::  Posts  ::  RSS  ::  ◂◂RSS  ::  Contact

Abstracting Compassion

 December 5th, 2010
giving  [html]
Passing a panhandler on the street, I feel a wave of compassion. I want to help them, I tell myself not to, and then walking by I feel guilty. My inner push to help the people around me doesn't understand the logic that leads me to give instead to international development, helping people far away. It doesn't understand that however much I can give, I must allocate it to do the most good. The impulse to help just knows: there's someone in front of me that could use some money, and I have more money than I need. How do I learn how to abstract compassion away from individuals who happen to live near me and towards the people who need help most?

Comment via: facebook

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Costs are Rising, US Highway Edition

There’s a preliminary paper circulating at Brookings, looking at American infrastructure construction costs. Authors Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow have tabulated the real costs of the American Interstate program over time, from the 1950s to the 1990s, an…

via Pedestrian Observations July 16, 2019

Nice things

Last night a friend of a friend invited us swimming at a private pond in a Boston exurb. Part of me felt suspicious of the place. Something about the feeling of “this is something rich people do” and the knowledge that the adults chatting in deck chairs w…

via The whole sky July 15, 2019

Deconstruct files

This is a psuedo-transcript for a talk given at Deconstruct 2019. In order to make this accessible for people on slow connections as well as people using screen readers, the slides have been replaced by in-line text (the talk has ~120 slides; at an averag…

via Dan Luu July 12, 2019

more     (via openring)

More Posts:

  ::  Posts  ::  RSS  ::  ◂◂RSS  ::  Contact