Caring: Why and How Far?

[lucimay]

ah Sarge...

Lucimay: great song, have you heard his opera yet?
i have it if anyone needs it.

you are the only one who noticed!!!!

what do you mean you "have it if anyone needs it?" the opera??
i listened to a few minutes of it at Virgin Megastore, music sounds great but am not sure about the libretto. i'd have to hear more.

anyway, hug to you for noticing! (i was watching In The Flesh yesterday)

[High Lord Tolkien]

Here's a total general comment based only on my own limited experience.

I too used to give money to any begger in the street.
My God, how could I not spare some change?
Do I really need that soda or can I skip it today?

Then I started learning how most of it goes to just buy alcohol or drugs.
I didn't believe it but then I started offering to buy them food instead of cash.
Coffee/donut shops were always nearby.
I used to ask them what they wanted and I would get it for them.
Never once was I taken up on it.
They usually just got pissed at me and said "f-you."

A buddy of mine runs a lawn care business.
Used to try and help beggers/bums by offering them lunch and money for some basic labor in the very area they were begging.
NEVER got anybody.

I just give to charities and shelters now.

[sgt.null]

i offered to get guys some clean up work at restaurants. they say know and demand cash, i walk away.

[The Laughing Man]

Oh, Avatar, you know "intentions" are everything, because I told you "intent" is everything.
(heh )

"Tank" You for the compliments. You are such a nice young man. and smart, too!

Yes I do believe intentions are everything, but they must be supported by equally adequate actions developed with concerned foresight.
Reduce to a minimum the obvious, prepare for the unknown. Semper Paratus. Always Ready, or the classic "Prepared For All Things".

I find the old "Road to hell is paved with good intentions" thingy pretty empty, as it seems to focus solely on intentions not acted upon, or maybe even unforeseen consequences. meh. (maybe I'm missing something?) Let's not discard "alternate external counter intentions" from the "circumstances" list, too.

Also, nothing burns me more than someone expecting an apology for something unintended, unforeseen and unavoidable, the flip side of that is anyone ever outright demanding a single thing of me. (unless they are paying me, heh. )

[sgt.null]

but we live in age of "i deserve"
my wife and i were somewhere and a young woman said the following... "wish someone would give me charity" that what shows an outstanding lack of knowledge and initiative.

[Avatar]

So you're suggesting Esmer, that the law of unintended consequences creates no responsibility on behalf of the "actor"?

That things done (let's forget the things undone for now, 'cause I agree that intentions unacted on don't count) with good intentions, however badly they may (and sometimes do) turn out, cannot be grounds for faulting the person who did them?

--A

[duchess of malfi]

I believe that people must be free to act as they wish. They can give or not give, as they wish.

If you are forced to give, than its not a gift. It is a tax.

From a personal perspective, I try to live my life by a "treat others as you wish to be treated" personal rule.

Towards that end, now that we are doing better financially (and we have had some pretty bad times, too...like so many here ) there are certain charities we give to on a regular basis. When I pay our monthly bills, I treat them like bills or my personal savings accounts -- something that has to be paid every month like a bill (that way I don't go out and blow the money on myself or my kids -- its only in the last few years that I've actually had money to blow and it sometimes itches a hole in my wallet ) So every month we buy about 600 pounds of food for our local soup kitchen. There have been times, you see, when we weren't sure if we could scrape up enough rent money to keep off of the streets the following month. So while I've never been hungry, there have been years at a stretch when I have had to worry about food. Likewise utilities. It gets cold here in the winter. And sometimes people have trouble paying their utility bills. So another one we regularly donate to is something called THAW (The Heat and Warmth Fund) that helps people who are down on their luck pay their winter utility bills. Since I would hate to be cold or hungry, I try to help others have food and heat.

While there are plenty of other causes we give to on at least an annual or semi-annual basis, those are the two main onces we give to regularly.

Who wants to be cold or hungry? Who wants their children to be cold or hungry? I realize my money is a drop in the bucket towards what is needed, but even if it helps one person, one family, that is enough.

[The Laughing Man]

Good post duchess. You rock. here in NY we actually had to take action at one point to stop the utility companies from shutting off people who hadn't (couldn't) paid their bill so they wouldn't freeze to death.


Well, however slippery this slope may be I am on right now with this, in the end I have to say that this is so. But somehow I feel there is a difference between "culpability", and "responsibility". But this has to be determined on a case by case basis.

For an example, lets use "drunk driving", a common issue these days. If I get in my car and drive drunk, and kill someone, without "intending" to, I am culpable and responsible. This is where proper foresight, and personal accountability come in to play, for it is a failure of those principles that led to the event. If I am sober and driving, and a deer jumps in front of me, and I swerve to miss it, and kill someone, I do not feel "responsible", but I do feel "remorseful".

This is a darn good question, --A, one that will be difficult to define in absolutes, and one that will more than likely force me to contradict myself at some point, but so it is. I'll let you take it from here, for the purpose of cross examination so far, eh?

[Avatar]

Perhaps I'm lazy, but I'm uninclined to argue it with you really. I don't believe in absolutes myself, and I can see a clear difference between being "culpabale" and being "responsible."

I can sympathise, but I'm not responsible for their circumstances. That's not to say that I wouldn't help if I could, but there is no obligation to help.

Every case should be judged on a circumstantial basis...there is never a solution that will fit every instance.

If negative consequences are the result of a failure of foresight, even that is not the same as deliberately "causing" something bad to happen, or even benefiting by "allowing" it to happen.

We are responsible only for our own actions.

--A

[The Laughing Man]

If negative consequences are the result of a failure of foresight, even that is not the same as deliberately "causing" something bad to happen, or even benefiting by "allowing" it to happen.

We are responsible only for our own actions.

--A

This is where it all gets "shady" for me, and I suppose it's the effort put into the foresight part that defines it for me. If you fail to foresee something "reasonably obvious", then guilty it is. Maybe this falls into the "intelligence/character" group somehow, but sometimes "Who knew?" is masquerading as "Who cares?".

[Avatar]

Very true.

And that brings us back around quite neatly.

Why should we care?

We've discussed how far people think it should go, but not why we should in the first place.

How does it help us? What makes us care or not care? Is selfishness really a bad thing?

--A

[The Laughing Man]

Finding the origins of selfishness, the recognition, and subsequent condemnation to justification of it would be a way to see. Don't forget, these "concepts" were here before we were, they were "taught" to us or "alluded" to in the course of our "indoctrination" into "modern life". Thats for next time, tho, going beddy bye for now. peace y'all

[Prebe]

Selfishness is mostly nature, altruism is mostly nurture. I'm saying mostly, because you can learn to be more selfish, and there is evidence for some types of altrusim being genetic.

[Avatar]

Indeed there is Prebe, to a certain extent at least. And I certainly agree that the origins of selfishness are even more so.

As I just mentioned in Lord Mhorams new thread in the 'Tank, everything that we take as being natural for humans, our society, or social behaviour, are, in evolutionary terms, so new that as humans, we are not used to them yet.

Compared with the millenia that reaching the point that we could have society at, and the established behavioural traits that permitted us to reach it, we're not yet adapted properly to society as human beings.

--A

[Prebe]

Evo-what?

[Avatar]

Very funny.

--A

[The Laughing Man]

Prebe, you are a "nail hitter". If anyone could find an elephant with a microscope, it would be you, heh.
Good point --A, and I would say trust is the central issue, being that we still cannot trust each other to take care of each other. Faith in our fellow man against the "reality" of our fellow man. It'd be like a jump off a cliff into a seemingly bottomless void as a leap of faith. This reveals the flip side of the coin, the fear that mistrust engenders and the uncertainty it instills. Survival anxiety maybe?

[High Lord Tolkien]

Indeed there is Prebe, to a certain extent at least. And I certainly agree that the origins of selfishness are even more so.

As I just mentioned in Lord Mhorams new thread in the 'Tank, everything that we take as being natural for humans, our society, or social behaviour, are, in evolutionary terms, so new that as humans, we are not used to them yet.

Compared with the millenia that reaching the point that we could have society at, and the established behavioural traits that permitted us to reach it, we're not yet adapted properly to society as human beings.

--A

Is it new though?
Are there any animals that help one another for no other reason than being kind?
I have no idea.
But why do whales and dolphins suddenly come to mind though?

[Prebe]

Technically there is a theory of so-called kin-selection in the animal kingdom. There is no kindness in it though. It is a matter of helping individuals closer to yourself because they SHARE MORE GENES with you. I.e. by helping them survive, you help copies of your own genes survive.

Some hymenopterean (bees, ants, wasps etc.) societies are prime examples. Workers give up sex, to serve a big ovulating mass of genes called the queen.

Edit:

If anyone could find an elephant with a microscope, it would be you, heh.

It's what I do for a living man

[Avatar]

It's very new HLT. The only mammalian species that engage in food sharing are the predators. Pack animals, much of whose social behaviour is similar to our own, despite lack of genetic similarity. No primates participate in food sharing.

And as Prebe points out, much "altruism" in animals comes from kin-selection. A Lion pride may share it's food, but the first thing that a dominant male does when he assumes primacy, is kill all the cubs fathered by the last dominant male.

--A