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Author Topic: Other: Do you feel a connection between doing good and feeling good?  (Read 3104 times)

Ghost235

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Do you feel a connection between doing good and feeling good?
« on: December 18, 2014, 12:43:16 pm »
Yet again I am not sure the right place to post this.  Hopefully this is ok.

What is your connection between doing good and feeling good?  When you do good stuff does it make you feel good?  Is this an absolute thing or does it vary for you?
« Last Edit: May 07, 2019, 03:11:52 pm by RandallS »

Redfaery

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Re: Do you feel a connection between doing good and feeling good?
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2014, 01:27:51 pm »
Quote from: Ghost235;167592
Yet again I am not sure the right place to post this.  Hopefully this is ok.

What is your connection between doing good and feeling good?  When you do good stuff does it make you feel good?  Is this an absolute thing or does it vary for you?


Altruistic acts make me feel better about myself. They make me feel even better still when I know they were appreciated, whether it is the person I helped thanking me, or a bystander praising me. I know some schools of philosophy take a cynical approach to human compassion because of this, but I feel like it honestly is not very relevant. To cite Mencius, if I saw a child about to fall down a well, I would run to rescue him. Sure, the child would be grateful to me. Sure, his parents would probably be willing to repay me somehow. But that wouldn't be why I did it. Frankly, I would jump after that kid because I'd feel pretty horrible if I saw a little boy fall into a well.

I don't like to see people suffer. This is also true of many animals, actually. It's just the way things are.
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Re: Do you feel a connection between doing good and feeling good?
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2014, 01:53:24 pm »
Quote from: Redfaery;167597
Altruistic acts make me feel better about myself. They make me feel even better still when I know they were appreciated, whether it is the person I helped thanking me, or a bystander praising me. I know some schools of philosophy take a cynical approach to human compassion because of this, but I feel like it honestly is not very relevant. To cite Mencius, if I saw a child about to fall down a well, I would run to rescue him. Sure, the child would be grateful to me. Sure, his parents would probably be willing to repay me somehow. But that wouldn't be why I did it. Frankly, I would jump after that kid because I'd feel pretty horrible if I saw a little boy fall into a well.

I don't like to see people suffer. This is also true of many animals, actually. It's just the way things are.

 
As my husband likes to say: it's nice to be nice. :)
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Faemon

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Re: Do you feel a connection between doing good and feeling good?
« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2014, 07:42:40 pm »
Quote from: Ghost235;167592
What is your connection between doing good and feeling good?  When you do good stuff does it make you feel good?  Is this an absolute thing or does it vary for you?

 
"Feeling good" can be a complex thing. There is, I think, some underlying algorithm that makes it absolute, but it's definitely contextual.

For example, it's good to keep a sense of serenity in a relationship. It's evil to force or pressure somebody to shut up about something that's important to them, and prevent them from acting in this world and growing into their understanding, for the sake of serenity in the relationship.

It's also, I've found out, been evil to silence myself for the sake of serenity in the relationship; but at that point, when I'm at the breaking point and the other person is used to it, it's evil to inconvenience them by speaking up.

So, doing good feels bad but doing bad feels bad, but doing bad feels bad whereas doing right feels...worth it.

There could be a shallow understanding of good, or niceness, that isn't evil just because it's shallow but it depends on the context.

There could be the collateral damage of other people's privileges and egos, even your own simple shallow joys, when you try to accomplish a deeper good. People who don't live that deeply are, to themselves, having their whole world (on their level of consciousness) destroyed.

Still other people can feel like they're dong that, and convince themselves that it was worth it because they can feel validation, but it was really just a lot of needless suffering for something that only served the destroyer and was thus labeled good because empathy had to be shut down.

I feel like I have a connection now, between my idea of good, and a better understanding of my feelings that "good" is no longer "nice" as in a stop-gap accomplishment that only represses the problems rather than transforms them. To transform a problem gets worse before it gets better, but it's usually worth it.
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