Please, altruism as defined your way does not exist. Altruism is at its core self-serving: We desire to feel better about ourselves, to feel we are good human beings. People admire different things, so their vision of how best to behave leads to different forms of self-satisfaction.
Rather than focus on whether Steve did great things because of his passion for excellence, or because he wanted to have legions of fans, or for whatever other supposedly saintlike or selfish reason, focus on what he accomplished: bringing computing to the masses. That is an amazing thing.
Altruism seems to mean different things for different people, and it has been a recurring topic on HN too -- and usually become a bit of a toxic topic.
I don't behave altruistically in order to feel better about myself. If I want to do that, I'll go out with friends and have a good time or something.
When I behave altruistically, it is driven almost entirely by my ego: I believe that I am capable of making a difference (huge ego & hubris there), and I want to make a difference because it is the only form of immortality that exists so far.
I think the biggest difference between people like me, and Jobs, in this regard is that he actually pulled it off.
The masses in the West. You don't see to many Mac's running around Africa, India, China, or Russia.
I'm not trying to belittle Steve Jobs at all. He was a visionary who had a stunning ability to spot and develop good products. It made him, and others VERY wealthy. And powerful.
But don't think for a minute Mr Jobs did it out of the goodness of his heart. Profit and his vision motivated him. He wanted to push the industry he loved in a certain direction. And he succeded brilliantly.
Oh and I admire him for doing what he loved to the bitter end. I can tell you, from personal experience (I lived though AIDS/Cancer) that was not easy for him. At all. I admire him a great deal for never giving in.
//edited. changed the 1st line and added the last paragraph.
The way you define altruism, would be the correct way to describe what Jobs did. Even though he was ousted from Apple he continued to work on his passion. His actions were at its core self-serving. The side-effects were the good things he added to humanity.
You have a common misconception about altruism, that it is defined as some sort of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, but through using a twisted interpretation of psychological models, claim that any voluntary action, no matter how detrimental, is intended to improve one's state and therefore altruism can't exist. Seriously, it's like a phase people go through.
Regardless of whether you feel better about yourself or not, intentionally self-sacrificing for the benefit of others is altruism (time, effort, or money are the usual) - there's nothing in the definition saying you must endure some sort of pain or end up less of a person as a result.
I'm not sure what you are saying. I think you are saying that altruism requires self-sacrifice, and that self-sacrifice is not self-serving. But this is silly.
Altruism doesn't have anything to do with self-sacrifice. It is about doing an act that benefits others. Saying, as the person I was responding to said, that someone is not altruistic if they do something "just because" that was their passion, and not because it would help others, is myopic.
Then there's the evolutionary biological sense of altruism, or the philosophical variant of "Pure Altruism", requiring that you suffer for a gift to be truly selfless. People who get really bogged down in this kind of nit-picking would do well to go outside and breath deeply. (points at self)
The concept of altruism doesn't mean "hey, as a side effect, people are better off". The inventor of Teflon isn't altruistic because people have better frying pans these days.
Altruism is doing something where the balance is for the betterment of others, and costs you in some form, such as time (and it is also not atruistic to donate someone else's resources). But that cost does not have to be suffering.
Ultimately, the core of altruism is really whether you're primarily doing -foo- for yourself, or for the benefit of others.
Rather than focus on whether Steve did great things because of his passion for excellence, or because he wanted to have legions of fans, or for whatever other supposedly saintlike or selfish reason, focus on what he accomplished: bringing computing to the masses. That is an amazing thing.