Are We Psychopaths Or Are We Philanthropists?

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Let’s explore why we are all narcissists. However, we need to make sense of this concept. To do so, we are going to use a new song from Taylor Swift which creatively exposes the paradox of selfish (& selfless giving). We know they are different, but in a culture riddled with consumer behaviors that absolve us from true philanthropy — we end up justifying psychopathic ethics over and above of really caring for others.

Walking the old lady across the street has been one of the oldest examples we use to exemplify a compassionate attitude towards one another. In human history, we hold up people like Mother Teresa as avatars who embody empathy and altruism for others. However, what if altruism is much more complicated and nuanced than we have been led to believe?

To understand the distinction between psychopathic altruism and traditional philanthropic action we need some basic understanding of both definitions. Psychopathic behavior is managed by a desire fueled by our evolutionary drives to protect ourselves or for genetic fitness. Genetic fitness is a desire for us to keep our family line going.

On top of this, other research seems to also argue that some forms of prosocial behavior emerged because parents wanted to care for their children — either way, evolution claims it arose out of selfish reasons. We also tend to cartoonify our understanding of psychopaths and assume that we could never exhibit habits like those criminals over there.

We create distance between ourselves and others so we can feel a sense of justified polarity. As long as we know that buying our favorite Starbucks drink means we’ve donated a portion of our money to a notable cause, we can then feel good and absolved of any guilt of not being able to do something more profound and systemic changing.,

In Biology, the Oxford University Lecturer and popular science author Richard Dawkins has proclaimed, “We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes” (Dawkins, 1976).

According to Richard Dawkins, altruism ONLY serves to give us a sense of control over our biological safety and perpetuation. This is an extremely boring take on what compels us to be people who desire to perform kind actions for those around us.

This is the kind?of altruism that already exists in the form of virtue signaling, where someone will do something kind and then post it on social media for the social value of others seeing it. We want others to think we are kind. Specifically, altruism is?the desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping. The social-exchange theory argues that altruism only exists when the benefits outweigh the costs—i.e. when your behavior helps you even more than it helps the other person.

However, if our choices are narrowly guided by external validation, then the altruistic act only serves as a way for the actor performing it to feel good about themselves. This means that the receiver of the supposed random act of kindness only acts as a screen upon which the altruist lives out their dream of virtual celebrity.

This is a form of psychopathic informed ethics.

What this exposes is that altruism?works on a spectrum?rather than typically understood lines of demarcation. Making a judgment call on one person’s actions over another is not enough to make a clear argument, because human intention has yet to be scientifically measured accurately. However, what can be measured is cultural value.

We must look at a culture’s ideological beliefs to perceive whether or not the ideas of pathologized altruism exist. One major way we can define whether it does or not is to look to conversations, discursive ethics, and consumer philanthropy to answer this inquiry more comprehensively.

America is a country that values consumer philanthropic practices. We can easily see those from the ongoing proliferation and normalized acceptance of how consumers will make purchases that align with their own personal worldviews. Part of this worldview is that people feel inspired to participate in shopping habits that make them feel good (i.e., psychopathic altruism),

We have to understand that the nature of narcissism is hypervigilance to protecting the ego — if we are compelled to act by saving the ego (i..e saving face in public situations), the acts we perform are only to ensure we feel safe. Sometimes this means we can even convince ourselves that we are performing certain behaviors from a selfless place, but in reality are viscerally driven to protect our social credentials.

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