One of the best things about blogging has been the sharing of books/films/music by my readers and the always insightful comments that have made me think twice about my views. Danke.
Economics and friendship (fellow-feeling):
One of the reasons that economics is a spectacularly narrow approach to understanding reality is that it posits that the sole principle underlying human motivation is self-interest (Edgeworth). Well, actually, that isn't true,strictly speaking,since economic (utility) theory doesn't actually say anything about the substance of one's preferences and instead focuses on their structure. So, for example, to say that one's preferences are rational is not a comment on the ends of one's actions/desires but, simply, that they-as a set- meet some sort of conditions of rationality (such as consistency).
However, for practical purposes most economists actually do take the self-interest idea as a working proposition or as the principle of motivation. It says something about "human nature": what it is, or what it ought to be.
And of course, the picture we set for ourselves-in our institutions, culture, and ideals- is often the one we grow into. The market, the "selfish gene", conflict, the survival of the fittest etc go up to make a constellation of ideas that views things like kindness, commitment, altruism, reciprocity, a sense of fairness and duty etc as fundamentally suspect. They are either veiled forms of self-interest or they are signs of weakness: if we were strong enough we wouldn't need to depend on others. Self-sufficiency is the deal. We are, it is said, at odds with one another. A warre against all.
We've been talked out of kindness, duped by a shallow form of intelligence (academia plays its part here). It would be mistaken to deny the great appeal of the notion of autonomy, but equally so to lose a sense of a 'we' (J.Luc Nancy)
Alan Ryan: "we mutually belong to one another" and this is necessary for the good life. Happiness: I-We.
Kindness-kinship (sameness). Philanthropia: the love of mankind. Caritas and open-heartedness. The desire to connect, to break out of the self, to live with others. Or man as a selfish beast, defined by his biological inheritance?
To be sympathetic to the vulnerability of others is to be so to our own-but not because it is so. Pleasure may accompany friendship but it is not the reason for it. Or, to put it another way, it is a qualitatively 'higher' form of pleasure.
What do we hold in common? Our needs? Our finitude? Is self-sufficiency and narcissism a turning away from the trauma of that acknowledgement? Kindness opens us to others but also to the dread of our own vulnerability and fragility.
Self-interest...assumes that we know what the self is, and what its interests are (next post)
Seneca: No-one can live a happy life if he turns everything to his own purpose. Live for others if you want to live for yourself.
'We' as a way of fulfilling one's humanity, our common humanity, without filling it.
Oikeiosis: the attachment of self to the other
4 comments:
Hello b.
I sometimes wonder what it does to our psyche to live in this schizoid system where it is alright in the name of profits to go to any lengths to trick people, but in which we also teach our children that lying, stealing, poisoning, violence are all wrong, and in which these values are the 'official' ones. But we all know that the companies and corporations lie, and so do the politicians, and sometimes shopkeepers - what does this rupture do to our souls?
m
ps since we are friends now and you call me mani, I feel I can tell you (i.e. you will hear me) that I had to come back to your post a few times to be able to get past 'mankind' and 'man' and relate to your words. I've come to a point in my life where I (choose to) disengage when I am being subsumed under the masculine. Yes, it is a privilege, compared with other women, to be able to do so - but I also feel that it is a responsibility, precisely because it is a privilege.
hello, m! :-)
Interesting point. I agree. At what point does a tension between public and private worlds and their values lead to a 'rupture'?
I think what's happened is that we now look at the corporations and think 'greed is good'. My only point is that this itself would not be possible unless there was background set of assumptions about human behaviour, about what is 'natural'.
To turn to the point you raise about not lying, for example. I think a whole strand of thinking would go: why shouldn't we lie or deceive if it's in our interest to do so? And the answer might be (as in the Prisoner's Dilemma): if everyone acts in that way it actually leads to worse results. But laready we're in the grips of consequentalist reasoning.
As to your other point I'm a bit surprised that you should think that you were being 'subsumed'. Of course, you're right, far too often the use of the word Man and manking have been used in just that way-to subsume or to exclude-but I would have hoped that in the context of the post there was no such intention. Hmm.
In any case, thanks for drawing my attention to it. Adam Phillips also makes the point in this book that selfishness has been seen as more of a male trait and sympathy as a female one in which case "man as a selfish beast" might actually be closer to the literal truth! :-)
Keep well,
b.
dear b.,
i did not think i was being subsumed - i *felt* like i was. yes, in the case of statements like "man as a selfish beast" i usually assume it means just that :). but i can't do that with "Philanthropia: the love of mankind", for example.
sometimes people think i'm being too sensitive (obsessive) about such things. they get tired of me always making the same comments (!)... i invite them to use 'woman' and 'womankind' instead, or an equivalent shift depending on the situation, at least for a week. sad to say, i'm yet to be taken up on that... but i keep at it :)
thank you for listening,
m
ah yes, isn't it awful, " we've been talked out of kindness" --- in all these eminent publications human nature has been so equated with the pursuit of self-interest that altruism & kindness have come to be seen as downright "unnatural" and as certainly not contributing to the maximisation of profit in a company context.
i've come to terms with remaining naively attached to kindness, but i do continue to read every Economist report on the possible evolutionary explanations for this oddity :-)
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