this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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You have to leave it as good as you found it, doubly so if you're tending to friends family or nature, and never stop trying to make things better for one(s) you love.
This means if you don't put your cart away at the grocery store I'm giving you stink eye.
I think we're all too tired, over worked, and taken advantage of to truly embody the above philosophy, so I let most people off the hook.
That said I think morality is a natural trait/occurrence of any living group, to be part of society is to contribute to morality, and to behave immorally within the context of a society is to not uphold the values of that society. Immoral isn't inherently/naturally wrong, it's just incorrect to the people you're attempting to exist with.
If anyone claims to exist without morals they are just claiming to have different values to what their community finds important, and would probably benefit from finding community that aligns with their beliefs, but that risks extremism and echo chambers, see also the Internet and federated instances.
I like the point about people being too tired - as much as that might have felt like a side point I think there may be something there - one thing I noticed in Japan is that when I did something nice that was not culturally required people would not only be really happy but actually surprised.
Japan is not only overworked to death, but also very strict on manners and social rules, so you're often required to pretend to be nice to someone and to follow your duty to others to the point that people start to lose the concept of doing nice things spontaneously.
As the vice grips tighten around the working and middle class, I think what you're describing has also been happening in the West not only since Corona but gradually over the last several decades. People concerned primarily with survival have less room to be kind. (That said, it means more when they are).
The way I'd put this in technical terms is "What percentage of your disposable income is going towards helping others?" $50 for someone making minimum wage is probably more than $1 million coming from a billionaire.
Right, so I think you could push it even further than what I said. Maybe something more qualitative like "What are you willing to give up to help others?"
That said you can also go too far the other way and say that a very rich person who does or doesn't give away things hadn't really giving up much, but we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good. (And practically speaking it's going to have almost as good of an outcome if they gave to the point of diminishing their well-being).
Your angle here is actually getting really close to Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality. (Personally I stop a little short of where he's at, but I think your position more closely resembles his).