selfless acts and genuine heartfelt kindnesses.

i meant to say 'please' aswell at the start of para 3.
sorry.

But if you post them here, you lose all your karma points!

(ps perpetrated)

(this may not qualify as a kind act)

Many kindnesses involve generosity of time, I think.

Next question!

Your story wasn't trivial, felicity. I get a huge kick out of polite drivers that move out of the way when I'm trying to merge. Maybe I'm just easy to please though.

SARAH MCLUSKY IS SINGER FROM GEGGY TAH SHOCKAH!

I walked over, and gave him my ice cream....after he made sure I wasn;t an undercover cop trying to move him along.

In ethics this is called self-referential altruism. This type of altruism describes concern for others in terms of concern for people who have some special connection with ourselves literally (friends, family). Wider extensions of this description usually focus on a connection with some special cause (political, religious). It is not selfless to display ‘self-sacrificing’ behaviour to something that we identify with as what we are doing is finding our own happiness in our concern for others. This is what David Hume calls a ‘confined generosity’.

I think that egoism* and self-referential altruism combine to characterise both our actions and our motives. Any kind person will find their own happiness in the happiness of those he/she cares for or feels connected to. Selflessness is not at the root of the pursuit for a good life rather we work towards what we see as our own fundamental well-being.

* the theory that bases morality on self-interest.

There are differences to be distinguished between the action, the motive and the consequence but I'm going to leave the fine, philosophical distinctions for tonight.

(Buddhists would agree - karma and the like.)

Could an act be selfless if you didn't know that you were going to feel good about it? See nza's friend, again.

Lara is correct, of course, but is it the fact of improving my life that doomed the stranger's deed to selfishness? I think what struck me about this example was the fact that I did not really fit into any rational category of confined generosity. Society should not encourage stupid American girls to overpack and be late for flights in the subway. Perhaps it was cruel of the stranger to give me false hope of catching my flight.

I still stand by the idea that if you are kind to another person because you like them and therefore want to help them, or because you generally like being helpful, or because you want others to be happy, that it is selfishness (in the philosophical sense).

(I can't remember what happened in the Friends episode. I presume the 'evil genius' won?)

No, you gain a good feeling from helping someone...whether now, or later.

It is possible to do an act, yet expect nothing in return, despite current philsophy.

If you're gaining it ain't selfless.

I love the word parse. I'm going to use it tomorrow.

As the gain isn't monetary in nature (nor are you getting anything solid from the action), of course tis still selfless.

(I realize of course that Lara's point is rather subtler than this, but I still quibble if nothing else with the use of the world "selfish" -- it just seems to have an unneeded spin to it.)

(Also, Hegel to thread -- cf. my favorite bugbear of recognition of the Self in the Other, etc.)

They have charts and stuff that try to illustrate people's propensity for 'altruism' based on their relationship to the beneficiary. Madness (and also frighteningly true in 99% of cases AFAIK).

Helping pretty ladies carry heavy things = what most men were designed for in the first place

What happened to just doing the right thing?

And btw, as the philosopher said while knocking the other philosopher, who had been arguing that nothing is real, on the head with a rock "I refute it thus".

[meaning i learned how to handle strong relativism years ago and to me the answer is that you have to stop philosophizing, get a backbone, and decide what is right and wrong according to principles of least harm instead of looking for perfect theoretical arguments. translation: no circular wanking allowed]

in true zen buddhist philosophy, you wouldn't 'try' not to feel anything good or bad when you do something for someone; you just notice the feelings coming up within you ('gee I am feeling kind of proud of that gesture'), refuse to get attached to them, and move on