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While not a substitution for scientific study, I always knew this. When people are comfortable themselves, they tend to be more kind, understanding, and altrui
by rg111 4y ago
While not a substitution for scientific study, I always knew this.
When people are comfortable themselves, they tend to be more kind, understanding, and altruistic.
I also suspect that this is also a long-term phenomena as opposed to the short-term implications featured in this study.
When growing up, I have seen those people become altruistic, helpful, and have more bandwidth for other people’s mistakes first who started earning comfortably first.
My theory is this- being socio-economically comfortable with peace in mind makes you more tolerant, altruistic, and kind overall.
Thus study mentions only "empathetic" people. But I think this goes beyond them.
- xtiansimon 4y agoIsn’t this just to say, when your belly is full, and you see people suffering hunger, you don’t feel yourself threatened. If you have surplus, you can be generous of heart, spirit, and material, because your mind is not clouded by the emotions of your own suffering.
- slim 4y agoSince "socio-economically comfortable" is relative (some people are socio-economically comfortable with much less than other people) I'd argue it does not go beyond the general notion of "empathetic people"
- jjoonathan 4y agoCompetition kills generosity.
- fullshark 4y agoCompetition also makes the world go round
- necovek 4y agoNope, it's gravity. And cooperation. Humans have risen above other species because of their cooperative approach (eg. sharing knowledge by passing it through language, forming communities with broader goals to protect the entire group, etc). This is pretty evident in all the stories of those children raised by animals in the wild: none of them develop much past their animal caretakers.
- whirlwin 4y agoYou could say the competition lies in maintaining and creating new relationships, in order to be able to cooperate well
- Jensson 4y agoBut competition is how we get out of local maxima, disruptive improvements needs competition, they don't happen through cooperation. For example, lets say you have a better way to make pots. You show it to people, but nobody listens, they think that their way of making pots is better. How do you actually help them get benefit from your discovery? Well, you set up a competition, so it can be clear to everyone which way is best. Then you beat the old way of making pots, they have to admit that they were wrong and now everyone benefits (except the old pot makers who now has to relearn their things and lose their status as masters).
- wahern 4y agoCompetition in the natural world is typically zero sum. In the human world cooperation and competition aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact we tend to build societies that leverage competition for mutual gain--i.e. cooperative competition. In any event, I think the point is that [altruistic, non-kin, systemic] cooperation is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species, not that it's the only dynamic at play or even the one that predominates across all discrete social interactions.
- necovek 4y agoVery nicely put, that was exactly my point.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- User23 4y agoCompetition and generosity are unrelated. Many cultures in fact have competitions in which status is gained by being more generous. Perhaps the most iconic is the potlatch[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
- slim 4y agoGenerosity kills competition
- kizer 4y agoIt’s certainly a privilege to be generous, almost by definition; you have to _have_ in order to _give_, abstractly. Whether the currency is in the form of self-esteem, wealth, status, etc. One of the most important things I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older. I just lived in my comfortable bubble growing up so of course it was easy to be “nice”. Of course I still believe we should always maintain a civil standard, but I understand now rudeness’ usually sad origins so to speak (emotional pain from abuse, life, whatever).
- hosh 4y agoThough I've seen some amazing people who have very little still being generous. And I have also seen crises wear down good people and turn them into ungenerous wrecks of themselves. In the end, what I learned is that people are people, and I really can't judge anything by the cover. I have no idea what else is going on with someone, or their character and capacity to meet great hardships. And even if they have little capacity ... they are still people. How well that holds up in my own moments of crises? I can do a lot better.
- blooalien 4y agoI wish I could up-vote this comment more than once.
- Swizec 4y agoWe had an interesting experience with this recently. A butcher accidentally added an extra zero and charged us $640 instead of $64 for our purchase. We realized a few days later when I noticed our credit card spend looks strangely high for the month. We're regulars so the next time we were there we said "Hey it looks like you overcharged us last week. Can you fix it? We got x,y,z and it doesn't sound like that adds up to $640??" The butcher people were super apologetic, reviewed their numbers, and refunded us. They specifically said "Wow you're so nice about this! Most people would be shouting and screaming and going crazy" We're fortunate enough that a hiccup like that isn't a big deal. Plenty of credit card balance to buffer the hiccup and if worst comes to worst, we can issue a chargeback. And if even that doesn't work, eh we'll be unhappy but fine.
- vmception 4y agoI would have just chargebacked immediately when reviewing the card statement Like an ongoing gameshow of Jeopardy: bzzt wrong price And then maybe contacted them to do it again But I definitely wouldn't have been confrontational either, I’m surprised people would bother being aggressive about it, maybe if they used a debit card or were broke/illiquid
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoYou familiar with how shitty card companies make that for vendors when you charge back? Not everyone would want to do that to their weekly butcher shop.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoI don't think the butcher shop would agree to be their weekly butcher shop anymore if they pulled that shit.
- throwanem 4y agoI wouldn't. Granted, Steam or Amazon pulling an entire account over one chargeback, as has been reported of both, remains bullshit. But dragging a small shop into that process without even trying to fix the problem with a friendly conversation? That's a customer I'm probably happy to fire.
- alexpetralia 4y agoStress erodes our buffer against external shocks. We can't avoid all stresses in life, nor would we want to (some acutre stress is great), but chronic stress can consume any additional slack we have to deal responsibly with adverse events.
- avgcorrection 4y agoSounds like a good excuse to make a plan to get ahead first before helping anyone. What’s my five year plan? To ruthlessly beat my opposition so that I will be in a better place to help the needy. Actually scratch that—make it a fifteen year plan.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rg111 4y agoThe world is not a zero-sum game like it was 250 years ago. I am not a company in a low-margin, huge-scale business. I am a person. A human being. I do not need to "ruthlessly beat my opposition" to be happy and comfortable. And a person is not a 2-tensor with two digits- altruism and success. My point is- when you are comfortable, content- no matter whether you earn money or not, or how much you earn, you tend to be more altruistic.
- avgcorrection 4y agoI concede that you must be a very altruistic and empathetic person.
- imtringued 4y agoThis is how relative poverty is born. One man doing the work of ten, leaving nine with nothing to do but depend on the first. If the first were to stop working once he has enough for himself, the other nine would be allowed to work for themselves.
- tintedfireglass 4y agoSounds like what Mao did in China 70 years ago lol
- rjh29 4y agoSeems like this could be a feedback cycle too. Be less kind to people and they'll treat you badly in return.
- pcmaffey 4y agoThis is why ending poverty should be the number 1 priority of our society. It puts *everyone* in a better situation to collectively solve other problems.
- pjmorris 4y agoI'm inclined to agree. Are you aware of the Poor People's Campaign? https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/ https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/ My sense is that it'll take action on the part of people who aren't activists to really shake things up, but the PPC seems like a start.
- zarmin 4y agoThis is an issue I care deeply about, thanks for the link. I just donated. Having said that...from their homepage: "The poo is immoral" https://i.imgur.com/4Cay0Zw.png https://i.imgur.com/4Cay0Zw.png
- pmoriarty 4y agoIt should be the number 1 priority, but at the same there have been multiple studies that show poor people are more likely to be altruistic than rich people.
- chris37879 4y agoWhich is why the goal isn't to make everyone rich. It's to end poverty. Those aren't the same thing, exactly. Think like, Star Trek. They have ended poverty, but it's not by making everyone wealthy.
- renewiltord 4y agoAn interesting corollary of this is that comfortable and wealthy people are going to be nicer to you than poor people.