Self interest is getting a bum rap. I mean here we are living inside these individually packaged flesh and blood bodies that clearly define us as separate beings and we’re not supposed to do our best to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative? You must be kidding!
Take the Olympics for example. You mean we’re not supposed to try to win the gold? Yeah, right. And what about investing in the stock market? We’re not supposed to buy cheap and sell dear, gain the most and spend the least, or generally beat the system anyway we can? I mean does it really make me a bad person if I try to get in the fastest moving line at the supermarket?
Well, of course not. Survival of the fittest has been around ever since it all began with plants spreading their leaves over other plants to capture the sun and animals jumping out from behind those plants to capture and eat other animals. Bottom line, there is nothing wrong in the slightest with looking out for your own self interest.
However, and it is a big however, it IS important how you define yourself and what you think of as YOUR self interest.
The plant that reaches for the sun is not aware of the ground cover it is shadowing. The animal that eats another species does not take more than it requires. And in both cases, there is no awareness that what they are doing is anything more than an inner reaction to instinctual needs. With humans it is different.
We have evolved intellectually to where we are aware of our interrelationships with each other. We know we are a part of something larger at many levels. Team sports need stars, but they need team play even more. No individual could survive in our modern metropolitan cities without the efforts of so many others to bring in the food, keep the power running, the traffic flowing, and the sewage going out the other end. What good is having all the money if the economy has collapsed and the money is meaningless. What is the value of being the strongest country on Earth if global warming is destroying the ability of the planet to support life, itself? We are more than just our individual bodies.
We are all connected. Like the fingers on a hand. How stupid it would be if the four parallel digits began picking at the thumb because they don’t see where they are all connected, causing injury, damage, and infection in the name of self interest. Hands are designed to work together, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Looking at it from a larger perspective we can see that. So why are we so myopic when it comes to seeing where we as individual humans fit in to the larger picture?
“The meaning of something is derived from its relationship to a greater whole”, says Albert Low. Fact is, we are a part of a greater whole. Family, community, country, humanity, planet, and beyond. Self interest is good, provided we know who we really are and act accordingly.
peace………………ag
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