bees don't help plants and.plants don't help medicine The verb help implies intent. Plants benefit from bees stealing pollen. That's not the same as humans helping eachother out of empathy -Yuri
Pity when you feel bad for someone else, even if they don't notice. Sympathy when you relate to someone else's situation. Empathy when you feel for someone and what they are going through. Psychopathy when zero fucks are given, yet spite might drive you to help anyway. Selflessness rarely comes without a hidden motive to get something out of the aid offered.
If you truly want to help others than set out to be the best you can be. Setting a goal to simply help others is not as good. People benefit from the invisible hand more than all charities combined. Take bill Gates, fo you think if his goals in life were to help people that he would have a private organization that spends more than red cross on the poor? Or is it that he was able to pursue his dreams which made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and allowed him to help his fellow man.
When the struggle is real, we all struggle together. A helping hand can lift even the darkest mood into the light, so long as you are willing to look.
manticore raises a great point in describing mirror neurons. Does it feel good to help someone else because you are engaging in a unifying act? In a way, if we are all parts of an underlying whole, it's the 'wholes' way of encouraging a healthy self. When someone is sick we want to care for them, maybe the whole seeks balance and encourages this. By helping others you may be helping yourself, by you being both the helper and the helped. It's as selfish as it is selfless, a harmony. When I see people who are clearly miserable and think 'that is me' what can I do to help this 'other me'. I work with a guy who is miserable and seems to thrive in negativity, anger, criticism and alcohol. How do we help others/our other self, in situations where we cannot even comprehend their local reality?
I was just going to say this. It is typically mutually benefiting both parties. Individual and the whole(on a grander scale). Interesting how nearly everything has a flip side.
Depends on the person, most people help others because its right, feed the homeless and volunteer in soup kitchens, give to charity. Then you have people that will go all the way to Africa and come back with hundreds of photos of them "saving the children". Id say if you take hundreds of photos with every poor unfortunate kid you can find your probably not there for the right reasons. I have always looked at those people just as attention seekers and nothing more. People will do anything for attention and to feel "holier than thou".
One would say, "It is the right thing to do", but that begs to ask the question; What is "right" and what is "wrong"? Surely it's all a matter of perception and perspective, no?
We're social animals, when we help one another we help ourselves. Feeling "good" is a mental chemical precursor that allows us to stay together as a functioning community. So good, there is no such motherfucking thing, there is only what is advantageous and not. It's a cold cruel universe unfortunately and value judementats aren't universal laws of physics....
Anyway that you can that is made obvious to you. Simple acts of kindness, or a show of general respect for another if only through repetition, may give them hope and a different perspective. Subtlety, and light heartedness may suffice with patience and perseverance. Know too though, that we can only help when the opportunity is actually there, and that forcing things, breaks them. Peace Oh yeah, different people do things for different reasons. There is a possibility of a singular, wholly beneficial being or consciousness or direction; but we are far from it. Things seem to be moving in the right direction though. Change for better is coming. 2¢ Peace Faith in selfless Unity for Good.
I see it as a benefit over burden scenario. The world prospers when there is more benefit than burden. The ones that see passed themselves tend to give and help more. Empathy plays a role as well. I would appreciate help if I needed it. So it only makes logical sense to help someone else. We are all the same, just different personalities. We all can feel the same emotions, just different thresholds at certain times.
Empathy, society, and love. Vice versa for why we hurt others. Empathy..We see others feeling bad and we apply it to ourselves thinking "i would hate for that to happen to me". So we help. Then society..we think that if we help others we will be viewed as nicer and thus more valuable. Love..we love the ones close to us and many love all other beings for we all share the same heartbeat. And then theres the selfish side of all that..pack mentality. If bad things happen to others close, that could have negative repercussions for us so we try to avoid that. The death of someone, encompasses all of these traits. We love them, we feel bad for them, we want to help them. and selfishly, we dont want to lose them! We are all one, whatever happens to a part, affects the whole, like a car without a wheel. Life is complex, yet simple. Love, do not desire, and you will be fulfilled.