Altruism
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Altruism is essential to the Sikh religion. In the late 1600s, Guru Gobind Singh Ji (the tenth guru in Sikhism), was in war with the Moghul rulers to protect the people of different faiths, when a fellow Sikh, Bhai Kanhaiya, attended the troops of the enemy. He gave water to the injured, which revived their strength[citation needed]. Some of them began to fight again and seemed to cause problems to the Sikh warriors. Sikh soldiers brought Bhai Kanhaiya before the Guru, and complained of his action that they considered counterproductive to their struggle on the battlefield. "What were you doing, and why?" asked the Guru. "I was giving water to the wounded because I saw your face in them," replied Bhai Kanhaiya. The Guru responded, "Then you should also give them ointment to heal their wounds. You were practicing what you were coached in the house of the Guru." In love of altruism, is there any room for hatred or duality?
It was under the tutelage of the Guru that Bhai Kanhaiya subsequently founded a volunteer corps for altruism. This volunteer corps till to date is engaged in doing good to others and trains new volunteering recruits for doing the same.
It is claimed by some Sikhs that Bhai Kanhaiya's successors who continued the tradition of serving others and who committed their lives to service of the sick and wounded lived longer than usual life spans.[citation needed] Bhai Kanhaiya’s successors were not related genetically in order to account for their exceptional longevity. Rather they were volunteers from the Sikh organizations who committed their lives to serve the sick; first they did it themselves and then they recruited others to do the same. All of them defied the recorded longevity norms of the time for a long span of over three centuries.[citation needed]
Longevity is determined by many factors, freedom from disease and stress are two such factors. The altruists were certainly observed to live calm and tranquil lives. For Sikhs, altruism was made an act of faith by their founders.
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See also
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Notes
- ^ Vinciane Despret, Naissance d'une théorie éthologique - la danse du cratérope écaillé, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1996, p.38 (French)
- ^ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), I-II, Q. 27, Art. 3, rep. obj. 2.)
- ^ See Pierre Rousselot, The Problem of Love in the Middle Ages: A Historical Contribution. Trans. Alan Vincelette (Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press, 2001).
- ^ Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII, 2 (Prometheus Books, 2000, p.458)
- ^ a b Rand, Ayn, with additional articles by Nathaniel Branden. (1964) The Virtue of Selfishness. Signet Book.
- ^ Seed, John and Macy, Joanna (et al)(1987) "Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings" (New Society Publications)
- ^ Brown, S.L. & Brown, R.M. (2006). Selective investment theory: Recasting the functional significance of close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 1-29.
- ^ Herbert Gintis (September 2000). "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality". Journal of Theoretical Biology 206 (2): 169–179. doi:.
- ^ Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation, PNAS 2006:103(42);15623-15628)
- ^ "If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural", Washington Post, May 2007.
- ^ Fisher, Richard (07 December 2006) "Why altruism paid off for our ancestors" (NewScientist.com news service) [1]
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References
- Oord, Thomas Jay (2007). The Altruism Reader: Selections from Writings on Love, Religion, and Science (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press).
- Batson, C.D. (1991). The altruism question. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Fehr, E. & Fischbacher, U. (23 October 2003). The nature of human altruism. In Nature, 425, 785 – 791.
- Comte, Auguste, Catechisme positiviste (1852) or Catechism of Positivism, tr. R. Congreve, (London: Kegan Paul, 1891)
- Kropotkin, Peter, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
- Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004).
- Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Philosophy of Poverty (1847)
- Lysander Spooner, Natural Law
- Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue
- Oliner, Samuel P. and Pearl M. Towards a Caring Society: Ideas into Action. West Port, CT: Praeger, 1995.
- The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02121-2
- The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (1990), second edition -- includes two chapters about the evolution of cooperation, ISBN 0-19-286092-5
- Robert Wright, The moral animal, Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0-679-76399-6.
- Madsen, E.A., Tunney, R., Fieldman, G., Plotkin, H.C., Dunbar, R.I.M., Richardson, J.M., & McFarland, D. (2006) Kinship and altruism: A cross-cultural experimental study. British Journal of Psychology
- Wedekind, C. and Milinski, M. Human Cooperation in the simultaneous and the alternating Prisoner's Dilemma: Pavlov versus Generous Tit-for-tat. Evolution, Vol. 93, pp. 2686-2689, April 1996.
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External links
- Society
- What is Altruism? from Altruists International
- Philosophy and Religion
- The Sciences
- Altruism: Myth or Reality?
- Biological Altruism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State University
- Dharol Tankersley, C. Jill Stowe & Scott A. Huettel (21 January 2007). "Altruism is associated with an increased neural response to agency". Nature 10: 150–151. doi:.
- Greater Good magazine examines the roots of Altruism at the University of California, Berkeley
- BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Altruism (requires RealAudio)
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