Altruistic thinking is the center of self-destruction. The idea that the quality of a person’s morality should be measured up to how beneficial their actions are to others traps them into feeling like they have to decide to be happy or guilt-free; a battle between selfishness and selflessness. In situations where a person has the opportunity to use their right to pursue their own self-interest, the expectations to be altruistic cloud the judgement of the person to decide what is truly right for them. The driving factor suddenly moves from what they want for themselves to what they feel is the right thing to do in other’s eyes, all to avoid the risk of being selfish and making a selfish decision. However, some situations call for selfishness, especially when they have the power to determine the quality of that person’s life.
Suppose a woman is having sex but knows she will not be able to care for a child is she were to get pregnant. The father of the child would not be ready, she has insufficient funds to give it a good life, and she is at a health risk of giving birth to it. She starts to use birth control in order to prevent any of these possibilities from happening. However, her parents are strongly against birth control and demand that she goes off of it, so she stops taking it. She feels it is her moral duty as a daughter to align her decisions with what her parents feel is the right thing to do, even if she knows that she is more at risk of unwanted consequences if she stops taking it. Here, her desire to do what she really wants is overtaken with the fear of being selfish. To say that this decision did not rob her of her right to pursue happiness since it aligned with what is “altruistic” would be ridiculous considering the options she was faced with: to either stay on birth control and feel guilty about it or go off of it and live in constant worry of being pregnant. The woman “wants” to stop taking birth control because she fears the disapproval of people whose opinions are important to her, and because of that fact, believes it is immoral to act for her own self-interest. This became the driving factor for a decision that she was not at the benefit of in the long run.
This video portrays this thinking pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7d-6MK7CTg
True selfishness – which is: a truthful pursuit of figuring out what is the most beneficial to one’s self, an obtaining of responsibility of finding it, a rejection of anything that could get in the way of it by acting on an impulsive instinct, a faithfulness to one’s judgement, views, and desires – constitutes true morality.