Why Does It Feel So Good To Help Others? Why Do We Help Others So Infrequently?

I don't really care about helping others. You can do what you want but I am not impressed and refuse to be guilt tripped. You probably do it because you want to be liked.

This may be the most honest, not trolling, non-letsrun thread I've ever seen.

Good job.

Charity should not be based on how it makes us feel about ourselves. Its center should be the person in need, not the giver.

I think any classical theory of mutuality (Greeks, Christian era, etc.) would conclude the same. It is largely only the moderns who have started emphasizing the "feel-good" aspect (which has been critiqued, even anciently, as a class-ist construct to assuage the feelings of the richer).

Modern reversed thinking wrote:

Charity should not be based on how it makes us feel about ourselves. Its center should be the person in need, not the giver.

I think any classical theory of mutuality (Greeks, Christian era, etc.) would conclude the same. It is largely only the moderns who have started emphasizing the "feel-good" aspect (which has been critiqued, even anciently, as a class-ist construct to assuage the feelings of the richer).

Great. Thanks for sharing. OP did more good than you today. Why don't you tell us why helping others makes us feel good since you're so learned? There must be some innate reason behind it. It seems like it is natural. I notice it when I do things like help out at a food pantry or even just let someone into traffic.

Ha -- only on letsrun would you get blasted for a post like this. I think we don't help others more often simply because it's difficult, or rather it's not easy. Inertia makes us keep doing what we've been doing. It would have been very easy for you to keep driving in your situation.

There are plenty of homeless people begging for money near my work, and I often feel the impulse to buy them some food, but for some reason I'm terrified of doing anything other than walking on by like usual.

Did you read the post? That was already answered. (which has been critiqued, even anciently, as a class-ist construct to assuage the feelings of the richer). There's also the idea that if you help others, then (perhaps by karma) you too will be helped in some prospective future.

But the poster is both right and wrong to some extent. While obviously there is some satisfaction in helping others (perhaps even in the sense of fulfilling a duty), you shouldn't make charity depend on how it makes you feel. I can name any number of people who don't try to help others because they've been burned before (and thus get a "feelbad" impression).

I suppose that where my parents live (in a nice cozy hamlet) helping at a food pantry is easy and feelgood. More difficult is in the inner city where breaking up fights and even having a knife pulled on you is a reality. Not quite so "feelgood", but probably more necessary than the former (my mother complains that some of their clients are so picky about what they will eat - is it current term for this "First World Problems"?).

While obviously there is some satisfaction in helping others (perhaps even in the sense of fulfilling a duty), you shouldn't make charity depend on how it makes you feel.

This is another good point. Modern theorists like to conflate charity with duty, or justice (either individual or societal). Again the ancients had a stricter philosophical notion. Charity (agape, translated by Jerome as caritas) should be freely given and for the principal benefit of the receiver. The incidental aspects (which were the main focus of the OP) such as "feeling good" should neither be central nor stressed.

Listen, I understand what you are saying. What I am saying - and what I think the OP is saying - is that there is an innate feeling of good that comes over my body when I do something good. It's not a classist construct and I am not rich and looking for friends or some kind of pay back. It just feels good to help someone out.

People are hungry in hamlets and in the inner cities. Both places need volunteers. You don't have to put your life at risk to help others. Sometimes it is as easy as saying hello.

John Prine wrote:

What I am saying - and what I think the OP is saying - is that there is an innate feeling of good that comes over my body when I do something good.

We get it, and this makes you a terrible fvcking person who deserves to die.

GDIF!

At least in the Christian tradition, speaking of one's own good works is considered (at the very least) poor taste, even if done to incite others to do similarly. As the "feel so good" nature often tends to such self-promotion (as evinced in the OP here), it again has never been seen as an impetus for helping others.

The closest example I know of is adoption. Most people who consider adopting quite naturally (in the sense of the OP certainly) envision/want children with few (or no) problems, tending to mutually fulfilling parent/child relationships, etc. The reality for many is quite different (and adoption counselors, at least the good ones, are fairly upfront about this to prospective parents). While I would never disparage anyone for adopting, the only really impressive thing I've seen is a lady who (with her breadwinner husband) specifically asked the agency for those that no one else would want (or take), and she quite openly says that many days she has to force herself to love her four adoptees (all of whom have various "problems", both physically and psychologically).

Just a Few Times wrote:

I would love to hear from others about times when you may have helped someone and felt pretty good about it.

Yes, every day at work...:)

It feels good because the Holy Ghost is blessing you for your service. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Evolutionary psychologists will (try to) tell you that the typical reason for feeling good is indeed "some kind of pay back", perhaps expressed genetically (by some unclear mechanism). But then again, EvPsych is kind of a bunch of nonsense in IMO.

Another example of your principle is employees who enjoy meeting/working with the public (concierge/receptionist the first examples), in the sense that are able to help them (of course, the same employees get annoyed by difficult persons too). Compared to office-bound drones, such people tend be much happier about life in my experience. Man is by nature a social animal (Aristotle IIRC, though Hobbesian thought has poisoned the well).

Unfortunately, one can't expect such heroic virtue to be commonplace... :(

Still, I too admire those that adopt, even if sometimes for more "selfish" feelgood reasons (the worst being those who want "to see what parenthood is like" or some such experimentation).

Perhaps I could say (not meant rudely): charity is quite easy in today's First World? (So much so the governments have taken over a lot of it.) OTOH, didn't the biblical widow give from what she had to live on, instead of her surplus? Again I can't expect much, but isn't there a line about this, concerning those who have been given much?

The only reason why I prod this topic is that much of the "charity gap" (the "poor" versus the "POOR") nowadays is specifically that helping the former is comparatively easy (and often feels good, as you indicate!), while there's a jump discontinuity in the difficulty of helping the latter, so much so that even social justice veterans have suggested throwing them under the bus in effect.

Other people had places to be. Enjoy your slacker life that enables stopping to help.

trollingfordollars wrote:

Other people had places to be. Enjoy your slacker life that enables stopping to help.

Are you asking him to check his privilege? I wish I had time to help others and feel good. Instead I am forced to undergo constant triggers and deal with hate speech in all of my classes. I have no time to help anyone or to feel good about myself because I am not of the privileged class.

this thread is relevant for me. I went to an orientation for helping with an adult literacy program in the city. Honestly, I have not felt so excited for something in a long time. Like I am really enthused about getting started with this group.

As humans, we are social beings and we feel good using our knowledge, skills, and abilities to help others.

I often feel too frightened to help people. I look at pictures of starving Somalian children or victims from brutal wars and ask myself how I am letting this happen, and then I go about my life. I listen to my iPod and buy Jimmy Johns and stuff. It is terrible. I think acting local is best, but even that can be scary and confusing. Am I supposed to give the guy at the stop light a dollar or not? I mean, people say that is not right, but the guy is begging for money at a stoplight, so he obviously needs the money.

I don't know, but I get scared. Maybe I am a huge pussy..

I have a Coexist bumper sticker on my Prius. It makes me feel smug as a bug and oh so superior to all you takers.

Look at me!!!

FarOutMan wrote:

I have a Coexist bumper sticker on my Prius. It makes me feel smug as a bug and oh so superior to all you takers.

Look at me!!!

Blah, blah. In other words, stop trying to have a philosophical-esque discussion on LRC. (Which is probably good advice, for one's sanity.)