A question about altruism

[Henrik Unné 0]

I was reading the posts in the thread on altruism which Nate Smith has started here in the forum recently. And an interesting question concerning altruism occurred to me. But it would have been off topic to ask this question in Nate Smith´s thread. So I am starting a new thread devoted to this question.

This is my question - in which type of society are men most likely to be duped by the altruist code of morality? This question occurred to me because Nate Smith´s thread seemed to demonstrate that one major reason that men are duped by the morality of altruism is that they confuse altruism with benevolence. I thought to myself that one reason for the fact that I myself was duped by altruism when I was young was, ironically, that I grew up in the largely healthy culture which was the USA back in the 1960s. Back then, I perceived the American society around me as being like a sunlit universe, like an arcadia. And this made me gullible. I was taught altruism, in school and by my parents - and the idea that altruism would lead to "good" results seemed to me to be plausible, since I saw so much happiness around me, and since I mistakenly thought that most of the Americans around me were practicing the altruist ethics. It came naturally to me to draw the dead wrong conclusion that altruism led to happiness!

I wonder - would men be *more* likely or *less* likely to be duped by altruism if they lived in, say, a benevolent society such as the USA, or if they lived in a bad society such as the Soviet Union?

On the one hand, in America the idea that altruism merely means kindness and generosity might seem more plausible than it would in the Soviet Union, where so many men were made malevolent by the horrible living conditions. On the other hand, in the Soviet Union, men would be subjected to a much more intensive indoctrination in the altruist ethics than they would be in the USA.

So where would men be more likely to be taken in by altruism - in a relatively good society such as the USA, or in a relatively bad one such as the Soviet Union?

Of course, most men are/were taken in by altruism, in *both* the USA and the Soviet Union. But is there *some* difference in the easiness and frequency with which men are/were taken in by altruism in these two societies?

One good argument which has occurred to me for the idea that men are *less* likely to be taken in by altruism in a good society such as the USA, is the fact that in such a good society there will be much more opportunity for adversaries of altruism, such as Ayn Rand, to make themselves heard!