The Inescapability of Altruism
On self-interest, benevolence, happiness, and why caring for others is part of caring for yourself
Most of us spend most of our time thinking about our own lives. We want to be comfortable, healthy, successful, and respected. We care about the well-being of people close to us. We may perform acts of charity or experience indignation on occasion, but only when we feel compelled. In the absence of such compulsion, the suffering of a stranger does not register as a priority. It’s not that we wish them harm; we just don’t think about them much at all.
And yet moral systems keep insisting we should. We’re told each person’s well-being matters equally, that we ought to expand our circle of concern far beyond ourselves and our loved ones, even to people on other continents and to future generations. Any curious and undogmatic person would naturally wonder: why? We seem to recognize how unrealistic and perhaps incoherent this demand is.
If we wanted to justify altruism as an end in itself, then ultimately I think there are only two kinds of answer. The religious answer says God approves it, so the obligation to promote happiness arises from his authority. The non-religious answer, as discovered by those like Henry Sidgwick who made serious attempts to find it, is that if you reflect carefully enough, you’ll just see that everyone’s good matters equally: it’s self-evident, like mathematical truths. If you don’t see it, there’s no further argument that can force you to change your mind.
To find the first answer satisfactory, you must already believe in divine judgment and authority. For the second, you must already feel the force of this supposedly self-evident moral truth. And if you don’t? The arguments have nowhere else to go.
A different approach would be to question altruism as an end in itself. Instead of asking “why should I care about others?”, we ask “what does it mean to truly care about myself?”
Imagine a small society of one hundred people. They are ordinary people with normal ambitions. They care about their families. They enjoy status and comfort. But each person has developed a stable disposition, whether through cultural conditioning, emotional or rational persuasion, systems of rewards and punishment, or something else: all their actions reflect genuine consideration of the well-being of the other ninety-nine.
What’s life like in this world for any random person? From his perspective, ninety-nine other people are constantly working for his welfare, either by performing certain actions or by refraining from certain actions. When he is sick, people help. The water that enters his pipeline is not poisoned. When he walks on the street, vehicles make way for him. When he has an idea, others help in turning it into reality. The institutions around him actually function because people contribute even when it’s not immediately profitable. Trust is high, which means opportunities are abundant.
Compare this to a society where everyone is narrowly self-interested. Here, cooperation is fragile and strategic. He can’t trust anyone to follow through unless it serves their immediate interests. Public goods deteriorate because no one wants to pay for them. He spends enormous energy protecting himself from harm and exploitation.
The clever egoist might ask: “Fine, but why can’t I be the exception? Why can’t I live in the altruistic society, preaching whatever myths are needed to sustain it and sanctioning those who talk about the virtue of selfishness, while quietly pursuing only my own advantage?” The most fundamental problem is that if this strategy actually worked and others followed your example, the very environment you’re trying to exploit would disappear. You’d be undermining the conditions of your own flourishing by doing to others what you don’t want done to you.
The external case is simple: your life goes better in a world of altruists, and you can’t sustain that world while refusing to be one yourself. The amount of good that can happen to you grows with the size of your society. If there are a million people, then 999,999 other people are working all the time for your welfare. One of them might invent the medicine that saves your life, even if she lives on the other side of the planet or in a different time period.
But even if we look only at our inner life, the purely self-interested strategy fails.
Consider what it’s like to live with your attention locked onto your own advantage. You’re constantly comparing yourself to others: Am I getting what I deserve? Why is she more successful? Did I get cheated in that interaction? This stance breeds anxiety, envy, resentment, and a perpetual sense of precariousness.
Now contrast this with caring about others’ well-being. It shifts your attention away from anxious self-monitoring and toward concrete tasks: helping, building. That alone is often a relief. When you are absorbed in a task and have forgotten yourself, that’s often when the most profound happiness arises. Such selflessness opens up sources of satisfaction that simply aren’t available to the self-focused person.
There is a famous Buddhist saying: All the happiness in the world arises from wishing others to be happy, all the suffering in the world arises from wishing ourselves alone to be happy. Joseph Butler made a similar point while trying to refute simple egoism: happiness is a by-product of the pursuit of things other than happiness itself. This is a structural fact about us: directly pursuing our own good is a self-defeating strategy.
So altruism is not a noble sacrifice, a moral duty imposed from outside, or a principle of pure reason independent of consequences. Once you think through what it means to live well as the kind of creatures we are, altruism stops looking optional. One can doubt religious commands. One can be skeptical of the moral intuitions upon which utilitarianism ultimately rests. But one can’t ignore one’s own well-being. And if we ask ourselves honestly, we will find that in all questions about what makes a good life, altruism is already embedded in the answer.
Happy season of giving to you all, and thank you for being part of the community here at Vatsal’s Newsletter!
Related post:
Review of Tyler Cowen’s Stubborn Attachments