In principle it is, but I think people do need some self awareness to distinguish between “I wish to help” and “I wish to feel like a person who’s helping”. The former requires focusing more genuinely on the other, rather than going off a standard societal script. Otherwise, if your desire to help ends up merely forcing the supposedly “helped” person to entertain you, after a while you’ll effectively be perceived as a nuisance, good intentions or not.
Fair! Yes. I guess I mainly have issues with the tone in the article, which in turn then makes me fear there’s little empathy the other way round: i.e. it’s going too strongly in the direction dismissing all superficial care as greedy self-serving display or something, while I find the underlying motivation—however imperfect—is often kind of a nice trait, coming out of genuine care, and it’s mainly a lack of understanding (and yes, admittedly some superficiality) of the situation that creates the issue.
In principle it is, but I think people do need some self awareness to distinguish between “I wish to help” and “I wish to feel like a person who’s helping”. The former requires focusing more genuinely on the other, rather than going off a standard societal script. Otherwise, if your desire to help ends up merely forcing the supposedly “helped” person to entertain you, after a while you’ll effectively be perceived as a nuisance, good intentions or not.
Fair! Yes. I guess I mainly have issues with the tone in the article, which in turn then makes me fear there’s little empathy the other way round: i.e. it’s going too strongly in the direction dismissing all superficial care as greedy self-serving display or something, while I find the underlying motivation—however imperfect—is often kind of a nice trait, coming out of genuine care, and it’s mainly a lack of understanding (and yes, admittedly some superficiality) of the situation that creates the issue.