Contemplating altruism is a hall of mirrors.

I've tried before, with mixed results. I've looked at altruism in fish and among dying humans, altruism in the context of Dickensian bushmeat dilemmas, post-Katrina dog and gun-grabbing "altruism", my own failed attempts at communitarian altruism, and my last one was a look at altruism at gunpoint, in which I concluded that people are tired of the game:

I've long suspected there's a huge closet of insincere altruists who'd love to come out, but the Democrats and the Republicans keep them fighting.

Dr. Helen has a must-read PJM post on the subject of altruism, and she cites convincing evidence that contrary to the conventional wisdom, atruism is selfish:

In my experience, most people are motivated by some sort of self-interest when they engage in an altruistic act. I used to have discussions with a psychoanalyst I knew who said, like Heinlein, that no one really does anything unless it is in their self-interest in some way.

People always point to Mother Teresa as a symbol of altruism but Christopher Hitchens points out that her underlying motives for helping the poor might include proselytization for religious fundamentalism and taking large amounts of money for her efforts. Neither reason seems terribly altruistic.

Some studies on altruism have found people to have darker natures than was ever imagined.

In Reason Magazine, Steven Landsburg points to a study in which university students were given envelopes with ten one-dollar bills and told to give whatever they wanted to a stranger in the next room. As an economist would predict, the participants gave little or no money to the stranger. If the students thought that the experimenter knew who they were, they gave more money as they thought they were being judged. However the students willingly gave the most money to strangers when the experimenter was matching their contributions three to one.

Dr. Helen concludes by asking some questions:

I do think most people are self-deceptive about their true motives when they are driven to do things to "help" people but I have seen too many cases that seem to be true altruism. For example, what about living organ donors who give to strangers or acquantances? What about the firefighters and police who gave their lives on 9/11? Was that altruism or was there underlying self-interest there that perhaps we don't know about?

Via Pajamas Media, Sissy Willis offers a possible explanation for the apparent altruism:

As for those firemen running into burning buildings, I do think it's an evolutionary survival thing having to do with avoiding shame and capturing honor among one's chosen peers. In today's parlance it comes down to "feeling good about oneself."

Approval amongst the members of one's group is all important for the psychological bonding that can mean the difference between survival and extinction, but some groups have more to feel good about than others, especially in this politically correct, self-esteem-without-effort era. We hold within us the potential for both extreme evil and extreme good . . . It all depends upon what we do with our human nature.

This is all predicated on the idea that the motive matters more than the act. Is doing a good thing for the wrong reason worse than not doing the good thing? Suppose someone runs into the street to save a child from an oncoming truck, and manages to push the child out of the way just in time, only to be run over and killed himself. If it turns out later that he was actually a total loser who had been hanging around just looking for an opportunity to make himself into a hero who happened to hit the jackpot that day, should his act be condemned because of a bad motive? Suppose he knew he would be committing suicide but did it anyway. Good or bad? Would it make the act better or worse if he truly believed that he would go to heaven and meet God? How about if the man was highly loved and successful, had a wonderful family, stood to gain absolutely nothing, and his death left a grieving widow and poorer kids. Better? Or what if he was a junkie in abject withdrawal, who figured that if he got run over he'd be given plenty of painkillers in the hospital, and that saving the child might earn him even more points with Sister Mary Morphine.

If a lifeguard dives into a pool and saves a drowning child, is that less worthy than a poolside stranger doing the same thing, simply because it is the lifeguard's job?

I ask these questions not because I know the answers, but because I am someone who does not trust my own altruism. I think the main reason many people don't like altruism is that it often results in self-deception. They only imagine (and often say, loudly) that they are being altruistic, but because they are actually selfish, they are both selfish and dishonest. I agree that dishonesty and self-deception are bad, but I'm not sure that selfishness is.

Altruism may be dangerous, even bad, for a number of reasons, but I don't think it's quite fair to condemn it simply for being selfish. Assume Mother Teresa was selfish. She still did what she did, and I think her many good deeds stand on their own. (Whether they'd have been "better" if she didn't really believe in God or heaven, who knows?)

Good acts are not, in my opinion, rendered bad simply because someone does them in order to feel good.

At the other extreme, what is called "altruism" can result in pure evil. Stalin and Hitler were both considered altruists by their demented followers. So were Torquemada, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, and every evil altruistic slimebag who manages to strap on a bomb and kill innocent people along with himself. Even assuming that some of these monsters had an altruistic motive (an assumption I make only for the sake of argument), it is completely irrelevant to the evil nature of their actions.

So, the presence of altruism neither makes a good deed bad, nor an evil deed good. Whether it exists or not, I don't think altruism in itself is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

My point is that even though it might very well be selfish, altruism is often very difficult to pinpoint, and if there's a good result, it should not matter. The problem comes from altruism being considered a good thing in and of itself -- which leads us to praise motives regardless of the consequences of the action. I'm sure most readers have seen the posing sanctimonious types who make a point of always stopping to give the "homeless" man a dollar (often with a reproachful glance at his more "selfish" companions, or even at strangers). It does not matter to him if the guy is a wino who's simply going to use the money to destroy his liver, because the donor has "proven" that he is virtuous.

This is an important issue right now, because the hair shirt, turn-off-the-power, anti-SUV brigades are coming, and they're hiding behind a smokescreen of altruism. It does not matter to them if the restrictions they want the government to impose end up ruining the economy, just as it would not matter if they don't have any effect on the climate -- or even if the whole anthropogenic global warming theory turned out to be bogus. Why? Because they are (so they say) acting out of altruism! Well, I'm not condemning their altruism, as there's no way for me to know anyway. Nor am I applauding it; what I care about is whether the result will be good.

Or am I allowed to care whether the result will be good? Doesn't that make me an altruist? No, because I don't care whether I am. I don't see altruism necessarily as a virtue, and I don't claim to be any better because of it. There's this thing called an enlightened self-interest that I'd like to think would kick in, but I don't think that's quite the same thing. (As to a sudden and spontaneous altruistic act, I see no way to judge its motivation.)

Why am I writing this blog post, anyway? Out of altruism? To save the world? Hardly. My selfish goal is to figure out what I think, and that's very challenging. If people like it, I'm delighted, but I am not here to help them. This is not to say that I have not engaged in altruistic acts or pretended to engage in them. (Question: is it worse to pretend to be altruistic, or to delude yourself into thinking you are?) Anything for the cause, right? If I get involved in something which is arguably bigger than myself (and I have), and people who love altruism want to see me that way, fine! It would be cruel to disappoint them, and why would I do that? I like to think that I am generous, but that's not because I'm hung up thinking it's a virtue; it just makes me feel good to be nice to people. Try it some time! If people want to call it altruism, that's cool with me.

What, I should tell them that I'm just being nice to them out of selfishness? That would hurt their feelings and make me feel bad. What kind of monster would do that? Is there a rule that I am supposed to tear my hair out worrying about whether or not I am being selfish by being nice to someone?

Who wrote this rule?

Altruists?

Here's a true story about a real act of altruism I once pulled off. As anyone who used to be a Deadhead can tell you, it was quite difficult to get tickets to their always-sold-out New Years Eve shows. Scalpers could demand hundreds of dollars for tickets, if they had any to sell. But merely having hundreds of dollars was no guarantee that there'd be any sellers. In an attempt to be fair, the Dead used to sell these tickets by means of a mail order lottery system, in which you'd send in your money order, and you had a one chance in five of maybe getting a ticket. This was one of those shows. Tickets were impossible to come by, and I had an extra, because a companion couldn't go at the last minute. Rather than sell it for $200.00, I thought I'd make a total stranger happy. A deserving stranger, to be chosen completely at random, by me! There were the usual hordes outside, begging, pleading, waving cash, and getting as close as possible to people with tickets, as if physical proximity to one of those precious tickets might cause one to clone itself or fall from the heavens. I finally spotted my mark, who just looked like a nice guy who knew he wasn't going to get in, but was hanging around anyway. (No, he was not holding one of those "I NEED A MIRACLE!" signs! They failed my arbitrary test for gratuitous altruism.) Just a look at this guy's face, and I knew how delighted and surprised he'd be. So I just said "here's a free ticket," and handed it to him on my way in. There wasn't much time for him to do much more than blurt out a "hey thank you," but once he saw the ticket wasn't a fake he was radiant. Never saw him again of course, and I didn't look for him.

Whether my act was truly altruism or not, I do not care. It felt good. A lot better than it would have felt had I sold the ticket. But you could argue that this wasn't "fair" to the people who were right there offering money, and it might have been downright cruel, because it was so arbitrary. So, so selfish!

(Yes, I know. People worked hard to earn the money they were offering me, and I gave away the ticket to some anonymous ne'er-do-well just so I could feel good about myself! And meanwhile, the oppressed masses in China didn't get to have any Dead tickets at all!)

Analyzing altruism is a trap, because you have to analyze it by its own rules. And by its own rules, it is not selfish. So if it is selfish, it's not altruism. And if it's not altruism because it is selfish, then it's only bad if altruism exists, which of course it doesn't.

If altruism does not truly exist, then how can it be bad?

Maybe we should pretend.