Response to "Questioning Benevolence."

Response # 1.

In Skyla's blog she posted the question "Can you think of anyone on this planet that represents benevolence to the very highest extent? Is there such thing as a human being who is truly and completely benevolent? If so, what makes them this way?"

I would love to say that I can think of a hundred people, or even a handful, that I can say live up to the Confucian idea of benevolence, but that would be a lie. Christians, such as myself, would say that Jesus is the only truly benevolent person that has ever lived. Because of His benevolence, and the sacrifice of it, we have no need to strive for complete benevolence. Yes, it is the idea that we strive to be "Christ-like" or "benevolent", but we can never fully become as such. If we could, there would be no need for Christ at all, thus undermining the basis of that faith. I digress.

Skyla's question wasn't a religious one per se, so I'll attempt to answer the question in a more secular sense. In my opinion, the trait of benevolence is over rated. I think that if we all fully reached benevolence we would be a very dull race. It is our flawed nature that make us beautiful and diverse. I also don't attempt to see benevolence as moral perfection. Doing onto someone as you would have them do onto you doesn't necessarily constitute moral perfection. Benevolence is a great thing to strive for, but it's just not realistic.

Therefore, I choose to view benevolence as the fight against indifference. Living in the most privileged country in the world somewhat hinders Americans in our fight against indifference. It is so easy to forget that there are people starving in the world, in our own country. We hear about things like ethnic conflicts in other parts of the world. No matter how sorry we feel for those people, it is extremely difficult to truly put that suffering into perspective. Thus, we forget those people as we lead our own lives relatively free of suffering. I think that the people who refuse to forget, who face tragedies that would otherwise be forgotten are the true sages of our day. Those people have, in my opinion, reached the only kind of benevolence that is actually attainable.

Self...ish?

We spent a good deal of class yesterday discussing the possibility of being inherently good, bad, or a tabula rasa. I would like to explore the possibility that human beings are none of those previously mentioned. My personal first reaction is to say that humans are selfish by nature. We desire only the things that are beneficial to us. An example would be doing charity work. It seems like a perfectly selfless and noble thing to do, but we only do it because it makes us feel good. Confucius knew that our motivations play an extremely important role in our nature as human beings. Confucius stated (roughly) that if your motivations are not good then the action is meaningless. I would disagree with him in that respect. A selfish action may be meaningless when attempting to reach benevolence, but in a not so benevolent world, all actions have meaning. Some self motivated things that people do promote good things for others. An example would be Walmart. This is a corporation that helps consumers "save money" and "live better" but they are ultimately in business to make money. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world and it did not become so through benevolence. I want to steer away from saying that people are "bad" because they are self motivated. If self motivation was removed from human nature, we would have no goals, no ambition. The technological, social, and economic advancement of our race may very well hinge on selfishness.

My question for this blog is: If people were-hypothetically-truly good and selfless beings, what would happen to us as a race? Would we continue to advance as we have?