Short-Sightedness in Selfishness

This driver who sees in the horn a lovely American toy, and so never stops fondling it and playing with it as he speeds through the streets of the city, believing he has done his duty toward the pedestrians and the other vehicles... forgetting, or pretending to forget, how many of people's nerves he has crushed along the way, how many of their ears he has shattered, and how many a bed of sleep he has troubled and kept wakeful in the night...

This maid who shakes out the carpets in the early morning, while the city is still slumbering, and so hurls her bombs that rend the prevailing stillness and terrify the neighbors... or who throws the house sweepings from the balcony onto the street and onto whoever is in the street, then follows them with the rinsing water, reckoning all the while that she has done her duty in cleaning the house from which she earns her bread.

This neighbor who gives the radio set free rein by day or by night — and perhaps night and day — sending out upon his neighbors, on all three wavebands, waves of disturbance and annoyance, forcing them to hear music they do not like and news and talks they cannot bear, while he makes a show of being free in his own house and with his own set, and no one has any right to protest or grumble...

This young man who will not stand in line before the ticket window, but storms the window from the other side, believing he has done no more than take a bold step that has earned him the saving of a wait... or who raises his voice in the cinema, commenting on the film or chatting with a companion, and sometimes uttering things that wound the ears of virgin girls and chaste women...

This man who rolls out curses and foul language in the middle of the street or in the tramcar, caring nothing whom the shrapnel of his abuse and the spray of his foulness may strike, so long as he is amusing himself and giving his spirit relief...

This passerby, or this shopkeeper, who throws his rubbish onto the roadside, delighted that he has spared himself the trouble of putting it in a special box or of walking as far as the refuse basket...

This man who takes pleasure in breaking the law — the traffic law, or the law of commerce, or the penal law — by slipping away from the men of the law; and if they take him by surprise, and he holds a high position, or is hitched to the wheel of a high position, he does not scruple to demean them, belittle them, and threaten them with punishment because they have dared to touch him in the name of the law.

All these and their like we are accustomed to call selfish: people who care only for themselves and the gratification of their whims, heedless of others and with no regard for their feelings. The truth is that these are the shortest-sighted of all people in their selfishness, and the most undutiful toward their own selves.

Yes — for just as there is short-sightedness in politics, and in economics, and in the judging of many matters, so too in selfishness — yes, even in selfishness — there is short-sightedness. What is understood by selfishness is love of self and preference for it without regard for others; but on condition that this truly leads to the self's comfort, and to the selfish man's enjoyment of guaranteed privileges and advantages. It does not occur to us to defend selfishness, to promote it, and to teach people its principles... nor does it stand in need of that, for it is one of those instincts that no one has the power to repel. But selfishness, like the other instincts, is subject to development and refinement by polish and discipline. And it lies within the power of society — that is, of man's life among men — to change the forms of selfishness, if it does not change its essence. What is asked of the individual in society is not that he rid himself of his selfishness and make himself a gift or a victim to others; what is asked of him is only that he be far-sighted in this selfishness... that he understand that protecting himself, and securing comfort and well-being for himself, can come about only through small sacrifices for others. And these sacrifices, or concessions, which he makes of his own free choice, return to him in the end many times multiplied.

The individual who gratifies his narrow selfishness and ignores the community — violating the law of cleanliness and health, or the law of courtesy and public comfort, or the penal code — directs a single offense at society. But in return for it he exposes himself to many offenses, for he encourages others to repay him in kind — indeed he positively drives them to it. And once every man in society says: it is my right to do as I please, and let the others burst if they will — chaos spreads, and it becomes certain to every individual that however energetic he may be, he can never, alone, direct at those around him as many offenses as they, all together, can direct at him. And so selfishness fails utterly, and turns into the very opposite of what it intended and strove for.

The written laws, and the customary laws, which the community lays down and agrees upon to secure its safety and comfort, are in reality nothing other than a guarantee of the individual's safety and comfort. And the more the individuals cooperate in carrying out the law, and respect one another, and feel that they are one body, the more surely is the safety and comfort of each one of them, taken singly, guaranteed; and none but madmen and fools would deny this truth. Your making light of the rights of others, your indifference to their comfort, and your disdain for their health — all this breeds in their souls a like feeling, so that they make light of your rights, care nothing for your comfort, and disdain your health; and the loss falls upon you in the end, and you pay dearly for your short-sighted selfishness. The Europeans knew this before we did; they are not less selfish than we are — indeed they are perhaps keener than we are on preferring themselves. One of the mottoes of some of them runs: every man for himself, and God alone for all. But their selfishness is broad of horizon and far of sight. Hence the care each of them takes for the public law, and the neighbor's respect for the neighbor's comfort, and the regarding of the community's property — such as the quiet, the street, and all the public places — as if it were private individual property. If one of them troubles the calm of the stillness at night, it is as though he troubled his own calm. Whoever throws rubbish into the street is like one throwing rubbish into his own house; and whoever destroys a flower or a tree or a bench in a public garden is like one destroying, with his own hand, a possession dear to him.

We say: what would happen if I picked one flower out of a thousand flowers, or broke the traffic law at some deserted turn, or threw an empty cigarette box onto the sidewalk, or shook out my carpet from the balcony? But they say: what would befall the garden if it occurred to every citizen to pick a flower — since I enjoy no privilege over him; and what would happen at the deserted turn if it occurred to every driver coming from any direction to break the traffic rules; and what might become of the sidewalk if every passerby threw down his empty box; and what dust would fill the street, and what din would fill the air, if everyone in the quarter chose to shake their carpets out from the balconies?

And the consequence is worse and graver still if any laxity creeps into the written law. One laxity drags a second after it, and then a third... and so on and on, until the law becomes as though it had never existed. Perhaps citing the example of Socrates here is of telling benefit. He gave the most splendid lesson in history on respect for the law, on the day he refused to let his disciples take him out of prison and save him from the death sentence, saying to them — he who had spent his whole life calling for respect for the law, however unjust it might be: Let us suppose that the State and the Laws came and appeared before me as I was attempting to escape, and asked me: Tell us, Socrates, what are you doing? What do you seek by your attempt to escape, except to destroy us, the Laws, and to destroy the whole city, so far as lies in your power?

Do you believe that a state can endure if its laws are not observed and its citizens make light of them?

It may be just to demand that every citizen be a Socrates. But it is no excess at all to ask that it settle firmly in the mind of every citizen that the written law, or the customary law, exists for his own service and the service of his family and kin.

I passed through Rome in the summer of 1950, and I did not hear a single horn rise from the thousands of cars that cross the Italian capital, even though some circumstances would call for honking. I asked my companion, who had settled in Rome: is the punishment severe, then, and the fine high, for whoever sounds his horn? He answered me: no — but people here respect the law, and the mere issuing of a law is enough for everyone to abide by it.

And I passed through Paris in the spring of 1951, and learned that the horn is not forbidden in the French capital; yet I rarely heard a horn, and when I did hear one, it was a faint tap, at the moment of utmost necessity.

The truth is that the people in Rome and Paris love themselves.