1. Introduction.
In this chapter I’ll sketch a few things I hope will help those who undertake to teach and to promote both individual lives that embody those Ancient Imperatives, and, indirectly, institutions and organizations whose decisions and policies pass this test: Is this the sort of decision or policy I’d want to be on the receiving end of, or have my loved ones impacted by?
Since selfishness – especially when coupled with a kind of ignorance — is probably the most crucial part of what obstructs the rise of such fulfillment, we’ll be focusing on that selfishness.
This chapter will include an emphasis on selfishness evident in the drug and “opioid epidemic” in the 20th and 21st centuries.
There is a kind of genuine teaching — not conditioning or brainwashing, but teaching that respects our important natural desire to learn, and to know what’s true, and to avoid being misled — that can help us in overcoming our widespread human tendency toward ignorantly selfish conduct.
That tendency is often expressed in the objectionable and apparently very widespread male mistreatment of girls and women that was highlighted by the 2017 Women’s March and discussed in chapter 5.
It seems quite obvious — and very important — that selfishness should also be mentioned in any attempt to explain cheating in games, or on an individual’s (or a company’s) income taxes, and the like.
In the late summer of 2022, the Attorney General of New York State is bringing to light details of extreme tax cheating by the Trump Organization. Their use of grossly inflated and deflated property valuations came to public attention through the confession of convicted former Trump Organization (now disbarred) lawyer, Michael Cohen. The Trump Organization illustrates selfishness on the grand scale. Rupert Murdoch’s extremely powerful news and entertainment empire appears to be even more influential, and at least as selfish. See CNN’s documentary series: The Murdochs: Empire of Influence.
The difference between the attitude of selfishness and the attitude of love I’m urging is profound enough to be characterized as a renaissance, or re-birth, or being born again, although fortunate individuals may grow up developing and embodying that loving attitude from their very early years.
The highly important ignorance that such learning overcomes is ignorance of the real — sometimes profoundly fulfilling benefits — that frequently arise for an agent – whether an individual or a group agent – when that agent acts in ways to benefit others.
Because this is philosophy of education, I’ll pay attention here to standard meanings and to principles, and I’ll offer some practical cautionary notes.
2. Defining “selfishness.” Beware of calling a youngster “selfish.”
Readers should bear in mind the explanations of self-love and its need for truth that are presented early in chapter 2. Those explanations are taken for granted in this treatment of selfishness.
Despite the evident innate tendencies toward love of others (chapter 4), very young and inexperienced humans surely tend to be largely preoccupied with their own needs and interests! How could it be otherwise?!
But that certainly does not, and should not, lead us to pointedly criticize the very young as selfish!
Standard definitions indicate: Someone is selfish to the extent that they are “concerned excessively or exclusively with one’s own interests”. . . that they “tend to seek or concentrate on their own advantage, profit, pleasure, or benefit without regard for others.” The very young are not yet distinguishing – not even aware of – such things as another’s profit!
To say that someone – some actor — is selfish, or that they acted selfishly, is not to neutrally describe them (as when we mention, say, eye color or blood type on a driver’s license application).
Instead, as standard definitions themselves indicate, to say some person is selfish – although it does describe — it does more. It criticizes: It expresses a speaker’s disapproval by attributing a fault – it functions to find fault.
So, emphatically expressing disapproval of a young child, by calling them selfish, is certainly not something I’m generally advocating.
I suspect that, in more than a few cases, doing so would go counter to the general aim I’m recommending, and it would probably violate the test I’m recommending for judging whether a particular action is right.
Bear in mind — that general aim I’m recommending is a world in which people and their organizations are conducting themselves in ways that are — to put it in one word — loving, that is: beneficial for, not harmful of, their fellow human beings or themselves.
And bear in mind the test I’m recommending for testing actions (and institutional policies and practices) for their rightness: Would I want to be – or have any of my loved ones – on the receiving end of that act or policy?
3. Childhood Examples; SELFISHNESS “at school”
In the natural, genetically-based pursuit of pleasant experiences — of fun — young children — often those who are bigger or stronger or craftier than others in a group — will sometimes act selfishly. For example:
1. They may stingily and forcibly grab – or sneakily take away — what belongs to other children – or
2. They may cheat in order to win a competition by breaking the rules . . .or
3. They may exhibit hostility toward their competitors (and competitors’ fans) in games.
Such cases illustrate selfish behavior, selfish action, selfish conduct, by children.
Such actions are obviously at odds with desirable relationships among those involved – at odds with the amicable, pleasant relations toward which our DNA instinctively inclines us, and which our personal experience normally rewards.
4. Responding to selfish conduct noticed in the young:
a. Ignoring it.
This retired philosopher of education is urging parents and others who teach not to turn away from emerging and obvious selfishness in youngsters you deal with. Try not to let your own work, your other obligations, your rest and relaxation, or your entertainment interfere. Don’t ignore selfish conduct on the part of the young who cross your path.
Uncorrected selfish conduct promotes selfish character. There’s a superabundance of material online about character formation.
Selfish actions and character obviously conflict with desirable, peaceful, amicable, friendly relationships among those involved – because those actions lack significant consideration for others, and are “overridingly concerned with one’s own profit or possessions, or one’s own pleasure, etc.”
In some cases, an adult’s ignoring the selfish conduct – deciding not to intervene – failing to speak up — may itself amount to selfish decision-making, selfish conduct.
b. Individual intervention.
Suppose you witness two youngsters – one of them, Bill, is clearly stronger than the other. Bill is forcefully trying to take away both the packed lunch and some money belonging to the other kid, Tom. You’re a young teacher, and much stronger than Bill. You intervene, and outspokenly scold the would-be thief: “Is that the sort of thing you’d want a bigger kid to do to you?!” Bill stops, and Tom hurries off with both his money and his packed lunch.
C. Cooperative intervention may be in order.
Suppose the situation was a bit different: You and a colleague are together when you encounter two young, would-be thieves stealing from Tom. One of you says to the other: “Let’s make them stop so that little guy doesn’t get ripped off.” You both successfully engage them, and Tom runs off, still in possession of his lunch and his money.
That cooperative intervention is perhaps the simplest sort of organized intervention into something that a group of individuals finds objectionable.
As regards adult agents, workers who believe they’re being selfishly mistreated by management may attempt to defend their interests by creating or joining a labor union.
To protect themselves from rapacious nations, other nations may form or join a military alliance.
To protect vulnerable consumers from producers of dangerous products, consumers (via non-profits, for-profits, and via those who govern) may form methods and agencies to provide for that protection.
5. About Individual (or personal) Agency.
Even the quite young need to learn that they are agents. Some of the “mental roots” of agency are evident in the studies by Paul Bloom, mentioned in chapter 4.
Somewhat later, youngsters should be introduced to the fact that they are beings who can, and do, (and must) choose among options . . . that they are beings with “personal agency” — that they themselves can bring options to mind, and that they can begin to compare the impacts and merits of those options. They can judge (or “weigh”), in the light of relevant reasons — pros and cons that are person-centered . . . they can judge in the light of harms and benefits to self and to other persons (and other sentient beings).
“You didn’t have to do that. What would it have been better to do?!”
Since even youngsters typically have individual (or “personal”) agency, they can be called to account, that is, required to explain – to justify or to excuse something they’ve done, or to acknowledge that what they did was wrong.
That calling to account may include involvement with legal authorities and violations of the law. We aren’t born knowing this sort of thing!
Explicitly commending the young agents who have done what’s good or right should become second nature for (but not overdone by) those who teach them.
6. When there are misdeeds by a young agent:
When there are misdeeds: The young should learn that making shabby, inauthentic excuses, — that is, explaining one’s action only in terms of causes other than his or her own choice among real options – is very different from offering a genuine apology. This generally implies giving assurances not to repeat such a misdeed.
One example of a genuine apology — one that we can witness via an online search — is the one Tiger Woods made in 2010 for his own marital misconduct – an apology that was accepted.
It may be important that someone who has committed a misdeed make amends. That is a matter of going beyond a verbal apology to whomever has been ill-done by – and to perform further actions that are appropriate for that situation – such as a change of one’s ways.
There’s a vivid example that includes an adult – a tax collector — making amends in the Gospel (= “good news”) according to Luke, chapters 3 and 19.
In first century CE Palestine, Jewish tax collectors like Zacchaeus, working for the powerful Roman imperial occupiers, often selfishly bullied vulnerable Jewish taxpayers – including farmers and poor widows. These selfish bullies commonly demanded more than what their Roman rulers required, and kept the difference for themselves.
The preacher-cousin and forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth – John the Baptist — urged that tax collectors should not take more than what Rome required. (Luke chapter 3).
A chief tax collector, very wealthy Zacchaeus (who was very small, in contrast with the storied massive bully, Goliath), — changed his ways, stopped his selfish bullying as a tax collector, made some very impressive amends (Luke 19: verses 8 and 9) and enjoyed fellowship with the Teacher – Jesus of Nazareth, Himself (Luke chapter 19:1–10).
And it’s reasonable to suppose that Zacchaeus himself experienced much better relations with those formerly extorted – but then very well re-compensated – taxpayers to whom he made amends (and with their close ones)!
7. SELFISHNESS AT SCALE
Those who educate should bear in mind – and convey to those they teach — at times and in ways that are age-appropriate — that organized ignorant adult selfishness has given rise to — and has sustained – a very wide range of grievous ills and crimes – acts that clearly fail our test for rightness, since no one, including any of our loved ones, wishes to be on their receiving end.
Many of these large-scale ills still plague our world.
These selfishness-rooted ills go far beyond schoolyard bullying and the widespread male mistreatment of women, against which many thousands of women – worldwide — marched the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated US President in 2017 (see chapter 5).
Credible standard definitions of “greed” make it explicitly clear that greed is itself a kind – a form – of selfishness. For example: “Greed is a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (often money) than is needed.”
Young people need to learn that selfishness in the form of the greed of some adults – and of some adult organizations — has sustained such major historic evils as slavery and the slave trade.
It has also sustained corporate and governmental (and religious) abuse of indigenous people including forcefully removing and confining indigenous peoples to places not of their choosing.
More recently, millions of us have been complicit in Nestle’s theft of water in Canada and elsewhere – to sell to the rest of us by the bottle.
Selfishness in the form of greed is central to cruel corporate profiteering like that that produced the Sackler family’s scandalous multi-billion-dollar wealth via Purdue Pharma’s corrupt marketing of addictive painkiller OxyContin. This is carefully detailed in the 2021 book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Corporate adult greed was also evident in Michael Shkrelli’s profiteering by raising the price of Turing Pharmaceutical’s anti-parasitic drug by 5,000%.
At painful – even deadly — cost to consumers, such greedy corporate capitalists have obviously failed to embody and to live out – instead they have clearly violated — those two Ancient Imperatives: Love your neighbors as yourself, and treat others the way you’d want to be treated.
Stockholders of offending companies may fail to realize their own enabling complicity, and may later come to regret it, and do something about it.
In 19th century America, as steel production (aided by continent-spanning railroads) was rising dramatically, Andrew Carnegie rose from abject poverty to become the richest man in the world.
Unlike other leading capitalists (such as railroad magnate J. P. Morgan, who is remembered for saying “I owe the public nothing”), Carnegie (remembered for, among other things, his philanthropy) had a real, life-long love for others. He deeply regretted having given so much authority to general manager, Henry Frick, while away and isolated on his own annual vacation.
With Frick in control, management selfishness led to the blood-drenched strike at Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant near Pittsburgh. View the Homestead story on American Experience.
And have a look at the insightful cartoon depicting the principal options confronting Homestead’s management — at alamy.com/stock-photo/Andrew-carnegie-puck.html
Big Oil
In the 2020’s there’s plenty of greedy selfishness involved in the persistent corporate spreading of doubt regarding climate change, and in corporate urging of delay when it comes to curbing hydraulic fracturing.
Big oil companies hate losing the main source of their immense wealth: gasoline-fueled vehicles. And they don’t want to diminish profits by curtailing our reliance on fracked shale gas, despite its abundant, seriously dangerous methane air pollution. Both gasoline-powered vehicles and the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas go on contributing to harmful global warming and already, in the early 2020’s, a marked worldwide increase in deadly weather extremes.
The 2022 Frontline TV investigative series on Big Oil’s (especially Exxon-Mobil’s) response to credible scientific findings on climate change, examines the length to which Big Oil has used its political power to block well-informed government action that would provide some protection for people and our environment.
Wars between nations can frequently be traced in large measure to the foolishly ignorant, selfish, and unspeakably harmful greed of national leaders, including multiple-palace-rich Vladimir Putin and his multi-billion-dollar cronies, especially his Gazprom and Rosneft oligarchs. Seeking to protect their extraordinarily large and luxurious private yachts from indignant members of the public, such oligarchs – well aware of the vulnerability of their palatial yachts — try to conceal them from the public.
Folks of all ages need to become aware of (and intelligently, caringly, and –through impactful organizations — responsive to) the needless powerful selfishness – including the selfishness of more than a few as they act in corporate, political, religious, and governmental roles — that adversely impacts human lives.
That awareness of large-scale harms stemming from selfish corporate, political, religious, and governmental policies and actions should not blind us to the fact that Mindful Organizational Self-love is compatible with organizational policies that benefit those on the receiving end: citizens, customers, and consumers generally! Sometimes recognized as the founder of modern capitalism, Adam Smith was aware that self-love is different from selfishness, and that an economy can flourish without the selfishness.
To illustrate: A comfortable, affordable, safe, environment-friendly vehicle can be Beneficial to ALL involved – without requiring selfishness — from those who – acting from self-interest and not primarily from benevolence — provide its raw materials, to its designers and producers, to advertisers and to sellers, to those who regulate its use, to insurers, and to those who use, and those who maintain such vehicles.
Because such things are also true for a wide array of goods people need, want, and prize, the historical rise of attractive economies that are free of forced labor and slave labor, and free of abject poverty, have become genuine possibilities. We’ll be better off when — thanks to mindful care of self and others — selfishness wanes and is limited to the ranks of ills that are being overcome.
8. Those who teach should be aware of threats to personal agency itself.
Selfishness is a central factor in the incalculably harmful “drug trafficking” carried out by gangs and cartels, as well as by an array of American corporations, and by more than a few doctors!
Especially in our era, learners need to learn that their own personal agency – their ability to choose mindfully among promising options – options really open to them – is seriously threatened by addictions, by getting “hooked on” – addicted to — harmful substances including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and dangerous opioid painkillers.
With ongoing careful medical supervision, some of these can assist with control and reduction of very serious pain that follows some serious surgeries. But otherwise they offer “highs” – that is, brief periods of more or less intense euphoria – which tend to be followed by very intense cravings to use more of the substance, which promote a trapped, unfulfilling life of trying to fulfill those insatiable cravings.
The widespread and unmistakable harms of alcohol addiction triggered America’s 19th century Prohibition movement and, finally, the enactment in 1920, of the excessively sweeping, short-lived Prohibition amendment.
Following the repeal of that (unwisely too-restrictive) amendment, and explicitly aiming at rapid corporate growth and maximum profit by purchasing their competitors, some producers, like the Canandaigua Wine Company, beginning in 1945, capitalized on the impoverished, often alcohol-addicted, inner-city market. They harmfully produced cheap, high-alcohol wine, rather than emphasizing lower alcohol table wines suitable for moderate consumption during meals with family and friends.
Later, in the 1980s, in response to the temptations of the illegal street drugs of that time, including marijuana, and both crack and powder cocaine, US First Lady Nancy Reagan urged those tempted to: “Just say No!”
That advice commendably suggested the importance of personal choice – personal agency. And “saying No” to (– much more accurately: refusing —) the costly pursuit of the drug-induced, purely subjective, conscious states – those highs – is crucially important, especially because taking that drug-paved path may well undermine and overpower one’s own personal agency itself.
One’s failure to Refuse – or, more recently – one’s being diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder or disease — now calls for very painful and very costly rehabilitation, provided that’s available.
If drug addiction is a disease, surely the US CDC — Center for Disease Control and Prevention — should be seriously addressing its prevention.
The attractiveness of that euphoria — those highs — and the power of those insatiable cravings, creates an extremely powerful, very high profit-generating Demand for opioids. That demand has been especially strong in (but certainly not limited to) communities heavily impacted by the decline of industries, like coal mining in Appalachia, that have depended heavily on the production and use of fossil fuels.
The extraordinary 2022 book American Cartel, by Pulitzer prize-winning authors Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, very readably brings to readers the incontrovertible evidence of the moral corruption (especially in the form of greedy selfishness) of some highly placed individuals in the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Agency, as well as some corporate executives of the drug companies that manufacture those opioids – including Johnson and Johnson, Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, and others.
American Cartel also documents the greedy complicity of some crucially placed individuals among such cooperating distributers as AmerisourceBergen Corp., pharmacies such as CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, etc., trade associations, and some morally corrupt doctors selfishly violating the traditional oath not to harm.
This important book also illustrates the role of lobbyists and skillfully-staffed lobbying firms in “assisting” our congressional representatives by framing legislation and in crafting for them misleading talking points that powerfully serve the interests of, and protect, those corporations that are profiting richly from the profoundly harmful opioid epidemic.
Because the greed of those individuals typically involves them (and their companies) in illegal acts, that greed gives rise to multi-million dollar lawsuits – also surveyed by Higham and Horwitz.
But those lawsuits begin, and they continue, because of deadly harm that has already been done. Their focus is on money, and not, of course, on preventing that deadly harm already done to human beings and their loved ones.
As a retired philosopher of education, in this Daring Proposal I urge all who teach to embody and to teach the attitude that will – when widespread — reduce (and tend to prevent) — the occurrence of such harms – the costly, sometimes deadly, addictions themselves. Those addictions give rise to the multi-million-dollar-lawsuits that preoccupy the parties seeking to win them, including those powerful corporate agents seeking to minimize corporate financial loss for offending companies.
There’s a better path than the long-standing costly “war on drugs” with its violent raids, its wasteful trials, and its many thousands of costly, often racially biased, racially unjust incarcerations of drug users.
And prevention is a far better path than the very difficult and costly rehabilitation that those who are addicted (or victims of substance abuse disorder) require.
As early as fits their situations, all learners need to learn realistically about the dangers of addiction, including the facts of chemical dependence involved with some valuable pain medications, and about the non-medical paths that sometimes lead to tragic (and avoidable) addiction.
They also need to learn that there are far better options for them than the highs for sale in schools and on some inner-city (and suburban) street corners . . . better options that include becoming engaged instead in enjoyable non-addictive recreation and extra–curricular activities – including sports and amateur dramatics, musical and arts and crafts groups . . . in satisfying, constructive, and gainful work, in successful, rewarding study, and mutually beneficial local, national, and international service activity, including working with the revived Peace Corps.
In addition to being a fulfilling alternative to living lives consumed with the pursuit of drug-based euphoria and driven by insatiable cravings, well-organized, well-targeted international service at scale – by making life better in less-fortunate societies – can help relieve some of the very troubling heavy immigration pressure the US Congress has failed to deal with comprehensively for decades. I was pleased that assistance to make life better for people in societies like Columbia – which has a reputation as a “cocaine state” — was emphasized by former President of Columbia, Ivan Duque Marquez, on the 9/23/2022 PBS program Firing Line, hosted by Margaret Hoover. He agrees that Demand for addictive drugs in affluent societies needs to be curbed.
Those who lead our society — and “we the people” in a democracy — must see to it that our society includes such live options as those. Parents and others who teach must guide learners toward those and similar live options sketched a couple of paragraphs earlier.
So addiction-prevention is itself part of this direct approach to what has often been called moral education. It involves a way of seeing and dealing with one another as persons with understanding — who make real choices.
We’re not simply organisms pushed and pulled by pleasures and pains, or by events in our nervous systems. Do reflect carefully on the paragraphs on Behaviorism in the next chapter.
We all – including those who’ll become corporate executives and employers, and political leaders and governmental and religious leaders, and so on — can learn to live as personal agents with choices guided by the attitudes of enlightened, informed love of self and of others.
So, by our persistent and peaceful educational combat – our informed and loving peaceful culture war against ignorant selfishness in our young — and in our adult world — those who teach will be engaged in the important task of contributing to the sort of world that’s worth aiming at, a world of pervasive mutual human caring, which is literally unthinkable without both mindful self–love and mindful love of others.