Why it pays to think better, not worse, of others: A wholly selfish argument

Do you want to improve life for others?

If you didn't answer 'yes' then I applaud not only your honesty but your self-awareness. You may move along to another post. (Have you seen my latest Resplendent Reading Report?)

You don't need to be Mother Teresa to see the benefit in helping others improve their lives. In fact, it might be easier than you imagine. I'm going to make a quick case that doing so will benefit you as much as it does anyone else.

A few of the ways helping others might benefit you

For starters, helping someone encourages reciprocity. It simply increases the odds they will help you later. Score one for selfishly helping others.

Secondly, professional mentors will tell you that encouraging someone to aim higher (within reason) has positive ripple effects you couldn't possibly imagine in the moment. It expands your ability to have "good luck" in the future. Score another for selfishly helping others.

Tyler Cowen, a mind much greater than mine, puts it thusly:

"At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous."

— The High-Return Activity of Raising Others' Aspirations (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/10/high-return-activity-raising-others-aspirations.html)

Finally, treating others as capable agents of willful intention tends to nudge them in this direction. This can be especially true with loved ones.

Viktor Frankl, who wrote the seminal Man's Search for Meaning, has spoken about this somewhat hidden truth. (In WWII Germany, Frankl was forced to render meaning from life as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps.)

“If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take him as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be."

View his larger address.

Have you experienced this too?

I believe Frankl is describing something I've experienced in my own life. If I expect growth of the people around me, it often nudges them toward realizing that growth. By no means does this happen all the time, or even most of the time. But it's a steal when you consider the alternative. Like a mold, expecting the worst from those around you breeds cynicism and corrodes strength, hope, and positivity.

Expecting goodness from others is a nice trick to make things better all around. Does it always work? No. Does it open you up for disappointment? Absolutely. But it helps you tap into another deep truth highlighted by Abraham Lincoln (or Peter Drucker, depending where you look):

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

If you can help someone paint a picture of their own future that improves upon what they came up with on their own, you're not only creating the future, but you're doing awful good by the world.

Thanks for joining me in this thought. Stay bright, intrepid thinker.

Jacob