Here’s a word that has been tossed around ad nauseam for the past two years: selfish. The powers that be have conducted a quite formidable campaign against the “anti-masker” and the “vaccine hesitant.” Leading that campaign has been the accusation that those not getting vaccinated or refuse to mask up are selfish — not just “selfish” in the way we were accused of being so as children when we wanted to keep all of our ice cream cone, but selfish in a truly diabolical way — biblically selfish, go to hell selfish, rapist selfish, serial killer selfish.
Throughout time there has always been a notion of reasonable empathy, and reasonable selfishness. We may hear in the news someone who has done some noble selfless act such as giving a kidney to a homeless person, or donating some astronomical sum to an orphanage or some other altruistic cause. Although I am sure many people are impressed with such extreme acts of selfless largess. But typically there is a limit, and people recognize that boundary between amazing generosity, and just plain kookiness. Where is that boundary?
I doubt if many people, if any, would call someone selfish if they did not give their liver, heart, or some other bodily organ that didn’t have a natural spare — thus giving up their life in the process of the donation. You MIGHT hear of such a sacrifice from a parent to a child (actually, have any of you heard of such a thing?) People, I am assuming, wouldn’t even expect someone to give a kidney to someone they didn’t love or have some deep connection with. At least they wouldn’t spit at them, “you selfish bastard,” as people are wont to do on Facebook or other social media, expressing shamelessly their moral superiority over some hapless dinkis (me) for leaving his or her mask at home while visiting the local grocery story. Of course I can hear the sheeple bleating, “but it’s only a mask, no one is asking you to give a kidney for god’s sake!!” Well, it really isn’t just a mask. Masks are a symbol of compliance to an authority that has zero regard for the people below them. Masks are a debilitating form of social degradation; they put prisoners at Gitmo Bay in masks for a reason. Masks cause huge social issues amongst the younger population. Masks are dangerous medically if worn for long periods of time, primarily because of the high CO2 intake. And masks do nothing to stave off the spread of a viral disease. I could go on and on. Masks are not “only a mask.” And as far as vaccines are concerned and the selfless act expected to get one, or two, or three? First of all, they don’t work, and if what thousands of researchers are saying is correct, it is surely equivalent to giving a kidney. Make it two.
Sorry, call me selfish.
I continue to be flabbergasted by this behaviour. Sure, anyone can be less selfish, but when is too much gracious sacrifice just too much? Or, more appropriate to this article, when is it deemed too little?
First of all, what are ordinary humans expected to do for strangers? — Even a community of them? When are you just performing as an ordinary person, or when do you become the “nice man next door who mows the old lady’s lawn” or the kook that throws hundred dollar bills, money he doesn’t have, out the window of his car driving down main street? We used to have a handle on this sort of evaluation, now we don’t.
I suppose we have always been expected to die for Queen and country. The mental assessment of young men and women making that sort of sacrifice is for another article. Is it a consensual determination that people should sacrifice their health, well-being, sanity, physical body, for a community cause? Maybe, I suppose, if the cause is clearly defined and rather monumental and is not coercion from an authority for the purposes of monetary gain or power. If it is proven that if such a sacrifice was NOT made, many would suffer or even die. And, of course, the sacrifice must be reasonable, or at least reasonable to the person making it. I doubt seriously if a person would, say, cut off their arm intentionally for Queen and country, although they may be willing to take their chances they would lose an arm as a result of courageously marching into battle.
So what would be the criteria for performing such a selfless act for the “good of the people”? What would it take to constellate our altruism for a good and noble cause? Let’s take the aforementioned situation as an example — vaccination with an “emergency” use vaccine that isn’t the usual run of the mill concoction.
We have been told that there is a killer virus on the loose. The Man has said we must all inoculate in order to save the world. Vaccine driven herd immunity is a necessity because without it the disease will spread like wildfire and kill tens of millions of people, possibly billions, and the only way out of this impending doom is to take this vaccine (there are no other treatments). The Man also assures us that the vaccine is “safe and effective” and if you take it “you will not get Covid” and of course will not suffer any adverse affects from the vaccine itself.
Did I cover it? Was that the narrative we were fed? Truly, I am not trying to be sensational here. From my own recollection I believe that is pretty much the way it went down.
But is that really the way it was? I mean truthfully, is all of that accurate? Of course at first most of us (except for those among us who are super shrews) believed all this. Maybe at that time there was a lot more compliance. (We didn’t have the vaccine at first as well, just masks and other terrifying requirements. Once the vaccines came out, most of us selfish people were already well ensconced in the truth). Maybe before we knew the facts about all this we might have been less selfish and more willing to take one for the team and mask up. But quickly we started to scratch our heads. “Wait a minute,” we thought, “there is something fishy here. I’m not so sure I want to sacrifice so much for so little.” We soon learned that:
· Masks did absolutely nothing to stop Covid virus particles.
· Masks were harmful in other ways, CO2 intake, social depravation, blockage of important pathogens to keep our immune systems up to snuff, among other things.
· Nowhere near as many people were dying as was originally projected, meaning the virus was no where near as virulent and deadly as originally described. In fact, RADICALLY less dangerous.
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· Vaccines were not safe indicated by information from VAERS.
· Vaccines were not tested properly, did not have long-term studies.
· The mRNA mechanism was dicey at best and utterly horrifying at its worst.
· Vaccines were ridiculously ineffective.
· There were other very successful and viable treatments available other than vaccines.
Who could be called selfish for not giving a kidney to someone who had two healthy ones and was in no danger of suffering a horrible demise without yours? This is what it came down to for us. Now, I understand that all those yelling “selfish!!!” at the top of their lungs did not, for some reason, get the memo above — that things were not as bad as they were told. But they should have. And they should have understood what they got. At least they should have understood that we didn’t think we were selfish at all. They had no desire to try to understand that we were marching to a different drum (the “drum of truth, science, and logical sense”), and even if they were not with us, they should have understood that we were not maliciously, and consciously, choosing to be horrible, selfish people.
Why does this matter? Because I don’t believe that any of them really thought we were all being selfish! I think it was purely a projection. They were not upset with us because we were selfish, they were upset with us because we didn’t obey authority (they didn’t need a reason to be compliant to authority — i.e., a medical emergency — they just believed that a person should be, no matter what.)
The irony here is that the people screaming “selfish!!” at us are no more selfless than we are. I believe to be selfless you have to sacrifice, you have to put others first, and yourself second. The people complying with such glee over mask wearing, vaccine jabbing, and other rules and regulations of Covidville were not sacrificing a thing: they believed there was no downside to mask wearing, no danger at all in taking the vaccine — they are giving no kidney to save humanity. It is all a piece of cake to them. The selfish ones know better, and the sacrifice of compliance is not worth the reward. There is no one to save by our own compliance, but indeed someone to hurt a great deal — ourselves.
Ayn Rand, an author who was quite popular in her time and founder of the American Objectivist movement, was and still is famous for her thoughts on selfishness. In fact one might say the idea she formulated about selfishness is her seminal contribution to philosophy. She even wrote a whole book about it titled, The Virtue of Selfishness. Here is a bit of what she had to say:
In popular usage, the word ‘selfishness’ is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends . . . and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word ‘selfishness’ is: concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
I love Rand’s writing, but I am not really a fan of her philosophy, yet I do find it fascinating and I don’t mind thinking of her as a great thinker of our time. What she says here is apropos to this discussion. Regardless of what the morally superior beings say about our trampling “over piles of corpses to achieve [our] own ends” it is psychically healthy to put our own interests first. We must first be true to ourselves, and follow a path of self-love and self-respect before we can even begin to be loyal and faithful, and helpful, to others. How many times as a psychotherapist have I said to my patients, “you have to put yourself as your priority, love yourself before you can love and be loved by others.”
It takes a narrow, and probably narcissistic mind, to not understand the importance of these statements. This does not mean that we do not sacrifice at times in our lives for others. In fact, the more tuned into oneself and of our own needs, the better equipped we are to be supportive to others. We are then less likely to be driven by a sense of moral superiority. As I said before, if the circumstances were such in this situation that our sacrifice would actually help establish the medical environment that saves lives and prevents a disease from rampaging through our global community, we would be ready to join the effort in any way we saw fit, and thus sacrificing quite a bit, maybe even our own lives — it would ultimately be in our best interests to do so. But we know the situation as it is does not warrant such a sacrifice, therefore none will be made.
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