The greater cause of "I"

I am always amused by the wave of compassion and humanity that engulfs us post a significant disastrous event. Number of lives lost is a fair indicator as to how compassionate the wave would be.

Duration is questionable. Feeble attempts are made by the still compassionate and the socially awakened ones to stoke the same passions and emotions. Anniversaries of such events serve as a pretty decent occasion to realise, feel bad again and remind our self of the grief others went through.

Cynical bastard you might think. Well, truth be spoken you are not all that off the mark.

With a little alcohol in me I managed to find some semblance of reason for this periodic awakening of conscience. Its selfishness mixed with a little built of guilt. Before the hell hounds of moral righteousness and social activism descend upon me, let me clarify. I say this with no sense of finality but only as an opinion with the usual disclaimers and caveats attached. Take it or leave it.

As long as it’s not us that have been shot in the ass it serves us well to go up on streets, hold up placards, maybe even shed a few tears, and pay homage to the souls departed. Do our duty as citizens and go back to sleep cause you need to catch your local in time else that fat smelly motherfucker’s going to grab your seat.

Suburbia doesn’t allow us the luxury of full time activism. You can’t handle a traffic jam, a pissed of boss, a demanding girlfriend, deadlines, hangovers and still take time out to go and actually make tangible efforts to change the system. The greater thought of making the cops accountable is immediately clouded over by the pressing concern of your pending phone bill.

The ones who talk and criticize the general apathy the public don’t really realize that the reasons for their activism and the reasons for the criticized party’s indifference are one and the same. Selfishness. Everyone’s doing whatever it takes to make them feel better. Remember helping a poor kid begging on the streets? Or giving out your change to the old leper on the signal? Or buying that souvenir for your girlfriend which was made by the children from the blind school?

I am sure you do. Your two cents in making the world a better place. You not only funded a part of a blind kid’s education, but also drastically improved your chance of getting laid. Bravo.

Somewhere along the line you managed to convince yourself that you really did feel bad for the homeless guy and for the victim of a mindless assault. But then that feeling evaporated after you gave him the change and lit the candle at the Taj. Your conscience was put to rest. Instant gratification. Went home feeling like a contributor to society.

The majority of us left it at that and went back to seeking other avenues of contentment. The ones who were still at it continued to seek the same from the same source. What makes them happy, the fact that cop’s have better equipment or the fact their efforts got cops better equipment. It boils down to a very basic question. Why do you do something for someone? To make them happy, to help them? Why do that too? Cause putting a smile on their faces matters to YOU. So if your efforts don’t make them happy you wouldn’t even take them on. You do that to make yourself feel better. The other reasons are built out as logical outcome of your actions.

Every greater good is born out of a need to satisfy oneself. Every greater good originates out of “I, me and myself” .It just looks better when you club along a million causes too. If you don’t have one that really matters, no problem you can always borrow. There are enough whales being killed and more than enough trees being felled. You will not feel left out. There are enough causes in the world for the aimless to be associated with. Better packaging always helps.

It’s nothing to feel bad about. It’s been going on since we evolved and will continue to do so. We as a species only respond to stimuli. A sustained stimulus doesn’t make us respond more. It makes us get used to it. Makes us adapt our self to live with it.

We are today’s children. Tomorrow mildly concerns us. Yesterday’s dead and buried.