Natalie Angier has a science column up at the New York Times about a concept being called “pathological altruism.” She’s working from a new book about the topic, containing essays from people like neurologist Dr. Robert A. Burton:
As the new book makes clear, pathological altruism is not limited to showcase acts of self-sacrifice, like donating a kidney or a part of one’s liver to a total stranger. The book is the first comprehensive treatment of the idea that when ostensibly generous “how can I help you?” behavior is taken to extremes, misapplied or stridently rhapsodized, it can become unhelpful, unproductive and even destructive.
Selflessness gone awry may play a role in a broad variety of disorders, including anorexia and animal hoarding, women who put up with abusive partners and men who abide alcoholic ones.
This paragraph caught my attention:
David Brin, a physicist and science fiction writer, argues in one chapter that sanctimony can be as physically addictive as any recreational drug, and as destabilizing. “A relentless addiction to indignation may be one of the chief drivers of obstinate dogmatism,” he writes. “It may be the ultimate propellant behind the current ‘culture war.’ ” Not to mention an epidemic of blogorrhea, newspaper-induced hypertension and the use of a hot, steeped beverage as one’s political mascot.
Boy, does that sound familiar. This has been one of Fred Clark’s major themes for the past few years. He wrote a clever piece a couple years ago titled Just Say No
He took offense.
It started out in college. You know, just experimenting with it. But he liked it. He liked how it made him feel.
For a while it was just recreational — weekends and parties and rallies and that kind of thing. But soon he was hanging out with some pretty hard-core users, with the kind of people who took offense all the time. They didn’t need a reason or an excuse, it was just what they did. It was who they were. Soon he found he couldn’t get through the day without it.
Over the years he even learned to grow his own, to take the tiniest seeds of umbrage and nurture them into full-grown pretexts for outrage. The good stuff.
I don’t know, anorexia as a form of selfishness? From what I understand the disorder is frequently the result of a person who has great feelings of powerlessness trying to gain control over some aspect of their life. Hmmm… and the article only gives anecdotal evidence of the anorexia as a form of selfishness.
The article says selflessness, not selfishness. Easy to do a double take over it, and I see it as a stretch either way.
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Brilliant written. It gave a kind of aha experience, putting word to and describing a feeiling I had my whole life… because this is a description of my father in a nutshell. Always offended. I’ve tried to put word to it myself in one sentence and its something like this: My father truly believes that being outragedly offended even by small unimportant daily issues as a que at the busstation makes him a rare kind of human – a human that genuinly cares about others. (A que at the busstation easely makes him rambling angry/madly about the need for change in politics/peoples behaviour/etc. etc. – for an hour!!)
The truth is sadly that his a angry, selfish person which you pr definition want to avoid to meet a second time, if you met him once. His lonely. With the years – lonely and bitter on nearly everything. Its very sad – but he have no love in him. I regard him to be very sick but have to stay away from him because he hurt me so much while I was young, and he keeps doing it. Never a kind word or any interest in my life at all. When I finished 7 years of studies to become a teacher – with the best exam of all the students nationwide that year – he did’t congratulate me. He started to ramble about how long holidays teachers have etc etc. Only negative critic. My advice to other with close relationships to people with addiction to indignation is this – let them go. Its no point using energy on a lost cause. Thats my experience. I’ve really tried to help him but it only brought me more grief. (Its of course more to this – my sister was in on the effort. We even got help from a family counselor etc etc. Long story. Bottom line – let them go and do not spend to much time having bad conscience because its not your fault. Even if it feels so.)
I suppose the lesson is that you have to pick your battles. Being indignant about a few things is normal. Being indignant about every little thing is pathological.
Of course, if the one thing you pick to be indignant about is having religion forced on you in the US (via everyday life and politics) then you’re indignant all the time. But again, I guess one has to fall back on picking the battles that matter.
I think we owe a great deal to *some* people who could be described as pathologically indignant and altruistic, such as Thomas Paine. Of course, had the British modified their colonial policies a bit, we’d still be part of the Empire, and he’d be remembered only as a pain in the @ss.
It’s going to be hard to distinguish between people who became involved in a cause because they couldn’t stand an injustice anymore and those who get involved primarily for social reasons. One could say that some of the conspiracy theory blogs, like abovetopsecret, constitute a virtual alternative religion. Has Angier come up with a checklist?
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This hits too close to home. Luckily, my addiction to indignation is only recreational as I am too passive to “do” anything about the various things which irritate me.