Pathological Altruism

[laughing dog]

Do you really think the "founding fathers" intended to have nutjobs running around with sophisticated weaponry beyond their dreams with no legal mechanism to curb them?

The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with altruism, pathological or otherwise. It was simply a reaffirmation of the 1689 English Bill of Rights.

Really? There was no element of altruism that motivated our founding fathers?

 

[dystopian]

If they consider the low wage jobs superior then they would be worse off if the low wage jobs were eliminated.

Likewise, the earlier argument about qualifications--removing the low wage jobs won't magically make them qualified for high wage jobs.

I can see no scenario where a bunch of them don't end up unemployable.

And who exactly is removing the low wage jobs and why, huh?

You seem to think if the minimum wage is increased that business are *forced* to cut jobs in order to stay profitable; when in actual reality its more like they're forced to cut jobs to stay *as* profitable. The overwhelming majority of companies would do just fine without cutting those jobs; but the problem is that since companies exist to maximize their profit, they will not trend towards placing the needs of their employees first; and will happily throw them to the gutter if it means a few percents increase in their profits.

If that's the problem, it becomes a matter of the government putting down consequences for any company that can be shown to cut (or move them elsewhere) jobs purely on the basis that their profit margins are shrinking. If a company's profit margins actually disappear completely as a result, then the government could put down consequences if the company cuts jobs without first exploring other options to solve their problem. If the government makes it more expensive for the company to cut jobs than to keep them, jobs won't disappear.

Of course, that's assuming your doomsday scenario of higher wages leading to mass unemployment are an actual concern instead of just fiction.

 

[arkirk]

Shit happens! Still good intentions are good intentions. If you don't start with good intentions, where can your efforts go anyway but down? I don't believe we should always be guarding ourselves and protecting ourselves from good intentions. In fact, it would be better for all of us if we would promote good intentions rather than promote the concept of pathological altruism. In a way, the concept of "pathological altruism" is an oxymoronic idea. The more you look for it, the more of it there is. Shit happens. We all know what good intentions are. The fact that something outside our consideration of the moment can spoil a good deed is just a fact of life.

akirk, I believe that's rather the point that the article was attempting to make. In a very large number of cases, the bad outcomes aren't outside the consideration of a reasonably objective person. But the person invested in the well-intentioned action refuses to consider any possible negative outcomes, because they are so enamored of the intention of their deed.

The point is that perhaps one should stop and do a bit more considering, a bit more objectively, before committing oneself to a well-intentioned action.

That certainly isn't arguing that anyone should stop doing good deeds, or that altruism is always bad, or anything else that is irreducibly absurd. By all means, consider being nice and practicing random acts of kindness. But consider the potential consequences of your actions as well... and consider them objectively. Listen to critics with an open mind, instead of simply closing them down as obstructionists. And when your well-meaning action causes harm, don't just wave it off blithely as "well, shit happens, and I meant well", especially not if the shit that happened was easily foreseeable!

****Coffee spills are not representative of the general spirit of my soap-box speech****

There is no such thing as pathological altruism. Perhaps the coffee buying frenzy and the random act of kindness are not altruism but rather simply responding to the herd instinct. The idea of random acts of kindness speaks to acts that are not well considered. It is also kindness to consider the possible outcomes of your actions whether they are well intended or more neutral in character.

Things that on their surface have the appearance of kindness can indeed have a darker side. I however doubt that many cases of genuine well considered altruism go very far awry. We are a culture that contains many dangers and many people warning of dangers. We are always given signals by big brother what we better not do. Big brother is nothing more than a social deity we are supposed to treat just like the Biblical god and obey. Big brother believes in thought control and tries to tell us how to be good and strengthen his power over us. Big brother will tell you he is only interested in keeping you safe and happy so he is informing you it is terrorism alert condition orange...for your own good.

On these days we are to suspect everything everybody except big brother does. The concept of pathological altruism is one of his favorite tools. A fellow named R.D. Liang wrote a whole book about it...The Politics of Experience. Basically it was a book about the politicization of psychological language. Another book in the late 70's addressed the same issue...Mainstream Psychology by Braginsky and Braginsky.

The idea you are to fear your own preferences to be kind is absurd.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Good intentions go bad, therefore ...

What?

Bad intentions go good?

Altruism is pathological therefore...

What?

Don't engage in selfless acts?

There is a brokenness in such thinking. More importantly, a brokenness attempting to masquerade as wholeness.

Any act, well or ill intended will have with it a set of unforeseen consequences, sometimes good, sometimes bad. The intention of the man who helps a child reach the water fountain is not not to get his own suit wet, which may well happen, but to aid the child in sating his or her thirst, which will also happen. It is not the intention of the bank robber to help uncover embezzlement by the bank manager, but investigation of one theft may shed light on another.

Most of our good intentions don't lead to making things worse. Nor is our desire to make a situation better for someone else pathological. We are social beings and the desire to help other is one of these arrive that holds us together and that's a good thing. Without society, cooperation and healthy doses of self sacrifice, the species goes extinct long ago.

Some people are naturally selfish or lack social skills or see themselves cheated of or disconnected from the benefits of
socialization. Such people may rationalize what they may feel as a failure into a strength and therefore attack the majority of people who don't fail socially as pathological, but that's a discussion the therapist's couch.

 

[Emily Lake]

I believe you're missing my forest for your trees...

Give a person a red herring and they'll obfuscate for a day, teach them the art of fallacies and they'll obfuscate for a lifetime.

Quite funny

 

[Emily Lake]

The fact that people are taking the low-wage jobs shows there aren't high wage jobs available.

This doesn't follow.

If the high wage jobs existed why would anyone actually take the low wage jobs?

According to Jobseeker.com.au, there are over 300 CEO vacancies in Brisbane, Australia.

Does this imply that it is impossible to fill vacancies for forklift drivers, night fillers, and fast food clerks?

Should I quit and apply for one of those positions? They exist...

Exactly. Just because high wage jobs exist doesn't mean that people in low wage jobs are qualified to do those jobs. The two aren't interchangeable, and the job-seeker isn't the only party involved in the negotiation.

 

[Emily Lake]

Things that on their surface have the appearance of kindness can indeed have a darker side. I however doubt that many cases of genuine well considered altruism go very far awry.

Consider the case of sending food aid to Africa. This is fairly well established, but I'm also not particularly good at history. I'm also home sick with a cold and I'm not inclined to go research it. It should be relatively easy to validate the gist of this if you are disinclined to take me at face value, and I encourage you to do so since i'm not providing sources of my own for it.

Some area of Africa faced frequent food shortages and droughts at some point in the not-too-distant past. I'd like to say the 80s and 90s. So a lot of developed nations sent food aid to Africa - free food to keep people from starving. Very well-intentioned, very altruistic, no strings attached. Genuine free food to keep people alive. What could be more genuinely well-meaning than that? True charity, with no ulterior motive.

The avoidable and foreseeable consequence of this well-meaning action, however, was to destroy the farming industry of the region.

You see, free food was available to everyone, so nobody was going to pay the farmers for their food. Without payment for his food, the farmers couldn't afford seed crops, and couldn't afford to continue to run farms. The farmers all went out of business.

Without farms of their own, the region was no longer capable of supporting itself when the drought ended, and faced starvation even though there was no external cause for it. They needed yet more charity to keep them from dying. They were unable to feed themselves.

The well intention act of charity had foreseeable and avoidable consequences that made the situation worse.

The idea you are to fear your own preferences to be kind is absurd.

I don't believe you have understood my point very well at all.

 

[Emily Lake]

Good intentions go bad, therefore ...

What?

Bad intentions go good?

Altruism is pathological therefore...

What?

Don't engage in selfless acts?

Your inference of what's being said is in error, and because of that, you've reached a false conclusion.

The OP and article haven't said that All Altruism is Pathological. It has said that Some people take Altruism to a Pathological Level, and in so doing, they ignore the foreseeable and avoidable negative consequences of that altruism.

Because that read differs from your errant inference, it invalidates your conclusion - that we should avoid engaging in selfless acts. It would be more appropriate to conclude that we should make more significant efforts to think through the reasonably likely consequences of our selfless acts before committing them.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Consider the case of sending food aid to Africa. This is fairly well established, but I'm also not particularly good at history. I'm also home sick with a cold and I'm not inclined to go research it. It should be relatively easy to validate the gist of this if you are disinclined to take me at face value, and I encourage you to do so since i'm not providing sources of my own for it.

Some area of Africa faced frequent food shortages and droughts at some point in the not-too-distant past. I'd like to say the 80s and 90s. So a lot of developed nations sent food aid to Africa - free food to keep people from starving. Very well-intentioned, very altruistic, no strings attached. Genuine free food to keep people alive. What could be more genuinely well-meaning than that? True charity, with no ulterior motive.

The avoidable and foreseeable consequence of this well-meaning action, however, was to destroy the farming industry of the region.

So let me get this straight

Charity, not frequent drought and famine, destroyed the "farming industry" in at least one region of Africa?

May I inquire...

Which one?

You see, free food was available to everyone, so nobody was going to pay the farmers for their food. Without payment for his food, the farmers couldn't afford seed crops, and couldn't afford to continue to run farms. The farmers all went out of business.

So these were farmers who could produce during drought and famine, or even directly or soon after drought or famine?

Without farms of their own, the region was no longer capable of supporting itself when the drought ended, and faced starvation even though there was no external cause for it. They needed yet more charity to keep them from dying. They were unable to feed themselves.

The well intention act of charity had foreseeable and avoidable consequences that made the situation worse.

 

[arkirk]

Consider the case of sending food aid to Africa. This is fairly well established, but I'm also not particularly good at history. I'm also home sick with a cold and I'm not inclined to go research it. It should be relatively easy to validate the gist of this if you are disinclined to take me at face value, and I encourage you to do so since i'm not providing sources of my own for it.

Some area of Africa faced frequent food shortages and droughts at some point in the not-too-distant past. I'd like to say the 80s and 90s. So a lot of developed nations sent food aid to Africa - free food to keep people from starving. Very well-intentioned, very altruistic, no strings attached. Genuine free food to keep people alive. What could be more genuinely well-meaning than that? True charity, with no ulterior motive.

The avoidable and foreseeable consequence of this well-meaning action, however, was to destroy the farming industry of the region.

You see, free food was available to everyone, so nobody was going to pay the farmers for their food. Without payment for his food, the farmers couldn't afford seed crops, and couldn't afford to continue to run farms. The farmers all went out of business.

Without farms of their own, the region was no longer capable of supporting itself when the drought ended, and faced starvation even though there was no external cause for it. They needed yet more charity to keep them from dying. They were unable to feed themselves.

The well intention act of charity had foreseeable and avoidable consequences that made the situation worse.

The idea you are to fear your own preferences to be kind is absurd.

I don't believe you have understood my point very well at all.

The free food fed a lot of people who could not feed themselves in the first place. I think you are just impatient for these people to get started back up again. It was a drought. Farms don't work well or produce anywhere near enough in those conditions. In severe droughts, the free food would be going to the farmers too. It is true the effort could have been better considered, but the food was necessary unless you think digging graves should be the outcome for every drought.

Someone should have included the seeds for restart of the farms. If they were producing well when the free food was given, then it would have simply been an economically disruptive act and not altruism. If the people needed food and simply could not pay the farmers, they still needed food. If the farmers had no market for their goods, then they could let their crop go to seed. Your story doesn't somehow add up.

My point is that you start off with good intentions. You look the situation over and decide what would be the best approach.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I love the example, because if you look at the actual problems, none of them come the charity of others. Distribution problems stemmed from poor infrastructure and corrupt governments who literally held the food hostage in order to control the people. Farming is hard when warlords raid and ravage your fields, and contrary to old B&W movies, it takes more than a good rain to get a region over a severe drought.

Altruism was the least of these people's problems.

 

[bilby]

It's a very popular fable, and very truthy; but I have never seen any evidence for it.

Farmers in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s were already out of business. The main reason was war; the struggle for Eritrean independence in particular, and the other usual tribal conflicts that are the inevitable consequence of borders drawn by European power brokers in the 19th Century with no regard for existing tribal boundaries meant that most of East Africa was a basket case - AK47s and ammunition were cheap, millions of young men were unable to work, and stealing stuff at gunpoint is easier and more fun than growing crops (that are going to get stolen at gunpoint anyway).

The region was almost able to feed itself in good years; but the drought was the last straw, and millions starved. At that point, sending free food wasn't going to do any harm to anyone; and it certainly saved a lot of lives.

Some 'free food' is still being sent to East Africa; the Somali refugees who have fled across the border to Ethiopia and Kenya to escape the latest famine are getting it, which takes some of the burden of feeding them off their hosts.

The population of Ethiopia today is more than twice what it was at the start of the 'Live Aid' famines of the 1980s; the same drought conditions have struck again in the last couple of years, with twice as many mouths to feed - and yet the disaster is missing, limited to Somalia.

In the 80s, Kenya had no disaster, while Ethiopia and Somalia starved. In the past five years, Kenya and Ethiopia had no disaster, while Somalia starved. These countries share the same weather pattern, and the borders are very porous, so food can be traded where needed; The population today is more than twice what it was; and the weather is just as bad. The difference in outcomes is not due to farming, or food prices, or climate, or population. The clear and obvious difference is rule of law. A farmer who knows that his crops will make it to market without being stolen, will grow those crops, sell them, and buy whatever he needs for his family with the proceeds.

That a few million refugees down the road are getting 'free food' from the UN has no significant negative effect on him; If he has food to sell, he can sell it to the UNHCR, or to the local market, or for export. Quite likely he is growing oilseed or coffee anyway; if food is cheap locally for any reason, that actually helps him, because he spends less of what he sells his coffee or for on food, and has the chance of having some money left over to buy other things he needs.

In recent years, flowers for export have become a major crop in Ethiopia; subsistence farming is no longer a way of life for many Ethiopians, and as a result, famine is no longer a way of life either. Growing flowers is a better way to feed your family than growing wheat or sorghum, if you can sell the flowers for enough cash to buy more grain than you could have grown, and still have money left over. Trying to compete with cheap grain from American and European agribusinesses isn't a good plan - and Ethiopian farmers ain't dumb.

If we assume that Ethiopian farmers are stupid; that people in refugee camps are in a position to grow food if only there wasn't all that free rice being handed out; that the situation in East Africa is simple; and that the people living there are little children who need our guidance, and some tough love, then the parable of the free rice seems almost plausible.

Sadly, none of those assumptions are reasonable; and oddly, nobody ever seems to have any evidence of a poor farmer who lost his livelihood to the dreaded foreign aid of free food.

 

[Deepak]

Consider the case of sending food aid to Africa. This is fairly well established, but I'm also not particularly good at history. I'm also home sick with a cold and I'm not inclined to go research it. It should be relatively easy to validate the gist of this if you are disinclined to take me at face value, and I encourage you to do so since i'm not providing sources of my own for it.

Some area of Africa faced frequent food shortages and droughts at some point in the not-too-distant past. I'd like to say the 80s and 90s. So a lot of developed nations sent food aid to Africa - free food to keep people from starving. Very well-intentioned, very altruistic, no strings attached. Genuine free food to keep people alive. What could be more genuinely well-meaning than that? True charity, with no ulterior motive.

The avoidable and foreseeable consequence of this well-meaning action, however, was to destroy the farming industry of the region.

You see, free food was available to everyone, so nobody was going to pay the farmers for their food. Without payment for his food, the farmers couldn't afford seed crops, and couldn't afford to continue to run farms. The farmers all went out of business.

Without farms of their own, the region was no longer capable of supporting itself when the drought ended, and faced starvation even though there was no external cause for it. They needed yet more charity to keep them from dying. They were unable to feed themselves.

The well intention act of charity had foreseeable and avoidable consequences that made the situation worse.

The idea you are to fear your own preferences to be kind is absurd.

I don't believe you have understood my point very well at all.

This is, of course, seething nonsense but it certainly helps us to rationalize the belief that once some tens of thousands of children starve to death the indigent will straighten up and fly right.

 

[laughing dog]

The OP and article haven't said that All Altruism is Pathological. It has said that Some people take Altruism to a Pathological Level, and in so doing, they ignore the foreseeable and avoidable negative consequences of that altruism.

Well, that definition is pretty much pointless, since most actions have foreseeable positive and negative consequences. The issue is the foreseeability of the degree of the possible consequences and one's view of their relative importance.

But, you need to actually read the OP, but the OP goes on to claim that

Pathological altruism is evident in the "living wage" discussion, where its proponents dismiss the harm of job losses and price increases; and in some instances charge that if a business cannot afford to pay a "living wage" it should not be in business. What happens to workers should that be the rule? A minimum-wage job is better than no job.

It is clear that this is just ideological taunting dressed up in pseudo-intellectual jargon.

 

[Emily Lake]

This is, of course, seething nonsense but it certainly helps us to rationalize the belief that once some tens of thousands of children starve to death the indigent will straighten up and fly right.

While I freely admit to having memories which are outdated on this subject, and withdraw this example as supporting evidence... I also rather object to your characterization of it as "seething nonsense" as well as to your implied characterization of my views and morals. Your insult is unwarranted and is not justified by my actions or by any views that I've expressed.

 

[Emily Lake]

Well, that definition is pretty much pointless, since most actions have foreseeable positive and negative consequences. The issue is the foreseeability of the degree of the possible consequences and one's view of their relative importance.

I disagree that it's pointless. I think that there are many people out there who want very much to help others, and because they can envision the potential positive outcome, they overstate and up-play the likelihood of the positive outcome while simultaneous dismissing and down-playing the potential negative outcomes. They tend to focus solely on the positive and they willfully ignore the negative. It's poor decision-making.

But, you need to actually read the OP, but the OP goes on to claim that

Pathological altruism is evident in the "living wage" discussion, where its proponents dismiss the harm of job losses and price increases; and in some instances charge that if a business cannot afford to pay a "living wage" it should not be in business. What happens to workers should that be the rule? A minimum-wage job is better than no job.

It is clear that this is just ideological taunting dressed up in pseudo-intellectual jargon.

I read the OP, I'm just not particularly interested in the OP Poster's singular platform for argument. I believe the general topic is far broader than discussions of living wage, and there's already a thread for that. Perhaps I'm being selfish in attempting to steer the discussion to the more general topic of altruism gone wrong due to willful lack of forethought in a non-partisan fashion.

 

[laughing dog]

I disagree that it's pointless. I think that there are many people out there who want very much to help others, and because they can envision the potential positive outcome, they overstate and up-play the likelihood of the positive outcome while simultaneous dismissing and down-playing the potential negative outcomes. They tend to focus solely on the positive and they willfully ignore the negative. It's poor decision-making.

You do realize you have a different definition of pathological altruism than the OP.

 

[Emily Lake]

I disagree that it's pointless. I think that there are many people out there who want very much to help others, and because they can envision the potential positive outcome, they overstate and up-play the likelihood of the positive outcome while simultaneous dismissing and down-playing the potential negative outcomes. They tend to focus solely on the positive and they willfully ignore the negative. It's poor decision-making.

You do realize you have a different definition of pathological altruism than the OP.

I believe I have a definition that is in keeping with the linked article. Trausti appeared to have a specific objective in mind; I don't share that objective.

Consider this a selfish attempt to direct this thread to a topic I find more interesting, and which is not entirely a derail

 

[Deepak]

This is, of course, seething nonsense but it certainly helps us to rationalize the belief that once some tens of thousands of children starve to death the indigent will straighten up and fly right.

While I freely admit to having memories which are outdated on this subject, and withdraw this example as supporting evidence... I also rather object to your characterization of it as "seething nonsense" as well as to your implied characterization of my views and morals. Your insult is unwarranted and is not justified by my actions or by any views that I've expressed.

How would you characterize it then? I mean this, to me, seems the textbook definition of a facile argument - no? As I understand it, your statement was a flowery retelling of the free-rider theorem in a thread about pathological altruism.

I mean, I don't go out of my way to be a dickhead (nor do I necessarily not) but since we're talking about real people dying by starvation while we have idle conversations in our comfortable lives via easy (and nearly ubiquitous) access to the internet, let's at least try to keep some sense of perspective and do some fact checking.

Hopefully you're getting over your cold.

 

[Sabine Grant]

It's a very popular fable, and very truthy; but I have never seen any evidence for it.

Farmers in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s were already out of business. The main reason was war; the struggle for Eritrean independence in particular, and the other usual tribal conflicts that are the inevitable consequence of borders drawn by European power brokers in the 19th Century with no regard for existing tribal boundaries meant that most of East Africa was a basket case - AK47s and ammunition were cheap, millions of young men were unable to work, and stealing stuff at gunpoint is easier and more fun than growing crops (that are going to get stolen at gunpoint anyway).

The region was almost able to feed itself in good years; but the drought was the last straw, and millions starved. At that point, sending free food wasn't going to do any harm to anyone; and it certainly saved a lot of lives.

Some 'free food' is still being sent to East Africa; the Somali refugees who have fled across the border to Ethiopia and Kenya to escape the latest famine are getting it, which takes some of the burden of feeding them off their hosts.

The population of Ethiopia today is more than twice what it was at the start of the 'Live Aid' famines of the 1980s; the same drought conditions have struck again in the last couple of years, with twice as many mouths to feed - and yet the disaster is missing, limited to Somalia.

In the 80s, Kenya had no disaster, while Ethiopia and Somalia starved. In the past five years, Kenya and Ethiopia had no disaster, while Somalia starved. These countries share the same weather pattern, and the borders are very porous, so food can be traded where needed; The population today is more than twice what it was; and the weather is just as bad. The difference in outcomes is not due to farming, or food prices, or climate, or population. The clear and obvious difference is rule of law. A farmer who knows that his crops will make it to market without being stolen, will grow those crops, sell them, and buy whatever he needs for his family with the proceeds.

That a few million refugees down the road are getting 'free food' from the UN has no significant negative effect on him; If he has food to sell, he can sell it to the UNHCR, or to the local market, or for export. Quite likely he is growing oilseed or coffee anyway; if food is cheap locally for any reason, that actually helps him, because he spends less of what he sells his coffee or for on food, and has the chance of having some money left over to buy other things he needs.

In recent years, flowers for export have become a major crop in Ethiopia; subsistence farming is no longer a way of life for many Ethiopians, and as a result, famine is no longer a way of life either. Growing flowers is a better way to feed your family than growing wheat or sorghum, if you can sell the flowers for enough cash to buy more grain than you could have grown, and still have money left over. Trying to compete with cheap grain from American and European agribusinesses isn't a good plan - and Ethiopian farmers ain't dumb.

If we assume that Ethiopian farmers are stupid; that people in refugee camps are in a position to grow food if only there wasn't all that free rice being handed out; that the situation in East Africa is simple; and that the people living there are little children who need our guidance, and some tough love, then the parable of the free rice seems almost plausible.

Sadly, none of those assumptions are reasonable; and oddly, nobody ever seems to have any evidence of a poor farmer who lost his livelihood to the dreaded foreign aid of free food.

To add that the recurrence of droughts has caused a process of desertification compromising the fertility of the soil. Other contributing factor limiting local agriculture, farming and livestock being the absence of infra structures designed to re route water resources towards drought stricken areas and more importantly store them to support the irrigation of cultivated fields.

The latest predictions being another drought for the next 3 months affecting (once more) Eastern Africa. An actually long term fix of a recurring high impact climatic event would have been for First World Nations to invest their efforts in building infra structures designed to maintain a consistent reserve of water resources. The depletion of water resources being the main cause of the under production of rice. Certainly not caused by "food aid" supplying and distributing rice.

http://www.common-fund.org/fileadmi...ce_Sector_Development_in_East_Africa_2012.pdf

The potential for growth in the African rice sector is enormous. A rapid increase in the area
under rice, irrigated as well as rainfed, is necessary. In particular, it is vital to develop new
irrigated rice schemes. Only 17%5
of the rice-growing areas in Africa is irrigated. If proper
interventions are in place, the existing potentials of Africa can enable it to produce more than
the level of consumption, allowing it to also export rice.

Note the "irrigated as well as rainfed". When we lived in Senegal, there was one year when the rainy season (June through September) did not reach its expected rainfall. As the dry season started, local farming and rural areas agriculture were greatly perturbed especially rural areas solely dependent on rain fall accumulation and storing for year round cultivation. Once the local accessible bodies of water dry out ("marigots"), local populations have no choice but transport water from distant bodies of water.(again absence of infra structures).