http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/200 sorry for all of these TED talks, but some of them are pure works of art and some open your eyes...... like this one.
One reason why most people arn't Samaritans is due to confidence/being scared I suppose, or really "I don't give a **** about that person" or "It's not my job to do so". I went through 3 years of hell in School (Year 8 - 10) were no one would help me, and I remember only one person (Yes one) helping me out, and that person moved from London, and I only knew him for about 2 weeks, it was just his background that reacted, he came from a rough background, he had to stick up/beat people up who were a threat to him and others, but my "friends", who I knew for 10+ years didn't do anything, basically because they didn't see the need of it I guess, which pissed me off. Going back to background, now I pretty much can defend for myself, and I had to in order to live life, and now a few years have gone, I thank em for pissing me off, because I don't know many people that can flip as quickly as I can in order to help/defend someone/myself, which is great tbh. And going back to being scared, the story that came up today of the guy who was throwing chips, guy stood up and said stop it, the guy throwing chips stabbed him and killed him, that's a perfect example of why people don't do stuff anymore. If it was me, I would of stood up and said something, and I guess I would be dead right now also. I remember before I saw some old woman in a wheelchair being harrassed by some teenagers, in a matter of 2 seconds I was out the door of the shop, throwing these twats off of her and just going nuts, it was instinct, nothing more, nothing less.
Actually, because people are sheep group animals. Social psychology research has shown that people will generally not come to a stranger's aid until other people do so. It's all group behaviour, see? Paradoxically, it takes a strong sense of individualism to help strangers.
hmm i consider myself a good Samaritan, in fact yesterday a guys car stalled at a traffic light so i pulled over and helped him out. I believe that helping people regardless of the reward is essential to being happy.
I think a lot of people (myself included) do altruistic things for selfish reasons. I help people because I enjoy it, and if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't do it. It feels kind of schiztoid sometimes, but I've finally accepted that as my reality.
I help people when I think it will benefit me, whether it is subconscious or not. Also what Nexxo said is true, I remember reading about this experiment where there were a group of people in a classroom that were all in on the experiment and one subject that wasn't. They all sat down to take a test and then smoke started coming from the door but everyone acted like they didn't see it. Most of the subjects followed the behavior of the other people and pretended it wasn't there. Only a few got up and left. It was pretty hilarious I wish I could find it.
