Inclusive Selfishness
Existence is an individual project but its sustainance is an engagement with the world
In this trivial world of ours, our support is often times once-off transactional. “What’s in it for me?” we silently want it. But, if our selfishness is to be inclusive, this is the right question? “How can I help make the world better for all of us?”
With scarce resources squeezed the other way, inequality widening, political scenes imploding everyday, economic lifeline suffocating, low on coin, spiritually defiled like everyone else, we've little chance but to hang on—to the last line of defence —by the fingernails.
Those who experience systemic poverty live them daily; they don't imagine. Bent and broken—and seemingly as hapless as a henhouse when a fox enters—they jump into it as raw, unfiltered as is.
And amidst these manufactured hardships, we’ve got choices to make: either life’s blows can harden us into bitter shells or soften us into kindness.
Propensities for barbaric aggression, submission to autocrats, hostility to outsiders, have all conspired to put our survival in some doubt.
But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence—the must-have tools for our continued survival and prosperity.
To ponder over it, every great shift in history, every revolution of change, happened because people stood up for something bigger than themselves. The truth is, we are all connected. Your neighbor’s struggles affect your community. A child’s access to education shapes the future. The well-being of another human being ripples outward in ways you may never see but will always feel.
Existence is an individual project but its sustainance is an engagement with the world. When you are stingy with life, holding back every little thing—your smile, love, activity—life will not happen to you. You will miss it completely. If you use yourself up absolutely every day—for the betterment of everyone— you will find the experience of life is very rich.
Understand this now, as an individual, if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to a particular place, it is as though you have performed nothing at all. So man/woman has come in this world for a particular task, and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then she will have done nothing.
Fantastic, Edwin. You are a great philosopher. I wish you could address audiences in North America and across the African Continent, Your words are inspiring to all who read them.