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Comment by jkhdigital | Hacker News Reader

Amen. I’m a sober alcoholic, and if I died tomorrow I’d be content knowing that I did at least one worthwhile thing with the time I had: I helped another alcoholic, a 23 year old man who tried to kill himself shortly before I met him, get sober and start working and move out of his mom’s basement and stand up straight and look other people in the eyes and then go and help a few other people stop drinking.

Not a single professional accomplishment is within an order of magnitude of that level of fulfillment. Just help one f*cking person become more than they thought they could be and you’ll die happy—why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?

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That brings up an old memory for me: I used to work as a lifeguard at a pool for three or four years as I was going through uni. Nothing glamorous in that work, it's just very loosely managing young males showing off in front of young females. Except this one time some kid jumped in the deep end and whilst he surfaced, he couldn't reach the top of the side of the pool in order to stay at the surface, he was clutching at the side with that unmistakeable, wide-eyed panic face. I reached down, pulled him out, and he ran off to his mum / friends / whatever, I never saw him again. Was a three second interaction from seeing it to him being back on dry land.

Possibly the best thing I've ever done in my life, and it was in my late teens. I get satisfaction from my intellectuality and general smarts, but for it really brighten my soul, it has to positively affect other people.

The bottom line is a demanding bitch and no matter how much you give it will ask for ever more. A positive change in a fellow human being is intrinsically, life-affirmingly satisfying; even just a single-serve in a lifetime.

I vaguely recall a study where they took suicidal people and employed them as lifeguards with great results.

It makes a lot of sense. There’s two types of depression (though their names elude me). There’s depression where there’s something wrong with your brain - and despite having a great life, your brain makes sad chemicals instead of happy ones. And then there’s depression where you feel sad because your life is missing purpose and meaning. Ie, being the person you are with the life you have, depression is a healthy response.

Most depression is the second type. So I’m not surprised giving people purpose shows great results. It would have for me, too.

It's an interesting fact that one could save many lives by donating to charities and yet wouldn't feel quite the same way about it. Clicking "donate" on a screen and filling in credit card details isn't as thrilling an experience as yours even if it achieves no less.

This nicely encapsulates why our society sucks. Helping people you can't see doesn't provide the self-congratulation dopamine hit, thus people don't do it.

That's why charities ought to be small, local operations helped chiefly by local volunteers and only secondarily by donations.

Charities aren't appealing not just because you don't feel as connected to outcomes, but because we know many of them pay out big paycheques to execs and other overhead to the point where barely any of our donations are put to good use.

Maybe just being cynical about it, but if I help out at a soup kitchen I know I'm helping people, when I donate I am just getting a tax credit and boosting a charity's executive bonuses.

I don't think it's about being cynical and more about proximity. I'm not as pessimistic about charities. We don't get the same good feelings helping people we don't know for the same reason we don't care about all the people that is suffering right now.

On this note, my parents have been in contact with a African woman for years who they helped via one of those child sponsorship programs. Shes an adult now and literally yesterday she called and texted my Mom via her own funds and everything. It doesn't seem like a petty thing after all.

There's actually an entire field called Effective Altruism [1] that's dedicated to researching which charities put donations to good use - and there are quite a few of them [2]

Also, overheads like executive bonuses don't _necessarily_ mean that the charity is ineffective [3]

[1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

[2] https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

[3] https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/choosing-a-charity/#a-note-a...

I also have a similar memory as a teenager swimming in a river. A young boy was on his own, with only his face above the water, with said wide-eyed expression. I asked him if he needed help, he managed to say yes, and I pushed him to the river bank. He ran back to his family.

I heard his mum giving out to his older brothers for not watching him. There is a good chance that young boy would have run out of energy and slipped under the surface with no one noticing. It's a nice thought that I may have saved his life and also saved his family from all the grief and guilt that would have caused. I doubt he remembers it - not that it matters.

If you like these life-saving type of experiences, I encourage adrenaline sports. Whitewater kayaking, big mountain skiing, etc. Having done these for years I can say there are opportunities every season to save a life and to have my own saved by someone else. It is exhilarating.

Not saving life but I directly and indirectly help dozen of people get into top companies. It's an amazing feeling when you see someone success because of you. To some extent, I felt like I'm reliving the offer experience over and over. In a way, I changed some people life and I felt oddly content.

When we do a selfless act we experience the joy from our soul – that's what we're truly are: an eternal, complete drop in the infinite ocean of pure consciousness. Our ego (which makes us feel that we're separate from others) binds us in layers and layers of conditioning, of labels and engages us in selfish acts, which only brings suffering and stress. Read about this discourse from Buddha to understand what we're missing – The Fruits of the Contemplative Life: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN02.html

> why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?

I suspect different people probably did try to tell me versions of that, but it’s very hard to learn deep feelings from hearing other people talk or reading their words as compared to living it yourself. You can read about others’ heartbreak but you learn from your first few breakups. You can read about having kids but nothing prepares you for the deep feelings of parenting.

Maybe being doomed to repeat the learnings others have had is part of the point?

The whole society seems designed top down to keep us fighting and arguing, live at the expense of others is the mantra. It seems it took a lot of engineering to get us this far from our natural state of caring. The Chinese seem to indoctrinate with a slightly different model where you are to believe society comes before the individual.

The sensible model seems rather obvious: One has to organize their own show before one is of [much] use to others. Until that time one should give the others the opportunity to help you with that and be grateful. Its not an embarrassment if you plan to do the same.

There has been a cost to individualism no doubt. There are a few culutures where, generally, the community comes first.

I think you can cultivate that in a small way though, by taking part in volunteer programs in your community. I know it's a cliche recommendation but if you are feeling like we lack community then it's probably just because of how easy it is to separate yourself from it.

Elevating society above the individual stifles innovation and leads to stagnation.

References?

>why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?

Say what you want about the ills that come with it, but religion has been telling us this since the dawn of time.

Amazing. Inspiring. Thanks for writing this.

Thank you.

> why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?

Because it has an intangible effect on GDP. Our culture optimises for creating obedient worker drones who will capitulate to authority. Fostering empathy for others and leading children to a life of fulfilment conflicts with establishment incentives.

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