On Being Selfish, Self-Righteous and a Hypocrite

Oh, where to begin?  The topic is so rich that one struggles to find a starting point.

So let’s start with me.  I am selfish, often self-righteous and a bit of a hypocrite.  I accept and embrace the incredible good fortune that has come my way by birth and circumstance, knowing full well that I probably do not deserve it any more than the hapless millions in this world that struggle through life with little or no good fortune.  Yet I do relatively little to rectify this.  

I also espouse and defend fairly liberal arguments for a more equal society, yet I fully enjoy my privileged status and take advantage of it at almost every turn.  I am not quite a classic limousine liberal, but I flirt dangerously close with the concept.  I am also at times self-righteous - more passionate about being right and being indignant at others’ refusal to acknowledge my wisdom than in the actual idea or cause I am advocating.

I know of some liberals who clearly have the courage of their convictions and are working tirelessly to change the world.  But most are like me – believing that there should be a better world yet not quite ready to pull the trigger on changing our lives to match that better world.

I have this thought experiment:  if you could press a button and God would re-order the world in a perfectly fair way to reflect the work rate, ethics and humanity of all its inhabitants, would you do it?  I know I wouldn’t – I fear the outcome.  It’s not that I am a bad person.  I am actually a nice person and I work pretty hard and have pretty good ethics.  But I know that my status and ‘comfort’ level in life would drop significantly in that scenario and I am simply not noble enough to push the button.

And what about conservatives?  Liberals may for the most part lack the courage of their convictions, but conservatives have managed to convince themselves that they somehow deserve everything they’ve got.  They do intellectual gymnastics to justify the inequities in this world and then they fume in almost apoplectic rage at the accusations that they lack compassion or empathy.  So the liberals live with their guilt-turned-to-apathy and the conservatives live with their guilt-turned-to-rage.

Now I know of course that the world is not a simple place and that human relations are complex and that economics is the ‘dismal science’ and that guilt is not all that productive and that fate is pretty damn arbitrary.  So I will not beat myself or others up too energetically on this theme.  But I do feel just a little bit better acknowledging the whole damn mess and how pathetically impotent we all are in this aspect of the human condition.