A thread on the depression forum won't leave my mind.

I'm incredibly self-focused. Nothing arouses my emotions like whatever I perceive to be my own personal hell, and most of my motivation, when I have it, is aimed to personal improvement and aggrandizement.

But every once in a while I wonder if all this...just makes me a bad person. That I care more about living comfortably, having nice things, improving my health, than any of the myriad horrors going on in the world. That I would rather spend my money of good food, interesting new products or pretty things than on helping others, rather devote time to myself than to service. The thread in question was about empathy and how limited many people's is (my own vacillates. I feel like an outright empath when it comes to stories of abuse, victimization, or internal suffering, but see stories of poverty or war with...not quite indifference, but what someone once called "brain-feeling".

Cognitive versus affective empathy, basically, but not enough to make me want to do anything), but I've been driven to guilt by the effective altruism movement too, and the entire ethic of earning to give to "do the most good". Right up to and including asserting that it's more rewarding to live for others than for yourself. Honestly, to me, even if I did have money, the idea of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a charity feels so...hollow. Numbers be damned, there's something incredibly empty about it, about making one's entire life about making and giving money whose effects you don't even see, completely subverting the self in service (which yes, many EAs do. I recall one article where people talked about denying themselves their dream career to do something more lucrative in order to donate more. It actually kind of disgusts me. At the same time...who the hell are you, am I, to pursue self-fulfillment when people are suffering?). I prefer good acts I can see. They may not be doing the "most good", but I guess... I trust them more. It's like a quality vs quantity issue. (If anyone has some good arguments why it's morally acceptable to not be an EA, please tell).

But this is a tangent. It's not about charity or EA, so much as self-centeredness vs empathy. I know, on some level, that I don't deserve much. Why should I do anything for myself? This coming from someone who is, knowingly, a terrible miser with her money and time and prone to thinking in extremes. I can just see that: demanding of myself to go from trying to fix and improve my material and mental life to abject self-denial. Basically, what right do I have to care about myself, to feel bad, to suffer in any way, to give myself anything beyond the most ascetic necessities when so many people have it much worse? And I barely care or think about it? Most of my mental activity revolves around myself, when I'm not even worthy of that? I've thought a few times that I can focus more on others once I'm stable and have everything I need/want, but I wonder if I even have it in me to do that.