@Jebus
I hope you're right! I've never had anyone I could really discuss moral philosophy with, so I'm excited! And I will definitely contribute to things being slow, because it always takes me a long time to organize and communicate my thoughts clearly.I think you will like it here. Even though it gets slow here at times, you will always get excellent replies to interesting questions.
So I apologize in advance for that, but promise you a lot of psychoanalysis when my answers finally do come! lol1) I'm talking about empathy, but you're talking about being unselfish. The two are not the same thing. I know someone who feels very strong empathy, but when they see others in pain, they have no desire to help. They simply want to stop experiencing the pain that they are going through as a result of their empathy, so they run away from the person who needs their help. They have no desire to remove the pain from the person who is experiencing it. They simply want to stop experiencing that person's pain vicariously.I don't think there is a middle-ground between over and under privileged that is more likely to become unselfish. However, the factors that are likely to lead to an unselfish (and perhaps vegan) lifestyle are more prevalent in the over privileged category. Such factors include:
Time to think and reflect on things other than how to make and spend money.
Exposure to influential people who can effectively promote altruistic (and vegan) ideas.
Having the intelligence/education to understand the action to consequence sequence.
The absence of religious dogma that allows for free thinking.
2) If you happen to have meant to be talking about empathy instead of talking about being unselfish...
I agree that all of the things you listed are resources that people can use to develop empathy, but the reason that I believe you have to be somewhere in between under and over-privileged is because our brains are hard-wired to minimize the energy we expend developing and implementing tools to minimize our own pain, so they will not build mental tools that are not cost-efficient and which do not protect us. This means that we need both resources (like the ones you listed above) AND a threat to be protected from. Otherwise, spending energy is dangerous, and could result in us not having enough left over to protect ourselves when an actual threat occurs.
So for example: someone with access to an influential and altruistic figure will not access[/] them if doing so does not protect them from some sort of threat. No matter how much time they have on their hands, or how much political or religious freedom they have to think, they will not use that time to develop empathy unless doing so protects them from pain more than other things do. If there is anything at all that their subconscious considers to be a more effective tool for protecting them from threats, they will take that option over developing empathy. And like I said, if there are no threats at all, then their brain will not expend the unnecessary energy required to form the mental tools that are used for empathy, since doing so could result in them not having the energy they need to build necessary tools when threats do occur. So in order for this person with opportunities and freedom and such to develop empathy, their subconscious has to believe that doing so will protect them from a threat they are experiencing--for example: empathy helps you understand what others are going through, which can help you reduce their pain, which can result in them identifying you as a resource, and wanting to stay near you, which allows you to benefit from them. If your subconscious has identified that your brain and body are not sufficient to survive on their own, then it might decide that you need to be reliant on other humans for survival (so the threat here is death from independence). This means that you will need to devote energy to developing skills/tools that help you keep humans in your proximity, and willing to help you. Since empathy is one of the skills/tools that is usually required for accomplishing this goal, your subconscious will use its resources to develop it. If, however, you identify that humans cannot benefit you, your subconscious will not need to develop skills to attract them, so empathy will not serve as much of a purpose for you as it does for the person in the first example. Therefore, even if you have all the resources you need to develop empathy, you will not do so. Instead, your brain will focus on developing different skills, like self-reliance.
So the point here is: no matter how many resources you have, you will not develop empathy unless you also have threats in your life that empathy could protect you from. That is why people who have too many resources and not enough threats (ie. privileged people) don't develop mental tools (like empathy)--their brains have no goals. There is nothing to protect itself from, so it doesn't need to build weapons/armor. And those who have too many threats and not enough resources also don't build mental tools, because it takes resources to develop them. The over-privileged person has a ton of metal but no war to fight (so they do nothing, and survive), and the under-privileged person has no metal but a million wars to fight (so they can do nothing, and get destroyed). The person in the middle has a bit of both, and their brain is hard-wired to make use of that metal to fight the war so that they can survive.
@brimstoneSalad
Thank you for the information! I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with spamming.
It may not be so much that you have an ability (empathy) that most people lack, so much as a "disability" in the form of being unable to rationalize and create cognitive walls that block off contradictions. This of course is an "ability" that it would be better that most people didn't have since it creates quite a bit of suffering in the world by allowing people to block out their harmful actions and ignore them.
That's very interesting. That might actually fit with me, because I recently realized that one of the most pervasive themes of my brain is that I cannot block things out the same way that others can. There are absolutely things that I repress and/or am in denial of, but I think that the amount that I repress/deny might be significantly lower than the average person. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it has to do with what I said above: having just enough threats to constantly be in survival mode (which heightens your senses and need to problem-solve, which teaches you causality) and just enough resources to not be overwhelmed by it (ie. having enough mental resources to come up with solutions to problems and enough resources to successfully implement them, instead of just seeing dead-ends everywhere and needing to turn your brain off with alcohol or something).