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How have you helped someone without them knowing?
It could be a deliberate anonymous act, or simply a knock-on effect from something you did.
Whatever it is, the person didn’t know that you did something to help them, but you absolutely did.
The help can be small or big, serious or funny, meaningful or inconsequential.
Tell us all about it.
Small petty things I'm sure we all do.
If I visit a food place with coupons and I'm unlikely to use the rest of them, I like giving them to whoever is next on line. If no one else is there, I leave the booklet on a table or at the drinks stations etc. I'd like to think over the years I've reduced corporate profits a tiny amount.
Tiny Hotel bottles of shampoo etc are always taken and then donated. Moving delivered packages left outside the apartment into the lobby. Moving expired community bulletin off to the side or behind more recent ones.
I also remove MLM adverts from community bulletin boards. This one probably a little more controversial. I don't mean your Mary Kay or Tupperware ones, I mean the World Financial Group or Primerica types if their ads are deceptive looking. Speaking of controversial...
I've recently tipped American products upsidedown at grocery stores. Don't want fellow Canadians inadvertently buying some without knowing. Similarly, one time the product sign says made in Canada when the product labels themselves on the fruit (?) says USA. I took a pen and crossed out the misinformation. You're welcome.
I also left a truthful poor reviews on Google for deceptive practices at a big chain grocery store: they don't change expired sale signs so you get charged more at the till unless you pay close attention, let them know, call another guy to verify price tag, and wait for their manager to saunter over for override correction. I wrote corporate first but they didn't care. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times plus letter to HQ ignored is enemy action.
Didn't know you can actually donate those small bottles - now I've got better use for the hoard.
But screw google - they often remove genuine negative reviews + they are US corporation and trump collaborants.
Yes you can donate them to organizations that want them because they serve folks who could use small quantities of stuff, such as soup kitchens or (sometimes at university dormitory) community cupboards or food banks or library shelves that offer personal care items. A lot of those freebie company branded merch can be donated too, depending on the thrift store: usually those small independent ones run by church ladies, not the giant conglomerate ones.
You don't happen to be German, by any chance, do you? German businesses abuse defamation laws to get negative Google reviews removed.
Pretty soon, you're going to see "Sold in Canada" labels at this rate lol
Yuck!! I would not put it past our illegal bread price fixing grocery chains, actually. They also use "made in Canada" to include imported then repackaged goods like tumeric powder for example.
A couple of months ago, I was boarding a short domestic flight. As I near my assigned seat, I noticed that sitting next to it was a dad taking care of two small child with the mom on the opposite row. It quickly dawned on me that my seat on the aisle would split them right in the middle. With that in mind, I walked past them to the stewardess at the back of the plane and explained the situation. It was a half empty flight so it was a non issue to move me a couple of rows back.
I like to think that this small act resulted in positive karma as I had to take a couple of long distance flights recently and luckily found empty seats next to me for all of them.
Charitable donations come to mind. They usually work this way, in the sense that the recipient might know which charity is helping them but not the donors.
I've donated to Against Malaria, which distributes bednets. For public health, who was really helped is doubly unknown. For example, you might know you got vaccinated, but you can't know for sure whether it helped, whether you specifically would have gotten the disease if you weren't. Nobody can know specifically whose lives were saved.
There are studies. There's a line on a chart somewhere that goes down. Hospitals get fewer of that kind of patient. My contribution to a line going down on a chart is too small to be visible. At best, I could do a rough calculation of statistical lives saved, with large error bars.
I do it because I believe the science has been done well and as donations go, it's relatively efficient. But it's awfully abstract.
I wish we would all contribute more to suffering lines go down efforts instead of so much focus on line go up profits.
Broadly speaking, Effective Altruism is largely about “let’s make the suffering lines go down.” Except that it’s a big tent with a lot of philosophical disagreement about how to do that, and some of the ideas are a bit out there.
For example, a basic question is whether to focus on humans or also include animal suffering. I stick with humans, but there EA types who are very into reducing the suffering of animals.
My brain isn't quite standard issue, and I definitely find that animal suffering moves me more than human suffering when at similar levels of separation
Same .... All animals are deserving of alleviation from suffering, whereas humans....
But that's why I have to work at it, can't just do the easy to do things I feel naturally inclined. Acts of kindness is its own muscle.
This was a long time ago (like 25-30 years), but it pops up in my memory once in a while, especially when asked something like this.
As a kid, I came back from school. I got off the bus, and walked home. A little further in front of me, I saw some kids throwing something in some bushes, in a garden of one of the houses. Mind you, this is somewhere just before or after summer (there was still school), but it was hot and dry as fuck. It has been dry for weeks, so everything, bushes, grass,... was brown and dry.
I passed by the house and saw that what they threw in the bushes, was a smoldering cigarette butt. I didn't pay too much attention to it, and kept walking.
But a little further, something didn't sit right. I looked back and saw a large column of smoke rising from those bushes. I ran back and saw that the butt obviously started a fire. I didn't really know what to do, and was honestly quite afraid (this was before cell phones). The only thing I could think of was trying to stamp out the fire. Luckily I didn't burn myself, and managed to put it out.
The bushes were quite large, connected to the house, and also the lawn was completely dried out. Given the speed of going from a smoldering butt to the fire I saw, it would have been a big fire pretty quickly, I reckon.
Nobody saw me do it, and those kids were oblivious of the danger they created.
My mother said something to me on this subject that I think about all the time. At the time I was living with my sibling helping them take care of their kid when sibling was at work (12 hour shifts). I formed a bond with this nephew, who was only 6 months old. I was planning on moving several days drive away at the end of the summer, and I remember feeling sad that I would remember this bond but my nephew would inevitably forget it. That the next time I saw him, I would probably feel like a stranger to him. I said this to my mum and (annnnd here come the tears) she said, "He won't remember that you loved him, but he will remember that he was loved."
There have been so many times since then that I've felt those words ring true. I try to love with that sentiment in mind. That the love is for giving, and if I receive it back in kind, its a bonus, but not the reason for loving in the first place.
Some people are monstrous in how they treat public bathrooms. I often pick up toilet paper and paper towels scattered on the ground and put them in the garbage. I learned when bartending that people tend to thoughtlessly add to trash on the ground if they see it already on the ground. So, in my mind, if it's picked up it might lessen those who might mindlessly add to the mess.
I can't think of anything specific, but in general, at work, my position is a sort of middle-man because I manage some processes that touch several other teams. I know what each of them needs, and often push for different things knowing I'm making their lives easier, making the process faster for them, even if they don't know it's happening behind the scenes.