Why do people do good deeds

Yang Yong: In our traditional culture there are two main views on the good. One is the Mencius "sex good theory", Mencius believes that "benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are not from outside the heart, I inherent also", the good from the human nature of the practice, the need for internal self-consciousness, do not have to seek outside; the second is Xunzi's "sex bad theory Secondly, Xunzi's "theory of sex and evil", Xunzi believes that "the birth of a person is also solid villain", people need to rely on moral education to improve themselves. These are the two perspectives on which our education has consistently been based. Most of our education emphasizes the importance of doing good, but there is little in-depth inquiry into why we should do good. The first step is to make sure that you have a good understanding of how to do this, and that you have a good understanding of what you are doing.

Yicheng: Not only in China, but also in traditional Western societies. Kant referred to the basic requirement of goodness for human nature as the "categorical imperative," and human beings are consciously and voluntarily in the position of goodness and take it for granted, just as people take the existence of the sky and the planets for granted. Western traditional psychology believes that morality is a matter of self-esteem, and the value of a person's good deeds is related to his position and feelings about society.

Yang Yong: I once read a report: Harvard University psychologist Mark Hauser did a questionnaire on moral choice, the questionnaire is: you are an eyewitness, standing in the train switch, an unmanned out-of-control train is about to speed past, and not far in front of the train there are five workers are working. In the first scenario, if you move down the turnout connector on the right side of the turnout, you can save five lives at the last second, but the only regret is that if the body swerves to the right, it will surely hit another worker on the railroad tracks, but it will only hit one person. In the second scenario, you are standing on a bridge over the railroad tracks and there is a strong man in front of you, you can push him down so hard that his heavy body will stop the train and five people will be saved, but the strong man will die. How will you choose?

More than 300,000 people gave their answers, and the results were shocking in that the answers given were almost identical, regardless of the respondents' age, gender, education, origins, and the region in which they lived. Five out of six chose to move the turnpike and one in six chose to push off the strong man on the bridge. While the outcome was that both would result in a person's death, more people tended to choose the behavior that indirectly resulted in a person's death. The more concrete and direct the behavior, the more likely it is to be depraved, while the more abstract and indirect the behavior, the more peace of mind it is. Analogous to primates, such as macaques, baboons, and orangutans, the same social behavior exists in their treatment of their peers. Hauser believes that moral laws exist in all of us, but that such laws are not passed on in the form of education, but are fixed through genes.

Yicheng: I don't see it that way, morality doesn't have to be innate, nor is doing good genetically determined. The experiment above said that there are still one in six people who choose to push the strong man and choose this direct and rough approach.

Yang Yong: most of this one-sixth of the people are antisocial (personality disorder), they only use the understanding to judge the situation at the time, their choice may be due to the brain has been damaged or social factors, such as all kinds of unfair treatment, poorer living conditions, and so on, and these factors are formed later.

Yicheng: Morality is nothing more than an emotional judgment, and doing good deeds is due to emotional weighing. We often make moral choices out of an emotional **** sound, this **** sound is controlled by a kind of nerve cells called "mirror neurons". When it acts, it elicits the same response in the brain as the actual behavior. When we go to help others, there will be an inexplicable sense of joy, a sense of accomplishment; if we get encouragement from others, we will continue to do good; if criticized and abused, few people will insist on continuing to do. Thus, doing good is an emotional reward and trade-off.

Yong Yang: Rewards and trade-offs result from education, and morality is complexly altruistic. Although it is impossible to point out exactly which genes are in charge of human morality, its underpinning should be selflessness. Just as primates will protect their young, it is a behavior of nature, not a result of rational consideration. Many moral choices are a gut feeling, an altruistic selfless behavior.