I am uninspired. This is not a reflection of my workplace, my education, my family or my friends. No, this is a reflection of my horrible messed up mind that like to complicate things that are not complicated.
I have dedicated the last 6 years of my life to bettering myself in an attempt to better the world in which I live. However, I am beginning to doubt the efficacy of such a project. Do I need to be a better person in order to make a difference. I am reminded of people like Oprah, Steve Jobs, the many millionaire/billionaire software execs, who are a far cry from perfect, a far cry from good, but who have managed to make enormous positive impacts on the world, primarily through dispersing philanthropically the money which they gained through capital investment and television talk shows. I wonder if it matters who you are as long as you are helping others.
For a long time I believed that these people were what's wrong with the world. People like Peter Thiel, who get rich off social media, and Angelina Jolie, who make millions pretending to be someone they're not on camera and off. For a long time I though, it doesn't matter how much good they do, they are famous for nothing, they give away the money - so what?! It is money they didn't deserve in the first place. But perhaps with age and education comes a certain kind of cynicism. I have become jaded to the point where I do not think about just deserts and recognition for good done and good for the sake of good. I am beginning to question whether these things are relevant
Perhaps they once were, but in our age of capitalism and technological advancement for its own sake these things have lost their meaning. Good is now what one does, not their intention in doing it. If a billionaire invests in small businesses in order to make money which can not be taxed, that's good. He is investing in small businesses. It doesn't really matter that his motivations were selfish. If a celebrity donates blood, money, clothing or adopts a pet, a child, a village, it doesn't matter whether they did it to get that movie deal, or the cover of People, they did good.
Good has been taken out of goodness so that all that matter is action rather than intent. I wonder, then, what place is there in this world for those who do not want recognition for their actions, who hate the newspaper clippings with images of their face plastered next to a self-righteous article about the merits of philanthropic behavior?
So I guess bettering myself doesn't really need to play a role in the betterment of the world. I don't have to be a good person to do good things, so why be a good person at all? Why improve ourselves when in the end all that will be remembered is how many African babies we adopted, how much money we donated and how many lives we've saved. If theses things are the measurements of good in our world, then how will each individual's tiny contribution have any impact?
Don't worry. I don't believe everything I just wrote. I do still believe in doing something without recognition of action and I do believe in goodness. I just needed to rant for a while.
the end and happy thursday!
