From where does your urge to help the less fortunate come?

Had a basic question, really. This is the root of all leftism - helping the less fortunate. I see it mentioned in so many threads here, and no one has questioned it. It’s your creed. But… why?

I’m an avowed social darwinist and capitalist. But that’s beside the point. I have never felt the urge to help the less fortunate, and I simply cannot understand those who feel it. If they are less fortunate, then they are worse. If they were not worse, then they would not be less fortunate.

In other words: if, in any society - *especially* in an American capitalist society with endless opportunities for upward social mobility - you are by the end of your life still “less fortunate,” then it is only natural for you to be less fortunate, because you are inherently worse.

Not to mention the fact that I simply don’t care about the poor. I never await help in my times of need, and I never dole it out to others in their times of need.

So is this urge something inherent in you guys? Were you born with it, or discovered it within yourself? Or did you come to the conclusion that helping others is the logical thing to do through various deductions and arguments? Or does it simply make you feel nice inside? Or do you believe it is objectively, morally right (and if so, on what grounds)?

Interested in hearing opinions.

Cheers.

Unlike you, most of us aren't tryhard wannabe psychopaths trying to be the edgiest kid on the block, for starters. That personality is just something you adopted to have a cool identity I'm sure, but it probably underpins a real phenomenon. Most people with a modicum of empathy will instantaneously observe injustice in the world, and that isn't comforting. Especially because injustice is random. To cope with the injustice in the world, some people begin to rationalise and explain away the injustice by placing blame with the victim. If you're unemployed, it's your own fault. If you're poor, it's your own fault. This is called the just-world hypothesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis



Unsurprisingly, it's more common in the right-wing and among the better off.

If you want to base your whole ideological outlook on life, er, sorry, your kewl edgy identity, on a cognitive bias -- a cognitive flaw in you that gives a necessarily distorted view of reality -- I guess you could do that, or rather, I guess we could bash your skull in for being an idiot, might makes right after all? To circle back to the 'cool identity' thing, I can only assume this has to be the case, because there is no other excuse to have this absurdly infantile idea that 'poorer = inferior'.

And yeah, helping people makes me feel nice inside, and seeing injustice makes me, well, mostly sad these days actually -- to see a world so structurally stacked against the losers, reinforced by the institutions of power, etc. etc. Pretty gloomy imho.

Think I'll close the thread shortly, don't think anything good will come of a social-darwinist roaming around.

EDIT, recycled an illustration (the ackchyually bloke). Don't know if it's insulting to people that look like that but aren't dicks. Let me know.
http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/w/imag...ldarwinist.png

One does not need to want to help the less fortunate to adopt a Marxist world-view, nor to be a communist. Furthermore, actual organization can be based on workers' self-interest. Politics based merely on "helping the poor" result in either the reformist left-wing, or, for ignorants or people who just want to feel good and don't really care, into the right-wing. (see Christians, etc.) We are not reformists; we are revolutionists, so of course we would be opposed to that approach. Your post, which makes assumptions, reveals you to lack information and makes incorrect generalizations.

Left-wing politics can be related to "helping the less fortunate" but do not reduce to this - we are not charity.

Actually, many here would criticize belief, "morality", identity, etc, especially expressed in such a manner.

If what you say is true, this is evidently not normal for a human being. (because empathy is one of the traits of humans and absence of it implies divergence from this, not just because this is "wrong") Your personality is damaged, possibly as a result of capitalism. But it would be unlikely that this is actually true, even if you really believe it yourself. Most likely you have helped a friend in need, etc. You will rationalize this with stuff such as "but it was in my interest in the end". Well, a lot of empathy is based on self-interest, but this does not change much. In any case people keep doing good because they are rewarded in a way, in the first layer rewarded by themselves.

By the way, a capitalist is one who has a bourgeois class status, not someone who promotes capitalism, as in the idea or the system.

"Endless opportunities for upward social mobility". Look, even if these existed, you would still be wrong -- it's still the environment which determines where someone ends up. But the picture you paint us here simply leads to the conclusion that you are entirely clueless, have no notion of conditions of life in the USA. Not only have you obviously never been in the real world, but your theoretical understanding is a complete failure, full of great ignorance.

How do you explain, then, that in some countries, where a different environment exists, there is such a high amount quality of life standardized amongst large groups of people, while in others there are great amounts of poverty -- especially when the national wealth is high in both cases? Are the Danish superior to the American, for instance? Absurd.

Your dumb thinking probably even leads to the conclusion that people in Africa are poor while these in, say, Europe are not, because they're "worse", even worse than the previous comparison of countries with equal wealth.

Ending up worse does not mean you are worse. The dumbest, weakest idiot could easily poison you, or kill you in your sleep. Your petty ideology results in the conclusion that the dumbest, easiest, not requiring of ability anti-social behaviour by the worst individuals somehow represents the "best", while the best behaviours of self-sacrifice we have seen are supposedly the opposite. Pathetic.

Sure, minds tend to justify injustice in order to avoid having to face tougher action, both mental and physical. There is really nothing new with this. It just reveals you to be weak.

Your very existence - even so far as your articulation of personality and individuality goes - is entirely based on society and falls with it. Furthermore, you'll be begging the moment your food is taken away. Quite frankly, we could not care nor are we impressed (rather, it reveals a weak personality) about your childish pretending that this is not true, and even if it was not true -- that would only reveal you to be even a more damaged, even less likeable piece of shit.

This is fake, but in any case there's something wrong when you need to pride yourself in this and feel that it makes your personality "interesting".

If what you want to research is empathy, there is plenty of scientific literature on the subject. If you want to research the motives of communists, there is also plenty of literature on that subject.

Leftism isn't about helping the less fortunate, it's about helping myself.

As a capitalist from where does your urge to help the most fortunate come from? Are you just a lickspittle?

We grew up.

I'm not a christian so

My guess is that charity came into existence as an actual thing in the Roman Empire, when Emperors distributed some money, some bread, so the people would not revolt. Then the Church usurped (Or, actually, inherited) this (mostly as an ideal, not as a reality).

Anyway, "charity" presupposes you have money and the poor don't, and that we should help them, because we are oh so good and moral people. Socialism (Communism, Autonomism and Anarchism) is about the poor (workers) overthrowing capitalism, murdering the upper classes and destroying money as a concept and a practical need, as a result of the destruction of commodities.

Charity is little more than being nice to the poor and powerless by relieving some of their pain without striving to overthrow the system that causes it.

Charity is as old as human civilization and inegalitarian societies.

Uhm, no.

I meant institutionalized as such. Sure that charity existed before Roman Empire.

:laugh:

I know, I know, but "MightIsRight"... I just had to say this.

I want to help other workers (and unemployed etc..) because i can empathize with them, seeing how we're all in the same shit situation. But i, like all Communists i suppose, recognize that the only way a qualitative change to our lives will come is through establishment of international proletarian dictatorship and merciless extermination of Capitalist class (in a political sense, but if there's need for it, then in phyisical as well).

I also want to beat the shit out of people like you, OP.

I don't really care any more, I just like the flags. ;)

But seriously, I don't know, it's just in me.

Upward social mobility is worse in America than many parts of Europe, you should really lay off the kool aid. It'd be really interesting to see how you live, how you've gone through all your struggles without any help and you never helped anyone. Actually it wouldn't because that's a fiction and you're just a liar.

Then you can never understand why we think the way we do. I can sit here in front of you and try and lecture you and it would be of no use if you're serious on your statement above. Your callousness for your fellow man should classify you as simply a speed bump to any civilization that wants to elevate from their sociatal ailments, rather than be enveloped by them. On the same coin, you have probably become callous due to being enveloped by these same social ailments which you have not educated yourself on simply due to "not caring". Injustice is a stone throw away in either direction.

Were we born with the need to help the less fortunate is irrelevant. Some of us could've been grown up being apart of the problem, and later in life educated ourselves on the issues plaguing our environmental structures, and decided to address them. Our action comes in two points:

1 - Realization of the problem(s)
2 - Addressing the problem(s)

Realization can only come about through education. You would be hard pressed to find those who would pick up a book and read, rather than get their information from filtered biased sources.

Let me put it to you like this: If you're not in the shit, you're not going to smell the stink.


Educate yourself.

*shrug Most people have empathy. People see others in a bad situation and feel compelled to help them in some way, because they realize that those people are fundamentally not much different than they are. That's a natural urge most people have.

Most people - that is, in mainstream political discourse - defend their positions as benefiting the less fortunate (as well as others). This isn't unique to leftism. "A rising tide lifts all boats," trickle-down economics, the anti-feminist groups making men out to be more disadvantaged than women, etc. No one says "black lives don't matter," it's "blue lives matter," because the police allegedly have such dangerous jobs, etc.

"Helping the less fortunate"? No. First of all we don't put things in such sneering, patronising terms. Second, we don't draw this artificial distinction between us and "the less fortunate", as if the workers were poor benighted fools that we, the socialist nobility are going to hand "the good life" to. And of course, socialism is more (and sometimes less) than helping people. Which is not to say that we don't help people. I personally act so off-putting and sarcastic that anyone looks better when placed next to me, increasing their chances when it comes to friendship, love etc. But socialism means the complete transformation of the manner in which society organises to produce the necessities of human life; replacing commodity production and the anarchy of the market with a socialist, scientifically planned production based on means of production held in common.

And sure, you don't care about the poor, that's why you're posting about this. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't be here. I don't care, for example, about clowns. Either way, clowns or no clowns, it's all the same to me. That's why you won't see me post long "I DON'T CARE ABOUT CLOWENS GUISE" rants on circus sites. My suggestion would be to drop the stupid Spencerism and find another hobby but eh, it's your life, do what you want with it.

This reminds me of Ayn Rand, another sociopath. In other words, you are very unoriginal.

Not at all. Some of them, such as you, might not even earn that much sympathy.

Empathy would, of course, be embarrassing.

You didn't turn up at a Buddhist forum, perchance? Or perhaps a better one which isn't just people whining about being hurt and who should be happy?
At English or posturing? If they were worse, then that would be misfortunate.

It's good that you never give others anything and they need it, perhaps after a while of doing things which are posited as redundant by them you'd actually have been quite 'unfortunate.' Wait, we're discussing social systems and you're measuring people's actual worth by the vote of a collective of idiots which isn't even a real vote? You must really esteem public opinion. I'm not really sure how we're supposed to evaluate your argument here except to say that we're not paying for it (with coins or whatever) and that makes it in our individual cases worthless as an argument, somehow.

Coincidentally it is worthless as an argument, so it's a pity it's wrong or you might have some extenuating evidence. But it is wrong.

Realistically, though (having dispensed with the actual 'argument,' of course, which wasn't really), nobody actually holds to the tautology of 'if they were successful or whatever then they were good,' (which strictly speaking would be more akin to an argument for communism with labour credits - 'if they do etc. then they should receive etc.' - but anyway) partly because obviously it's an avoidance of individual judgement, as evidently judging art as good because it's popular is just not judging art and then it wouldn't be popular so it couldn't be good (and judging it here would be a communistic thing, because it's implying social subordination to humanity rather than the impersonality of capital and such), partly because it was so obviously abdicating the field of political economy or examining the workings of an actual economy that existed (rather than your mental apparatus) that Marxism has a simple time, and partly because obviously there isn't an exact coincidence and many people might not try to be 'successful' in the first place, having other priorities or just not wanting such an equation to work out, let alone a person donating to charity being therefore a moment of moral crisis in their life for that reason. This was in the New Testament somewhere, Jesus was killed and it wasn't deserved or something? Now, the thing with making such an equation is that any divergence from that formula being even possible - which obviously it is given the terms involved - means that they're immediately actually positing a social principle of conscious management by humanity, or in brief they're anti-capitalist and are supporting socialism, albeit perhaps misguidedly. 'Capitalists' always trip up over how they're utopian socialists and get haughty about this fact for some reason.

In any case the collectivism inherent in the argument necessarily validates Marxism and its analysis of capitalism.

Oh, right, and the other thing that they trip up on. Obviously the purpose of 'success,' unless you're literally just trying to say (as in a sense is communicated but anyway) that people should merely live to serve the economy (what?), would here be 'happiness,' in which sense the 'success' itself becomes irrelevant. Now, obviously, altruism which makes people feel nice might be termed 'egoistic' in some sense (just as their 'egoism' might be termed 'altruistic,' and their morality 'eclectic and illogical'), and leads to happiness, in which sense their whole argument collapses because such altruism or helping 'the poor' or whatever can lead to happiness just as anything else can, including of course impoverishment but that's another story.

But in either situation, more abstractly. If 'success' is good, then success at the expense of others can't be good because it's detracting from 'success' - which is more nonsensical than the egoistic equivalent because an ethics involving 'success' in such a role makes no sense - so you can see why there was anxiety about such things, because in reality they are merely advocating some self-defeating, MILD relativism which can't be formulated in a real ethic. Because that's a reductio ad absurdam in nature, such sentiments in a genuine sense, rather than merely as social pandering, would imply the dissolution of the problem or being socialist, but precisely because it would imply that the question being posed is ludicrous, or in brief that sentiment itself wouldn't be a part of the socialism which is beyond such a problematic.

Obviously labourers sold their labour-power, and not the Form of the Good, which evidently has no place in capitalism.

As a capitalist, if you say that you have no desire to help others, then quite frankly you will not be very successful (unless you get in bed with government and are legally allowed to screw people over).

If you want to succeed as a capitalist, you'll need to understand that in order to make a lot of money, you'll need to impact the lives of many people so that they'll be compelled to mutually exchange their dollars for your product or service.

You may be selfish in your desires, but that does not change the fact that in order for you to succeed, you must do things that impact the lives of those around you in a positive way.

So you all took the OP troll bait?

I still LOL at his username.

I am a communist and outright despise the idea of "helping the poor" as he who claims to want to help the poor has already accepted the fact that there will be poor people. But poverty is nothing that is brought about by bad luck or individual error: there are no "less fortunates", there are the exploited, "misfortunates"! People who have a chance to survive only if they enter into servility, and accept a lifetime of work which takes place if and only if, and only in so far as profit is to be had, of which the worker will get a minimal share so as to be able to come to work the following day.

There is nothing one could do but give reasons why a worker should ultimately refuse to go to work under these circumstances ever again. The left should not help or become engaged in the fight against poverty but address the causes of poverty and undermine the workers' willingness to cooperate.

Helping and preaching on the other hand is best left to the clergy and to politicians.

the desire to help someone in a worse situation than you comes from not being a sociopath and having empathy for other humans. now, as communists, we do not advocate helping the poor, instead we advocate finding the root of what makes people poor and eliminating it so the poor will not need to be helped. cooperation is just as much human as competition. if you do feel any empathy for those in a worse situation that you, you probably need mental help. even most of the right wing people i know have some level of empathy for those that are in bad situations. they just believe that the poor can be helped without the need for changing the system that causes them to need the help. your attitude is honestly quite disturbing.

I don't have an urge to help people, I have an urge for an equitable society.

One identifies with the 'less fortunate'. One recognizes the relations of power that underlie their consciousness in relation to the 'less fortunate' and rejects them out of disgust.

One proclaims: I cannot be free and dignified until all peoples are, because the conditions of my own freedom and dignity are rotten, so that an act against 'the weak' is an act against oneself.

nahhhh cuz that be liberals who are bleeding hearts. for commies saving the poor is a trojan horse they use to sneak into power with. as u can see from history communist parties are happy to let millions of people starve to death

My love for god.