I have 2 questions. I'll leave the second one to a later post.

1. Is it good or bad to do the right thing for the wrong reasons? I'm not talking about reasons that are bad but rather reasons that might be kind of petty compared to the more compelling reasons for doing something. Since this is all very vague, here are some examples:

When I started volunteering at a homeless shelter my freshman year, I did it in large part because my friends were doing it, rahter than just out of concern for the people being provided for by the shelter, etc. I have heard others argue, however, that this isn't such a bad thing, that people often get involved in service and whatnot bc of others. While I see that this is useful from a practical standpoint, it feels wrong that the important reasons arent enough to compel me to do more.

Similarly, why is it that we give to charities when we see images of people suffering more so than when we don't see these images but know that the suffering is going on?

So, this is kinda my dilemma (the actual situation that is behind this questioning is slightly different from the examples above, but I think these are good analogies-more discussion of what is actually on my mind at the moment available upon request). Any thoughts?