]

 

 

Trivia:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/altruism

Full Definition of altruism

:  unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others

:  behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

They missed one out:-

: official religion of the Liberal.

 

I see nothing wrong with altruism in principle. What troubles me is that those who partake of it have a dire wish to enforce altruism on the rest of the population. This is a particular affliction of the Socialist and the Left Wing Liberal.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Chang

[Marblehead]

 

:  behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

 

That definition requires decision, and does not anywhere imply that the altruist must be an amoral robot who knows nothing and denies their own identity and very existence. Pretty sure.

 

Some insects are altruistic.  Beyond that, ...

[Taoist Texts]

"for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 

yep. denial is not just a river in egypt.

[redcairo]

 

: official religion of the Liberal.

 

I see nothing wrong with altruism in principle. What troubles me is that those who partake of it have a dire wish to enforce altruism on the rest of the population. This is a particular affliction of the Socialist and the Left Wing Liberal.

 

Got that, but altruism is about "oneself." It is how an individual chooses to behave based on their own assumption of the good of something/someone else,

 

The desire of the Left to "manipulate authority figures into mandating that other people give those-other-peoples' stuff to the causes I think are good" requires a whole new word. 

 

And a big stick. For them.

 

And the Second Amendment. For everyone else.

Edited February 8, 2016 by redcairo

[Karl]

Got that, but altruism is about "oneself." It is how an individual chooses to behave based on their own assumption of the good of something/someone else,

 

The desire of the Left to "manipulate authority figures into mandating that other people give those-other-peoples' stuff to the causes I think are good" requires a whole new word. 

 

And a big stick. For them.

 

And the Second Amendment. For everyone else.

 

It isn't about oneself, it is about no self.

 

Don't you really mean kindness, caring, compassion ? These are self generated actions done in complete conscious knowledge that the voluntary action brings with it sense of well being/happiness in the carrying out of those actions.

 

I'm anti altruist because it's evil. The only preachers of altruism are those that wish to enslave others.

 

I know it's often used mistakenly for voluntary charitable action, or kindness, it seems a stupid thing to pick on, but note that Orwell wrote a book on the power of words. Our Governments frequently transpose meanings and Churchill said that the next battles would be fought over the words that would create people's reality.

 

It's the same as people who work voluntarily for a company, for pay, saying that they are slaves of the company owners. Start thinking like a slave and it won't be long until you are one.

[redcairo]

 

> It isn't about oneself, it is about no self.

 

I don't see any reference to utter-lack-of-self in the definition. In usage, human experience is a spectrum, so it could cover the range of the human spectrum, including as much lack-of-self as possible. It certainly does include in the definition putting something else ahead of or above the perceived good of oneself. (In the case of altruism that kills you I suppose we could as slang give it leeway to say it was about no-self... eventually!)

 

But I see altruism in many people past and present, and in many accounts of peoples' behavior in times of threat and war for example. I have known people (when I was a child and they were grandparent age) for example who during WWII risked their lives constantly to help jews escape through the underground in Holland where they were, amazing real accounts they had to tell, and often of many other people whose compassion moved them to daily acts of altruism many of which led to them being hung or shot.

 

There is a photo I saw as a teen that has stuck with me for decades. It's of a young man and his sister -- she had just been hung, he was next -- I think in Germany (as opposed to the outlying areas), who had worked together on the underground. He was standing tall and looking as pointedly un-fucking-sorry as a human ever looked for anything, as if even knowing of this day, or a worse day, would not have deterred him in the slightest from doing what he felt was the right and good thing to do. I was so moved by the impression I got from it.

 

To me, that is an extreme example -- it's over on the far side of the human-experience spectrum -- but it IS an example of altruism. Not that he died although that is too. But that what he did every day, when he was a handsome white just-past-teen who could have ignored all that, instead was all about helping others. Did the state force him? No the state killed him for it. Did someone "preach" it at him? Who knows but he was a young adult and made his own decisions and paid for them.

 

Most the people I have personally known who were the most altruistic, were not so because they were manipulated or preached or guilted into it and in many cases they were in fact bucking every authority whose influences were exactly opposite.

 

And often whatever they were doing was exhausting and unrewarding and sometimes embarrassing or detrimental to themselves in some fashion. Usually quiet sometimes even secret.

 

Say the woman who sends half her meager income to her nephew to help him in school and he doesn't know she can't afford it or works a second job for it and does without everything for it. She doesn't owe it to him and barely if at all knows him. Sure there's a long dictionary list of nice emotions we can assign to this, but the --behavior-- she's evidencing is "altruism" -- behaving in such a way that puts the perceived-good or worth or need of someone or something else ahead of one's own. It would be injust to assume she was manipulated or preached or guilted into it. Maybe she just loves him. Or maybe she doesn't love him at all and in fact dislikes him, but simply feels it is the right thing to do -- because he's younger and will have a better outcome for having college and she did love his mother who died. Altruism doesn't have to mean you even like the person or thing you're favoring with your behavior, it may not be kind or compassionate -- only that you are favoring it for whatever reason at all.

 

> Don't you really mean kindness, caring, compassion ?

 

Not at all -- those are different words entirely, although nearly every human emotion word could be dragged across the lines to say that altruism sometimes could involve ____.

 

The second could be stretched to say "Jane 'cares about' thing/person-X or wouldn't behave like-so" but that's about it.

 

> These are self generated actions done in complete conscious knowledge that the voluntary action brings with it sense of well being/happiness in the carrying out of those actions.

 

Altruism does not imply any sense of well-being or happiness in carrying out actions, aside from the fact that one is choosing to make a decision and so it is assumed that even if the decision makes you miserable that there must be some brain reward from making that decision or it wouldn't be done. It may not be able to be consciously perceived by the individual though.

 

Many times altruistic behavior in fact makes one totally miserable and even resentful, but is done anyway for what is perceived to be a good or need or ideal of more import than the alternative/s behaviors.

 

Often there is what is easy, and there is what is right. When people choose what they think is right, not out of guilt or fear or conformity-to-right or fear-of-wrong or expected benefit, but because they simply consider the right thing more important than their own ease, that is a form of altruism even though this can be mild and even for an 'abstract.'

 

> I'm anti altruist because it's evil. The only preachers of altruism are those that wish to enslave others.

 

Preachers? Altruism is not a religion or a political party. It's just a word in the dictionary that represents a human behavior, and that human behavior itself.

 

Actually I just realized you live in socialized Europe so you've probably had people stuffing their bogus thou-shalt-give-your-stuff-to-others-the-state-defines your whole life. Perhaps using "If you loved everyone else the way you should you would agree, you mercenary cretin!" as leverage, I don't know. Probably this could develop a knee-jerk response in anybody...

 

> I know it's often used mistakenly for voluntary charitable action, or kindness, it seems a stupid thing to pick on, but note that Orwell wrote a book on the power of words. Our Governments frequently transpose meanings and Churchill said that the next battles would be fought over the words that would create people's reality.

 

I agree with that although I do not see that this particular word is a captured example.

 

> It's the same as people who work voluntarily for a company, for pay, saying that they are slaves of the company owners. Start thinking like a slave and it won't be long until you are one.

 

Um. I don't agree they are slaves if they volunteer and work for pay; I agree that if they think like they are that they become so; I agree that this could be one of many examples of the power of words; but I don't see how that relates to this particular, specific word in example.

 

Best, RC

Edited February 9, 2016 by redcairo

[Karl]

"Altruism does not imply any sense of well-being or happiness in carrying out actions, aside from the fact that one is choosing to make a decision and so it is assumed that even if the decision makes you miserable that there must be some brain reward from making that decision or it wouldn't be done. It may not be able to be consciously perceived by the individual though.

 

Many times altruistic behavior in fact makes one totally miserable and even resentful, but is done anyway for what is perceived to be a good or need or ideal of more import than the alternative/s behaviors.

 

Often there is what is easy, and there is what is right. When people choose what they think is right, not out of guilt or fear or conformity-to-right or fear-of-wrong or expected benefit, but because they simply consider the right thing more important than their own ease, that is a form of altruism even though this can be mild and even for an 'abstract.'"

 

This, right here is exactly what I'm talking about. I gave the example of the child who was told to share their toy and learned that sharing was a miserable experience, therefore to be miserable was a good thing. Consequently, to make someone else miserable by asking the same of them is seen as acceptable. That is the heart of what I'm saying.

 

Do it with lightness of heart, because it gives pleasure to give, not out of a sense of guilt or duty. Otherwise, what is learned is to go against rationality and to do 'any' duty proscribed by any authority because it is dutifully necessary and therefore good. This is the lesson of Nazi Germany. It is why a man will give a stranger electric shocks until he apparently ceases consciousness. To be trained to do what feels emotionally/rationally uncomfortable, or unpleasant as ones duty has resulted in most of the misery on our planet. It's inherently anti-life even though it appears to be pro-life.

 

I'm not talking here of things that are unpleasant but are rationally necessary for the purposes of survival.

 

It certainly isn't a knee jerk reaction either. I was also trained to be altruistic-but what I was being trained to do was to made to feel guilty and to carry out actions which made me miserable. Is it any wonder our schools are full of bullies who can take advantage of kids who have been taught to 'share', or that we have allowed the meanest sociopaths to lead us through Government ? All that is required is to activate the trained instinct of guilt, duty and altruism to hold power over the weakest.

 

'Your country needs you'-'pay your taxes'-'the wealthy have the duty to shoulder the greatest burden'-we must accept and look after immigrants' Are examples.

 

I'm sure you think I'm making too much out of a word (after all it's only a word), but the ideas that underpin it have far wider implications than just dropping a few coins into a charity box.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Karl

[redcairo]

This, right here is exactly what I'm talking about. I gave the example of the child who was told to share their toy and learned that sharing was a miserable experience, therefore to be miserable was a good thing. Consequently, to make someone else miserable by asking the same of them is seen as acceptable. That is the heart of what I'm saying.

 

 

But is that not an assumption? They learned sharing was miserable? So misery is a good thing -- are you sure?

 

1 - maybe they learned sharing in fact made them feel better as they ended with someone who played 'with' them or later shared something of their own.

 

2 - or maybe it occurred to them at some point to think about how the other kid felt when he had no toy, until one was shared, and how he had himself felt in the past when in the same situation, and how he could easily alleviate that negative experience by sharing.

 

My best friend and I were talking recently about Oprah. He happens to live in the HI Islands where she owns a staggering amount of land. Various celebrities (esp. sports) live there, and all support the area in some way (there is a lot of need for social support for locals -- like most 'extreme tourist' locations it's a study in econ polarity). She does jack-all. Not even lending her name to anything that wouldn't cost her a dime, other people'd do all the work, for any kind of charity. My friend's been there a decade but he's an AZ boy so he's not a local and 'observes' the social and political things perhaps a bit more objectively than those native. The people on the island generally have a very big opinion about the foreigner who came in, bought so much of the land, and shows zero appreciation for the land or people or or local biz or anything else. Of course, everyone will admit: in our corporate culture, nobody owes anybody anything. Nobody is expected to be a decent human being officially. At least not here in the USA. Being a Ferengi is actually considered perfectly reasonable and comes with a nice sportscar, trophy wife, and wiki tells me Michael Milliken, man who annihilated the life savings of god knows how many people in junk bonds, is a philanthropist, thanks to the millions or more he made off the mass destruction he created... you get the idea.

 

Anyway, so I said, well, maybe she clawed her way up from the bottom of the food chain economically and feels others should have to. He said, well maybe that ought to make her even more aware of the situation and willing to do something, anything, even that literally cost and troubled her nothing, as a result.

 

And at that moment I realized that it never worked that way for me. I was lower-lower-lower middle-class growing up. Had one of those situations where what little we had went to rent, so we lived in an area beyond our means, which meant I was actually living in near poverty in the midst of upper-middle-class (I owned a single pair of Levi jeans and 2 ratty t-shirts for like 3 years of high school, in a school where girls' daily outfits could cost $1200 or so -- and that was 1980-3!). (I actually never got lunch until 10th grade when I moved away from home and a Dean found out when I got in trouble for something, and gave me 'free' lunch. I ate what pieces friends didn't want off their trays for years prior to that.) And when I was an adult, I worked my ass off, but I had the very strong work-ethic and personal-feeling that nobody owed me anything. Since even my parents had sucked for what parents are actually responsible for. 

 

I had two people who profoundly influenced me. One was a woman-friend ML, she had been a Vietnamese boat person as we called them, though you'd never know she wasn't a local, no accent at all, girly-girl new-age sort to the max. (Ha. My California girl lingo creeps through.) She remothered me you might say. The other was a boss for four years, an inventor and CEO of a small R&D corp. Both of them told me at various times, and years later, how self-contained I was. They would do something nice for me and I would literally take a step back and say, wary, "You don't owe me that." And they'd say, I don't need to owe you something to do something nice for you! And eventually after years of them demonstrating more human decency to me than anybody ever had, and totally sharing their stuff and their lives -- I separately lived with both of them for a time, both loaned me their vehicles at other times, and more -- I actually relaxed a lot and began to accept that good things were allowed to happen for me without my actually suffering, starving, and working myself to the bone for it. Nearly everything good I have ever come by in my life has, directly or indirectly, been via other people.

 

And that's what taught me to be decent. I wasn't quite Machiavellian before but not far from it. It was all I'd known. But they both could have easily made no effort on my behalf. They didn't owe it to me. They were political poles -- she was a metaphysical minister who mostly worked for donations, he was so right-wing he once paid me to read and listen to Rush Limbaugh LOL -- neither had any good objective reason to reach out to me of all the people around them the way they did. And thank the gods they did because who I am today is radically different as a result. Anyway the thing is, I did not learn the 'emotions' that drive what I consider to be altruism until someone had given it to me. Growing up on a hard street did not teach me to be good let alone an altruist. It took actual altruism on other peoples' part to demonstrate it for me, and to make me realize the larger picture, not just of friendship or compassion, but the larger picture of why doing what seems the right thing matters.

 

Even when the right thing is sometimes a pain in the ass, even when the people don't frankly deserve it at least by behavior. There is a greater good in humanity as a whole, I believe that.

 

And that one line I think is what you detest most about the word and concept -- is that the greater good is a myth to you, a fairy tale imposed by the powers that be, from parents to clergy to war generals, solely to manipulate people into being decent to each other or even worse, decent to "ideals" (which can mean decent to the perceived community, not just individuals or single situations).

 

But I don't think TPTB can truly teach a human to be decent. I think only other humans and interaction with them can teach that. And I think that decency is what breeds behaviors like altruism. Not because the state says so or mandates your taxes to pay for immigrants or whatever. But because one learns the experience of being a human in a big world, and begins to operate not just on their own behalf, but also sometimes on the behalf of other humans or elements of that larger world.

 

Which to me is what begins to explore the larger-consciousness or perspective that is a potential in our species. That we are actually able to cognitively perceive, consider, and then behave in a way contrary to what seems beneficial to ourselves or sometimes even our tribe, based on our perspective about something, someone, somewhere, somewhen else. Something we prioritize. Is that not altruism? Why would this be a bad thing?

 

I mean isn't every emotion or situation the "potential" to be a good or bad thing just depending on how one implements it? I could use the example of love and protectiveness to example a bad marital situation or a good one, for example -- one can misapply or overdo anything. One can use any emotion to attempt to 'influence' whole groups -- families, cults, countries. 

 

Is there no instance in which altruism is a good thing, and not a symptom of a bad thing?

 

RC

 

I type like 120wpm+ so a conversation in my head becomes a book.

Edited February 9, 2016 by redcairo

[Karl]

Good story. Mine was similar, perhaps not quite as bad in some areas and worse in others, but that's the breaks, we move on.

 

There is no good side of altruism because it's fake to begin with. It's predicated on the philosophy of a sinful, deluded being that has no existent identity and must therefore be forced to accept whatever authority claims this to be true.

 

If you carry out an act of kindness then you aren't always expecting a physical return. That isn't altruism. Doing something nice for someone is a nice thing to do and watching someone you have helped improve their circumstances is payment enough. However, don't you, personally discriminate with your own direct acts of kindness ? Woukd you give your wallet to a drug user, or hand over your car to a drunk who was stuck for a lift ?

 

When you donate, don't you look to see if it's a cause you support ? If you were bullied into making a donation would you feel good about giving, or are you suggesting that you would simply regard it as altruism and in a poof of smoke your individual self vanishes ?

 

I'm certainly not saying be a mean bitch, but surely you give where it gives you most pleasure. Where you believe that your effort will result in something good happening for the ones in whom you endeavour to support. Even the efforts of a mother are aimed at helping her children grow and prosper like a Gardner tending his plants. The effort is rewarded because it was judged to be worthwhile otherwise you would just give everything away including your life to any cause whatsoever.

 

A marriage only flourishes when both partners are receiving as they are giving. There is no altruism. Love is identity and being identified. This is what real respect is all about. It is respecting the values of the other person and the other person respecting your values in turn. It is a trade, but no money passes hands, love isn't a valueless commodity, it's the highest valued commodity of all.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Karl