It's All About Me

Trey Smith

Saturday represented only the second day so far this month in which there wasn't significant rainfall. We enjoyed partly cloudy skies with our high reaching 62 degrees! I took advantage of the nice weather by getting out in the garden to continue my project of digging up sod.

This activity continues to puzzle my neighbors. Though I have explained to them WHY I have chosen this labor-intensive method, they still offer their "helpful" suggestions. The number one suggestion always has something to do with one herbicide or another.

"If you use x, you could accomplish your goals so much quicker and easily" is the common refrain. I don't work and I don't socialize much, so I need projects to occupy my time. Getting out in the garden and working with the soil seems like a great way to enjoy the outdoors. And while the tack I have chosen is not the easiest, who ever said the easiest route is the best?

The answer to that question is America's chemical companies. That's the message they've been spreading for years! Your time is valuable, they tell us, so we've created products that will allow you to get the job done in no time at all. Don't worry about the costs to the environment or the health of yourself or your community. Your time is all that matters.

This message plays well in America and our capitalist society because we've been taught to believe that life is all about ourselves -- the world of me. My time is more valuable than anyone else's time. My efforts are more important than anyone else's efforts. My happiness is more essential than anyone else's happiness.

By focusing chiefly on our own desires, it becomes very easy to discount how our actions might negatively impact someone else. Why should we care about others anyway? They are focusing on satisfying their own desires too. Their decisions could just as easily have a negative impact on me, so I need to insure that I'm at the head of the line.

One of the key points of capitalism is that the public interest is best served when we each pursue our own self-interests. Supposedly these equal levels of self-interest will balance each other out and the economic interests of all will increase. Whether you believe this axiom is true or, like me, you think it represents a big, fat lie, I think we should be able to agree that one of the pillars of this theory is born of selfishness.

If we are at all honest, that's what self-interest is. It's just a more benign way of phrasing it. When your number one goal in life supposedly is protecting your own self-interests, what we have done is to elevate selfishness to a virtue!

And so, if I chose to behave in a selfish manner, I would use one or more of the various herbicides on the market to kill my grass. It would save MY precious time and money. Few people would give me any grief over this decision.

Yet, by choosing to be unselfish -- to give consideration for how the use of herbicides will negatively impact the planet and the life forms who call it home -- my neighbors act as if I'm an alien from outer space! They look at me like I'm some aging hippie trying to spread peace and universal love.

It blows my mind.