Welcome to the first installment of the Interact Club's exclusive column, Service Update of the Month! This week, Daniel Kim '22 explores the psychology of charity.
Now, here’s a full disclosure: I have, thus far, considered myself a relatively sympathetic person, who knows benevolence and compassion, ready to give the support anyone needs whenever necessary. And I am sure that many of you assess yourselves similarly – we all disdain characters from movies like Jurassic Park who inexplicably exhibits outright selfish behaviors, desperate for their own lives and willing to sacrifice their companions for their own survival. At the same time, we praise the people, both in fictional situations and in real life, who stand up for others and relinquish one’s values for other people’s sakes. Perhaps we could call them heroes of modern society – neither perfect nor almighty, yet definitely what the world needs and deserves.
An idea, however, occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, when one of my closest friends proposed a single ‘dilemmatic’ question to consider – if a murderer somehow called me and offered a choice between my entire high school GPA and the life of a random stranger that I do not even know the name of, which would I save?
It’s honestly a ridiculous proposition – and it is also quite shameful to admit, but as a member of such an overly competitive community (where some students can be terrified because they receive a B+ on their math examinations or 1450s on their first SAT tests), I had a hard time making the decision. The numbers on my gradebook, or a single person’s life? The choice should have been an obvious one, but I somehow found myself going through a serious consideration on each of their values, trying to trade lives with mere letters on a piece of paper.
Needless to say, I was quite disappointed in myself, also very shocked by the very experience – not only was I naïve enough to overestimate my sense of goodwill, but by that decision to value simple letters over a person’s life, I felt like the universally hated ‘self-centered traitors’ from all the adventure movies I’ve watched; even though in a hypothetical situation, I might have considered paying a person’s life for the cost of keeping my own personal contentment.
It may seem like quite an extreme example, true. But I found it worth pondering, that if I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my high school grades for a stranger’s life, then what was I willing to sacrifice? What can I give away for their sakes, the people around me, the people million kilometers away from my contemporary circle of familiarity? What will the majority of the people choose? How many people are truly prepared to make sacrifices for altruistic causes, and to what extent are they willing to make that sacrifice?
As much as people favor selflessness as a virtue and despise selfishness as a vice, the virtual choices they make when they are placed in identical positions as did the ‘selfish’ and the ‘selfless’ ones usually tend to incline towards the rather self-serving conduct. Quite a sorry phenomenon to observe, but indeed a truthful remark.
There are many things we can sacrifice for our self-interests, and perhaps without much consideration. Examples may vary as to the scale of their magnitude, yet such tendency is prominent throughout all aspects of our daily lives. Say, we may discard garbage thoughtlessly for the sake of that moment’s convenience, believing that someone else – namely the ayis – would do the tedious job for us instead. We may have ghosted WeChat messages from our friends or parents asking for help or saying hello, simply because you were feeling too lazy to give a think through their proposal at the moment. We may have felt indignant toward those unwilling to actively cooperate with the rest of the group, while under certain occasions, ourselves behaving similarly.
But here lies the true question: then how much can we sacrifice to support OTHER people’s wellbeing? To what extent can we support others’ success while potentially depriving our own chance to succeed?
From what history has taught us, it seems very reasonable to believe that people are inherently selfish and are meant to pursue a cause primarily for the sake of themselves – and therefore, by default we tend to choose to minimize whichever choice that could prospectively become costly for our own wellbeing. There could be exceptions, and there could be varying extents as to how far that egocentrism reaches, but as far as the general tendency of events is concerned, history proves the perpetuated cycle of greed and self-absorption all across the globe at a very consistent trend. True, so many people tried and are still struggling to make this world a better place – and it’s also true that we’ve made considerable progress. Yet it is outright impossible to eliminate all absurdities permeating the very basis of this ‘human’ society, for it is always the individuals who are capable of changing, less so for humanity as a whole which remains obstinately stagnant in many of its character. People normally have trouble resonating with people outside their social groups, if they even can afford to feel for others to begin with; there lies the root of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism, still vehemently prominent throughout secluded areas of the world despite all the advancements previously made. No matter how much progress we make, and no matter how closer we get to it, there will always be an ‘asymptote of evil’ which we can neither completely abolish nor address – because people are, by a huge number, selfish beings.
The age is always blighted by simple yet detrimental misunderstandings; or, to be more precise, the lack of incentives to even TRY to understand other people’s feelings, standings, or character. Because we are inherently different beings, we are bound to doubt and repel each other, ultimately putting ourselves in an ironic circle of trust, where, as a part of a greater societal structure solely composed of newly-made and broken ties of relationships, we still choose to fundamentally isolate ourselves from the rest of the world revolving around our imperceptible solitude. From a larger context, this is also why most people would rather choose NOT to advocate for a seemingly righteous cause – they simply do not feel the need to actively take actions on its behalf without being properly incentivized. The majority prefers to behave passively, to minimize the risk; they would rather wait until some other activist will do the job for them, and they will assess the values – just like I did – of the benefits they will receive and the loss they will have to go through if they chose to take a step forward.
When people are offered a choice between earning their own personal benefits and advocating for a positive change (that does not directly impact their own wellbeing), by a high chance they will value their own benefits over unrelatable decencies forcing them to act in a particular manner that goes against their own advantage. And this ‘benefit’, that typically works as the incentivizer, does not have to be something physical or materialistic – it could be one’s momentary convenience, a sense of temporary moral superiority, or even the very thought of ‘what harm could it do?’
Without any sort of ‘compensation’ offered for the sacrifice, it is extremely difficult to make large-scale sacrifices out of purely selfless motivations. In a rather ridiculous way of putting this – to make this world into a better place means to break and resist our immanent nature that drives us away from rather virtuous behaviors.
But it is also quite strange – because every one of us wish to live in a better version of the world, we dream for a society where more people can live happily. Why is this never enough to motivate more people, if not simply a large majority of them? Though we yearn for a reality more valuable than the one we live in today, why do some of us hesitate to take steps that could potentially bring us to that stage? With this desire to live in a better world combined with all the dedication people put to uphold causes, justice, and freedom – and also the victory we taste over certain tyranny and greed – why do we still fail to eliminate evil once and for all?
The answer is quite simple – people wish to play safe. They prefer solid, direct, immediate rewards over abstract, indirect, long-term effects, no matter how favorable the outcome is projected to be. It is often tangible values that the common people care more about, both what they sacrifice, and what they earn.
So, I will ask this question one more time: to what extent can and must we renounce our own privileges in order to prevail against such ‘criminal character?’ Our pride? Money? Time? Effort? Beliefs? Will we have to prepare ourselves so that we can make more ‘actual’ sacrifices? What difference, if we somehow choose to take that step, can we foster in this stagnantly ‘evil’ side of the world? True citizenship truly begins, and so does our step towards a better future, by finding a legitimate answer to address these inquiries.
And to answer these questions, we must first understand one pivotal modification in perspective, that it was never about making sacrifices – in order to change the world, we must, as individuals, change first. To make this difference, it is crucial to recognize our own inherent limitations we face as humans – which are the fundamental ways people choose perceive charity and every doable acts of kindness. Because people see helping others in the context of what they will lose, not what humanity will gain as a whole, it becomes increasingly harder for individual persons to actively participate in movements of kindness. I hesitated to give up my grades because all I could think of was the loss I’ll have to suffer – the values I’ll gain, and what the stranger will gain, through the sacrifice were simply neglected. The solution is not to alter people’s nature, but to alter people’s ways of thinking.
As crucial as it is to acknowledge our limitations, it is even more important to confront those imperfections – and one must find their own way to do so, because we are all inherently different beings, we all have different ways befitting our nature to strive towards what goes against that nature. Can we make that call, regardless of what that call will be?
To be frank, it is easier said than done. It takes years, even decades of contemplation to make the call – not to mention how many fail midway. And simply acquiring the answer does not end the – one must have the courage to take steps upon that foundation built upon the sacrifices they have made to uphold that cause. Whoever capable and willing to take that step forward, is truly a hero that the world owes a favor to; because these few people who question and overcome the innate absurdities chiseled within the very blueprint of this corrupted society, we make progress, we make steps, we see difference, and we hope for a better tomorrow – even if that tomorrow is unlikely to come. But whether or not that future truly substantiates matters less than the hope incentivizes us to hope for more – perhaps someday, that hope will fuel our actions and push the wheel onwards to perpetuate a positive cycle. Perhaps, we all, deep inside, admire selflessness for a very good reason – anticipation for a better tomorrow.
And, guess what, anyone can make that small difference, since there is no need to make any forms of sacrifice. You can be the one to make that step – however far that step reaches, you are still making a step forward, emerging triumphant over a seemingly unbeatable foe.
There are predecessors who left footsteps before you – namely, those who are ready to make those ‘sacrifices’ for a ‘greater benefit’ this world will altogether earn, those who have already made that decision, and furthermore trying to make a difference upon all the relinquishments. These people include Amnesty, NGO, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, and Rotary, etc. Through what you wish to make your ‘payments,’ it does not matter. It may be your financial capabilities, time and commitment, maybe family, friends, free time, or anything else that you value. Your predecessors made those payments to their own extent and made sacrifices for others’ sakes, and they gained so much more not just to themselves but to the lives they’ve saved, rights they’ve protected, and the people they’ve served.
And there is absolutely no need to assess the extent of one’s dedication through the magnitude of such sacrifices. No matter how much you give away, the benefit it’ll return to the rest of the world will always make them worth it – without exception, it’ll be an absolute win.
I wish to end this with some thoughts regarding what I would have lost and gained if I saved a person’s life at the cost of my entire high school GPA. I would have to extend my years of misery and suffering, by retaking classes from the very beginning. I might not get a good job or be penalized when applying for when because of that decision. But I would have saved a person’s life – and what other compensation do I need? The person also would have gained a precious chance to re-live their life – and perhaps they’ll live their life to save someone else, just like how I ‘sacrificed’ my GPA to give them a second opportunity. Think of the hope, the change, the possibilities I’ll enable, merely at the expense of some numbers on a piece of paper. Indeed, if people could love other people more than they love themselves, their beliefs, or their benefits, this world would have been a little better than what we see today.
So make the change, and earn your share – for kindness does not cost you anything. It only gives.
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