There is a secret to achieving greater personal happiness and a better society.
It
is realizing that we are selfish. Not
just sometimes. Not just a little. Each of us is always and completely selfish. It’s a secret because we learned selfishness
is wrong and we often prefer to look good rather than face facts. However, the facts are obvious.
We are born selfish. Babies cry when they are uncomfortable. They stop when comfort comes. Their first smiles come not from altruism or the desire to please. Kids of all ages demonstrate selfishness, amazing in its consistency and ignorance of any other way to be.
Of
course, toddlers learn manners and youths, in varying degrees, learn to be
charitable and responsible in the eyes of others. By adulthood, we have learned to control
impulses, to take the time to cook and serve a meal for a sick friend, to
donate money to causes we deem worthy, to volunteer to serve others. Soldiers, sailors and peace officers
volunteer for dangerous duty.
Firefighters dash into harm’s way to save people. Parents lead Scout troops and clubs, coach
kids’ sports and help in classrooms.
Citizens serve on school boards, town councils and commissions,
subjecting themselves to verbal abuse from the disgruntled and the risk of
harassment and lawsuits from the vindictive.
Usually there is no compensation save the good feeling that service
brings.
However, adults are no less selfish than children. The expression of adult selfishness simply tends to be more sophisticated. It is more subtle, conscious of the needs and expectations of others, and most important, more acceptable to other adults.
Everything
we do follows our selfish selection from the options we perceive. Think about it. When was the last time you did something
without some personal reward?
Gratification may be immediate or delayed, physical or emotional. The selection may be conscious or
unconscious, impulsive or deliberate, reflexive or controlled. The deed may be trivial or grand, routine or
unique, venal or saintly. Whether it be
showing or withholding love, praying, make laws or breaking them, voting or
staying home, saying yes to charity or saying no, or just doing our jobs, if is
done, it is selfish.
I
am neither advocating nor condemning selfishness. That would be pointless. Selfishness is a part of life. I am not suggesting that our present
circumstances are all of our choices:
God, luck and the actions (and inactions) of others are important, too.
I just want us to be honest. Service is selfish: This realization can be the grace of the next century. Contributing to another person is a source of satisfaction unsurpassed in the human heart.
In
his State of the Union address, President Bush expressed our cultural
self-righteousness by saying, “If we can selflessly confront evil for the sake
of good in a land so far away, then surely we can make this land all that it
should be.” His heart is in the right
place, but it in no way diminishes the courage and sacrifice of our troops to
point out that we took on Saddam Hussein quite selfishly. The man did enormous, blatant evil. We wanted to undo as much as we could and
prevent him from doing more. As for the
second part of the president’s syllogism, if making America all it should be depends on
acting selflessly, the venture is doomed.
It
is time to discard the notions that we can teach children, and inspire or shame
adults, to be unselfish. It is futile to
attempt to reconcile the concept of selfishness as socially unacceptable with
the sometimes glorious, sometimes brutal realities of our society. The glory is because of the peculiarly
productive ways in which we have accepted and channeled self-interest.
Is this nothing but a philosophical exercise? No. Acceptance of our selfishness will reduce that self-righteousness that too often interferes with personal happiness and good government. That happier youth is the one whose strings are not pulled by peers or parents, who understands he is making choices. The happier parent sees each moment with a child not as a burden or distraction, but as that most profound of gifts, the opportunity to contribute to another human being. The happier worker views his or her position as the culmination of choices and an opportunity to develop future choices, not as a bleached bone thrown by fate.
As for government, the better public servant is less concerned with looking good - it is hard to get too self-righteous if you admit everything you do is selfish - than with simply serving well. Also, the search for political wisdom would be well served by reducing the self-importance that so infects our debates.
The truth is that it can give profound satisfaction to pay in discomfort, fatigue, frustration, even pain, for the experience of contributing to the whole of which each of us is a fleeting part. Let us cease the pretense that our pursuit of happiness is unselfish. As Albert Schweitzer urged, to be really happy, let us seek and find how to serve.
