Why does death lead to action?

I read stories online occasionally about someone trying to raise money for charity (usually someone with an illness)... They often fail to reach their goal, but because they die somehow this causes people to donate and help when they wouldn't have done so otherwise.

Why do you think death becomes a catalyst for compassion (or is it not compassion but something else, like guilt)?

more likely it's guilt....

people in general are reactive in nature and not proactive...

it often takes something drastic to shake people from their apathy

because biologically we are driven to survive and to procreate and to master our MOST IMMEDIATE environment

to see one of our species die is a trigger that "this is a problem and it has to be addressed"

some exotic disease is less convincing as a problem if it only happens to total strangers a million miles away

the dishes in the kitchen may not be as important of a problem as HIV virus - but if those dishes are in MY kitchen and the HIV is on another continent then the importance scale keeps the dishes higher on the action item list than the disease

but

when someone that i recognize as an individual personality dies because of hiv

THEN the immediacy of the issue hits home as a problem needing to be addressed

I recently finished an entry level psychology class and it brought up a theory that I believe answers this question. It’s part of Freud’s theory on the subconscious, although it is not a perfect theory it explains much of how a humans behave. The idea is we have three parts to our subconscious called the Ide, Ego, and Super-Ego. The Super-Ego is what we would most likely call our morals, but it is not always the same with every person. This is due to the fact that so many cultures express life and death in various ways, so their morals will be far different than our own. Usually a nation will share the same morals and teach it to their children; this is how they are developed (through societal influence). Now the Ide is what we need to keep on living because it is basically our survival instincts. I like to think the ide isn’t just a flight or fight response but the thing that tells our bodies to keep breathing. Finally the Ego is what behaviour we present to the world and it inhabitants.
Now the Ide is where I believe this question has an answer. You see society says we should be selfless but not at our own risk so that we may continue to another day. This message expresses a small part of what the Ide is all about, so when our ego is presented the ide will be expressed more. Now the Ide being our survival instincts is reacted by two things: Stimuli (something to initiate the need for an Ide) and FEAR.

I believe that the stimuli such as sight of a tragic event like the death of a fellow human being will hit our subconscious and make its way to the Ide; it will be channelled by fear. Fear is one of the most powerful forces in the universe and in turn also one of the most dangerous. The fear is merely a catalyst for our minds to process the event that took place. Now processing anything with fear is usually considered negative unless the being survives a physically traumatic experience; I support this idea in terms of the question. You see fear may help you run from potential death in a battle but when you reflect on those who die either in a battle or out of it you will, in some way, think about your own end. The Ide will not allow you to give up and die; since it is primarily in use at the moment it will then become more enraged with fear and tell you to jump at the closest way to prevent your own death. In war you escape but in say at a funeral you will think to raise money to find a cure to stop the disease that killed the person you are burying.

So in short I believe death brings action primarily through fear for the pre-programmed instant to survive.

ide?....that's the first time i've ever seen it expressed like that....i've always seen it expressed as id....no e.....

I don't know if I accept that it's purely a matter of fear conditioning - whether social or genetic. I think there's more to it than that. Helping someone far away doesn't serve our own survival in the least - unless we're going by the extremely shaky argument that we'd hope that someone would do the same for us one day (which I'm really not sure is motivation enough to take action all on its own). I actually think compassion is the right word...

I see things like this appear from time to time on social networking sites and the like - I even follow one girl on a social networking site who is going through cancer treatments for a very serve form of cancer. I never would have known about her if it hadn't been for my following one of her friends who was sharing a link to a "GoFundMe" page. Now I didn't donate to her fund because I don't do that sort of thing if my only contact with a cause is through the internet - I always feel an intense urge to donate though, to help in any way I can, an urge I have to resist when it comes to just throwing money at a problem. I did help raise some awareness from people about her campaign though, and I believe she met her fundraising goal in the end.

But I also think that this comes into better light when we bring in the physical, face-to-face meeting under similar circumstances. You often see someone giving change to a homeless person on the street, and if you watch carefully you'll notice that most very nearly slink up to and away from their target, as if fearful the misfortune will rub off. In that I think is a strange mixture of fear, pity, and yes, guilt. Because they are in a position to give, or rather they are in a position to have, when the homeless person is not. It also seems to have an ego response associated with it - a factor of feeling pleased with the attempt to do something good, even if all it amounted to was a few pennies in a cup.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about that actually, and adjusting my habits and responses as I get older. I never give anyone money anymore - I'll happily give food, water, and sanitary supplies however if I'm able to do so. I recently had an experience in this dimension that was quite interesting though, because it was actually two separate encounters - remarkably different from each other - in the space of a few minutes.

I was in a bookstore with a girl I'd recently met, on a date, and a man walked up to use with a grubby, hand-written sign up sheet, and told us that he was collecting for some group so that they could go somewhere (apologies, the details escape me, it was a few months ago). He said that they needed a certain amount of money to do their thing, and would we consider giving a few dollars. It was desperately obvious however that he was not being truthful - from the way he stood, shifted, looked at me; how he was dressed, spoke, smelled - there was nothing even remotely true about what he was saying. But the girl I was with fished out ten bucks, gave it to the man, and he wandered off. Personally I felt she'd been a bit gullible, but she said that she really didn't care whether he was telling the truth or not, she just wanted to give.

Not long later we were just leaving the comic book shop when a young kid caught our eye. He was asking people outside the shop if they'd be willing to give him some money in exchange for a comic book. I was tempted, but having just experienced such an obvious con inside the store, I was unwilling to go for it. But again, the girl I was with gave money, and refused to take the comic book in exchange - and the kid (I say "kid" he was probably just a few years younger than me) seemed almost desperate to not accept the money purely as a gift. He insisted we take the comic book (actually a large graphic novel which the girl later gave to me). He didn't need to do that, especially not when the girl I was with had already said what she had given him was a gift - but he needed there to be some form of exchange, or he wouldn't have felt right about it. He could have kept the book - sold it to someone else later, made double the money. But it wasn't about making as much as possible, it was about doing what he felt was fair. That meant a lot to me. I remember wishing he'd had a second book with him so I could have bought it and given more more money.

I bring this story up because I do think that there is something deeper in the action of giving. This is something noted in many religions across thousands of years as well. To "give of thyself..." Perhaps these things come down to a variety of factors depending on thee situation in the moment. Pride, fear, ego, kindness, memory of similar circumstances, desire to do for others in the hope that others will one day do for you, guilt....

The girl I was with said that she felt that in giving to someone else she was actually giving to herself - she said that she had read this principle in a book about Taoism. That one should always give, because whatever you gave came back to you in another form. Because it kept your life flowing and moving. Part of me still thinks she was gullible, but part of me really believes that she was right. I still have that kid's comic book.

Did this rambling stroll through memory lane have anything of worth to say? >_< Sorry it,s late. I need to go to sleep.