I was once told that altruism is based on being 3 years old and one's survival   
   depending upon other people. This is completely wrong. I have had dealings   
   with altruistic organizations such as the Salvation Army and Medicins Sans   
   Frontiers. They were not    
   composed of 3-year-olds. They were composed of honest, intelligent people   
   working to make the world better.   
      
   Another claim comes from Ayn Rand: That altruism is a totalitarian trick. Here   
   she was confusing the value with the misuses of the value. Just about anything   
   that is good can be used for wrong. It does not make it a bad thing in itself.   
   Money can be used    
   for wrong; that does not mean that money is bad. Intelligence can be used for   
   wrong; that does not mean that intelligence is bad. Beauty can be used for   
   wrong; that does not mean that beauty is bad. The same is the case with moral   
   values. They can be    
   used for wrong, but that does not make them wrong in themselves. That Lenin   
   and Stalin appealed to the legitimate virtue of altruism for an illegitimate   
   goal of creating a brutal totalitarian state does not damn altruism. It damns   
   Lenin and Stalin.   
      
   Then there is the claim that, if you are getting anything out of the   
   situation, even if it be a good feeling, then you aren't being actually   
   altruistic. I cannot begin to tell you how wrong this is. Doing good things   
   should feel good. If it gets    
   something for you, then you have earned it. Whether we are here as function of   
   evolution or as God's design, in either case it would make sense that doing   
   things that are good for others should feel good for you. So if you are doing   
   something good and    
   getting something out of it, that is how things should be.   
      
   Probably the worst claim I've heard on this subject came from an Indian lady.   
   She said that she enjoyed helping people because she had low self-esteem. I   
   told her that it may not have anything to do with her self-esteem but rather   
   with her values and    
   education. This kind of thinking is absolutely atrocious. Something good is   
   presented as something bad. Being willing to help others is one of the best   
   qualities that you can have, and it is wrong to portray it as psychopathology.   
      
   Where the proponents of altruism can in fact go wrong is when they decide that   
   only altruism is right and that everything else is evil. That is wrong. There   
   are all sorts of ways to do good things, and there are all sorts of ways to do   
   bad things. Not    
   all forms of self-interest are bad. Not all forms of religion and spirituality   
   are ignorance or superstition. If a person wants to pursue prosperity or to   
   raise a family or to worship God, that in and of itself is not a problem. It   
   becomes a problem if    
   the person is burning the rainforest or flooding the atmosphere with CO2. The   
   solution to that is not to end economic progress but to move toward smarter   
   technologies.   
      
   Of course the negative experience of Communism has discredited any number of   
   altruistic purposes. However altruism is not limited to Communism, and I've   
   seen altruistic tendencies in any number of people who want nothing to do with   
   Communism. It is a    
   part of human makeup. As such it can be done in any number of ways – good,   
   bad, or a mix. Which means that the right way to deal with such tendencies is   
   not to disparage them but to leave them free to do their work of making the   
   world a better place.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)