Selfish selflessness-or just what is altruism?

I was still wiping the sleep out of my eyes when I read HaiXia's email:

"Would you tell me why do you help others who are strangers even if they are foreigners? If some people say that you doing good things to people because you want to get praises and you are selfish, is it true? If it is not true, how do you look on they?"

Of course, we're all selfish devils. The whole human race. But, still, I was pretty sure I knew where Haixia was coming from, what the project is she's working on, and why she suddenly found herself questioning the very thing she intends to advocate. Just what does it mean to be a volunteer--or for that matter do anything supposedly altruistic? Are we ever without selfish motives? Is there any such thing as altruism?

Haixia and I aren't exactly the first ones to be thinking about altruism. Pick your philosopher, your theologian, throw in Darwin and all the game theorists, and you'll have a lively conversation. But what struck me was that Haixia's question came the day after I stumbled across these two websites: Global Volunteers and World Teach. Oh! I see! You can go somewhere for a week or two and be a TEFL teacher. Ouch! I've lately been thinking a lot about fly-in-for-a-week experts and helpers.

And, yet, suppose those week-long TEFL teachers don't have top notch certification, so what? I've often thought that what matters most about teaching in the humanities is intellectual curiosity and dedication. Some of the young handsome guys up the hill from me have no background in TEFL or English, but they're doing a great job teaching conversational English here in Beibei and are beloved by their students. And those week-long teachers, so what if they are on feel-good vacations? Is that any worse than any other kind of vacation?  Ultimately, they're participating in cross-cultural exchanges, which, if the dialogue is two-way, I have believed in my whole life.

Teaching, cross-cultural exchanges, even vacations--they all can be defended, I think, whatever size package they come in.

But Haixia is going for something else. Chinese skepticism about volunteers is warranted, not only philosophically, but also because of China's own experience with foreigners. Legions of missionaries have come--and still come--to China to teach English via hymns and Bible stories and so on. The hegemony of English and Western customs is justifiably questioned. The "white father" do-goodism of Peace Corps and all those "baby Peace Corps" organizations has been justifiably questioned when the assumption is "we have something better to give you"--even though that decidedly is not the assumption driving most of my fellow volunteers' work here.

What is in it for us? Among my fellow volunteers are writers, adventurers, and travelers who may have their own ulterior motives. Some are aiming for careers in the foreign service, international studies, or foreign language teaching, so the experience is a step--decidedly relevant--in their own career development. But most are also somewhat idealistic--they believe in the value of service, of doing something that at least isn't harming anyone and is not directly for material gain.

So, while there are indeed the selfish motives (there always are), I think there also is some of the thing Haixia is asking about, somewhat selfless service, altruism. What motivates it, if it exists? I wonder how any of you would answer.

Even if you think altruism exists, you might not want to risk explaining, but I was asked and I'll try. I think it has most of all to do with little choices. More on those in a second. But I'm also guessing that the desire to act for the good of the whole is not unique to any particular culture, and we're all animals who figured out a long time ago that the whole benefits from a little bit of sacrifice on everyone's part. And just about every cultural and ethical system has some version of "the Golden Rule."

But how those choices get translated into practice may vary. So, even as China is hurtling headlong into a market economy, it is still a thorough-going collectivist society. Making choices still matter—especially if “choosing” makes the difference between ethical decision-making and simple rule-following. But if the larger culture is serving the common good, at least in principle, then the role of agency may be somewhat deferred.  When everything in your bones is for the common good, when you are duty bound to see yourself as only part of a larger family and culture, then there is no need to go out of your way to serve the public good, the common cause. You've been doing it since you took your first breath. In collectivist societies, you express somewhat selfless acts constantly. But, that said, the difference between being an ant in ant colony or a bee in a beehive and being a moral person in China is still exercising the choices one can make, exercising agency where one can, and Chinese people do it every day. In Western cultures, singular acts of serving the common good are perhaps more conspicuous and therefore risk being taken as naive, hypocritical, or patronizing--and often are, especially if not integrated into a whole set of little acts, but I'd like to think that, well, we can still just do our dogged best, whatever that is. And in any culture, I think it's the pattern of little choices that probably matter most.

So, I'll spare Haixia this long ramble and answer her simply that, first of all, I see my volunteerism as a form of cultural-exchange more than service and, if she wants me to, explain why. But as for altruism, even though I think, of course, it's always coupled with other motives, I believe it is  possible--and not even unusual--to want to do things for the common good. Most Chinese people do that every day.