I posted this answer:
To be rationally selfish is to think carefully about the values likely to contribute to your happiness and flourishing within consideration for the full, long term context of your life. To be rationally selfish likewise impells you to consciously place your values in a hierarchy of importance to your life, and to act accordingly. Certainly, there can be charitable causes that can fit into your hierarchy of values and to which you deem worthy of your donation. To donate to such causes would therefore be a rationally selfish thing to do, not as a duty or a sacrifice but as a reflection of your values. The only “rule” would be that you should never, as a rationally selfish person, sacrifice a higher value for something you value less. So your donations should be made as and when you can afford it, to causes you value, but not at the expense of giving up something you value more highly, such as the welfare of your children or your next mortgage or rent payment.
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1 comment:
Primary concerned with one's own interests is a guide for one's actions in the face of alternatives. One's choice and action is the "compulsion", as opposed to something or somebody physically forcing one. It's compulsion only in the sense that one spends one's own time, effort, energy, money, etc. on something. So, one might compel one's self to donate to charity. In terms of human life and its maintenance and improvement, starting with one's own, one can donate to charity if one chooses.
With due thought of what charity to donate to, charity is not detrimental to one's own interests and can be helpful to them, possibly in both the long term and the short term. Again, with due thought, it will be helpful to the recipients. So, it's a "win-win" or, at least, a "neutral-win", but never a loss anywhere.
This assumes no outside influence of physical force. To the extent there is outside force, it becomes harder to determine one's interests, thus, whether or not to donate to charity. The absence of outside influence of force maximizes the ease of deciding.
Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Human life, its maintenance, and improvement, starting with one's own, is what makes primary concern with one's own interests rational, meaning, in accordance with reason. Also, we may now call it selfishness. So, we may call it rational selfishness. And it can "compel" us, by our own choice as noted above, to donate to charity.
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