News:

Welcome to the Astral Pulse 2.0!

If you're looking for your Journal, I've created a central sub forum for them here: https://www.astralpulse.com/forums/dream-and-projection-journals/



All kindness is selfish

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Astralzombie

Quote from: Sarahinthesky on March 02, 2013, 11:13:59
Very interesting, read the whole thread, thanks for posting.  I'm not going to comment on the equation in mathematical terms; I hated math.  You can chalk up ANY good deed to spiritual nourishment.  I think its sad to "know" that no matter what you do for others, its really all for yourself in the end.  For someone who wishes to become or believe that in the past they've been completely selfless for the greater good of another, that equation can be a bummer.  I guess thats ego though too.  "Im a good person and have no selfish needs, don't prove me wrong"  I guess I have to believe in something like this:  if the equation can't be proven wrong, then we shouldn't focus on ourselves and our inability to be selfless.  Just focus on filling yourself up with good karma, pay it forward, always be kind, promote peace externally and internally...  Maybe humans are incapable of detaching from the ego completely.  Maybe we need a billboard that says something like "being kind benefits you!  Stop being a Jerk" Maybe that would change the world faster than trying to shed the ego all together.  Do I make sense?! 

You make an interesting point. If we approached kindness from the angle that helping others will help ourselves, it may appeal to larger egos less inclined.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain

galeb

Quote from: its_all_bad on February 09, 2013, 12:56:03
I watched an interesting show the other night called "Dark Matters". In it, they dramatize some true events that are bizarre but are none the less considered true. The show depicted the story of George Price, whom at the time was an Atheist. He was an amateur mathematician who worked out a theorem that proves that altruism is an evolutionary trait that helps insure that one's genes are passed on and is therefor selfish by design.

I understand the concept but not the theorem. To be considered a theorem, it must always be true in all examples given. Even in hypothetical examples.

Here is a wiki link to the theorem:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation

If anybody can explain this to me in layman's terms, I would be grateful. I have a healthy understanding of algebra and geometry but this is beyond me.

"I understand the concept but not the theorem. To be considered a theorem, it must always be true in all examples given." 
No theorem is always true, people formulate a theorem and then set out to prove it is right, so if anything over about 75% of the times the experiments agree with the theorem they say the theorem is correct. Most of the time if it is right over 95% of the time it will once others also test it, it will be considered a "law of Physics" or whatever field it is in. The times when it didn't work, are considered faulty technique or some other way to justify why it didn't work. None of the "Universal Laws" have ever been 100%. So just because you get hundreds of experts telling you something can't be done because of some law or another, laugh at them and do it anyway. Maybe you can only get it to work one time out of twenty or fifty times, that just proves what I stated above. Remember, expectations affects the results and their expectations may have been the main reason that they got the answers they were looking for most of the time resulting in "proving" their theorem.

Szaxx

Here's one ,
Take the price equation.
Mix it with a dash of misconception and derive it's negative outcome using physical objects.
Let's use our fingers on both hands as the objects.
We know ( thumbs included) we can count to ten, logically.
That was our standard and it's a factual reality.
Now intergrate the price equasion. This means putting a negative aspect into the counting process.
On one hand we count up, a positive aspect.
On the other, as we already know there's ten we count down.
To sum the two results we now have a problem.
1,2,3,4,5 ok take the.5.
Next we already know theres 10, so counting down.
10,9,8,7,6. Ok take the 6.
When these are added we now have 11.
If we start with 9 then knowing there's really 10 do we chop one off?
Of course not.
This is a simplified view of the price equasion.
It can't work as you need to stay positive throughout.
It's annoyingly clever.

Imagine baking a sponge cake this way. Half cook in the morning then half cook at night.
If you can bake you'll understand the outcome. Lol

This argument is invalid. The semantics are misrepresented and the only outcome is negative.
It's a copy of the 'world is flat because we say so'.
A black hole of Sorts.

Try to apply this to unconditional love.
Houston we have a problem...
:-o
There's far more where the eye can't see.
Close your eyes and open your mind.

Eliaz

#28
Quote from: its_all_bad on February 13, 2013, 17:57:09
In conclusion, I have three choices:
1. I can accept the equation to be true and not worry about karma since nothing I can do is truly kind.

Karma is change, if you are kind to others they might pass it on and again creating a new pattern of kindness. Even when kindness is selfishness,  wouldn't you want for yourself and future generations to live in a world of kindness rather than a miserable world? We are the world, become the change. I don't see why we have to view selfishness as something negative, aren't we here for our own reasons?

Chaki

Quote from: its_all_bad on February 12, 2013, 10:41:28
Beedeekin-  It seems we agree wholeheartedly on this matter then. My problem with this concept, is that "spiritual kindness" (pardon my phrase theft) can't be explained with math or even defined with language for that matter.

Mr. Price himself killed himself after he went mad trying to disprove his own work. He "discovered" the theorem when he was an Atheist.

He began contemplating about his own life and how everything came together to bring him to the point where he was at. In other words, he believed that there were far too many coincidences that he believed influenced his life's journey. For example, he had something like 5 serious gf's in a row who had the name "Mary" (I can't remember the real name). Since he was a "love at first sight" kind of guy, he reasoned that he was not attracted to the specific name for some unknown reason since his infatuation for the women would begin before he knew their names.

Anyways he looked at a lot of others things and worked out the individual odds of each coincidence and them looked at the odds of each one coming together. He reasoned that only an outside force or "God" could overcome those odds so he became a believer.

Unfortunate, but fascinating end to his life. Also, fascinating thread.

I think about kindness and "selflessness" a lot and have come to the conclusion that every single act is done in self-interest. At least, every single act can be construed as being done in self-interest. I don't like this conclusion, but when I explain it as I will below, I don't know what else to think.

Think of a "selfless" act, for example, sacrificing your life for another. You go onto the train tracks to push a child out of the way of an oncoming train, knowing there isn't enough time to save yourself, so you'll definitely die.

I think it could be argued that the alternative, letting the child die when you know you could have saved him, is so undesirable to you in that moment that it's preferable to die and save him. So the act is in part motivated by a desire to save that child, and the desire to avoid those terrible feelings of not saving him. Those desires outweigh your desire to live, especially in that moment (if you could freeze time and ponder your decision maybe things would change), so you act accordingly and sacrifice your life.

Even the desire to save the child could be described as a desire to avoid the negative feelings of not saving the child as well as experiencing the positive feelings (albeit very momentary in this example) of saving him (albeit very momentary in this example).

This could be flawed logic though, I'm not sure. Like saying, "I want to do this because I want to do it." Or something. But it seems pretty reasonable to me that even the most selfless acts can, at their base, be described in terms of self-interest.

Just yesterday I got home from work and there was a centipede on the dry part of a chopstick in a water-filled bowl in my sink. I imagine he was going to drown but found safety on the floating chopstick. I brought him outside and released him in the grass and wished him luck. If I didn't post this no one would have ever known I did that. It seems like a pretty selfless act but the thought of killing the centipede irked me. I would have felt bad. Maybe I only did that to avoid those bad feelings and to experience the good feelings I did by freeing him? I'm really not sure. I find it easier just not to think about these things as it doesn't really matter anyway :)

CFTraveler

Interesting thread, disagreed with some parts of the theory itself and with other things that reinforce them.
Why?

Jude101

#31
I thought about this all trough work, How there is always a self-interest element in all the things we do. I wanted to dig deeper and find out my perspective in this, was I a selfish person and did not know it. I came to a conclusion, at least for me; It is true that there is and probably will always be some what of a self-interest element in all that we do. But trough my experience in AP and from some research I have done I came to realize that everything is planed and nothing is ever a coincidence. What ever we do here has been agreed upon in a completely different level by any participants participating in such events. We all chose to forget and play a game call life, we are all made and come from the same cloth. When we hurt others, we are just hurting ourselves and that goes too for the good things, yes we could act selfish and still do nice things. But throughout it all, that is the reason we are here for, to learn and grow. As I always say "The one is all and The all is one"
"We should consider ourselves as spirits having a human experience rather than humans having an occasional spiritual experience."

dotster

If we were all just one giant living entity having separate experiences then helping another "you" would technically (and bizarrely) be considered selfish from a big-picture point of view. Then again from that point of view, I would think that helping another "you" would be just like you scratching your own nose when it itched, so maybe from that perspective selfishness isn't defined as we choose to define it in terms of individuality. Not saying that this is how the world is, but ultimately I think it just comes down to what you describe as self.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Perhaps some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Szaxx

I see a pattern in this thought train.
It's now the beginning.
We have the word-s.
Let there be light.
:-D
There's far more where the eye can't see.
Close your eyes and open your mind.