You are surrounded by dangerous primates, the single most deadly species on the planet, proven killers; and you’re safe because for nearly all of them, harming you is simply too much bother. You’re in far more danger, orders of magnitude more danger, from the things they do carelessly than any deliberate act.
Roberta X
September 27, 2019
Most People Are Basicially Lazy, Which Is Why They’re Good
[There’s more than a little truth to this. But I’m a little bit more optimist than what is could be concluded from the truth of Roberta’s insight.
People help other people even with no expectation of the favor being returned or compensation. There is something either in the gene’s or in the socialization, perhaps both, that makes most people feel good about helping others rather than just grabbing their stuff and continuing on when someone else is down.
Perhaps I’m more of an optimist than I should be but it’s hard to know for certain.—Joe]
Someone hasn’t studied her history. Harming someone is rarely too much bother; crime is the easy road after all. If earning an honest living was easy, there would be no crime. Others are a danger to us precisely because we are basically lazy as a species and thus for many take will always be easier than make.
Sorry to tell you this, but the altruism genes are not evenly distributed, by race, by tribe, faith, sex, family, or individual.
Roberta’s comment is indicative of living in a relatively homogenous high-trust civilized society. Most of the members of such a society share basic moral and ethical values, which include respect for individual rights, personal property, and the other members of that society around them.
Societies where most members interact as members of tribes and families, those whose morals and ethics do not recognize the concept of individual rights, have an entirely different world view in which anyone not of your family and tribe are by default regarded as enemies. Whenever such a culture invades a high-trust social structure, trust erodes, witness what is happening in Minneapolis, Bangor, and Sweden, among numerous recent examples.
Such invaders commonly mischaracterize those they initially victimize as ‘Weak’, mistaking forbearance for unwillingness to fight. That is not always the case, however……..
Did something change while I was a sleep?
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
I would guess the charitable acts far out number that number.
It certainly isn’t genetic, at least not beyond the (potentially extended) family unit, and lots of cultures don’t socialize that value, or even actively work to de-socialize it.
I just recently saw a discussion where a Chinese court was reported as punishing someone we would consider a “good Samaritan” for helping someone who slipped and fell. The person who fell later claimed they were pushed in order to get court-ordered compensation from the person who had helped them; the court agreed, using the logic “Nobody would stop and help a stranger unless they felt guilty [for harming him in the first place]”.
Due to the apparent pervasiveness of this sort of thing, Chinese people have reportedly developed the habit of, if they see someone slip and fall and they feel the urge to assist, they get out their cellphone and start recording, and ask the person on camera whether they slipped and fell before rendering any assistance, so that they have a recording for defense in case the person who fell later changes their story to try to milk them for compensation.