What is enlightened self-interest ?

Bounties of human ethics bound us without boundaries. Hear me out as I broadly reveal to you a human ethic which asks you to pursue your own interest for you.

Prologue

It is a commonly accepted norm that selfless caring for well-being of others is graceful. Some promote another persons’ welfare placing their own welfares aside, the altruists. Some provide support to the needy, the benefactors . Some distribute largesse seeking goodwill, the almsgiver. And the list expands. Benevolence, especially to the indigent, is considered as a way to ease the stiffness between the rich and the poor and uplift the necessitous. This can be more evidently empathized in societies where the gini index soars.

Enlightened Self-Interest

An Introduction

As humans we love “interesting” stories. To make a story interesting for humans is very simple, the story needs to include an ally to share your empathy and an adversary to oppose your empathy. The adversary needs to be demonized and the ally needs to be glorified. It is up-to the story writer to present to you a mix of different levels of adversary and ally empathies to create an inducement on you, which can be felt as being “interesting”.

In my opinion, “Ethics” are set of principles that as humans we empathize and /or distance ourselves to govern our personal behavior that helps us to conduct in a community. Here, you are the story writer and it’s the story of your behavior that you are writing. To make your story “interesting” is to mix different levels of “adversary” Ethics and “ally” Ethics. I feel that being perfectly “Good” may not be interesting.

Considering altruism to be an ethical empathy to ally, would easily make egotism an ethical adversary. Thus it is easy to tip any self-interest as being self-centered, selfish or egoistic.

Most communities consider self-interest as a form of being selfish, less do they realize that not all forms of self-interest is selfishness. I feel that concerning about self development is one of the most important forms of improving ones own self. When it becomes harmful it turns out to be selfish.

The first things I learnt in the software development environment is to “respect what came before you”. It could be completely ridiculous, totally unsophisticated or a doltish old system but it is important to respect it as there has been a lot of decisions taken to make it that way. This rule applies to human ethics system as well, we cannot blame what earlier humans have already defined as ethics for us. Hence we can’t make people believe that self-interest is an important ethic to ally.

This gives us an opportunity to make a form of self interest that mixes your “self-interest empathy” with the “altruist empathy”. Here I introduce to you “Enlightened Self-Interest”. In this article I provide to you one variety of “Enlightened Self-Interest” which could make your behavior “interesting”. It is “interesting” as it straddles between the ally ethics and adversary ethics.

Enlightened Self Interest, an overview

Enlightened Self interest concerns with myself acting in ethics to other people in such a way that I want them to act towards me. For example, I do not lie because I do not want anyone else to lie to me; I do not use bad words because I do not like others to use bad words on me. This is based on a belief that I can control only things that I can control. Thus discounting any efforts I need to make to make others think the way I want them to think about me. Thus I really don’t care what others think about me as it is something that I cannot control explicitly. This attitude gives me more time to work on my strengths.

I can control only things that I can control

Resourcefulness is value to self-interest

If someone hurts me voluntarily; they only open an option for me to hurt them back. Since I personally do not want to hurt the other person, their action only lowers my trust on them. To avert this case I have to place myself in a state where the other person needs my trust (on them) more than I need the other person’s trust for me. Thus, adding reasons for me to yearn for being a more enterprising kid than that I am. Being more resourceful only adds to trust you more. This feeling only helps you to grow. As you grow higher valuing more of yourself there is less reasons for others to nitpick on you because they would need more from you and would always have to work harder to earn your trust. I know that it is a lot of back and forth but trust me it is a very “interesting” game with mutual profits.

Being more resourceful only adds to trust you more.

The Expectation Bug

The concept of “Enlightened Self-Interest” has a bug that you need to deal with. That is when you do good to others there is an implicit expectation that others will do good to you. If they do not meet the expectation you cannot do anything about changing their behavior. For example, I do not lie to others because I do not like people to lie to me. There is an implicit expectation that people will reciprocate in the same good manner as I do, in this case “not lie to me”. But if I find someone lie to me then as mentioned above they loose my trust for them. It will be frustrating for me when I come to know of such betrayals. Nevertheless, it is surprising to believe but, I have almost always experienced that “something” stops other people from acting against me when they realize that I have rented out some good service to them. Even if they do not return the favor they will have no reason to hurt me.

You “cannot” do anything to change other’s behavior.

Being “Grateful”

In enlightened self-interest your “self-interest gains” override any other element. As much as self-interest is important so much is being grateful is. Enlightened self-interest requires you to put your partner’s interest in such a way that both gain out of it. Thus your partner has spent some energy to make you realize your goals and you have to be grateful to your partner. There are people with no gain just constantly supporting you to achieve your interests, you have to take care to be very grateful to them. At times when the interest of the person, whom you are grateful to, clashes with your self-interest it is your duty to make things happen for that person without hurting your self-interest goals in the most polite manner possible. It is easy to say but easier to work out.

As much as self interest is important so much is being grateful is.

Impatiently pursuing your interest

When you are in pursuit of a “self-interest” you are naturally impatient. This impatience is good as it steers you all the time to be self-dependent and never wait for knowing if others satisfied your request or not. In my enlightened self-interest, you ask for “help” only when it is extremely essential and not always. When you ask for “help” you cannot guarantee that the “help” would be rendered at once. It may be that the other person was busy or something else that you do not know. Hence any “help” is an asynchronous request and you should be impatient to find new other ways to achieve the “self-interest” you own without complaining.

When you are in pursuit of a “self-interest” you are naturally impatient.

Is it hard to build into “Enlightened Self-Interest”?

I grew being into “enlightened self-interest” through several experiences or perhaps its a part of my genetic nature whatever the reason may be it governs me as a second nature. I am sure people around me would have noticed me working silently on my self-interest. If you wanted to build this onto you, within matter of few days you will see yourself playing the game right. I here put a broader version of “Enlightened self-interest” as a food for thought. It’s for you to evolve your “own”; to be unique; to be you and for you.

It governs as a second nature.

Being altruistic with “Enlightened Self-Interest”

Altruism is a principle of selfless concern for beings around you. There are several great human beings and organizations that form a central role in helping others in need without concerning themselves. I respect their service to human kind. It is of good interest of the human kind and indeed there are several who are in need of such services. Many provide support to vulnerable elderly, people who are in chaotic poverty, people suffering from incurable diseases, orphans etc etc. And it is rightful for us as the fortunates to support the needful peer to make them feel fortunate through our inclination.

“It is rightful for us as the fortunates to support the needful peer to make them feel fortunate through our inclination.”

At the same time, When a man turns lazy and starts to depend on “charity”, it is duty of “charity” to step up and say “no”. At such circumstances, instead of supplying for free, charity would be to help the person identify his/her potential to grow mentally, physically and financially. That is more selfless than any gracious donations. It is for this reason I strongly believe that “entrepreneurship” is one of the biggest forms of valuable sustainable charity that can support people. And yes, “entrepreneurship” is one such example of being altruistic with “enlightened self-interest”. Another example would be foreign affairs. Foreign affairs between two countries works perfectly smoothly only when each country emphasizes on being in “enlightened self interest” of each of their own countries.

There is a saying,

“One must always elevate oneself by ones own self.

One must never degrade oneself.

One is one’s own friend and

One is one’s own enemy”.

Epilogue

I have always seen myself as a positively motivated enterprising character. I always attribute this character to the experiences gained from the environments several people around me had created for me, especially my professors at the universities, my teachers at high school, my community I grew up in, developers and scientists I interact with, my friends, my close relatives etc etc. There is plenty I admire from these amazing people which forms the basis of certain aspects of my character. Through this article I give you for free (What should you understand when I say free?.. I am being altruistic.) one such aspect that I use to propel myself towards my targets and ideals; that is, “Enlightened Self Interest”. This article only presents the tip of the iceberg. There are lot more secrets I obscure from you for it is in my own “self interest”.

Hear me out as I take you on a journey of a thought, giving you an opportunity to audience one of my vivid thought process.

Yankee doodle went to town walking down the street;
He stuck a thought in his head and called it a lovable treat ;

Just around the corner; squeezed between a minimart and megastore is a door, that leads to a tapering hall with an array of perfectly aligned shelves, filled with chaotically arranged old books is an old bookstore. When you enter the old book store and you walk deep between the racks and stay there for some time, the books surrounds you with the smell of old paper which creates a wistfulness; sometimes a slight feeling of dizziness. Before the vellichor befogs you, you run out of the old book store, discounting the favor offered by the store keeper who wants to help you find the right book, you gush out to save yourself; to breath some air. As you step out, there is a chill breeze and a feeling of relief. There, I was, wondering “What was about to daze me?”. I parked the question for a later realization and continued my walk down the street.

Walking though the street seeing people, buildings, cars etc. there are times when flashes of thoughts come to entertain me on my journey. A thought flashed in my head about “control structures”, a topic that is found in the charters of basic foundations of computer programming. The flash of thought was about my teacher teaching me about control structures. He asked me a question, “What is a ‘control’ in a control structure?”. The answer to this question I believe is quintessential not just to understand if-conditions, switch-cases or ternary operators but also for those who are young and yankee. Yes, young and yankee. I am young. I am yankee. I am just about to hit twenty-five and thus I am young. I stay in the protection of Uncle Sam and hence I am yankee. I thus can proclaim myself to be young and yankee. The voice of my teacher repeated in the flash-thought “What is a ‘control’ in a control structure?”. With all my eyes glimmering at him I was in passionate thoughts searching for an apt answer; eagerly enthusiastic suffocating to answer with the feeling of the answer choking my throat; while he paused to bring in a silence that was designedly eloquent. With a change in pitch and pace in his voice, in a tone that gave me a sense of revelation, I heard him say “Choice”; “Control means choice.”

Being young is to have plenty of choices and being yankee snowballs it to a quotient soaring to levels that high such that you are put in a ball game to tackle the choices. When it is time to make a decision over the many choices, at times, choices put me in a state of indecision leading to a state of analysis paralysis that prevents me from making a decision over the choice eventually allowing the situation to make the choice for me. Making the choice becomes overwhelming because my mind always wants to choose best of the choices that fits to give me maximum profit. It feels like choices surround you to give you a feeling of being drunk into oblivion; strikingly similar to my recent experience at the old bookstore when surrounded by the books. “Could that vellichor have been caused by the number of choices of books around me at the old book store?”- my mind started to “distract” from the flowing thought process and wants to yo-yo to reopen to try and answer the parked old question from the old bookstore experience. That’s right distract me. As much as choices are there being “young and yankee” has, as much as distraction it throws at you. In wake of the “distracting” old question I decided to put my mind back on track with the topic by making a “choice” to concentrate on the topic. In fact , in terms of “choice” and “distraction”, concentration is state of embracing the choice of distraction from unimportant matters.

With the juggle of choices and explicit distractions from the choices caused by biasing on one choice over the other, it was evident that my mind needed a logical argument to assert that it is in control of the choices and picks the best one that fits. In the old bookstore, running out of the store had a way for relief for the mind. But being “young and yankee” is not like being in the old bookstore. There is no door to escape but there are plenty of ways to mitigate. You need to trick the mind to believe that the choice you pick gives you the most positive outcome. I decided to sooth the mind with a deductive reasoning deducing from my self made propositions, that I could easily make my mind to assume to be true, to arrive at a impeccable conclusion that keeps my mind jovial.

Here is a way. Rules, Control and Discipline above all is Belief. All that you hear in sense of a religion. This could mean that there may be superstitions but that is for good.In fact, superstition eliminates need to put yourself in place of the possibilities to choose and to blame the choice if the choice did not work out. Superstitions created by the rules are formed by certain propositions. Suppose you sit for an exam. You have a pen from one brand and you write with it. It turns out you studied really well that the exam’s results were awesome. For the next exam you use another brand of pen and you don’t do well. After case two you blame the brand of pen to be culprit even though you know that it is not. You thus create a superstition over the brand of the pen used in the first exam saying it was a “Lucky” pen for you as it worked!. That forms the proposition that my mind would accept easily as being true. The rule here is using the pen of the same brand used for the first exam always gives you a positive results.

Superstition gives a calm in the mind. But there is a drawback. It could be a hard to “quit” it. It could turn into an imposition on you if you overplay it. When it becomes an imposition people around you notice it. They would advice you to quit yourself from the superstition. For me, all that I know is they do not realize the amusement my mind is going through nor they do have a solution for it to make the right choice if I agree to quit my superstition. Your mind has less reasons to quit something that it assumes to be true of giving a positive outcome. Here is what I did. Instead of quitting the superstition I expanded it, multiplied it, quadrupled it to large numbers, that there were several other superstitions that others people, the outsider, could less realize them. They did not know which superstition of mine to focus on to advice me. Superstition is a boost. It takes a lot of hard work to create more superstitions in the “rule” systems. That is to simply say is, you have to do awesome in a lot of other exams to make several other brands of pen as “lucky” and take care to not disturbing the luckiness that was already created.

I realized that this was a ever growing organism that needed a superpower that could serve as a manger of the superstitions. That is what I call a “Control” mechanism. Control is the power that influences the rules positively and impacts the course of action. It can create rules, override superstitions to improve on the ability to drive through the situations. Control helped me to hide the superstitions from the other people who are uselessly monitoring me. And makes my mind feel happy by preventing me from overdoing of a superstition, a causative factor for an imposition.

It’s a lot of work that goes into making a great “choice”. This needs a lot of practice, that is the “Discipline” mechanism. There needs to be practice of training yourself to work smoothly with the “rules” and “control” mechanism to effectively achieve the task of making a great choice. All for these you need to believe that the choice that is going to be made is the best one. Some do the control through religion that helps them believe that they are pursuing the choice and a supernatural force would manifest it. That is great!.

This is how I improve the chaotic arrangement of choices into a knowledgable workflow, a sort of a middleware, to hit on the choice that fits me as a glove. Whether it fits or not my mind believes affirmatively that my choice is the best. This gives me the power to own my choice.

My flash-thought entertains me to luster as I walk “up” the streets with a lovely uplifted mind full of enthusiasm about the many choices I have. My mind is fully convinced that it makes the winning choice with the help of my internal croupier, the middleware, which spins the roulette wheel in one direction and spins the ball in another. The ball eventually falls into a colored pocket, that is my choice. The people monitoring me uselessly do not get to see the middleware but only see the act of choice being made and me owning it, would simply say, “he makes the right choice”.

The mind is a powerful tool. All that you have to do is very simple, it is to keep it happy. You have to cuddle it, to cheer it, to trick it, to assist it, to make it believe that it is can engineer itself to greatness!. It achieves you wonders no matter how much possible it is. It can make you lift a rock, drink the ocean complete or think the unthinkable to usher in you the wisdom of Einstein. It’s “your” baby of “you”. It’s your craft. It’s your pursuit.

Mindful mind is the heart of the soul.

The above is a story of how I assisted my mind or rather tricked it to help it stay in sense of being young and yankee. Just one instance of the chaos that needed a “syllogism” to fix it. However happily chaotic it may seem to be. Does not matter if you care about it or less not;

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit, it is fantastic to be “young and yankee”.

Yankee doodle went to town walking up the street;
He stuck a thought in his head and it was indeed a lovable treat ;

Epilogue

On a Saturday morning, “Should I get up”;“Yes”; “What should I eat?”; “Should I cook”; I go to the kitchen. “Ah let’s order food”; “ok, what food?”; “some Indian food probably south Indian”; “before that, which food delivery app to use”; “Is there offers in any of them”;“Ah, Pizza pickup has offers”; “ May be a cheese pizza”; “That’s a lot of calories”;“Calories don’t matter as I am not fuzzy about fitness”;“No No Health matters”;“Let me drive myself to the next city to have some food”;“Ok which car”;“Which app to choose the car”; “No car near the house”;“Forget it!!!, empty stomach one day is good for health. Let’s do something else other than cooking and eating food”.

“Whatever” works.

Perspective changes the opinion.

I felt that it takes too much energy to get people to talk to me. I have to send them text messages, wish them on their birthdays, wish them on festival days, set up meeting times to get people to meet, help them fill out their write-ups, choose the universities etc etc. Things I do to just keep in touch. Personally, I squander my energy to make others feel comfortable around me and less frequently is the favor returned.

The taxonomy of the people around me is a problem often complex with certain cases of misclassification hard to detect. People can go into the acquaintance bucket or the friend bucket. There are some true acquaintances who behave as friends and some true friends who behave as acquaintances and then there are these confreres. Acquaintances probably need less attention unless they are potential friends and some friends need constant maintenance else they turn into acquaintances. Some need heavy maintenance while others need soft maintenance. Some stick and remember you even after a decade, others would forget within the next cycle of meeting. “Keep in touch” mechanism is to refresh the person’s memory of you and that is possibly why someone remembers me as a part of their own story. I owe a lot of this trouble to not having made many friends in the past or not having to distract my attention away from the intellectual ecstasy.

The above is the voice of my alter-ego that over shadows me at solitary times; and squalls me with emotions to make me cry. The squall of having a friend is much frequent and heavy resulting in the desire to find someone who would be an ecstatic fan for my stories and for who I am; to whom I would reciprocate the same. Such a person might be likely possible. My alter-ego went a step ahead to question myself “Why would someone love me?”. That is a very absorbing question. “Why should someone love me?” .

I started to put my ears and heart to the happy-self pretending to be distracted from the squalls of my questioning alter-ego. I put out the same question to the happy-self; “Why should someone love me?”. Here is the voice from my happy-self that is “me”.

I feel everyone loves me, it is just that they do not find ways to express it to me. I feel people around me, the friends, are just silent observers who would instantaneously make things move for me if I ask them for a favor. It is just that I had less to ask that I could not feel the friendship in existence. The morning birds sing songs that is most often beautiful but less often appreciated. The bird still keeps singing the song every morning.

Everyone is their own recipe of who they are. Thus there are lots of people who are recipes of themselves; Who found ways to cater it to the other person who are in taste of the recipe they are. I am my own recipe. I have to find way to have it catered to someone who would like the taste of me. I have to own my recipe stronger to provide to the other person a more likable me.

What am I? I am morally-disciplined, dedicated, lively, engaging and perhaps as others say I am a walking wikipedia or a wolfram word reference who loves the toughest theories in computer science like a Harry Potter enthusiast loves the characters of Harry Potter. When I love something I feel so much in love with it that the contents would overflow out of me or radiate out of me and flood the room I walk into or could be felt by a friend I talk to. I fill people around me with joy with just the sight of me. What makes me me is what makes them feel happy about me. What attracts people to me is happiness, joy and feeling high with passion. Sometimes people I meet want to dip their hands in the happiness I emit or at least want to hear me out as to how I self-elevate or what I am intoxicated with that keeps me happy.

That’s the voice from my happy-self. The voice of my happy-self always makes me feel happy. And that’s right. “Why should someone love me?” That is a question having a weak semantic significance. Perhaps not a question that matters. I see people love me when I own my recipe; to own my recipe, I dive into matters that make me joyful; which strengthens my recipe to cater to someone who would fashion it. I look forward to the day that I would be vibing someone with my recipe who would also be vibing back at me with theirs.

Hence,

“Why should you love me?”

Because I am a lovable recipe of myself.