I don’t feel that I’ve solved this issue at all for myself, but some thoughts nonetheless.
One can cultivate compassion and care by doing more acts of kindness and appreciate the resulting fuzzies.
In that sense, I don’t think that it is reasonable to think about spending units of caring.
I like that in your case, it seems that your motivation was strictly out of care for the beggar. People can also feel that they just want him to go away or that they are obligated to give him a few coins.
I think that you can definitely allow yourself to feel good about being a caring altruistic person.
This is instrumentally useful in increasing motivation and improving how you engage with people you help or collaborate with. I don’t see a reason to worry about it making one care less about doing good effectively, as long as you feel care toward more abstract far-away people / animals / future people.
On the long run, you probably won’t encounter many cases of beggars and random people who need help where you feel compassion toward. I think that it might be a good policy to allow yourself to just be a kind altruist for the fuzzies, without thinking too much about the counterfactual.
Thank you for kind words and for validation. If I were properly calibrated I’d find neither useful, but I’m not and I do. It’s very gratifying that people seem to appreciate my having written this.
I did not set out to create something that people find beautiful, but if I did so I am happy. Seeing this upvoted, and tagged as “art”, was surprising but pleasant. (Parenthetical aside: is art something created for the self, or something created to express the self to others? I’ve heard both stances espoused. If the latter, then expressing thoughts one finds ugly in a way others find beautiful could be regarded as a failure. Human endeavors are complicated, and I don’t think art is often created for any one reason, but I still think there’s an answer to something hiding in that line of questioning.)
In response to your first thought, I communicated poorly. When I referred to units of caring, I wasn’t positing a finite amount of empathy, I was referencing this. I’ll edit the OP to be less opaque. In response to your second thought, I think my thoughts are covered in my response to shaybenmoshe.
Beautiful!
I don’t feel that I’ve solved this issue at all for myself, but some thoughts nonetheless.
One can cultivate compassion and care by doing more acts of kindness and appreciate the resulting fuzzies.
In that sense, I don’t think that it is reasonable to think about spending units of caring.
I like that in your case, it seems that your motivation was strictly out of care for the beggar. People can also feel that they just want him to go away or that they are obligated to give him a few coins.
I think that you can definitely allow yourself to feel good about being a caring altruistic person.
This is instrumentally useful in increasing motivation and improving how you engage with people you help or collaborate with. I don’t see a reason to worry about it making one care less about doing good effectively, as long as you feel care toward more abstract far-away people / animals / future people.
On the long run, you probably won’t encounter many cases of beggars and random people who need help where you feel compassion toward. I think that it might be a good policy to allow yourself to just be a kind altruist for the fuzzies, without thinking too much about the counterfactual.
You are allowed to do non-effective acts of kindness. It’s okay to feed stray cats.
If that takes too much out of you, you can always change policy.
Thank you for kind words and for validation. If I were properly calibrated I’d find neither useful, but I’m not and I do. It’s very gratifying that people seem to appreciate my having written this.
I did not set out to create something that people find beautiful, but if I did so I am happy. Seeing this upvoted, and tagged as “art”, was surprising but pleasant. (Parenthetical aside: is art something created for the self, or something created to express the self to others? I’ve heard both stances espoused. If the latter, then expressing thoughts one finds ugly in a way others find beautiful could be regarded as a failure. Human endeavors are complicated, and I don’t think art is often created for any one reason, but I still think there’s an answer to something hiding in that line of questioning.)
In response to your first thought, I communicated poorly. When I referred to units of caring, I wasn’t positing a finite amount of empathy, I was referencing this. I’ll edit the OP to be less opaque. In response to your second thought, I think my thoughts are covered in my response to shaybenmoshe.