A SELFISH MAN

I am a selfish man and proud of it! People are apt to say to me: "You ought to think more of others sometimes, Jonathan. Happiness comes from being of help to others." Old Mrs Murphy is the person most inclined to take this line with me, and she treats it as the height of wisdom! Apparently, she has been of service to others all her life and, not altogether surprisingly, is keen to let people like me know of the fact. I used, in my then-relative ignorance of moral issues, to be half-impressed, wondering whether such wisdom oughtn't to play a greater role in my life, too. But now I would turn a deaf ear to her admonitions and not feel particularly ashamed of myself for being selfish. I would react no less negatively to any similar admonition received, in letter form, from my aunt, who has also specialized in a life of service to others, and tends, on occasion, to offer me what she considers to be 'good advice'. I am free to accept or reject it. I would now choose to reject it, having given the matter, in my capacity of self-styled philosopher, some considerable thought!

Of course, I'm not completely selfish. No man is, unfortunately! But I do regard myself as being predominantly selfish, which is no mean achievement in this world, even these days. There are still, alas, quite a number of relatively selfless people around, and some of them rub-up against one on occasion, threatening one's spiritual integrity and perhaps even detracting from it, if only on a temporary basis. Nevertheless I remain quite proud of my record to-date, which is the consequence, in no small measure, of a principled stance in relation to selfishness. People like my aunt and Mrs Murphy would not understand this, because they tend to pride themselves on quite opposite behaviour than myself. Should I attempt to explain it to them? No, I think not! They are too old and, besides, I would only succeed in hurting their feelings.... Not that such a prospect greatly worries me. But one has to consider oneself as well, and thus avoid, if possible, giving others an opportunity to tarnish one's peace of mind. If it came to the crunch, I would probably turn the other cheek - assuming they hadn't made that too difficult. Unfortunately, Mrs Murphy has a lethal faculty for obliging her opponents to come to grips with her. It is almost as if she were a masochist!

But turning the other cheek is a policy I often adopt with my neighbours when they are making rather a lot of noise. I could respond, as I used to do several years ago, by making some noise myself, giving them a taste of their own medicine, so to speak. But I prefer not to engage in noise combat with them because it distracts me from my reading or writing or thinking or contemplating, as the case may be, and disturbs my peace of mind even more than their respective noises. I prefer, when possible, to plug-up with wax earplugs and carry-on with whatever I happen to be doing at the time. Naturally, I may get sore ears in the process. I may even go deaf eventually. But I always put the intellect, and thus by implication my peace of mind, above the senses these days. I would take that risk. As also the risk of being taken for a fool by my neighbours because I don't fight back but prefer to remain silent and endure what, from their point of view, must seem like unreasonably putting-up with noise. I am quite resigned to such a risk because I know it would be ill-founded on their part, a reflection, so to speak, of their own limitations as dualists, which is to say, as semi-pagans for whom the doctrine of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' remains valid even in this late-Christian or, as some would say, early-transcendental age. Christ, of course, taught 'turning the other cheek'. Someone else, of Old Testament provenance, preferred to teach the former doctrine. Christians have never been entirely clear as to which teachings to adopt, because the Bible is comprised of both Old and New Testaments. Along with Christ's moderately transcendental teachings we find the mundane, quasi-pagan teachings of the ancient Hebrews - of people like Moses and King David. No wonder Christians have been so ambivalent over which teachings to adopt! As dualists they have acted now one way, now another, depending on their mood and/or the gravity of the violence being directed against them. They are indisposed to maintaining a peaceful, and therefore heavenly, state-of-mind all the time. That would require a post-dualistic mentality in an unequivocally transcendental age. They are prepared to plunge into violence and, by implication, a hellish state-of-mind when circumstances would seem to necessitate.

Thus if I were more of a dualistic Christian, or let us rather say less of a post-dualistic transcendentalist, I wouldn't hesitate, on occasion, to plunge into vengeful activity against my neighbours by repaying them in kind with as much noise as I considered appropriate to the circumstances. But precisely because I'm a predominantly selfish man of transcendental bias, I prefer, like Christ, to 'turn the other cheek' and carry on, as best I can, with my intellectual commitments ... which are, after all, what I'm really interested in and consider to be of paramount importance. I wouldn't want to play records too often - as would surely be the case if I made a habit of responding to my neighbours' noises by repaying them in kind - because, frankly, music only appeals to me in small doses and when I wish to hear it, being, so far as I'm concerned, a lesser commitment than philosophy or literature or contemplating salvation in any ultimate sense. My selfishness compels me to steer as determined an intellectual course through life as possible, and, on the whole, I nobly succeed in sticking to my bent. Not everyone, however, would understand my reasons for doing so, least of all those who are less partial to a heavenly bias in their adherence to dualistic, and thus partly hellish, criteria. A people accustomed to a dualistic tradition will be more disposed to behaving in a relative manner. A people acquainted, on the other hand, with some form of transcendentalism will be in a better position to understand Christ's advice about turning the other cheek. They won't be far off the mark if someone like Gandhi should come along and advise them to offer but passive resistance to oppression. Resistance of any kind is of course less than heavenly, but passive resistance is a good deal better than the active variety! It, too, pertains to the post-dualistic.

All this may seem a long way from selfishness but, in reality, it is a manifestation of the selfish, as signified by intellectual or, preferably, spiritual preoccupations. I'm not thinking about sensual selfishness, which is an entirely different matter - as I hope to demonstrate in a moment. In fact, to make absolutely certain that no-one misunderstands me, I am going to distinguish not only between spiritual selfishness and its sensual counterpart, but also between spiritual selflessness and its sensual counterpart ... in the unequivocally diabolic. By which I mean the stars.

This isn't something that either my aunt or Mrs Murphy would care to hear, so I shall confine myself to paper for the benefit of posterity or, maybe if I'm fortunate enough, some intelligent, not to say sympathetic, readership in the years ahead. I am going to begin by defining the diabolic principle as 'doing for others', a necessarily selfless and (certainly in the case of stars) unconscious principle - one not apparent, in other words, to the doer as such. Our sun, for instance, isn't conscious of the fact that it sustains a solar system, let alone a planet on which human and other life forms are to be found. And yet, considered objectively from the vantage-point of a human mind taking account of the fact that without the sun there would be no solar system, it does in fact sustain one and makes life on earth possible, to boot. The sun doesn't exist for itself but for others, namely planets and life forms, and it is precisely in this 'doing for others' that its existence becomes justified and that it is intelligible to us as a sun. So must it be with the millions of other stars in the Galaxy, as indeed the billions of stars in the Universe as a whole, and this regardless of whether the stars in question be major or minor, central governing stars or peripheral revolving ones, like our sun. When a star is deprived of a raison d'être, in the context of any particular galaxy, it becomes a shooting star, an outsider and loner, as we would say of the human equivalents to such stars, who have come apart from society, which is the microcosmic reflection of the galactic macrocosm while nature predominates over the supernatural, as it will do for a considerable period of earthly time. Fortunately shooting stars, like tramps and outsiders, are the exception to the rule! Most stars continue, in spite of themselves, to exist for others, to burn and transmit energy throughout vast areas of space. Our sun has been doing so for billions of years. It shows no signs of abandoning its natural inclinations at present. So much, then, for the diabolic principle!

Now let us turn our attention to the divine principle, the principle antithetical to 'doing for others' which is 'being for self' - the most selfish and self-conscious principle conceivable. It exists only for itself in the most complete self-absorption of transcendent spirit. This will be the case whether such transcendent spirit is one of many spiritual globes converging, in space, towards ultimate unity or whether it is the definitive spiritual globe itself - at the climax, so to speak, of supernatural evolution. Wherever transcendence has occurred, on whichever level, the principle of 'being for self' will prevail, and to such an extent that the ensuing spiritual globe won't be conscious of anything else, least of all planets or stars, because the ultimate introversion. A star, by contrast, isn't conscious of anything inside itself, because the ultimate extroversion. Yet such extroversion is beneath consciousness and therefore devoid of reference to the external.

Here, then, are the two extremes of evolution, beginning naturally in the 'doing for others' of the stars and culminating supernaturally in the 'being for self' of transcendent spirit. Human life falls somewhere in-between, and the degree to which either tendency prevails will to some extent depend on one's sex and also to some extent on the phase of evolution existing at any particular time. The lower the phase ... the more will 'doing for others' predominate. Conversely, the higher the phase ... the more will 'being for self' predominate. The former will be predominantly sensual, the latter, by contrast, predominantly spiritual. At neither extreme, however, will there be an approximation to the absolute, whether diabolic or divine, because man is but a stage of evolution combining both alpha and omega in himself, a stage which stems, on the one hand, from the pre-human life forms and which aspires, on the other hand, towards post-human life forms (as loosely defined in terms of brain- and new-brain collectivizations), each of which will be more extreme than himself - the former directly stemming from the Diabolic Alpha, the latter directly aspiring towards the Divine Omega. The totality of stages would run something like this: major stars, minor stars, planets, plants, animals, men (in pre-atomic, atomic, and post-atomic phases), supermen, superbeings, planetary spiritual globes, galactic spiritual globes, universal spiritual globe. Everything from minor stars up to men (including atomic-phase men) stems from the Diabolic Alpha in natural evolution. Everything from men (including atomic-phase men) up to galactic spiritual globes aspires towards the Divine Omega in supernatural evolution. Prior to this evolutionary divide, 'doing for others' predominates. Subsequent to it, 'being for self' plays an increasingly important role.

Let us look a little more closely at the human stage and add to those antithetical tendencies already mentioned what could be called the compromise tendencies of ... 'being for others' and 'doing for self', each of which also plays a significant role in life. What is the distinction, you may wonder, between 'doing for others' and 'being for others'? For there is one, and quite important it is too, even though both tendencies appertain to the sensual as opposed to the spiritual realm. Women like Mrs Murphy are especially good at 'doing for others', as when they prepare a man's dinner or feed a tiny-tot his soup or take care of the washing-up or help a man into his coat. Such women are or were - if I am to insist on the increasingly post-atomic nature of the age, and thus pay passing tribute to feminist sensibility - more disposed to 'doing for others' than to 'being for self', a fact which needn't surprise us, since for long centuries women were more natural than men and thus stemmed from the Diabolic Alpha, in both appearance and behaviour, to a greater extent than men - ugly, intellectual, spiritually-striving creatures that they generally are. Isn't this still partly the case today? I shan't apologize to 'libbers' because I am, after all, a philosopher and must therefore speak honestly, not in terms of what Schopenhauer would have called 'theological expedience'. The philosopher doesn't expect to be read by the millions in any case, as I think I intimated a little while ago. His is the voice of truth, and truth isn't something that everyone can appreciate, least of all at a point in time which is overly enamoured of strength and beauty! I certainly wouldn't expect either my aunt or Mrs Murphy to appreciate it, particularly in view of the fact that it may reflect less than flatteringly upon them! This world is, after all, a battleground, and often enough its battles take place between the sexes and the generations.

To return to my main thesis: most women have long been more disposed to 'doing for others' than to 'being for self', partly because men have insisted on their behaving in a certain way, partly because they have chosen to behave in that way as a consequence of natural inclination - the extents to which either influence may have predominated depending on the age and degree of civilization. There is no simple way of regarding this problem, not, at any rate, from a philosophical standpoint. Even a majority of men were more inclined, at one time, to 'do for others' than to 'be for self', and they haven't ceased, in the main, to be capable of the former - as, for example, when making love to a woman. For making love to a woman is largely to 'do for others', i.e. to copulate for propagative purposes and/or the woman's greater pleasure, with a lesser personal pleasure for the male as a reasonable incentive. Such was traditionally the case and, to a certain extent, such is still the case today; though the pleasure principle has come, with the progress of humanity towards post-atomic criteria, to dwarf the propagative commitment.

From the woman's viewpoint, however, the other side of the sensual coin (of 'doing for others') is 'being for others', and this has applicability not only as regards the man, who undoubtedly takes pleasure in his relatively selfless activity, but also as regards any offspring that may result, sooner or later, from the sexual act. Naturally the woman may take considerable pleasure in the experience; but she is still largely 'being for others', just as people, regardless of sex, tend to be when they sleep - the subconscious or, more correctly, unconscious being 'the other' or 'another' in relation to the self, the dreaming process being a natural activity which this 'other' needs and which takes over from the conscious mind and subordinates that mind, via the subconscious, to its interests. We don't dream in the sense that 'we' applies to the conscious mind, but are passive spectators, through the subconscious, of the dream process, which obeys its own laws in defiance of or disregard for conscious preference. Hence we can no more will ourselves not to dream a nightmare than we can will ourselves only to dream highly pleasurable dreams. The will, as the upper or superconscious part of the conscious mind, is temporarily neutralized by sleep, while the imagination, or unconscious mind, becomes free to dream. In sleep, imagination has full rein to wander where it may, untrammelled by the will. This is why it occasionally wanders into regions that we'd rather it didn't, though, if we're not particularly deep sleepers, we may be able to bring the will to our rescue in the nick of time and wake ourselves up before the nightmare's grisly consequences become fully apparent! No doubt, many nightmares are aborted in this fashion, not endured all the way to the climax of imaginative terror. Our ancestors, having been more under unconscious influence than ourselves, would have fared worse than us in this respect. Women probably fare worse than men even nowadays. Children fare worse again.

So much, then, for doers and, by implication, the neutralization of the will in 'being for others'! One is, in this context, a passive receiver of another's doing to one's self, who is 'the other' from the activist's point of view. The doer, i.e. the unconscious, needs to do for 'the other', i.e. the conscious-become-subconscious. The latter has no alternative but to surrender to the former's activity. This principle applies no less to other sensual contexts, including sex. Though in the realm of conscious behaviour it becomes subject to modification as a result of systematic evolutionary progress, as I hope to have already emphasized. A Mrs Murphy may biologically need to prepare a man's, say Mr Murphy's, dinner more consciously than a liberated woman, who, if truly modern, may deny experiencing any biological need to prepare one at all.

We have now got to the point where we can take a look at the parallel distinction between 'being for self' and 'doing for self', both of which tendencies apply to the spiritual realm and constitute alternative approaches to selfishness. Because I defined the other parallel tendencies as sensual and stemming from the Diabolic Alpha, I am going to define these ones as spiritual and aspiring towards the Divine Omega - the former directly, the latter indirectly. A man who is 'being for self' may well be a keen reader of books or listener to music or contemplator of paintings or viewer of television or devotee of transcendental meditation. Whatever context he indulges his penchant for 'being' in, he will indulge it solely for his self, not for anyone else. He will be feeding his spirit and thereby aspiring, no matter how crudely, towards the ultimate beingful context of transcendent spirit, which is the goal of evolutionary striving. A man, or for that matter a liberated woman (what I tend to call a quasi-superman), who is 'being for self' is selfish in the highest sense throughout the period of his commitment to this spiritual self-indulgence. He is living in the most moral context, regardless of which particular form of being, it is possible for a person to live in. Certainly he is living in a morally superior context, at such times, to those indulging in either the 'doing-for-others' or the 'being-for-others' contexts of mainly sensual commitment. He is also, though to a lesser extent, living in a morally superior context to the man who is 'doing for self' and therefore only indirectly aspiring towards the Divine Omega.

Who is this man? I, myself, am one such when I put pen to paper, as at present, and convey my thoughts to a permanent form. Am I writing for anyone else? No, not specifically. I am writing for my own benefit, because this is what I want to do in order to pass the time in a relatively agreeable fashion and see how much truth I can get out of my self. If I enjoy doing this work, because I realize there is a good deal of hitherto unrecorded truth in what I'm writing, then it is a successful activity for me, a suitably selfish mode of doing. I don't have to ask anyone else for an opinion of the work since, being the closest person to it, I am its best judge. Such is the case for other selfish writers, not to mention painters, musicians, composers, photographers, film-makers, sculptors, and the like. Selfish artists are the highest kind of doers, the only kind who are ever going to produce great philosophy or art or music, as the case may be. Of course, they live in a world where it's necessary to pay certain bills, feed the stomach, purchase new clothes, etc., and, realizing this, they will offer examples of their work to publishers or dealers or whatever for commercial dissemination. But they don't act on the 'doing for others' principle of the lesser artist, who firstly considers what other people may want to read or view or listen to and then, like an obedient slave, sets about producing it as a matter of course. On the contrary, these higher creators, who are too moral to care for selfless attitudes, are only satisfied if they have pleased their selves (not to be confounded with themselves, which I interpret in a largely phenomenal way), and thus produced something which they can consider of creative worth on its own account rather than in relation to what others may happen to prefer, irrespective of its moral or cultural value. Whereas the lesser creator is content to cater for what he regards as a need that the public may have for a particular type of creation, the greater creator ignores the public in deference to his self and, as a by-product of his behaviour, may - and indeed sometimes does - establish a new taste in the public, or certain sections of it, for his particular brand of work.

Thus whereas the slave creator directly kow-tows to tradition in what is felt to be a popular demand, the free creator may indirectly create a new taste in the public for work that he produces to please his self. He corresponds to a divinity, self-contained and oblivious of the world around him - a perfection towards which certain more intelligent sections of the public may draw if they have any desire to better their minds, but towards whom he remains largely indifferent. The slave creator, by contrast, corresponds to the Diabolic Alpha, imposing himself upon the world around him and obliging the masses, or a significant percentage of common humanity, to swallow his creations whether or not they asked for them and, more usually, whether or not they like them. There is in this selfless creator a tyrant who invariably tyrannizes over the public, like a petty star. He 'does for others', but in all 'doing for others' there is a tyranny which 'the others' are obliged to endure, presuming, however, that they aren't wise or strong enough to turn their back on it and gravitate, through their own volition, to higher, self-contained things. The slave creator enslaves those who fall victim to his tyranny within traditional moulds. The free creator allows those who approach him of their own volition to perceive a higher way, a superior mode of being, to anything previously created. And he does this without conscious determination but, rather, as a by-product of his selfishness. They come to him, but he has not forced them! He is oblivious of their approach. He doesn't wish to concern himself with others. Neither, it goes without saying, would a globe of transcendent spirit.

But just as one globe of transcendent spirit will converge towards another such globe, in accordance with the divine principle of mutual attraction, and thereupon expand into a larger globe compounded of the two, so the higher strata of humanity will converge towards the work of the free creator and, through ingesting it, become akin to him in their spiritual beliefs, so that his truth may be said to have expanded into other minds and accordingly established a greater degree of spiritual unanimity and awareness in the world of men than had existed hitherto ... prior to his doing. What happens on earth in this respect is but a crude foreshadowing of what will happen, in a far more refined context, in the future transcendental Beyond.

Just as 'doing for others' and 'being for others' complement each other as two sides of the same sensual coin, so 'being for self' and 'doing for self' are likewise complementary as two sides of the same spiritual coin. The work of the man who 'does for self' may become the focus of attention for the man 'being for self'. I write a book which someone else may choose to read. A free artist will create a painting or light work which someone else may contemplate. A free musician composes music to which someone else may listen. We contemplate paintings not simply for the fun of it but in order to plunge into 'being' and thereby approximate, no matter how crudely, to Heaven. Art, like literature and music, provides us with regular opportunities to 'be for self'. With base or low-quality art, on the other hand, we are obliged, in contemplating it, to 'be for the other', the doer, who 'did for others' in a spiritually selfless way. That's to say, he was not thinking of his spirit, his higher self, when he created the work, but of what would appeal to others - usually to a majority of others - in a quasi-sensual way.

This is really the chief distinction between selflessness and selfishness. The self is psyche and one can deny it either directly, by indulging in sensuality, or indirectly, by using it to cater for base ends, as when a writer thinks predominantly of the public and what can be expected to appeal to it. This indirect form of selflessness is doubtless less ignoble than the directly sensual variety but still far from noble, because the self is being used (or, more correctly, misused) to cater to vulgar, sensational ends. It is the selflessness of the half-educated, semi-civilized person who 'does for others' on relatively high terms but can never bring himself to 'do for self', and thus develop rather than hinder his spiritual growth. His is a negative attitude to self - the attitude, fundamentally, of the materialist. If he can secretly despise those who directly deny their self, like cooks or dustmen or chambermaids, he is nevertheless obliged to feel inferior before a free creator, whose work may last for centuries because it is literally fine rather than crude. What flows with the self is fine; what goes against it - crude. Crude art denies the self in order to serve the senses. Fine art, by contrast, affirms the self in the interests of spiritual development. It is perfectly selfish.

But the selflessness of a person cooking dinner leaves the self altogether out of account and is therefore the 'doing-for-others' selflessness of sensual commitment. The selfishness, on the other hand, of a person reading some book directly affirms the self and consequently stands in an antithetical relationship to selfless doing as 'being for self'. The 'being for others' of the diner, who eats for his body, and the 'doing for self' of the free writer, who writes for his self, also form an antithesis, though on an intermediary basis. One could never eat for one's self, because food is sensual and cannot directly appeal to the psyche. Thus, although the process of eating may suggest doing, to eat is to 'be for others' or, more correctly, to be for 'the other' - namely, the body in general. It is a conscious equivalent of sleep, the being for dreams. We eat to sustain the body. We sleep to dream. Our self becomes, at such times, the passive spectator of the actions our body requires for physical health. It is subordinate to 'the other'. This is the context of indirect selflessness.

I, however, am a man who likes to be directly and indirectly selfish as much as possible, to 'be for self' and to 'do for self'. I dislike eating and sleeping, and very seldom do anything that could be described as directly selfless, such as preparing a meal for someone. Other people prepare meals for me and get paid for doing so! Occasionally I visit old Mrs Murphy, who prepares me a meal for free - out of a need to act for others. She would find life terribly boring were there no-one around for whom to cook. She cannot understand, when I inform her of my customary behaviour, how I can spend so much time on my own, either bent over a book or scribbling ideas onto a notepad. There is, besides a generation barrier, a sex barrier between us, and, like most people who live without bothering to acknowledge or recognize such a barrier, she projects her mind onto me as a matter of course, advising me to become more like her and to 'do for others' more often. But I am a selfish man and proud of it! I battle against the world and its chief supporters in the interests of my self, the development of my spiritual potential, and have succeeded, to-date, in developing it to a point way beyond Mrs Murphy's philistine comprehension. Naturally, she regards most of what I believe as nonsense. But, there again, how could it be otherwise? Her self is nowhere near on the same level as mine. She has never systematically cultivated it to any appreciable extent, so we speak a different mental language - I the language of self, she the language of 'the other'. Her self exists, for the most part, in the service of the body; mine, by contrast, in the service of itself. We shall never see eye-to-eye!

But that doesn't really bother me. Why should it? I am, after all, a selfish man, so I don't go out of my way to justify or explain myself to others. I exist primarily for my self, and certain others will find in me an indirect guide to existing more for their selves as time goes by. One day everyone, or at any rate everyone capable of it, will be systematically existing for their self in a context directly aspiring towards the Divine Omega. And even that day will be but a staging-post, as it were, on the road to something higher again - namely, a post-human age of millennial selfishness!