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.

Kids and Dogs

The events described happened Saturday, June 25, 2011.  This is not a reprint or a second-hand story.  The events and characters are real.

As we often do, my parents and my family eat lunch together on Saturdays.  Typically, we frequent a Thai restaurant here in San Antonio called Thai Cafe.  My son, a lover of Thai noodles, as of this writing, is 28 months old and an advanced chatterbox.  He’s become quite good at describing in words what he wants us to know.  Although, when frustrated, he tends to prefer to demonstrate his angst with interpretive defiance.

On this Saturday, as a solo dad while my wife was at a wedding in Washington D.C., my son was in a good mood.  We had a pleasant meal and he even was good enough to let my parents and I talk for a few minutes.  Glancing at the clock, it was a little later than his typical nap time, and I hoped he would not sleep in the car on the way as this often interferes with his ability to nap once we get home.  The car ride home, he was talkative for about half of the 20 minutes back to the house.  Keeping an eye on him in the rearview mirror as we turned into my neighborhood, I was relieved to see he was still awake and alert.  With heavy eyelids, he was still actively looking at things as we drove by them.  Making the final right turn on my street and approaching our driveway, as I position the car to back into the garage, as I normally do, my son says excitedly “Who’s that, Daddy!?”

Stopping the car, I check all my mirrors and look in all my blind spots.  I see no one around the car, nor is anyone approaching the vehicle.

“Did you see somebody?” I ask.

“Who are those people, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, baby, what do you see?”

“Those people, right there!” he says straining against the car seat straps.  “Those people!”  He pushes his small finger against the glass.

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Why are they crying, Daddy?”

“Do you see someone crying?” I persist.

“Daddy, the’re right there!  Why are they sad!?  They’re crying, Daddy!  Who are they?”

“I don’t see anybody, baby.” as I keep the car going backwards into the garage.

Properly positioned in the garage, I quickly shut the car off as my son tugs at the straps of his car seat, trying to unfasten the straps himself.  Running around the car, I quickly open the car door, get him out of the car seat, and stand him up pointing toward the garage door, neither of us saying a word through the exit process, until I break the silence.

“Show me where the crying people are.” I demand, excited and creeped out.

He runs to the driveway, just outside the garage, looking to the same area of the yard he was pointing while we were in the car.

“Where’d they go, Daddy?”

“I don’t know.  Are they not they anymore?  Are the crying people gone?”

He walks into the grass, and turns 360 degrees.

“I don’t see them anymore, Daddy.  They were crying.”

Looking into the waning box hedges in front of the house, I presume as a last resort, he raises his palms as to suggest he cannot find the crying people.

“They’re gone, Daddy.”  He looks confused and a little sad himself.

I’ve heard it said before that kids and dogs see things us average adults don’t.  I don’t have a dog.

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!

Push presents

For the “WTF!?  Are you serious?” file, there is a new and growing trend called “push presents” or “birth baubles“.  “What is this,” you might ask?  Well, it is a gift given to women during labor, during the birth of a child, the baby daddy is now supposed to give baby mama a gift.  Far be it from me to deny my significant other with the finer things in life, but do we really need another expectation to spend money?  During birth!?

Hi! Is now a good time to give you some earrings?

I’ve been through the birth of one child and hopefully I will have a chance sometime soon.  Granted, not like my wife has been through the birth of one child, but nonetheless, I have a first-hand observation and experience of the event.  I can’t fathom how anyone would suggest this be the right time to give a gift.

In “A Bundle of Joy Isn’t Enough?” from the New York Times, the article briefly explores this latest Fashion & Style.  Where one woman was given diamond earrings and another a pricey metal sculpture.  Jena Slosburg received the pair of diamond earrings and says “I was on cloud nine.  It was the perfect present to make a frazzled, sleep-deprived, first-time mommy feel absolutely glamorous.”  What, we can’t go through an event that our species has been performing for tens of thousands of years without having to fill it with a bunch of crap?

Every kid begins with Kay?

The birth of a child is an amazing moment.  My male buddies claimed it to be the end of my life as I knew it.  My work colleagues told stories of sleepless nights, vomit, colic, and many other horrors that come with a new human being.  The birth of our son didn’t go smoothly.  There were some complications.  It was hard.  And we knew that going into it.   Never mind that we spent thousands of dollars of our health insurance money to have this child.  We kept the sex of our child a surprise.  So, at the end of the day, we got the best gift we’ve ever known — a beautiful baby boy.  He was healthy, mama was healthy, and we went back to our room to revel in the creation and elation of parenthood.

Despite this article having been written in 2007, I did not hear about it with the birth of our son in 2009.  Even if I had, I don’t know that I would have done it.  We spent enough money.  We walked away with the gift that keeps on giving.  We commemorate the birth with a child.  Not some trinket.  Not some rock, or hunk of metal.  We celebrate the occasion WITH A CHILD!  Didn’t we learn anything from the materialism of the 1980’s?  Didn’t you watch Wall Street?  I spoke with my partner about it and she said “It’s just another excuse to make you feel guilty and sell more stuff.”  Thank you, honey!  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

A Bundle of Joy Isn’t Enough?

Too little, too late?

Finally a decent, rational discussion about the challenges making the mainstream press, and it’s on the eve of collapse of reason.

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