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Being kind to others is good for your health

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Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#261

Post by bitexploder »

chefandy wrote: post #259
bitexploder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been managing people for many years now. It’s a hard balance, but I always start from a place of empathy. I find it easy to be empathetic first and then lay out then business/situational needs. We don’t do brutal honesty, just gentle honesty. When people are brutally honest they just use it as cover for being an asshole. I am probably not being clear about what I think about kindness, it’s a subtle point. Even…

Great! Keep at it, then!

Thanks. I wish text could convey the attachment of emotions experienced when writing it. I deeply care about the humans I work with. At the same time, I have experienced what happens when you try to sugar coat things too much in the guise of kindness. You literally cheat people of their opportunity to improve. At the same time, getting the best out of people as a manager means balancing truth and emotion. It’s a very, very human thing. I just try to remember we are all humans blasting through time as only humans can. It’s worked well so far. As long as you can truly meet another person, its hard to be crass and ignore their perspective

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#262

Post by xyzelement »

laurent92 wrote: post #243
xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

You forgot one kind of generosity called « Actual experience »: The « I have been decently generous most of my life(1), and yet, when I had a need, no-one wanted to care much (you know, who cares about a white male, we want fewer of them in our company) so now I default to buying pure mercure on Alibaba and throwing it into the lake » kind of generosity. If all of those speeches about generosity and inclusivity were…

Laurent, this sounds dismal and I am sorry. What you talk about in paragraph one is a real thing - there are plenty of people who are your friends when everything is great but fade when you need a little bit of help (even if you're not even asking them for it.) I experienced that recently, it's really disappointing. But I also experienced a surprising amount of help from people I wasn't even close to and it was just a reminder to me to default to be that kind of person. That's actually what inspired my original post.

About your paragraph two, I kinda agree - there's a big divide between people who talk a big game about inclusivity etc and those who quietly practice it as a matter of principle.

Anyway, for what it's worth I hope things turn better for you, and I just want to say that destructiveness and self-destructiveness aren't going to help anything.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#263

Post by dash2 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #260
dash2 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that hunger and war are woolly concepts.[1] But I wouldn't say causation is a myth at this level. You can reasonably ask whether hunger causes war and run IV regressions, instrumenting hunger with e.g. rainfall, which have a reasonable chance at testing that hypothesis.[2] [1] More thoughts about this at: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/on-social-science-about-comple... [2] Like the literature comin…

I'm gonna check out those links but I just wanted to clarify that I think causation is a myth at all levels, even the hardest of sciences. It's just that it's a more useful myth in those places.

So what's your objection to the standard Pearl/Rubin idea: "X causes Y means that if X, and nothing else, varies, then Y varies"?

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#264

Post by sobani »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #256
manmal wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be trying to apply a business/market principle to domains where they probably are not fitting. Eg specialization has its place in nature, but there is also the problem of overfitting, and those beings usually die out if their environment changes slightly. Packs of wolves do automatically specialize their individuals (eg alpha wolf spends more time looking after the others) - but the crucial part is that the…

I would never ask someone to help me move. I don’t understand why anyone who’s middle class or higher doesn’t outsource that activity. If you’re so poor that you can’t hire movers I’d rather give you cash so you could hire someone.

You do realize that a major part of helping moving is in the socializing, right?

You'd rather pay someone than be with them.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#265

Post by bserge »

adamsea wrote: post #254
bserge wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're right. My opinion has only been formulated from my own experience, so it's very limited. Emotions have simply been a net negative for me, and I barely experience the good ones.

Word. And I appreciate your thoughtful response. Emotions aren't easy - they're work. Like with many things though, the work pays off over time. The most surprising part of therapy to me was just how rational, analytical, and logical it all is. Like, things start to make sense which didn't before. Therapy has many components but identifying irrational distortions in our own thought processes is a huge part of it. Whi…

Everything you wrote is interesting, as I am trying to meditate and exercise more, figure out my own brain/mind and what exactly I can change in my life, so thank you!

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#266

Post by _bz2r »

xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

That's not what stoicism is.

Stoicism has more to do with things that happen to you vs how you treat other people.

It's great that you disclaim it a bit with "can't think of a better word", but it's just inaccurate.

Perhaps "libertarian"? Or "rugged individualist"?

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#267

Post by nicbou »

laurent92 wrote: post #243
xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

You forgot one kind of generosity called « Actual experience »: The « I have been decently generous most of my life(1), and yet, when I had a need, no-one wanted to care much (you know, who cares about a white male, we want fewer of them in our company) so now I default to buying pure mercure on Alibaba and throwing it into the lake » kind of generosity. If all of those speeches about generosity and inclusivity were…

If you treat generosity as a form of investment, you are bound to be disappointed. I see it as a small contribution to a better world. If you want something back, ask for money and call it a job.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#268

Post by throwaway98797 »

sobani wrote: post #264
throwaway98797 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never ask someone to help me move. I don’t understand why anyone who’s middle class or higher doesn’t outsource that activity. If you’re so poor that you can’t hire movers I’d rather give you cash so you could hire someone.

You do realize that a major part of helping moving is in the socializing, right? You'd rather pay someone than be with them.

There are better ways to socialize.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#269

Post by adamsea »

bserge wrote: post #265
adamsea wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word. And I appreciate your thoughtful response. Emotions aren't easy - they're work. Like with many things though, the work pays off over time. The most surprising part of therapy to me was just how rational, analytical, and logical it all is. Like, things start to make sense which didn't before. Therapy has many components but identifying irrational distortions in our own thought processes is a huge part of it. Whi…

Everything you wrote is interesting, as I am trying to meditate and exercise more, figure out my own brain/mind and what exactly I can change in my life, so thank you!

Welcome, and thank you! That’s awesome. Meditation is something I should do as well.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#270

Post by Bakary »

devdas wrote: post #238
momokoko wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Significantly different. Do you realize that metropolitan areas in US are not even 50% white or Christian or likely any of the other stereotypes people have of the US outside of the US. Many cities in the US provide documentation in often 4 or more languages. Schools employ large teams of specialists for teaching English as there are significant amounts of schools where less than half of the student population i…

Coming from India, the dominant flavour of Europe is some sort of white, Christian group, possibly with a dash of Islamic influence, but mostly monotheistic branches of the same family. There is some variety in languages, and food depending on the climate. The US doesn't have all that much diversity comparitively. There is more diversity in skin colour, but the major cultural groups are far closer to each other than…

>Coming from India, the dominant flavour of Europe is some sort of white, Christian group, possibly with a dash of Islamic influence, but mostly monotheistic branches of the same family. There is some variety in languages, and food depending on the climate.

I'd say that this is the same reductive view that Europeans have of India, for comparison.

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