Hey ho

I've been rather depressed lately, which generally puts a damper on my opinion-forming abilities as I tend to simply not care. However, there is something I thought about a while ago, one of the base problems with the world. I'd heard of it before as something like "People don't try to make a difference" or something, that we just stick to our lives and try to do good for ourselves in the existing system.

Honestly though, that's perfectly understandable. Even if power was truly equal for all individuals, you only have the power of one individual of billions, and as it is power is isolated up in places we can't touch for the most part. There are also so many factors that even the most educated might end up causing more harm than good to their cause merely through the law of unintended consequences, and most people don't even try to fully understand an issue before forming an opinion (for these people, leaders exist. They can still contribute, just less and with greater likelihood of error.). There isn't much to warrant being selfless.

However, I hold that the wrong idea is that itself- that it is neccessarily selfless to act in these ways, that you need to be trying to make a difference. It only looks on one side of the spectrum. When you're dealing with creation then yeah I'd say that's about right. If you want to generate wealth in regions of poverty or contribute to medical science I guess you can only be driven by selflessness, yours or somebody else's. Kinda temporary though.

Not so for destruction. What do you do when you want to make a difference, to take down some bad system in the world? Well you spead awareness and try to expand your little army; but ultimately what you as an individual do is deny some aspect of yourself to whatever needs to be destroyed. Whether it's a vote to a candidate, or money to Wal-mart, or a negative example to society; all you do is make damn sure that you aren't feeding the monster, and then watch it starve.

Why should that be limited to selflessness? It shouldn't. Fuck selflessness, my answer is pride. I never became a vegetarian to save the oh so cuddly-wuddly animals, or because I couldn't stand to eat them. Nor did I do it in the interests of the climate, although I said that in the past for simplicity. I did it for me, simply because I refused to be part of what I didn't agree with. For my sense of identity, that it might be made more separate from that which I dislike. What exactly is more selfish than that?

The problem with the world is not that people don't try to make a difference, it's the idea that selfishness is bad all the time, and selflessness good all the time. If win-win situations never exist then that just leaves us with realism and we're all fucked anyway. Sometimes it's good to swim with the current, we'll get farther than always going against it.

Notes:

1. ...I just realized however how much my own individualist tendencies put a bias on this, but maybe I'm still right. Well, I'm right about the individualism, so I'm probably right. It'll be interesting to see the replies if they come.

2. I decided not to scour this for mistakes or rambling or nonsenicalness, because I figure I can just blame my laziness on the first sentence. Not like I'm handing it in anyway. Enjoy... Or not, it's your choice.

3. I broke my new mouse for my desktop within a week, I can't access any of my old ramblings for the moment. This will have to do.