In your opinion, are people basically

[Kain99]

But you're obviously telling us about it because you know you did something nice for someone else, therefore you're getting the pleasure of us knowing you did a good deed. So you're getting something out of it.

If I plastered the boards with every nice thing I did Vrai... you'd be blowing chunks!

 

[vraiblonde]

I think you guys are thinking of "payoff" as money, or a favor in return or something tangible. I'm literally talking about the good feeling you get knowing you did the right thing or something nice for someone else. And THAT is something.

 

[vraiblonde]

If I plastered the boards with every nice thing I did Vrai... you'd be blowing chunks!

I doubt it. I do nice things for people all the time, sometimes anonymously so there's not even a "thank you" involved. But I get something out of it - the happiness of knowing I helped someone else.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

 

[Danzig]

But you're obviously telling us about it because you know you did something nice for someone else, therefore you're getting the pleasure of us knowing you did a good deed. So you're getting something out of it.

I did something good but obviously I can't tell you about it because then you would know I did something nice for someone else, therefore I'm not getting the pleasure of you knowing I did a good deed. So I'm not getting something out of it.

 

[Kain99]

I think you guys are thinking of "payoff" as money, or a favor in return or something tangible. I'm literally talking about the good feeling you get knowing you did the right thing or something nice for someone else. And THAT is something.

You have a point. Even though Pixie isn't verbalizing it properly so does she. Sometimes you do the right thing and pay for it dearly.

 

[vraiblonde]

Sometimes you do the right thing and pay for it dearly.

That is very true. But at least you know you did the right thing and that's something.

 

[Kain99]

I doubt it. I do nice things for people all the time, sometimes anonymously so there's not even a "thank you" involved. But I get something out of it - the happiness of knowing I helped someone else.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

When you put it that way.... Yes, I totally get it. I'm just not so sure, that's the only thing that motivates us ya know?

 

[vraiblonde]

I'm just not so sure, that's the only thing that motivates us ya know?

Then what else would it be? People are motivated by pleasure and deterred by pain.

 

[sleuth]

I did something good but obviously I can't tell you about it because then you would know I did something nice for someone else, therefore I'm not getting the pleasure of you knowing I did a good deed. So I'm not getting something out of it.

But you are getting the pleasure of knowing that you did something good for someone else, even if no one else knows it. :shrug:

 

[sleuth]

Honestly, I fail to see what is so hard to understand or so cynical about this concept.

Vrai, I don't think they are not "getting it" so much as "not admitting" it. I think it's because most people don't want to admit that they're motivated by selfish desires. :shrug:

 

[BuddyLee]

I think most people are selfish.
But then I think that's good, so long as your selfishness doesn't come to the point of greed or ruthlessness.

I'm selfish and proud of it. Everything I do, including the stuff I do for other people, is because I think it will make me happier and wealthier. When I do something for someone else, I do it because that person's happiness is imperative to my own, even if for just a few moments.

Everyone is selfish, some more than others. End of story.

 

[BuddyLee]

Agree 100% with Sleuth and Vrai. I even mustered up an essay for my final philosophy presentation on selfishness. The only possible way I can think for one to be unselfish is to have true love within something in the act they are committing.

 

[sunflower]

To me, the definition of stupid is knowing better, and doing it anyway. Repeatedly. Even though every time you do that particular action, you get bad results.

I agree with you 100% vrai

 

[SamSpade]

This POV does obviate words like "Charity" and "Selfless".
And I don't see a problem with that. I still do things because I get something, even though it may not even be obvious to myself, out of it.

I guess my perspective is that - it IS perspective. AND because finding the reason for the action is taking place AFTER the action occurs.

We do some of this all the time with regard to politics. Take the war. Was there a legitimate concern in this administration that Iraq would become one large feeding frenzy of terrorists, with a vengeful madman who had billions of dollars to spend giving away WMD's like candy? Was he any kind of threat to us? Or did he do this out of a sense of revenge, spite, political advantage or to gain international advantage over Middle East oil?

If you think Bush is basically *bad*, your choice is easy.
If you think Bush is basically *good*, your choice is also easy.

If you believe it's *impossible* for people to ever be motivated by *anything* other than a desire to help themselves, than any apparently selfless act, no matter HOW clearly 'selfless' it is, is purely an act of selfishness. Thus, running into a burning building to save a stranger's child or diving into the freezing Potomac to save an unknown Air Florida victim - that kind of heroism is sheer bullsh*t - pure selfishness. That's just the way you're going to interpret it, because you've decided before the event ever occurs that it WILL be selfish. It doesn't matter what the actual thoughts that run through the "hero"'s mind.

If you believe as I do, that not only ARE there acts of selflessness, there are loads of irrelevant actions that are neither (case in point : why did I take the trash out in last night's freezing cold? I could give a crap if it piles up; I didn't do it last week. I did it, because I did it, just like I got the mail - it had nothing to do with self at all) - if you believe that, then you see it differently.

But EACH has to do with your perspective *before* you see the action.

It's like Mel Gibson, in "Signs". Don't believe in miracles? Then people just get lucky. Do believe in miracles? You'd be amazed at how often they happen.

If you're cynical about love - all references to 'romance' in TV and movies will make you sneer. If you're in love and believe in it - the SAME ones may make your heart glow.

It boils down to choices you make.

 

[Hello6]

If 99.9% of the people are basically good, why is 3.1% of the adult population in prison or on parole? You can't fool me, I listen to NPR
6.6 MILLION people in America's jails, prisons or on parole in 2001. That's a lot of people who basically suck.

 

[Hello6]

I doubt it. I do nice things for people all the time, sometimes anonymously so there's not even a "thank you" involved.

I'd say thank you

 

[SamSpade]

If 99.9% of the people are basically good, why is 3.1% of the adult population in prison or on parole? You can't fool me, I listen to NPR
6.6 MILLION people in America's jails, prisons or on parole in 2001. That's a lot of people who basically suck.

I guess it depends. At one time, that prison number would have included a member of my family whom I otherwise think of as a 'good person'. A good person who used to drink a lot. A good person who (now diagnosed as bipolar) takes her medication and has no such problems any longer.

I tend to think of *felons*, drug dealers, thieves, rapists, wife-beaters, pedophiles and muggers as 'scum'. But the prisons aren't overfull of these. The prisons have way too many people in there on charges as light as drug possession. Yeah, I know it's against the law, and I am FOR it being against the law, but not everyone who has gone to jail is 'scum'. My brother-in-law once spent a night in jail for resisting arrest (translation: he swung back after they beat the crap out of him in the precinct bathroom. You get a *little* perturbed when you're washing your face in the sink, and a cop decides to repeatedly ram your face into the porcelain).

But my second point is, so the hell what? If the percent of crooks in lockup is that high, good on us. It means someone is probably doing their job.

 

[Tonio]

The prisons have way too many people in there on charges as light as drug possession.

There are some compelling arguments for decriminalization:

http://www.slate.com/id/2110987/

Do you know anyone who really believes in the "war on drugs" as it is supposedly waged in the United States? It is widely understood to be the main index of pointless and costly and unjust incarceration, a huge source of corruption in police departments, and a cause of crime in its own right as well as a source of tainted and "cut" narcotics. And that is before you even consider absurdities and cruelties like the denial of medical marijuana, or the diversion of personnel and resources from the war against more threatening gangsters. Our entire state policy, at home and abroad, is devoted not to stopping a trade that actually grows every year, but rather to ensuring that all its profitable means of production, distribution, and exchange remain the fiefdom of criminal elements. We consciously deny ourselves access to properly refined and labeled products and to the vast revenue that could accrue to the Treasury instead of to the mobsters here and overseas.
This demented legacy of the Nixon administration will have to be abandoned sooner or later, and I believe that the threatened sacrifice of Afghanistan to the dogma may be the "tipping point." There are numerous policy planners, prison officials, policemen, elected politicians, and scientific specialists, on the intelligent Right as well as the intelligent Left, who have concluded that decriminalization is an urgent necessity. It's hard to think of any other single reform that could make more difference in more areas. The idea offers a way out of the current sterile red state/blue state dichotomy. It ought to be the next big thing.

 

[2ndAmendment]

I guess my perspective is that - it IS perspective. AND because finding the reason for the action is taking place AFTER the action occurs.
...

If you believe it's *impossible* for people to ever be motivated by *anything* other than a desire to help themselves, than any apparently selfless act, no matter HOW clearly 'selfless' it is, is purely an act of selfishness. Thus, running into a burning building to save a stranger's child or diving into the freezing Potomac to save an unknown Air Florida victim - that kind of heroism is sheer bullsh*t - pure selfishness. That's just the way you're going to interpret it, because you've decided before the event ever occurs that it WILL be selfish. It doesn't matter what the actual thoughts that run through the "hero"'s mind.

If you believe as I do, that not only ARE there acts of selflessness, there are loads of irrelevant actions that are neither ... - if you believe that, then you see it differently.

...

It boils down to choices you make.

Well said.

I am glad that you, I, and many others are not as cynical as vrai, BL, sleuth and some others.

 

[SamSpade]

Well, this subject probably deserves its own thread. I could get behind decriminalization of drug laws IF enforcement of crimes committed while *ON* drugs were more severe - e.g. you don't go to jail for smoking crack, but you *absolutely* go to jail if you drive your car while on crack.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of faith in courts promising to better enforce the laws.