Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

Note: You may want to read the related blog entry found here first. This was also posted at GIGO-Soapbox.org.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

It is one of unacknowledged truths of American culture that we are becoming more selfish. Yes, "we." And I don't have a mouse in my pocket. I do mean to include you, my gentle reader, as well as myself.

I'm aware of studies that claim that Americans are the most charitable of all nations. I don't dismiss those claims, since it is logically possible to be the most charitable and trend toward selfishness, and since it is logically possible that this means we're the least cheapskate of a world of cheapskates.

As we look back forty years, especially now at the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we can observe a trend. JFK was greeted with cheers when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." President George H.W. Bush was jeered by liberals because he proposed a Thousand Points of Light. His son, President George W. Bush, demands that prescription drug costs be incorporated into Medicare. We move from the Peace Corps of volunteers that ventures throughout the world to Americorps whose paid "volunteers" work in their own country.

Who is the most important person in the world? Ourselves, apparently. We are all Zaphod Beeblebrox, as we step into the faux Total Perspective Vortex, only to confirm our deepest desire that we are the most important thing in the universe.

Cartoon and comic punditry has not failed to catch this trend. I recall a Peanut's comic of over ten years ago because of a friend's response to this selfish attitude while he stood watch as Chief of the Watch. On a submarine, a Chief of the Watch, in one of his many duties, acts as sort of an administrative assistant to the Officer of the Deck who is the senior watchstander. Many folks dial him up, "CoW, request permission to ..." and often these people act as if whatever it is they "need" to do is the most important thing in the world regardless of whatever mayhem and madness was going on in the Control Room. My friend took to the following phrase (in a very flat Eeyore sort of voice), "Mine, mine, mine, me, me, me, get, get, get... What can you do for me today?" He was riffing off of Lucy Van Pelt in one of her characteristic selfish moods. In a more pointed exchange at the beginning of a Simpson's episode, we see Grandpa Simpson walking down the street. "Everybody wants something for nothing," he complains, and then without missing a beat he walks into a Social Security office, "I'm old. Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

This selfishness has infected all areas of society.

Capitalism

There is a misperception that capitalism is based on greed and selfishness. This confusion is created by missing the distinction between selfishness and self-interest. This distinction can easily be explained by asking which examples should be displayed as the models of capitalism.

Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia traces the beginnings of Bill Gates success in less than glowing terms: "Gates went on to establish an unsavory reputation for his business practices." Gates sold an operating system which he did not own to IBM, and then walked down the street to purchase that operating system.

But if that example of shady salesmanship isn't convincing, how does the burst of the Enron bubble fit in? In both cases they sold a chimera, is success the sole determinant of the ethics of the act?

And does it make a difference whether the grifter is a big time white collar or a streetwise punk? Are ponzi schemes legal?

The point is that capitalism is predicated upon two or more parties negotiating a transaction based in self-interest, not a cut-throat cynical clash between people seeking to separate others from their money.

Government

Then there are the government anti-capitalist yearnings to free people from the pain of fluctuations of the market. Consider the foolish attempt by former California governor Gray Davis who thought to repeal the laws of economics by acting as if California would conserve energy while he artificially kept the price of energy low.

But not all politicians are so foolish. The Hawaii legislature chose to cap the price of gasoline at some point in future, outside of the legislative session which enacted it. They got to get the praise of feel good legislation while putting off the blame (of a certain mess) for some future government.

The list of government intervention is endless. The minimum wage is given as a sop to the unions (many union contracts are tied to the level of the minimum wage). Farm subsidies for the almost non-existent independent farmer (who has three names: Archer Daniel Midland). Sugar and milk prices are propped up. And so is steel, as this administration sought to raise steel tariffs. And I'll let the liberals complain about corporate welfare.

And let's not leave out the third rails of the entitlement system from school lunch programs to Social Security.

In some way, in some fashion, most of us have our hands out.

Politics

And that brings us to politics and the fractionalization of the body politic. Everywhere there is an interest group. There's the black vote, the Latino vote, and the soccer mom vote. There is a whole political consultancy that is enamored with the idea that votes must be pandered for, political ideas must be marketed in colorful splashy ads, and the candidate should be a young Robert Redford.

It's no wonder that the body politic becomes confused that democracy is all about them -- the sum of individual parts competing for a larger slice of the pie -- and not about them -- the one, the community as a whole. In such situations, the old saw becomes a truism; democracy is three wolves and a rabbit deciding on what's for lunch.

Edmund Burke's unpopular proscription against this sort of politicking bears repeating:

Parliament is not a Congress of Ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an Agent and Advocate, against other Agents and Advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative Assembly of one Nation, with one Interest, that of the whole; where, not local Purposes, not local Prejudices ought to guide, but the general Good, resulting from the general Reason of the whole. You chuse a Member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not Member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament.

Religion

But the real antidote is religion that warns against coveting. The Judeo-Christian ethic is one that counterbalances the excesses of the other regions in the public square.

Christ founded a religion that was antithetical to selfish demands, "...If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt 16:24-26)

And yet men still fashion and fit their religion according to their whims and desires. The Episcopal Church in the United States is only a recent egregious example of the many wrong turns men have made when re-inventing the Christian faith. When they elevated an active homosexual to Bishop, Episcopalians were only following the trail blazed by Bishop John Shelby Spong who decided that Christianity must be modernized to keep its followers. How so befitting is it for a man-made theology to raise up Man, Mammon and Little Willie as the new Trinity.

The corrective for all these ills in the economy, government, politics and religion is not to refashion those systems. It is so easy look through the windows of your soul and find all the faults outside and beyond your control. Who is to blame for all the problems of the world was answered succinctly in a very short essay:

Dear Sirs,

I am.

Sincerely Yours,
GK Chesterton

The correction for selfishness was ever within each individual's domain. We've just been looking in the wrong direction.