614:
Altruism is really a perfectly balanced two-way road of
selfish and selfless intertwined endeavour.
Take the idea of selflessness
which could lead to insufferable saintliness, which then becomes unsustainable.
And the opposite is just as ridiculous - the selfish world leads us into the
usual inevitable trouble. Altruism has been high jacked by the morality mob and
been made to look ridiculous, but it needn’t have been.
When would-be altruists try to
take things out towards idealism they show off strong moral positions intended
for admiration. It’s meant to give life meaning and also to make one look good
but there’s no modifier to keep things in balance. It looks too righteous and
it usually doesn’t work.
The saintly and selfless is in a
face-off with the selfish and materialistic; extreme good versus extreme bad;
black versus white; one side can only work when it has its extreme opposite to
relate to, so if we’re really bad we have to do something really good to
balance it. But why not just avoid extremes? Why not let our altruism take the
form of being useful yet anonymous? Then there’s no chance we’ll be sidetracked
by extremes. We can thrive very nicely by operating on low levels of selfish
and unselfish motivation. It’s not so impressive and it’s slower to get
results, but in the long run its our continuous usefulness and good intention
that counts and indeed, that makes us happy.
If this is a new altruism then
what does it mean? Does it mean that the slow-but-sure way brings the best
results? Maybe, but we are trained to believe the opposite, to ask ourselves,
“Who’s got the time to hang around waiting when only results prove progress?”
So is altruism asking us to look one level deeper? If results work for us
personally we’ll be able to make them work for us collectively. If it works for
me and it makes me optimistic about myself then I’m more likely to feel
optimistic about the future of our civilisation.
It’s a circular argument that
never really gets resolved of course - that we need to ‘do’ altruism (in a
balanced way) to feel good about ‘doing’ it in the first place, but feel good
about our altruism in order to strike just the right balance.
Perhaps more positive an idea is
plain optimism. We need it for brightening our lives, to stop us being gloomy
about things. An optimist might say, pragmatically, “So what if all this damage
has taken place? It can be fixed”. Optimism ‘ups’ energy. In turn, this ‘upped’
energy creates attitude change, which will start with transitions and move
towards transformations.
Going vegan is one of the
simplest and most effective transitions anyone can make. And even if the rest
of the community doesn’t understand it, on a personal level it can be gold. We
do it not because it’s right but
because it means we’re optimists, on the road to becoming altruists.
With all the hype, nonsense and
untruth of today, veganism stands as a beacon of sanity. It’s optimism is in
balance with Nature. It looks good and for a vegan it feels right. It’s as if
one is dressed appropriately for the right climate. For vegans, anything we can
do to promote vegan principle will inevitably be satisfying, and then the
notion of being altruistic doesn’t seem to figure quite so large whichever way
it’s seen.
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