The Silver Lining: Selfishness and Greed are Not Cool These Days

I was not planning on doing a Thanksgiving message, but something dawned on me last night as I thought back to the kinds of things I've been seeing from my colleagues and students at Stanford, the people who write me on this blog, my wife's stories about the Girl Scouts and the needs of under served girls and their families, and what I've been reading in various press reports and stories about the responses to the economic crisis. 

The lost jobs, economic suffering, and fear are terrible things and my heart goes out to all those who are hurt and will be hurt by this mess.  In the Thanksgiving spirit, however, I do see something to be thankful for these days: Being greedy and selfish -- doing things for me, me, me and ignoring or exploiting others in the process -- is out of fashion.  The current crop of Stanford students are the most socially conscious I have ever encountered during my 25 years here -- things like stopping global warming, improving K-12 education, and reducing poverty are seen as what the coolest students do.  And -- despite how hard it is to get a job -- recruiters will tell you that, to get the best students, they need to demonstrate serious commitment to these and related issues.   The stories about greed and insensitivity in corporate America make the headlines, but I keep running into managers and executives who are worried about their people, who fight to protect their jobs, who take pay cuts so that others have more, and who see their job is easing the psychological and objective pain suffered by those they work with and their families. I also see it in politics.  The crisis seems to be bringing out the best in both U.S. parties. My sense is that ideological battles and raw self-interest (although they still are present) are simply far less acceptable than in the past, and that people are trying to pull together to fix things so that everyone benefits.  Sure, there is the usual finger-pointing and some evidence of greed, but a lot more energy is being devoted in positive directions than I can ever recall.

I have written about and reprinted a touching Kurt Vonnegut poem here and talked how kind he was to let me reprint it in The No Asshole Rule. It is called Joe Heller.  The main theme is that the knowledge that "I have enough"  can be a source of good mental health, and I would add, can lead to more constructive and generous relationships with other people.  Although nearly all of us who have enough have lost a lot of money this year, I don't actually know anyone who has complained bitterly about it. Doing so is just is not cool, as whining about it is selfish given that so many people who don't have enough have lost so much. Here is the poem, which strikes me as especially appropriate for the times.  It is one of the last things that Vonnegut wrote before he died.

Joe Heller  

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!"

--Kurt Vonnegut

The New Yorker, May 16^th, 2005

There is interesting research by Stanford's Dale Miller and others showing that unbridled self-interest is not the natural human condition; rather being selfish versus altruistic are behaviors that can be prompted by the way that we frame a particular problem or choice or by the behavior of people around us.  In other words, being greedy and selfish are social norms that are provoked or suppressed in most human beings by different conditions.  A silver lining of these dark times is that greed is seen as bad behavior and doing things for the common good is seen as, well, good behavior.

P.S. You can read Dale's paper on "The Norm of Self-Interest" here. It is more accessible than most academic papers and an evidence-based challenge to the assumptions made by many economists.

Comments

[Andrew Meyer]

Bob,

I love your writing and giving you're interest and work, you might find this interesting. It's a site that does a Myers-Briggs analysis on bloggers based on what they write:

http://www.typealyzer.com

It makes sense that you came up as a Scientist. The world needs more long-range thinking, individualist types. Especially now.

Thanks for all your great work,

Andy

[Kevin Rutkowski]

Thanks for this post. It's full of good wisdom for Thanksgiving... and for all the other days of the year as well.

I'm very glad to hear about what is considered cool on campus. We hear too much about the bad aspects of young people in the news and not enough about the good.

[Tim Berry]

So you weren't planning to do a Thanksgiving post, but you've done at least three of them here. The second paragraph, then the Vonnegut poem, and then Dale Miller's research. Each is worth a full post, each deserves the highlighting a full post would get. Great post. Tim.