Yeah, I've always thought the cynics were missing the point there. Of course the altruism needs to be effective - if a person is unknowingly making themselves feel good at the expense of the people zie is trying to help, or just not achieving what zie thinks zie is, that's a problem, and it does unfortunately happen quite often. But in general, if the things that help us to flourish as a species also feel good and the things that hinder it feel bad, that's how it's supposed to work, because it had to work for millennia before we were able to tell ourselves little stories in our heads about how we ought to do something whether it feels good or not, and it still has to work now when we have to act quickly, before we have time to remember the story.
Hmm. Now I'm noodling about connections with the Calvinist work ethic and diet culture vs. intuitive eating and exercise vs. movement and and and... none of which are the pieces on international arbitration in Singapore and Hong Kong that I'm actually supposed to be working on. *sigh*
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Date: 2014-01-30 01:06 pm (UTC)Hmm. Now I'm noodling about connections with the Calvinist work ethic and diet culture vs. intuitive eating and exercise vs. movement and and and... none of which are the pieces on international arbitration in Singapore and Hong Kong that I'm actually supposed to be working on. *sigh*