The ‘new’ altruism

Altruism is really a perfectly balanced two-way road, both selfish and selfless, intertwined. It doesn’t ‘ work’ if separated.
Take the idea of selflessness, it leads to insufferable saintliness. It’s unsustainable. And the opposite is just as ridiculous - the selfish world leads to trouble. It’s strange how altruism has been highjacked by the morality mob. By taking things towards idealism we hope to appear definite; we try to define ourselves by holding some strong position that everyone will approve of. It gives our life meaning and makes us look good too, but because it’s so far out of balance it doesn’t succeed.
The saintly, unrealistic and selfless faces-off with the selfish and the materialistic; good versus bad. The only way an extreme can work is in relation to the extreme opposite, so if we’re really bad we have to do something really good to balance it … and that’s so contrary to nature that it fails miserably - any attempt at extremism which calls for overcompensating is energy draining.
‘New’ altruism suggests it’s foolish to go out to extremes. If our altruism is reserved for useful work it won’t get sidetracked by extremes. It will operate on low levels of selfish and unselfish motivation and thrive that way. It’s not as impressive, it’s slower to get results but in the long term … well, that what I’d be backing anyway.
If this is the new altruism, what does it mean? That the slow-but-sure, in-balance way brings satisfying results? It is the expectation of getting a result that drives us on. And wouldn’t that be ultimately what we want? We all surely want repairs to work? And if they work, wouldn’t that be the ultimate result? What else could we wish for? If it works for us personally, there’s good reason (in our perception) to be optimistic about our own future and that of our civilisation?
It’s a circular argument that never gets resolved of course, that we need to ‘do’ altruism in a balanced way to feel good about ‘doing’ it in the first place but we need to feel good about it in order to reach balance. It comes back to optimism being the bright light in our lives, and that everything we do is made that much easier if we aren’t gloomy about things. An optimist may take a very pragmatic, benign slant on things, saying, “So what if all this damage has taken place? It can be fixed”. Optimism "ups" the energy. In turn, our ‘upped’ energy improves our chances of making the necessary ‘large leaps ahead’. They’re attitudinal changes. They’re not the easy ones, they often mean some hard work, they’re changes which to the casual observer aren’t immediately obvious, they’re not necessarily, straight away, attractive - but it’s this scale of change, attitude change, which most helps us make transitions.
Going vegan is an ultimate transition. And even if the rest of the community doesn’t click into it, for us it can be something worth aiming for. By not confirming our don’t-care-about-violence attitudes, by being a day-to-day vegan, we set a course in a particular direction. And we do that not because it’s right but because it means something to us. And it means something beneficial to others too. It is, overal, instrumental to a good outcome.
Amongst all the blather of modern day man, with all the hype, nonsense and untruth of today, veganism stands out, alone, a beacon of sanity. It’s optimistic and, in balance with Nature, looks pretty good. For a vegan it feels right. It’s as if one is dressed appropriately for the right climate. For vegans, anything we can do to promote the vegan principle will be inevitably satisfying, to us and indeed to all of us.