Sue Hindmarsh wrote:
"Donating organs, giving blood, helping the poor, going to the aid of another - are in no way examples of altruistic behaviour, as they are instead examples of selfishness."
Hardly. When you donate a kidney you put yourself at risk. In fact you are not allowed to be a donor without having the risks explained to you. This is definitely true with bone marrow.
Sue continues:
"Unlike other animals, human consciousness makes us value the individual self over the tribe."
Not true again. But then I doubt you have any personal experience with living in a tribal society so I wonder upon what basis you would make such an absolutist statement.
And Sue continues with:
"So even though we may feel that our good deeds are purely altruistic, that feeling is actually just part of our own egotism."
Had you read this thread from the beginning you would have seen the statement that altruism, at its heart, is self-serving. Self-serving but not egotism. Few altruistic acts involve sitting back and carefully calculating the celebrity that will come if one rescues a drowning child. And having worked as a lifeguard for a few years I find your comment laughable. The only celebrity I received from 5 or 6 rescues was a sunburn.
