The illusion of altruism

It is useful to understand what people mean when they say that they are doing something for someone else's good.

It is tempting to think that the person doing the good is self-less in the sense of putting other people's interests ahead of their own interests.

Unfortunately, this is never the case.

The closest that we ever come to putting our own interests ahead of someone else's is when we are satisfying one of our own interests in a way that makes it appear that our own interests are being considered second.

Here is how that works.

A person may be walking down the street and be approached by a beggar asking for some change.

The beggar looks pathetic, and so the person pulls a few dollars out of their pocket and gives it to the beggar.

The person has created the appearance that they have put the beggar's interest ahead of their own by taking money that they had to work for and that represents value that can be traded for food or some other desirable thing and given that value to someone else out of the goodness of their hearts.

That hasen't actually occurred though.

The person instead asked what their own will demanded of them in the instance and did that. They may have willed that the beggar go out of their sight and determined that it was worth the money they were going to give to have themselves moved into the beggar's category of 'those who I have already gotten some from' so that the beggar would move along.

Or, the person may be one of those who desire to see themselves as someone who gives to the poor, and in doing so receives some measure of reinforcement that they are 'good' people.

Notice that in neither case was the money given self-lessly. In both cases, the money was given because what was being bought by the person giving the money was actually a bargain, and was being bought for themselves, and only incidentally helped the beggar.

In the one case, the person serves their own greater interest in being free of the sight of the beggar, by putting a lesser interest, that of retaining the value represented by the money, after the interest of the beggar, that of obtaining the value represented by the money without having to earn it, and in the other case, the person serves their own greater interest of reinforcing their perception of their own good-ness, by putting a lesser interest after the previously described interest of the beggar.

The above, in both cases, is a relatively benign instance of the illusion of altruism because it is actually a transaction between willing individuals, both of whom received benefit from the transaction and have the option of not participating in the transaction.

However, much injustice is done in the name of altruism, and the only reason that it is possible is that people believe that actions that appear self-less, or are advertised as self-less, actually are self-less.

But altruism is never self-less. It's always an illusion.