The Myth of Altruism — The Myths Series

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The Myth of Altru­ism — it’s actu­al­ly pret­ty hard to find a self­less act. most acts that seem self­less are any­thing but.

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Examples abound about the idea of altruism. Let’s first define the word:

Regard for oth­ers, both nat­ur­al and moral; devo­tion to the inter­ests of oth­ers; broth­er­ly kind­ness — opposed to ego­ism or self­ish­ness. — : Web­ster’s Revised Unabridged Dic­tio­nary, ? 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

The ques­tion aris­es: is it pos­si­ble to com­mit a tru­ly self­less act? I sus­pect that it is pos­si­ble… but it hap­pens rarely. 

“Non­sense!” peo­ple scream. “Day in and day out I make sac­ri­fices for my (par­ents, spouse, kids, cus­tomers, employ­er, employ­ees). The real ques­tion is, why don’t they ever appre­ci­ate my sacrifices?” 

As we lis­ten to peo­ple shov­el­ling this bilge, we are sup­posed to nod know­ing­ly, and think or say, “What a saint! Look at all (s)he puts up with. And does­n’t even get a thank-you, let alone payback.”

Which then causes us to ask, if payback was expected, how could the act be altruistic?

Altru­ism might also be defined as “an action with­out thought of reward.” 

Let’s get real and look at how life generally is:

• Most peo­ple have not been taught to stand up and go for what they need. Most peo­ple do not even know how to ask for what they need.
• Oth­er peo­ple, when they ask for some­thing, expect 100% com­pli­ance. If they get reject­ed by their par­ents, spouse, kids, cus­tomers, employ­er, employ­ees, they sim­ply stop ask­ing and start manip­u­lat­ing. As opposed to ask­ing some­one else, or meet­ing their own needs.

What the major­i­ty call altru­ism is actu­al­ly manip­u­la­tion. It’s act­ing or speak­ing in a cer­tain way, in order to get what we want or to get a reward.

As usual, our parents taught us how to do this.

“When you behave like that, you make mom­my sad.” I’ve actu­al­ly heard par­ents use this line, as opposed to, “If you do that again, here is the con­se­quence,” and then apply­ing it. 

The first “you make me…(whatever)” approach teach­es the child that their goal in life should be to “make ‘mom­my’ hap­py.” Or what­ev­er. The idea is, 

• I act,
• you feel something,
• and some­how it’s my fault that you chose to feel what you’re feeling.

But back to sad-unhap­py. I will ask, “Why the hell should I or any­one else care if you choose to make your­self unhap­py? Besides, no one can make you feel!” 

Most folk, how­ev­er, have heard vari­a­tions on this theme since they were hatched, and actu­al­ly believe they have the pow­er to affect anoth­er’s feel­ings. From there, it’s a short leap to, “It’s my duty to make oth­ers happy.”

Par­ents utter this line for only one rea­son — they want to stop a cer­tain behav­iour. They, as chil­dren, were taught to look to their par­ents for cues about what pleased them; if they were wise, they then did the pleas­ing behaviour. 

Inter­est­ing­ly, most chil­dren com­ply not out of a fear of con­se­quences, but because they were trained to avoid dis­pleas­ing. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, we learn from this to manip­u­late oth­ers through our behav­iour. If I behave a cer­tain way, mom­my will love me and smile at me. And vice versa. 

So, if I want some­thing from mom­my, I’ll do all the things she likes, and then she will owe me what I want.

I did what she wants; she’ll have to do what I want.

Ini­tial­ly, when we were small, this was how it worked. You’re sulk­ing, dad­dy says “light­en up,” and you do, and he gives you a treat. 

By the time we’re teens, it sel­dom works that way. We do some­thing that’s sup­posed guar­an­tee that good old dad will be oblig­at­ed to give us the car keys, and he does­n’t. Then we scream that dad’s not being fair. (See The Myth of Fair­ness)

We either try again, (and again, and again) or declare dad to be hope­less. We decide to find a spouse to manip­u­late instead. Or we have a kid, and play the same game with their heads that were played with ours.

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Phony altruistic acts are done in the name of love, yet are methods to manipulate others into doing what they aren’t doing, or don’t want to do.

I had a client who grew up with par­ents that crit­i­cized every­thing about her. Her looks, clothes, choic­es, all were judged to be lack­ing. They con­tin­ued to do this all through her ses­sions. She want­ed her mom and dad to love her, so she kept telling them all she accom­plished, hop­ing for praise. 

She nev­er got what she was look­ing for. 

She had a 19-year-old son, who got by, by the skin of his teeth. She con­sid­ered him irresponsible. 

One time, she heard a rumor that his col­lege course was going to start ear­ly, and he’d dome noth­ing about it. She told me how she’d called the col­lege, found out it was true, made sev­er­al calls to the school and to her par­ents to find the mon­ey, and got every­thing sort­ed out for her son. 

She was beam­ing as she told me what she had done. 

I asked her if she could explain to me how doing all of that helped her son to be more respon­si­ble.

She said, “I real­ly resent you for point­ing that out to me.” 

I con­grat­u­lat­ed her for being hon­est. I also said that her resent­ment was not going to cause me any loss of sleep. My job was not to get her to like me. 

After some thought, she admit­ted that she had been look­ing for praise from me, and what she want­ed praise for was for being a good moth­er (bet­ter than her mother.) 

She grudg­ing­ly real­ized that by act­ing as she had, and by then let­ting her son know how she’d bailed out his chest­nuts yet again, she was say­ing, “See. You can’t get along with­out me! Now tell me how won­der­ful I am!” 

This was exact­ly the oppo­site of her avowed pur­pose of get­ting him out on his own, stand­ing on his own two feet. Her action, far from altru­is­tic, was a manip­u­la­tive res­cue, meant to keep her son in his place as an incompetent.

Most “altruistic acts” are exactly like this.

True altru­ism is not a bar­gain of the “I’ll do this so that you do that” sort. 

The alter­na­tive to all of this is being aware of myself. I pay atten­tion to the games I’m play­ing, and let peo­ple I reust in on the mad­ness going on between my ears. 

This week, ask for what you want, direct­ly. If the per­son refus­es, ask the per­son if they know why they are refus­ing, and whether they’d be will­ing to dia­log about it. If the peo­ple you are in rela­tion­ship with con­tin­u­al­ly refuse your direct, non-manip­u­la­tive requests, ask your­self why you are in rela­tion­ship with them.

Notice when you are try­ing to manip­u­late peo­ple into doing what you want — by lying, mis­di­rec­tion, false com­ple­ments or end­less crit­i­cism. Ask your­self why you need to play this game. 

Stop being a mar­tyr, just for an hour or so. Stop feel­ing sor­ry for your­self for an after­noon. Stop whin­ing about how awful the world is for a whole day. 

Ask your­self why you have set your life up to be like this. (Who’d you think set it up???) Tell a few peo­ple about the games you play, about your inse­cu­ri­ties, about the manip­u­la­tions that you give in to attempt­ing. Then vow to stop yourself.

Go where you need to go to get what you want. Do what you need to do for you, not to make some­one else happy. 

Give up on “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine.” Wash. Don’t wash. Because you choose to, not for what you hope you’ll get. (You’ll be dis­ap­point­ed. Even if you get it, you’ll know it was coerced, not freely given.)

This week, get over yourself.

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