How can every action be selfish when people constantly sacrifice themselves where sometimes people do things without any gain at all?
How can everybody be selfishly motivated by everything? How can everybody be a psychological egoist?
How can altruism be a myth perpetuated by cultural narratives within a story of idealizing?
Even drug addicts so profusely obssesed and indulged with drugs can sacrifice themselves unto death over an object that they selfishly over indulge in.
Even a drug addict can become selfishly obssesed with the drugs that he puts in himself for a euphoric like high in that overtime through a overdose he kills himself over his own obssesion without ever gaining anything at all.
The altruist believes that sacrifice and death seperates them from egoists yet egotistical drug addicts who sacrifice their entire lives unto death by that of selfish addiction shows how the altruist is not unique at all in those regards.
Altruism taken as an absolute is probably a sham, but you can’t deny that it exists at least as a property of a given action. Mother Teresa and Ghandi were examples of people who yes, indeed benefitted in some way from the good things that they choose to do with thier lives, but that benefit pales in comparison to the benefits that were bestowed on others by those actions. Altruism and egoism are both false if taken to such an extreme or considered as absolutes. Neither are in reality properly perceived.
There is no altruism. There only exists egoism. Altruism is a mask for egoism.
My point of this thread was to show how selfishness of a object or thing can lead to one’s own death and sacrifice without any gain by my analogy of a drug addict.
We all die.
Any (illusion of) gain is temporal.
Drug addict may die a little quicker with intense pleasure and pain, but they aren’t so different from the rest of us.
We are addicted to air, food and activities. If you doubt, stop breathing for a while and you will see.
Maybe you’re talking about hedonism? I think there is altruism, but that it may be inseprarable from egoism. Saying that there’s no such thing, when it’s simply there to see is a bit ridiculous.
Why not throw out egoism? Because it’s still there two. They are both properties of any given action. You can’t just decide that one exists and the other doesn’t. Maybe neither is essential to any given action, and maybe not all actions possess both properties. But there is egoism in the world, and there is altruism in the world, and most of the time the ascription of one property or another rather than both where they actually are is a result of a misguided perspective about how things actually work. How can you be against altruism if it doesn’t exist? I gave a homeless man five buck the other day while I was going down the road, I practically threw it at him. There wasn’t even time for him to thank me, and I had 5 less bucks when it was over. I doubt that I’ll ever get a damn thing out of doing it. Personal satisfaction however, can come from something besides egoistic desires. Come on Joker, you know better than all this.
If we can acknowlege that selfishness can lead to death and sacrifice of a individual without receiving any gain or benefit at all in regards to my analogy of a drug addict, what exactly is left for altruism to establish distinguishment or distinction of itself in contrast to psychological egoism?
Is there even a real distinction beyond pretend show?
If we acknowledge that no distinction exists we can then conclude that altruism does not exist.
It doesn’t exist. It’s a imaginative distinction or vessel much like god and morality is.
I’m against the nauseating pretension of fictitious entities.
As usual the fundamental problem of philosophy and science has come down to people no longer able to distinguish what is real versus what is fictitious.
Only in a world where people can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction does the problems of god, morality or altruism arrive.
Just because you think you’ve nailed down the difference between what’s real and ficticious doesn’t mean that you have. What you’ve done is made a value judgement about how you think the world ought to be, while ignoring the fact that it blatantly appears to be otherwise. Seems to me like you’re the one grasping for straws to find some refutation of the notion that egoism and altruism, while maybe inseperable are still distinct. Is that so hard to get your mind around? There are people who do good things for the sake of doing good things every day. Just because in some cases a reward happens thier way does not mean that the action wasn’t altruistic. Seems like you’ve got a kind of warped and cynical view of human nature. Not everyone is an insufferable prick. Maybe you just haven’t met any of the nice people out there. If that’s the case I’d say your resulting conclusion are based on an inadequate sample size in your research. Go back out into the world and you’ll find nice people. I promise. And they’re not all just doing nice things for the glory or praise, but because they’re nice people. You can’t deny that this happens. If you try to, then you’re abandoning the “is” in favor of postulating an “ought” which clearly isn’t the case.
