"Are all actions in life based on interest only"?

[Belacqua]

In evolutionary biology there are four common types of social behavior that get studied: Altruism, selfishness, mutual benefit, and spite.

Spite occurs when an animal harms itself in order to harm others.

Have you heard the joke that Zizek tells about this?

Once there was a Slovenian farmer who worked on his farm. One day, a god-like figure approached the farmer and offered him a deal. The god-like figure says “I will do whatever you request to you, but whatever I do to you, I will do twice that to your neighbor.” The farmer thinks for a moment then replies, “Take one of my eyes.”

[Anomalocaris]

In evolutionary biology there are four common types of social behavior that get studied: Altruism, selfishness, mutual benefit, and spite.

Spite occurs when an animal harms itself in order to harm others.

Evolutionarily altruism and self-harm to harm others are only subjectively different obvious outward behaviors associated with the pursuit of the same underlying survival strategy.    If the outward behaviors were detached from the underlying strategy, then tendency towards these behavior would soon be bred out of the gene pool.

The strategy is to pay an obvious upfront cost to pursue more subtle but more consequential long term benefits.     Obviously such a strategy is sophisticated, may involve multiple small or indirect profit stream, and require more work on the part of an observer to map out and weigh up the cost and benefit, then simple transactional strategy of running faster or be eaten.   

People who see ultruism or self harm in these sees the obvious upfront cost, but either neglected to see the long term profit, or neglected to tell you the long term benefit in order to tell a better, either more upbeat or more depressing, yarn.

[Anomalocaris]

In evolutionary biology there are four common types of social behavior that get studied: Altruism, selfishness, mutual benefit, and spite.

Spite occurs when an animal harms itself in order to harm others.

Have you heard the joke that Zizek tells about this?

Once there was a Slovenian farmer who worked on his farm. One day, a god-like figure approached the farmer and offered him a deal. The god-like figure says “I will do whatever you request to you, but whatever I do to you, I will do twice that to your neighbor.” The farmer thinks for a moment then replies, “Take one of my eyes.”

If his neighbor doesn’t have children, then he would do better to tell the god like being to take one of his testicles.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm interpreting interest to mean personal gain. This is very different from saying there is always a reason for our actions, or even more abstractly that there's always a cause, in which case only actions born out of pure randomness would qualify.

There is some research in motivation suggesting that the wrong incentive can interfere with your decision to do something. For example, blood donations usually go down when a cash incentive is offered. This is because people donate blood altruistically to help others, but when you are paid to do so this interferes with your motivation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Part of the problem with the question - that we need to interpret interest as a specific kind of interest...and even in that category, a specific kind of a specific kind of interest, the bad and exclusively bad kind. We don't ever act outside of interest. Action is a demonstration of interest. We do sometimes act outside of personal gain, and we do sometimes act inside of personal gain in a way that is not bad.

The question, by it's framing, seeks a very specific answer and..likely... can admit no other answer. As any act outside of the double limited boundaries will be insisted to be said act itself, no matter what. As already demonstrated in thread. A corrected question might look something like "surely, we act out of interest, but what does that mean or entail?" The reason this question is not asked by the op is that the op already has a preferred answer for it, and merely seeks to wash all acts with that particular and novel answer. It's not a question at all, it's condemnation by shade.

Change my mind, lol.

[Anomalocaris]

I'm interpreting interest to mean personal gain. This is very different from saying there is always a reason for our actions, or even more abstractly that there's always a cause, in which case only actions born out of pure randomness would qualify.

There is some research in motivation suggesting that the wrong incentive can interfere with your decision to do something. For example, blood donations usually go down when a cash incentive is offered. This is because people donate blood altruistically to help others, but when you are paid to do so this interferes with your motivation.

In this case,  it would be critical to ensure “personal gain” is defined in a way that does not serve to obscure the reason for our actions.

You may define personal gain as measurable financial enrichment, and thus conclude any act which does not lead to measurable financial enrichment as being qualitatively different from acts which do, when in fact there is no qualitative difference in the underlying cause of both acts.    The underlying cause simply does not weigh financial gain per se very much, and in the case where the act result in financial gain, the gain is incidental.

[The Grand Nudger]

Qualitative/quantitative.

If we distinguish between acts that lead to financial gain and those that do not, we are not engaging in fantasy. There really is a difference, measurable in quantaties of USD(in the example), between them. Though... you bring up a good case for qualitative difference. If a quantitative gain is incindental then it doesn't really make sense to say that we did the thing for the quantitative gain, eh? Thus, there is a qualitative difference between such acts and those engaged in explicitly for such gain, by definition.

What is word.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I came across this map of motivational systems.

[Carl Hickey]

I came across this map of motivational systems.

Hi,

According to Eric Berne ((May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of  as a way of explaining human behavior. Wikipedia)

The types of hunger are:



(a) food-hunger;



(b) stimulus-hunger;



© recognition-hunger;


(d) structure-hunger.

They are stated in Games people play.

So, everything one does is to eat. Therefore  all actions in life are based only on interest.