If I do something good because it makes me feel like a good person, is that technically selfish?
no, only if you’re choosing to make others suffer to make yourself feel good
enjoying making other people happy is a great thing
There is a Jewish story about a wealthy man who came to his rabbi and said “I have decided to build an orphanage, can you put me in touch with the relevant people”
The rabbi was delighted to do it, and introduced the man to some charities. After a few weeks, the man came back to the rabbi.
“I have decided not to build the orphanage,” he said. “I realised that I was only doing it because I wanted to be admired as a philanthropist, my motives were selfish.”
The rabbi answered, “do you think the orphans will care what your motives were? Build the orphanage!”
I think there was a similar anecdote about Abraham Lincoln and a pig, but from the other direction
The Fable of Abraham Lincoln and the Pigs
Once Lincoln was traveling in a mud-wagon coach along a swampy, rural area. His fellow passenger was his good friend and US Senator Edward Dickinson Baker, who later lost his life in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff at the onset of the American Civil War.
While they were conversing in the mud-wagon coach, Lincoln remarked to Baker that in doing good and evil, all people are motivated by selfishness. Just as Baker challenged Lincoln’s assertion, their coach crossed a rickety bridge over a slough (a large swampy marsh.)
Abruptly, Lincoln and Baker glimpsed a mother pig making a terrible squeal because her piglets were stuck in the swamp, couldn’t get out, and were in danger of drowning.
As their coach started to head away, Lincoln yelled, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” The driver replied, “If the other fellow don’t object.”
With Baker’s approval, Lincoln jumped out of the wagon, ran to the slough, lifted the piglets one by one out of the swamp, and carried them to the dry bank of the swamp.
When Lincoln returned to the coach, Baker remarked, “Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in this little episode?”
Lincoln replied, “Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I would have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”
anyway I think the idea that good needs to be externally motivated and that the giver isn’t allowed to benefit from it, even inside their own head, is extremely puritanical and nature and can be discarded
AMEN. OH MY GOD THIS, THANK YOU FOR THIS POST, THIS PUTS INTO WORDS SOMETHING THAT HAS BUGGED ME FOR YEARS.
This whole critical approach to finding motivations for altruism is honestly such bullshit. Who cares??? Do good because it makes you feel good–you’re still doing good! Do good because you like being praised–fine! Great! Do good because you’re gaining from it, too–I do not care. The end result is still that good is put in the world, and if you worrying that your motives are impure is more likely to make you not do good–if you’re so worried that you might be behaving selfishly–that it makes you actively avoid doing good deeds just because they might be motivated by selfishness, then you will never do anything good at all. Like, you wanna talk selfish? How about worrying so much about the purity of your motives that you stop doing good deeds at all? That’s fucking selfish! You’re putting your own desire for pure motive over the potential good you might do!
There’s a line that always stood out to me in Wicked, in the song No Good Deed: “One question haunts and hurts too much, too much to mention: was I really seeking good, or just seeking attention? Is that all good deeds are when looked at with an ice-cold eye?”
Like…bitch yeah, maybe! But so? You’re still helping people? You’re still doing good?
So like…just fucking embrace it. Embrace that all good deeds may have some inherently selfish roots if you dig deep enough looking for them and that does not fucking matter because they’re still good deeds that are helping people and hopefully removing some pain and suffering from the world.
Anyway sorry for the rant but OMG bless this post for existing.
(P.S. If you, like the original person in the ask, have genuinely worried about your motives–this is not an angry rant at you. This is an angry rant at the puritanical ideals that made you so afraid to act for fear of being told you’re ‘virtue signaling’ or ‘just being selfish after all’ that you felt the need to question your every good and kind impulse. Like, self-awareness is a good thing, but if you’re literally afraid to do something good because someone out there made you think you were only being selfish by doing so–if that has been genuinely worrying you–then this rant is meant to be empowering to you, and a virtual flipping off of the people who made you feel that way. Do good things, and enjoy the hell out of those fringe benefits, I say!)
I loved SvS Redux because it went over this exact point
