Philosophical Questions: Help

[ysabetwordsmith]

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Is it more important to help yourself, help your family, help your society, or help the world?

The world -- because without a world to stand on, you will not have yourself, your family, or your society. At least not within your current life, which will be over.

Also, for idiots arguing that the environment conflicts with the economy -- no. The economy is a subset of the environment. No environment, no economy.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

I've never understood why anyone considers the environment a partisan issue at all; whether you're a liberal or a conservative we all have to live on the same planet and breathe the same air and drink the same water!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Part of it is ignorance. Most people don't understand how connected everything is. They get that everyone lives on the same planet, but they think that they can do things in one place without affecting everywhere else. "One air, one water, one Earth" is not a concept they can grasp.

Part is often religious; Christians believe they were given "dominion" over the Earth. Now if a super-powerful being gave me a super-awesome present, I'd be motivated to take very good care of it. Especially if said being was as violent and abusive as the one described in the Bible. Contrast this with most indigenous religions, where people see themselves as a small part of the Earth with a responsibility to live lightly so they do not damage it.

Part is usually arrogance. Some people believe they can get the cheese without springing the trap, that their misbehavior will not have any consequences, or if it does, the consequences will affect someone other than themselves. Being rich really tends to encourage this.

Part is often age. The older someone gets, the less time is left for their misbehavior to catch up to them. An old person often can wreak havoc and escape into death before the consequences arrive.

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

>>Part is often age. The older someone gets, the less time is left for their misbehavior to catch up to them. An old person often can wreak havoc and escape into death before the consequences arrive.<<

Conversely, the older one gets, the less one has left to lose...which means, among other things that old people are more likely to fight back in muggings.

[see_also_friend]

Ah, but the people who are ignoring the environmental stuff believe in

1 a hierarchical system
2 where moral people are in charge of less moral people, and
3 where moral people are rewarded.

Therefore, the rich CEO is protected from environmental disasters by the rewards for their morality (aka money), while their thousands of workers in some third world country are only poor because of their immorality, and therefore if they experience misfortune it is from their immorality.

Meanwhile the other viewpoint is less hierarchical, and considers caregiving to be moral (as opposed to immorality-encouraging-immorality).

[see_also_friend]

It depends on your priorities and resources.

Yes, we need the world to not be completely destroyed in order to have a family and society. But if you can't fix the world, you might need to prioritize your family or a small corner of society. Or you might have to betray your society to protect your family, or your family to protect your society.

Plus there's the practical bit that for any people foregoing one's friends/relatives causes /social/ difficulties, as betrayal of close confidants is so against standard human mental programming.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Either local-only or wide-only answers are a problem, because things are so interconnected. But nobody is an endless well, taking care of others and the world to the exclusion of taking care of yourself limits how much you can do rather effectively.

[see_also_friend]

Yup.

...and then people are all befuddled as to why you're acting like a burned-out husk, instead of Doing All The Nice Things. :/

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That is true. Modern society is very prone to using people up, then it complains when people are broken.

Re: Yes ...

[see_also_friend]

Well, society does it, which is demoralizing.

But its also not-great when an individual person does that, and then is all befuddled at the results of "forgetting to emotionally-water your friends/family."

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I like the Relationship Bank Account metaphor. It is straightforward, easy to grasp, and far more people know what a bank account is than know what allogrooming is or its modern equivalent social media grooming. They understand that if you try to take out more money than you put in the bank, it gets overdrawn; so they can easily apply that concept to relationships.

A problem is that not everyone wants an equal relationship. Many are looking for people to use and abuse. But the RBA metaphor helps there too, by making it easier for victims to see that behavior as abuse and resource theft.

I like emotional watering too, but I suspect that's less effective nowadays when fewer people have gardens or even houseplants.

Re: Yes ...

[see_also_friend]

>>They understand that if you try to take out more money than you put in the bank, it gets overdrawn; so they can easily apply that concept to relationships.<<

That is a useful metaphor. That said, I can think of 2 problems with it:

1) It assumes there is a common 'currency,' since banks will usually only take currency. With relationships a love-language mishap can have the equivalent of 'depositing' cacao beans or snails to someone who is expecting dollars and cents.

2) The implied capitalism metaphor makes a relationship sound almost like a rigid exchange, and not all relationships are like that. For example, investing in a child or mentee is not a capitalist investment where you have an expected payoff, but more of a pay-it-forward investment, where you might not benefit, but someone (or exponential someone's) will.

>>I like emotional watering too, but I suspect that's less effective nowadays when fewer people have gardens or even houseplants.<<

It makes sense to me, even though I'm not a big gardener, especially since it involves regular maintenance.

And most people do know that if you forget to water your plants, then eventually they will turn all brown and ugly and brittle, at which point it is kind of pointless to complain at the plant for being dead...

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Balance is necessary. Each person should also choose one or more worthy causes to support, and ignore the rest as someone else's responsibility; as you said, nobody can do everything.

But it remains true that without a world to stand on, none of that other stuff is going to continue.