The decisions of individuals such as their willingness to cooperate and altruistic acts are just as important as international agreements or national regulations. This is what scientists call “prosocial behavior”.
Psychologists from the University of Würzburg and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig have now published the results of a longitudinal study that investigated the influence of various mental trainings on prosocial behavior over several months.
The results: “We were able to demonstrate that human prosociality is malleable and that different aspects of prosociality can be improved systematically through different types of mental training,” Anne Böckler-Raettig explains; she is a junior professor at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Würzburg. According to her, this can be achieved through training that consists of short daily practices, which are easy to implement in everyday life. The scientists published the results of their study in the journal Scientific Reports of the Nature Publishing Group. (1)
Very nice. But once more, science is missing the point.
It does not matter what you show to the outside world.
But what you are in the inside.
The meaning of the cosmos lies not in what you do not control.
But in what you can control and alter based on your own free will.
If you are trained to be altruistic, then you are not altruistic. If you are brain-washed to be a bad person, then you are not a bad person. If you are trained to be a good person, you are not actually a nice person. At least not until you prove that you actually are.
It takes a lot of courage to be human.
And only we can decide if we are.
Roaming in the forest.
Listening to the birds.
Teach not the sparrow how to sing.
For if you do,
You will have left it mute…
