Self-Interest and Altruism

Once upon a time, when I was much younger and full of ideals, when I was mostly segregated from the rabblement that comprised individuals too haughty about their ways to listen to or even pay attention to someone who looked a little different from them, I believed in altruism. From the many levels of education that I was receiving in those days, my conviction towards altruism was strong, wilfully sacrificing myself should the situation arise if the overall benefits were to outweight the costs of self-sacrifice; in some ways, this is the very definition of utilitarianism since it weighs the value of the outcome given the cost of the action.

But as time went by, my disillusionment with the world grew, and slowly but surely, I found myself starting to believe less and less in altruism. In fact, I would say that the events that occurred scantly a year ago are probably what triggered my general lack of belief that altruism is a worthy goal to pursue, for the simple reason that people are not morally rational. I think I'm beginning to understand what the sages were trying to say when they proclaimed that each generation of society was on a spiral of destruction, with each successive generation falling ever lower compared to the last. And as an observer, I have started to see this occurring even as we speak. And the strange thing is, I can see myself as being a contributor to the entire fiasco.

Self-interest and altruism seem to be polar opposites of each other---it is hard to be acting in a way that is consistent with both self-interest and altruism. Granted, one may operate in a way that aligns most of one's self-interest with altruism, but in most cases, this is merely a facade. Altruism is an idealism that attempts to reconcile the actions of the leaders with the welfare of the people---it is a means of showing why a leader does what he/she does by putting the actions into a new light that it is somehow helping the greater good. But are the actions' intent really for the greater good, or is it a by-product of careful engineering on the presentation of the actions? That is one question that few would dare to answer, simply because the intent of any action can only be deduced, and the deduction is probabilistically true at best, since it is hard for anyone to actually understand the innate circumstance that governed the cause of action of any one person.

So is self-interest incompatible with altruism? That is a question that is plaguing me for the better part of the year. As I have noted earlier, I began with the thought that I would be willing to do anything for the greater good. But I have been shown that my assertions were not demonstrated in the real world, and slowly but surely I find myself working from the perspective of self-interest more than anything else. To a large degree then I find that self-interest is incompatible with altruism, since the intent from which the actions they spawn are polar opposites.

[Ed: This started out as a rant on Oct 03, but by now I have no idea where I wanted to go with it, so I'm just leaving this half-completed monstrosity online.]