In the battle between the altruist and the egoist, there lives in the no-mans land between the two the freed person. The person in the middle sometimes gives and sometimes takes and is happy to do both. That person that never minds taking a complement on board without offering one in return. That person that takes favours without immediate payback to the giver. That person that helps at the spur-of-the-moment without question. That person that is there when needed, who won’t be locatable when all is good.
The altruist is trapped in a world of giving. They question themselves in ways, so as to avoid questioning their altruism. They question the symptoms but not the root cause. They never end up posing the deeper question: is all this giving so good and won’t it be nice to take once in a while. Won’t it be nice to become a freed person?
A typical example of altruist is a mother. Who does everything to protect her children from god, the devil, people and the world. Believing she is doing something good for her children. These are the mothers that end up never telling their children the truth since they are constantly looking for the right moment to tell their children. Pity then that there is never the right time for an altruist person. An altruist, in telling the truth, in hurting the listener, is taking something, is taking the naivety of the listener, the child. As an altruist does not hurt their children, they then can’t tell the truth. Instead the altruist should see that taking, sometimes leads to more giving. Telling the truth would relieve the mother from her pain and enable her to be a better giver.
The egoist is trapped in a world of taking. They begin to wonder why they don’t have real friends, only business partners, a wife and children for whom they are constantly buying amazon junk. They might even have work colleges with whom they share a family-like love of the company and their work. Egoist boss’s demand absolute loyalty to the company in that they themselves don’t believe. So everyone pretends to love the company while looking for new jobs.
Egoist run the world but strangely, at the same time, are disconnected from the world. They are disconnected since in the first place they are looking out for themselves. Now if they spend their time looking out for themselves, an attribute that in the first place got them there where they are, the higher they get, the more they have to look out for themselves. The competition doesn’t sleep and neither should they. So leaders are constantly trying to avoid personal failure instead of looking after the nation they are leading. And so it goes.
It’s strange that there is not a word for a person between altruist and egoist. Perhaps the best word is consumer: giving their money to take content they don’t need.