A COUNTER INTUITIVE IDEA -- "PLEASING-SELF" OR SELFISHNESS IN A CULTURE OF SELF-NEGATION

A COUNTER INTUITIVE IDEA – "PLEASING- SELF" OR SELFISHNESS IN A CULTURE OF SELF-NEGATION

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© April 29, 2014

REFERENCE:

Another vignette from “Six Silent Killers.”

THE “PLEASING-SELF MENTALITY” EXPLAINED

Is the please-self mentality the ultimate in selfishness? Not necessarily.  Unselfishness is at root a cultural condition. A counter intuitive case could be made that the ultimate in selfishness is found in the unselfish.

The unselfish allows himself to be exploited by being taken for granted, taken advantage of, given faint praise, and treated as a gopher.

When a person permits others to bankrupt him emotionally, physically, and spiritually, he does himself no favor, or anybody else. The unselfish redistributes his pain, agony, and self-pity where it is least deserved, on family members and loved ones. This causes deep unhappiness everywhere. In a zero-sum game, those who are the takers are the unhappiest of all.

Takers never get enough, always demanding more—more attention, more sympathy, and more time, more everything. Worse yet, takers have little respect for givers. There is only one way to be truly unselfish, and that is by being totally selfish.

Look at the evidence. If we first meet our own personal needs before we meet the needs of others, we do so with a generous spirit and a sense of freedom. Yet it is considered virtuous to meet the needs of others at the expense of our own. That is how we have been conditioned. It fails to work in the chemistry of being, because it is dishonest and self-abusing.

More virtuous is to assert ourselves by meeting our own needs, then meeting the needs of others with a light heart. To submit to social conformity at the expense of one’s own free choice does not engender a kind heart.

Sainthood defies the human condition, placing itself above the vanities while reinforcing cultural vagaries. Sainthood is perhaps the most narcissistic of postures.

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) may not be considered a saint, but many consider him the noblest figure of the twentieth century for his altruism. He lost patience with what he called a “jackass society”—the bourgeoisie of Europe, which included his own intellectual community—leaving a brilliant career as a theologian, musicologist, and organist to study medicine. Upon completion of his studies, he abandoned Europe for Africa, where he undertook the task to build hospitals and clinics.

There is no question that Schweitzer was a gentle and deeply religious man. Only 31, he set up his paternalistic service to Africans in a deserted mission at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa, in a spirit “not of benevolence, but atonement” to fight leprosy and sleeping sickness. Even his newly discovered ethical principle, “reverence for life,” was fully worked out in relation to the defects of European civilization.

Schweitzer’s selflessness has always been troubling to me. He turned his back on a “jackass society,” but brought European arrogance to Africa. Africans managed to live for centuries without European progress. Moreover, his reverence for life was confusing to the natives, for he couldn’t kill the smallest of insects. His hospitals, as a consequence, would never receive the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. 

Conceivably, Schweitzer went to Africa to find himself and to expiate his guilt for being European. Characteristic of the Christian-Judaic culture is for the individual to identify with society, not with nature. The religious animism of Africans is to yield to nature, not control it. Schweitzer had the arrogance of intellect and predisposition to elitist control making him a totally Western man.

Perhaps a sense of life’s futility drove him there to pay a humanistic debt to atone for these misgivings. By sacrificing his life to the natives, perhaps he felt he could realize his salvation. Western man is consumed with the idea of debt and repayment, in contrast to the Eastern man who prefers moving from ignorance to illumination. Whatever the motivation, European society, far from being incensed at his rebuke, celebrated him as an altruist.

Was Africa improved? Is it better now? It is impossible to say.  What is more remarkable about this man is not what he did, but that he had the courage to do it. He had the courage to please self by serving others. In that sense, he escaped European society and its shackling culture.

The most significant characteristic of the please-self mentality is the need to be purposeful. The world outside may be in disarray, but that has little impact on the deliberate individual. The resonance of the individual depends on a separate dynamic—chaos and order. Chaos synergize effort, as it did Schweitzer, to restore some sense of order, which launches the person into the dynamic of change. One wonders what Schweitzer could have done if he had stayed in Europe and turned his zeal on his own society, a more monumental task.

In the corporate world everywhere, managers and workers are trying to please customers, bosses, stockholders, suppliers, subordinates, peers, community leaders, even confessors, and ending up pleasing no one. They are at their wit’s end and still manage to smile through clenched teeth. So, what do they do? Do they say, “Damn it? Time out! Enough already!” No, they open another pack of cigarettes, have a couple of double martinis at lunch, go on a health kick, giving up one narcotic for another, punishing themselves into a condition they never had when they were half the age. 

They acquire younger significant others, while carrying a pack of Rolaids in their briefcase, alongside a deluxe container of Extra Strength Excedrin. They drink gallons of coffee, looking forlorn and perplexed, then they have a cerebral hemorrhage, myocardial infarction, peptic ulcer, colon cancer, kidney failure, liver complaint, prostatitis, or simply retire on the job. Were these same people inclined to please self, the outcome would be quite different, but they are not, and that’s the problem.  Albert Schweitzer deserted Europe for Africa and lived to be 90.  Think about it.

THE PRICE OF “PLEASING-SELF”

Not everyone has their Lambarene to escape to. Like Desiderius Erasmus (Catholic Counter Reformation), most people with a please-self inclination must seek their destiny inside the system, rather than outside as did Martin Luther (Protestant Reformation).

The clash of culture between feudalism, which was first economic and then religious (Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism), and capitalism, which was first religious (Protestantism) and then economic (progressive capitalism), is once again upon us. We are in the post-modern, post-capitalistic period, and what is evolving is the please-self mentality, which is neither particularly economic nor religious, yet quite chaotic and somewhat dysfunctional.  Nowhere Man is in Nowhere Land.

It is a time for personhood. The please-self mentality in today’s organization stands out like a sore thumb. People of the please-self orientation might agree with naturalist Stephen Jay Gould’s message in “An Urchin in the Storm” (1987) that all organic life is programmed to survive only when it is threatened with extinction.  Otherwise, there is no instinctual mechanism that preserves a species. Only the sense of danger precedes activation of the survival behavior.

Likewise, with people, if there is no sense of danger, or if the danger is felt exaggerated, it will be ignored. The human species has a herd mentality that necessitates being frightened to death to act. Biologist Richard Dawkins relates in his book “The Selfish Gene” (1976) that selfishness is indigenous to survival.  

Dawkins studies single-cell organisms and sees an interesting correlation between biology and social theory. He suggests that selfishness is neither good nor bad, but is simply inherently robotic. Evolution, he claims, has always been selfish, and all organic life is a survival machine, on both a molecular (genetic) and mechanistic (human) scale. So, why are we so afraid to be selfish when it is so critical to our well-being?