Is altruism even possible without genuine empathy? Like what’s the root of altruism?? And you can’t have empathy without some self reference right?
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For me its a combination of
- Empathy
- A belief in a certain type of karma
- A sense of duty sometimes
- A sense of what feels right.
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Doing things for welfare of others than for self I guess is altruism. But thinking can be like feeling for others and putting ourselves in others place.
Yes. I do some things that I am fairly emotionless about based on the fact that I didn’t like it when it happened to me so I try to prevent it happening from others. It’s more of a logical action for me.
Yes, it’s perfectly possible. Altruism has many paths on which to grow, empathy is just one such avenue. For example purely at the cognitive level there’s the argument from need. What I need most is more important than what I need less even if it’s somebody else getting it. That’s altruism and for some people is that realization that drives their altruism rather than empathy, a principle, a pure assessment from value. The notion that selfishness is somehow the default baffles me. There doesn’t need to be a reason for altruism, it’s selfishness that needs a reason in order to exist, altruism is the default. If I see a starving man on the street I need a reason NOT to help him, helping is the default.
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Yea … I guess that was what I was really thinking. Because Lot of times I don’t feel like the emotion of empathy but it feels like I’m just doing it because of reasoning about stuff. I guess I wish I had more feelings of empathy.
Also I feel like maybe the people who don’t show me kindness or humanity can’t actually relate to my experience so it’s harder to treated me with compassion because they would have to do the kind things against alot of negative emotions. Idk… Just trying to figure out what’s going on in my freaking life
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