When evaluating if something is “good” or not, it’s often helpful to ask if it is universally preferred behavior. If everyone did it, would wellbeing increase over time or decrease? What would the externalities be? What side effects and consequences?
Let’s say you have some options:
Help someone else with their physical needs (food, shelter, clothing).
Help yourself deal with avoidances, unresolved emotional trauma, fears, shame, guilt, etc to find integration and healing.
If everyone did more of category 1, I do think we’d see an increase in wellbeing. We’d see more gratitude, more sense of purpose and belonging by helping others, and we might even start creating more shared goals and systems that benefit everyone more equitably, regardless of where they started out at birth. Importantly, I think this will be needed all the more given the unprecedented economic situation the world is facing.
I also think we’d see some people hurt by it. I know this is a privileged and unpopular thing to say, but it might keep some people in a state of avoidance. I think we’d see a rise in people who have been trained to believe they have to be dependent on others and can not depend on themselves. There would be more expectations and, perversely, some instances of ingratitude where the disconnect grows between the personal cost of producing value and the entitlement mentality of deserving it with no personal effort. I do remember what it was like in high school losing our house and in many ways relying on the charity of others as we lived on a boat. I also remember what my parents were avoiding dealing with. Would those times have been easier if the avoidances leading up to losing the house were dealt with directly?
Now imagine everyone did more of category 2. Are there any downsides? If the yogis, gurus, mystics, and actual followers of Christ’s teachings are to be believed (I’m talking real spirituality, not religion), their physical needs would decrease while their wellbeing, contentment, and bliss would increase. Less consumption, less greed, less suffering. I imagine it would actually result in more of category 1 happening as well, in a natural, organic way. People would realize more of their interconnectedness with everyone and everything around them.
Evolving your consciousness and decreasing entropy there to increase your capacity for love is something anyone can do right now. Even if just for a few minutes of mindfulness meditation, everyone anywhere in the world can do this. Rich, poor, young, old, sick, healthy... everyone. There is nothing more universally accessible. All it requires is consciousness.
If everyone on the planet started focusing on this, where would the world be after a few weeks or months? We have the power to create a better world, and it just might start with creating our better selves.
Clear seeing, clear thinking, and love without prejudice all result in good actions whereas sometimes our best intentions in "doing good to others" only makes things worse.
What do you think? What should the priority be if you had to focus on category 1 or category 2 first?