Because doing good isn't supposed to be with the goal of being rewarded, it's supposed to be to help make other people's lives better. When you help someone by giving them a ride somewhere, it doesn't make much of a difference to the universe but it makes a difference to that person in that moment
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
-15 points (20.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
28789 readers
1624 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Why religious people think atheists are bad. Because if there isn't a big reward then why would you ever be good? I don't know, empathy? Which they clearly show they don't have much of if they need to be rewarded for doing things as simple as not judging others
If your perspective is "doing good = personal gain", then you're doing it wrong.
You do good because it benefits other people, not you.
I set up a Little Free Library and have spent a couple hundred dollars giving away books in my community, it doesn't benefit me, personally, but other people are enjoying it!
Why do anything? Every goal is a value choice. Pleasure? Money? Leaving a legacy in children or added knowledge or whatever? Learning? Improving your community? Improving the world in general? Raging against the absurd?
If self-centered hedonism is the way you want to spend your brief meaningless time in this meaningless world, go for it! Just go for it with the same full knowledge of its pointlessness and your mortality as you would anything else.
Dude, looks like you are just looking for an excuse to be an asshole. Don't ask for permission, just go and make other people suffer, if that's what you want. Let's see how far you get with that mindset. Maybe one day you'll be the president of a country. Shrugs
Because helping others around you and "doing good" helps build community, which you are a part of.
If you want to look at it from a selfish perspective, doing good and helping others builds goodwill towards yourself, and sooner or later, you may need to rely on others doing good for you. It's much easier to get help if others think highly of you.
As far as being manipulated, you probably shouldn't just blindly help people who request it. Keep your eyes open and your guard up when dealing with people you don't know or trust.
I spent my current age doing good and that earned me zero returns and some losses and I know a lot of people who had a similar experience to me.
No one even feels greatful for the good I do.
Respectfully your argument does not hold up for me.
Do good to the right people !
Upvoted your post since this is a good question :) !
Because your evolutionary heritage tells you to. You're part of a social species, we're hardwired to be altruistic because it's helped us survive (some people's wiring is faulty).
I'm an atheist. I do good things because I have a conscience. I have a legacy. Being a good person feels better than being greedy and spiteful. I pity the rich—never knowing which of their friends and family are true and who would abandon them if they weren't rich.
I mean of course I wish I had more than I have but I have enough to be fulfilled. So why not do good things? Being kind to people is its own reward.
"Considering the fact the doing good will not earn you anything in anyway"
This simply isn't an accurate statement.
I treat my co-workers well, help them out, and one of them bought me a pin that says "Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!!!" because they know I like that movie.
I help people, people help me. Do they sometimes not help me, sure, but on balance everyone is better off for helping. It's not a zero sum game.
What you're describing is a common or free kindness - it's a social kindness that costs nearly nothing and delivers many times its value. The problem is more with economic kindness and selfishness and in that regard your coworker is (mostly, unless you unionize) irrelevant... the question is whether your boss, if looking at a 20 million dollar payout for a company of a dozen people will take half that and make you all rich or take it all and tell you plebs to get fucked.
The story of recent history is that plebs are getting fucked pretty much without exception. Social norms have shifted to the point where fucking over your employees is "cool" and there's not much we can do about it except slowly try and turn back the social compass and, of course, fucking unionize.
"any good"
“It’s the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay”
-Gandalf
Do good, you never know when you will be the one ray of light through someone's darkness.
Because you shouldn't want to make the world harder for anyone else, and should be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and see how they'd feel from your poor treatment of them.
What guarantee that if they were in my own shoes they wouldn't fuck me up?
Why not focus on my benefit regardless of its effect on the world?
Why care about a society that does not care about me?
I feel that The Platform movie answer exactly this question, everyone care only about himself.
You can't control what others do to you, but that's no reason to make the same people in your class miserable. That's my point. Perpetuating the poor behavior will only make the world a harsher place, and that could eventually come right back to you.
This is a struggle I find myself in now. I was very politically active in my youth, and I'm currently looking back on everything I did thinking "wtf was the point of any of it? Should I have just focused on college/employment the whole time? If I did, would I have been in a position to escape?"
In the past, the big thing that kept me going was my local community. Sure, I never accomplished anything that reached a further stage, but I was at least making my local community better. Eventually though, I was given the opportunity to leave my shitty local community, and I immediately took it. Now I live somewhere great, that fully represents me, to the point that I started taking a step back from politics. No reason to campaign for an opposition mayor if I like my mayor, right? I still go to the monthly town hall meetings, if only to assure myself that things are going well locally, but I'm less vocal. I don't really need to be, and that's wonderful, but it's pushing me to be even less active.
I'm sure my hometown has gotten significantly worse in my absence though, since visiting family feels like visiting a corpse. Did I even make a difference there, or was it a temporary mirage? What was the point of any of it?
The point is that you'd also like to have good things done to you.
It really depends on how much you have to do, to be considered as doing 'good'. Do you consider returning a shopping trolley as a good act? It's a simple, small act that you do have to go out of your way to accomplish, and it brings some utility to others, which you might unknowingly be a recipient of.
That's not to say you're expected to return every trolley in the carpark, or that all the evil corporations are actively trying to exploit this for free labour.
Society requires that people do good to exist, while continued Evils tend to slowly destroy their community.
As I said before, I did not get anything from doing good and I only lost by doing it.
Evil society exists, if the good has to be done, then why should I be the one to do it?
Anytime you do something good, you lose something of yours in doing so, be it time, attention, wealth, etc. Having good done to you, you only gain.
That being said, good acts, and evil outcomes are not transactions, and thinking about it that way only leads to the belief that life is a zero sum game.
Sure society full of Evils exists, but they're not stable. Do you want to live in such a society? Or do you want to live in one where the people do good?
Obviously you're thinking of living in a good society, but then not contributing your part - but that's how a society slowly turns Evil, from the absence of Good. You can try chasing the good society, but as more good societies see your non-existent good acts, the harder it will be for you to join.
Right now in society grifting is the sole way to make a comfortable living. I refuse that path because I believe that this is a reflection of a deeply broken society and work to support those people around me that I can.
This isn't a case of "if more people act selfishly it'll become the norm" because it is the norm - the time for that thinking was in the 80s, 90s and maybe the 00s - but I will still stubbornly reject it and be economically kind when I have the option.
One should do good because seeing good done to world, or to others, is itself a source of satisfaction. If it is not, then I don't know what anyone can tell you.
You might enjoy this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
TLDR: The optimal strategy, even if its just for your self interest is to: Be nice, but don't be a pushover. If someone done you wrong, retalitate (proportional to what they did).
Doing good feels good. Our brains are wired for cooperation. I think most evil people are miserable.
Possibly because the consequences 'evil' people get is effectively more like living in their own shit than external punishment. If you only look at direct repercussions it looks like they're making it pretty well, and even by their own estimates it might seem like that, but they're really just rising to the top of a story social scale. If you value that it will be frustrating.
You were born into a highly social species. The basis of human society (and that of many other social species) is co-operation and mutual aid to increase the individual's chance of survival and reproduction, make life for group members easier and, at least since Neanderthals and Denisovians, longer, rather than, as Thomas Hobbes opined "nasty, brutish and short". While it is quite true that there are those who game the system to reap more than their share of the benefits while giving less or nothing back, overall, those who give more are more likely to 'earn' the respect of their fellows and gain the help they need to live as well as possible within whatever circumstances they find themselves.
Don't be too sure that the evil face no consequences. Until their book is finished and closed, you cannot know they will not wish once more to ride down the slope on Rosebud. I knew a woman who was the head nurse on a terminal ward for years -- to this day, I don't know how she did it. She told me one evening that, in all those years, no one had ever died wishing they'd made more money or achieved greater power, but many of the elite that passed through her ward died alone.