Causal Altruism
Ethics through outcome-based reasoning
Observations on the causal relationship between altruistic behavior and one’s social and economic success.
Asking: What must be true for pro-sociality to have evolved and remained functional?
Author’s Note
This framework was written by a psychopath (the author) who does not experience empathy in conventional terms, addressed to a sociopath (Olivia) who was causing harm through repeated boundary violations. The case study (Part II) documents a real-time correction of harm written by the author to their partner, both operating outside typical emotional-empathetic frameworks.
The voice is unpolished and direct because academic framing would strip the functionality. This is written for people who do not experience conventional emotional empathy and flooding. The author believes systems should be legible to the people they are designed for. The voice was left intact for that reason.
The dynamics are authentic. Names have been changed for privacy.
Abstract
Premise: Altruism is an effective means of reducing tension and enhancing one’s personal success — socially, interpersonally, and economically.
Part I — Framework: How Tension Becomes Conflict and How Altruism Becomes Strategy
1. Tension increases conflict.
The source of all interpersonal conflict — physical violence, emotional abuse, frequent arguments, emotional distance — is tension. Tension here means strain, anxiety, or a state of excitement or intensity outside one’s ability to easily regulate. When tension arises from disagreement, conflicting needs, or poor communication, conflict follows.
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 any factor that incites, instigates, angers, or irritates.
3. Provocation is created through poor mentalization, dysfunction, and poor communication — and through the absence of de-escalation.
Provocation can come from outside factors like work environment, illness, or accidents. But most often in domestic contexts, provocation comes from internal dysregulation, dysfunction of one or more acting parties, and poor communication skills. A limited ability to mentalize or empathize compounds this. When external triggers do drive provocation, the corrective move is the same: mentalize, de-escalate.
4. Conflict reduces the ability to have needs met.
Conflict is the most direct contributor to poor economic outcomes and unmet needs. Emotional conflict between parties is causal to poor decision-making, elevated violence, elevated incarceration rates, and adjacent harms including substance use and broader disenfranchisement. People raised in abusive households frequently struggle with mental health and economic self-sufficiency as downstream effects of traumatic stress. A person in constant tension brings that dysregulation into the workplace, which compounds economically.
5. Selflessness is unnecessary in order to share success.
One does not need to be selfless to understand and benefit from low conflict, high communication, mentalization, and altruism. If these traits weren’t beneficial, they wouldn’t have evolved. The cultural intuition that these traits are contradictory to success comes from a narrow lens — the “greedy, rich, powerful capitalist” archetype who steps on anyone in their way. What’s missed in that archetype is the supporting role of luck, predisposition to power (e.g., inherited wealth), nepotism, and racial and gender disparity. We call them the 1% because the rest of the population, regardless of how aggressive or exploitative they become, statistically will not reach those outcomes. The system is structured that way, and a system designed to create hostility produces enemies for those operating inside it. Empirically and theoretically, the claim that people are inherently designed to be selfish dissolves under scrutiny. Plenty of people do harmful things; few of those people live genuinely happy and prosperous lives.
6. Empathy can be simulated through proper understanding of altruism’s causal effects on one’s environment.
Understanding how one’s environment affects oneself — genuinely, not abstractly — surfaces how ambient hostility and tension are personally costly. Reducing them becomes the rational route to personal prosperity. A natural consequence is that they’re also reduced for others. To lower tension for oneself requires self-regulation, communication skill, and the ability to de-escalate for others as well. Learning to produce desired outcomes, communications, and felt states yields a more positive ambient environment for everyone in it.
In most cases, the strategic focus should be on conveying to the other party that one is not a threat, and that both parties want the least harmful outcome — whatever that turns out to be. Mentalizing — understanding why they may want a different outcome — is the entry point for reframing their thinking compassionately, such that they can see why one’s chosen outcome is more compassionate toward them than the one they initially selected. Done well, the other party feels you want what is best for them more than they want it for themselves. This feels to others like genuine empathy and compassion.
7. Favor is gained by simulating empathy.
When no reasonable compromise can be reached, a willingness to take a loss so that the other party gains substantial emotional or material improvement can produce disproportionate returns — if the loss can be borne without later regret or projection. Acting from regret reverses the effect and creates the conflict it was meant to prevent. It’s equally important not to bring such acts up afterward or use them as leverage. Once done, the act should be treated as ordinary.
Boundaries still matter. Some things are non-compromises; others are within one’s willingness to flex. The depth of impact on one’s emotional wellness determines what’s available to be used for favor.
Done well, with attention to the other person’s needs and no strings attached, taking a deliberate personal loss so the other party can have a substantial gain is among the most fulfilling outcomes available for both parties. It signals to them that their needs matter, that they are seen, that they are a priority. For the giver, it accrues favor and creates a more selfless public read — even when subsequent actions are self-oriented. When self-oriented actions are taken, they should still be designed to remain favorable to others. Reserving the right to act without regard for others should be exercised rarely if one wants to maintain a reputation for character and empathy.
8. Gaining favor leads to having one’s needs met.
Even for the rich and powerful, connections are the load-bearing structure. Humans and sociality are inseparable. Whether wealthy or not, sociality is the mechanism through which needs and desires get met. Humans, while largely benevolent and curious toward altruism, are daft creatures who enjoy popularity contests.
A relevant aside: the best politicians often don’t win, because they lack charisma. Efficiency is not charismatic. The problem in politics is that voters cannot verify performance before the term begins, so they vote on popularity instead.
Interpersonally, however, people love those who are efficient and get things done — especially when the efficiency is rooted in care. The mom who always packs the lunch and gives an extra pudding cup and never misses the soccer practice. The dad who, in spite of working a billion hours, always finds time to be at the shitty kindergarten play and do yard work with the kids. The hardworking grandma who worked until she was 98 at the local Save-A-Lot so she always had money for birthdays. Your sassy aunt who stands up for all the gay kids.
None of these people will win an election, but they are deeply favored because they are fearless, efficient, and meet needs. People love them because they care.
9. Patience is the key.
At the root of most struggles with gaining favor and re-defining oneself as more altruistic is impatience. Results are based on reputation — how one is perceived over time. Re-defining oneself often requires burning away a previous image, which takes time.
Impatience drives the wrong questions: why is this happening, why now, why aren’t things getting better, why is this person still responding to me with tension after I improved my language? The usual answer is that people do not give changes long enough to work. They try a new pattern once or twice, decide it doesn’t work, and revert to the prior dysfunction.
Part II — Conflict Example: Applying the Framework
Premise: Currently, my sexual relationship with Olivia is quite dysfunctional and has been a source of high conflict and tension.
10. 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 abandonment dynamics) as well as sexual attraction and interest.
11. Tension is created through provocation.
Tension was initially created through my 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.
12. Provocation is created through poor mentalization, dysfunction, and poor communication — and through the absence of de-escalation.
While a previous triggering provocation occurred by Olivia (years before, sexually inappropriate behavior toward me), the ongoing provocation occurred from a nightmare and a feeling of disquiet stemming from a mental health episode that reignited the memory of her previous actions. The proper course of action would have 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 the trauma by bringing up sex, putting herself in inappropriate situations that would make me feel uncomfortable, or just declining concessions that would put me at ease and make me feel more empathized with.
13. Conflict reduces the ability to have needs met.
Because Olivia didn’t properly attempt to understand my needs, she was unable to have her needs met. She upset me further by pressuring me to have sex — constantly bringing it up, making vulgar remarks, touching me when I was already uncomfortable, and making me 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 me as what she did initially was quite upsetting and traumatized me. She never saw me as a victim, despite being fully aware that what she’d done to me was illegal and harmful. This further upset me because I didn’t think it was necessary for her to see me as a victim in order to respect my sexual and physical boundaries, and so I further tightened the reins and shut down sexually, isolating her more and more.
14. Selflessness is unnecessary in order to share success.
Simply by adhering to my boundaries, I would have quickly recovered from my feelings and been back to having sex with Olivia in a pretty short time. She could have remained completely selfish and still have 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 became a clear signal establishing that she simply does not care for me setting boundaries with her.
15. Empathy can be simulated through proper understanding of altruism’s causal effects on one’s environment.
Had Olivia understood that giving me space would allow me to recover quickly, she could not only have what she wanted sooner, but she could come across far more understanding and empathetic to my plight. What was a trauma induced by her could’ve felt like genuine understanding and care, and allowed me to re-center current stability over past trauma.
16. Favor is gained by simulating empathy.
Allowing someone space and time to feel better isn’t a negative reflection on you, but a positive one. Olivia treated any time taken as a personal attack on her, when truthfully her allowance would’ve made her appear more stable and lowered my guard. 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 not to 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 resentment 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.
17. Gaining favor leads to having one’s needs met.
Should Olivia ever grow to understand how to garner favor through good decision-making, she will begin to be able to influence outcomes in a way that allows her to have her needs met, make her partners and others happy, and hold a positive and influential relationship with those around her.
18. 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.
The framework above is general; the case is illustrative. Both are offered as one possible model for understanding why altruistic patterning tends to produce better outcomes than its absence — for the altruist as well as the people in their environment.