A Selfish Perspective

Homo sapiens are relatively new creatures, finding our niche in a world long built on, as far as we know, a general absence of self-awareness.  A world built on simple life and death, where success was defined by reproduction over time.  Some may debate we are born of a design, battle-tested and echoed over millennia, steeped in a requirement for basic resources.  Maslow catalogued human needs many years ago.  If you will, for the next few paragraphs, humor yourself any argument of creation or evolution, and think of wealth and success in our day and age.  If you’re reading this, you may be on a computer or an Internet-enabled device, presumably educated, and so absorb that our world is defined by a population where 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 US a day and where the richest 20% of the world’s population accounts for about 75% of the world’s income.⁺

Many who read the first paragraph may scoff and think that the next words will be focused on socialistic or communistic ideology, but they would be wrong.  Many will turn away, right now, dismissing what will be said next.  We need competition.  We need freedom.  We need to challenge ourselves with measurement of others around us.  We must compete – it is in our DNA.  The recipe of our survival is full of primal, instinctive, and survivalistic need.  The drive to be the dominant species of our planet, but also to dominate the others around us has made us a successful force of nature, in terms of propagation and terraforming, much to the detriment of all the beings that inhabit our space rock, and in so many cases, even ourselves.  Collectively, we can do amazing things, and in the face of collective danger, humanity has come together in such substantive ways that it boggles the mind why we have not learned how to direct our selfishness, and build on this collective capacity.

Manhattan, New York 1873

Manhattan, New York – Today

Learning and studying of a woman named Ayn Rand, stumped me for many years.  The Liberal dream of collective altruism shriveled when this woman took it to the edge of reason.  This woman made selfishness en vogue.  Political entities engulfed and assimilated the concept to bring justification to ritualized uncaring, except if it profited their existence.  Ayn Rand’s description of selfishness, though undesirable to those trapped in the whirlpools of cultural socioeconomic incapacitation, made complete sense.  No matter how my brain sliced and diced this concept, there was no way around it.  Our individual lives are selfish.  We have to be selfish!  We have no one to be accountable to but ourselves.  The attention and support of friends and family is a precious gift that will never be guaranteed.  Our code says we need to perpetuate our existence.  That is life at all levels – luck and selfishness.

Ayn Rand

Selfishness is benefited through collaboration of resources, which without Rand looks awfully ironical.  A successful life is one where other people invest their time and relationship capital with you, in varying degrees that makes friends, children, families, business, cities, countries, societies, religions, and governments. This construct is repeated over and over again.  When any of these constructs are threatened, people resolve themselves to obstruct the elimination of the life that may have benefitted them in some way, none so much as the individual whose life might be on the line for elimination.  This brought me the concept that an economy, while born of a construct of human behavior, takes on the characteristics of life.  The people involved in that economy, where the economy may be of thought, money, influence, and/or sex, people while protect that economy tooth and nail.  The kicker is, we possess the resources AND the mechanisms to give everyone on the planet basic caloric intake, basic shelter, and healthcare, but we don’t do it.  Fundamentally, our selfishness is more raw than the selfishness defined by Rand.  Most of us recoil at the thought that a natural law of give and take must exist, and so selfishness is defined by what you take.  However, the enlightened selfish will find that giving is as much a part of the taking, to gain a positive sum.  Selfishness is an investment.

At this point, we could discuss capitalism, communism, socialism, value systems, religion, competition, and many other –isms, quite assuredly.  Let’s not.  Let’s figure out a new –ism, a new way of living where people will still lose, but not their livelihoods or their very lives themselves, and where the winners push humanity forward.  To new planets, to better energy sources, where the economy that matters is all of ours – collectively selfish.  An economy where we are all at stake for the forward progress, where education gets more resources than prisons, where those that seek only to harm are persecuted to the fullest extent of law’s wrath, where love is embraced regardless of the genitals the DNA dice gave you, and where religion is a choice of one of many a path to a concept we finally realize no one human can comprehend.  A world where we possess the power, not over each other, but power to better humanity, to fuel compassion and freedom, and promote a world where the economy, where the competition is to bring out the best in humanity.  That is selfish, and a selfish plan I can get behind.

Is it utopian to believe this way?  Not at all!  Not everyone can be happy all the time.  There is no individual utopia in a competitive society.  Suffering will and must continue to exist, but changing the scope of suffering is paramount.  Where you can still win more than someone else, and be rewarded for your wins.  Finding failure for an idea in a competitive economy of compassion is far better than suffering while your body wastes away in a disease-ridden land, in the dirt, while your mother cries for not being able to provide the most basic elements to sustain your life.  We can do whatever we put our minds to do.  Imagine a world full of healthcare and science, where human beings could live hundreds of years.  This could yield long distance space travel and imagine the wisdom harvested from such a full life.  Nature saw fit for us to have this brain, to give us ideas, and find solutions to bear fruit to our success.  The time is now to make it happen.  You have to choose it!  No one can truly make you do anything – it’s not a right.  You have the choice to make this happen.  We can build a free world, where we can appreciate what we have, and still want more.  What was is not what always will be.  Be selfish – want more than you ever dreamed possible!

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s another perspective. Be aware, some language may be objectionable to you, and that’s OK.

Art imitating Life imitating Art

I suppose it’s nothing new.  When I think back through the ages, I think of Shakespeare recounting star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, King Richard III, and Julius Caesar.  I’m thinking that people have kind of always been doing the same things for quite some time, and how often the mere reemergence or “modernized” view of some concept revitalizes it to imitation.  Charles Caleb Colton once said that “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”  But what happens when people choose to imitate insincere and petty things?  What happens when we start mocking reality?  Oh, how our culture has turned to perpetuation of thoughts, ideals, and behaviors completely unbecoming of them, and their victims, and how often this is venerated and imitated for entertainment purposes.  What happens when reality shows become reality.  Can we still tell our children “That’s make-believe” when our entertainment culture destroys our real lives?

The Land of Make Believe

I’m a huge advocate of freedom.  I’m never going to tell you what you can and cannot watch, nor do I believe anyone should tell you what is entertainment you should or shouldn’t experience.  The fact is, it is you and I that are driving this sick ship.  It’s our choice!  The public has spoken.  We choose to sit and watch people in mock reality.  Confusing ourselves of information and entertainment.  Choice is our one gift that makes us who we are.  Everything is about choice.  Every decision you make comes with a responsibility of cause and effect.  Even your mood is based on choice.  You have the power to choose to be happy.  No one can make you angry.  No one can offend you.  That is not to say that those people who choose to say offensive things, or choose to try and anger you aren’t making poor choices, but ultimately, you have the power of choice in how you react.  It is probably your single most powerful thing you as a human being could ever posses.

Two stories really brought this to mind:

Jon and Kate plus 8 (now: Kate plus 8?)

Far be it from me to interject any real opinion about what happened with their marriage.  To say I don’t care is too crass.  It is very inconsequential to my life.  However, I can only imagine the strain that eight children place on a marriage to begin with, then with added pressures of a show, with ratings, it was all probably too much.  I empathize with a young couple trying to make ends meet thinking this was a good idea.  I can understand how fame can fan the flames of an ego to burn a desire for more and more.  Was it worth it?  That’s what we have to ask ourselves.

David Letterman’s Blackmail

David Letterman is blackmailed

I bet he didn’t see this one coming in his mailbag!  I bet this will make his Top Ten list of nightmares!  All joking aside, I know David Letterman isn’t “reality TV” but here we have a CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman using an entertainment medium to push an agenda for blackmail.  48 Hours was always using real life to make entertainment.  But as media and entertainment permeate our lives in new and inventive ways, the victims and the ripples this makes impart real damage.  As much as people enjoy watching train wrecks, literal and figurative, are we really no different than the Mayans or the Romans watching people get torn apart and lives destroyed in the rings?

Our egos attempt to strengthen itself with power by balancing and bolstering the side of a triangle, to become equilateral.  The three sides of the Power Pyramid are Fame, Wealth, and Sex

Pyramid of Power: The building-block of human ego

The larger the pyramid, and the more equal the triangle, the more fun and exciting it is to see it deflate.  There’s a certain satisfaction in watching people fail because, while we may not be growing our pyramid of power, our egos become bigger in relation to the fallen.  We see them more human and this in turn makes us feel better, but what are we really saying about ourselves?  When we as a society start blending entertainment with reality, what are we saying?  Are we feeding the desires of our egos?  Are we saying that our reality has to be entertaining or that our entertainment has to be real?  If one begins to expect entertainment for existence, when that becomes reality, where will you go to escape?  What are you escaping from?  Our entertainers become purveyors of life.  Our life becomes a medium, scripted for maximum effect, playing 24 hours a day, stripping us of our unique essences.  Here’s to hoping that we make the best choices and recognize when we’re becoming the train wrecks.

Tell me what you think!

Declaration of Improper Parking

When in the Course of my normal day, it becomes necessary for one person to consume more resources than anyone else may choose to consume, and to assume my greater importance on this earth, that I have more rights than you to which the Laws of Nature and my God entitle to me, with no respect for other opinions of mankind requires me to declare my superiority of choice over everyone else.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that my need for parking is greater than thou, that I am endowed by my Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are proximity, convenience, and the persistence of apathy.  That to secure these rights, I institute my vehicle among others, driving just powers from the tons of steel and plastic, that whenever any parking space could hold my girth, it is my right to take it despite the vehicles around me, and institute my will, for my convenience of consumerism and disorganizing others, so that I may be most happy.  Prudence, indeed, is lost on my will long established should not be changed for guilt or logic; and accordingly all entitlement hath shewn, that mankind is disposed to suffer, for my evils are insufferable, than to park in another spot by eliminating my convenience to which I am obviously entitled.  But when a long train of cars and trucks, pursuing invariably the same intent evinces a wrath to extremes, where it is my right, it is my sole entitlement, to throw out common courtesy and decency, to create my own opportunities, and provide new parking for my needs.  Such has been the impatience and greed of my life; and now is the necessity of my ego which constrains me to do nothing else other than my own choosing.  The history of my fenders and doors is displayed in dents and dings, all having direct consequence of my actions of absolute superiority over a parking lot.  To prove this, I dare you to park next to me.

.

.

.

Mass megalomania

Americans, over and over, repeat a mantra of egoism and declarations of greatness. Despite the fact the Constitution was drawn to be very generalized, to adapt for the future, these constitutional fundamentalists hold on to every word as if each word had but one meaning. I hope I leave you with something to think about: there is nothing you know that your mind doesn’t make so.