Do motivations matter?

[mothedrine]

OK, I'm really not sure I should make this a poll, which is why I didn't make it public - despite my curiosity. And the reason is that I suspect that the definitions are going to get really slippery at some point, starting right about here.

I was thinking about organ donation (the best of luck to you and yours Zombies) and I realized that were I an organ recipient, although I'd be grateful beyond words, I probably wouldn't think too much about the donor. I certainly wouldn't feel as if that person's life was sacrificed to save mine. My attitude would be more along the lines of, well, this person was going to die anyway and of course that's always tragic and sad, but hey, fresh, healthy organ for me - woo-hoo!!!

Beyond that, I'd probably feel some sense of obligation beyond a concern for my own health, to make sure that the organ was used to its fullest potential, given its decrepit host. At very least I wouldn't even think of doing anything that would damage it.

But that's not really the point. The point is, I would also certainly respond and act the way I was expected to - whatever that might be and regardless of whether or not there was any genuine feeling behind it. I'm an old pro at that. It's truly exhausting, but I know that people feel hurt if I don't and although I don't really care what happens to people, the one thing I can't abide is being responsible for their suffering. Under that rubric I used to include sins of omission, but that just became completely unmanageable, especially when most of the people you know are even more fucked than you are.

So for the past year or so I've completely withdrawn from real life and although at times it would be nice to go to dinner or something with someone, I can't say that I actually miss it given what for me was the downside of having to pretend all of the time that I actually gave a shit.

So what I want to know is, in those instances where I did what was expected of me but only did it out of a vague sense of obligation, did that make any difference? You can assume that my act was convincing. I'm very good at emulating empathy when I have to. One of the first things I did to become socialized was volunteer at a peer counseling center. They actually trained me how to do it. I went through I think 8 or 10 weeks of pretty intensive training to become a counselor there. Plus there was the actual counseling and then getting critiqued on my performance. So, for all practical purposes, no one knew any difference.

Subjectively it probably had a negative impact in that it finally drove me to say to the world 'FUCK YOU, FUCK ALL OF YOU,' except that had always been my attitude - I'd just always had more energy and therefore could handle the added stress.

So maybe I'm stacking the deck here? Maybe I'm trying to push this in a moral or quasi-religious direction? IDK.

Spill your guts to me people. What does this get you thinking about?