It is nearly impossible to escape all the calls to action one hears throughout the course of a day like “taking one for the team” by doing their part to “better society as a whole”. The ones who claim that we must all sacrifice our time, our money, and our way of doing things by abandoning our selfish pursuits to take a cause for something that will benefit the “common good” say our world would be a much better place. Such idealistic “common goals” may require the individual to take the bus or bicycle to work, flush one’s toilet between multiple uses, buy inferior energy “smart” products, and volunteering our time to benefit the whole.
The problem with the majority of people who think like this is that they neglect a fundamental fact of human nature: all humans on this planet act out of self-interest. Granted, lots of people act and do things that may appear to be out of self-interest, but the reasons they are doing it are always self-interested in nature. Even the people who create such action groups are self-interested in the fact they believe their views are superior to yours and wish to acquire power over the individual and force them to do something.
I would like to take my stellar astronomy lecture class to illustrate this point. With over 200 students and scheduled take-home examinations, there are grand opportunities for people to work together as a whole. The instructor encourages students to work together on these tests, and even announced Facebook and WebCT groups in class to encourage collaboration of answers for all to enjoy. In this micro examination of self-interest, let’s assume that “society as a whole” represents the 200+ students in the class. The “common good” is what society is trying to accomplish in working together to complete the exam. The “individual” is each and every student in the class.
I was pretty excited when he announced these groups, not because I thought people would actually participate and complete the test together, but because it is a great example of self-interest. To facilitate the experiment, I thought I would post the first 5/100 answers of the test to see if anyone else would post the next five. The reasons why I posted these was not because I felt compelled to “better society as a whole”, but because in theory I was seeking free answers and, of course, to see the outcome of the experiment. Hence, I was self-interested. Over the course of nearly 2 weeks of posting my answers, how many questions were answered?
WebCT
It takes more than simply a deep desire of helping society as a whole. As human beings, we must have incentives to do anything, may it be money (market channel), coercion (government), recognition (volunteerism) et cetera. This is inescapable. Instead of trying to bend, fight, and change human self-interest, let’s recognize this fact of life and stop trying to impose values through force against something which is not natural! Allow people to freely pursue ALL their separate and self-interested actions: from making money, making babies, making time, making contracts, and making anything which the individual may deem fit so long as it does not violate a negative right. End the hypocrisy of policy, and end the fundamental political conflict between selfishness and selflessness.
