2 weeks Ago By Sahan Weerasooriya
by Susantha Hewa The Covid-19 pandemic, which took more than seven million human lives in its destructive sweep across all borders of the planet could teach us, among other things, two lessons; first, that greed for money can dislodge essential human empathy even when the entire humanity is in danger of annihilation by a common threat. The reports of increased sales of counterfeit healthcare and sanitary products as well as personal protective equipment made this patently clear at the time. As Oxfam stated in 2020, “Seventeen of the top 25 most profitable corporations are expected to rake in $85 billion more in profits during 2020 than what they averaged in the four years before the pandemic” (Who Profits from COVID-19, and How Can We Use That Money to Help Us Get a Vaccine?, 2020, https://www.
oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/who-profits-covid-19-and-how-can-we-use-money-help-us-get-vaccine/). In other words, the pandemic bared to the world the most selfish and callous side of human nature – the craving for profit and personal enrichment at whatever cost.
Conversely, the second lesson was regarding our concern for a better world; it taught us that the mechanisms that can benefit the entire society are the ones which best align individual interests with collective interests. That is, selfishness and altruism are not mutually exclusive; they can be made to coexist with each other sustaining each other for the benefit of all. The latter is illustrated in the compulsory use of facemasks by all individuals.
We wore masks principally for selfish reasons- to protect ourselves from the infected ‘other’, which, however, automatically translated into protecting the uninfected ‘other’ from being infected by us. That’s not very bad selfishness, to begin with. One might see it as a sort of connecting selfishness and unselfishness without splitting hairs about ethics.
Perhaps it would become a jolly good moral with no undertones of religiosity – a kind of handy two-in-one, as they say, a selfish unselfishness. A serviceable idea which is potentially applicable in areas other than health. If the contagion had continued, people would have effortlessly learned it as a cool ethic without the stamp of any religious or moral authority.
Perhaps it might work equally effectively in areas like business, policy making, education, ethics, social welfare, etc. For example, in business, it is likely to merge the maligned idea of unconscionable profitmaking seamlessly with the much commendable idea of profit-sharing. Individual interests, instead of necessarily leading a person towards unashamed self-centeredness, may constructively be made to stand up with collective interests, says Zygmunt Bauman in his book “Does ethics have a chance in a world of consumers?”.
In extolling the idea of “collective insurance against individual misfortune”, he goes on to say that the “order of egoism” in society may be replaced with the “order of equality” by turning the citizens into “stakeholders in addition to being stockholders, beneficiaries but also actors – the wardens as much as wards of the ‘social benefits’”. It seems to be an illustration of the seemingly paradoxical precept of “selfish altruism” symbolised by the pandemic-prevention facemask. We all are naturally self-centred, which ensures our survival.
Self-interest becomes injurious only when it begins to harm others- not when it promotes others’ interests. Wearing the facemask proved to be an exemplification of the apparently absurd ‘moral’– be unselfish by being selfish. The sad fact is that a pandemic had to ravage the planet to drive the lesson home.
Perhaps, the nagging issue of global poverty and the scandalous income gap between the few superrich and the impoverished masses may find some solution in Bauman’s idea of “stakeholders...
being stockholders”. Can we think of any moral principle of pure altruism without even a spark of self-interest? Too good to be true. It will be like trying to conceptualise “we” denying “I” being an essential constituent of it.
Of course, selflessness – selfishness, kindness – unkindness, sensitivity – callousness, fairness – unfairness, justice – injustice, honesty – dishonesty, etc. are all opposites in the morality spectrum. In all these sets, the left is universally acclaimed as wholesome while the right is unconditionally reproved as harmful.
All religions and long held values want you to favour the ones on the left- the good ones. When you come to think of children, generally, you would attribute the qualities on the left to children. Incidentally, one is reminded of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” where the poet focuses on children’s ingenuousness and uses imagery to associate them with purity and innocence.
And as we know, it is when they grow up and get “experienced” that they gradually move into a lifelong pursuit of success in which “innocence” makes room for “efficiency” with the blessings of all superiors, mentors and gurus- an efficiency which blossoms on a set of values more pragmatic than those favour that passing juvenile innocence. It is at this time we develop a liking for books on how to grow rich, to think like a billionaire and to think big; and become go-getters and leaders and set an example in time-management by taking a little time off our tight schedules for meditation, which is said to polish our entrepreneurial skills in a roundabout way, of course. In all these things, we are fueled by the variations of the mantra of getting ahead, coming out on top, taking the prize, gaining the day, etc.
as they say. All this is not bad except that in none of these are we encouraged to focus on anything other than the self. Naomi Klein attacks this ruthless acquisitiveness when she refers to Donald Trump and Meredith Mclver’s book “How to get rich”, in which the authors are said to promote crass egotism which excludes even the slightest regard for the common welfare.
She sardonically sums up the book’s patently overt message: “You may be on the verge of personal bankruptcy today, but if you (literally) play your cards right, you could be living large by morning”. This is not the ‘altruistic selfishness’ of the pandemic times, which would benefit the individual as well as the society, but one which unleashes the most repulsive side of man, without making him worried about how such selfishness comes into conflict with his accustomed ‘religiosity’. It is only a crisis of ‘pandemic proportions’ which can teach us the happier possibility of securing your wellbeing in ensuring the wellbeing of all- to make you feel that it is only when all are safe that “I” can be safe.
In terms of its stark pragmatism, it is much more commendable than a load of ethics which make us ‘spiritual’ in a secluded tower. It seems that the more we separate ethics from the day to day life of constant ambition and competition, the more we think of them in their abstract forms floating above our heads, which we try to catch when we get a ‘break’ from the rat race – a rat race, which atomises society by celebrating ‘success stories’ of nobodies becoming somebodies, where the ‘hard’ virtues like courage, diligence, persistence, drive, initiative, etc. get all the credit.
The only virtues that get ignored are the ones codified in religion – love, kindness, empathy, etc. We know that they are passable when it comes to going places. Business is business.
What is in tune with achievement is the ability to do ‘business’ without letting religion or the ‘soft’ ethics to mystify your vision of success. In fact, when it comes to success, all those practical people have a more nuanced and analytical approach not particularly susceptible to religion. Yuval Noah Harari shows our general reluctance to think of secular matters in terms of ethics, religion and spirituality when he writes, “The assertion that religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organizing large-scale cooperation may vex those for whom it [religion] represents first and foremost a spiritual path” (Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow).
Perhaps, the way forward towards a better world is not to put ethics on the backburner till the time comes to look forward to the trip to the next world where nobody wants to go, but to have a wise mixture of selfishness and altruism in all practical matters for the benefit of both “I” and “we”. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. Perhaps, it may be relevant to changing our rigid attitudes about success which we take to be conflicting with common wellbeing.
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