“Put a smile on your face. Make the world a better place.”

Certain events are prone to triggering vast amounts of nostalgia. May it be a celebrative event reminding one of the past three years or hearing some songstress triggering memories from more than a decade ago. It brings hope that life will get better in the future, as it has in the past. “Oh 90’s music how you make me smile.”
We get motivation from two basic interests: curiosity (the kind that motivated the cat to be more self-serving) and self-serving (the kind that motivated the cat to flee the box before Schrödinger or his followers could carry out the experiment). Pretty much all other interest are products of these two main points. It is also important to note that while curiosity and egoism overlap surprisingly often, they practically never conflict. Try to think about it.
Altruism is about making us feel better about who we are.
Altruism is a curious thing, I would classify it as phase 3 of rationality. The first would be complete rationality – not thinking before acting whatsoever. This means direct actions,  basically what animals do. They see food and they are hungry, they eat it. They see food and they are not hungry, they try to storage it if possible. Nothing too complex, even a monkey can do it.
Phase 2 would be balance. A balance of rationality and irrationality. This assumes the existence of consciousness. Basically the phase where most humans are located – sometimes we do things we find reasonable, but sometimes obey our emotions instead. It is the life of the average Joe.
The aforementioned phase 3 would be the phase where the being understands that it has no rational cause to exist. Hence the being would most probably either self-terminate or become altruistic. That is until the being either reaches the underworld, phase 4 or revert to a previous phase.
Phase 4 is, obviously, overrationalizing. This is when the being has understood that not only he/she/it has not rational reason to exist, neither does anyone else. Hence there is no reason why not use this knowledge and live life to the fullest. If nothing matters anyways, why not have fun not mattering? This means the lack of regrets and denial of emotions. It is not a sad life per se, but some people may claim that life that follows only strict rules of logic is sad and cold as there are no emotions. They forget that for the person in Phase 4, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Anyway the wind blows, nothing really matters. And in that state, a being can thrive. With no morals, no regrets, no actual emotions, all kinds of possibilities open up ranging from simple manipulation to world conquest.
Perhaps there are more phases, perhaps not. I have yet to observe them. And one cannot argue with these phases because neither side could possibly have any hard evidence or cold facts to support their claims. Psychology is, after all, a mere pseudoscience, because empiric observations are impossible and every claim can be true or false, depending on the person deciding it. We would need intricate knowledge of the brain’s functions and once we have that and can definitely claim the existence or non-existence of these phases, it is no longer psychology, it is biology.
This is because it was a part of my childhood, my past. And someone reminded me of it.