Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World

🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins
view on research edit on research Add an excerpt Add a bilingual page Add full text subpage

Book

LibraryBooksBibliography PDF Link

Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information. You can find more information about this item on the publisher website.

Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

In Happiness, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism — genuine concern for the well-being of others — could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term.

Ricard’s message has been taken up by major economists and thinkers, including Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros. Matthieu Ricard makes a robust and passionate case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefitting ourselves and our society. It’s a fresh outlook on an ardent struggle — and one that just might make the world a better place.

(Source: Little, Brown and Company)

Citation

Ricard, Matthieu. Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World. Translated by Charlotte Mandell and Sam Gordon. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Publisher Link

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/matthieu-ricard/altruism/9780316208215/

Table of contents

Introduction3

I What is Altruism ?
1. The Nature of Altruism 15
2. Extending Altruism 24
3 What is Empathy?39
4. From Empathy to Compassion in a Neuroscience Laboratory 56
5. Love, Supreme Emotion 65
6. The Accomplishment of aTwofold Benefit, Our Own and Others'76
7. Self-Interested Altruism and Generalized Reciprocity83
8. Selfless Altruism 89
9. The Banality of Good 94
10. Altruistic Heroism 103
11. Unconditional Altruism 110
12. Beyond Imitations, True Altruism: An Experimental Investigation 120
13. The Philosophical Arguments Against Universal Selfishness 137

II The Emergence of Altruism
14. Altruism in Theories of Evolution 151
15. Maternal Love, Foundation for Extended Altruism? 171
16. The Evolution of Cultures 177
17. Altruistic Behavior Among Animals 183
18. Altruism Among Children 208
19. Prosocial Behavior 225

III Cultivating Altruism
20. Can We Change?239
21. Training the Mind: What the Cognitive Sciences Have to Say 247
22. How to Cultivate Altruism: Meditations on Altruistic Love, Compassion, Joy, and Impartiality 260

IV Contrary Forces
23. Egocentrism and Crystallization of the Ego 271
24. The Spread of Individualism and Narcissism 281
25. The Champions of Selfishness 299
26. Having Hatred or Compassion for Yourself 314
27. The Shortfall of Empathy 322
28. At the Origin of Violence: Devaluing the Other 339
29. The Natural Repugnance to Kill 374
30. Dehumanizing the Other: Massacres and Genocides 388
31. Has War Always Existed? 412
32. The Decline of Violence 426
33. The Instrumentalization of Animals: A Moral Aberration 455
34. Backfire: Effects of the Meat Industry on Poverty, Environment, and Health 470
35. Institutionalized Selfishness 480

V Building a More Altruistic Society
36. The Virtues of Cooperation 515
37. An Enlightened Education 532
38. Fighting Inequality 552
39. Toward a Caring Economy 563
40. Voluntary, Joyous Simplicity 604
41. Altruism for the Sake of Future Generations 616
42. Sustainable Harmony 657
43. Local Commitment, Global Responsibility 675
- Conclusion: Daring Altruism 690

Acknowledgments 695
Karuna-Shechen: Altruism in Action 699
Notes701
Sources for Figures 833
Select Bibliography 837

Interconnections

Works related to this item

2 Contains chapter or part

Ricard, Matthieu. "Backfire: Effects of the Meat Industry on Poverty, Environment, and Health." In Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, 470–79. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Articles2015About this item

In the previous chapter, we examined the serious ethical concerns about how we treat animals. But that is not the whole story. If we are concerned with poverty and the increasing inequalities between rich and poor, if we are concerned about the environment and human health, and if we accept the conclusions of scientific studies presented by reports like those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC, established by the UN), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Worldwatch Institute and others, then we can’t help but question the excessive practices of animal breeding and wonder about the negative impacts that consuming meat has for humans and for our environment.

Ricard, Matthieu. "The Instrumentalization of Animals: A Moral Aberration." In Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, 455–69. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Articles2015About this item

The notion of altruism is severely tested by the way we treat animals. When a society accepts as a given the outright use of other sentient beings for its own ends, and grants almost no consideration to the fate of those it instrumentalizes, then we can only speak of institutionalized selfishness. The massive exploitation of animals is accompanied by a degree of additional devaluation: they are reduced to the state of products for consumption, meat-making machines, living playthings whose suffering

amuses or fascinates the crowds. We knowingly ignore their nature as sentient beings and rank them among objects. This ruthless point of view was expressed by Émile Baudement, holder of the first chair of animal husbandry at the Agronomical Institute at Versailles in the mid-nineteenth century:

Animals are living machines, not in the accepted sense of the word, but in its most rigorous sense as used in mechanics and industry.…They give milk, meat, strength: they are machines producing a return for a given expense.[1]

In the same line of thinking, a century later, the commentator in a televised report devoted to the establishment of industrial breeding in France announced with a certain pride in his voice: “Every action of their biological lives should correspond to our needs and our schedule.… The bovine becomes what we had hoped: an industrial product.”[2] Even more cynical, a manager of the American company Wall’s Meat recently declared:

The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.[3]

The vision of the system is summarized by the president of an American poultry company with 225,000 laying hens, Fred C. Haley: “The object of producing eggs is to make money. When we forget this objective, we have forgotten what it is all about.”[4]

Is it conceivable to desire the advent of a more altruistic society while closing our eyes to the fate we inflict on the billions of animals killed every year for our consumption?

In the system of industrial production, the lifespan of animals is only a fraction of their natural expectancy, 1/60th for poultry. It is as if a human’s life expectancy were only a year and four months.5 Animals are confined to cubicles where they can’t even turn around; castrated; separated at birth from their mothers; made to suffer for our amusement (bull fights, dogfights, cockfights); caught in traps that crush their limbs in steel jaws; skinned alive,6 crushed alive in giant screws (the fate reserved for hundreds of millions of male chicks every year).

In short, we decide when, where and how they are to die, without the slightest concern for what they feel.