so, yeah, reciprocity, the ancient art abandoned by mainstream society, art of sharing. or am i over-dramatizing things and still is alive and well?

if someone does not know what reciprocity is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_of_reciprocity. "The norm of reciprocity is the social expectation that people will respond to each other in kind—returning benefits for benefits, and responding with either indifference or hostility to harms. The social norm of reciprocity often takes different forms in different areas of social life, or in different societies. All of them, however, are distinct from related ideas such as gratitude, the Golden Rule, or mutual goodwill."

personally, as i said already, i think this is a dead or dying concept today. more so a social norm.

I hold to the concept of treating others the way I′d like to be treated. So I try my best to be nice to those around me and to work hard. I don′t often get anything in return but sometimes I get surprised by those around me when they do something nice in turn. Also I've found that you can eliminate any chaotic relations between you and others by being nice even when you don′t get treated nice in return. It humbles people and makes them feel silly.

The way I see it is that if everyone treated others better than themselves then there would be nearly no social problems. After all, nearly no one (I keep using nearly because there are still certain people who have problems that are self destructive) wishes himself harm in any way so if everyone treated others better than themselves they′d most certainly not harm others, be it through economical means or physical means.

And don′t worry, even if it doesn't seem like most people wish to be decent honest beings that is only because they get shadowed by those who would grab our attention with their destructiveness. The other day I was looking out the window of the 3rd floor in an apartment block and I saw a person walking his dog, it made the sort of mess you'd expect dogs to do on the ground and the owner did not pick it up. Later I saw another person with a dog and it also did as the last dog did. However this owner picked it up, spotted the other one and picked that one up too. There are still people who do the right thing even without being directly responsible for it while expecting nothing in return. And I personally am grateful to those kind of people and they motivate me in turn to keep doing good things without expecting anything in return.

And who knows, perhaps someone notices something I may do and gets similarly motivated.

what? I just try to not be jerk, but do whats good for me.

I live in capitalist country USA.

Its been dead along time in this neck of the woods.

Every man for himsef it seems to be here.

that is good, keep it up. i wish more people were like that though. as i said, seem these kind of things are a breed in danger of extinction.

i wish that was the case all the time. something their motives for being nice in return are nothing even remotely close to humbling themselves.

well, it'd be great if there were more of them so the good behaving crowd would overshadow the rest.

good for the second owner. i wish more were like him.

oh, so true. it still is discouraging to look around and see people swallowing pills more than they swallow their pride, sharing their hate instead of sharing whatever good that they can do. and so on.
me too, in California. and yeah, same feeling about it here.

I find that respecting others until they give you a reason not to works pretty well. It also doesn't hurt to try to be friendly just to get things off on the right foot. It's amazing how disarming a smile can be to someone that might otherwise tend to be rude.

I live in Chicago, which is a big city, so there are plenty of rude people. It's not too bad considering it's the 3rd-biggest city in the country, though. I grew up in the far suburbs, though, and out there people were downright neighborly most of the time.

Even when people get to you it makes me feel better to be the bigger person...even if it's just for the smug satisfaction of knowing I'm in the right.

I don't think that it's so much that the give/receive dynamic is dying as much as people are becoming less social creatures. I don't think most modern societies value their inter-personal relationships, family bonds, etc. as much as they used to.

true. of course, the hard part, for me at least, is applying it when rubber meets the road.

that would be one sad trend if they are. :S

true, looks like they don't. :S

ya that is for sure... And when we don't get our way we whine about it. The only times we ban together are... well... um... you see...

I disagree. Capitalists provide valuable goods and services to benefit others with the expectation that their efforts will reciprocate back to them in the form of equal or greater benefits, monetary and otherwise.
If the benefit of others is not first and foremost, YOU FAIL. It's why it's called a "service department"...and good service leads to good benefits for the employees and the leaders of a given venture.
Just ask Donald Trump...or any business man or woman of any type. Being nice and "going the extra mile" wins.

I don't, I treat them how their behaviour shows they deserve to be treated.

Alternatively, under capitalism, you could just establish a monopoly and give people shoddy services, because they can't get them anywhere else. The market is king, but I control the market!

That is true, but the great majority of businesses are small businesses with competition.
I'd like to think that MightGrowSoft provides a great service, but it is kind of a monopoly...sometimes shoddy but I think they'd like to avoid that image for the long run, because there is competition.

More along the lines of I got put the guys competing with me out of business.

Or how can I make the most profit with less materials?

Can we not use this safety procedure for workers? It will cost money!

Life is a two edged sword but the negatives will not cause all to stop believing in the best principles fundamentally.
Otherwise we should all just give up and become out and out chaotic criminals...always taking, stealing and cheating and never, ever be willing to do anything for the ultimate benefit of others.

There is a point to that but personally I don′t think anyone can always be at his best behaviour at all times. And people do change.



I've probably rambled on a little bit more than I should have so I′m putting my story in a spoiler tag, but the moral of it is this. "Fight fire with water, not with more fire." After all you don′t put out fires with more fire, you only feed them. Same goes with chaotic behaviours.

true. so we just need to be patient with them until they do change

no, that's fine, thank you for sharing your experiences

he he, yeah, revenge only begets more revenge, so conquer evil with good