I have recently heard it said that Human Beings are 'basically [intrinsically] Selfish'. This seemed to hearken back to a long and episodic conversation that I had had with one of my closest and dearest friends in High School.
Yet I was struck, surprised and somewhat wounded by the sheer prevalence of this prejudice and the energy I had to exert to discuss the question civilly; even people with whom I would usually debate seemed almost not to regard it as even as a Question.
When I had originally debated this with Sunny, it was probably precisely Because of the unrelenting seriousness and methodical clarity of his logic that I ran home upon that night Thrilled that I had finally found Evidence, in an incontrovertible Conviction, for the Presence of an Altruistic Impulse within me: The earnest knowledge of a very Clear and Overwhelmingly beloved Other that had motivated me in all actions that I could lend any Meaning to. I had long ago lost any formal faith in grades and competitions, because the absurd systems of the public school (and even, eventually, the Colleges) seemed designed to merely draw one's attention away from the window into not merely a 'Better' world but a World that was Imminently Miraculous, that wanted not to be 'attained' as though it were some Utopia but to perpetuate itself into its next unfolding. As Timothy Leary had put it, ' Under this sidewalk there is dirt!'
That is not to say that I had not thoroughly entertained the Selfish Argument. It was chiefly after my discussion with Sunny and after I recovered from Depression that I could allow myself the privilege of living for Myself. Yet what I find when I review my writings and my decisions from that time was thjat I was stuck in a box that I was always trying to escape from.
This had been my struggle from throughout my youth. No one could ofer me a pleasure that was not of the Other. I refused to write any essay if I did not know what I was writing to be the Truth. It was as though something was always my audience, watching and caring, yet not in the paranoid fashion one might envision: An Over-Truth that lay behind all things and was indicated by whatever I could believe of what I heard from other people.
We must be in the midst of a Decadent Period right now. Few seem even to Know what I'm talking about.
Yet I was struck, surprised and somewhat wounded by the sheer prevalence of this prejudice and the energy I had to exert to discuss the question civilly; even people with whom I would usually debate seemed almost not to regard it as even as a Question.
When I had originally debated this with Sunny, it was probably precisely Because of the unrelenting seriousness and methodical clarity of his logic that I ran home upon that night Thrilled that I had finally found Evidence, in an incontrovertible Conviction, for the Presence of an Altruistic Impulse within me: The earnest knowledge of a very Clear and Overwhelmingly beloved Other that had motivated me in all actions that I could lend any Meaning to. I had long ago lost any formal faith in grades and competitions, because the absurd systems of the public school (and even, eventually, the Colleges) seemed designed to merely draw one's attention away from the window into not merely a 'Better' world but a World that was Imminently Miraculous, that wanted not to be 'attained' as though it were some Utopia but to perpetuate itself into its next unfolding. As Timothy Leary had put it, ' Under this sidewalk there is dirt!'
That is not to say that I had not thoroughly entertained the Selfish Argument. It was chiefly after my discussion with Sunny and after I recovered from Depression that I could allow myself the privilege of living for Myself. Yet what I find when I review my writings and my decisions from that time was thjat I was stuck in a box that I was always trying to escape from.
This had been my struggle from throughout my youth. No one could ofer me a pleasure that was not of the Other. I refused to write any essay if I did not know what I was writing to be the Truth. It was as though something was always my audience, watching and caring, yet not in the paranoid fashion one might envision: An Over-Truth that lay behind all things and was indicated by whatever I could believe of what I heard from other people.
We must be in the midst of a Decadent Period right now. Few seem even to Know what I'm talking about.
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