In our individualistic society a widespread pernicious conviction holds that eventually everybody does everything out of egoism. Even when helping someone else, you only do so because it makes you happy or because you’d feel awful if you didn’t, so the reasoning goes. Yet, after years of hearing the same argument repeated, I still cannot grasp why so many people are convinced by it.
Of course purely altruistic actions are not always easily found. Even grand projects that were supposedly set up to help the poor and the needy, often turn out to be more of a search for self-aggrandisement instead of true self-giving. Underneath the will to help often hides a deep need for attention, approval and status. As such, I understand that people sometimes wonder about the genuineness of certain supposedly altruistic actions and I admit that we indeed should not gush about overly sweetened ethics. Altruism isn’t obvious at all. The touted generosity of many people is certainly in need of nuance.
Yet the prevalent denial of altruism is in need of nuance as well.
What strikes me first and foremost is the way in which unbelief in altruism becomes some sort of legitimisation of the contemporary lifestyle. It seems an easy way of condoning the present day hedonism. It is impossible anyway, so you shouldn’t strive for it, the message often seems to be, thus becoming nothing more than a justification for not even trying to be altruistic. However, it is not because ‘pure altruism’ sometimes seems a bit difficult to attain, that one should deny every possible form of self-giving.
A few weeks ago I helped a blind man cross the street. I often see the man in a shopping street close to my home, where he plays some tunes on his melodica. Once in a while he changes the place where he plays. So, reaching the dense traffic of a main road he asked whether somebody could help him cross. Some people passed but ignored him. He then shouted somewhat louder: “Can somebody help me cross the road, please?!” I quickly stepped towards him and introduced myself. He thanked me, hooked his arm into mine and a nice conversation later we were on the opposite site.
Did I help him cross the street to feel good myself? Did I do it because I would’ve felt guilty if I hadn’t? If that’s the case, why didn’t the other passers-by help the man? Is my behavior truly reducible to egoism? Or did I simply try to help that man for a second, without giving much thought to the consequence? My personal experience, in the very least, seems to support the latter.
A different example. These days we’re in the middle of the winter, so the flue is back in the country and lots of people tend to get sick for a few days. Luckily a whole lot of adults are gently caressed by their caring partners and a whole lot of children that got the flue are cared for by their loving parents.
Is this egoism? Does anyone only help his coughing partner or his feverish child because he feels better himself? Even though it is only a small winter flue, do people really only take care of them because they’d feel bad if they didn’t? Of course they probably would feel bad if they showed no care at all, but that doesn’t make it the reason why they help. Why not simply accept that people take care of their partners and parents of their children because they love them, want to protect them from unnecessary suffering and thus put in a little bit of extra effort? Why should we go and look for subconscious motives in all of this? Who knows, perhaps some particular subconscious motives might be at play – because every person has many of them hidden in their soul – but that certainly doesn’t mean the initial and most determining motive wouldn’t be genuine compassion.
A last example perhaps, that transcends the daily examples of altruism. A few days ago I heard a lecture of Jo Berry. This British lady lost her father, the politician Sir Anthony Berry, in a bomb attack of the IRA, some 25 years ago. Together with him, four other people died in this quite famous ‘Brighton hotel bombing’. It needs no explanation that this event changed Jo’s life from one day to the next. Mourning and suffering were hers as well. Yet she refused to let herself be taken over by the grief. Inspired by Gandhian spirituality she decided to get into contact with Irish people (and ex-IRA members) in order to understand them better and give her own suffering a place. Eventually she even met Patrick Magee, the one who planted the bomb.
This meeting was the start of the unthinkable: a friendship. Without forgetting or concealing that Magee and his IRA-ideology were the cause of the murder of her father, they grew towards each other and Jo learned to see the human behind the perpetrator.
Perhaps some might think this last example doesn’t have anything to do with altruism because it talks about forgiveness. But forgiving is of course the greatest – for often the hardest – form of (self)giving. Forgiveness is about offering someone an existence within your own existence again. It’s about accepting someone back into a previously closed-up heart.
So contrary to what people often think, examples of altruism actually can be found all over. At least for those that want to see them. Those that don’t believe that a human can attain true self-giving are denying a real dimension of existence, for altruism surrounds us just as much as the egoism that so often blinds us.
No, there’s no reason to act as if altruism doesn’t exist, and yes, it is worth striving for greater altruism in our own lives.