Do Good Be Good
You are reading this because you think you will get to know something by reading this that you did not earlier. I am writing this because I think I will get to know something about myself by writing this that I did not know earlier and that if people read this, that must be good for me, somehow.
Every active action that we do, we do it because it good for us.
Assuming this is true, all of us could potentially be, what is usually called, selfish. Humor me, whilst I list down some cases:
You go to the gym because you want to look good. Or you want to stay fit, so that you live longer. Or just feel stronger. Or maybe you go to the gym simply because you particularly like that one person who comes around at the same time you do. In the last case, you’re more closer to your basic desires than in other cases.
You study because you’re being told that learning stuff is important, because you would be graded on your knowledge of stuff throughout the rest of your lives. While that may be true, you also notice how the same people who tell you to study, have reasons for telling you so. If you study and study well, two things will happen: 1. You will be more likely to succeed in life. 2. People who told you the importance of studying will feel a sense of accomplishment for contributing to someone’s life and that, in turn, fuels their idea of how they are a good person who does good things.
You pursue a love interest because something inside you tells you to. If you’re lucky, and the thing inside you is real, you won’t notice how selfish the love is because it is cloaked now, with the hazy pureness of your love. Bliss! …That something that tells you that they are the one for you, makes you do something that might be good for you. It makes you take the leap forward. You go ahead and ask them out. You find something common between the two of you - the band that they love now is the same one you used to drool over in tenth grade. This shared interest circles back and solidifies the initial feeling of attraction. Oh, you are now inseparable. You live together for a while. You see how they change in front of other people, but you ignore it thinking they are their real self in front of you and their changed personality is just a show for others. This fucks you up, because now you are calculating, meticulously, the probability of what you think to be their real self to actually be their pretend self, that they used with you. When you were ‘other people’ to them and they were their some other self. You go back to thinking that this shouldn’t be happening to you. Only good things should happen to you. So, you pivot your actions and thoughts again to minimize the possibility of you being wrecked in this arrangement. To get out of this situation with minimal casualties. Why? Because hurt is no good, you think.
You are a tree. You grow fruits on your branches because you want to spread your seeds all across the region. You make the color of the fruit a bit brighter. You sweeten the pulp up just to increase the chances of attracting the right animal. Make it more juicier. You hang the fruit lower now so that it gets eaten/or upper if you want the fastest/strongest/the best of the lot to eat your fruit. You give them all this because you are hoping they will eat the Naturally Enhanced™ fruit and shit the seeds with their Wholesome Organic™ manure to grow more of your kind nearby. To spice things up, you concoct up a laxative and add it generously to the flesh of the fruit to induce premature shits. All mammal shits are same to you. Whatever gets the seeds out the fastest. You go ahead, and this is learned over generations, and add a little more spice, literally now, that only affects mammals and not birds because you like birds. 1 They don’t eat the seeds up like those stupid mammals do. And they travel farther, so they’ll shit farther too, potentially expanding your reach. This is the tree equivalent of working out in the gym to attract the right kind of mate. In a way, the tree is using us for reproduction. After all, Biology is basically just about sex and death. Maximizing the first and minimizing the latter. 2 But, here comes the intelligent Homo Sapien 9000. We trick you into believing that your seeds are going places by eating a lot of your fruit. Not the seeds though. We eat the sweet juicy flesh, dump the seeds and only replant less than 1% of the seeds. Not because we want to fulfill your purpose. Only because we want more of your fruit. You could argue that this is a symbiotic relationship. We both are getting what we wanted, albeit in a twisted way. Maybe this is a reflection of the relationship with the love interest in the above point. They live together in a contorted harmony supporting each other and doing what’s good.
You want to save the Earth, because you inhabit it. Since you are aware of your fellow inhabitants and their wants and priorities, you have a presentiment that shit is going to hit the fan if the schoolyard bully that is capitalism is continued to be allowed to have its go. “If capitalism wins, we die”, thinks Leo. And since we all are one, you are Leo and Leo is you. 3 So you, being Leonardo DiCaprio, are on a world saving mission starting with the Arctic penguins and then moving on to the humans because, inherently even Leo has his priorities right. Now focused as ever, with no wandering daydreams of winning an Oscar anymore, Leo is more philanthropic as never before, trying to do what? To save the world. “But, why?”, you ask. “Isn’t dating supermodels enough for one man? Is he obligated to spend his time saving the aquatic life and the African tribes”. Leo does this because if the Earth dies, so do we. So do the supermodels, the athletes, the Presidents, the koalas, the elephants, the snakes, the bakery that you love, the pub that you hate, the rotisserie that rotates. We want to save the world, because if it dies, we die. Elon Musk is endeavouring to sustain life on other planets because he is our fail-safe. A steam-engine running for thousands of years cannot be brought to a screeching halt, that’s why we need bubble-wrap suits so that we can jump off the carriages and live because we are running out of rail track. Elon is the guy in charge of making the cheapest, yet safe bubble-wrap suit. He has made himself in-charge because if no one does, the alternative sucks. It is for the willingness to live, the most basic survival instinct that most of our actions can be directly traced back to.
The answers are not here. I do not know why I am writing this. You do not know why you’re reading this. So might as well, be good to others around us. We are not here for long. Go get that fit body you want so bad, study like there’s no tomorrow. Love, deeply endlessly and spread your seeds. 😄