Eric S notapenguin's blog: "Philosophy (different aspects)"

An unasked favor need not be returned.

It's worth reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake

Taken from here... "The Hedgehog and the Fox is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history." The title refers to a fragment of text attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." (This part is the only part of this article I knew and have heard before, a rather quotable line... - Eric) Isaiah Berlin (after giving a number of examples of authors in each category...) considers Tolstoy, and after considering that it seems that he falls in neither category suggests instead, that while Tolstoy's talents are those of a fox, his beliefs are that one ought to be a hedgehog, and thus Tolstoy's own voluminous assessments of his own work are misleading. (Edited excerpt concluded, will look for book...)

I'm reminded by Plznoexcuses' nickname... tagline... that someone thought a very important principle of moral living, of the way to treat others honorably, was the idea that one should treat other people not as means, but as ends. And not as one does objects, especially... (especially not as some people do objects. Admittedly on the other, some people treat objects better than they do people.) (I wouldn't suggest that the "Golden Rule" also is a similarly useful guideline- on the contrary really, much too full of exceptions in practice, especially when, as I tend to see, interpreted overliterally, and letter used in place of spirit.)