Larissa MacFarquhar on Getting Inside Someone’s Head
&gt; I think this notion that trying to help people, sacrificing yourself to help people was a sickness became very widespread, especially in the ’70s and ’80s under the better-known term codependency. It’s part of our now unconscious culture, the way we look at altruists. When we hear about them, many people think first, “Are they sick?”<p>I personally wouldn&#x27;t go that far as calling a person &quot;sick&quot; for being extremely altruistic but it is generally well-known that gifts&#x2F;free things are never really &quot;free&quot;.<p>For a sociological view on gifts&#x2F;altruism not being genuinely &quot;free&quot; there&#x27;s Marcel Mauss&#x27;s classic &quot;The Gift&quot; [1], while from personal experience I can tell that I used to be taught by both my peasant Eastern-European grand-mothers to never accept free stuff from our neighbors (like going to eat at their place or something similar), the reasoning being that those neighbors would most certainly want something in return at some point in the future.<p>In a similar vein there&#x27;s this Seinfeld season 3 episode called &quot;The Pen&quot; [2], where Jerry accepts a &quot;free&quot; pen as a gift from one of his parents&#x27; neighbors and, obviously, that turns out not to have been the best idea.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Gift_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Gift_(book)</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Pen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Pen</a>