"Pri's altruistic what nots": a personal rant

Find it terribly depressing to think that self-interest is a fundamental, unalienable characteristic of human beings. When we do something for others, whether it’s for individuals, or for society, sure we feel good, but our motivation for doing it is not necessarily to feel good, but because we want to help, or because we think as members of society we want to make a contribution – surely that cannot be classed as ‘self-interest’, or even ‘enlightened self-interest’? What about the thousands of mothers who make different kinds of sacrifices for their children, is that self-interest? Freedom fighters like Steve Biko or Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jnr do we reduce their actions to ‘ego trips’? Was Mother Theresa just a crazy Albanian woman who got a kick out of working in Calcutta’s slums? Or Ela Bhatt (the founder of SEWA) a trade unionist merely interested in recognition for herself?
Equally depressing that young women (especially young women) all of whom are at least fifteen years younger than me, are more inclined like Patsy Cline to shout “stop the world and let me off” than they are to use their energy to change it! I’d rather they went with Edmund Burke “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”. But maybe that’s why at 57, I have very little money in the bank, own no property except a heavily mortgaged flat in a doubtful part of London, continue to boycott Nestlé, haven’t been to Kandalama, am seen on marches and in street junction peace protests, am riding a bike again but have not much change to show for it! (Aunty) Priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

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