Oops, I did it again: I automatically tried to help someone instead of consciously deciding to help. And the result is part of the reason I automatically do it. Cairo is, of course, in a desert. Because of the Nile, however, it is humid here and there are tons of mosquitoes. This hostel is great, in part because they have a mosquito zapping device: a light that draws the pests into a box and electrocutes them. I must admit that when I hear the zapping from the next room, it makes me a little happy to know that one of the bloodsuckers just exploded. Well, I noticed that like everything else in Cairo, the zapper was dusty. I looked closely and figured out that it was so dusty that the dust was insulating the mosquitoes from the wires-of-death. This was an outrage! Not really, but I did want them to die. And I wanted to help the owner of the hostel. I _automatically_ told him what I found and that I believed that if he cleaned the wires and the lights, then it would work better. Because my energy is low right now, when I spend energy on something like that and the person dismisses me, then I feel bad. Thats why I want to stop automatically trying to help people. He didnt dismiss me, though. He listened to my idea, he cleaned it, and it works really well now. He was planning to buy a second one because the performance of this one had degraded so badly. Now he doesnt need to spend that money. Thats why I automatically help people: when it works, it makes the world a slightly better place. In psychology, we study how some outcomes reinforce some behaviors. When my actions sometimes make a difference, it reinforces my automatic tendency to help other people. [Its 12:50 am, I cant think of tidy conclusion. So:] The End.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 22:50:54 +0000
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