Why be an Altruist
It is impossible for a person to ask any moral question unless he already has a sense of empathy, or at least a recognition of other human beings and society. The fact that he recognises he is in society at some level means he must ask questions about it and how he relates to it. If he has empathy then he has the faculty that makes altruism possible. But in any case he may still ask himself whether it is best to act for the general benefit, or his own, or as a island on his own with others the same. The slightest inbred compassion and self-respect will allow him to ask questions about the whole range of social interaction, with humanity and beyond. He might be a naturally self centred person out to get what he can for his own desires, but human society has to survive for that to be realized. With any intelligence it may be evident that some forms of society can be more responsive to global pressures than others and can allow individual and corporate imagination and enterprise to express itself so as to answer those pressures, and to improve life generally. No doubt if he has no interest beyond his own life, or for his children, then there will nothing to constrain his tyrannous immediate greed. The rest of society will have its answer to that. Altruism of some form provides a long-term 'progressive' and 'sustainable' society, that the more ossified alternatives cannot. And at the heart of altruism is global Diversity.