What Should We Do? (Part Two: Compassion)
Compassion
Here’s another thought experiment:
You are a sneaker fanatic. You love shoes, and you just bought your favorite pair. You decide to take the shoes for a stylish walk around the lake near your house. But then disaster strikes.
You spot a little girl drowning in the lake! She is screaming for help and no one is around but you. She will surely die if you don’t step in.
QUESTION: What should you do in this situation?
A) keep walking
B) give her strong words of encouragement
C) wade into the lake to save her, ruining your new shoes
For those of us who insist that C is the correct answer, philosopher Peter Singer says the following:
That’s good to hear. It turns out that there are thousands of little girls in the world right now who will die if you do not intervene to save them. If you don’t mind ruining your expensive shoes to save one little girl, you surely don’t mind donating $50 to the Against Malaria Foundation to build 25 mosquito nets for impoverished children.
Ouch, don’t you feel like a really bad person now? Me too. That’s okay, because we can both be better together.
But just in case you don’t feel a pure, altruistic devotion to other human beings regardless of their spatial proximity to you, here’s something to consider:
Being Nice is the Most Selfish Thing You Can Do
At one point in his book “Flourish” the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, talks about one of the most satisfying moments of his entire life.
He was waiting in line at the post office with about 30 other people. Most customers were simply trying to purchase a single stamp so that they could mail their packages, but the process of payment for each individual was taking forever.
When it was Seligman’s turn, an idea sparked into his head. On a whim, he purchased 100 stamps for no more than a few dollars and turned around with them uplifted into the air, “Free stamps!” he announced. Everyone applauded and thanked him one-by-one.
The memory of that small act of kindness still makes him smile.
This event inspired him to study the effect small acts of kindness have on our short-term and long-term happiness. Sure enough, if you’re looking for something that will cause the highest increase in your happiness for the longest amount of time right now, the most bang for your buck you can get is to do a small act of kindness for someone else.
Feel like testing it? Try donating a few bucks to the Against Malaria Foundation right now. Every $2 equals one mosquito net which is one life saved. See how you feel. If you don’t feel that spark of warmth in your heart, I’ll personally shake your hand.
Because this is one of my favorite topics, let me indulge you in another piece of evidence:
Why do we smile?
Like, isn’t it weird that we just walk around showing our teeth to other people??
In his book “Born To Be Good”, positive psychologist Dacher Keltner traces the evolutionary origins of the smile and reaches a fascinating conclusion.
It turns out, if you observe primates today, they smile too, but it’s not an expression of happiness or joy. Rather, they smile to signal submissiveness often to the alpha male/king guy of the pack.
However, somewhere along the chain of evolution humans started using the smile for a related, but different purpose. When one human overpowered another in a fight or something, it was beneficial if you could make the loser a loyal supporter rather than an enemy. So we started smiling after dominating members of our clan as a kind of “hey man, it’s clear I’m the winner here, but I’m, like, gracious in victory, so look I’ll throw you this little bone of pride by using the submissive signal after humiliating you.”
Thus, the smile came to signify kindness. And here’s the thing: Only after the smile became a symbol of kindness did it transform into a symbol of happiness.
Why? Because being kind is directly causally connected with making us happy.
So, back to the little girl drowning in the pond and all the metaphoric little girls drowning all over the world today. If you’re an altruist, the answer is obvious. But now that we know that being kind is the most selfish thing a person can do, we can definitively answer the question for self-centered people as well.
What should we do about people suffering needlessly? We should help them.