Altruism

In Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray, the title character is forced to face a life full of cruelty and regret. As the novel progresses, Dorian goes from fearing death to embracing it. Dorian kills, watches the people he cares for die, and eventually comes face to face with is own death. All of these changes in Dorian’s life are due to his deteriorating soul and corrupt morals. In the Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde accompanies Dorian with death to advocate the importance of selflessness.…

Patriotism can be defined as the loyalty to one’s country and the love they have for it, but when your patriotism takes over, it can lead to violence and death as seen in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Realistically, patriotism does lead to death and violence because patriotism leads people to believe that people must be hurt or die for their country. For example, in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Brutus explains, “It must be by his death, and for my part, I know no personal…

\ Charity benefits the giver more than the receiver. This saying is demonstrated in nearly every charitable act ever performed. Moreover, people all over the world perform acts of kindness for the self-fulfillment received by helping others. Charitable acts are selfless acts, but at the root, they are truly selfish. Firstly, I have participated in charity events, and truthfully I admit I partially did it for the feeling you receive when you help someone else. This feeling not only makes me…

All humans have a natural tendency to put themselves before everybody else. In all novels, from a sci-fi action novel to an autobiography, including at least one instance or scenario where a person commits an act that can be deemed as self-centered. However, most of the time when these selfish acts are committed, the character often regrets them and feels even worse about his decision and the people around him. In the book Romeo and Juliet, Romeo selfishly takes his own life, only to…

Selfishness: An Inescapable Plague As humans, we are inconsiderate, egoistic, greedy animals who proceed down the most revolting and corrupt path in order to achieve our desired goals. Gone are our ethical values when our hunger for success and power is unleashed. Unconcerned with the wellbeing of others, our lethal daggers plunge into our vulnerable prey. Why is it that even with many witnesses, no one dares to take a step forward to save the victim? Many may feed you the generic response…

that unselfish acts produce self-satisfaction, so that even when doing something one feels under the oath of others to do, a sort of hedonism is acted upon. This is wrong due to a confusion of definition. Even if a person receives satisfaction from altruism, is it not the case that “the unselfish man [is] precisely the one who does derive satisfaction from helping others, while the selfish man does not?” (235). A truly selfish person would not be bothered to seek the pleasure of an honorable…

1. Introduction Behavioral game theory has been used extensively in experimental research, focussing on altruism, fairness and cooperation (see Camerer, 2003). Game theory assumes that people behave rationally when making decisions and in order to maximise personal gain, people should behave selfishly when allocating resources. However, this is not always the case as people take the receiver’s payoffs into account, as well as their own (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003). Game theory enables us to test…

Altruism and hedonism are two opposite extremes of how one may react to the idea of pleasure or joy. Most of society tend to fall in the middle or grab a little from each side. Another word for altruism is self-sacrificing while hedonism is self-satisfaction. It is a definite struggle to balance the two in an everyday routine, and a lot of the time humans struggle to discover the best way to handle questionable situations. It can be relatively challenging to accommodate the happiness of everyone…

Firstly, benevolence brings danger to oneself by damaging one's health. According to Time, people who sacrifice to take care of their family members "become less healthy both emotionally and physically, since they are frequently overwhelmed with conflicting responsibilities." This shows that benevolence can actually be harmful to the one providing help if they are constantly helping others. Additionally, being excessively benevolent can cause service "to become more of a burden than a blessing"…

In the book, The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically, by Peter Singer, the author introduces readers to a new movement called “Effective Altruism”. As stated in his book, effective altruism is “a philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason to working out the most effective ways to improve the world.” (Singer, 4-5) To be able to practice effective altruism, the book offers several ideas to become an effective altruist such as…