Doing Good

I think it's impossible to identify one, most plausible cause for why people do good. There are many and they all seem plausible. Paul Farmer, for example does good to a scale that is almost unimaginable, yet seems to be motivated solely to do good. And he doesn't really even think he is doing good or doing something above and beyond, he just believes that he is doing what is right. Dr. Maret's presentation for TSD is another example of someone doing good on a larger scale than most without an expectation of receiving anything in return.

But some people do good while expecting something in return. This is called reciprocal altruism. Some people say that if you do good because you want to get something in return, it mitigates the good deed. I don't think this is the case. If a guy volunteers at a soup kitchen, it is looked upon as an act of kindness, but if it turns out the guy only did so to impress a girl, it takes away from what he did. But does it make the people he served any less full? If you do good because you have an incentive, you're still doing good.

I don't think it matters as much why you are doing good, just that you are. That you are going out of your way to help others, and feeling what others are feeling. I think little things like Dr. Maret's work and the activism that the school does with the Campus Ministry are positively changing the wold. And if everyone did things like that, or even smaller things like work in soup kitchens, that our communities and those of other people can and will be better.