You love your mother. Wherever she is at the moment, whatever she is doing, you love her- no matter what. You have that same love for all the members of your family. This type of love is one of benevolence. Selflessness is often when one cares for others much more than themselves. Along with loving your mother, you would do anything for her. Would you automatically choose yourself over her? Or would you choose her over yourself?
Altruism, also known as selflessness is defined on Wikipedia as, “a concern for the welfare of others”. Most people are capable of such a deep level of love and care, a level of want and need for the other to turn out as great as possible in everything they do. Having a care for someone so intensely, more than your own is what a selfless person has. At a certain point, they don’t even care what happens to themselves, they care about what happens to their loved ones. Altruism is one of the least malicious actions, where everything, in that moment, is for the better.
We learned of altruism in the 19th century, and to this day it is used in many instances. It is mainly looked at with psychologists’, ethologists’, as well as evolutionary biologists’. When it was first discovered though, it was looked at in more of a philosophical and ethical light. “While ideas about altruism from one field can have an impact on the other fields, the different methods and focuses of these fields lead to different perspectives on altruism.”
There are many different viewpoints on altruism. There are scientific views, as well as religious views, and even different animal habits having to do with the subject. One of the scientific views has to do with “how the brain works”. Two neuroscientists, or “the study of the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology of the nervous system”, did a study on how the brain reacts to different items using magnetic resonance imagining (also known as MRI’s).
Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman found that simple rewards and donations lit up the part of the brain that responds to food and sex. They also found that a different brain circuit lit up when they discussed donations and generously helping others, and this circuit is known as the subgenual cortex/septal region. This region is referred to when looking at social situations, as well as bonding and attachment. Thus, the experiment suggested that altruism is not considered a moral suppressant for basic selfish urges, but more-so a basic hard-wire to the brain and pleasurable to the human race.
Religious views have to do with most of the religions that are practiced daily, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Sufism, Jainism, as well as one of the main viewpoints being Buddhism. Wikipedia states, “Love and compassion are components of all forms of Buddhism, and both are focused on all beings equally: the wish that all beings be happy (love) and the wish that all beings be free from suffering (compassion).”
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