Selfless Act

[Selena]

Today I brought up "selfless act" in a discussion with nagi, and personally I find the topic rather interesting in the sense that I'd like to hear other persons opinion(s) on the topic and perhaps modify my own point of view as I go. Here we have a rather new discussion part of the forum, so why not bring in the lot of you, right?

Well. Here's the deal:

After many years of self searching, scientific/social interest and logical thinking, I've come to the loose conclusion that human beings are incapable of doing pure selfless acts.

Now, I base that opinion on the fact that humans somehow gets a reward for their actions, no matter how meager and meaningless, or harmful to itself the act might seem, consciously or unconsciously.

If you do a nice deed, it most likely will make you feel good (unconscious stimuli from the brain), thus your action has been rewarded.

I believe that, you are hardwired to be rewarded for acting in the benefit of your group, as it strengthens your groups chances of survival, thus your chance of survival, not to mention your social status within that group, and so it is a selfish act.

So, even if you give your life for the group, for your children or your loved ones, or even a stranger, it is selfish biological hard-wiring that gives you the leeway to act that way. Also social teachings to strengthen the group mentality ultimately boils down to the survival of the self.



What do you think?


PS! This might be crappy written and poorly explained, so I might come back and rewrite it to make it clearer or whatnot, if I do, I'll highlight and explain the changes made. *nods*

[327]

I think its true for a big part. but i want to make a little difference here.
If somebody ( and you dont know him and you will never see him again ) have a problem and you help him. then i will call it a pure selfless act when your mind was only on him for that moment. Also when it gives me a nice feeling.

Its something els if your mind was on the newspaper, tv talkshows, friends etc to tell about your heroic action.

Also there are some situations in live that you know when you help the other you get a lot of problems. By example Your friends are raping a minor age girl. When you choose against your friends then you can get a lot of problems. They know where you live, can put your house on fire etc. i will call it a pure selfless act if you do it. I dont think that it will give me a good feeling to do that because i betray my friends. The only reward here is that i can look in the mirror again for the rest of my live.

I know here is meaby the reward my nice face in the mirror. But that was not on my mind. My motivator was to help the poor girl also when i know that i get much problems.


I think we have to made that difference. then we can choose our actions

lets made a scale with on the left side the pure selfless act and on the right side the actions with full awareness of te rewards. i think with all your actions you are somwhere on the scale. sometimes ( i hope the most times ) somewhere on the left side and sometimes on the right side.

BTW this not a scale from good to evil. because also with the best intention and with a pure selfless act you can by mistake blow up the world. and you can save the world from hungry only with the intention to be famous and rich and get a lot of nice ladys on your side.

So i like to make choice to made some difference and my keyword of this is awareness

When you awarness is totaly not on the rewards (at the moment or before the action ) i will call it a pure selfles act.
When you awareness is totaly on the rewards ( at the moment or before the action ) i call it a egocentric action.
I know its most of the time a mix but i hope your most actions are on the left side.
Dont feel bad if you do good and get a good feeling. Lets call it the law of nature :)

Greetings 327

[Nicoleise]

Hm... I can see your reasoning, but it doesn't work for me. If this was the case, it would not explain why people do bad things (i.e. if we strive for stimuli of the brain through good deeds, then why do people ignore oppurtunities to do good, or even downright do them the bad way?)

I also think that people do things without the expectance of a reward. I can give you an example from my work. I was at a client, installing some very sophisticated lighting in their living room. Thus, it took me a good while, and the family heads off for a weekend trip to Sweden, leaving me with a housekey and an alarmcode for a house stuffed with B&O products.

The thought to steal anything from them doesn't even cross my mind. On the other hand, I noticed something red in their garden, only to see that their daughter had set a bunch of clotches out to dry. They were gone for the entire weekend and the weather was sunny, so I decided to take the clotches in because it would fade the colours from staying out.

I think you can agree both options derrive from the same situation and are excactly opposite.

If I were only going for stimuli, emptying a house full of B&O products and either setting them off on the market or keeping them would probably bring me more than taking in their drying clotches. I didn't expect a reward for it.

I simply did it because I had discovered a problem, and that gave me two options ;
- ignore it
- prevent it
Ignoring it wouldn't get me yelled at or anything.

The only thing that made me do it is my concience. I wish to help in making the world a better place, and this reflects in every aspect of my person. I always try to make people happier, I always find joy in other peoples happiness rather than being enveous. The same principle would apply to me if I saw someone in a life threatening situation, which is where the selfless act term finds its true potential. I would immediately assess the situation, and figure out if I could do anythiing at all. I wouldn't commit suicide to help someone else, because that only gives rescue workers more bodies, but I would go to the next-shortest extend of that. I am one of those people who would run through fire, if I knew someone could not get out, and I could help them. Why? Concience. I would have a hard time accepting the thought that I could have intervened (successfull or not) in a situation, that later claimed a life or inflicted injury. Or even worse - if I caused it.

I would almost say it's an expectation to myself. I expect myself to do the right thing, and will be disappointed if I dont. But stimuli? No way. :)

[Uryu]

Well.....I can somewhat see what Nico is saying, but as for why people do bad things......that just humans for you. Some do good and some do bad, we can't really change what they did, as it already happened. Some people (eg-serial killers) actually get a kick out of doing harmful things to others. That's not saying that we don't have our good samaritans every now and then. If they're rewarded, it's because someone else felt they deserved it.

I recall when a middle-aged man saved a college boy when he fell onto the train track from a seizure. No one told him he had to do it, he simply made a choice.

Our choices makes us who we are, be it good or bad.