Genuine altruism is not intentionally altruistic; on the surface it looks like utter selfishness.
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Yes. The desire to do good is driven by self-interest; on the other hand, self-interest pursued to the extreme ends in the realization of one’s inseparability from everyone else and thus leads to altruism.
But I had in my mind something like the beavers, who do not intend to be crucial contributors to biodiversity but who pursue their own ends entirely without regard for the good of the ecosystem. And thus end up being irreplaceable for it.
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And then on the other hand, we humans in our attempts to do good for the world end up destroying it by interfering with interdependent natural processes we cannot understand adequately.
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