Is it ok to do something nice for someone else for your own self-interest?

[devonin]

Exactly. I mean...if you go around doing good things for people because you are insanely selfish and outright addicted to the feeling you get when you do a good thing, and actually don't even care at all about the person to whom you are being generous or kind or helpful, that's totally fine.

This is also the reason why I don't get down on legitimately religious people for their religious beliefs. If the reason they are being kind, loving, forgiving and compassionate is because a book told them to and they believe it, what do I want? For them to be an asshole instead?

If you are being a good person for bad or incomprehensible motives, you're still being a good person.

[Izzy]

Sure it might be better than some alternatives, but I would still rank being nice because it makes you feel good higher than being nice out of fear.

[Ksl33zy24]

There has never been a single selfless act ever, so don't worry about it.

[Izzy]

Sacrificing your life for someone you hate? Is that possible?

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Sure it might be better than some alternatives, but I would still rank being nice because it makes you feel good higher than being nice out of fear.

Being nice out of fear was never the question here. The UNIVERSAL objection to "Aren't selfless acts wonderful?" is "HURF DURF EVEN IF YOU ONLY DO IT BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD ITS SELFISH NOW HURR DURR" which is just (coming from me even!) overly literal and redundant in any sort of actual thought on moral philosophy.

You'll notice that I said legitimately religious people. People who obey God for fear of Hell aren't really what I'd call legitimately religious, as those are the same kind of people who condemn others as -going- to hell for "breaking" the "rules" of God. The legitimately religious are people who admire Christ or the Buddha as being generous and kind, and seek to live up to their compassion and love by doing so themselves.

Thank goodness doing nice things for other people makes us feel good, or shit would never get done around here. If the only reason you do a nice thing is because you enjoy the feeling of doing a nice thing, that's still selfless.

Even if you only do a nice thing because you feel like it will gain you social capital to use later, I'd still argue that is pretty selfless, because chances are, the reason the person you were nice to got treated nicely in the first place, was cashing in a bit of social capital they had earned. Keeping the cycle going is also pretty selfless.

When -I- say a position is too pedantic, you know something's up.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Sacrificing your life for someone you hate? Is that possible?

Absolutely.

[Vendetta21]

I feel like saying everything is self-interested is a purely descriptive statement which has nothing to do with morality which is perscriptive set of beliefs or values, which is what "altruism" is trying to get at.

[RB_Spirit]

It's impossible to be nice

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by devonin

Absolutely.

So then you can do something nice for someone even though it makes you feel bad.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Izzy

So then you can do something nice for someone even though it makes you feel bad.

Doing a thing you don't want to do because it is the good or right thing to do brings us full circle to the maturity thread.