We were watching this show "The Moment of Truth" last night. It is this Truth or Dare sort of game (without the dare) where a person is strapped to a lie detector and asked personal questions. All you have to do is answer every question truthfully in order to win $500,000. To make things worse, you have your family members and friends sitting in front of you listening to you answer questions that sometimes are very hurtful to them. Tough show!There were all sorts of embarrassing questions about husbands and wives, finances and hairpieces. But the question that struck me the most was "Do you really care about starving children in Africa?" That got me thinking...
Do I care about starving children in Africa? Or do I like myself better when I care about starving children in Africa?
I thought long and hard and I guess that it is not the action that makes a person nice or not nice, it is the motive.
But then again I have to ask - if we all had to have the perfect "nice" motive for doing nice things, then would people who really needed acts of kindness get them or not? Or would the starving children just have to starve to death? Is there a genuinely nice person left in this world who will feed them?
I guess that means fake niceness is better than no niceness at all? But that doesn't sound right to me. I'm confused.
PS - Who defines who is a nice person and who isn't? Is there a World Council for Niceness? Are they the World Council because they are all nice people? What makes them nice? What did they do? Or not do? (I just had to put this part in for the benefit of those who understand.)
Disclaimer - This post has more questions than answers. I may or may not have made a lot of sense. I apologize. This is my frame of mind right now. I may actually disagree with myself later. All permissions to eat own words reserved.
4 comments:
love your blog! Insightful & funny. (:
wow, a nice anonymous commenter. I like the left sided smiley. d:
I think when you do something nice, you feel good and that might be motive to do nice things - ultimately it's for yourself. So we can't really question because if they do do the nice things, then someone else benefits as well and that's good. But there's the other extreme where you do nice things just to get votes and such.
Do I care about the starving children? it's a tricky question-if the answer is yes, then what am I doing about it?
I wonder if we have to have a motive for being nice; kindness is often instinctive, provoked by a genuine need. Saying you care about something is a more contemplated reaction. And if you say you care, you have to to do something about it. Otherwise you're as daft as a beauty queen wishing for world peace.
:)
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