Yes, I wrote everything correctly. No, I didn’t mix up the words. Yes, I am aware of the meaning of the word. But I am impressed by the phrase “if you want to make the world happy, start with yourself,” so the closest We’ll look at relationships between people through this prism for a couple of minutes. I remember that back in school, my literature teacher told us that in Russian classics we often see the image of a person suffering for the sake of others. The meaning and purpose of this suffering were sometimes unclear, but it was necessary to suffer. How else? Without this, the book will not work. But the times of Russian classics have passed, but the model of behavior remains. And what's worse is that it has become romanticized. A special contribution to this was made by people “made in USSR”, in whom society fostered the idea of ​​living for others. And as you know, ideas are mental viruses that transfer to new carriers and continue to live in them. No, I didn’t read science fiction, but I listened to Dawkins once again. So, now to the point. What is self-sacrifice? This is the transfer of a certain resource that you yourself need to another person. How do we imagine this? There is me (let's say Hypothetical Gennady), there is another person (Hypothetical Peter). I tear this piece from myself and give it to him. I'm worse, he's better. On his part, gratitude, on my part, the feeling that I did well and made the world a better place with my resources. And it would work like that if these two characters existed in an isolated universe without other people. But as we all live in a complex system of social relationships, the following will happen: Hypothetical Gennady gave the resource to Hypothetical Peter and was left sad because of the scarcity of the resource. Imaginary Vera sees him and also decides to sacrifice her resource so that Hypothetical Gennady does not be sad. Gennady seems to have returned to normal, but now Vera is sad. But Vera also does not exist in a vacuum, she has a friend, the Composer Svetlana, who also sacrifices herself in the name of friendship. And that’s it, the flywheel spun up. As a result, having made a thoughtless self-sacrifice, Gennady launched a chain reaction of suffering and pleasure among those around him. But has anything really changed in the world for the better? No. That is why sacrificing oneself in the name of improving the world is just an illusion, with which we often justify (rationalize) the inability to maintain personal boundaries. Do you really want to make the world a better place? Love yourself and take care of yourself so as not to force others to take care of you to their own detriment. PS This does not apply to caring for others, which is not to the detriment of yourself, and to extreme situations. This article is about routine self-sacrifice. Sincerely, Sergey Maksimov. Psychologist.