Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash
They say there’s no such thing as selflessness – true altruism doesn’t exist because people have ulterior motives beneath their kindness. But in a selfish world, do these motives really matter if, at the end of the day, someone helped another?
Does the end justify the means?
This question has been around since time immemorial, thrown whenever people are faced with questionable choices that lead to valuable outcomes. Apparently, regardless of the meaningful outcome, it automatically degrades if achieved through contentious methods. Between the means and ends, people outweigh the former than the latter – a concept that can be tricky to understand.
How people will perceive kindness depends on their reason.
For instance, when people donate to charities because it makes them happy, because of how rewarding it is for them, others might instantly accuse this gesture of selfishness masked with kindness. The donation automatically carries a negative impression. It doesn’t matter if there’s a massive sum of money involved or if it managed to help thousands of people in need.
At the end of the day, they have an ulterior motive: to satisfy themselves. Since the donation was made for selfish reasons, its worth automatically diminishes, and the person behind it is, without question, a bad guy.
Why people do what they do will always bear a greater value than its results or effect. But how does this influence how people perceive kindness and volunteerism? Does kindness always have to be selfless?
The Truth About This Ends and Means Debate
Acts of kindness have been and will always be associated with an increase in one’s well-being. When people help others, they feel good about themselves, which elicits a desire to do it again. Kindness is as beneficial to its giver as it is to the receiver.
Obviously, people always want to feel good. If helping others provide this satisfaction, does it make them the bad guy if it’s the reason for their kindness?
Author and Peace Corps volunteer Gary R. Lindberg has published a book documenting his journey as a volunteer in the 1960s. He shares every fascinating fact about working with the organization, highlighting the activities and projects he’s finished with the group.
Everyone might say he’s a hero of his time. But for people who always have to over-analyze these gestures to weigh the means and ends, his action can be portrayed as questionable.
His memoir entitled The Vegetable Grows and the Lion Roars revolves around the fulfillment of volunteerism to encourage people to follow his tracks. He volunteered to serve in a foreign land, believing he was doing his purpose, to help those in need out of kindness. That’s where people might question his kindness as selfishness. If he’s helping to serve his purpose – something everyone aims to fulfill in life – is it true altruism?
What Even Is True Altruism?
If he’s spending his time volunteering, something he doesn’t receive monetary benefits from because it makes him happy, should his feeling cancel out his kindness? When people glow from helping others, meaning they’ve benefited from their kindness, does it make them a bad guy?
Somehow people always have a hard time distancing true altruism from selflessness and kindness with personal satisfaction. When people benefit from their acts of kindness, others feel the need to taint the gesture. This has been a phenomenon for so long that it’s reached a point where people feel bad whenever they feel good out of kindness. Helping makes them feel selfish, which hinders their desire to do it again, which obviously shouldn’t be the case.
Every good deed must be rewarded. So, why can’t it be a reward received internally?
The evolutionary reward of feeling elated or fulfilled when offering kindness doesn’t have to be tainted. It should make these behaviors fun and inviting. When people feel happy because they’ve helped someone or if they’re helping someone because it makes them happy, why should their reason not be celebrated? Why do people need to question and label these reasons constantly? This benefit of reciprocity people receives when helping others shouldn’t elicit mixed reactions from people.
Perhaps, People Are Naturally Selfish. But That Doesn’t Make Them Bad
It may sound rude to put the vision out, but everyone is born with the tendency to prioritize themselves above all else. It’s the essence of survival as a concept. People must put themselves, their needs, and their satisfaction before everyone else’s to make it out alive and well in the world. Every system runs on selfishness. From the moment they were born, with everyone grappling for their lives, even risking their mothers to their pursuit of happiness, selfishness runs in everything.
And this should end the discussion about the ends and means.
True altruism doesn’t have to be selfless.
