Pride in who I am is good. Selfish pursuit of “my” interests is good—-when you begin to understand who you are.
I believe that a person’s identity is more than a bodily confinement, that we live as part of communities of people, places, ideas and beliefs, and we are both selfish and caring at the same time. That is, the division between “self” and “other” disappears. You may be confused by my attempt to put this into words. I think it is what most of us feel without having to describe it.
I’m saying that my identity was always more than the flesh and bones me. It was a family, an activity, a journey. What I participated in became who I am. Only a true sociopath fails to know this.
Think about John Donne’s famous passage, “do not send to know for whom the bell tolls…. It tolls for you.” As our lives take us further along on the adventure of maturity, we simply become part of large wholes. We suffer when others suffer. We feel pride when “our team” succeeds. I find great satisfaction in contributing to another’s success, or the growth of my garden, or the acceptance of ideas that I have developed with the full participation of others.
It is called “my identity.” And when I act for the benefit of these parts of who I am, I am actually acting selfishly and altruistically. I am no longer calculating a limited personal gain and loss when I do the right thing. I am not “sacrificing.”
Even risking death is “selfish,” since I live in the cause for which I die. I do it for the “me” that has become more than a sack of watery chemicals and electrical circuits.
Am I my brother's keeper? That's the question I asked. I asked this question following yet another rant about people being different, not so much as different from him so to speak, but who he wished he was. At first he had no answer. He texted his brother, a preacher, who told him what his correct belief should be. And the answer is ... No. It's just a rhetorical question he said.