Writing Slowly

“The cultivation of soil and cultivation of spirit are connatural, and not merely analogical, activities. What holds true for the soil—that you must give it more than you take away—also holds true for nations, institutions, marriage, friendship, education, in short for human culture as a whole, which comes into being and maintains itself in time only as long as its cultivators overgive of themselves.” - Karel Čapek The Gardener’s Year (1929), quoted in [#Baladur:2016].

Haven’t you sometimes been there yourself? Overgiving: caught between the exhausting virtue of putting everyone else first and the nagging guilt of looking after your own interests. Doesn’t it feel like being stuck in a no-man’s land somewhere between sainthood and selfishness? Yet neither of these seem particularly sustainable for those of us who aren’t planning on either extreme, whether of martyrdom or a career in investment banking.

The conventional wisdom presents us with a stark choice: be selfless (and risk becoming a doormat, a “loser”) or be selfish (and risk becoming an insufferable “winner”). But surely this binary thinking is precisely the problem. What if there’s a third way that doesn’t require us to choose between depleting ourselves and disappointing others?

Image by Josef Čapek, public domain.

Escape the tyranny of false choices

For too long, we’ve been told that the opposite of selfishness is selflessness, a kind of noble self-denial that sounds admirable in theory but proves more than tricky in practice. After all, if you’re constantly giving without taking, who exactly is minding the shop that is your own well-being? It’s a bit like trying to pour from an empty jug; you carry on pouring even after there’s simply nothing left to give.

This might leave us see-sawing between guilt-ridden self-sacrifice and defensive self-preservation, never quite finding our balance. We start with the best intentions, determined to be generous and kind, but gradually find ourselves overextended, resentful, and secretly wondering if perhaps the cynics were right all along: maybe “looking after number one” really is the only sensible approach.

Meet the four tribes

Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, published in 2014 [#Grant:2014], suggests a missing piece of this puzzle. Bill Gates once observed that there are “two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others.” [#Gates:2008] Fair enough (not quite sure how monopolistic billionaires fit in here), but Grant points out that if we take this seriously, we shouldn’t have just two categories of people; instead we should consider four.

Observe the possibilities:

• Some people care deeply about others but little about themselves (these people are the traditional “selfless” types).
• Others care primarily about themselves with little regard for others (they’re the classic “selfish” bunch)
• But what about those who don’t seem particularly bothered about anyone, including themselves? Grant calls these rather sad specimens “apathetic.”
• Finally there are those who manage to care both about their own interests and the interests of others. These people, Grant suggests, deserve their own category entirely. He calls them “otherish”.

This is a term that might not go viral any time soon, and since 2014 it has pretty much gone nowhere. But at least it captures something both more sustainable and more sophisticated than simple selflessness.

Why intelligent altruism works

This isn’t entirely new thinking, of course. The economist Herbert Simon made a similar distinction between what he called “unintelligent altruists” (those martyrs who only look out for others) and “intelligent altruists” (who have the good sense to look after themselves as well). As Simon rather dryly observed,

“The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than the unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.” [#Simon:1993]

Nice work Herbert, you came so close to creating a tongue-twister for geeky ethicists.

At this point, it’s surely inevitable that I’m going to mention the airline safety demonstration that tells you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. They tell you this because you’ll be fairly useless to everyone if you pass out from lack of oxygen. Intelligent altruism recognises that sustainability matters, that you can’t help others effectively if you’ve run yourself out of breath and into the ground.

Herbert Simon isn’t the only precursor here. Martin Luther King Jr. framed a similar idea when he spoke of the choice between “creative altruism” and “destructive selfishness” [#King:2008]. Note that King’s alternative to destructive selfishness wasn’t self-denial; it was creative altruism, an approach that recognises both the moral imperative to care for others and the practical necessity of doing so in a way that doesn’t destroy the caring person in the process.

How do we navigate a universe of others?

Perhaps the most compelling argument for becoming “otherish” (or whatever more catchy term you prefer to use) comes from a rather obvious observation that we somehow manage to forget: as John Andrew Holmes (an American journalist and aphorist) pointed out,

“the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.” [#Holmes:1927]

When it’s put like that, learning to navigate relationships with others while maintaining your own well-being stops being just a nice-to-have social skill and becomes something rather more essential.

In his meditation on gardening, quoted at the top of this piece, the Czech writer Karel Čapek noted that the injunction ”you must give it more than you take away” applies not just to soil, but to “nations, institutions, marriage, friendship, education, in short for human culture as a whole.” But notice that Čapek didn’t suggest we should give everything - just a bit more than we take. This is a sustainable approach to generosity that recognises both the importance of giving and the reality of our own needs.

Sustainable generosity is an art worth learning

Being otherish, then (no, I still can’t think of a better term), isn’t about finding some perfect balance between self and others. It’s about recognising that the two aren’t actually in opposition. When we take care of ourselves thoughtfully, we’re better equipped to take care of others. When we help others effectively, we often discover that our own lives become richer and more meaningful in the process.

This is more than clever accounting or strategic kindness; it’s about understanding that human flourishing is fundamentally interconnected. Since we’re all “composed of others,” learning to be intelligently, creatively, sustainably generous is practically essential. Giving, sometimes even overgiving, in Čapek’s terms; but not over-overgiving. That’s the habit that makes the difference.

But don’t we already know all this? I hear you ask. Isn’t this old news by now? Well, I wish it was but I’m thinking about “intelligent altruism” at a time when political leaders are strongly promoting the exact opposite: flat out dumb selfishness as a supreme virtue. I’m totally over it, and almost any alternative would be better than the supremely stupid road of narcissistic self-destruction they’re trying to lead us down. So do we need to choose between being good to ourselves and being good to others? No. We just need to forget being good and start getting on with being a little less foolish.

References

[#Baladur:2016]: Baladur, Tulika. Review of Gardens. An Essay on the Human Condition, by Robert Pogue Harrison (2008), in On Art and Aesthetics website, https://onartandaesthetics.com/2016/10/01/gardens-an-essay-on-the-human-condition/.

[#Gates:2008]: Gates, Bill. “A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century”. World Economic Forum 2008. Davos, Switzerland. < news.microsoft.com/2008/01/2… > Jan. 24, 2008.

[#Grant:2014]: Grant, Adam. Give and Take. How helping others drives our success. London: Phoenix, 2014.

[#Holmes:1927]: Holmes, John Andrew. Wisdom in Small Doses. Lincoln, NE: The University Publishing Company.

[#King:2008]: King, Coretta Scott. The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Newmarket Press. Quoted in [#Grant:2014], p.31.

[#Simon:1993]: Simon, Herbert. ‘Altruism and Economics’. American Economic Review 83.