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Burdens of Reciprocation


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    • Unwise, Socially efficient
      0
    • Unwise, Not socially efficient
      2
    • Unwise, Dunno
      0
    • Wise, Socially efficient
      0
    • Wise, Not socially efficient
      3
    • Wise, Dunno
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    • Dunno, Socially Efficient
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    • Dunno, Not socially efficient
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    • Dunno, Dunno
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I've been pondering this (these) for a while with no conclusion, and for some reason this seems like a good community to ask:

  • Would life be more enjoyable if you felt no obligation to reciprocate when given to or complimented or cetera?
  • Would it be more socially efficient if everyone did so?

Please note that I don't mean the actual reciprocation, only the sense of guilt when one hasn't yet reciprocated.

 

EDIT:

Poll note: "wise" is short for an affirmative answer to the enjoyability question

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Why would anyone do anything nice if others didn't do nice things for them in return? I mean, every selfless action is based in selfishness because in some way it makes you feel good. But evolutionarily if doing good things for others did not lead to them being likely to do good things for you, we would no longer do good things for others.

 

I don't know what's supposed to be theoretically more socially efficient. Like if doing good things was just the way of the world and no one worried about getting something in return? I dunno, I'm telling you, with no chance of reward eventually people stop doing nice things.

 

The only future in which this is not the case is a utopian one, where the support you naturally receive from the world makes up for the lack of return you may get from others. Similar to the "Pay it forward" concept, where you're causing others to do nice things by doing nice things, but on a universal scale. This would be required for this hypothetical to work. And, y'know, human nature ain't letting that happen anytime soon.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Why would anyone do anything nice if others didn't do nice things for them in return? I mean' date=' every selfless action is based in selfishness because in some way it makes you feel good.[/quote']

I agree that people won't give selflessly (When I first typed that, I mistyped it "senselessly", interestingly enough), but I think people's selfish reasons usually aren't return gifts:

  • Altruism
  • A deep-seated subconscious fear of ostracization paired with the expectations of their acquaintances of generosity (which is the same mechanism (fear, though not of ostracization specifically) that I think explains the lion's share of hedonistically senseless action)
  • Attempting to absolve guilt (which I consider to be fear, but that's not the topic of this thread)
  • Indoctrination (The mechanism by which this occurs is not the topic of this thread, though I'd definitely give this to fear)

With my own interpretations of things, basically there's just altruism and fear, but I won't assume that others agree with my synonymization of ethicality and fear

 

Additionally, on the first question, I'm not making the assumption that the entire rest of the world follows suit.

 

Also, to clarify, Reciprocation can be reasonable if looking to maintain a relationship, regardless of the guilt that the burden adds, so to me at least, it boils down to whether that motivator is a net benefit.

 

(There's also the matter that most people would be insulted by a request for them to stop giving gifts.)

 

To defend my belief in fearless altruism, it's evolutionarily beneficial for tribes, which is ultimately the evolutionary unit that has pervaded most of humanity's existence, which makes me think it might function. That said though, I do think that it would fall apart on an evolutionary timescale with a society structured as the west (and increasingly everywhere else) is, but whether humanity will exist and/or need eachother by the point at which significant evolutionary change has occured is anyone's guess. (Also anyone's guess is whether the West's contemporary individualism will hold over the next several thousand years)

 

The only future in which this is not the case is a utopian one' date=' where the support you naturally receive from the world makes up for the lack of return you may get from others. Similar to the "Pay it forward" concept, where you're causing others to do nice things by doing nice things, but on a universal scale. This would be required for this hypothetical to work. And, y'know, human nature ain't letting that happen anytime soon.[/quote']

Not really aimed at you (As I agree with this passage), but to any who would view the "any time soon" as "absolutely never", please read:

  • Indoctrination can do some impressively counter-nature things, though this would require a level of possession on the part of a central orchestrator that would be very difficult to maintain for any significant stint. (Interestingly, some people think that the present-day world is like that (karma), which I (and I'd imagine you) find preposterous.)
  • At a small enough scale (if the species is all the way down to having about 3 or so people left), I think it might work like that, provided that the people are all roughly duplicates, and their circumstances are all roughly duplicate.
  • If the species is down to a single individual, whether this remains true is a highly philosophical/semantic problem to which I don't think a concrete answer can be found... Whether that makes it possible or not is yet another question that evades concrete answers...

 

Perhaps relevantly, my family has stopped exchanging gifts on Christmas, and it's been a better holiday for everyone.

 

Sorry for the scatterbrainedness of this post; a lot, if not most of this, was not even intended in response to the quotes.

 

For the record, my poll response was Dunno, Not Socially efficient

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Ah, didn't know you meant just a single individual. Well, I dunno if this is how I'd go about, I dunno, whatever the aim of this line of thinking is. I'll go with the utopian thing, since honestly that's pretty much what the goal of how I try to act is, if you extrapolate far enough. Whatever seems right to you, though.

 

Then again you were asking us. I don't see it working since it's not exactly a change that suddenly spreads through the whole of society. More likely you would just be, I dunno, disfunctional by society's standards rather than a conduit for change. In small systems like just your family or friends though you're free to do whatever you're all comfortable with.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Well' date=' I dunno if this is how I'd go about, I dunno, whatever the aim of this line of thinking is.[/quote']

The aim of this line of thinking is determining whether the sensation of guilt when one hasn't yet reciprocated is a net benefit to the one who hasn't yet reciprocated. Pros and cons of having this feeling are as follows:

cons

  • The feeling itself

pros

  • The additional pressure to return the favor, which will evade judgement

Now that I lay this out like this, I feel like I was being impossibly dunceish by expressing this as though this was some objective one-decision-fits-all thing, though my creation of a poll would seem to suggest that at some subconscious level, I already knew that it wasn't...

And to some degree I'm developing my forum persona (not like roleplaying, rather like introducing oneself)

 

 

Then again you were asking us. I don't see it working since it's not exactly a change that suddenly spreads through the whole of society. More likely you would just be, I dunno, disfunctional by society's standards rather than a conduit for change. In small systems like just your family or friends though you're free to do whatever you're all comfortable with.

It's not whether you should reciprocate, it's whether you should feel guilt for failing to have already done so when receiving gifts; its spread in society wouldn't probably be relevant for exactly the reason you state: it's really, really unlikely.

 

I feel compelled to thank you for making this thread.

I am flattered to an embarrassing extent

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So you mean, if you still felt like "Hey, that was nice. I should do something for them", but you didn't have guilt for not doing so and were able to simply accept random gifts?

 

Well, I don't feel guilt anymore. Reisen helped me get to a place where I don't need to feel anything negative. I think it's usually referred to as being a humanitarian, but I'm not sure humanitarian as a title is in popular use. Moreso used as an adjective. Regardless, you didn't phrase that very well, and the poll is sort of useless now. I don't think the answers already given understood the question. Given what I stated in the previous paragraph, undoubtedly that would be ideal. Unfortunately most humans still need negative feelings to make them do stuff. It takes a certain level of selflessness/care for humanity in general/"faith in unconditional love" to safely absolve negative emotions. They had an evolutionary purpose, and still serve those purposes to this day for most. Though I do believe we're at a point where we can start to change our thousands of years of genetic coding to be more relevant to modern society. And I believe selflessness and unconditional love are possible. I know some communities that get along just fine like that. The world at large, however, is a little too stupid archaic insecure to abandon their guiding instincts. I'd like to convert as many people over as possible, though..

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I do not reciprocate compliments. Instead, I let know whoever I am talking to that I appreciate their compliment, that's all.

 

Ah, I'm too tired. I only came here to help.

« — Va, je ne te hais point ! »

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