Blog Post #7

This will pretty much just be an expansion on my Moodle post, but I’m excited to write this blog post because altruism is a concept I’m deeply fascinated by. I would personally define an altruistic action as one that benefits an other/others who is/are not close with or related to one who performs such an action. I think that while we can certainly frame a desire for elevation, the “warm fuzzies” or whatever you want to call the emotional reward as an explanation for altruism, I think that argument is a bit too simple to nullify the validity of the desire to help another for no other reason than to be helpful. I recall actions of mine from last summer, for example–not trying to put myself on a pedestal, these are just the first actions that come to mind–such as helping a homeless man carry his cart up multiple flights of stairs on the subway or helping a grocery store worker transport the contents of a box that broke from one aisle to another. In both of these situations, I had self-serving reasons not to perform the “altruistic” actions that I chose to. In the former situation, I was already likely going to be late for a rehearsal for a musical I was in. In the latter, I was supervising students at the summer program for which I worked during a trip to this grocery store, yet I did my best to multitask in order to make this man’s life easier. I think it is fair to say that I got something out of helping these people, but I (perhaps incorrectly–I obviously can’t look at myself objectively) also think that I had less to gain from feeling that warmth, self-validation or what-have-you than I did from adhering to the tasks I was already working towards completing in those moments. What I think could potentially detract from the argument for these actions being altruistic is the concept of reciprocal altruism, particularly when applied on a grand scale. I’m definitely of the belief that, broadly speaking, people should help one another more. While it’s highly unlikely that I would ever see the homeless man or grocery store employee who I helped again–and even more unlikely that either of them would remember by face–the only semblance of control I have over getting people to help one another more is to help others myself and hope that they pick up the habit. Perhaps that is not altruism, because it’s pretty firmly a motivation for my actions other than “doing as much good as possible.” But it’s a starting place, I think.