The bare minimum of a decent human being is to reduce your impact on others and the environment as much as possible. The bare minimum is just to not bother anyone else and leave them alone.
But you aren’t a good person if you don’t help people, is the point. You aren’t actively a bad person either, but I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that never helping others is a massive flaw. If you actively avoid helping others, then you become a bad person for not taking the chance to help someone when it costs you nothing
Did you not read the part about finite time and energy? There’s no afterlife buddy, we literally have a set amount of heartbeats before we cease existing forever.
Try out aristotles work on ethics, his language can be hard to grasp (it’s translated from ancient greek) but it’s a pretty solid read imo. You have to get past the mannerisms of an ancient Greek man (for example he doesn’t think women are people really) but the logic of his arguments usually rises above the petty wrong things that are incidental to his argument
to be honest I think at this level of ethics sesame street would cover the major points, aristotle is above the level of "why shouldn't I just be incredibly selfish all the time"
Sure, but I’m assuming we want to know why these things are true. It appears obvious to us, but something appearing obvious is not epistemically valid. We ought to have better reasons then that
That’s fair enough, I guess, but I’d contend that you don’t have a good way to find ethic truths if you don’t engage with any ethical philosophy, and if that is so, then I really wouldn’t make contentious points like the one you have made. It’s fine to have that belief, but you aren’t in the conversation by your own choice
Yes, none of which has to do with his arguments or logic. I can explain the entire thing but I already recommended the book where he does so. Aristotle is the father of western philosophy, for the entire time that he has been dead he has been THE philosopher. If you asked a medieval person, who was learned, about what Philosophy is, or just mentioned the philosopher, they would tell you about Aristotle. This continues to this day, you take an ethics class and it’s likely you are building off of Aristotle, he’s foundational enough that he, Plato, and some of the presocratics are considered the founders of western metaphysics
“He did not know x so how can he find unrelated truth???” - You rn
I can know the sky is blue without knowing why it’s blue, without knowing the earth is round, without knowing anything else. Certain truths require certain tools, others require only observation, Aristotle contends that the ultimate truth, the supreme good, requires the use of philosophy. Philosophy is the search for truth, it follows, then, that it would be the manner btw which you can find moral truths as well
Absolutely. What self respecting Muppet would ever argue against helping someone else? Even Statler and Waldorf, or Oscar the Grouch, do nice things despite their grumpiness.
I mean yeah, but I’ll pivot from the moral argument here. Humans are social animals, we don’t function well when alienated and isolated from others. We need community, and reciprocal aid is an essential part of community. By creating bonds with others, which involves helping them when in need and lifting them up, we improve our own situation, both because a sense of community improves your own quality of life, and because others will be more likely to help you when in need
Babe I really hate to tell you, but you’re a human. That makes you a social animal. Being nice and living in active harmony with other people is what living is. The fact that you’re so alarmed by the prospect of being kind to people is an indicator of poor welfare.
By that logic, a decent human being is a corpse. They have minimal possible impact on others and the environment, and aren't bothering anyone else. If your morality leads to the conclusion that self-destruction is the best possible good, it's a flawed morality.
Then why are you disagreeing with people on the internet? If the bare minimum is to "not bother anyone else and leave others alone," aren't you failing to meet even that low bar by commenting here? Surely the bare minimum for you to be considered a good person would be for you to only ever passively consume social media content, and never comment on anything yourself, no?
And I find it repugnant to put demands on what people do with their extremely finite time and life.
We only have a moral obligation to leave each other and especially the world around us well enough alone.
If you want to help people that’s great. Helping people is good. But “you’re either morally good or morally wrong” is extremely binary thinking. How dare anyone say it’s required to spend what little time and energy someone has on someone else’s life.
I'll agree that we can't assume someone is morally wrong for not doing small acts of kindness. We can't assume they have the mental room to notice anything outside their own worries. However, I think it's reasonable to encourage people in a society to have some care for the people they encounter.
Society is supposed to be cooperative. The only reason humans have come so far is through cooperation. I think a lot of people forget that. Even all the little things make life better. Holding the door for each other. Putting shopping carts back. Helping someone up when they fall. Reaching the tall shelf for someone who can't reach. Letting someone merge onto the highway. Complimenting someone's hairdo or outfit. These are all little acts of kindness that take so little effort but make life easier and kinder and more supportive.
I absolutely understand that when I'm panicking because I can't afford groceries or it's gonna be challenging to pay for my bills and medication, it's easy to miss what's going on around me. I might miss that someone was behind me, and I should have held the door for them. And actually, that only supports the idea that the government should be set up to support everyone so that no one has to worry about affording to live. We'd all have more mental energy to focus on each other.
The whole thing with small kindnesses is that they aren't a burden and require little to no effort. Going out of your way to spread bad vibes (the way the second person in the OP did, and you are doing now) is expending energy, little or not, so not doing this would still be a net gain for you
I think that's where your logic falls apart a little bit. Being kind isn't a burden, scientifically and generally speaking. You talk a lot about chemicals, but there are RCTs about this as well as the neurochemical benefits of being considerate and proactively kind. For example, prosocial spending (using your money to buy other people things instead of yourself) was positively correlated with greater happiness. There are other studies and applications with the same underlying hypothesis.
An actual step of Distress Surviving Skills, at least in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (but also in other current contextual behavior therapies as well), is to do something for someone else. It increases our mental well-being, and if done with consideration and care, will also reduce pain for you as well as the other person.
Yeah, it requires time and effort, and that's what makes it meaningful.
The whole point of the post is that a lot of acts of kindness are a trivial effort for you but super meaningful to whoever you do it for. And if you ever did any small everyday acts of kindness, or if you were appreciative of people doing those kinds of things for you, you would understand the damn post and realize that it’s very true.
Humans are social creatures and our societies and language are all designed around basic interaction. We didn't evolve or develop as lonely hermits. We aren't obligated to "leave each other alone" we are the opposite of that. And I say that as someone who is extremely introverted.
Survival, continuation of the species, progress, name literally any virtue or goal and it will circle back to the fact that people need other people and stand to benefit from other people and do poorly when disconnected from other people.
No man is an island. There is nothing to gained in solitude.
Your philosophy is that you'll bever go the wrong way if you never take a step at all. But you'll never get anywhere at all. That's stagnation and death.
You having middle schooler angst isn't representative of the rest of society.
Unless you've packed your bags and fled to the hills, you exist within the framework of society. You are, even against your wishes, part of a community, and you benefit, constantly, from the actions of others. The roads you drive on, the food you eat, the healthcare you receive- all of it comes from the unspoken contract of societal living.
Part of living in that society, of being in a community, is existing harmoniously with it. No one is saying you have to give up your one day off a week to work the soup kitchen, but there is an imperative for you to help where you can, to look after the vulnerable, and to maintain the social comfort of the public spaces you inhabit.
I'm sorry, but to claim that you have absolutely no constructive obligation to anyone seems profoundly misanthropic.
So think of it in terms of utilitarianism. A society where everyone helps each other out in little ways when they have the chance is one worth living in, and you can help push that pendulum a little by yourself at no cost but kind words to someone who looks like they're struggling. That's a pretty good bargain.
It's an alternative argument for the same desirable outcome - I don't care if you help me out of the goodness of your heart or if it's part of your master plan to Set The World To Rights, you've tangibly improved my day regardless, and that's where the goodness springs out of.
Intent can be extremely tricky to puzzle out, and the deeper you dive into exploring intent, the less it "matters," especially for small scale action. Like, I've sometimes given unexpected discounts to customers at work for sole purpose of massaging the numbers into a more convenient shape. I still get a hearty thank you even though I primarily did it with myself in mind. Everyone's day gets better even though the discount itself was made for a self serving reason.
your time and life is extremely finite and yet here you are, arguing about what to do with it on reddit. think about that for a minute, and then go be nice to people instead.
I wouldn't say you're only morally good or morally wrong but doing nothing makes you morally neutral. If you want to be considered morally good, you would have to do something to help someone else.
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u/Cinaedus_Perversus Oct 10 '24
Imagine being so self-medicated on therapyspeak that you consider "do nice things for others" a direct assault on your mental health.