True Human Altruism

A thought that a couple of friends had a very intense conversation about last night came upon me and I really don't want to believe it is true, but makes quite a bit of sense in its semantics and thought system. This thought is that there is no possible way for true human altruism to exist due to the understanding that humans always act in self interest. When someone does an act it is to full fill a understood ethical paradigm that fully fills themselves more then it burdens that person or others. It does make sense but I just don't want to believe that all human actions are lead by self interest. This idea stemmed from a discussion about Christianity, but I think it really applies to our current reading as well. In Ragtime, I feel that the act of charity to bring in the newborn child into the family house was truly an altruistic act, and I really think that I would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. It is a very long philosophical road, but I'm excited to discuss things like this this year.