Is being altruistic just a meme now?

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>>8747425
The real question is: "why do you care?"

>>8747425
We live in a society where none of us can claim moral soundness by the morals that we were taught without living in extreme denial.
It's not possible, so to live in comfort you have to either continue living in denial or rethink those values entirely.

It was always a meme

>>8747425
that's a meme too

>>8747425
Don't listen to anyone here.

There are two types of altruistic people, better yet, two types of altruism. The "sensible altruism" and the "masochistic altruism".

Being altruistic means that you feel pleasure when you help others, and guilt when you feel you should but you don't. This means that, on the plus size, a great deal of the time you will feel extra pleasure from doing things that already give you other benefits, mostly reputation.

However, altruism can get negative when a person gets it into his head that he "needs to help people", so helping people becomes less of a pleasure and more of a chore, while not helping brings harsh guilt.

If you manage to be a "positive altruist", that's a great characteristic for your own gain, but avoid the masochism.

>>8747425
>now
It has been under scrutiny by philosophers for centuries.

There are still plenty of people who believe in altruism or in living an altruistic lifestyle for a more fulfilling life. These people are usually very "small" — they don't have much involvement with the world outside of their small suburbs or rural towns in which they live, work, and socialize. This is also why these are really the only places where you will find religious people anymore. And that is fine.

In heavily urbanized areas and cities, you won't find many people who care. The middle to high end spectrum of capitalist society has no room for it. You need to serve yourself in order to get by, and furthermore, achieve those high end ideals you end up forming after being exposed to so many successful people.

At one time selflessness was among the highest values. Philosophers and the secular world over have come to understand otherwise and why such a value is actually very damaging.

First, pure selflessness is impossible. No matter how strong a feeling of admiration you feel for something, or how unbiased you think your behavior is, the fact is that you are still operating out of your own wants and needs (which can be reduced to a single element: will to power). This makes it damaging on the basis that it is a (sometimes cleverly worded) falsehood.

Second, striving for selflessness actually causes suffering in many people, just about as much as the capitalist world does. This makes it spiritually damaging as well. If you do not love yourself already then trying to live selflessly will be torture. It's like a homeless man being expected to donate to charity.

Third, many philosophers and poets have observed (and you can see this in the world yourself) that the most generous and kind people are in fact the ones that have always sought after themselves as the number one priority. Because they worked to fulfill their own desires first, they were able to satisfy themselves and inevitably have an overabundance of energy with which they could pour back into the world, like a cup that is overfull and flows over. The cup, your spirit, should overflow before you let others drink from it, otherwise you are behaving at your own expense, which leaves us humans out in the open for the predators of the spirit that lurk within us called resentment, envy, jealousy...

And yes, I am aware of the poeticized image of a human being who gives even when he has none left for himself in the end, and does not fall prey to those predators. But it is an outdated form based on outdated philosophies. The hero of today looks out for himself just as much as he looks out for his fellow men.