Causal Altruism
Observations of the Causal Relationship of Altruism on One’s Social and Economic Success
Abstract
Altruism is an effective means of reducing tension and enhancing one’s personal success socially, interpersonally, and economically. The benefits of altruism are not isolated to the recipient. Therefore, those unable to identify with typical moral frameworks due to low affective empathy may still participate in altruistic behaviors to their own benefit.
Framework
How conflict cycles
1. Tension increases conflict:
The source of all interpersonal conflict, be it physical violence, emotional abuse, frequent arguments, emotional distance, is tension. Tension being strain, anxiety, or a state of excitement or intensity outside of the ability to easily regulate. When tension arises because of a disagreement or conflicting needs, poor communication, conflict occurs.
2. Tension is created through provocation:
Tension is often created through provocation. Provocation doesn’t necessarily mean deliberate attempts to provoke the other person. It is only a factor that incites, instigates, angers, or irritates.
3. Provocation is created through poor mentalization, dysfunction and poor communication, as well as a lack of de-escalation:
Provocation can come from outside factors like one’s work environment, but most often in domestic situations, provocation comes from internal dysregulation, dysfunction of one, both, or multiple acting parties, and poor communication skills. Additionally, a lack of ability to mentalize or empathize can lead to provocation. Sometimes, however, people become provoked because of outside stimuli (triggers, mental health, violence, accidents, etc) and it’s very important to try to mentalize and de-escalate the situation.
4. Conflict reduces the ability to have needs met:
Conflict is the most direct contributor to poor economic success and the inability to have one’s needs met. Emotional conflict between parties is directly causal to poor choices, an increase in violence, an increase in incarceration rates, an association with other forms of crime, including drug use, as well as overall disenfranchisement. Many people who grow up in abusive households then struggle with their mental health and struggle to support themselves due to illness resulting from the stress of traumatic abuse. People who are in a constant state of tension and conflict tend to also bring their poor self-regulation into the workplace, which hinders their ability to make positive economic choices, ultimately leading to poor economic success.
Lowering conflict through altruism
5. Selflessness is unnecessary in order to share success:
It’s not necessary to be selfless in order to understand and benefit from low conflict, high communication, mentalization, and altruism. It can be argued we wouldn’t have evolved these traits if they weren’t exceedingly beneficial to us in the first place, and our idea of them as contradictory to success comes from a narrow lens through which we see the typical ideal of “greedy, rich, powerful, capitalist” who is typically willing to step on just about anyone, willing to use just about anyone to get what they want.
What is often ignored in our idea of these people is the elements of things like luck, pre-disposition for power (e.g. noble birth), nepotism and racial and gender disparity. We call them the 1% because it’s exceedingly unlikely that the rest of us will ever, no matter how much of an asshole we are to people, reach those “goals.”
Plenty of people are greedy capitalists willing to step on others and claw their way to the top, and yet so few ever reach it because the system is designed as such, and because if you have a system that is designed to create hostility and enemies, you’re bound to, ya know, make enemies.
Both in reality and in theory, the idea that people are inherently designed to be selfish seems to just fall apart when you really examine it closely. People do horrid things, and while they may not immediately receive due justice for those actions, few people who do genuinely horrid things live genuinely happy and prosperous lives.
6. One can simulate empathy through properly understanding the causal relationship of altruistic interactions on their environment:
In understanding how the world around you affects you, but in a very genuine and real way, you can start to see how the world’s hostility and tensions impact you. Reducing those tensions then seems like the only reasonable way to increase personal prosperity. A natural consequence of reducing the tensions around you is also reducing them for others. In order to reduce tensions for yourself, you have to learn to be able to regulate yourself, communicate, and learn to de-escalate and reduce tensions for other people as well.
Learning how to create desired outcomes, provide desired communications, and promote desired feelings will lead to an overall more positive feeling and put everyone at ease. In most cases, your focus should always be on convincing the other person that you are not a threat, and that you both want the least harmful outcome, whatever that may be.
Learning to mentalize so that you can see why they may desire a different outcome is important in beginning to re-frame their thinking in a more compassionate way so that they can see why the outcome that you have chosen is more compassionate towards them than even the one they selected. In doing so, you can make people feel like you want what is best for them even more than they even want what is best for them. This feels to others like genuine and real empathy and compassion.
7. One can gain favor by simulating empathy:
At times, a willingness to take a loss so that others may have substantial improvement in their emotional or material well being should occur when no reasonable compromise can be made.
You should really only do this if it’s something that you can emotionally handle without feeling extreme regret and projecting your feelings onto the other person, because doing so will have the opposite effect of creating tension and conflict. It’s equally important not to bring it up and lord it over them as a means of controlling them or guilting them. Once such an act is done, it should be treated simply as any other ordinary act.
It’s important to set boundaries. Much like today with the example about my hair. Hair color is a non-compromise, but clothing is within my willingness to compromise. The depth of their impact on my emotional wellness determines my willingness to flex on whether or not I am willing to use it to gain favor.
However, done well and with a thorough understanding of the other person’s needs, and without “strings attached,” taking a deliberate loss to oneself so that the other person may have a substantial gain can be one of the most fulfilling outcomes for both parties. It helps the other person know that their needs matter, that they are important, that they are a priority to you. It makes them feel as if you have empathy for them, and it makes them feel seen. For you, you garner favor and are able to be viewed in a more selfless light, even when you make actions that are oriented in your favor.
It’s important that when you make actions oriented in your favor, that you are considerate enough to make sure your choices are still favorable to others as well. Only in rare circumstances should you exercise your right to do what you want without regard for others if you want to maintain a good reputation and be seen as of good character and empathetic.
8. Gaining favor leads to having one’s needs met:
Even for the rich and powerful, connections are key. Humans and sociality go hand in hand. Whether you’re rich or poor, sociality is a means of having both your needs and desires met. Humans, while largely benevolent and curious towards altruism, are daft creatures who enjoy popularity contests.
Largely why the best politicians don’t really win is because they lack charisma. Efficiency isn’t charismatic. The problem with politics is that we have to vote for someone who can’t actually prove anything until they’re in office, and so we vote based on their popularity.
But interpersonally, we love people who are efficient and get things done, especially when it’s because they care about us. The mom who always makes our sandwiches and gives us an extra pudding cup in our lunch and never misses our soccer practice. The dad who in spite of working a billion hours always finds time to be at our shitty kindergarten play and do yard work with us.
Our hardworking grandma who worked until she was 98 at the local Save-A-Lot so that she always had money for our birthdays. Your sassy aunt who stands up for all of the gay kids.
None of these people will win an election, but they are all favored because they are fearless and efficient. We love these people because they meet our needs and they care.
9. Patience is the key:
At the root of a lot of struggles with gaining favor and creating a more altruistic sense of self is just impatience. We often expect very immediate results, but results are based on reputation and how people see us over a longer period of time. Often times when we re-define ourselves we have to burn away a previous image of ourselves, and that takes time.
Impatience can make us wonder why this is happening, why it’s being brought up now? Why things aren’t getting better now? Why even though I’ve improved the language I’m using, this person is still responding with tension and hostility to me?
People just tend to not give things long enough to work. We try them once or twice, decide they don’t work, and go back to the same song and dance of dysfunction and dysregulation and go back to struggling to communicate our needs.
Conflict example
Premise: Currently, my sexual relationship with Olivia is quite dysfunctional and has been a source of high conflict and tension.
How the conflict cycled
1. Tension increases conflict:
A conflict arose as a result of the tension stemming from opposing desires between Olivia and me. I desired to halt having sex because of a trauma that occurred. Olivia desired to continue having sex because of a mix of insecurity resulting in a need for validation from her partner (likely stemming from BPD/abandonment issues) as well as sexual attraction and interest.
2. Tension is created through provocation:
Tension was initially created through myself being provoked by a nightmare of being raped by Olivia. Olivia has, in the past, made some boundary pushing choices in her physical interactions with me. Due to the traumatic nature of the dreams and some memories that arose of our interactions together, I asked to maintain some distance sexually while I sorted myself out emotionally and mentally after the initial provocation.
3. Provocation is created through poor mentalization, dysfunction and poor communication, as well as a lack of de-escalation:
While some involvement occurred by Olivia (long ago), the initial provocation occurred from a nightmare and a feeling of disquiet occurring from a mental health episode. The proper course of action would’ve been to de-escalate and try to meet my needs. Instead further provocation occurred through poor mentalization, poor communication, and a lack of de-escalation.
Olivia would frequently do things that would “prompt” memories of our trauma by bringing up sex, putting herself in inappropriate situations that would make us feel uncomfortable, or just declining concessions that would put us at ease and make us feel more empathized with.
4. Conflict reduces the ability to have needs met:
Because Olivia didn’t properly attempt to understand our needs, she was unable to have her needs met. She upset us further by pressuring us to have sex by constantly bringing it up, making vulgar remarks, touching us when we were already uncomfortable, and making us feel like she didn’t understand the problem. She would later go on to admit that she didn’t understand the severity of her actions, which was really bothersome to us as what she did to us initially was quite upsetting and traumatized us. She never saw us as a victim. This further upset us because we didn’t think it was necessary for her to see us as a victim in order to respect our sexual and physical boundaries, and so we further tightened the reins and shut down sexually, isolating her more and more away from us.
Where altruism would have lowered it
5. Selflessness is unnecessary in order to share success:
Simply by adhering to my boundaries, I would’ve quickly recovered from my feelings and been back to having sex with Olivia in a pretty short time. She could’ve been completely selfish and just given me the time I asked for in order to get what she wanted back. However, she frequently expressed distaste for any boundary I established because it would make her “feel bad” which led to her, unintentionally, establishing that she just simply does not care for me setting boundaries with her.
6. One can simulate empathy through properly understanding the causal relationship of altruistic interactions on their environment:
Had Olivia understood that giving me space would allow me to recover quickly, she could not only have what she wanted quicker, but she could come across far more understanding and empathetic to my plight.
7. One can gain favor by simulating empathy:
Allowing someone space and time to feel better isn’t a negative reflection on you, but a positive one. While Olivia would take any time away from her as an assault against her poor sense of self, the actual reality is that being stable enough to allow one’s partner time away from them to process trauma is a reflection of how empathetic and loving they are as a partner.
Olivia struggles to mentalize with her partners, de-escalate situations (including her own emotions), and improperly communicates what she does feel. Even when she does know how she feels, she often opts to not communicate it, believing that it’ll reflect negatively on her, when in fact it’ll likely do the opposite.
Olivia rarely takes losses in order to benefit others. When she does, she lashes out and blames the person she did the task for, completely ruining the significance of the deed she’s done. Once the task has been held over the person’s head, it becomes negatively associated, and using it further in the future only begins to deepen resent for both parties and increase hostility.
Olivia hurts herself in this way, because what could be a really kind task that gives her actual, real leverage and is useful as a passive social tool to give others a favorable view of her is instead used to attempt to guilt trip others, causing others to hold a very negative view of her instead. Her good deed is instead turned into a negative deed, making her singular “sacrifice” a far more significant loss than it was when she initially made it, simply because she chose to use it angrily.
[e.g. I moved your boyfriend here!]
8. Gaining favor leads to having one’s needs met:
Should Olivia ever grow to understand how to garner favor through good decision making, Olivia will be much less Sokka with the fortune teller and begin to be able to influence decisions in a way that she can have her needs met, make her partners and others happy, and hold an influential and positive relationship with those around her.
9. Patience is the key:
Olivia has yet to learn the value of patience. She thinks a week is a long time. She allows her loneliness and emotions to drive her decision making instead of rationally considering the facts of the situation from another person’s point of view and attempting to mentalize. She doesn’t attempt to break her emotional cycle by properly understanding the other person’s state of mind, instead getting trapped into her own distorted ideas about herself. She becomes impatient and seeks to be validated by having more positive interactions with her partners, which drives them away because they aren’t ready or past what has happened yet.