@Electric_Banana Said
I was referring mostly to suffering
like if I could get away with torturing a small dog to death I wouldn't
(not that it would entertain me to do so)
I would be emotionally upset for the animal I harmed.
Most people probably would torment a small dog for fifty bucks and a Big Mac..or that is the impression I am leaving with.
You have a dark opinion of humanity, that much has been clear to me for a very long time. I am not saying that by way of insult either, it's an observation and not a judgement of your character.
In the end, whether my or your opinion is more correct is a pointless question.
For the record though, I still have to dispute that and I do not believe that most people would torture anything for small gains, but I have no empirical proof of that any more than you do of your opinion.
I did recently hear a very interesting idea about the Nazis that you'd probably find some stock in: that logically, if you were devoting and expending a huge amount of your military resources to exterminating a group of people while you were simultaneously losing a war with the rest of the world it would make sense to stop, or at least suspend the extermination long enough to win the war and then pick it up later. But they didn't do that...they actually accelerated those efforts and drove their war machine into the ground.
Part of the speculation is that there was an almost addictive quality to it. Imagine you're an SS guard in a death camp who has a crowd of people totally beholden to you and to whom you can do literally anything your sick mind desires. Some would say that is exactly why those people were placed there: to satisfy that sick desire.
Jung tells us that the human shadow descends all the way down to hell.
Willi recently put it more succinctly in another thread: there is a devil in all of us. Even in you. My response was that when you let the devil ride shotgun, sooner or later he's going to start driving.
I think perhaps the people you see torturing a small dog for a big mac and fifty bucks at some point in the past let that shadow descend a little lower than sea level...let the devil ride shotgun...got just a little taste of human evil and it took its hold. Once that starts, it's a hard chain to break to keep it from going deeper.
When it happened to me, I turned right on the crossroads instead of left and spent the next two decades dedicating my life to trying to make up for it. I don't know why, and I don't deserve any praise or recognition for it. Call it conscience, I'll call it wanting to feel better about myself. That is where that selfishness fits in, so you're right when you say:
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The only way altruism fits into the above scenario is myself not wanting to emotionally hurt for the animal.
That's empathy and it's biological in nature. Your aversion to needless suffering in other living things is a mechanism to preserve yourself, ultimately. That, too, is not an insult because it's how every human being is (apart from psychopaths).
Maybe our opinions of humanity aren't so different...it's just that mine is a little lighter shade of shadow.
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There isn't any pure, snow white, form of altruism
but there doesn't have to be
There just has to be enough concern for others so that everyone can live in equality and without suffering.
Selfishness would still take place but in sensibly moderate forms.
That's where community comes in.
If I'm standing in front of you and you hit me in the head with a hammer for no reason, I'm going to suffer for your poor choice. I'm dependent on you to not make that choice and to understand that doing so would not only be of immediate harm to me, but ultimate harm to yourself as well because eventually, if the devil starts driving and you start doing those sorts of things out of habit, someone is going to catch up to you and tear down your third Reich and you end up suffering greatly for it.
We are all dependent on each other to reach that understanding and be selfish in those sensible, moderate ways that you and I agree are part of natural humanity.