Is giving self-serving?

Dec
20
2019
by
Lynne McTaggart
/
457
Comments

To everyone who is appalled this time of year by what they consider the grasping, selfish and consumerist nature of their fellow humans, I point to the story of Samuel Oliner.

Oliner’s life has been haunted by a single question — beyond why he, alone of the inhabitants of his entire village, managed to survive a Nazi pogrom. For six decades he has been asking himself why a perfect stranger was willing to put everything on the line – her family, even her own life – in order to save his.
A village slaughtered
When Oliner was 12 in the summer of 1942, his family, like many other Jews, were forced to leave their homes to take up cramped quarters in a ghetto in a small town in southern Poland.
Early one August morning, the Einatzgruppen, a cadre of enormous trucks, roared into the middle of the plaza. Armed soldiers — Germans and Ukrainians serving under the Nazis — flooded out and banged on the doors of all the houses.
Heeding his sobbing stepmother, who implored him to save himself, Oliner hid beneath their sloped roof where, through a tiny aperture, he was witness to unspeakable atrocities —  a young girl casually flung out of a top floor window as if discarded, a crying baby silenced by gunshot fired by a soldier who’d just finished raping its mother — until the Nazis herded all the survivors, including Oliner’s family, into the trucks.
After the Einatzgruppen departed, Oliner ran barefoot through the countryside, sleeping rough and managing to elude his countrymen who were looking out for stray Jews.
By chance several days later, he learned the fate of his family: they and a thousand others had been stripped, made to stand on a plank, and systematically shot by machine guns so that they would fall into a giant mass grave that had been dug below where they stood.
Oliner managed to make his way to another village, where he knocked on the door of the home of Jacek and Balwina Piecuch, a Christian family he barely knew. Balwina had attended school with his father as a young girl. She had heard about the mass extermination at Garbacz, and as soon as she opened the door and saw Oliner, hugged him to her and ushered him in.
For the following three years, Balwina hid Samuel from the Nazis. She gave him a new name, taught him to act like a Christian, secured him a job with one of the Polish farmers, and continually offered love and reassurance when he was close to despair.
Oliner survived and emigrated to America, where he married and became a noted sociologist. But over the years, he constantly asked himself: Why had Baldwina done it?  
Her decision to help him had put her family in extraordinary jeopardy, for her house was surrounded by countless informers, who would receive generous rewards from the Nazis for reporting Jews in hiding.
What made her risk everything – her own life and the lives of her husband and two children — for a relative stranger?
The question burned so long and hard within him that eventually he was compelled to ask it of anyone he heard about who had engaged in altruism on that kind of heroic scale.
Oliner conducted a lifelong study of the motivation of ordinary people performing extraordinary acts — those who had rushed into burning buildings or dived into icy waters to save strangers’ lives. Actions like Balwina’s flew in the face of every truth he’d been taught about the essence of humanity — which is supposed to operate from a solid core of self-interest.
“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,” writes British biologist Richard Dawkins, “because we are born selfish.”
As the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes once remarked, anyone appearing to act unselfishly does so simply “to deliver his mind from the pain of compassion.”
According to this mindset, we do nice things, basically, out of guilt, or a fear of reprisal from our friends. Evolutionary biologist Michael Ghiselin put it more unsentimentally: “Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.”
From this perspective, actions such as Balwina’s make no logical sense, because they are potentially an act of purposeful self-destruction. In a zero-sum game, it is deliberately choosing the shorter straw.
In someone else’s shoes
Daniel Batson, a psychologist at the University of Kansas, who holds twin doctorates in theology and psychology, has run a number of experiments whose purpose is to look into the human heart to find out exactly why we do selfless things for other people.
Batson managed to tightly control the experimental conditions, so that he could distinguish true altruistic helping from a host of alternative reasons, such as helping in order to win approval, enhance self-image or avoid self-castigation.
Through some 25 studies he has shown that altruism isn’t sparked by social concerns, such as guilt, sadness, or shame. Rather, it is evidence of what he calls “the empathy-altruism hypothesis”: people will help if they can put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
When people can genuinely feel another person’s pain, rather than imagining their own pain in the same circumstance, they are prompted to act altruistically.  His work suggests that altruism requires an ability to completely move out of your own state of mind and into someone else’s.
Oliner has found the answer to his life’s question. When people are able to step outside their own sense of difference from each other they are capable of the most extraordinary good. The impulse is there from birth, but is more realized in some people than in others.
Batson refers to this impulse as empathy, but Robert Cialdini, former psychologist at the University of Arizona and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, offers a more all-embracing explanation: We help when we have lost our sense of individuality and step temporarily into a space of oneness.
Giving to others is the natural extension of what happens when you move out of your small sense of yourself and your own individuality and into the space between.
May you move out of that small self this holiday season and find the joy of giving without getting.

Facebook Comments

We embed Facebook Comments plugin to allow you to leave comment at our website using your Facebook account. This plugin may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the commenting interface, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the interface (such as “liking” someone’s comment, replying to other comments), if you are logged into Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven books, including the worldwide international bestsellers The Power of Eight, The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Bond, all considered seminal books of the New Science and now translated into some 30 languages.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

457 comments on “Is giving self-serving?”

  1. thank you Lynne, you're confirming what I've been questioning for years, always feeling a bit weird because many people called me unsophisticated, now I know that my wish to help is nothing else than my step into a space of oneness, that's why I feel so good in doing it!! Can't thank you enough........

  2. I believe that almost all of our words and actions are essentially self-serving. When this doesn't work it's because we have failed to inquire deeply enough to find what it is we really want. And.... I think all of us want essentially the same thing... a FEELING.... feeling safe, peaceful, open, content, joyful..... essentially AT HOME in this body and in this world. I believe that the paths to this sacred place are, among others, learning to connect with compassion, kindness, softness, gratitude and love. And the container for these qualities is acceptance... of people just as they are, and life as it presents itself.
    I call this "intelligent self-interest." is it selfish??

  3. I believe that when we ask ourselves deeply enough , "What is it I really want?" that question opens the path for our own awakening. What I really want is not different from what you really want, and the path to that place is all the various forms of acceptance.... compassion, trust, kindness. forgiveness and love.

  4. Dear Lynne, I loved hearing you speak on Coast to coast last night. I will be sharing this site a lot and am really happy that so many people are proving that Intentions work.
    I also heard and now reading something that tells us WHY it works. Nanci Danison, author of Create A New Reality, during the most extensive afterlife visit ever reported, reports that we are all indeed a part of our Source, and not separate from it, as we have been led to believe! When using our Intentions we are actually Manifesting a change in our reality, that is clear we have the power to do! It also seems the more we love, the more power we have, especially together!

  5. mexico drug stores pharmacies [url=http://mexicanph.com/#]п»їbest mexican online pharmacies[/url] mexican pharmaceuticals online

  6. buying prescription drugs in mexico [url=http://mexicanph.shop/#]mexico drug stores pharmacies[/url] mexico pharmacy

  7. reputable mexican pharmacies online [url=http://mexicanph.com/#]purple pharmacy mexico price list[/url] purple pharmacy mexico price list

  8. medication from mexico pharmacy [url=http://mexicanph.com/#]mexican online pharmacies prescription drugs[/url] buying from online mexican pharmacy

  9. mexican border pharmacies shipping to usa [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]mexico drug stores pharmacies[/url] medicine in mexico pharmacies

  10. buying prescription drugs in mexico online [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]best online pharmacies in mexico[/url] pharmacies in mexico that ship to usa

  11. reputable mexican pharmacies online [url=http://mexicanph.com/#]mexican border pharmacies shipping to usa[/url] medicine in mexico pharmacies

  12. purple pharmacy mexico price list [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]medication from mexico pharmacy[/url] buying from online mexican pharmacy

  13. pharmacies in mexico that ship to usa [url=http://mexicanph.shop/#]medication from mexico pharmacy[/url] mexican pharmacy

  14. medicine in mexico pharmacies [url=https://mexicanph.com/#]mexico pharmacy[/url] buying prescription drugs in mexico

  15. mexico pharmacy [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]mexico pharmacy[/url] mexican drugstore online

  16. mexican pharmacy [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]pharmacies in mexico that ship to usa[/url] п»їbest mexican online pharmacies

  17. mexican rx online [url=https://mexicanph.shop/#]buying prescription drugs in mexico online[/url] mexico pharmacy

  18. lasix 40mg [url=http://furosemide.guru/#]Over The Counter Lasix[/url] furosemide 100 mg

  19. buy medicines online in india [url=http://indianph.xyz/#]top 10 online pharmacy in india[/url] top online pharmacy india

  20. where can i purchase diflucan [url=http://diflucan.pro/#]buy diflucan over the counter[/url] diflucan brand name

  21. tamoxifen breast cancer prevention [url=http://nolvadex.guru/#]tamoxifen postmenopausal[/url] aromatase inhibitors tamoxifen

  22. tamoxifen cancer [url=http://nolvadex.guru/#]tamoxifen for men[/url] nolvadex gynecomastia

  23. can you buy diflucan over the counter uk [url=http://diflucan.pro/#]diflucan generic cost[/url] can you purchase diflucan over the counter

  24. order diflucan online cheap [url=http://diflucan.pro/#]buy diflucan cheap[/url] diflucan online nz

  25. Online medicine home delivery [url=https://indianpharm24.com/#]Online medicine home delivery[/url] buy prescription drugs from india indianpharm.store

  26. canadian pharmacy world reviews [url=https://canadianpharmlk.com/#]canadian pharmacy[/url] onlinecanadianpharmacy canadianpharm.store

  27. buying from online mexican pharmacy [url=http://mexicanpharm24.com/#]mexican pharmacy[/url] mexican mail order pharmacies mexicanpharm.shop

  28. mexican online pharmacies prescription drugs [url=http://mexicanpharm24.com/#]Mexico pharmacy price list[/url] mexico drug stores pharmacies mexicanpharm.shop

  29. my canadian pharmacy review [url=https://canadianpharmlk.shop/#]Canada pharmacy[/url] canadian pharmacy mall canadianpharm.store

  30. can i get clomid [url=http://clomidst.pro/#]order clomid no prescription[/url] order generic clomid

  31. how to get cheap clomid tablets [url=http://clomidst.pro/#]can you buy cheap clomid[/url] how to get cheap clomid pills

  32. generic for amoxicillin [url=http://amoxilst.pro/#]amoxicillin 500mg capsules antibiotic[/url] amoxil pharmacy

  33. online ed treatments [url=http://edpills.guru/#]online ed pills[/url] ed online prescription

  34. best no prescription pharmacy [url=https://onlinepharmacy.cheap/#]canadian pharmacy online[/url] canada online pharmacy no prescription

  35. mexico pharmacies prescription drugs [url=http://mexicanpharm.online/#]medication from mexico pharmacy[/url] mexican drugstore online

  36. canada drugs online review [url=https://canadianpharm.guru/#] canada drugs[/url] canadian pharmacy world

  37. mexican online pharmacies prescription drugs [url=https://mexicanpharm.online/#]mexican rx online[/url] mexico drug stores pharmacies

  38. mexico pharmacies prescription drugs [url=https://mexicanpharm.online/#]pharmacies in mexico that ship to usa[/url] mexico pharmacies prescription drugs

  39. Online medicine order [url=https://indianpharm.shop/#]reputable indian pharmacies[/url] indian pharmacies safe

  40. buying drugs online no prescription [url=https://pharmacynoprescription.pro/#]non prescription canadian pharmacy[/url] non prescription online pharmacy

Why wait any longer when you’ve already been waiting your entire life?

Sign up and receive FREE GIFTS including The Power of Eight® handbook and a special video from Lynne! 

Top usercarttagbubblemagnifiercrosschevron-down
0