Saturday, February 20, 2010

Is altruism real?

This is a question that I was thinking about and I realised that it is an espectially suitable question now, at the beginning of the lental period. Last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday the beginning of the Lental Period) I went for the evening mass after work, and the preist was discussing the three pillars of Lent, Prayer, Fasting, and acts of goodwill. So I told my self I shall try to actually follow these principles, starting during lent, and maybe would have created a habit by the end of the 40 days and continue...

Then I was just thinking about my own motivations behind these actions of goodwill and realised that it does have a selfish root, it makes me feel good about myself. I think it is also because when I see poor people (specially when I was in Sri Lanka) I would feel guilty for having so much and them so little, so then when I try to be charitable with my time or money, It reduces my distress in witnessing their pain. I enjoy working in the Not-for-Profit sector as it gives me self satisfaction, and I feel like I'm working towards a greater good than my self... Doesn't that sound like a contradtion there?

So I started to read up on this dillema of whether there is such a thing as altruism, and came across this story.

"Abraham Lincoln illustrated the philosophical issue in a conversation with another passenger in a horse-drawn coach. After Lincoln argued that selfishness prompts all good deeds, he noticed a sow making a terrible noise. Her piglets had gotten into a pond and were in danger of drowning. Lincoln called the coach to a halt, jumped out, ran back, and lifted the little pigs to safety. Upon his return, his companion remarked, "Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode?" "Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have no peace of mind all day had I gone and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs.
"Social Psychology" by David Myers, p477

Another interesting quote by Vexen Crabtree on 'Love' considered to be the most giving, unselfish emotion of all

"Love is perhaps the strongest emotion we possess. But love is ultimately selfish; the satisfaction and feel-good that it brings is an ultimate reward. Our instincts and needs underlie any altruistic behaviour, especially when it comes to love. That is part of the beauty of love... that you know your loved one loves you because it makes them feel good. You know that they know your love is selfish, and they are happy that you love them because it makes you feel good. Without this hidden, deeper selfishness, Human love would have less depth. Love is best and most beautiful when it comes from the depths of one person and extends to another, and both know that the other loves them for selfish reasons. We love someone because they make us feel good and they love us because we make them feel good. This combination is a supreme gift to our ego and helps explain why love is easily the most potent emotion."

Being a devout Catholic, these then made me think about religion, what does it mean if all good actually has a selfish root? I believe that God just made us that way so that people would naturally be good, for their own happiness, and for their own survival (though there seems to be bugs in the programming of some people like serial killers!)... After all this thinking and reserach, I still am not much closer to figuring out whether we're all good or all bad, but I will try to continue to be helpful and giving, especially during this lenten period and feel good :)

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Friday, February 05, 2010

Going back in time...

As I was going through some of my old nic nacs from home, I suddenly came across a couple of poems I had written when I was in my early teens. Reading them, made me realise how much I have changed across the years from the painfully shy kid with a strong inferiority complex to today, where I'm quite happy with life and who I am (though I'm always learning everyday)...

These poems made me think of how far I've come in the journey of life... I wander what I'd think reading my blog in 10 or 20 years time...

In my my early teens I considered guys to be of an alien species as I never had brothers and I studied at a single sex convent where the nuns made guys sound like evil octopuses waiting to get their tentacles around us! At the same time I was attracted to them too! So this poem was written with a friend when we were both in our early teens about how we felt... Of course this was an exaggeration, but you get the idea!

Why
I've always wondered why,
I act so weird around a guy.
I go bump into chairs everywhere,
and make them all stare.
So I try to act pretty cool,
In the end making myself look a fool.
The thing is that I wanna have a boy friend,
But I can't with them even a second spend.
And sometimes I wonder why,
I seem to be so shy(Especially in front of guys).
Which I really don't think is wise.
When ever I am self conscious,
To others I seem very anxious.
It really breaks my heart
Oh why oh why is life so hard?

Now after studying and working in a man's world (engineering), and with all my experiences in UK and Switzerland, I think that in the end we're all the same, with fears and hopes and dreams... the way we show them or what we like maybe different, but then they are also different from person to person even of the same sex... One thing that I wonder a lot about is whether what is considered as 'social norms' for men and for women are really inborn or are they due to the way we grew up... the famous nature or nurture debate...

While of course respecting the many biological differences, and knowing that we both have certain things that we tend to be better in, I wander if some of the differences are more to do with how we grew up rather than 'brain programming', even though book after book on men and women seem to claim the opposite... I think as I was the only child, I was both the girl and the boy in the family! So I became very independent and ambitious and liked numbers and technical things (which are considered to be male traits) and at the same time I loved music and dancing and had a strong interest in psychology and people and literature and am not very good at sports (which are considered to be female traits)...

So the more I think of it, the more I feel that people should be allowed to be themselves, rather than putting them into boxes and trying to find labels. To me this is true gender equality, where both men and women are allowed to be themselves as long as they are good people and don't harm others without society dictating terms on how they should behave...

Well I totally went off topic, but will add another old poem before ending this post, this was when I was chubby and tried my best to lose weight, funnily enough now, without trying I've lost all that puppy fat.

Trying to get thin
Some people want to be thin(for example me)
A great figure win
But that'll never be
For I've tried almost everything
Exercising, dieting, aerobics and all, but nothings working
And I won't even grow tall
My problem is that I don't eat much rice
And I try to cut down on other starchy things too
But cookies cakes and fries
I each a lot, Oh yes I do
When it comes to exercise and aerobics
I do them for a few days
And then I quit
And to loose weight I find other ways
So don't ever hope to be fat my dear friend
And with that
I will come to an end


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