I am now entering the final month of my year-long foundation project.1
The focus of this month is on service.
Although previous foundations have focused on making one’s life better, this foundation is to contribute to the well-being of others. I think service is a great pinnacle for the project, and it is a reminder that the key point of life is not self-optimization, but to contribute to the entire world in a meaningful way.
For those interested, you can read the basic updates for the first 11 months here:
- Fitness: Begin, end, books.
- Productivity: Begin, end, books.
- Money: Beginning, ending, books.
- Food: Beginning, ending, books.
- Reading: Beginning, Ending, and Books.
- Outreach: Beginning, Ending, Books.
- Sleep: Beginning, ending, books.
- Reflection: Beginning, ending, books.
- Connection: Start, End, Books.
- Focus: Beginning, ending, books.
- Organization: Begin, end and books.
The paradox of altruism
Service is an integral part of almost all religions in the world and has long been considered a central part of a better life. Almost everyone except for some cynical people agree that helping others is both beneficial and beneficial – we feel happiest when our lives are filled with meaningful pursuits.
However, there are some paradoxes about altruism.
First, many of the benefits of service, such as meaningful goals, social recognition and avoidance of excessive self-deception, come from the selfless intention behind the behavior. If you only join a charity to get connected contacts, then if you are truly motivated by your career, your time there won’t be as enjoyable as you do.
Instead, many of the most socialized activities seem to be neatly aligned with the greatest psychological benefit of service.
Arguably the most selfless thing you can do is earn the highest salary and donate as much as you can to charities that help the poor. This means a hard-working lawyer who works in a high-paying company and donates most of his income may actually contribute more to his career than a public defender who uses his career to help (relatively) wealthy First World clients.
Similarly, while volunteering your time seems to be more charitable than earning income from work, your paid work may be more than unpaid labor. Care for the family also seems to have crossed the gap – almost selfless acts, but also contributed to the common good.
Given these debates, should “counted as” as a service? Doing well, paying some extra money? Or do you have to volunteer your time and energy? Does volunteering benefit you in some way? Or is it completely selfless? What about helping friends and family? Is this important or is it just a real service provided by anonymous strangers who cannot reasonably reward?
My take on this month is to cast a wide network: Assuming the motivation for help is diversified, so various services may bring different benefits. Nevertheless, I want to keep in mind a caring father who volunteers to participate in community causes and philanthropy aims to maximize the benefits of every dollar donated.
How selfish am I?
When evaluating my altruism, I definitely feel the gap between ideals and actual behavior.
I do not volunteer anywhere at the moment. I volunteered to a lot of volunteers while in college, but since then I haven’t volunteered regularly. Also, if I reflect on my past volunteering, it’s mostly in student organizations and community events, rather than helping those who really need it.
As far as charity goes, I used to make more money than I donate now. Some of these appear to be due to increased financial pressures to raise children and live in an expensive city. Some of this may be due to not a certain fear of my business and the lifespan of current livelihoods. However, given my actual living environment, the reduction in charities seems to be painful.
It’s hard to say about the more direct impact my career has had. I want to believe that my work benefits people, but the net benefits of online experts are hard to determine. After all, if I end up be wrong about my beliefs or the core advice I provide, my net contribution to society can actually be negative. Therefore, I think the uncertainty of estimating the impact of my work is greater than that of a doctor, teacher or accountant.
I think I’m quite generous with my friends and family, but that also seems to blur the difference between service and self-improvement.
Even my ethical norms of consumption choices are controversial. I’ve long thought that some form of vegetarianism might be2 Better for the world, but I ate seafood, eggs and dairy. The ethics of these choices are not clear to me, and it may be my choice that makes the world worse – depending on how you calculate, eggs and shrimp contribute more to suffering rather than beef.
All of this is saying that the gap between the potential benefits I can do and the goals I actually achieve seems to be huge.
Low hanging fruit
On the other hand, with a large potential gap on the basis, improvements are often achievable. It’s easy to improve your health if you never exercise, but it’s hard to improve your VO2 maximum if you’re already running every day.
So while my self-assessment is self-blocking, I hope to be able to improve my overall service contribution through some efforts.
Some things I want to do:
1. Donate more.
Given my relative abundance, I should donate more to charities, especially to charities that are highly cost-effective in terms of the benefits they provide. From an effective altruistic perspective, this is probably the most beneficial thing I can do.
2. Volunteer regularly.
I want to start more volunteering. I think my ideal is a weekly commitment, but this can be tricky in the beginning because it can be uneven with the needs of different organizations.
3. Be even more generous with friends, family and community.
While helping to get close connections is not a completely selfless act, I do think it is an important part of fostering a more service-conscious personality. I think I can play a more active role in finding ways to help those around me.
4. Improve the possible impact of my work.
This seems to be the hardest, but it is probably one of the most important aspects of my service.
The most important factor for me is the overall quality of my suggestions and ideas. If my ideas are better than the most alternative ideas, then my work benefits the average reader. If my ideas are worse than this, my work makes my readers worse.
I don’t think this is a trivial assessment. In my opinion, the online ecosystem is full of content that has become popular. I’m wrong about what’s important, and I think the error makes my suggestion worse than possible (and probably worse than the nearby alternative).
However, since I will never intentionally share bad suggestions, the problem I face is ignorance. How to improve the ultimate, agnostic value of work? I suspect the best answer is to adopt good awareness and communication practices such as honesty and transparency, do my homework, and postpone those who know better than I do about the subject. I can’t guarantee this will cause The best Suggested, but it does seem to help.
However, I suspect that one important factor that will ultimately affect the quality of my work is the quality of my learning. If I learn more and can improve the quality of my advice and ideas, then my career is a net positive opportunity.
_ _ _
Given that these more vague ambitions are too great to implement within a month, I focus on the first three: rebuilding the habit of charitable giving, trying to find volunteer opportunities next month, and trying to be more active in helping in my family and community.
At the end of this month, I will share some of my thoughts on the research on this topic and how my service attempts are going to be done in the middle of the month.
footnote
- I’m working on my personal foundation project, three months in advance Basic Courses And the post is here. Technically, I’ve been in this month’s 23rd paragraph – I extended the last month due to family vacations – but I kept the monthly release schedule for consistency.
- I have a lot of uncertainty about how to properly weigh animal rights in overall morality.
