Believing in the kindness of other people even when some are tools

We all know there are selfish people out there who just look out for themselves and don’t care about anyone else. Some say that selfishness is part of human nature, that we are just wired that way.

Even I have to admit that under certain conditions, humans will always act in a way that can be considered selfish. This is self-preservation. It’s not anything to feel guilty about. You need to eat before you can care much about when others eat.

What I find about selfishness though, is that it correlates directly with fear and the survival instinct. That means that once you do what you can do to ensure survival and are capable of seeing a bigger picture, selfishness disappears, or at the very least evolves to become holistic and one with selflessness.

If I’m scared I don’t have enough money to eat or that one day someone is going to rob me if I’m not careful, those Kind of fears could easily lead to selfish behavior and there isn’t even anything wrong with that. The problem is when I am no longer in danger of starving or being robbed and I continue to act as if I am. This isn’t called human nature, this is called immaturity and it’s so normal in society that we don’t see it.

Overcoming that fear can be a challenge though. There really is no way to be sure that you won’t starve or be robbed. Even if you amass all the worlds resources and hire an army, you can never be sure that you won’t fall ill, that your army might turn on you, that your perceived enemies develop a new technology that allows them to harm you. This is where overcoming fear becomes a necessity for humans to continue to have some semblance of harmony, and it’s totally possible if we allow ourselves to grow the fuck up.

There will always be threats. But how many rolls of toilet paper do you need before you feel safe? How much money do you need to feel secure? You will eventually find that no matter how much toilet paper or money you have will not give you peace of mind, it’s time to grow the fuck up.

Once you grow the fuck up, you’ll realize that you are creating more threats through selfishness, because it turns potential allies into enemies. It doesn’t mean you have to let down your guard completely. It means taking steps to meet them halfway and staying vigilant enough to account for unpredictabilities. There is no need to fear though. Once you make preparations, any worry is just a waste of energy and you’d be served more by switching to another, more socially productive and cooperative mode of human nature.

I like to look at Maslows hierarchy of needs. At the bottom, you have psychological needs like safety. Once you know you aren’t going to die if you stop running, you can seek out basic needs like food and shelter. After that you feel a longing for love and affection and sex and all that. Then you want to respected. From there you can move towards self actualization, which is your pursuit of a higher version of yourself.

A self actualized person doesn’t freak out when there is no toilet paper. They use their cognitive functions to say “well I have enough for 3 months, if it’s the end of the world, eventually I’ll need to get used to using leaves. They don’t think “well I own this whole street now, time for me to buy up the next street”. They think “well if people can’t buy their own houses they are going to hate me.”

There is still self preservation present in a self actualized state and you could even call it “selfishness” but it starts to merge with selflessness.

A self actualized and mature person can see the way we all interconnect like one organism. They can be selfless in their selfishness and selfish in the selflessness. At that point is it even worth calling selfish anymore?

I hope and I think that we are learning to overcome pure selfishness and evolve into a society where people learn to care about others to a much greater degree.

It all starts with us. If more of us make an effort, we will see it affect the world around us. We no longer have the luxury of believing that we can’t make a difference. We will discover more and more that inaction is a decision, that doing nothing for others is actively holding us back, that grabbing on to all we can is no longer a sustainable way for humanity to progress and live comfortable.

While some people are running around like headless chickens, others are doing what they can for themselves AND others. I’ve received masks from four different people and two people offer to help me out a bit if I can’t work since I’m freelance. I have a friend who was offered an apartment with free rent. There are lots of people trying to help others right now. I’m trying to do the same in whatever ways I can.

We are getting our shit together on a collective scale. Its taking time but It’s already happening, you are welcome to join us.

-I+Everything