(July 14, 2016 at 2:19 pm)ohreally Wrote: A thought I had was that less altruism is happening currently not because people are any more or less nice to each other but the average number of hours of free time we spend with friends in general has gone down. It's seems like you would have overall less opportunities to be kind to people when you spend less time with them.
I'm not sure that helping friends is counted as altruism anyway, since there are obvious personal benefits to helping your friends.
But maybe in the end that's actually a good point-- even though say a fellow American isn't known by you, you might be helping him because you see both of you as part of a community. So by my definition, that's not REALLY altruism, it's a kind of very indirect selfishness-- there's always a chance that fellow American will come to your aid at some point, just because you're both American.
