@cheeseweasel 454599 wrote:
And as for altruism, would people honestly really still give to charity if they got no sense of self-fulfilment from it at all? If that little smug sense of self-worth that comes from setting up a monthly donation wasn’t there? These are the sort of questions I don’t really care about as at the end of the day I’m happy and charities get my money.
Whilst I tend not to give cash sums to charities these days (I might have done so after the SE Asian tsumani in 2004) I didn’t do so for “self-fulfillment”, just thought it was the right thing to do because it is my ancestors lands.
I also purchased from a old sailor who had a random stall in a shopping centre (in SE England, 150 miles away from the North Sea Coast) a foam rubber rat on a string. This was being sold in aid of the families of fishermen who had drowned in the North Sea. Although I did visit the North Essex coast around that time, it wasn’t for any nautical reasons (I do have much respect for those who go to sea in that area) – but I wanted the rat for a cat toy as one of our cats had gone missing and the remaining one was feeling insecure and being bullied by another cat.
I brought the rat home, showed it to my cat, who promptly ran away and hid (every time I brought it out).
In the end I ended up having to caterwaul the bullying cat away from my garden myself a few times, and meow with my own cat, which did actually improve his self esteem – though my mum and sister complained because both of us would meow when they were cooking and we were hungry and we would make quite a racket. I also started to meow with (and at) other cats and still do today, especially to warn kittens and juvenile cats playing at or the road against the danger of traffic. I think however this practice (though not as uncommon as I thought) is more likely to diagnosed as clinical lycanthropy than viewed as altruism :laugh_at:
