Altruism

Marcel Mauss's book The Gift contains a passage: "Note on alms." This note describes the evolution of the notion of alms (and by extension of altruism) from the notion of sacrifice. In it, he writes:

Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice, on the other. Generosity is an obligation, because Nemesis avenges the poor and the gods for the superabundance of happiness and wealth of certain people who should rid themselves of it. This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a principle of justice. The gods and the spirits accept that the share of wealth and happiness that has been offered to them and had been hitherto destroyed in useless sacrifices should serve the poor and children.

This seems to suggest that it's the responsibility of those who have so much that they can spend on luxury items (the "useless sacrifices"😉 to share their wealth with others who do not have it. How does this fit with the approach I often see in this forum which is "if I earned or inherited it, I don't have to share it with anyone less fortunate, because only socialists/marxists/whoever do that" ?

What's important in life? Which path do you follow?

Being humane without thinking about it. There is no agenda.
Being righteous by thinking about it. There is an agenda.
Resorting to convention (law, ettiquette, etc.) for lack of the above.

If you don't feel it's wrong to see people needy (or turn it around: if having material makes you happy, what are you missing?), you may feel obligated.
If you don't feel morally obligated, you get lawfully enticed.

I don't think it's God or law or moral obligation which makes altruism flow.
It's helping an old lady down the stairs without thinking about it first. Just doing and being.

Say you're sitting at a table eating and someone sits down beside you, don't you automatically offer him some of your food?
And if you do, do you do it without thinking?
Or if you do, do you do it because you feel obligated to?
Or if you do, do you do it because there's a law forcing you to share your food?

And if you don't, the path you're on is as thin as an eggshell and you cannot end as you think you will.

- Loosely translated from the Tao Te Ching chapters 35 to 40 (obviously the granny crossing the road isn't in there though) -

And for some reason, I do think there's a very strong core of truth in it.

Originally posted by shavixmir
What's important in life? Which path do you follow?

...without thinking about it first.


And if you do, do you do it without thinking?

Yeah, for you the "not thinking" part is strong.

Originally posted by Kewpie
Marcel Mauss's book The Gift contains a passage: "Note on alms." This note describes the evolution of the notion of alms (and by extension of altruism) from the notion of sacrifice. In it, he writes:

Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice, on the other. Generosity is an obligation, ...[text shortened]... have to share it with anyone less fortunate, because only socialists/marxists/whoever do that" ?

One can use socialist arguments but others are also applicable.

One is the concept of "moral luck."

The existing distribution of income and wealth, say, is the cumulative effect of prior distributions of natural assets—that is, natural talents and abilities—as these have been developed or left unrealized, and their use favored or disfavored over time by social circumstances and such chance contingencies as accident and good fortune. Intuitively, the most obvious injustice of the system of natural liberty is that it permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by these factors so arbitrary from a moral point of view. (Rawls 1971, p. 72.)

Another is the idea of the meritocracy, a concept grotesquely misunderstood.

Published in 1958, though largely set in 2034, Michael Young’s much-cited but often misunderstood The Rise of the Meritocracy is ultimately a dystopian warning against a rampant, self-serving, IQ-driven, intolerant meritocracy – a meritocratic elite emerging largely through intelligence testing and educational selection. ... ... essentially the argument is that carving up society along restlessly meritocratic lines – “merit” defined by Young as I + E, intelligence plus effort – excessively privileges the winners, bringing out their least appealing qualities, and badly undervalues the contribution of the losers.

In the first case, people claim too much merit for their personal success when it is typically a product of luck and factors outside their own control. In the second case, people may indeed succeed through merit, [though of course their merit is itself a product of luck] but the rewards they claim are excessive and vastly disproportionate, while the less successful are allowed unfairly small shares of the wealth to which their efforts also contributed.

Originally posted by Wajoma
Yeah, for you the "not thinking" part is strong.

Who'd have imagined you couldn't understand it...

Originally posted by shavixmir
Who'd have imagined you couldn't understand it...

I understand it fine, it calls for sacrifice 'without thinking' or some mysterious un-named bogeyman type bad karma thing is going to happen to you.

(...at least the god botherers give it some form and call it hell)

News for Shavmiester:

Good things happen to bad people.
Bad things happen to good people.

and vice versa

Sacrificing yourself in the hope that this will majically cease is futile.

Originally posted by Wajoma
I understand it fine, it calls for sacrifice 'without thinking' or some mysterious un-named bogeyman type bad karma thing is going to happen to you.

(...at least the god botherers give it some form and call it hell)

News for Shavmiester:

Good things happen to bad people.
Bad things happen to good people.

and vice versa

Sacrificing yourself in the hope that this will majically cease is futile.

shavixmir is right. You really don't understand it.

Originally posted by finnegan
shavixmir is right. You really don't understand it.

Go ahead, break out your 'interpretation'.

Originally posted by Kewpie
Marcel Mauss's book The Gift contains a passage: "Note on alms." This note describes the evolution of the notion of alms (and by extension of altruism) from the notion of sacrifice. In it, he writes:

Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice, on the other. Generosity is an obligation, ...[text shortened]... have to share it with anyone less fortunate, because only socialists/marxists/whoever do that" ?

the notion that one is solely responsible for ones fortune is a myth.


we live in a society. one gets education from the society. security. absolutely everything you do, someone else contributed at least in some way to it.


there is no "if you work hard enough, you will get it". you also need luck. huge amounts of luck. little things to coalesce in just the right amount in order to strike gold.

so it is not such a huge dilemma whether to ask someone making 100 million a year to give back to the society that helped him make his fortune. yes, he will not be able to afford 2 diamond ponies, just one, but some night guard's kid might be able to go to college because of his "sacrifice"

Originally posted by Wajoma
Yeah, for you the "not thinking" part is strong.

For once, I agree with the alternative position. It is not so much not thinking, as accepting the thinking of others, often by introduced by means of force or fraud.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
the notion that one is solely responsible for ones fortune is a myth.


we live in a society. one gets education from the society. security. absolutely everything you do, someone else contributed at least in some way to it.


there is no "if you work hard enough, you will get it". you also need luck. huge amounts of luck. little things to coalesce i ...[text shortened]... , just one, but some night guard's kid might be able to go to college because of his "sacrifice"

No doubt, every individual has the opportunity to benefit from society, but the outcomes will always differ. Luck of genetics, chance encounters, and lot of other factors besides individual effort play on success, but individual effort is the one thing that we as humans can control.

Who appointed you to say what anyone who makes $100 million dollars should do with his or her money? Sacrifices are made voluntarily. Your demands make a sacrifice, no more sacrifice than it is when a robber presents a note threatening a bank teller, or pulls a gun on a gas station or convenience store clerk.

Originally posted by Wajoma
I understand it fine, it calls for sacrifice 'without thinking' or some mysterious un-named bogeyman type bad karma thing is going to happen to you.

(...at least the god botherers give it some form and call it hell)

News for Shavmiester:

Good things happen to bad people.
Bad things happen to good people.

and vice versa

Sacrificing yourself in the hope that this will majically cease is futile.

Involuntary sacrifice is not the same as voluntary giving. A sacrifice from a sense of duty is involuntary. It involves either force, or fraud, or both.

Originally posted by normbenign
Involuntary sacrifice is not the same as voluntary giving. A sacrifice from a sense of duty is involuntary. It involves either force, or fraud, or both.

Amazing. So any action undertaken from a sense of duty is induced by fraud or force or both? One cannot, for instance, exercise a free choice out of a sense of duty. Interesting to apply that principle more widely but I wonder first if it is what you intended to say.

I can think of a wide range of behaviours that can be attributed to a sense of duty. The claim that all of these behaviours are induced by fraud or force is interesting and has quite curious implications. You may like to consider some of them.

Voting.
Caring for elderly parents.
Maintaining dependants.
Paying bills when they fall due.
Performing work in a responsible manner for which one is paid a fair wage.
Giving evidence in a criminal trial.
Assisting the emergency services.
Serving in armed forces.
Charitable work.
Placing litter in the bin provided and not dropping it in the street.
Picking up the mess left by your own dog in a public place.

Originally posted by normbenign
No doubt, every individual has the opportunity to benefit from society, but the outcomes will always differ. Luck of genetics, chance encounters, and lot of other factors besides individual effort play on success, but individual effort is the one thing that we as humans can control.

Who appointed you to say what anyone who makes $100 million dollars s ...[text shortened]... ts a note threatening a bank teller, or pulls a gun on a gas station or convenience store clerk.

Yes we can control individual effort and we cannot control luck. There may be other things we can control actually.

Does everybody have the opportunity to benefit from society? That depends surely on how society is organised. Often it is organised so that some benefit greatly and others benefit very little, while some suffer oppression. The term for this is inequality.

Nobody appointed me to do or say anything whatever. That is why I have no power to make anybody do anything whatever. Do you object to my having an opinion?

Government does not rob citizens. It is a legitimate institution, serves a useful function and can be made accountable to the citizens. It is perfectly reasonable that the same state which enables and facilitates wealth creation is entitled to claim its share of resources with which to perform its useful functions. Government is not inherently theft nor inherently tyranny. You anti government and anti taxation rants are an attack on democracy which ideologically helps to sustain the selfish interests of corporations and wealthy individuals who suck wealth out of our economies and destroy wealth.

Originally posted by finnegan
Amazing. So any action undertaken from a sense of duty is induced by fraud or force or both? One cannot, for instance, exercise a free choice out of a sense of duty. Interesting to apply that principle more widely but I wonder first if it is what you intended to say.

I can think of a wide range of behaviours that can be attributed to a sense of duty. ...[text shortened]... and not dropping it in the street.
Picking up the mess left by your own dog in a public place.

Voting?

Wow are you ever duped.