There are many things I am good at. Complaining, chiefly. Also eating, whining, and complimenting myself on my use of wordplay (good job Yalun!). Oh yeah, and blaming other people for things. But it’s not my fault. I’m part of the “me” generation, meaning it’s all about me.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably all about me too. You don’t have to worry about day-to-day survival and can relax perusing this in a coffee shop, on the internet, or—like most people who read HK Magazine—while pooping. That’s OK. I like talking about myself and you like reading about me and if you don’t stop, right here:
STOP
You didn’t? Ok cool. My life must be super interesting. I can make things up, embellish stories, and your only recourse is to write me angry emails, giving me ample time to come up with a witty retort. Like, for instance, “Hmm, you don’t like my column? Suck a fat one, fat boy!” or “Balls balls balls!”—a meaningless phrase which, if yelled loudly, will stop any conversation in its tracks.
Don’t worry. We’re all self-indulgent. People say we’re increasingly so, due to social media turning us into narcissists. But I don’t buy that. It’s just another tool to support our natural orientation to think of ourselves first. And recognizing, understanding, accepting and using this fact is important to making you a better person than the terrible one you probably already are.
There was this guy in my high school, Mike Brier, whom I would argue endlessly with about the concept of altruism.* Mike thought there was no such thing as altruism. Everyone did things out of their own self-interest. For instance, If you saved a baby from falling into a well, it’s because you wouldn’t want to deal with the consequences of jail, crying mothers and a bloody well. I took the other side of the argument (the Mencius one): you’d save the baby first and only afterwards think of the consequences of not doing so. That “first” instinct was altruism. Our even nerdier friend, Alex Kosse, would then ask us, “What if the baby were Hitler,” and I’d wonder what the hell we were doing in early 20th century Austria. And where the hell were Hitler’s parents, anyway?