Altruism

Two words carry the definition. Exosocial means the help reaches outward, past the boundary of a person's own endogroup, to someone outside it, which most apparent generosity does not do. Charity that leaves the giver elevated and the receiver grateful runs inward and firms up the group's boundary. Egalitarian balance names the purpose: not a gift flowing downhill from strong to weak, but a move that closes an imbalance, with energy or resources going where they are short until the two sides level. Marsh ties this to a drive she reads as basic to life, the tendency of those who can access primary anima to release the excess for others, and she places altruism at the root of how movements form.

Auguste Comte coined altruism in the 1850s as the opposite of egoism, living for others rather than the self, and that moral sense is still the dictionary one. Biology took the word elsewhere: an act is altruistic if it costs the actor and benefits another, explained through kin selection and reciprocal altruism. The effective altruism movement narrowed it to measurable good per dollar. All three keep altruism inside a one-way frame. Marsh drops the sacrifice and asks only whether the act crossed a group boundary and closed a gap.