Unselfish or Just Plain Stupid
by This article takes a look at one of the key reasons why the middle class is losing ground in the country.
Unselfish—or Just Plain Stupid
by Richard Gingery
History is replete with examples of people who were so unselfish that they clearly put the interests of others ahead of their own best interests. Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years in prison because he would not put his own best interest ahead of his struggle against apartheid, Mahatma Gandhi, who fasted nearly to starvation and who died the victim of an assassin’s bullet would not put his own best interest ahead of a non-violent campaign for Indian independence and Martin Luther King, Jr., who faced beatings, bombings and jail time because he would not put his own best interest against ahead of the struggle for civil rights in the United States are just a few examples of the unselfishness that changes the world. Indeed the historical figure of Jesus would now be long forgotten had he decided that winding up on a cross was not the way to go and had taken steps to protect his own best interest. May we ever have people who are so unselfish in the name of freedom and equality and justice that they are willing to make personal sacrifices to protect those values we hold most dear.
However, going against our own best interest is not always the unselfish thing to do; it is often an act of complete stupidity. When we support politicians who pledge not to raise taxes on the rich while gutting the social safety nets that the rest of us now use or may need, are we merely being generous to rich folks, or are we proving how stupid we can be? When we examine health care systems around the world and discover that ours is the most expensive while providing overall health care outcomes little better than Cuba does, would it not be in our own best interest to adopt the kind of single payer health care systems that work in all those other industrial nations around the world– cheaper and better than ours? Yet somehow Big Pharma, the Health Insurance industry and right-wing politicians have so stigmatized single-payer health care by labeling it “socialized medicine” that we will work against our own best interests to keep it out of the United States. Once more, are we being unselfish by protecting the exorbitant profits of Big Pharma and the Health Insurance industry, or must we admit again to stupidity because we have allowed the monies interests of medicine to pull the wool over our eyes on this one?
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