[GBA]

I remember a high school English teacher arguing with us that there is no such thing as altruism, that even the most altruistic act is done with a motivated self interest.

Naturally, the class argued. We'd been raised to believe in altruism as being a selfless sort of thing, but eventually I reluctantly had to agree with him.

While it might not be as obvious, altruism comes with a reward for the altruistic as well as for the one benefiting from the act of altruism, so altruism is not really a selfless thing at all, just less obviously self-benefiting than the usual self-centeredness we run with.

In all these years since high school, I've yet to come up with an example altruism that doesn't come with some sort of reward, or isn't in some way benefiting, for the one being altruistic.

He was a good teacher and it was an interesting class.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m thinking that teacher had read Ayn Rand. She had a lot of good things to say about altruism and other things. If only she had understood Christianity ... but she didn’t. It was her blind spot.

[rlmorel]

That is a great discussion. And I do agree...there is very often an underlying “self-interest”.