Great Debates in Western Thought: Tribbiani vs. Buffay on Altruism and Human Nature

One of the most philosophically interesting episodes of Friends, in my estimation, is the one where Phoebe and Joey have a disagreement about whether there is such thing as a “selfless good deed.” (And one of the most interesting things about Friends in general is how it totally co-opted that casual way of referring to TV episodes and used it for their official episode titles, so that I had to choose between writing “the one where . . .” and “The One Where . . . ” - which definitely feels different.) In this episode, Phoebe espouses a naive, man-is-inherently-good philosophy, an extreme iteration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Joey, on the other hand, is cynical, Hobbesian, claiming that every supposed act of altruism really has some baser motive. “All people are selfish,” he declares, with all the subtlety of an Ayn Rand protagonist, right before comparing a belief in altruism to one in Santa Claus.

The two "forgotten" friends.

[A brief aside: if Friends was set in 2018, I imagine Phoebe would attend women’s marches, sell homemade (hideous) jewelry on Etsy, and share recipes for vegan, gluten-free, GMO-free desserts on her Facebook page. Joey, on the other hand, would still mostly just eat meatball subs and sleep with attractive women, but he’d probably be somewhat into either Ben Shapiro or Bill Maher, depending on his political leanings (which the show never really addresses - and this, by the way, proves to me how much politics has seeped into “real life.” Can you imagine a show about a group of twenty-somethings coming out today and never even touching on political issues? I mean, the closest Friends ever got was a bit about George Stephanopoulos wearing a towel - or I guess “the one where” three of the friends develop class consciousness over some Hootie and the Blowfish tickets.)]

But anyway, Phoebe sets out to prove Joey wrong, to perform a good deed that does not bring her any pleasure whatsoever. Of course, her task is doomed to fail from the very start, since any positive example would bring with it the satisfaction of proving her point. But the show doesn’t go there. Indeed, the show is very committed to portraying Phoebe’s failures as incidental rather than inherent: quirks of circumstance, not anything baked into the project itself. It suggests that she may have been wrong, but is not necessarily wrong; it leaves open the possibility that there is such a thing as a selfless good deed, even though Phoebe couldn’t find one.

Darius Rucker, sleeper agent of the
communist revolution

Take, for instance, her attempt to rake up her elderly neighbor’s leaves. This fails only because the old man catches Phoebe and rewards her with cider and cookies - which has the worrying implication that Phoebe only feels good about doing something kind when it is recognized by someone else. (I am reminded of a brilliant throwaway line from some episode of Rick and Morty: “Always waiting for permission to feel accomplishment, sir - that’s my motto!” [Which I also think about often in the context of educational “incentives” and grades.]) But if that is true - if Phoebe has not sufficiently internalized the gaze of the Other in order to see herself as object - then there is no reason why she couldn’t have raked the leaves unseen. Or go rake someone else’s leaves, even, and thereby perform a “selfless good deed.”

Her next attempt is more slapstick, farcical; less worthy of serious examination. She lets a bee sting her, reasoning that it “makes the bee look cool in front of his bee friends.” Right. Moving on.

Phoebe’s big breakthrough moment comes when she decides to donate money to a PBS telethon, overcoming her personal negative associations with the network and recognizing rationally that its programming does bring joy to people. (It is interesting that this whole debate is sparked by a PBS telethon, since it could certainly be argued whether PBS - or any government-funded organization, for that matter - exists for altruistic purposes. And Phoebe’s arc-defining anecdote about Sesame Street certainly suggests that PBS fails to provide comfort to our nation’s most vulnerable children.) Again, it is never implied that she feels anything but miserable about this. That is: until her two hundred dollars, by pure coincidence, happens to push the telethon’s donations over the top and lands Joey on TV. Now, this causal chain would not have been set off if she had called five minutes earlier or later, but Phoebe seems to accept defeat. The twenty-two minutes is up, anyway. Victory: Tribbiani.

Sesame Street, along with Friends, made young me feel like I had
to live in New York City to be valid

Or so it would seem. But just because Phoebe is wrong (sort of) doesn’t necessarily mean Joey is right. The problem with Joey’s position is that he seems to assume that motivation is singular, that it is all-or-nothing. If there is a single drop of self-interest present, then the entire act is tainted by selfishness. In this sense, he reminds me of John Irving, who satirized the radicals of the sixties with characters like Hester in A Prayer for Owen Meany and the Ellen Jamesians in The World According to Garp. Irving uses these characters, who did get involved with activism for selfish reasons, to malign the whole movement. Or think of all those who criticized the student walkout protests back in March by saying that kids were "just trying to get out of class"; or folks who always insist on pointing out the worst, least informed hangers-on of any social movement, who want to reduce Black Lives Matter to Rachel Dolezal or feminism to Lena Dunham. Joey fails to recognize that human beings are complex and can be motivated by many different factors, some of them unconscious. (Which he really should get; he did star in the hit musical Freud! after all.) Self-interest can be one of them without negating or overshadowing the others.

Ultimately, neither Joey nor Phoebe seems to get that it’s not a zero-sum game; you don’t have to give up some of your own happiness in order to give it to others. Knowing this, their positions really aren’t incompatible. (It’s like in Inherit the Wind, when the Clarence Darrow character “proves” that creationism and evolution can go together, as long as you’re willing to loosen up a bit on the definition of the word “day” - which I always found kind of specious, by the way.) Maybe we do feel good when we perform acts of altruism, and maybe that is part of the reason why we continue to do them - but isn’t that kind of awesome, when you think about it? Rather than cheapening the value of a good deed, I think that makes it all the more remarkable. Phoebe should be thrilled: you can bring happiness to two people instead of just one. (I’d use the “birds and stones” idiom, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it.) And so, if Joey is right and human beings are largely driven by self-interest, then that doesn’t have to be as bleak a conclusion as it initially sounds.

So is there such thing as a selfless good deed? No, but it’s a good thing.