Today I had a British visitor in my "British and American Cultures" class and students were asking him questions to learn more about the British culture. One student asked about how older people were treated in England these days and our guest said not very well as they were usually put in the home and most often were not visited much by their children. The student asked why that was the case and our visitor said he thought people in the modern urban environment were quite selfish; they had no time to spend with their elders or they didn't want to. They may be more occupied with work, hectic lifestyle, technology, etc.
This got me thinking about being selfish. As a matter of fact I have been thinking about being selfish for some time now. Is it true that people in this age and time are more selfish than in the past? Are there legitimate reasons why we become more selfish? Are we to blame for being selfish? These days we want more time to ourselves, to Facebook (ironically alone but with others), to play computer games, to chat (again by ourselves yet with others), to do our errands, to finish work (after work hours), etc. We dread it when relatives from other provinces visit unannounced; this is very inconvenient, we say to ourselves, it's a lot of work to have relatives over at your house. Is it true that modern lifestyle excludes us from real people?
What surprises me is not that we may be more selfish but that it is quite easy for us to be selfish. We are comfortable being selfish. Some religious beliefs might contribute to us being ok with being selfish. Does not Buddhism teach us to get rid of all burdens--even our children are seen in a sense as burdens; they trap us with the secular joy. Buddhism teaches us to free ourselves--each individual person--from all the burdens and worldly traps, individual, not you and your family, or you and your spouse. When you leave this world you go alone, it is only when you live you are with people in your life.
In essence, we are more "individual" than we can imagine. We are all "islands," separate entities from others around us. The human ties we cultivate through our life are thus rather fictional; we create them because that's what our parents, our teachers, our society teach us to do. It is what human beings have been doing since the days of the cave men. Anthropologists, scientists, and many other --ists say human beings are social animals, we must live in flocks. They tell us that social ties are essential to our well beings. Isn't all this too confusing? Spiritually we should be alone (selfish) while socially we should be part of groups.
I might be crazy but I think these opposite ideas of how we live life is the origin of our headaches. We get unhappy or worried when we miss out on group activities or ones which involve people. We feel bad when we spend time by ourselves because we use the social rules as our criteria. If we use spiritual rules as our guides, we would feel natural to be alone, to care for only ourselves--to be selfish. I know this is scandalous, this is plain selfish. But hey, I am only a very confused human being.
February 1, 2011
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