Altruism and Reality

Altruism and Reality
Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136810730

Brings together Paul Williams' previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara.

Altruism and Reality

Altruism and Reality
Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136810803

Brings together Paul Williams' previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara.

Altruism in Humans

Altruism in Humans
Author: Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195341066

We send money to help famine victims halfway around the world. We campaign to save whales and oceans. We stay up all night to comfort a friend with a broken relationship. People will at times risk - even lose - their lives for others, including strangers. Why do we do these things? What motivates such behavior? Altruism in Humans takes a hard-science look at the possibility that we humans have the capacity to care for others for their sakes rather than simply for our own. Based on an extensive series of theory-testing laboratory experiments conducted over the past 35 years, this book details a theory of altruistic motivation, offers a comprehensive summary of the research designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis, and considers the theoretical and practical implications of this conclusion. Authored by the world's preeminent scholar on altruism, this landmark work is an authoritative scholarly resource on the theory surrounding altruism and its potential contribution to better interpersonal relations and a better society.

A Fraught Embrace

A Fraught Embrace
Author: Ann Swidler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691183201

In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals from faraway places descended on Africa to offer help and save lives. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of altruists who dream of transforming lives, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this incisive, irreverent book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of policy and practice. All who want to do good—from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals—depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. The mutual misunderstandings among these players create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. A Fraught Embrace unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.

Delusional Altruism

Delusional Altruism
Author: Kris Putnam-Walkerly
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-03-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119606063

How you give matters. Discover philanthropic strategies for creating transformational change. Whether you regularly donate to charity, run a small family foundation, or are responsible for millions of dollars in grants, you are a philanthropist. Delusional Altruism: Why Philanthropists Fail To Achieve Change and What They Can Do To Transform Giving looks at how you can create transformational change. It reminds us that how we give is as important as the amount we give. The author describes common practices that hinder transformational change and explains how to avoid them, ensuring that your gifts help create the impact you seek. Delusional Altruism—a set of all-too-common errors in philanthropic strategy—can derail a program of giving and result in a loss of efficiency and effectiveness. This book asks philanthropists and charitable organizations to consider whether they have fallen under the spell of Delusional Altruism. Are you cutting out impactful giving in order to save money or avoid uncertainty? Is your philanthropic approach unnecessarily restricted by traditional thinking? This book will help you answer these questions and determine how you can achieve better outcomes through the process of Transformational Giving. Ask questions that spur learning and fuel innovation Believe that investment in yourself and your operation is important Increase the speed of your actions to increase the impact of your giving Give in ways that create lasting, sustainable change Follow strategies to make your philanthropy unstoppable Although enhanced opportunities for philanthropic giving are on the horizon, changes to philanthropic practice are needed to prevent this philanthropy boom from becoming under-leveraged. Implementing updated approaches now can lead to positive change for the future. Read Delusional Altruism to learn how you can transform reality with strategic giving.

A Scientific Search for Altruism

A Scientific Search for Altruism
Author: C. Daniel Batson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2018-10-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0190651393

For centuries, the egoism-altruism debate has echoed through Western thought. Egoism says that the motivation for everything we do, including our seemingly selfless acts of care for others, is to gain one or another self-benefit. Altruism, while not denying the force of self-interest, says that under certain circumstances we can care for others for their sakes, not our own. Over the past half-century, social psychologists have turned to laboratory experiments on humans to provide a scientific resolution of this debate about our nature. The experiments have focused on the possibility that empathic concern-other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need-produces altruistic motivation to remove that need. With carefully constructed experimental designs, these scientists have tested the nature of the motivation produced by empathic concern, determining whether it is egoistic or altruistic and, thereby, providing an answer to a fundamental question about what makes us tick. Framed as a detective story, this book traces the scientific search for altruism through numerous studies and attempts to examine various motivational suspects, reaching the improbable conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. The book then considers the implications of this conclusion both for our understanding of who we are as humans (the bad news as well as the good) and for how we might create a more humane society.

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2011-06-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393339998

Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.

Pathological Altruism

Pathological Altruism
Author: Barbara Oakley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2011-12-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0190453818

The benefits of altruism and empathy are obvious. These qualities are so highly regarded and embedded in both secular and religious societies that it seems almost heretical to suggest they can cause harm. Like most good things, however, altruism can be distorted or taken to an unhealthy extreme. Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy. Pathologies of empathy, for example, may trigger depression as well as the burnout seen in healthcare professionals. The selflessness of patients with eating abnormalities forms an important aspect of those disorders. Hyperempathy - an excess of concern for what others think and how they feel - helps explain popular but poorly defined concepts such as codependency. In fact, pathological altruism, in the form of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, may underpin some personality disorders. Pathologies of altruism and empathy not only underlie health issues, but also a disparate slew of humankind's most troubled features, including genocide, suicide bombing, self-righteous political partisanship, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. Pathological Altruism is a groundbreaking new book - the first to explore the negative aspects of altruism and empathy, seemingly uniformly positive traits. The contributing authors provide a scientific, social, and cultural foundation for the subject of pathological altruism, creating a new field of inquiry. Each author's approach points to one disturbing truth: what we value so much, the altruistic "good" side of human nature, can also have a dark side that we ignore at our peril.

Standing at the Edge

Standing at the Edge
Author: Joan Halifax
Publisher:
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2018-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1250101344

"[This book is] an ... examination of how we can respond to suffering, live our fullest lives, and remain open to the full spectrum of our human experience"--Amazon.com.

Survival of the Nicest

Survival of the Nicest
Author: Stefan Klein
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-06-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1925113337

The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ conjures an image of the most cutthroat individuals rising to the top. But Stefan Klein, author of the international bestseller The Science of Happiness, makes the startling assertion that the key to achieving lasting personal and societal success lies in helping others. Klein argues that altruism is in fact our defining characteristic: natural selection favoured those early humans who cooperated in groups. With their survival more assured, our altruistic ancestors were free to devote brainpower to developing intelligence, language, and culture — our very humanity. As Klein puts it, ‘We humans became first the friendliest and then the most intelligent apes.’ To build his persuasive case for how altruistic behaviour made us human — and why it pays to get along — Klein brings together an extraordinary array of material: current research on genetics and the brain, economics, social psychology, behavioural and anthropological experiments, history, and modern culture. Ultimately, his groundbreaking findings lead him to a vexing question: if we’re really hard-wired to act for one another’s benefit, why aren’t we all getting along? Klein believes we’ve learned to mistrust our generous instincts because success is so often attributed to selfish ambition. In Survival of the Nicest, he invites us to rethink what it means to be the ‘fittest’ as he shows how caring for others can protect us from loneliness and depression, make us happier and healthier, reward us economically, and even extend our lives.