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Some do what's right even if it doesn't feel good. The best charity can be painful.

• freedomben 3y ago
  Definitely, but the pain was decided to be worth it because the feeling the person got from doing the thing (or the pain they avoided by doing the thing) was worth it. For example a friend of mine has an adult kid who is homeless. They have tried to help many times but this person keeps falling back into the same things that led to the situation in the first place. The pain of watching your child go through something can be an incentive to help. My friend has helped his son even though my friend isn't well off and experiences financial pain. He's still responding to an incentive (that of not wanting to watch his child suffer) even though he's experiencing pain from it. If a person believes they are doing the right thing, their brain will release dopamine (aka a reward) simply for acting within their belief system. To be clear, I'm not trying to minimize or dismiss people's sacrifices. I still think they are noble
• unshavedyak 3y ago
  What? Pain has nothing to do with this. The positives outweigh the negatives by whatever criteria the giver uses to decide to do the act of giving. This is always true. No? Even self sacrifice, such as jumping in front of a bus, you deem to be the right thing - you chose an action because you believed it was a positive, for you, action. Just because you die doesn't mean you didn't still felt it was right, in that moment. If you do something you do not believe is a positive it changes from charity to masochism. You're doing it to punish yourself. If you're not punishing yourself, you're gaining something (or net neutral, i suppose, but that's difficult to define). edit: Though arguably even punishing yourself is self interest, as if you're punishing yourself it's because you want to.