Natural Interest--- right?

Isn't self-interest, well, natural?

My father received an honorary degree this week. The honor was a pretty big deal because they threw in a couple of other add-ons to the award that just made it even more prestigious.

When he told me, the fact that he had been different on the phone since the last time I spoke to him became apparent. I have this random wierd memory from the time when I was like fourteen. One of my father's products had one some huge award for innovation and all these other crazy features. Part of what made the product such a big deal was that a substantial number of it's applications would help lots of people---lots.

We were riding together in the car. I can't remember where we were going. Suddenly, he got into this weird trance-like mode, and started saying shit all of which he boiled down to a single annoying statement--Money can't buy prestige. He had proven to himself that despite him at the time not being able to pull off all the commercialism that he would have liked, he at least had managed to attract selective attention.

It was disgusting. He seemed so utterly self-absorbed that I swear he forgot I was in the car. In fact, that summarized my view of my father's attitude for the majority of his adulthood. He was absorbed with his career to the degree that he forgot that he had family.

That statement relies on several key assumptions:
1. my father's intense satisfaction from award's equals his absorption with his career.
2. careerism equals egoism.

So, I did some googling on egoism and achievement, and got an interesting quote:

"As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth century ethical culture, both Greek philosophy and Christian religion, held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest."
The quote comes from a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

This to a good degree sums up my anger with the universe.

I hate, detest, and want to fucken obliterate egoism, and yet, I wont' let go of it myself.

One issue that underlies that statement is that to a large extent on some levels I really despise myself. I am masochistic.

I also think that egoism is lonely, and I hate feeling lonely. I also think that egoism is out of synch with the universe. Since I don't contain the universe, and it instead contains me, egoism, as a self-focused endeavor, makes me feel small.

These statements rely on the assumption that egoism separates me from the universe. Egoism makes my motives center on me, and I cannot be the center of the universe.

After all this ranting, I did some more reading and talked to my favorite sibling. According to my sources, I desperately need to read Ayn Rand for a decent intro-treatment to ethical egoism.

During the past few conversations, I said that sometimes I thought I should just be a teacher, or a naturalist. Maybe I'm missing my calling. Maybe I shouldn't achieve because well, that's not who I am cut out to be.

I heard responses back that my talent is intellectual and that I should pursue this avenue. Hmm... the next post perhaps somes it up well.