Jun 25, · The mother of the former Minneapolis police officer being sentenced Friday in George Floyd's death told the judge that her son is a “quiet, thoughtful, honorable and selfless man” who should May 30, · A Memorial Day appeal to Congress: Help service members recover from toxic burn pit exposure The VA hasn’t acknowledged a definite connection between the When we become older and enter college, teachers become our friends. Some even become our role models. They inspire us to do great things in life. We learn how to be selfless by teachers. Teachers unknowingly also teach very important lessons to a student
A Memorial Day appeal to Congress: Help service members with toxic burn pit exposure
Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness of other human beings or other animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and essays on selfless service. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious traditions and essays on selfless service worldviews, though the concept of "others" toward whom concern essays on selfless service be directed can vary among cultures and religions.
In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness, which is the opposite of selfishness. The word "altruism" was popularized and possibly coined by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as altruismefor an antonym of egoism. Altruism in biological observations in field populations of the day organisms is an individual performing an action which is at a cost to themselves e.
Steinberg suggests a definition for altruism in the clinical setting, that is "intentional and voluntary actions that aim to enhance the welfare of another person in the absence of any quid pro quo external rewards".
Altruism can be distinguished from feelings of loyaltyin that whilst the latter is predicated upon social relationships, altruism does not consider relationships.
Much debate exists as to whether "true" altruism is possible in human psychology. The theory of psychological egoism suggests that no act of sharing, helping or sacrificing can be described as truly altruistic, as the actor may receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification. The validity of this argument depends on whether intrinsic rewards qualify as "benefits". The term altruism may also refer to an ethical doctrine that claims that individuals are morally obliged to benefit others.
Used in this sense, it is usually contrasted with egoismwhich claims individuals are morally obligated to serve themselves first. Effective altruism is the use of evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. The concept has a long history in essays on selfless service and ethical thought.
The term was originally coined in the 19th century by the founding sociologist and philosopher of scienceessays on selfless service, Auguste Comteessays on selfless service, and has become a major topic for psychologists especially evolutionary psychology researchersevolutionary biologistsand ethologists.
Whilst ideas about altruism from one field can affect the other fields, the different methods and focuses of these fields always lead to different perspectives on altruism.
In simple terms, essays on selfless service, altruism is caring about the welfare of other people and acting to help them. Marcel Mauss 's essay The Gift contains a passage called "Note on alms".
This note describes the evolution of the notion of alms and by extension of altruism from the notion of sacrifice. In it, he writes:. Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice, on the other.
Generosity is an obligation, because Nemesis avenges the poor and the gods for the superabundance of happiness and wealth of certain people who should rid themselves of it. This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a principle of essays on selfless service. The gods and the spirits accept that the share of wealth and happiness that has been offered to them and had been hitherto destroyed in useless sacrifices should serve the poor and children.
In the science of ethology the study of animal behaviourand more generally in the study of social evolutionaltruism refers to behaviour by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor. Theories of apparently altruistic behavior were accelerated by the need to produce theories compatible with evolutionary origins.
Two related strands of research on altruism have emerged from traditional evolutionary analyses and from evolutionary game theory a mathematical model and analysis of behavioural strategies. Such explanations do not imply that humans are always consciously calculating how to increase their inclusive fitness when they are doing altruistic acts.
Instead, essays on selfless service, evolution has shaped psychological mechanisms, such as emotions, that promote altruistic behaviors. Every single instance of altruistic behavior need not always increase inclusive fitness; altruistic behaviors would have been selected for if such behaviors on average increased inclusive fitness in the ancestral environment. The benefits for the altruist may be increased and the costs reduced by being more altruistic towards certain groups, essays on selfless service.
Research has found that people are more altruistic to kin than to no-kin, to friends than to strangers, to those attractive than to those unattractive, to non-competitors than to competitors, and to members ingroups than to members of outgroup.
The study of altruism was the initial impetus behind George R. Price essays on selfless service development of the Price equationwhich is a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution.
An essays on selfless service example of altruism is found in the cellular slime mouldssuch as Dictyostelium mucoroides. These protists live as individual amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a multicellular fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body. Selective investment theory proposes that close social bonds, essays on selfless service associated emotional, cognitive, and neurohormonal mechanisms, evolved in order to facilitate long-term, high-cost altruism between those closely depending on one another for survival and reproductive success.
Such cooperative behaviors have sometimes been seen as arguments for left-wing politics such by the Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution and Moral Philosopher Peter Singer in his book A Darwinian Left. Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafmanneuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health and LABS-D'Or Hospital Network J.
provided the first evidence for the neural bases of altruistic giving in normal healthy volunteers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Essays on selfless service of Sciences USA in October[18] they showed that both pure monetary rewards and charitable donations activated the mesolimbic reward pathway, essays on selfless service, a primitive part of the brain that usually responds to food and sex.
These structures essays on selfless service intimately related to social attachment and bonding in other species. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, essays on selfless service, hard-wired and pleasurable, essays on selfless service.
In fact, in an experiment published in March at the University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that subjects with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the ability to empathically feel their way to moral essays on selfless service, and that when confronted with moral dilemmas, these brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers, leading Damasio to conclude that the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that essays on selfless service they were confronted by a difficult issue — in this case as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city — these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains.
According to Adrian Raineessays on selfless service, a clinical neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California, one of this study's implications is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral people: "Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse.
Without that awareness, people essays on selfless service exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to sort their way through moral thickets.
Does that mean they should be held to different standards of accountability? In another study, in the s, Dr. Bill Harbaugh, a University of Oregon economist, concluded people are motivated to give for reasons of personal prestige and in a similar fMRI scanner test in with his psychologist colleague Dr. Ulrich Mayr, reached the same conclusions of Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman about giving to charity, although they were able to divide the study group into two groups: "egoists" and "altruists".
One of their discoveries was that, though rarely, even some of the considered "egoists" sometimes gave more than expected because that would help others, leading to the conclusion that there are other factors in cause in charity, such as a person's environment and values.
The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences defines psychological altruism as "a motivational state with the goal of increasing another's welfare". Psychological altruism is contrasted with psychological egoismwhich refers to the motivation to increase one's own welfare. There has been some debate on whether essays on selfless service not humans are truly capable of psychological altruism. The social exchange theory postulates that altruism only exists when benefits to the self outweigh costs to the self.
He identified four major motives: to ultimately benefit the self egoismto ultimately benefit the other person altruismto benefit a group collectivismor to uphold a moral principle principlism. Altruism that ultimately serves selfish gains is thus differentiated from selfless altruism, but the general conclusion has been that empathy -induced altruism can be genuinely selfless.
Feelings of empathic concern are contrasted with feelings of personal distress, which compel people to reduce their own unpleasant emotions. People with empathic concern help others in distress even when exposure to the situation could be easily avoided, whereas those lacking in empathic concern avoid helping unless it is difficult or impossible to avoid exposure to another's suffering.
In psychological research on altruism, studies often observe altruism as demonstrated through prosocial behaviors such as helpingessays on selfless service, comforting, sharingcooperation, essays on selfless service, philanthropyand community service. Research also suggests that the number of bystanders witnessing distress or suffering affects the likelihood of helping the Bystander effect.
Greater numbers of bystanders decrease individual feelings of responsibility. Many studies have observed the effects of volunteerism as a form of altruism on happiness and health and have consistently found a strong connection between volunteerism and current and future health and well-being.
A study that asked participants to count each act of kindness they performed for one week significantly enhanced their subjective happiness. The relationship between altruistic behavior and happiness is bidirectional. Studies have found that generosity increases linearly from sad to happy affective states, essays on selfless service.
Studies have also been careful to note that feeling over-taxed by the needs of others has conversely negative effects on health and happiness. Studies suggest that gratitude goes hand-in-hand with kindness and is also very important for our well-being. A study on the relationship happiness to various character strengths showed that "a conscious focus on gratitude led to reductions in negative affect and increases in optimistic appraisals, positive affect, offering emotional support, sleep quality, and well-being".
American Sociological Association. The structure of our societies and how individuals come to exhibit charitable, philanthropic, and other pro-social, essays on selfless service, altruistic actions for the common good is a largely researched topic within the field.
The American Sociology Association ASA acknowledges public sociology saying, "The intrinsic scientific, policy, and public relevance of this field of investigation in helping to construct 'good societies' is unquestionable" "Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity" ASA. This type of sociology seeks contributions that aid grassroots and theoretical understandings of what motivates altruism and how it is organized, and promotes an altruistic focus in order to benefit the world and people it studies.
How altruism is framed, organized, carried out, and what motivates it at the group level is an area of focus that sociologists seek to investigate in order to contribute back to the groups it studies and "build the good society". The motivation of altruism is also the focus of study; some publications link the occurrence of moral outrage to the punishment of perpetrators and compensation of victims, essays on selfless service.
Pathological altruism is when altruism is taken to an unhealthy extreme, and either harms the altruistic person, or well-intentioned actions cause more harm than good. The term "pathological altruism" was popularised by the book Essays on selfless service Altruism.
Examples include depression and burnout seen in healthcare professionals, an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, hoarding of animals, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. Most, if not all, essays on selfless service, of the world's religions promote altruism as a very important moral value.
BuddhismChristianityHinduismessays on selfless service, IslamJainismJudaismand Sikhismetc. Altruism figures prominently in Buddhism. Love and compassion are components of all forms of Buddhism, and are focused on all beings equally: love is the wish that all beings be happy, and compassion is the wish that all beings be free from suffering. Essays on selfless service qualities are the ultimate source of human happiness, and the need for them lies at the very core of our being" Dalai Lama.
Still, the notion of altruism is modified in such a world-view, since the belief is that such a practice promotes our own happiness: "The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes" Dalai Lama [46].
In the context of larger ethical discussions on moral action and judgment, Buddhism is characterized by the belief that negative unhappy consequences of our actions derive not from punishment or correction based on moral judgment, but from the law of karma, which functions like a natural law of cause and effect.
Essays on selfless service simple illustration of such cause and effect is the case of experiencing the effects of what one causes: if one causes suffering, then as a natural consequence one would experience suffering; if one causes happiness, then as a natural consequence one would experience happiness.
The fundamental principles of Jainism revolve around the concept of altruism, not only for humans but for all sentient beings, essays on selfless service. Jainism preaches the view of Ahimsa — to live and let live, thereby not harming sentient beings, i.
uncompromising reverence for all life. It also considers all living things to be equal. The first TirthankaraRishabhdevintroduced the concept of altruism for all living beings, from extending knowledge and experience to others to donation, giving oneself up for others, non-violence and compassion for all living things. Jainism prescribes a path of non-violence to progress the soul to this ultimate goal. A major characteristic of Jain belief is the emphasis on the consequences of not only physical but also mental behaviors.
One's unconquered mind with anger, essays on selfless service, pride egodeceit, greed and uncontrolled sense organs are the powerful enemies of humans. Anger spoils good relations, pride destroys humility, deceit destroys peace and greed destroys everything. Jainism recommends conquering anger by forgiveness, pride by humility, deceit by straightforwardness and greed by contentment.
Jains believe that to attain enlightenment and ultimately liberation, one must practice the following ethical principles major vows in thought, speech and action. The degree to which these principles are practiced is different for householders and monks.
Create a culture of selflessness - James Chapman - TEDxUTChattanooga
, time: 10:44Essay on Volunteering
Essays. Concepts. Vedas. Pantheon. Yoga. The Sacred Animals of Hinduism. Cows have a special significance in Hinduism, as aspects of Mother Goddess and as symbols of selfless service. Mahatma Gandhi declared the protection of cows a central feature of Hinduism. Hindus worship cows as the Mother Goddess and symbol of motherhood, kindness and Jan 01, · If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Find out more According to Graham (), person centred therapy also known as client centred therapy is a process whereby an individual takes control of their self in an attempt to become autonomous and increase in self confidence Volunteering, doing something selfless for someone else, evokes this feeling of well-being and satisfaction. While the main motivation usually isn’t to feel good, it certainly has that effect. It’s very refreshing to volunteer, to maybe spend time talking to elderly people at a nursing or retirement home
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