The Negative Side of Selfishness: Because we all loved it so much before

Sep 16, 2014 //
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There is a fairly common belief that part of the basic nature of humanity involves some amount of selfishness. That, instinctively, people will look out for number one, and when it really counts, will leave their fellow man behind. This allows things like Capitalism and Liberalism, with their heavy emphasis on individuality and striving to raise oneself over others, to become bio-truths. When the paradigm of the day declares selfishness to be a part of who we are, the exploitation and oppression that arise from it become even more difficult to fight and overcome. If one despot is overthrown, for example, another will simply take his place as that is how our basic chemistry makes us.

Is it true? Are we naturally selfish? I am but a humble blog writer with no relevant credentials, but I would disagree with this assertion. The belief that we would naturally be selfish is based on the idea that self-preservation would allow our ancestors to make sure they weren’t eaten by a saber-tooth tiger. They only had to outrun the person they were with to survive, after all.

It is of course impossible to know for certain what makes up our biological impulses compared to what is nurtured into us, but I believe there is evidence even today that disproves selfishness as a part of our nature. The easiest place to look to see if self-preservation prevails is a place where human beings are being threatened with death every day. So let’s look at war.

The book On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman tells us that the utmost fear of a rookie recruit going in to battle is the fear of dying. However, the greatest fear of soldiers who have seen combat is letting their comrades down. The conditioning of soldiers is intended to strip them of their humanity until they are unfeeling killing machines, and this typically works. However, basic instincts would remain, and what we see by those who have faced the opportunity to either embrace their allegedly selfish nature, or stick with their friends, is that they almost always stick with their friends. Those who are ignorant of the ways of war maintain the selfish fear of personal death likely due to the common cultural belief that we are inherently selfish individuals, but those who have lived it show that the true instinct lies in our connection with others.

This phenomenon doesn’t just appear in war. Parents on welfare will frequently go without food so that their child will be able to eat. When the situation becomes dire, it seems that our instinct is to take care of those that we love, not abandon them in order to save ourselves.

So… cool? Most people associate selfishness with “bad” anyway, so why am I bothering to disprove it as a bio-truth? Because when we see it as a part of who we are, it seems almost necessary that greed and corruption permeate all levels of our culture. To strike back becomes futile, and the common trend is to join in and try to survive as best you can. We even have philosophies based on selfishness that are wildly successful. To achieve happiness, don’t change the world, change the way you look at the world. Reality is based on our perception and experience, and if one focuses solely on the way they perceive things, they would be able to achieve whatever they want: within the realm of their own existence.

But our reality is not the only reality. Each reality shares an interconnected dependence on all the realities of all the individuals around it. Think of it as a a lake, and every action we take is a stone dropping into the water, creating a ripple. If everyone throws in a stone, each ripple overlaps with all the others, influencing the pattern on the surface. We are not individuals, we are individuals within a community, and to ignore that is detrimental to both the community as well as the individual.

So if our basic instinct is to embrace our love, why is there selfishness? The entire premise of Grossman’s book is to look at what enables one human to kill another, and I believe the conditions that allow us to kill allow us to perform all manner of terrible things upon each other, and I look at this premise more in depth in my blog post here. I also believe that what we call empathy, or our ability to perceive the experiences of others through our own personal lens (oftentimes to the detriment of that other) allows us to act selfishly without recognizing the consequences of our actions as damaging to others.

How do we fight the selfishness that appears to be overpowering our culture? Foster the interconnected in our communities, listen instead of assume, disable the conditions that perpetuate both figurative and literal violence, and above all else know that deep down we are creatures of love. Expand the circle of that love to include more than just family and friends, and a difference will be made.

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Categories Philosophy

Being Nice is Bullshit

Sep 7, 2014 //
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There was once a man named Abraham Lincoln. Now, Lincoln is known for a few things, like abolishing slavery, owning dapper hats, and a posthumous distaste for the theatre, but one story that is slightly less known is that one day Abe and a buddy were riding in a carriage discussing altruism. Lincoln was saying that there is no such thing as a truly selfless act, and his buddy was saying, yeah bro, there is. All of a sudden the carriage came upon an adorable little pig stuck in some mud. Abraham Lincoln demanded the carriage driver stop, leaped out of the carriage with his coattails all a-flutter, rolled up his sleeves, and rescued the pig. Dusting himself off, Abe climbed back into the carriage. His buddy, triumphant, declared, “Saving that pig did not affect you in the slightest! That was a truly selfless act!” and Abraham Lincoln, being the wise-cracking mother fucker that he is, smirked and replied, “If I hadn’t saved that swine, it would have bothered me all day.”

Do I agree with good ol’ Honest Abe? That there is no such thing as a truly selfless act? No, I don’t. I’m using this story to illustrate the fact that people who do nice things for themselves are smug assholes.

Too often do I hear people say to do nice things, and nice things will happen to you. Or to do nice things because it’ll make you feel good. Or do nice things and people will finally respect you. These are the reasons that Abe Lincoln claimed that a truly selfless act is impossible. Doing nice things for personal gain or self-image doesn’t make you nice. It makes you a dink. You’re like those people who are always so God damned cheerful, but everybody knows that it’s just a ruse and they’re really a creep. Just because your actions might be considered nice or beneficial to others, it doesn’t make you a saint if your justifications are self-serving.

A Batman once said that it’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you. That may be how others will judge you, but it is not who you are. Your essence as a person is not based on the opinions of others, but on your consciousness alone. If the quality of that consciousness is based on self-serving motives, then regardless of how many pigs you save, you’re still kind of a twat.

The obvious alternative is to do nice things for other people. That is also stupid. There is no way to predict the outcome of a “nice” act, and so to rely on the reactions of other people to dictate the merit of an act will constantly vary. Did you ever give a gift you felt sure would make somebody happy, and have it rejected or met with apathy? It’s the thought that counts, right? The thought to do something nice for someone else? What good is a thought if everybody loses? An act cannot be judged based on its outcome because the outcome will never be known prior to the act itself.

So if the consequences of an act don’t define it, nor does its intent, the only thing left is the act itself.

But Dan, don’t actions lack any inherent value?

That is an excellent point, italicized text. We as subjects create the value for every single act, but that does not exclude the possibility of projecting that value outside of ourselves when it comes to morality. Therefore when we act, we do it not for ourselves or for others, but for the deed itself. This allows us to abstain from self-righteousness, as well as foregoing the risk of a moral quandary due to unanticipated consequences.

This does not mean that we are obligated to hold others to account under our morality, for it is still our own and will always be unique to us. Just because we project it outside of ourselves does not mean that we must forget its original source. Neither does this mean that absolutism is the answer, and projected morality does not have to be rigid, but can be just as fluid as the situation merits.

Hold on, so we’re just supposed to pretend that something that comes from within us is actually outside of us? How can a form of ethics be based on make believe? 

All forms of ethics are based on make believe. Ethics is impossible to nail down; hence why it’s one of my favourite things. This is just a theory of mine to prevent people from being terrible, and also to help them realize that deeds are not necessarily the only method of defining somebody’s character.

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Categories Philosophy

The Flawed Nature of Social Media Activism

Aug 29, 2014 //
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What the Internet, and social media especially, has allowed us to do is to market ourselves more thoroughly than we’ve ever before been capable. This allows entrepreneurs to simply make a Facebook page, and all of a sudden they now have a free advertising space where they can post random shit about whatever it is that they do. Maybe they make aprons? Who knows. Anyway, it’s a sweet deal, let’s be honest. But what Facebook and other social media also does is turn individuals into brands. Not just the products and services that participate on social media, but people themselves sell their Self as a sociable human being. Have you ever lamented being tagged in a bad photograph? It’s bad publicity. I read an article that spoke about the implications of only seeing the happy, fun, exciting things that everybody seems to be doing on Facebook, and how that lie influenced people. We all have problems, and when we see how awesome everybody else’s life seems to be, we feel even worse. This is a bit of a tangent, but the relevance of the article is that everyone wants to project an image of themselves that is successful, fun, and adventurous, and hide any sort of distasteful aspects of themselves. We sell ourselves to the public, and we want them to buy into us.

When we realize that this is who we are in a social media setting, we realize that any sort of activism rings just as hollow as a mega-corporation donating a few bucks to a charity for the tax write-off. We are projecting the image of activism for the sake of our branding, and this leads to is what is sardonically called Slacktivism. Slacktivism is people who may genuinely care about things, but can’t actually be bothered to do anything tangible about them. So reposting a status update, or changing your profile picture for a day, or pretty much anything to do with “raising awareness” would fall under the blanket of Slacktivism. As you might be able to tell, this accomplishes nothing, but does give off airs of humanism to those who might be paying attention.

That isn’t to say the activism doesn’t sometimes sneak through every once in a while, but when it does, it is packaged in such a way as any other form of mass media drivel. Successful activism today must fit the same criteria as a Jimmy Fallon bit: easily digestible, bitesize, palatable content that is inoffensive and safe. It is activism you might find on a Buzzfeed page with a catchy title. This is the kind of activism where the gimmick is more popular than the cause. One such example is my most favourite thing in the world: Movember, but the most recent explosion of gimmicky activism is, of course, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Don’t get me wrong. Having a charity drive for something other than the cancer of a private part is so God damned refreshing. And the number of lives that will be saved because of the millions upon millions of dollars being raised for an admittedly worthy cause is incalculable. So what am I griping about?

Let’s look at the Ice Bucket Challenge. Its success doesn’t come from the fact that Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a particularly prominent condition, as it is heart disease that afflicts most people in North America. Nor does its popularity stem from any kind of advertising campaign based on what ALS is:  its causes, its symptoms,  its treatments, or anything actually relevant to the disease itself. Its success comes from the fact that the gimmick associated with it is “fun”, its process is incredibly public, and celebrities are doing it. The cause itself is also a safe one, as no cultural norms need to be upheaved in order to cure a disease. It is a safe disease even, as heart disease would mean admitting that there is an epidemic of over-consumption in our culture.

Is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge about ALS, or is it about the person who is dumping ice water on themselves? Does it promote the cure for the disease, or the “charitable” nature of the the person participating in it? The cause or the brand?

Do the ends justify the means? Regardless of the method of raising money, there has been a significant charity drive for ALS. I’m sure a sufferer of this condition couldn’t give a fuck about what I think about the Ice Bucket Challenge, and honestly, more power to them. But what the success of the Ice Bucket Challenge means is that those causes that have a bit of an edge to them, that can’t fit into an easily-digestible 30 second video clip; those become even more difficult to market, as the market shifts towards the Social Media paradigm of harmless activism and status updates.

Were genuine, hard-hitting causes to show up in a Facebook newsfeed, not only would they be seen in the context of cute cat memes and travel pictures, but they would also be in the company of slacktivism and gimmicks that degrade the nature of progress.

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Categories Politics
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