Politics
have just begun to interest me. Not current affairs or foreign policy but the radical questions concerning how it is that we can get along. There are many questions that hence arise: what is the essence of to be human? Does self-preservation always come before self-sacrifice? How did civilization begin? That is, why did we begin to work together in the first place? Can we ever attain altruism? Or is everything we do, for some reason or another, self-interested?
Perhaps it is sharing that enables the possibility of our getting along, and giving that enables the possibility for love, dedication in trust. Sharing, to not selfishly take someone else's portion even though you can, first begins the reciprocity in every relationship: you give and hence expect to receive, and if you don't receive, the trust is broken. So there is always an initial giving by the more trusting one, even in trades or exchanges. This is why shops have security; they enforce a fair exchange by/through exciting a fear of punishment in the shopper. When the shop has little security it is being more trusting, showing more trust in its clients. This is due to the shopowner having less fear that s/he will be robbed. This "less fear" is the shopowner's, despite the area or the people in it. Yet this "more trusting" directly relates to the area, its economic status (which can be assumed reflects the moral/ethical education of the area's inhabitants in that the wealthy are typically more educated and hence because they are wealthy and because they are more educated they are less likely to try to steal a pack of chewing gum), and, as was just shown, the people in the area.
So, as we have seen, every exchange is a giving, in that one must first give expecting the other to give in return: even sharing rests on a giving. Despite the fact that when we give we typically expect something in return, if we were only to not mind if nothing was given in return, and hence to take pleasure in generous giving, expecting but forgiving the failure to satisfy the expectation, we would, with this forgiving and giving, perhaps even refusing the return giving, come to be altruistic beings.
Yet one can say that the wanting to be altruistic degrades all "altruistic" actions to the status of reciprocally altruistic, as the "altruistic" doer is getting something out of his/her action, for him/herself, namely what they want, which is to be altruistic. So altruism is impossible. Yet ever so necessary.
This topic deserves more than a short blog.
Perhaps it is sharing that enables the possibility of our getting along, and giving that enables the possibility for love, dedication in trust. Sharing, to not selfishly take someone else's portion even though you can, first begins the reciprocity in every relationship: you give and hence expect to receive, and if you don't receive, the trust is broken. So there is always an initial giving by the more trusting one, even in trades or exchanges. This is why shops have security; they enforce a fair exchange by/through exciting a fear of punishment in the shopper. When the shop has little security it is being more trusting, showing more trust in its clients. This is due to the shopowner having less fear that s/he will be robbed. This "less fear" is the shopowner's, despite the area or the people in it. Yet this "more trusting" directly relates to the area, its economic status (which can be assumed reflects the moral/ethical education of the area's inhabitants in that the wealthy are typically more educated and hence because they are wealthy and because they are more educated they are less likely to try to steal a pack of chewing gum), and, as was just shown, the people in the area.
So, as we have seen, every exchange is a giving, in that one must first give expecting the other to give in return: even sharing rests on a giving. Despite the fact that when we give we typically expect something in return, if we were only to not mind if nothing was given in return, and hence to take pleasure in generous giving, expecting but forgiving the failure to satisfy the expectation, we would, with this forgiving and giving, perhaps even refusing the return giving, come to be altruistic beings.
Yet one can say that the wanting to be altruistic degrades all "altruistic" actions to the status of reciprocally altruistic, as the "altruistic" doer is getting something out of his/her action, for him/herself, namely what they want, which is to be altruistic. So altruism is impossible. Yet ever so necessary.
This topic deserves more than a short blog.
posted by irrefutable at 12:19 AM
2 comments
