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Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Part of what makes acts of kindness praiseworthy is the acceptance of those risks for the sake of another pe

by bmpafa 9y ago

Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Part of what makes acts of kindness praiseworthy is the acceptance of those risks for the sake of another person.

phkahler 9y ago
>> Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Really? I've never heard that. Can you give some examples? Preferably ones that seem harmless but could go wrong. I guess providing such examples is my job but I'm too tiered, so help me out.
- vageli 9y ago
  Someone knocks on your door, bleeding from a wound on their arm. Are the a person in need or an armed assailant waiting to gain entry into your home? A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire? Most any interactions where "help" is more than verbal information transfer usually lead to situations where the helping party is put into a position of vulnerability. To help someone is to literally "go out on a limb" i.e. put yourself in a precarious position.
  - bmpafa 9y ago
    ^ this. also, there's an entire family of laws[1] designed to protect people from certain risks they take on when they decide to help someone in dire need. These are all extreme examples, but I think the parent post example (not giving feedback b/c of liability issues) is cut from the same cloth. Businesses take liability risks day in & day out. For some, the calculus concludes that (practically) selfless gestures, like giving applicants feedback, aren't worth that risk. That, imo, is a shame. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
  - cc439 9y ago
    >A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire? There have been at least 2-3 different murderers who have used that technique in my local area within the last 5 years alone.It's just so wrong that I can't even wrap my head around it.
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  I create random small jobs, and I risk a bit of money in hopes of getting what I want. I don't need to, but I get a joy from creating opportunities.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Killing the messenger - it's true but they'll punish you for hearing it. You may remember that saying, if not: "No good deed goes unpunished." All actions can backfire, I remember an old friend getting reamed out by his friend he'd given a computer to, when the hard drive failed, for not providing enough free maintainence. Given! I had a friendship nearly end when I repaired a friend's computer. Something else went wrong a week later and he just assumed it must have been something I did. A generous uncle of mine is forever finding that temporary favors like free rent are bitterly resented when withdrawn. People ain't all nice all the time. Benefiting someone is not the same as pleasing them; psychopaths and narcissists please others, but the rest of us like to mix in a little benefiting-but-not-necessarily-pleasing now and then. Otherwise, the world just falls apart.
- chepaslaaa 9y ago
  ''Dressed in faded, threadbare GoreTex, a couple of months shy of his sixty-ninth birthday, Pete was a gangly, slightly stooped man who had returned to the high reaches of the Himalaya after a long absence. In 1966 he’d made the first ascent of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest point. In 1958 he’d made history as the driving force behind the first ascent of Hidden Peak, a 26,470-foot mountain in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan—the highest first ascent ever achieved by American climbers. Pete was even more famous, however, for playing a heroic role in an unsuccessful expedition to K2 in 1953, the same year Hillary and Tenzing reached the peak of Everest. The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realizing that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain’s steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.*'' Jon Krakauer wrote that in Into thin air

by bmpafa 9y ago

Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Part of what makes acts of kindness praiseworthy is the acceptance of those risks for the sake of another person.

phkahler 9y ago

>> Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Really? I've never heard that. Can you give some examples? Preferably ones that seem harmless but could go wrong. I guess providing such examples is my job but I'm too tiered, so help me out.

vageli 9y ago
Someone knocks on your door, bleeding from a wound on their arm. Are the a person in need or an armed assailant waiting to gain entry into your home? A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire? Most any interactions where "help" is more than verbal information transfer usually lead to situations where the helping party is put into a position of vulnerability. To help someone is to literally "go out on a limb" i.e. put yourself in a precarious position.
- bmpafa 9y ago
  ^ this. also, there's an entire family of laws[1] designed to protect people from certain risks they take on when they decide to help someone in dire need. These are all extreme examples, but I think the parent post example (not giving feedback b/c of liability issues) is cut from the same cloth. Businesses take liability risks day in & day out. For some, the calculus concludes that (practically) selfless gestures, like giving applicants feedback, aren't worth that risk. That, imo, is a shame. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
- cc439 9y ago
  >A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire? There have been at least 2-3 different murderers who have used that technique in my local area within the last 5 years alone.It's just so wrong that I can't even wrap my head around it.
mathgladiator 9y ago
I create random small jobs, and I risk a bit of money in hopes of getting what I want. I don't need to, but I get a joy from creating opportunities.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Killing the messenger - it's true but they'll punish you for hearing it. You may remember that saying, if not: "No good deed goes unpunished." All actions can backfire, I remember an old friend getting reamed out by his friend he'd given a computer to, when the hard drive failed, for not providing enough free maintainence. Given! I had a friendship nearly end when I repaired a friend's computer. Something else went wrong a week later and he just assumed it must have been something I did. A generous uncle of mine is forever finding that temporary favors like free rent are bitterly resented when withdrawn. People ain't all nice all the time. Benefiting someone is not the same as pleasing them; psychopaths and narcissists please others, but the rest of us like to mix in a little benefiting-but-not-necessarily-pleasing now and then. Otherwise, the world just falls apart.
chepaslaaa 9y ago
''Dressed in faded, threadbare GoreTex, a couple of months shy of his sixty-ninth birthday, Pete was a gangly, slightly stooped man who had returned to the high reaches of the Himalaya after a long absence. In 1966 he’d made the first ascent of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest point. In 1958 he’d made history as the driving force behind the first ascent of Hidden Peak, a 26,470-foot mountain in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan—the highest first ascent ever achieved by American climbers. Pete was even more famous, however, for playing a heroic role in an unsuccessful expedition to K2 in 1953, the same year Hillary and Tenzing reached the peak of Everest. The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realizing that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain’s steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.*'' Jon Krakauer wrote that in Into thin air