It is of course taken as a trueism in our society that << selfishness is not
a right but a natural and normal mentality >>
But is it?
My favorite course in college was a Freshman seminar given by an
anthropologist named Dorothy Lee who showed examples of "primitive" cultures
whose people had no concept of social class and no comprehension of the (from
our viewpoint) normal human attitudes of individual competitiveness and
greed. And don't we all know, from our own experience, that human beings in
our own societies, who do comprehend individual competitiveness and greed
all to well, including ourselves, nevertheless long for something more, an
impulse especially marked among working people and which has produced
glorious behavior.
For anyone who hasn't read it, I would recommend the compilation called "The
Civil War in America" consisting of newspaper articles by Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels in the 1860s. In one, Marx talks about the British Mill
workers. They were starving due to the Northern blockade of Southern ports
during the war, since the cotton mills got cotton from the South. The (often
liberal) mill owners wanted England to intervene on the side of the South
(i.e., slavery) and the British government looked like it might do so based
on a provocation (the Trent Affair). At that point 100,000 (if I remember
right) British mill workers - who were starving due to the Northern blockade
- starving! - held a mass meeting which resolved that if Britain intervened
to support the South (their meal ticket) they would march on parliament.
Their declaration stated that: "Labor cannot be free in the white skin when
it is enslaved in the black."
So perhaps, we humans, having lost the paradise of innocence of pre-class
society, now long to return to it, on a higher plane. Which is why many of
us strive to transform society, though immediate "self interest" might
dictate otherwise.
Jared
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