The Good Side
Sometimes People Show Selflessness...Sometimes
And yet the community in trouble often responds favorably to save the lives of others. I remember vividly in the early 80’s, in my brief tenure in trying to work in the D.C. area, where a plane took off from National. Only it didn't, it never got enough lift (possibly they said the wings had not been de-iced properly before trying to ascend)and dived straight into the Potomac, which was icy cold–killing cold. The plane skidded across the 14th street bridge and struck seven vehicles before falling into the river. Seventy-three passengers died upon impact as well as one who drowned. Four people in vehicles driving across the bridge:
Two people in particular emerged as heroes during the rescue:
Arland Williams and Lenny Skutnik. Known as the “sixth passenger,” Williams survived the crash, and passed lifelines on to others rather than take one for himself. He ended up being the only plane passenger to die from drowning. When one of the survivors to whom Williams had passed a lifeline was unable to hold on to it, Skutnik, who was watching the unfolding tragedy, jumped into the water and swam to rescue her. Both Skutnik and Williams (along with bystander Roger Olian) received the Coast Guard Gold Lifesaving Medal. The bridge was later renamed the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge.
Last year when Ian hit Florida, people left behind, people who couldn’t afford to flee to safety, united with neighbors to help preserve each other, sacrificing their own safety for their neighbors’. People often see a car stranded and pull over to tow strangers to safety, or in the worst case, pull over if a car rolls off the road.
Following the 1906 earthquake, Anna Amelia Holshouser madea makeshift tent to shelter 22 people, food was brought in and shared with nearly 300 residents who had lost their shelters, set up in Golden Gate park.
There are plenty of amazing incidents of people actually risking themselves to insure the safety of others. And people often shell out of their own meager savings to send money after disasters to assist in rescue efforts. I would really like to think this is the natural inclination of man. In the Altruistic Brain, Donald Pfaff suggests we are hardwired in our brains to do so. And yet in the 1960’s, Phil Ochs wrote a song, included on his album Pleasures of the Harbour that suggests the complete opposite:
Oh, look outside the window, there's a woman bein' grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes, and now she's bein' stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[Verse 2]
Ridin' down the highway, yes, my back is gettin' stiff
Thirteen cars have piled up, they're hanging on a cliff
Now maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move, and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[Verse 3]
Sweating in the ghetto with the colored and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleepin' on the floor
Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already, and besides we've got the cops
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[Verse 4]
Oh, there's a dirty paper using sex to make her sales
The Supreme Court was so upset they sent him off to jail
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine
But we're busy reading Playboy
and The Sunday New York Times
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[Verse 5]
Smokin' marijuana is more fun than drinkin' beer
But a friend of ours was captured, and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[Verse 1]
Oh, look outside the window, there's a woman bein' grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes, and now she's bein' stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
[Refrain]
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Recently Noah Belartsky suggested that it is within one’s social center that people are more inclined to react in defense of his social group. And I think therein lies the rub.
Robert Rei has recently written, “From my perspective and experience it is the higher educational systems that are somewhat dysfunctional; how else would the American Higher Educational System have produced such a crop of so-called highly educated individuals (Idiots in the most etymological sense of the word) who insist on supporting Trumpian type thinking, so much so that nearly half the voting population has and would again vote for such unthinking individuals, most of whom would not actually act in anyone's else's best interests but rather for their own profiting, controlling, biased interests?...”
I’ve written quite a bit about the dysfunction of the educational system—but of course the point I take, Mr. Rei is making is the the case that there is a conflicting message that we are being taught. First we are taught about American exceptionalism, or that America is somehow better than other peoples and then if we are lucky (or unlucky, depending upon your point of view) we learn that America has been exceptionally unkind. To be exceptionally unkind creates a separation from the truer nature, the altruistic nature, or at least the altruism necessary for society to function altruistic rather than selfishly towards itself.
Mr Rei in the same substack article “Self-Discovery through Writing” goes on to discover himself through listening. Too many unfortunately, in our attempt to reclaim our individual voices charge forth to speak before we hear. Thus obstinance and isolation sets in and we tend to view ourselves as exceptional for the reason that the system in which we are taught denies our individual exceptionalism. Denied of that self-need to be recognized we begin to demand recognition but without hearing what is said to us we become blind followers of any view that can appeal to our experience, and we become addicted to identifying ourselves as misfortunate and anyone who addresses our misfortune as being “caused” (by whatever, banks, governments, courts, daddy) we begin to “hate” ourselves in the others. Many people, I have noticed, despise their own faults by failing to recognize what they are. The angry man “can’t stand confrontational people”; the withdrawn person thinks others “should stand up for himself”.. The overly-talkative dislikes others for talking too much. This is called psychological projection. The person denies his inner person because that inner person has been denied and therefore he projects his inner faults to external causes. A bully (say DeSantis) feels extremely vulnerable and projects his vulnerability by bullying others. But the bullied can be attracted to the bully when the bully bullies anyone other than himself. The “crowd” smirks against the person being put-down and begins to participate in the bullying. This shifts blame from the inner self for his failures that ends up manifesting itself in “shame dumping”.
So the man who has not succeeded becomes totally susceptible to the man who wishes to succeed by opening the door to group shame dumping upon others who may be vulnerable for bullying. Thus the black man who might be seen as getting a preferential education didn’t earn that education if he had to obtain a scholarship to get his education. That black man’s unearned scholarship indicates that he is replacing the white man and the white man projects his own feelings of lack upon the black man. This is a projection of general guilt that leads to creating a delusionary inner personality to proclaim a “betterness” of self against a “tyranny” that is false.
Mr. Rei concludes his article of self-discovery with this quote From Aldous Huxley:
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
But perhaps that is not true at all. Perhaps we cannot improve our corner of the universe without the help of others. I spent most of my adult life, or at least since 1984 (not coincidental with the book title but when I began to reject being “employed”.
I began to realize, as Frederick Douglas discovered many years ago, that being employed was little different from being called a slave. In no way is being called property acceptable. But neither is not being called property and being used to benefit the other. I began to wonder if I was “employed” why the boss was called the “owner”. Well yes, he might own the buildings, but did the buildings produce his wealth or did the people he employed? If no one worked for the owner, his buildings would crumble uselessly abandoned. A farmer can own a plot of land and he can farm that land or he can lease the land and profit from other’s labors. When he does that, then he owns more than the land, he owns the livelihoods of those who work on the land. So I began to rationalize that by working for another I was being enslaved and had to rely on his largess for my survival. I was no different than a chattel slave, only I was told I was not. And if I am told I am not but believe or intuitively feel I am, I become a ripened tomato that can be eaten by demand by anyone who projects my inner being towards the external other who is most like me. In the case of the white laborer, the one who is most like me is not the white boss but the black laborer by my side. So the projection of my self defensively against the one who is most like me becomes a necessity in order for me to feel unowned and so I despise the one I should be embracing who is in actuality of my community. In doing so I splinter the natural altruism of the social bond I should be connected to in order to be important to the common community and a slave to the uncommon community to which I have little bond.
Now I would like to refer to my story of the man and woman that I posted the other day. The husband and wife become bonded in a mini-community that becomes the total community. But if the marriage becomes the identification of the man and woman and the passion of the initial bond becomes diluted by the experiences necessary to be a sum community which delineates its sum to only include the passion, and the passion has dwindled because being the sum must include experience beyond their idyll and the experience beyond the idyll refutes their completeness then the completeness of a sum of one + one that equals only one “family” and that sum gives them authority over the offspring of that authority and the society dictates that at a certain age that authority disappears and the offspring must now exercise their own authority, leaving the husband and wife, now sans the passion, feeling “out of love” and unable to navigate within their idyll.
So if we represent the authority of the democracy over citizens to the authority of the man and woman to their children, the absence of the citizens to an equality of representation within the citizenship of the democracy, then at what point do the citizens become passionless for the democracy? If the sum is the unit of the democracy and the citizens identification does not extend beyond the expectations that are given of its representation at what point do those citizens flirt with the idea of a lover who will offer them an individualism separate from its initial passion that the lovers think “prove” their love?
So a democracy, absent a community of individual relevance that continues to represent itself as a complete representation of freedom, not deny, by its very sum, the individuals within it. And at what point does the authority of ownership not create the projection of conflict that infuses itself against itself.
I did it wrong. I could not just not work for another. I deluded myself that I was not prostituting myself by contracting in doing work for others. And in so doing I also inflicted wounds both upon myself and upon others.
For a democracy to succeed, it must not be a “work in progress”, it must be a completion of its promise and it must splinter itself away from its own splinters. To be a democracy it must offer community choice and those communities must be communities of individuals who select its leaders from its midst who are the most altruistically responsive to the individuals within its communities.
Ayn Rand, in the Fountainhead writes of the corporate leaders quitting and the world falling into chaos. I dispute this. It contradicts the entire recorded history of kings replacing kings, of the insecurity of kingships, of the meaningless of the lives of its citizens, and corporate-sponsored kingdoms have only changed kingly empires built on the insecurities of kingships with corporate empires that continue to grab for larger and larger corporate power out of fear of losing power. The corporate leaders are not any more spectacular or any more entitled to their empires than kings were to theirs. And they go on through corporate consolidations and buyouts. They go on by continually replacing its leaders or through inheritance. And heirs continue to fight against each other for that inheritance.
So it would not send the world into chaos if they all “quit”. I don’t believe they could quit. They are unsuitable for survival. Their “hard work” is not the work of doing things but determining how to make others compliant enough to do for them. Do corporate leaders mine for resources, do they wire homes for the energy they own, do they farm for their food, do they build their own palaces? Do they do anything to enable their society beyond determining how to enslave others to their will and deceiving others into thinking they are obligated to be beholden to them for producing the goods they don’t themselves produce. So let them all quit.
And so it’s the time not to abandon the complete resignation but to expand it. It’s time for no one to work for anyone else. It’s time for no one to sell to customers at Wal-Mart, no one stock the shelves, no one drive the trucks with the goods to be sold, no one to manufacture those goods that are sold. Then we will see how important they are. The John Galts will never quit because they can’t survive. It’s time to walk away and join communities that can survive together, not continue to be enslaved by the communities. But we can’t rebel—we lose. We can’t revolt under Trump or those akin to him. We just abandon our jobs and work together in small communities for our common survival. Let them own what they want if they don’t own us. I did it wrong, I tried to do it alone. But it must be communities who do it together. And we must all do it.
Then maybe we will have freedom and democracy within those communities and maybe we will have justice that supports communities and law becomes a protection of communities encroaching upon others.
Then we will have free trade or bartered trade, then individuals will become important and respect themselves that they needn’t project their self-negating fears upon others. Maybe. I doubt its possibility of occurring. Lives don’t matter, and in the process many will probably be maimed, mutilated, tortured and slaughtered. But isn’t that happening anyway? What would be lost? And would we gain?
And would altruism, if it is our genetic nature, actually be exhibited towards all. I will probably not live for that day to come. But you probably will not live if it does not.