The Pathological Altruist

[Elijah]

Are you saying that pure altruism does not exist, except in theory?

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

This is going to be hard to explain and I don't feel that confident in my ability to communicate this effectively. Let me just say that I have a problem with altruism as it is defined. I don't think that people make a decision to expend energy that could be used elsewhere completely altruistically. I might decide to offer to mow your lawn for free on a hot day because i know you can't do it and I might believe I'm doing it because i'm a heck of a nice person. I just think there are always other factors at play. Maybe I get off on thinking about what a heck of a nice person I am. So it's worth the energy I might expend elsewhere just to have that. My problem is that when there are so many things involved in people's motivations it seems unlikely that their pathological behavior is actually caused exclusively by a need to expend enormous amounts of energy on the needs of others. I hope this makes sense.