This is that “happiness pump” idea, rephrased: Wolf describes it as a person whose default setting is not “self-preservation,” but rather “other-preservation.” It’s the ego turned inside out. When we think of it that way, it doesn’t sound so terrible—it even echoes ubuntu—but in order to achieve this moral sainthood we’d have to do this all the time, in every scenario, which essentially renders the idea impossible. If we were having lunch with our best friend, Carl, and across the street a woman got frustrated by a malfunctioning parking meter, we would have to leap up and rush to help her . .
...more
