Should you help people?

[MelziGurl]

It's a personal choice to help people. A perfect stranger offered to use his RACQ to get my sisters keys out of her car. He told her to pretend she was his daughter and that he had driven her car.

I've been run up the rear end in my car by a damned BMW, the owner towed my car for me and even gave my parents money to use on fuel in their car (was without a car for roughly a month). I also had another guy stop in a turning lane at a set of lights to wait with me until my mother and brother came (11 o'clock at night and by myself).

Random acts of kindness give me hope for humanity, but I don't expect anyone to risk their life for another.

 

[nicholaxxx]

What I'm saying is, if they deserved to be in that situation, they wouldn't have been my friend prior to the accident.

it's a whole other story because if they are underage, then they are 'those' kind of people, you know, the one's who shouldn't have been breeding in the first place, the ones who stay up all night partying, drinking, getting high and laid, the ones who eventually become dead beats, the ones who raise your aforementioned potential Hitlers.

You didn't answer my question about family.
Also, Hitler was born into an affluent family, if I'm not mistaken.
But fair enough

Actually, Hitler was born into a family where his father abused him and his mother thought that he could do no wrong.

I'm sorry, what did you want to know about family?

 

[Kevvers]

you are a very negative person, SIR, those type of people became what they are from the bad deeds of other people, or mental problems that devolped from the actions of other people etc, etc, most of the evil people in the world were corrupted by others, and i know it will probably never stop but we can at least try our best to prevent it from happening to people in the first place, people do crazy things from the actions of others, i know because i wacth alot of TV shows about it

Negative?
No. I see things clearly, unlike you, who views the world through the veil of idealism.

"i know because i wacth alot of TV shows about it"
Ahahahahahaha!
Yes, and I watch television shows about an ex-spy living in Miami - does that mean if I look around, I can find my very own Michael Westen?

And Monk is right - people who are abused do have a higher chance of becoming the abuser, but it's not required.
And it's not a sure thing.

Some people are just inherently malicious.
Hell, most people are just inherently malicious.
But they tell themselves they'd never act on it.
You can't make the world a better place because humans are evil.

I think that all these serial murderers, child rapists, etc... mostly they are actually they way they are not because of events that happened in their childhood or things like that, but because they actually have stuff wrong with their brain. They've done brain scans on psychopaths and they do actually have a brain that is wired up differently from a non-psychopathic person. In case anyone didn't know psychopathy is literally not being able empathise with another person. I'm not exactly sure, but I believe they noted that when people watch things designed to provoke an emotional response a part of their brain lights up, and that part of the brain didn't light up as much in psychopaths leading them to conclude that it wasn't very well developed/connected. Also, I believe that people with schizophrenia when scanned have extremely bad connections -- some parts of the brain are simply just not very well connected to the rest of it, which could explain why they are prone to chemical imbalances and strange patterns of thought.

However, the thing is the brain is not set in stone -- you can actually change its connections by your own thoughts -- I believe this is a fairly new field of psychology called cognitive therapy. The brain is a big ball of neurons some of which is hardcoded into specific roles, but a lot of it is fairly malleable and the kind of network of connections in your brain adapts to task. Meaning that if you continually have the same kind of thoughts, your brain might actually become accustomed to thinking that way -- those neural paths become strongly re-enforced, are quicker to fire, and become connected to more neurons and so are more likely to fire.

The problem is that in the case of people who are deliberately changing their brains with these undesirable traits that quite often it is happening on an unconscious level, and so its hard to recognise. And ultimately, the only person who can exercise control of their thoughts is that person themselves. And in the case of severe 'psychosis' the task is like trying to put a broken egg back together.

So, in conclusion, I don't think anyone is evil per say. We just have different brains. Some people have undesirable traits because they were born with that kind've brain. Other people give themselves undesirable traits by continually re-enforcing them, changing their brain to better suit its purpose. Please, for the good of us all, think happy, happy thoughts people!

Just as a note: most of this stuff I have picked up from reading "The New Scientist" because I am a big fan of science, I also read a bit of [link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate]"Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker[/link] who I believe puts all this much better than I can.

 

[bodyklok]

Co-operation is at the foundation of advancement, by working together humans can achieve much more than we could by working alone. So yes, I do think we should help people.

 

[slevin8989]

I would but that's because I'm too much of a nice guy. Hell i had a guy living at my place for a week because he was homeless and i didn't even know the guy

 

[ragamuffingirl]

yes i think we should help each other. if we don't help each other we cant survive as a species. considering this every time we look the other way we've not only wronged that person but ourselves as well.

Well put.

 

[Xorghul]

Should I help someone in need?
No.

Will I help someone in need?
Maybe. Depends on my mood at the moment.

 

[KarumaK]

Hell no.

Life comes and life goes, just be glad you're not up to bat.

 

[Scarecrow38]

I'm surprised there really needs to be a thread about this. If someone needs help and you can reasonably provide it.... help them. It's what good people do.

There's no reason not to help people unless doing so places you in unacceptable danger. The man in the situation was not in any such scenario and he was right to attempt to help. His death was tragic and should not have happened in the way it did.

Some people might think it's witty to try to score points with other members of these forums by saying how badass they are about not helping another human being. I think it's pathetic and immature.

 

[pyrod]

my opinion has already been expressed. If it's within your limits help people. Otherewise try to make the situation less dangerous for them while giving yourself some room to survive. If death is absolutely unavoidable for them or yourself (as in if you have to choose) try to comfort them in their final moments