Selfish Fellows Quotes

You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.

We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource.' This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.

Now you see, Tom," said Mr. Harthouse (...); "every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures.

Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow "for company." Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.

To those who have neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health.

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.

Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish. Need something more concrete? No problem. Make 1 million people achieve any of the following: Make them feel better. Help them solve a problem. Educate them. Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup). Give them security (housing, safety, health). Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence). Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual). Make things easier. Enhance their dreams and give hope. … and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.

From the late eighteenth century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society.

Whatever had made the Dean take such a fancy to him, a cowardly, selfish, obstinate, ugly old fellow like him? He would never understand it. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at that too. Faith in God. God. A word he had always refused. But the Dean had said, put the word love in its place.

If that other fellow doesn't know his happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal with me. Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover, it's more selfish anyhow.

Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet was a smoky wasteland, they’d be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell.

Their arrogance protected them against any liking for their fellow-man, against the slightest interest in the strangers sitting all about them, amidst whom M. de Stermaria adopted the manner one has in the buffet-car of a train, grim, hurried, stand-offish, brusque, fastidious and spiteful, surrounded by other passengers whom one has never seen before, whom one will never see again and towards whom the only conceivable way of behaving is to make sure that they keep away from one's cold chicken and stay out of one's chosen corner-seat.

How will people remember you when you are gone? And for how long until they forget? Were you selfish or selfless? A gossip or a patient listener? Did you add value to the world, or did you simply take from it? Did you add value to the lives of others, or did you take the value out of someone's life? Were you a plus or negative? Meaningful or meaningless? Do you live to take or live to give?

With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher. But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life -- no true home -- nothing to be dearer to me than myself and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me better things than I care to culture for myself only? Nothing, at whose feet I can willingly lay down the whole burden of human egotism, and gloriously take up the nobler charge of labouring and living for others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so rounded: for you the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a huge mass of my fellow- creatures in no better circumstances. I see that a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both partners run out of goods. But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason. Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection – the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others.

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth)

People can be cruel, deadly, heartless, selfish, disrespectful. They can be vice-ridden and lack any basic empathy toward their fellow man.

I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the firsts chapter in the new history of man

the way we ignore the suffering of others and close our ears to their cries of pain. The way we disrespect our fellow man and are selfish for our own needs. Much of human suffering is avoidable. But a righteous path has a high price, and many are not prepared to pay that price.

The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence... Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process.

I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone's way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional "Watch where you're going, bitch" can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.

Ultimately, injustice isn’t a social problem. It is a moral problem. Injustice exists because we are all fallen, sinful, selfish people. The only solution is a personal, heart-level transformation, not just for a particular group of so-called “oppressors,” but for everyone.

Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow, to make his whole intellectual and emotional life merely an extension of one's own—to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egotism through him as well as through oneself. His own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being very selfish.

Happiness, so they say, makes one selfish... Alas! this happiness that is in store for some to the detriment of others must make one so, indeed. O my God! Shared happiness, that which one would find by working for the happiness of one's fellow men, would make man as great as his destiny on earth, as good as yourself!

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

The Black race could never “be placed on an equality with the white race” in the United States, Lincoln professed. Whether this “is right or wrong I need not discuss,” he said. Lincoln then blamed the presence of Blacks for the war. If Blacks leave, all will be well, Lincoln touted. “Sacrifice something of your present comfort,” Lincoln advised, asking the group to press their fellow Blacks to make the trek to Liberia and start anew. To refuse would be “extremely selfish.

Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop. Mr.

Man’s development requires his capacity to transcend the narrow prison of his ego, his greed, his selfishness, his separation from his fellow man, and, hence, his basic loneliness. This transcendence is the condition for being open and related to the world, vulnerable, and yet with an experience of identity and integrity; of man’s capacity to enjoy all that is alive, to pour out his faculties into the world around him, to be “interested”; in brief, to be rather than to have and to use are consequences of the step to overcome greed and egomania.

I remember being taught all about how Japan was created by the gods, for instance. How we as a nation were divine and supreme. We had to memorize the text book word for word. Some things aren’t such a loss, perhaps.’ “But Jim, things aren’t as simple as that. You clearly don’t understand how such things worked. Things aren’t nearly as simple as you presume. We devoted ourselves to ensuring that proper qualities were handed down, that children grew up with the correct attitude to their country, to their fellows. There was a spirit in Japan once, it bound us all together. Just imagine what it must be like being a young boy today. He’s taught no values at school — except perhaps that he should selfishly demand whatever he wants out of life. He goes home and finds his parents fighting because his mother refuses to vote for his father’s party. What a state of affairs.

Each one of us is hard at war - within. We must face this battlefield; withdraw, as the psychologist would say, our habitual projections of that strife from the world around us, and realize that we should be so busy killing the selfishness within that we really have not the time, much less the will to blow up our neighbour. And when a few more individuals recognize that the war within implies a friendly tolerance of those about one, and of their ways of living and internal fighting, the Hitlers and Stalins and even the unpleasant fellow next door may provoke in everyman a smile, rather than an H-bomb, or even a bow and arrow.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; in its precepts 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt'. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures [...]. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience;

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody’s target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His death, were coverts drawn from thieves and from prostitutes. Those who were aligned against Him were the nice people who stood high in the community—the worldly, prosperous people, the men of big business, the judges of law courts who governed by expediency, the “civic-minded” individuals whose true selfishness was veneered over with public generosity. Such men as these opposed him and sent Him to His death.

I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience.’ ‘It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,’ said Philip. ‘But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure.

The chief guide which must direct us in the choice of a profession is the welfare of mankind and our own perfection. It should not be thought that these two interests could be in conflict, that one would have to destroy the other; on the contrary, man's nature is so constituted that he can attain his own perfection only by working for the perfection, for the good, of his fellow men. If he works only for himself, he may perhaps become a famous man of learning, a great sage, an excellent poet, but he can never be a perfect, truly great man. History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy; religion itself teaches us that the ideal being whom all strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare to set at nought such judgments? If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla. “Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls. “Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.” “In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.” “The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly. “Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.” “I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?” He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap. “You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.” He smirks at that. “Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.” I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak. “But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.” Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too. I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment. Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes. “A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.” Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head. “You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.” Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused. I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving. “What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest. “I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him. “Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.” I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything.

It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling could be condemned. As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbours in the local, not of our Neighbour, in the Dominical, sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.

That's just the trouble really. Nobody's shocked by anything anymore; we're not shocked by deceit, cruelty, lust for power, faithlessness, money-grubbing. Indeed, we accept it as inevitable that each and every one of our fellow men should be impelled only by selfishness. Well, sir, let me say that it's stupid of us not to be shocked, because the continuation of our civilisation depends precisely upon our ability to be shocked.

It's not un-American to suggest that as Americans, we each owe our fellow Americans something. Not to infect them with a deadly virus by refusing to wear a mask, for one thing. Think of all the Americans who gave their lives storming the beaches of Normandy to protect those back home. I wonder how they'd feel about their sacrifice now if they could see their fellow Americans refusing to get vaccinated, or ranting and raving about being forced to wear a mask in order to protect others.

He would become a career politician, the profession that attracted a higher percentage of fellow psychopaths than any other. And while there were a number of pathetic men and women who had chosen politics in a sincere effort to help others, on the whole, politicians were narcissistic backstabbers. Professional liars. Totally selfish and without conscience, most couldn’t care any less about others, although they could con anyone into believing they were the most compassionate people on Earth.

It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure.

With limited resources, a survival machine can’t afford to help all other survival machines, so it must assess whom to help, whom to exploit, and whom to leave alone. It’s a balancing act. If you’re too selfish, other survival machines will punish you; if you’re too selfless, other survival machines will exploit you. Thus, developing positive relationships—social bonds—with other survival machines is an adaptive strategy. If you are there to help your fellow group members when times are tough for them, they are more likely to be there when times are tough for you.

Your home is here. And your home is endangered. Consequently, so are you. Without this home, you or perhaps your children or grandchildren will die. Clearly, your destiny now rests in your own hands. But as Franklyn and Montaro have both told you, the seeds of a solution are already in your hands. The longer you do not act, the weaker the better self in each of you becomes, and the harder your struggle grows against the relentless pulls of greed, selfishness, and the addictive lust for power, which breeds wars and indifference to the sufferings of fellow human beings.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me because, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.

Why then should I often be unhappy over what happens here? Shouldn't I always be glad, contented and happy, except when I think about her and her companions in distress? I am selfish and cowardly. Why do I always dream and think of the most terrible things- my fear makes me want to scream out loud sometimes. Because still, in spite of everything, I have not enough faith in God. He has given me so much- which I certainly do not deserve- and I still do so much that is wrong every day. If you think of your fellow creatures, then you only want to cry, you could really cry the whole day long. The only thing to do is to pray that God will perform a miracle and save some of them. And I hope that I am doing that enough!

Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop.

Etymologically, "compassion" means to suffer together. "Together," however, is different from "identically." Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping other people that is materially disinterested but emotionally self-regarding. As Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself..." Or, as Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, "Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs.

In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards my fellow-creatures had greater claims to my attention, because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature. He shewed unparalleled malignity and selfishness, in evil: he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself, that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed.

They were all fine, handsome fellows; Fritz, now twenty-four, was of moderate height, uncommonly strong, active, muscular, and high-spirited. Ernest, two years younger, was tall and slight; in disposition, mild, calm, and studious; his early faults of indolence and selfishness were almost entirely overcome. He possessed refined tastes and great intellectual power. Jack, at twenty, strongly resembled Fritz, being about his height, though more lightly built, and remarkable rather for active grace and agility than for muscular strength. Franz, a lively youth of seventeen, had some of the qualities of each of his brothers; he possessed wit and shrewdness, but not the arch drollery of Jack. All were honorable, God-fearing young men, dutiful and affectionate to their mother and myself, and warmly attached to each other. Although

My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don’t find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren’t adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgment by getting rid of the judge.

If you have taken up the service of God already, never be ashamed of imitating Him whom you serve. Be full of love and kindness to all men, and full of special love to them that believe. Let there be nothing narrow, limited, contracted, stingy, or sectarian in your love. Do not only love your family and your friends; love all mankind. Love your neighbours and your fellow-countrymen. Love strangers and foreigners. Love heathen and Mahometans. Love the worst of men with a love of pity. Love all the world. Lay aside all envy and malice, all selfishness and unkindness. To keep up such a spirit is to be no better than an infidel.“Let all your things be done with charity”, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you”, and be not weary of doing them good to your life’s end (1 Corinthians 16:14; Matthew 5:44). The world may sneer at such conduct, and call it mean and low-spirited. But this is the mind of Christ. This is the way to be like God. GOD LOVED THE WORLD.

He lavished on me a friendliness which was as far above that of Saint-Loup as that was above the affability of a mere tradesman. Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great gentleman, charming as it may be, has the effect of an actor’s playing a part, of being feigned. Saint-Loup sought to please; Elstir loved to give, to give himself. Everything that he possessed, ideas, work, and the rest which he counted for far less, he would have given gladly to anyone who could understand him. But, failing society that was endurable, he lived in an isolation, with a savagery which fashionable people called pose and ill-breeding, public authorities a recalcitrant spirit, his neighbours madness, his family selfishness and pride. And no doubt at first he had thought, even in his solitude, with enjoyment that, thanks to his work, he was addressing, in spite of distance, he was giving a loftier idea of himself, to those who had misunderstood or hurt him. Perhaps, in those days, he lived alone not from indifference but from love of his fellows, and, just as I had renounced Gilberte to appear to her again one day in more attractive colours, dedicated his work to certain people as a way of approaching them again, by which without actually seeing him they would be made to love him, admire him, talk about him; a renunciation is not always complete from the start, when we decide upon it in our original frame of mind and before it has reacted upon us, whether it be the renunciation of an invalid, a monk, an artist or a hero. But if he had wished to produce with certain people in his mind, in producing he had lived for himself, remote from the society to which he had become indifferent; the practice of solitude had given him a love for it, as happens with every big thing which we have begun by fearing, because we knew it to be incompatible with smaller things to which we clung, and of which it does not so much deprive us as it detaches us from them. Before we experience it, our whole preoccupation is to know to what extent we can reconcile it with certain pleasures which cease to be pleasures as soon as we have experienced it.

Man is an irrational creature...for he seeks pleasure instead of abstinence, lies and deceit, instead of counsel and advice, violence and war, instead of withhold and peace, and easy wanton ignorance and gluttony, instead of hard sought after wisdom and moderation...man has grown indifferent to the sufferings of his fellow man and neighbor, for he only cares as to whether there is any monetary gain or financial reward, for his immediate and erstwhile assistance...man, in this current age, has completely lost the ability to engage in disciplined learning and fair and honest debate, for instead he would rather believe in lies and falsehoods, for it only confirms his prejudicial beliefs and irrational fears, all fed to him by the so-called, "fair and balanced" news media...he is a patriot for all the wrong reasons, for his patriotism is one of selfish jingoism, instead of an objective and unadulterated, "universal brotherhood", that seeks to find common ground and common solutions across the diplomatic table, instead of blind "sabre rattling" and childish and superficial flag waving...man's blind and puerile barbarism is what will ultimately do him in, in the very end, for the prophets of the present who tried to warn him as he stood at the edge of a moral and spiritual precipice, will be the ones who will wear a quiet and confirming smile, as man and his erstwhile shadow of ignorance, will be cast into the bottomless pit, of eternal damnation and doom...

If I give you two possible worlds to choose from, in which you would like your children and grandchildren to live, which one would you choose - a world filled with hatred and discrimination, or a world where the humans care about their fellow humans beyond the petty little man-made labels of religion, race, nationality, intellect, gender etc.! We do not need to make efforts and be kind in order to keep Nature running, she can do that quite well and far better than us herself, in fact, it'd benefit Nature, if suddenly the humans were to disappear. It is us who need Nature in order to exist, not the other way around. We must stand on the side of kindness, goodness, compassion and conscience, not to keep the processes in Nature functioning, but because if we don't, the environment that we would be giving our future generations, would be no different than the violent and lethal environment of the wild. Hence, our kindness would make no difference to Nature whatsoever, rather it would simply be a selfish yet humanely necessary act on our part, that we must carry out to create a humane environment for the human species. Upon the kindness of us humans, the fate of humanity is predicated, not the fate of Nature. We are born in a world filled with hatred and discrimination, hence it is our existential responsibility as sentient and conscientious beings to contribute in the elimination of such discrimination and hatred. Kindness of ours in our daily walks of life, shall pave the path for a truly humane society for our children and grandchildren to live in.

To let their light shine, not to force on them their interpretations of God's designs, is the duty of Christians towards their fellows. If you who set yourselves to explain the theory of Christianity, had set yourselves instead to do the will of the Master, the one object for which the Gospel was preached to you, how different would now be the condition of that portion of the world with which you come into contact! Had you given yourselves to the understanding of his word that you might do it, and not to the quarrying from it of material wherewith to buttress your systems, in many a heart by this time would the name of the Lord be loved where now it remains unknown. The word of life would then by you have been held out indeed. Men, undeterred by your explanations of Christianity, for you would not be forcing them on their acceptance, and attracted by your behaviour, would be saying to each other, as Moses said to himself when he saw the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed, 'I will now turn aside and see this great sight!' they would be drawing nigh to behold how these Christians loved one another, and how just and fair they were to every one that had to do with them! to note that their goods were the best, their weight surest, their prices most reasonable, their word most certain! that in their families was neither jealousy nor emulation! that mammon was not there worshipped! that in their homes selfishness was neither the hidden nor the openly ruling principle; that their children were as diligently taught to share, as some are to save, or to lay out only upon self—their mothers more anxious lest a child should hoard than lest he should squander; that in no house of theirs was religion one thing, and the daily life another; that the ecclesiastic did not think first of his church, nor the peer of his privileges.

Yes." "It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life--their pleasure." "No, no, no!" cried Philip. Cronshaw chuckled. "You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.

Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He had always had a passion for life, and the idealism he had come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself, because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fellows. For Philip his type was Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald, still cherishing the remains of his good looks and still delicately proposing to do exquisite things in the uncertain future; and at the back of this were whiskey and vulgar amours of the street. It was in reaction from what Hayward represented that Philip clamoured for life as it stood; sordidness, vice, deformity, did not offend him; he declared that he wanted man in his nakedness; and he rubbed his hands when an instance came before him of meanness, cruelty, selfishness, or lust: that was the real thing. In Paris he had learned that there was neither ugliness nor beauty, but only truth: the search after beauty was sentimental. Had he not painted an advertisement of chocolat Menier in a landscape in order to escape from the tyranny of prettiness? But here he seemed to divine something new. He had been coming to it, all hesitating, for some time, but only now was conscious of the fact; he felt himself on the brink of a discovery. He felt vaguely that here was something better than the realism which he had adored; but certainly it was not the bloodless idealism which stepped aside from life in weakness; it was too strong; it was virile; it accepted life in all its vivacity, ugliness and beauty, squalor and heroism; it was realism still; but it was realism carried to some higher pitch, in which facts were transformed by the more vivid light in which they were seen. He seemed to see things more profoundly through the grave eyes of those dead noblemen of Castile; and the gestures of the saints, which at first had seemed wild and distorted, appeared to have some mysterious significance. But he could not tell what that significance was. It was like a message which it was very important for him to receive, but it was given him in an unknown tongue, and he could not understand. He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.

The philosophers who in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme value to justice and applied the yardstick of justice to ali social institutions were not guilty of such deceit. They did not support selfish group concerns by declaring them alone just, fair, and good, and smear ali dissenters by depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes. They were Platonists who believed that a perennial idea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty of man to organize ali human institutions in conformity with this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to man by an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions of this doctrine did not ask what the consequences of realizing the schemes they called just would be. They silently assumed either that these consequences will be beneficiai or that mankind is bound to put up even with very painful consequences of justice. Still less did these teachers of morality pay attention to the fact that people can and really do disagree with regard to the interpretation of the inner voice and that no method of peacefully settling such disagreements can be found. Ali these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehend that there is, outside of social bonds and preceding, temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing to which the epithet "just" can be given. A hypothetical isolated individual must under the pressure of biological competition look upon ali other people as deadly foes. His only concern is to preserve his own life and health; he does not need to heed the consequences which his own survival has for other men; he has no use for justice. His only solicitudes are hygiene and defense. But in social cooperation with other men the individual is forced to abstain from conduct incompatible with life in society. Only then does the distinction between what is just and what is unjust emerge. It invariably refers to interhuman social relations. What is beneficiai to the individual without affecting his fellows, such as the observance of certain rules in the use of some drugs, remains hygiene. The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to the preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust. There cannot be any question of organizing society according to the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of justice. The problem is to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends which men want to attain by social cooperation. Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation. Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfíshness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society. Utilitarian philosophy and its finest product, economics, reduced these apparent antagonisms to the opposition of shortrun and longrun interests. Society could not have come into existence or been preserved without a harmony of the rightly understood interests of ali its members.

One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape. This also applies to us, bipedal apes. Ever since our ancestors swung from tree to tree, life in small groups has been an obsession of ours. We can’t get enough of politicians thumping their chests on television, soap opera stars who swing from tryst to tryst, and reality shows about who’s in and who’s out. It would be easy to make fun of all this primate behavior if not for the fact that our fellow simians take the pursuit of power and sex just as seriously as we do. We share more with them than power and sex, though. Fellow-feeling and empathy are equally important, but they’re rarely mentioned as part of our biological heritage. We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. As Katharine Hepburn famously put it in The African Queen, ”Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” This opinion is still very much with us. Of the millions of pages written over the centuries about human nature, none are as bleak as those of the last three decades, and none as wrong. We hear that we have selfish genes, that human goodness is a sham, and that we act morally only to impress others. But if all that people care about is their own good, why does a day-old baby cry when it hears another baby cry? This is how empathy starts. Not very sophisticated perhaps, but we can be sure that a newborn doesn’t try to impress. We are born with impulses that draw us to others and that later in life make us care about them. The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we’re not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them ”animals”. But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being ”humane”. We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves. It wasn’t until an ape saved a member of our own species that there was a public awakening to the possibility of nonhuman humaneness. This happened on August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion. That Binti’s behavior caused such surprise among humans says a lot about the way animals are depicted in the media. She really did nothing unusual, or at least nothing an ape wouldn’t do for any juvenile of her own species. While recent nature documentaries focus on ferocious beasts (or the macho men who wrestle them to the ground), I think it’s vital to convey the true breadth and depth of our connection with nature. This book explores the fascinating and frightening parallels between primate behavior and our own, with equal regard for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But that's fatalism." "The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure." "My brain reels," said Philip. "Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. "There's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer." Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded: "You're not a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad..." Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world." "But there are one or two other people in the world," objected Philip. "I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches." "But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once." "I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience." "It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things," said Philip. "But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?" (324)

In temperament the Second Men were curiously different from the earlier species. The same factors were present, but in different proportions, and in far greater subordination to the considered will of the individual. Sexual vigour had returned. But sexual interest was strangely altered. Around the ancient core of delight in physical and mental contact with the opposite sex there now appeared a kind of innately sublimated, and no less poignant, appreciation of the unique physical and mental forms of all kinds of live things. It is difficult for less ample natures to imagine this expansion of the innate sexual interest; for to them it is not apparent that the lusty admiration which at first directs itself solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate attitude to all the beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and plant. Parental interest also was strong in the new species, but it too was universalized. It had become a strong innate interest in, and a devotion to, all beings that were conceived as in need of help. In the earlier species this passionate spontaneous altruism occurred only in exceptional persons. In the new species, however, all normal men and women experienced altruism as a passion. And yet at the same time primitive parenthood had become tempered to a less possessive and more objective love, which among the First Men was less common than they themselves were pleased to believe. Assertiveness had also greatly changed. Formerly very much of a man's energy had been devoted to the assertion of himself as a private individual over against other individuals; and very much of his generosity had been at bottom selfish. But in the Second Men this competitive self-assertion, this championship of the most intimately known animal against all others, was greatly tempered. Formerly the major enterprises of society would never have been carried through had they not been able to annex to themselves the egoism of their champions. But in the Second Men the parts were reversed. Few individuals could ever trouble to exert themselves to the last ounce for merely private ends, save when those ends borrowed interest or import from some public enterprise. It was only his vision of a world-wide community of persons, and of his own function therein, that could rouse the fighting spirit in a man. Thus it was inwardly, rather than in outward physical characters, that the Second Men differed from the First. And in nothing did they differ more than in their native aptitude for cosmopolitanism. They had their tribes and nations. War was not quite unknown amongst them. But even in primitive times a man's most serious loyalty was directed toward the race as a whole; and wars were so hampered by impulses of kindliness toward the enemy that they were apt to degenerate into rather violent athletic contests, leading to an orgy of fraternization. It would not be true to say that the strongest interest of these beings was social. They were never prone to exalt the abstraction called the state, or the nation, or even the world-commonwealth. For their most characteristic factor was not mere gregariousness but something novel, namely an innate interest in personality, both in the actual diversity of persons and in the ideal of personal development. They had a remarkable power of vividly intuiting their fellows as unique persons with special needs. Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another. But the Second Men, more intensely and accurately self-conscious, were also more intensely and accurately conscious of one another. This they achieved by no unique faculty, but solely by a more ready interest in each other, a finer insight, and a more active imagination.

There is something unbearably selfish about the two person romance - about Romeo and Juliet or Heathcliff and Catherine. Austen’s novels do not belong to this species of love story. They are ensemble affairs not duos against the world. And they’re far more concerned with the question of how to live among our fellow beings than how to marry your best friend. The books end in weddings but that doesn’t make them love stories - it just makes them comedies.

For the greatest civilization to form, it takes every individual within it to only be willing to wreak upon their fellow man what they would be willing to have wrought upon themselves, regardless of infraction or perceived trespass.  This, however, is what stands between us and the evolution of the human race, since it only takes one strong-willed and selfish individual to instill hardship and cruelty in millions.

Members of your tribe are fellow travelers. The tribe exists to further every member’s journey and well-being. Generosity and compassion are expected. Promiscuity and posing are frowned upon. Selfishness or manipulation lead to ostracism.

I'd rather be a poor honest fellow than a rich piece of crap.

In fact, Obama is the one who gains the most from the outcome. His gain is not the mere half sandwich he took; rather, it is the allegiance of the fellow he is supposedly helping. That guy is now indebted to Obama, and more likely to vote for him. While the other man gains a meal, Obama gains power. So now we must reconsider the assumption that Obama’s actions are motivated by altruism. It’s far more likely they are motivated by a will to power. He is the greediest, most selfish one of all because he is the only person among the three of us taking something that does not belong to him. Obama’s talk about “greed” and “selfishness” is a fraud; it is simply part of his con man’s pitch.

Right after high school, Fisher had already decided what he would do with his life. He would aim for the ultimate heights, as befitting someone of his superiority. He would become a career politician, the profession that attracted a higher percentage of fellow psychopaths than any other. And while there were a number of pathetic men and women who had chosen politics in a sincere effort to help others, on the whole, politicians were narcissistic backstabbers. Professional liars. Totally selfish and without conscience, most couldn’t care any less about others, although they could con anyone into believing they were the most compassionate people on Earth. There

My biggest problem during the postwar period was the doom and gloom of its most celebrated thinkers. I didn’t share their negativity about the human condition. I had studied how primates resolve conflicts, sympathize with each other, and seek cooperation. Violence is not their default condition. Most of the time, they live in harmony. The same applies to our own species. I was shocked, therefore, in 1976 when Dawkins asserted in The Selfish Gene, “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.”6 I’d argue quite the contrary! Without our long evolution as intensely social beings, we’d be unlikely to care for our fellow humans. We have been programmed to pay attention to each other and offer help when needed. What else would be the point of living in groups? Many animals do, and they do so only because group life, which includes giving and receiving assistance, yields tremendous advantages over a solitary life. One time Dawkins and I politely disagreed in person. On a cold November morning, I took him and a cameraman up a tower at the Yerkes Field Station. It overlooked the chimps that I knew so well. I pointed out Peony, an old female. Her arthritis was so acute that we had seen younger females hurry to fetch water for her. Instead of letting Peony slowly trek to the water faucet, they’d run ahead of her to suck up a mouthful and return to spit it into her mouth, which she opened wide. They also sometimes placed their hands on her ample behind to push her up into the climbing frame so that she could join a cluster of grooming friends. Peony received this aid from individuals unrelated to her, who surely couldn’t expect any favors in return because she was not in a condition to deliver them. How to explain such behavior? And how to explain all the acts of kindness that we ourselves engage in every day, sometimes with complete strangers? Dawkins tried to salvage his theory by blaming genes, saying that they must be “misfiring.” Genes, however, are little strings of DNA devoid of intentions. They do what they do without any goals in mind, which means that they can’t be selfish or unselfish. They also can’t accidentally miss any goals.

That’s how I see it. War comes from hatred, but hatred is always based on a selfish love, a love that seeks to confine rather than to expand—love of home can turn into hatred of strangers; love of country can turn into arrogance toward other states; love of fellow travelers can turn into a desire to suppress anyone with a different opinion.

*I’ve always had an alternative reading of the Body Snatchers movies (Siegel’s, Kaufman’s, and Ferrara’s). Each movie presents the Pod People in a sinister light. Yet really, almost nothing they do on screen really bears out this sinister interpretation. If you’re one who believes that your soul is what makes you you, then I suppose the Pod People are murdering the Earthlings they duplicate and replace. However, if you’re more of the mind that it is your intellect and your consciousness that make you who you are, then the Pod People transformation is closer to a rebirth than a murder. You’re reborn as straight intellect, with a complete possession of your past and your abilities, but unburdened by messy human emotions. You also possess a complete fidelity to your fellow beings and a total commitment to the survival of your species. Are they inhuman? Of course, they’re vegetables. But the movies try to present their lack of humanity (they don’t have a sense of humor, they’re unmoved when a dog is hit by a car) as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness. That’s a rather species-centric point of view. As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it’s a stretch to say it’s what makes us great. Along with those positive emotions—love, joy, happiness, amusement—come negative emotions—hate, selfishness, racism, depression, violence, and rage. For instance, with all the havoc that Donald Sutherland causes in the Kaufman version, including the murder of various Pod People, there never is a thought of punishment or vengeance on the Pod People’s part, even though he’s obviously proven himself to be a threat. They just want him to become one of them. Imagine in the fifties, when the Siegel film was made, that instead of some little town in Northern California (Santa Mira) that the aliens took root in, it was a horribly racist, segregated Ku Klux Klan stronghold in the heart of Mississippi. Within weeks the color lines would disappear. Blacks and whites would be working together (in genuine brotherhood) towards a common goal. And humanity would be represented by one of the racist Kluxers whose investigative gaze notices formerly like-minded white folks seemingly enter into a conspiracy with some members of the county’s black community. Now picture his hysterical reaction to it (“Those people are coming after me! They’re not human! You’re next! You’re next!”). *Solving the problems, both large and small, of your actors—lead actors especially—is the job of a film director.

The fruit of the Spirit is love. Why? Because nothing but love can expel and conquer our selfishness. Self is the great curse, whether in its relation to God, or to our fellow men, or to fellow Christians. We usually think of ourselves and seek our own benefit. Self is our greatest curse, but praise God, Christ came to redeem us from self. We sometimes talk about deliverance from the self-life and praise God for every word that can be said about it to help us. I am afraid, though, that some people think deliverance from the self-life means that now they are no longer going to have any trouble in serving God. They forget that deliverance from the self-life means to be a vessel overflowing with love to everybody all day.

don’t claim that the Rearden-Taggart contraption will collapse,” wrote Bertram Scudder in The Future. “Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. That’s not the important issue. The important issue is: what protection does society have against the arrogance, selfishness and greed of two unbridled individualists, whose records are conspicuously devoid of any public-spirited actions? These two, apparently, are willing to stake the lives of their fellow men on their own conceited notions about their powers of judgment, against the overwhelming majority opinion of recognized experts. Should society permit it? If that thing does collapse, won’t it be too late to take precautionary measures? Won’t it be like locking the barn after the horse has escaped? It has always been the belief of this column that certain kinds of horses should be kept bridled and locked, on general social principles.” A group that called itself “Committee of Disinterested Citizens” collected signatures on a petition demanding a year’s study of the John Galt Line by government experts before the first train was allowed to run. The petition stated that its signers had no motive

I read a book once by a lunatic who claimed that the world wasn’t made by some god; it started off empty and stuff just gradually grew,like lichen on a rock. To begin with there was just moss,and then the moss turned into plants,the plants turned into fish and birds,the fish and birds turned into lizards,the lizards turned into monkeys and the monkeys turned into people. All this happened,the nutcase said,because in each generation there’d be smarter moss,more ruthless plants,more self-centered and arrogant fish,birds,lizards and monkeys who outperformed their wretched fellows and aspired to change. They were the ones who got the girls, so their progeny survived while the losers perished. Arrogance,selfishness and a total disregard for others is,therefore, what turned moss into men.

The real challenge, therefore, lies in sublimating our desires and reorientating them towards creative and valuable ends. Inevitably, this means recognizing that, although we can get a certain amount of short-term satisfaction from fulfilling our own selfish wants, ultimately our greatest happiness is inextricably bound up with the desire to work in some way, however apparently insignificant, for the happiness of our fellow men and women.

Orwell found that communists and their fellow travellers at the celebration adopted the Marxist position that bourgeois freedoms were illusions, and intellectual honesty was a form of antisocial selfishness: ‘Out of this concourse of several hundred people, perhaps half of whom were directly connected with the writing trade, there was not a single one who could point out that freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticise and oppose.

78.3 Affability. Optimism and cheerfulness. Another virtue which makes social life more pleasant is affability. It may express itself in the form of a friendly greeting, a small compliment, a cordial gesture of encouragement. This virtue leads us to overcome our inclination to irritability, rash judgments and actions ... , basically, to live as though other people didn’t matter. Elizabeth’s start of joy at the Visitation emphasizes the gift that can be contained in a mere greeting, when it comes from a heart full of God. How often can the darkness of loneliness, oppressing a soul, be dispelled by the shining ray of a smile and a kind word! A good word is soon said; yet sometimes we find it difficult to utter. We are restrained by fatigue, we are distracted by worries, we are checked by a feeling of coldness or selfish indifference. Thus it happens that we may pass by persons, although we know them, without looking at their faces and without realizing how often they are suffering from that subtle, wearing sorrow which comes from feeling ignored. A cordial word, an affectionate gesture would be enough, and something would at once awaken in them: a sign of attention and courtesy can be a breath of fresh air in the stuffiness of an existence oppressed by sadness and dejection. Mary’s greeting filled with joy the heart of her elderly cousin Elizabeth (cf Luke 1:44).[496] This is how we can lighten the load of the people around us. Another aspect of affability lies in the practice of kindness, in understanding towards the defects and mistakes of other people (we don’t have to be constantly correcting others), in good manners evinced by our words and behaviour, in sympathy, cordiality and words of praise at an opportune moment ... The spirit of sweetness is truly the spirit of God ... It makes the truth understandable and acceptable. We have to be intransigent towards every form of evil; nevertheless, we have to deal kindly with our neighbour.[497] A truck-driver once pulled over at a highway rest stop for a cup of coffee. He needed a break because he had many miles ahead of him. He sat at the counter and a young boy came to wait on him. The truck-driver asked with a smile, Busy day? The young fellow looked up and smiled back. Some months later, the truck-driver returned to the same stop. Much to his surprise, the young fellow remembered him as if they were old friends. The truth is that people have a great thirst for smiles. They have an enormous longing for cheerfulness and encouragement. Every day we encounter a good number of people who await that momentary gift of our joy. Through the practice of the social virtues we can open up many doors. We cannot allow ourselves to be cut off from any of our neighbours or colleagues. The Lord wants us to do an effective apostolate of friendship and confidence. We need to introduce other people to that greatest of all gifts which is friendship with Jesus.  

Leave aside your individual destinies for a moment and understand that there is a larger destiny. It is a common thread that invisibly entwines us all. This thread weakens by its constant brushing up against religion, caste, creed and various personal ideologies (deceptions of mind). What that larger destiny is? Well, It is called LOVE (Absence of Ego). The next time you observe yourself fulfilling your individual destiny by suppression of another fellow human and yourself through an expression of selfishness and insecurity remember that you are just running away from fulfilling this larger destiny.

I’ve felt how you feel,” he said simply. “As if another had all I needed and lacked, and he didn’t even appreciate what he had.” “You?” She expostulated in disbelief but walked more slowly and made no objection to his hand lightly touching her back. “What could you possibly want for? You’re the firstborn of a duke, titled, wealthy; you’ve survived battles, and you can charm little girls. How could you long for more than that?” “My brother will succeed Moreland, if the duke ever condescends to expire. This harum-scarum earldom is a sop thrown to my younger brother’s conscience, and his wife’s, I suppose. He and my father had considerable influence with the Regent, and Westhaven’s wife may well be carrying the Moreland heir. Anna made the suggestion to see Rosecroft passed along to me, and Westhaven would not rest until that plan had been fulfilled.” “How can that be?” Emmie watched their moon shadows float along the ground as they walked. “A duke cannot choose which of his offspring inherits his title.” “He cannot. According to the Moreland letters patent, it goes to the oldest legitimate son surviving at the time of the duke’s death.” “Well, you aren’t going to die soon, are you?” She glanced over at his obviously robust frame, puzzled and concerned for some reason to think of him expiring of a pernicious illness. “No, Miss Farnum, the impediment is not death, but rather the circumstances of my birth.” There was a slight, half-beat pause in the darkness, a hitch in her gait he would not have seen. “Oh.” “Oh, indeed. I have a sister similarly situated, though Maggie and I do not share even the same mother. The duke was a busy fellow in his youth.” “Busy and selfish. What is it with men that they must strut and carry on, heedless of the consequences to any save themselves?” “What is it with women,” he replied, humor lacing his tone, “that they must indulge our selfish impulses without regard to the consequences even to themselves?” “Point taken.

in 1862, Congress set aside $600,000 (about $14 million today) to eject Black people from the country. Black people made their opposition to colonization loud and clear in the summer of 1862. Lincoln, desiring their support, welcomed five Black men to the President’s House on August 14, 1862. The delegation was led by the Reverend Joseph Mitchell, the commissioner of emigration for the Interior Department. The discussion quickly turned into a lecture. The Black race could never “be placed on an equality with the white race” in the United States, Lincoln professed. Whether this “is right or wrong I need not discuss,” he said. Lincoln then blamed the presence of Blacks for the war. If Blacks leave, all will be well, Lincoln touted. “Sacrifice something of your present comfort,” Lincoln advised, asking the group to press their fellow Blacks to make the trek to Liberia and start anew. To refuse would be “extremely selfish.

If we (selfishly to outward appearances) pray for removal of our selfish tendencies and ask instead for replacement with selflessness – care and sincere concern for our fellow man – we’re on solid spiritual ground. If we desire greater physical well-being, fitness and strength, we, by necessary association, are requesting greater self-control over our eating habits, enhanced dedication and persistence regarding physical exercise, and a greater ability to tolerate pain and recognize suffering as something to be accepted and welcomed as a positive and necessary component of actualization.

February 23 The Determination to Serve The son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Matthew 20:28 Paul’s idea of service is the same as our Lord’s: “I am among you as He that serveth”; “ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” We have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different kind of being from other men. According to Jesus Christ, he is called to be the “door-mat” of other men; their spiritual leader, but never their superior. “I know how to be abased,” says Paul. This is Paul’s idea of service—“I will spend myself to the last ebb for you; you may give me praise or give me blame, it will make no difference. So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does.” The mainspring of Paul’s service is not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ. If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men. Paul’s realisation of how Jesus Christ had dealt with him is the secret of his determination to serve others. “I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious”—no matter how men may treat me, they will never treat me with the spite and hatred with which I treated Jesus Christ. When we realise that Jesus Christ has served us to the end of our meanness, our selfishness, and sin, nothing that we meet with from others can exhaust our determination to serve men for His sake.

I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!” ~ Tom Lehrer

They are terrorists whose only goal is to destroy us with their misguided notion of individual liberty. Liberty. What a laughable concept. Freedom is the desire of selfish men who care only for themselves and not their fellow man.

  "Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!   To all the sensual world proclaim,   One crowded hour of glorious life   Is worth an age without a name". Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. The heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men.

If you enjoy something, pursue it. You don't have to make it your official purpose in life—but what if you did? What if you decided to spend your life doing what you enjoy? That's what river people do. Sometimes they're called eccentric, or absentminded, or obsessive. Sometimes they're called geniuses. But whatever they're called, all they do is flow with their river of interest and allow themselves to enjoy the journey. They don't care if what they're doing is important to the rest of the world; they care if it's important to them. They aren't out to save mankind; they're out to save themselves—from a life without joy or meaning. But isn't that selfish? You bet it is. It's the good kind of selfish, the enlightened kind, the kind that says you will bring far more good to the world by doing what you care about than by doing what you hate. If you want to maximize your contribution to your fellow human beings, you owe it to them, and to yourself, to follow your dreams, to follow your purpose, to follow your bliss. Do

Emergency Phone Numbers O Lord, hear me praying; listen to my plea, O God my King, for I will never pray to anyone but you. —PSALM 5:1 TLB     With cell phones we can make urgent calls to business or family contacts in a flash. But at times there are emergency calls that need to be made that don’t require a phone. The numbers for these calls are found in the Bible. Emergency Phone Numbers When in sorrow, call John 14. When men fail you, call Psalm 27. If you want to be fruitful, call John 15. When you have sinned, call Psalm 51. When you worry, call Matthew 6:19-34. When you are in danger, call Psalm 91. When God seems far away, call Psalm 139. When your faith needs stirring, call Hebrews 11. When you are lonely and fearful, call Psalm 23. When you grow bitter and critical, call 1 Corinthians 13. For Paul’s secret to happiness, call Colossians 3:12-17. For understanding of Christianity, call 2 Corinthians 5:15-19. When you feel down and out, call Romans 8:31. When you want peace and rest, call Matthew 11:25-30. When the world seems bigger than God, call Psalm 90. When you want Christian assurance, call Romans 8:1-30. When you leave home for labor or travel, call Psalm 121. When your prayers grow narrow or selfish, call Psalm 67. For a great invention/opportunity, call Isaiah 55. When you want courage for a task, call Joshua 1. For how to get along with fellow men, call Romans 12.

How many rough blows had she suffered? How many times had she been an unwilling step for the selfish souls of her fellow opposite gender? And the Pinkies, so white and so male, were like living stiff boots of conquerors.

You've been with us a long time, Warden," he continued. "Have you ever found a man who really wants to be bad? Unconventional, yes. Contrary, perhaps. Maybe the fellow's stupid or selfish. But no one starts on this kind of life by wanting to be merely bad. You know how old Shakespeare put it. 'There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' And when the public makes up its mind that a fellow is bad, he will become bad, even if he had no ambitions along that way originally.

Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others. And thus it is not to mere self- denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice: not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish. It concentrates our whole attention on self; self-knowledge, self-control--and can, therefore, eventuate in nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness. At best it succeeds only in subjecting the outer self to the inner self, or the lower self to the higher self; and only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self and excluding its grosser and more outward elements. Self-denial, then, drives to the cloister; narrows and contracts the soul; murders within us all innocent desires, dries up all the springs of sympathy, and nurses and coddles our self-importance until we grow so great in our own esteem as to be careless of the trials and sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of our fellow-men. Self-denial, thus understood, will make us cold, hard, unsympathetic,--proud, arrogant, self-esteeming,--fanatical, overbearing, cruel. It may make monks and Stoics,--it cannot make Christians. It is not to this that Christ’s example calls us. He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self. He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own soul to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him. He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there we will be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means many-sidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,--binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home. It is, after all, then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be made truly men. Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish. Only, when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise true, that he who loses his life shall find it. Only, when, like Christ, and in loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying true of himself also: “Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him.” The path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory.

EVOLUTION, ALTRUISM AND GENETIC SIMILARITY THEORY by J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON The reason people give preferential treatment to genetically similar others is both simple and profound: they thereby replicate their genes more effectively. Altruism is a very interesting phenomenon, even recognized by Darwin as an anomaly for his theory. How could it evolve through his hypothesized "survival of the fittest" individual when such behavior would appear to diminish personal fitness? If the most altruistic members of a group sacrificed themselves for others, they ran the risk of leaving fewer offspring to carry forward their genes for altruistic behavior? Hence altruism would be selected out, and indeed, selfishness would be selected in. Altruistic behaviors, however, occur in many animal species, some to the point of self-sacrifice (Wilson, 1975). For example, honey bees die when they sting in the process of protecting their nests. Darwin proposed the competition of "tribe with tribe" to explain altruism (1871, p. 179). Thus, a tribe of people willing to cooperate and, if necessary, sacrifice themselves for the common good would be victorious over tribes made up of those less willing or able. Subsequently Herbert Spencer (1892/93) extended this, suggesting that the operation of a 'code of amity' towards the members of their own group, and a 'code of enmity' toward those of out-groups prevailed in successful groups. In non-elaborated forms, some version of "group-selection" was held by most evolutionists for several decades. A degree of polarization followed [Wynne-Edwards' advocacy of group selection] As D. S. Wilson put it, "For the next decade, group selection rivaled Lamarkianism as the most thoroughly repudiated idea in evolutionary theory" Essentially, there did not seem to exist a mechanism by which altruistic individuals would leave more genes than individuals who cheated. The solution to this paradox is one of the triumphs that led to the new synthesis of sociobiology. Following Hamilton (1964) the answer proposed was that individuals behave so as to maximize their "inclusive fitness" rather than only their individual fitness by increasing the production of successful offspring by both themselves and their relatives, a process that has become known as kin selection. This formulation provided a conceptual breakthrough, redirecting the unit of analysis from the individual organism to his or her genes, for it is these which survive and are passed on. Some of the same genes will be found in siblings, nephews and nieces, grandchildren, cousins, etc., as well as offspring. If an animal sacrifices its life for its siblings' offspring, it ensures the survival of shared genes for, by common descent, it shares 50% of its genes with each sibling and 25% with each siblings' offspring. …the makeup of a gene pool causally affects the probability of any particular ideology being adopted, which subsequently affects relative gene frequencies. Religious, political, and other ideological battles may become as heated as they do because they have implications for genetic fitness; genotypes will thrive more in some cultures than others. … Obviously causation is complex, and it is not intended to reduce relationships between ethnic groups to a single cause. Fellow ethnics will not always stick together, nor is conflict inevitable between groups any more than it is between genetically distinct individuals. Behavioral outcomes are always mediated by multiple causes.

To love both the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity in all human minds−the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion for one's fellows, blind to the healing potencies of the soul awaiting exploration.

Look at Matthew 11:16-19, “But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, we have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.  But wisdom is justified of her children.” What a description of this generation! John the Baptist came fasting, and Jesus came feasting, and they called John a demoniac and Jesus a glutton. Nothing suited them. They were like spoiled children who’ve had too many toys.  Today, our churches are filled with spoiled "adults." They’ve been petted and pampered and no kind of preaching pleases them. If the wrath of God is preached, the minister is too severe. If the love of God is proclaimed, he’s too sentimental. If he speaks in a low tone of voice, he’s dull. If he speaks in a loud voice, he’s deafening. If he stands still, he’s a statue. If he moves around, he’s a sensationalist. That used to bother me a lot until I learned how to identify these children of the marketplace. They play, they pipe, they play a wedding, they mourn, they play funeral; and it looks real, but it’s all make-believe.  And we play church just like that. I was invited to Fremont Temple in Boston some time ago for an evangelistic conference, and the pastor said, “We're so worried about playing church.” Well, I’ve heard that many times before, but what a common thing it is today to play at it and our Lord called it play acting, hypocrisy: spiritual babies who won’t grow up. The Apostle Paul experienced the same problem in the church in his day. He said, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able," (I Cor.3:1-2). We have overgrown babies who have become such as have need of milk but not of meat, 150 and 200 pound church babies who keep the pastor busy running around with a milk bottle when they ought to have been on meat a long time ago. And, then when they call a new pastor, they say, “I don’t like him. He changed my formula.” Ah, they’re a headache and a heartache to any pastor, pouting and selfish to whom John the Baptist would be only a demoniac and Jesus a glutton.

Character defects,” a phrase ripped from the pages of the Big Book, were also on the table—flaws identified by our fellow patients, like selfishness, self-absorption, dishonesty, and a lack of “willingness” to give ourselves to the program.

Humans can be literally poisoned by false ideas and false teachings. Many people have a just horror at the thought of putting poison into tea or coffee, but seem unable to realize that, when they teach false ideas and false doctrines, they are poisoning the time-binding capacity of their fellow men and women. One has to stop and think! There is nothing mystical about the fact that ideas and words are energies which powerfully affect the physico-chemical base of our time-binding activities. Humans are thus made untrue to “human nature.” Hypnotism is a known fact. It has been proved that a man can be so hypnotized that in a certain time which has been suggested to him, he will murder or commit arson or theft; that, under hypnotic influence, the personal morale of the individual has only a small influence upon his conduct; the subject obeys the hypnotic suggestions, no matter how immoral they are. The conception of man as a mixture of animal and supernatural has for ages kept human beings under the deadly spell of the suggestion that, animal selfishness and animal greediness are their essential character, and the spell has operated to suppress their real human nature and to prevent it from expressing itself naturally and freely.

Every kind of society, church groups included, is seized by the hurrah phenomenon and as such it becomes apparent generally at a time when a certain goal is to be reached quickly by a drive with external blatant means. All this hurrah business has certain traits which make it evident in arising out of the flesh; they are: 1) It appeals to the natural brutal sense in man, indicating that those who make use of it are willing to accommodate external brute force. 2) In a rousing attack, force is applied to accomplish with the might that which quiet, sustaining and thorough work cannot be relied on to produce. 3) Mass agitation is the object and the individual must be swept along by force with the crowd, because there is no confidence in the spontaneous decision of the individual personality. 4) The promoter, by noisy conduct, attracts attention to his own person. 5) Thus he would put himself across together with his concepts and aims, yet indeed not by an inward conviction of his fellow men but by the use of external means. 6) By so doing, love toward neighbor is forgotten, while selfishness, disaffection and malice have an open field. 7) Finally, hurrah sentiment always has the nature of clever fabrication. Headlines there are, true enough, and slogans that would give the impression of genuine value. Yet it does not carry the imprint of something which grew out of the unencumbered understanding of intelligent men of character and blossomed forth into an overwhelming truth…Now, sanctification, our actual Christian business, doesn’t agree with that sort of thing. When once it becomes apparent that sanctification is in every point the direct opposite of hurrah sentiment, then every Christian ought to see for himself that we must avoid this general ruling spirit of the time.

Why is it so important for some people to think of boppers as mindless machines? Why do zerks laugh at monkeys in a zoo? Why do rich people say that poor people are getting what they deserve? Why don’t you show compassion for your fellow creatures? If you drop your selfishness, you can lose your guilt. And, wave it, once your guilt is gone, you won’t need to hate.

Human nature is not evil. All pleasure is not wrong. All spontaneous desires are not selfish. The doctrine of original sin does not mean that human nature has been completely corrupted and that man’s freedom is always inclined to sin. Man is neither a devil nor an angel. He is not a pure spirit, but a being of flesh and spirit, subject to error and malice, but basically inclined to seek truth and goodness. He is, indeed, a sinner: but his heart responds to love and grace. It also responds to the goodness and to the need of his fellow man.