Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.
Joseph Conrad, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times Saturday Book Review (1879), August 1901.
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Joseph Conrad
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If only that were true.
We have a government that has abandoned the latter by pandering to the former. Egoism is serving it well.
Actually, the government is trending toward altruism, the notion that one’s life ought to be dedicated to the service of others, and away from egoism, the idea that one ought to live one’s life according to one’s own goals.
Altruism is not what we have. We have a government that says that that ones life is not ones own and that greater and greater portions of it need be spent caring for those that the government either has trained to not work, or else that the government has destroyed the environment where work might be available, essentially enforcement of a lack of options. Since they have shown no inclination to stop policies that continue in this direction, one might wonder what they have in mind for when the burden becomes too great.
We would pray for merely altruism.