This is bound to be controversial, but i'm not shy of that, so here goes. Whilst at work last night (I work in a pub and restaurant) I was waiting on a table of six or so people, two of which happened to be disabled and reliant on wheelchairs for mobility. During the course of this interaction I began to consider the origin of what we call genuine good deeds, or helpfull and good behaviour. When someone helps and assists someone who is, such as in this instance, less able bodied than ourselves, who are we actually really trying to help? Are we genuinely trying to help the other person, so that their situation is assisted or improved, or really are we simply satisfying our own need to feel that we are living a virtuous and good life, and thus massaging our ego? This leads to the question, much debated, of 'are there really any selfless actions?'. We are vicarious beings, such is our nature, and when this subject is examined in my mind I find it difficult ot reason otherwise. When can we say that we ever engage in completely selfless and good behaviour, for are we not merely feeding our personal desire to feel virtuous and good? We crave this justification for our existence, that we are justifying our lives, presence and being in this world. This is the reason we feel guilt and dissapointment when we have 'been bad'.
The content of this question can be narrowed down to this;
Are good deeds really selfless and altruistic?
There is a debate on this open at http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/122573.
My thoughts on this subject are not a closed book, but open and ever evolving, so please, any elaboration is most welcome.
3 comments:
Oliver......
I have been reading you blog , and what a gem it is, however I must admit I found this particular article the most poignent, I think you have made a very interesting point, perhaps some other things need to be considered? Firstly as you said you were at work, had you not assisted the disabled folk you may well have got in trouble, or even sacked in the crazy politically correct world in which we live, but you were at work and thus helping anyone is your role . However I do see your point quite clearly, had you for example noticed a disabled person struggling to get through a door at uni, they were, lets say ten feet away from you and you were aware of other people being closer, do you A ) Hold out for somone else to help (and hope no one noticed you watching and waiting) or B)Run to their aid immidiatly, having no prior thought of it was or was not the right thing to do.
I could go on and on about this But I wont bore you for too much longer, what Im saying is this, I personally belive its very dependant on the individual, if they are by nature a truely more selfless person, and of course ye old upbringing has a large influence in how we respond to that type of situation.
When I left school I worked in a nursing home, a paid job I must point out, but not well paid and clearly not a job that everyone could do or would want to. Did I choose that job because I felt I was helping peole less fortunate than me? or because on some level it would make me feel good about myself?
I suppose I better go and think about that!
Em x
hhhm this is an interesting debate. Personally i do think that you can do a good deed and not feel good about yourself. i work in a care home, i enjoy my job but some shifts i go home and i dont feel good about myself, i feel tired and altough i know i worked hard, i dont feel ike "oooh im so good working in a cae home" i feel like moaning! haha some residents in the home are bad tempered and helping them makes you mad, not feel good about yourself... my ego isn't rubbed yet i still have helped them in tasks they cantdo for themselves...if you get where i'm going with this?
I personally think it’s society’s way of adjusting to disabled people’s needs. I mean, who are we to say that someone who has lost one of their senses or limbs, etc are ‘disabled’ surely they are just disabled in the view of our society. It’s just the way we’ve structured the world that means that ‘disabled’ people are literally unable to get around like others do. At the end of the day it we didn’t keep making buildings hundreds of feet in the air than disabled people would be able to get around just as well as others as they wouldn’t have to have ‘disabled’ access. Maybe if we made the world so that it accommodates everyone, everyone would have the same ‘abilities’. I can see this is a near impossibility but perhaps it can be said that if this was the case you wouldn’t feel any different about helping a disabled person than you would anyone else.
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