Self-Interests and Enlightened Self-Interests and Beyond

This is a reflective piece that I intended to write in three separate articles but the flowed into one.

It is in our self-interest to have food, shelter and clothing; basic self-interest needs. Then we move to more self-interests. It is also in my self-interest to be a part of a family that will help raise me and care for me early in life, and love and support me throughout life. And when we raise families of our own they just become extensions of our own self-interest. It is in my self-interests to have an education that helps provide meaning for my existence and skills I need to obtain employment to gain my immediate self-interests.

Moving up the ladder of self-interests, I want a government that will protect me and provide me with services and a superstructure that helps me with my other self-interests. And, for most of us we have spiritual self-interests; we like to think there is a god who takes special interest in us and may even provide and eternal life even better than this one; a god who will answer and prayers for things of my self-interests. Most prayers offered are those of request.

Each and every one of us has basic and extended self-interests; it is part of being human. We are born crying out feed me, clean me, keep me warm, even though we don’t have words for them yet, we have self-interests and they never go away.

Guess I might as well move to part two.

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Enlightened self-interests come when we realize that it is also in our self-interest to see to the needs of others as means of enhancing our own self-interests. It is in my self-interest not to punch out my neighbor because my neighbor and his buddies may turn and beat the crap out of me. It is part of my enlightened self-interest to be nice to the members of my family, as that will make it more likely that they will be nice to me. This then logically extends to extended family, friends, and government. It is in my self-interest to pay taxes to a government that will protect me, provide regulations so that I get my shot and a meaningful life, and protection if live gives me a bad time of it.

In business an employer will find it in their self-interest to care for employees so they will be more productive and his or her business will be better. A good example here is Henry Ford who understood that paying his workers well would make them good candidates to buy the cars he was making and selling; a very radical idea at the time. It is also an enlightened self-interest many modern businessmen seem to have forgotten in their myopia. CEO’s or 1%ers are not working in their enlightened self-interests when they demand a ridiculous share of the economic pie. It weakens the very economic structure in which they are involved.

The same is true for workers who if they think in line of enlightened self-interest will give a good days work for a good days pay. Unions were necessary because employers were not given workers a fair shake, but unions demanded more and more of the companies economic pie driving a business out of business lose sight of enlightened self-inteerest.

In my opinion many conservatives today work in terms of shortsighted self-interest in contrast to long term-enlightened self-interest. Thus we find politicians catering to short-term self-interest opportunities, rather than engaging in long-term service for their constituents. That is true of both parties.

Another example of this is buying from mega-stores such as Wal-Mart which in the short term give us products at a lower price, but decreases the number of people able to buy because of low pay and driving out small business that cannot work out or demand sweetheart deals with manufacturers to give them a special advantage. If we look at today’s employment increases, more folk are getting jobs again but they are often at lower paying levels than before, which in turn lowers the ability of society to buy and depressing the overall economy. Also governments giving special tax advantages to attract businesses to their community may seem like the way to go but the also drive out the small business that already exist and is basically just unfair.

In the spiritual realm if my only concern is my self-interest is in what the church can give to me and make me happy, we are on the road to destruction placing impossible burdens on churches and loosing the vision of what a church is anyway, to be the body of Christ to serve the world. The same is true of any religion. And, if religions fight each other they demean both sides. The enlightened church knows that they do well when they are a positive influence for all religions.

Ah, I’ll put the whole thing here, as I am not going that deep into any of it.

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Finally, I come to what I see as wisdom, divinely inspired graceful actions that go beyond both self-interest and enlightened self-interest.

We see it time and time again when the media interviews someone who is labeled a hero for actions they have taken at personal risk to come to the aid of others, the person(s) being interviewed do not see themselves as heroes, just folk who did something they think anyone would do in that situation. It seems disassociated from any self-interest; just something in which they were caught up in. I describe these moments as divinely inspired activities where human being are lifted by grace to do what is good. It goes beyond normal self-interest to a special place for which the participant does not take responsibility for or feel that they have done it for a self-interest principle.

These moments happen more frequently than we realize or acknowledge because of their very nature. And most of us just lack the language to describe these in appropriate terms because we are far more accustomed to the language of self-interest and enlightened self-interest. It is like most Christians, while believers, are scriptural illiterate and don’t use faith language in everyday life, and yet are believers and act in religious, other-directed ways. But one knows when they have done a good work whether it came from a self-interest to be acknowledged as a good worker or person or whether they were just caught up in doing a good work without a thought about self.

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We are an odd combination of self-centered beings that on occasion are caught up in the divine drama. Most prayers of the divine part of our life are prayers of thanks.

Of course, most folk will chalk up good altruistic deeds as a sign that human nature is good. I see that as just another form on self-interested conceit. We prefer to think we are god-like rather than god-dependent. I have referred to this as Little Jack Honer Theology:

Little Jack Horner

Sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie;

He put in his thumb,

And pulled out a plum,

And said, "What a good boy am I!"  ~ Mother Goose

All Jack did was stick out his thumb receive an unearned gift and then proclaimed he was good.