this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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I know I would be attacked by entire fediverse, but I want to say that charity also has egoism as backing cause. People help other people because it makes them feel good. And people expect themselves to be noticed or praised or rewarded, even if they tell themselves and everyone else that they don't.
Also don't presume that I am a capitalist, before you decide to attack me.
I mean, you're not wrong, but your point is also kinda meaningless. Of course, you only ever do things because there's something in it for you, even if that something is just feeling good about yourself. If there was truly nothing in it for you, then why would you do it?
But that misses the point of the "people are inherently selfish" vs "people are inherently generous" discussion, because it's not actually about whether people do things only for themselves at the most literal level, instead it's about whether people inherently get something out of doing things for others without external motivation. So your point works the same on both sides of the argument.
I might help people because it makes me feel good, sure. But I might also do it because those are my values, long since established, and I try to live by said values. So it's about what following a self-imposed expectation, not about getting something. For some people, some of the time.
Similarly, the argument that "being selfless is selfish" is not useful and provably false. Just go ask people, and they'll tell you why they did things and how they felt. Then you have to argue that many of them are either lying or mistaken, which doesn't seem like a winnable argument.
Yes, that's my entire point.
Depends on how you define "selfish". Again, that's exactly what I'm trying to demonstrate here. Reducing the definition of selfish to mean "getting something out of it" makes it meaningless because every decision is made in the hopes of getting something out of it in some way, even if it's obscure. To make it useful, you need to look at what someone is getting out of it in order to get to a useful definition.