Altruism, good or bad?

So I had a great discussion here at Chez Plotz about altruism.  One of us arguing it as the savior of the the planet and human race and the other its ultimate downfall.  I'm going to talk  about the latter which is easier being it is my point of view.  

Throughout history we have been brought up on the view that to give you life or your money for a great cause, or even better for someone you don't know is one of the greatest feats someone can achieve.  And that a truly altruistic human is great and wonderful.  Well look at our history, there is a lot of good but there is damn sure a lot of bad.  I think altruism is a gross perversion and is another type of control.  When your best interests or lost and given away it grains against everything you are and become something that you don't want.  That something starts to rage against itself because it has essential told itself that it is not good enough to survive and thus gave away to something better.  The crux is if that person was a stranger you don't even know if you made a good decision.

In my un-humble opinion our world would be better served and lived in if altruism became the greatest sin (sorry about the term but it was the best I could come up with).  I mean happiness is what drives us, and if your actions were taken with yourself in mind in both the immediate and more distant future how could this not become a better place in which to live.  I guess it comes down to how you view yourself, if you see yourself as the most important thing to you than this philosophy makes prefect sense.  But if your fellow man is more important than self well I guess this sounds like a terrible and heinous direction of life.  But I will argue that the later does not know life because by loosing the first recognition of self they have already lost part of life already and have very little grounds with which to defend it.  Unless they realize that they are worthless, which most are not, then losing self would be tolerated but still not wanted.  

It seems that when establishments (society, religion, government etc) gain power and influence the first thing they preach and try to implement is a loss of self and altruistic actions.  But they will never put it in those terms.  It is after all what allows them to stay in their positions of influence.  But ones happiness is the only realm of influence that a person truly controls, and it is that acceptance in which I think can truly make the world a better place.

-Zachary