The notion of altruism is fundamental to social work’s core values. In keeping with the NASW Code of Ethics, Social workers’ most important goal is to aid people in need and to deal with social problems. Social workers promote service to others above self-interest. Social workers resort to their values, knowledge, and skills to help individuals in need and to attend to social problems. Social workers are encouraged to volunteer some part of their expert skills with no expectation of considerable financial return.
The spirit of altruism
Though a person’s contributions may be small, one can perform the tasks with majesty and do it with a spirit of altruism. According to Peter Benedict St Andrews, one’s talents may not be great, but one can utilize them to bless the lives of others. The integrity of the world in which individuals live is the accrued goodness of many small and seemingly insignificant acts of selfless individuals who have (predominantly) been guided by dignified impulses. When people are able to shift one’s inner awareness to see how one can serve others and make this the essential focus of one’s life, one find ourselves in a position to comprehend how the work of so many invisible and insignificant people has brought opulence to the world.
A unique social bond as per Peter Benedict St Andrews
A distinctive feature of the social bond is that most of those who give will possibly never meet those whom they give to. The inspiration is not because of relationship rooted in socially constructed value, a common heritage or shared culture. People are not only motivated by a desire to share within the direct affiliation circle; rather, they give without qualification or condition. People give simply because it is the correct thing to do. And when people do it in a prearranged way, one’s individual gifts have much more of an impact. The primary step in the procedure is to comprehend that we as individuals have something to present. The subsequent step is essentially offering it.
Most of those who have been subjective to the philosophy of materialism have an incorrect belief that individuals are basically selfish. The fact is that individuals have an innate longing to do well. It is one’s culture and institutions that dispirit the use of moral lens and accentuate serviceable values. They make individuals use the financial lens which blinds them to the ethical objective of life. This is the cause why friendships are no longer built on poignant bonds but have a transactional establishment.
The birth of a new cultural paradigm
The new enriching paradigm assumes that individuals are principally driven by material self-centredness. If this had been the instance, the society would have emaciated long back. As Peter Benedict St Andrews believes, the actuality that the world still remains a stunning place is evidence of the prosperity of altruism in the moral fibre of the society. However, individuals need to cultivate and protect the flavor of altruism in one’s lives, or else humankind will wind up with a civilization that cooperate less, trusts less, and is less attractive and less helpful.