One of the reasons that many people argue, there's no such thing as true altruism — people are never truly motivated to help other people for their own sake — is because, paradoxically, altruism is a source of enormous joy for people who help others. People who have donated kidneys to strangers will reliably tell you it's one of the best things they've done in their life, they would do it again in a heartbeat if they could.
The best part of altruism is the sense of joy it brings, because these feelings encourage people to engage with it more often. It’s easy to look at something like that and say, 'Aha! Well, then it wasn’t really altruistic because if it brought you such pleasure, well then it must have been selfish.' But this perspective can be a bit puritanical.
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