I was a volunteer EMT for the longest time, and I’d always tell people I did it for my own selfish reasons, kinda tongue in cheek like you here, but at the end of the day it always is. I did it because I liked the feeling of helping people. I liked the feeling of giving my time to my community. It just happens it was good selfish and not bad selfish.
some argue that this “temptation for good” is proof of a god’s existence, but i think it’s “just” an evolutionary trait that brought our species to a great success
Interesting philosophical question there. Do we ever do good deeds for selfless reasons? Or do we do it for the satisfaction, recognition, or sense of self?
hard question to answer, but I’d wager yes. there are still nice things we do that we know will never get noticed. maybe it’s buying a sandwich for the dude on the corner or making go fund me donations anonymous but I do think we all have some of those little things. at least for the people we love.
True, but you are always there to notice your own actions. The satisfaction of doing something good and/or keeping up with your own self-image may be the real motivators.
fair enough. I would argue that without your own self-image you would not be able to decipher what a “good” act is. our sense of self is definitely entangled with our moral compass. but now we’re really getting into it haha.
It’s essentially for selfish reasons, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t putting ourselves second or even third. You won’t be doing stuff your brain doesn’t tell you to do and your motivator is called dopamine. Where that comes from is irrelevant. But when you have a good heart you will tend to want to make the world a better place. And you will live knowing that you did. However, it is possible to have a bad day and still have the enforced neural pathways that got trained because the dopamine has made your brains remember the last time you did that. At the moment you might not even like doing it but you do it anyway. Because it’s “the right thing to do” or so your brain says. When you have felt a hardship you may also feel compassion with someone and do not want them to feel what you felt. But the essential reason is the same.
So it’s absolutely possible to be selfless, just not for selfless reasons. Doesn’t mean we’re all selfish assholes. On the contrary. We get happy in groups, so we want the groups to be happy. We do everything for that. If we don’t then we tend to not really be there anymore. And we’re not required to, but we do. That’s the selfless part.
Idk, the other day I saw someone had parked one of those pay to ride scoots in the middle of a walking path. It was not necessarily on my way the way I was coming from, but it annoyed me enough that I moved it to the side of the road. Was it a good deed? I mean it no longer obstructed the path, and someone probably had an easier time due to it. I gained nothing by doing it, nor was it ever implied by any public norm I should do it. Although I guess it could just be an upbringing thing.
One might argue that you saw it as a good thing to do and you see yourself as a person who does good things. You might behave in ways that seem altruistic but are really acting to avoid cognitive dissonance. That said, I’m just thinking out loud here, I don’t have the answers.
I do it for “selfish” reasons, but not those. I want the carts in their corrals so they don’t damage my car and are in a well-known location when I want/need to use them. So, I do the work needed to make that world, and not just the minimum.
I also have to recognize that not everyone has the ability to return the cart, and so while/when I have that ability, I should return at least a few carts that aren’t “mine”.
But deep down, I want people to see me returning the cart. My motivations were never entirely pure.
I was a volunteer EMT for the longest time, and I’d always tell people I did it for my own selfish reasons, kinda tongue in cheek like you here, but at the end of the day it always is. I did it because I liked the feeling of helping people. I liked the feeling of giving my time to my community. It just happens it was good selfish and not bad selfish.
some argue that this “temptation for good” is proof of a god’s existence, but i think it’s “just” an evolutionary trait that brought our species to a great success
Interesting philosophical question there. Do we ever do good deeds for selfless reasons? Or do we do it for the satisfaction, recognition, or sense of self?
“Does altruism actually exist”
Can any deeds even be evaluated as good or bad without the context of satisfaction, recognition, or sense of self???
Right? People don’t exist in vacuums, we all rely on each other and the relationships we maintain.
Tell that to the eternal accountants. -400 points for buying a tomato. No wonder we’re all going to the bad place.
hard question to answer, but I’d wager yes. there are still nice things we do that we know will never get noticed. maybe it’s buying a sandwich for the dude on the corner or making go fund me donations anonymous but I do think we all have some of those little things. at least for the people we love.
True, but you are always there to notice your own actions. The satisfaction of doing something good and/or keeping up with your own self-image may be the real motivators.
fair enough. I would argue that without your own self-image you would not be able to decipher what a “good” act is. our sense of self is definitely entangled with our moral compass. but now we’re really getting into it haha.
It’s essentially for selfish reasons, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t putting ourselves second or even third. You won’t be doing stuff your brain doesn’t tell you to do and your motivator is called dopamine. Where that comes from is irrelevant. But when you have a good heart you will tend to want to make the world a better place. And you will live knowing that you did. However, it is possible to have a bad day and still have the enforced neural pathways that got trained because the dopamine has made your brains remember the last time you did that. At the moment you might not even like doing it but you do it anyway. Because it’s “the right thing to do” or so your brain says. When you have felt a hardship you may also feel compassion with someone and do not want them to feel what you felt. But the essential reason is the same.
So it’s absolutely possible to be selfless, just not for selfless reasons. Doesn’t mean we’re all selfish assholes. On the contrary. We get happy in groups, so we want the groups to be happy. We do everything for that. If we don’t then we tend to not really be there anymore. And we’re not required to, but we do. That’s the selfless part.
Idk, the other day I saw someone had parked one of those pay to ride scoots in the middle of a walking path. It was not necessarily on my way the way I was coming from, but it annoyed me enough that I moved it to the side of the road. Was it a good deed? I mean it no longer obstructed the path, and someone probably had an easier time due to it. I gained nothing by doing it, nor was it ever implied by any public norm I should do it. Although I guess it could just be an upbringing thing.
One might argue that you saw it as a good thing to do and you see yourself as a person who does good things. You might behave in ways that seem altruistic but are really acting to avoid cognitive dissonance. That said, I’m just thinking out loud here, I don’t have the answers.
I do it for “selfish” reasons, but not those. I want the carts in their corrals so they don’t damage my car and are in a well-known location when I want/need to use them. So, I do the work needed to make that world, and not just the minimum.
I also have to recognize that not everyone has the ability to return the cart, and so while/when I have that ability, I should return at least a few carts that aren’t “mine”.