True good is only possible when the self is aware of the suffering of the other and wants to minimize the suffering.

An interesting thought is to think about is when did humans or higher animals become self conscious and therefore developed a theory of mind that allows them to know what it feels like for others to experience the same thing that they might.

To make this more concrete, let’s use an example, two for that matter, one good behavior and one not so good. A bonobos monkey accidentally breaks a branch off of a tree and it falls on the head someone below, “… the film’s animal advisor, Patrick Bleuzen, who remarked that ‘Once I got hit on the head with a branch that had a bonobo on it. I sat down and the bonobo noticed I was in a difficult situation and came and took me by the hand and moved my hair back, like they do. So they live on compassion, and that’s really interesting to experience.” Excerpt From FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition Jeremy Griffith. The behavior  suggests that they can feel what it like to be in a position of compassion towards others.

Example two, an angry dominant male chimp snatches an infant from a female and dangles it precariously over a cliff edge. This is a clear example of control and an I don’t have to hit you but, I can get what I want from you by threat alone.

So what’s the threshold. What level does an animal have to be at to exhibit this behavior. How do we test for self awareness to begin with. One way that comes to mind is can they recognize themselves in the mirror. I decided to look it up, sure enough it has been done. As one would guess higher primates pass the test along with dolphins and others. See Mirror Test for more.

So once one is self aware, it is one easy step to start projecting that out to others and develop a theory of mind. And, this might be the root of good and evil. ( I started thinking about this was when I read partway through FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition by Jeremy Griffith )

For how can one know good and evil other than having a theory of mind for the other. True evil  is only possible when the self is aware of the suffering of the other and wants to maximize this suffering. True good is only possible when the self is aware of the suffering of the other and wants to minimize the suffering. The good news is that there is more good available because good can go beyond just minimizing suffering but, beyond it to generate positive benefit above this point, towards freedom from the potential of suffering and on to the path of the pursuit of happiness. Good can also generate the resources to create a reserve to push out and prevent suffering.

Cooperation

Think of it this way, people in small groups or a community can cooperate to store up a harvest and other reserves to carry the individual and a community through the hardest of times. The more that is stored up, the more that can be shared and the worse conditions might have to be before there is suffering.

Kye

In modern times this form of cooperation can be extended to one of the best resources that can be held in reserve collectively and used to do good for people involved cooperatively. The resource is money and the tool is known as a kye in Korean and, pronounced as geh in English. A form of this concept exists in many other countries around the world. It is basically a loan circle among a group of close friends and/or relatives and can expand to be as large as a community (good for the community such as providing a water well can be funded this way). Money goes into a kitty on a periodic basis, usually monthly and then someone from the group gets a payout to start a business, cover an emergency, obtain a down-payment on a house and so on. Think of it as a communal savings plan of sorts. Money is effectively harvested and concentrated to do good for all the participants on a rotating basis which can be determined by a leader of the group, a vote, consensus, random draw or rotation around the group in turn. To read more about this and the versions from other parts of the world read The Radical Economics of Lending Your Friends Money and/or Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) . The descriptive category that is one level higher than this is Collaborative Finance.

The Circle of Self

In a way personal money can work like this too, with yourself, you can give the gift of it to your future self from your present self, your own mini loan circle, with now-you giving and future-you on the other side of it receiving.

Money is not quite about happiness after all

Money really does not buy happiness and having it beyond a certain point creates less of what economists call utility.

• The first million is exciting, the second not quite as much.
• Twenty dollars to someone living on the street with nothing is worth far more in utility than a person that is making 100K per year, it has a lot more utility for the former than the latter.

A thought experiment is to pretend that you have 10x your financial resources, 10x in income and in the bank, just divide everything that you see the price of by 10 and think of that for a minute for a perspective of how it would feel. Then do the opposite. It’s like having a utilty-scope and gives you a sense of what it feels like to slide into different financial brackets.

But, money has it’s limits to buying happiness as we can see with falling utility as we have more of it. But, it ( having enough buffer ) does buy a way out of misery, which is just a word for a continuous never ending path of suffering. Savings is just money set aside to share with your future self.

It’s expensive to be poor

• In central Nairobi water comes out of a tap. In a shanty town outside of Nairobi it gets delivered in plastic containers at 10 times the cost of the tap water and with much more inconvenience to use.
• If you are too poor to have enough money in your banking account to cover a check that was written to you, you can go to the originating bank and cash it. In the past this was free and why not, the money is right there, isn’t it? Totally verifiable and available on the spot. Nowadays you can expect a service fee of $5 for the convenience of getting the check cashed.

These and worse examples of predatory lending like payday loans, subprime lending make access to money as a resource more difficult for the poor.

How much to save?

It depends, some say 6 months of your income. I’d take that further by looking at what the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early  ) movement does. Save 6 months worth of expenses as a start, but don’t stop there, get rid of debt, learn how to raise your savings rate and learn how to invest what you have saved. The more you have, the further you push out the gap between comfort and potential suffering for you and others around you. Aim for true financial independence. Something major breaks, a big expense, no problem. If in the end it’s become a large pile of fat stacks of cash that you don’t need all of, well you can pay it forward to do good for someone else, a reverse kye maybe. Plus, having money saved up gives you more options in a positive way, life changes, plans change, unforeseen opportunities arise and being there at the right place and the right time means nothing unless you have the resources, usually money,  to make the opportunity manifest into reality.