Helping a total stranger with pure sympathy; do we still see that?

[Stoppelmann]

That is probably your experience, as it is mine, but there are exceptions that do reveal a potential that is worth investigating. I think it is also the reason why people started thinking that love is something divine, and to experience it we have to imitate it. It is something like we say of beauty, that it is in the eye of the beholder, or the way a smile often causes a smile, or a laugh causes a laugh. Many people I knew in nursing, especially the older nurses, had a tale to tell of help they had along the way. I'm sure it has an infectious property.

Do you have any example where people offer help unconditionally..

Don't worry - I can wait...
I shall not hold my breath.

The old ladies in the neighbourhood regularly get help from their neighbours, but you would say they do it conditionally, and we go shopping for one regularly, because we are able, not for any wage. When our cellar was flooded, about ten neighbours came and heped spontaneously, even they weren't affected. When a woman without any family quarantined herself because of covid and was having a hard time, people rallied to cook, wash and shop for her. These are just recent examples in a small house of flats.

And do you believe in the Christian god?

I believe that there is a wholesome, beneficial way of living, and there is an egotistical way to live, but my neighbours are not Godfearing people at all.

[Sculptor1]

Do you have any example where people offer help unconditionally..

Don't worry - I can wait...
I shall not hold my breath.

The old ladies in the neighbourhood regularly get help from their neighbours, but you would say they do it conditionally, and we go shopping for one regularly, because we are able, not for any wage. When our cellar was flooded, about ten neighbours came and heped spontaneously, even they weren't affected. When a woman without any family quarantined herself because of covid and was having a hard time, people rallied to cook, wash and shop for her. These are just recent examples in a small house of flats.

And do you believe in the Christian god?

I believe that there is a wholesome, beneficial way of living, and there is an egotistical way to live, but my neighbours are not Godfearing people at all.

That's a round about way of avoiding the question.

[Stoppelmann]

And do you believe in the Christian god?

I believe that there is a wholesome, beneficial way of living, and there is an egotistical way to live, but my neighbours are not Godfearing people at all.

That's a round about way of avoiding the question.

That is a way of saying that you will claim that everything depends on something else, and is therefore conditional. I am saying that the people I listed were spontaneous in their assistance, and whether they were doing it for a reason, I do not know. It was more a case of, I can, I will. Probably others thought that they couldn't, for example those who already need help, and so they didn't help.

I still claim that love, also neighbourly love, is a feeling of belonging, and spontaneous acts of benevolence, be they small in our estimation, can be jewels of compassion that pay out at later times. A "good morning," a smile, a short talk when meeting on the path, a gathering in the hall, or in front of the house on New Years Eve, an invitation to the terrace in the summer, a barbecue on the lawn in front of the house, looking after plants when people are on vacation, and many more examples encourage that bond. People who live in such an environment, may be spontaneous outside as well, because it has become normal.

It is secular, not religious in a formal sense, but in an informal sense. You may have noticed that I understand God to be the ground of being, the primary consciousness out of which we all emerge, and to which we all return. We belong in that, and each feeling of belonging we experience is a reminder of that. So, benevolence is for me a religious act, whether the person is formally or nominally a member of a religious society or not.

[Sculptor1]

And do you believe in the Christian god?

I believe that there is a wholesome, beneficial way of living, and there is an egotistical way to live, but my neighbours are not Godfearing people at all.

That's a round about way of avoiding the question.

That is a way of saying that you will claim that everything depends on something else, and is therefore conditional. I am saying that the people I listed were spontaneous in their assistance, and whether they were doing it for a reason, I do not know. It was more a case of, I can, I will. Probably others thought that they couldn't, for example those who already need help, and so they didn't help.

I still claim that love, also neighbourly love, is a feeling of belonging, and spontaneous acts of benevolence, be they small in our estimation, can be jewels of compassion that pay out at later times. A "good morning," a smile, a short talk when meeting on the path, a gathering in the hall, or in front of the house on New Years Eve, an invitation to the terrace in the summer, a barbecue on the lawn in front of the house, looking after plants when people are on vacation, and many more examples encourage that bond. People who live in such an environment, may be spontaneous outside as well, because it has become normal.

It is secular, not religious in a formal sense, but in an informal sense. You may have noticed that I understand God to be the ground of being, the primary consciousness out of which we all emerge, and to which we all return. We belong in that, and each feeling of belonging we experience is a reminder of that. So, benevolence is for me a religious act, whether the person is formally or nominally a member of a religious society or not.

Woe betide anyone who, having received some help at some point did not reciprocate.

[Stoppelmann]

Woe betide anyone who, having received some help at some point did not reciprocate.

What a sad statement, warranted by nothing I have written, and indeed in opposition to what I was giving as examples.

What disappointment has made you so pessimistic?

[Sculptor1]

Woe betide anyone who, having received some help at some point did not reciprocate.

What a sad statement, warranted by nothing I have written, and indeed in opposition to what I was giving as examples.

What disappointment has made you so pessimistic?

You know it is true.
When you receive help do you not feel under obligation. Be honest!

[Belindi]

"Pure sympathy" i.e. not empathy or obedience to a moral code, is spontaneous. You can feel sympathy only where the object of sympathy is immediately present, or where the object of sympathy is excellently portrayed by a poet or artist or your own imagination.