Generosity with/without motives

can you tell the difference? If so, explain.

 

In oneself or with someone else?

 

Doesn't exist without motives

 

the person doing it can. the random act of generosity is twice blessed.

if you're the person receiving it, just be thankful for them,
and to the universal wonder of strangeness, which requires no personification,
and owes nothing to what anyone tells anyone else to think they know.

everyone has their own lives to live and face.
you can't expect to know, and benefits no one to assume.

 

the universal wonder of strangeness, requires neither motivation nor to be known in order to exist.

 

Generosity usually has no motives. If someone has motives, then he/she isn’t being generous. “If you do this for me, I’ll do this for you,”” is just a business deal. Just my opinion.

 

There are no motives....but there is a motive in feeling good that you helped someone or something...and just were generous and put a smile on their day or something...and it goes the opposite way, too....like tonight with that creature I saw and wrote about in the what are you doing now thread, ...and feeling like the worse person in the world, too.

 

But that's only one example of a motive. Greed is a motive, yes, but it's far from the only one.

If you help a little old lady cross the street to feel better about yourself, that's ultimately a selfish and interior motivation. If you do it because you don't want her to get hurt and you want to make things easier on her, it's a selfless and exterior motivator, but you're motivated nonetheless. So while some motivations toward generosity are more noble than others, I think just about everything we do is motivated by something.

 

That's true, but I think there are times, when just doing the right thing, makes sense. No motives.

 

It is always a good thing to help another
person when you can
Because you can

 

Depends on the person for me. If they treat me well, I treat them well and if they don't they probably shouldn't expect too much from me.

Like this guy I play pool with right, it'll happen today when I see him. He won't have money for beers so he'll ask me every time I go to the bar if I can buy him a drink. At first it was a joke but I bought him a drink to the point it's almost an expectation. He treats me well, there's respect. When he has money he will buy me a drink. Right now it's at like 20 beers to 2 in return but I don't mind because we're good.

Then there's another guy that's at pool, he's not on my team but I see him every week. Same deal, same situation. We don't get along. He gets nothing from me. He glares at me when I buy drinks for others. All he had to do was be a decent person towards me, but he lost that.

 

This thread reminds me of my brother in law, who throws money around anytime we do a family vacation. He always buys everyone drinks, grabs the check for dinner, pays for outings, etc. But he's also super moody, always acts sort of pouty if people start doing their own thing rather than what he wants to do, he wont really talk to people until he's had a drink or two, just not the easiest person to get along with

I think his motivation is that paying for everything gives him control over the situation and it also atones for him just sort of being a dick most of the time lol

 

Always assume there’s an ulterior motive to their generosity and benevolence

 

Not something i worry about unless i feel there is a reason to.

 

Good answer and exactly. I am not really thinking about it, either....I will stop and pick up anything like a caterpillar or anything I see off the road and put it off to the side in the grass so the next car coming will not squish it.......I do this because I have to and don't even think about whether I should or not...

 

i would still call that a motive. doing what doesn't make sense causes a sort of anxiety, so the motive is to avoid that.

this is just a semantic argument though, and was obviously not the point of the OP's question. so to answer that, it really just depends on the person. some people are really transparent in their motives, and others are not.

 

I feel this discussion has arisen a few times now. I think generosity without motives or altruism exists in the form of generosity with no readily apparent expectation of reciprocation. If one is to be pedantic, perhaps it could be argued that Altruism with a capital 'A' does not really exist, as we may point to positive reinforcement in pro-social behavior, atoning for prior deeds, or other subtle perhaps even subconscious potential reasons why such generosity may occur.

 

Hyperbole 101?

 

in what sense?

 

I don’t even know where to begin to breakdown that statement into some coherent form