Is not acting out of self-interest a sign of mental illness?

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This is an extremely simplistic analysis. Emotions are intrinsic to all human decision making, and the lack of emotions impairs the ability to make decisions. Emotions do not invalidate one's actions or decisions automatically - and feeling good about doing something altruistic does not mean it was never altruistic in the first place.

Just one example of how altruism is not such a narrow concept that it only counts if one emotionless sacrifices for another benefit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism - also known as "pay it forward,"

Anyway, it's not really to the point to specifically and narrowly define altruism in such a way that it cannot exist. It clearly describes a particular type of behavior that happens among humans, and one can either deal with the fact that people really do this, or one can set impossible hurdles to invalidate it to serve one's own assumptions. The latter is not particularly rigorous, and is also known as "confirmation bias."

Last edited by Verdandi on 04 Apr 2013, 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting. So are you saying that altruism means never acting in one's own interest? Someone cannot be generous today and selfish tomorrow? That doesn't survive reality testing.

It is not a battle between "truly loving yourself" vs. "truly loving others." These are not mutually exclusive traits and you can act on each one in different ways at different times. You aren't required to pick one and neglect the other at all times.

This is really an "extended family" serving the same purpose as a family, but with much less tight bonds.

Survival implies competition and cooperation among the species.

But there still will not be any true altruism. You don't take part in a cooperation if you don't intend to gain anything from that cooperation eventually. If you do it, the action does not serve survival as it "should".


But I guess one should just be satisfied with the cooperation aspect of life.

I have a hard time figuring this out.

If you truly love others, this will be unconditionally; so even if it is bad for your own life, right?

Why should you not love all people? Isn't it because you should only love the people who are good for your own life? In other words always loving out of self-interest.

If you love someone as much as you love yourself this should be unconditionally, because you love yourself unconditionally...?

It makes me feel alone that love is this way. Noone really loves you unconditionally, only yourself. But I guess you should simply accept that you are completely alone even if the cooperation part of life could make your feel otherwise.

I do voluntary work, but I don't do it to make myself look good. I'm not that type of person in that way, although we all can sometimes do things just to try and prove something to others, like competing, at some point in our lives.

I know a lot of this goes on on Facebook, especially with young people in their teens and 20s. I know a girl who has always been shy and introverted and a little strange, and all she does is post pictures of herself on Facebook at nightclubs, all glamoured up with a pile of other girls, often cuddling a boy, as if to say ''look at me, I'm not the shy introvert you thought I was, I can do this.'' I hardly ever post pictures of myself when I'm with my friends and put it all over Facebook just to prove to everyone that I have friends. Maybe I may do this occasionally, but not to show off.

On Facebook I'd rather see pictures of people's pets or children or anything like that, that doesn't seem boastful or have a certain ''look what I've got/look what I'm doing/I'm so fantastic'' sort of impression to it.

"Pay It Forward" was a good movie! The movie helps define pay it forward. I recommend it to people if they'd want to watch it.
If one is doing something good to better things (helping others qualities of life, helping homeless, volunteering) and they are doing this out of the good of their heart as they like to help people.

Our neighbor helps a lot of homeless veterans, he has a nonprofit, has done so much for so many years (he's also a former veteran) he does it out of the good of his heart. He's retired and everyday he is out there searching for homeless to feed and see if they need help. He has made the paper for his good deeds many times. It is a thing he does since he cares about others.

A sociopath for example, would lack emotions, and thus everything done would be to benefit oneself. I have seen a case of this with my sister inlaw who is a diagnosed AntiSocial PD. She also has had brain scans done and the part that controls impulses (amygdala i think) never grew. The rest would be environmental factors.

SIL only thinks about herself and that is it. Never her kids, or others. It all comes down to her. In a way i feel bad for her since her family outcasts her for a disorder she was born with and it's not like they don't know what to expect. Another incident that threw me off was one time we went to get her in NC and she refused to leave without her cat. It took her an hour.

So i think there might be a spectrum in sociopathy; then again i suppose they professionals just use the depravity scale.
However i have other examples i've studied in which the individual would be considered a sociopath yet they don't meet full criteria...

Sorry i went off on a rant.

There is nothing wrong with helping others. If you feel good after you helped others, there is nothing wrong with that as long as the reason you are helping is truly from your heart.

In short, i agree with Verdandi's post on this one.

"Acting out of self-interest" can be stretched awfully far. Including to cases where a person's entire life is given up.

A mom dies to save her baby? Well, she'd rather die than live knowing her child's dead. And besides, those are her genes. See, she's being totally selfish.

What about a German in 1943 who dies to help get a Jew to out of the country? Well, that's obviously selfish too. That person is risking death because he can't stand the thought of living as the sort of person who wouldn't help his fellow man. This time there's little or no genetic connection, but the ideas in his head--ideas like the value of human life--are still being passed on. He's passing on his culture.

And even if there's no human life saved, directly. A pacifist burns himself to death to protest war? He's dying to pass on the ideas in his head. Again, you can define it as self-interest.

But here's the trouble with defining everything as being self-interest: Selfishness loses its meaning. It becomes "Anything I do because I want to do it," because if you want to do it and you're not mad then it must benefit you somehow. Since involuntary actions aren't choices at all, every choice can be defined as selfish.

Trouble is, "selfish" is now defined as "something that benefits me... whether or not it also benefits somebody else... whether or not it benefits them much more than it benefits me... whether or not it also results in distress to me...."

You see the trouble with that? You've just redefined selfishness. If you want to talk sensibly about it, you have to give it a more precise definition, something like, "An action which benefits me, done at the risk of harming others, without considering whether it will harm others, or while ignoring the knowledge that it will harm others."

Defined like that, it's the selfish action that is a sign of mental illness. Human beings are social animals and we naturally survive best when we cooperate, each person helping every other, balancing his own needs with those of everyone else. It is insane not to help each other, because in the long term, if we do, everyone benefits.

Altruism is not some sort of masochistic urge. It is not painful. It is something that gives us joy and fulfillment--and it should, because it is in our nature. Certainly in the short term it can be unpleasant to give up something for someone else, but in the long term, it is much more unpleasant to know that you are the sort of person who takes advantage of others.

So you've discovered that we help other people partly because we ourselves enjoy it: All right. Does that mean that altruism is now worthless? No. If anything, it's simply a reason to disassociate altruism with self-superiority, because you can no longer delude yourself into thinking that your altruism is something unusual or extraordinary. It is simply the way a healthy human being naturally acts.

Those were some good posts to the discussion.

Thinking about it, acting out of self interest might not be that bad after all. Perhaps it is just fine that everybody acts only out of self interest - because we still have the cooperation part of human survival (not just the competition part) which brings us together.

In the end this ensures that we survive...and in the end that is really the most important thing after all.

I think that's the issue I'm having with this acting out of self-interest - that I value being "truly good" to other people as more important than surviving. But I start to see that "good" actions are actually often (always?) those that promote survival (which includes acting out of self-interest), so I see I should change my perspective of "good and bad actions".

I tend to consider selfish actions bad actions, but that's really far from true when looking at it in the large scheme of things. If noone acted selfishly everyone would sit and do nothing because they could not "selfishly claim" their space in the world - soon everyone would die.

Yeah; if you believe that human life is valuable, then that includes your own life. So you have to take some for yourself, so that you can survive. Besides, if you want to help other people, neglecting your own needs just means you won't be able to do as much for other people. Only in situations where resources are so scarce that there's not enough to go around does it really make sense to give your share to someone else, and even then you have to try to balance everybody's needs so that the person who needs things most is the one who gets them. That's why having a strong belief in fairness means you're angered when someone else is treated unfairly, but also when someone treats you unfairly. You can't just go and give everything to everybody else--you have to be logical about it. And logic says that you should take care of yourself, too, or you won't be good for much of anything.

How do you get from truly loving someone to unconditional love? There are many kinds of love, and I don't see why some kinds are more real than others. Unconditional love doesn't follow from truly experiencing love.



I don't know what it means to experience any angst from being alone. Such a thing doesn't distress me.

Also, Callista said it a lot better than I could.

When thinking it over I do realise I have a weird concept of love (because of the aspergers). It's just very difficult to "learn" to love in the way you are supposed to when it's not the way you naturally feel.

You are supposed to love in survival terms. This does mean true love can also be unconditional (or actually I think it should always be that).

But "true love" is naturally to me much more like the "true love" typically portrayed...very unconditional and all that...but I see that works against the survival mechanisms...and I begin to realise that everything that works against the survival mechanisms is basically wrong. It's only logically that I am really able to agree to this, it's much more difficult to accept emotionally - like really feel it should be that way.

I do have a very animalistic nature in me. But not when it comes to experiencing love/emotions. It's only my "autistic part" that can experience emotions (and often too much)...the animal part in me is completely cold in that regard.

It seems like this "Black and White"-thinking is my basic nature. Either I'm full of emotions and don't appreciate survival....or I'm appreciating survival, but I have no real love-like emotions. I don't know whether this is common in aspergers.

As you wrote yourself: This "true love" stuff, you speak of, is simply portrayed by media, or did you ever face anything similar in reality?

If you want a nice comparison: Pronos are one border of portrayed relationships, romantic love films are the opposite border. And reality lies in the middle of this. ^^

I did once. A girl I can certainly claim to have been in love with. She was aspie herself, so I guess that's why. I realise it's only autistic love that feels "true" to me. It's so frustrating that one can pretend just about anything in this world except love. If you don't feel it the normal way, you don't feel it the normal way. There's no coping technique.




That's the problem. Typical love is gray - I think in black and white. I've always wanted "one thing at a time" and "either this or that, not both". I see it's not something new. I have definitely never been any other way.

Qawer, are you needing dating advice on here? this is one of a few topics you started regarding love and issues on selfish self interest bordering on sociopathy, putting oneself first and foremost.

Callista and Verdandi both worded it well.

Out of curiousity a lot of your posts, Qawer tie into "love" a lot, and you mention loving others unconditionally. Are you in love or trying to figure out if you are in love?

Or did you fall in love, and the person hurt you so that you think you might put up defenses one for oneself and thats all?

Hmm...I'm just split between this "asperger-kind-of-love" and the "survival-kind-of-love" (and in general really, not just what regards love). It's the last kind of love that most people experience - essentially "We are great at surviving together, I love him/her". That's what really lies behind all the emotions people are feeling. Following the way of nature this is really the natural way love is "supposed" to be.

Autistic love is not based on survival in the same way (to me at least). It's something different. Meeting someone with underdeveloped social skills makes the interaction more "honest", simple and close. I feel like this has another foundation than survival (and that's basically what's "wrong" about it). It's like you "meet in the other (autistic) world", and that's the foundation of the love.

Last edited by qawer on 07 Apr 2013, 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Not acting out of any form of self-interest (e.g., "Altruism") does not necessarily mean that the person doing so is insane, nor does it mean that the person isn't insane.

Altruism just isn't likely.