Never do anything „for others“

When I tell people that I „never do anything for others“, they tend to be rather confused. They would remind me of my numerous social activities and mention some particular events where I helped friends. And that, if what I say was really true, I would be a complete asshole - which I do not seem to be [1]. But I'm not lying: all these things I really never do for others. The reason is, that I actually enjoy doing these things. I therefore do them for myself. And I’m more and more convinced that this motivation to do things „for others“ is (or rather: should be) totally sufficient. Most modern philosophers would disagree with me here. Doesn’t history show very impressively that our primitive social instincts are insufficient to prevent humans reliably from harming each other? And because of this we need to cultivate „higher“ moral standards which keep our problematic „animal“ nature in check? The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is based on fundamentally flawed…

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