There is a bumper sticker about rescue dogs: Who's Rescuing Who? This, of course, refers to the idea that the human being who takes a dog out of the pound and gives it a home is benefited as much as the dog.
There is a television commercial showing a sequence of strangers on the street who, one at a time, performs some random act of kindness and then in the next scene is benefited by another act of kindness. The woman who helps a little old man pick up things he's spilled onto the sidewalk, then walks down the street and is about to step out in front of an oncoming bus, only to be pulled out of harm's way by a stranger, who himself, in the next scene is saved from a piano crashing on his head by another stranger and so on.
The messages of this ad may be variously interpreted--I cannot even remember the product being advertised--but the message I took home was there is a sort of order to the universe, call it God, or call it universal justice or whatever you like, but somehow the good you do, although it may not seem to benefit you directly, or perceptibly, comes back to benefit you. In this way of thinking, there is some magical connection between seemingly unconnected events, something which is guided by a force for justice, for reward.
Then, there is the less magical view, that virtue is it's own reward, or, as the Beatles said in some song, "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
Or something.
All of this redounds to an idea which has bothered me since I landed on various tele evangelists, whose message to the throngs seems to be, "Love God, or else," or "Love God, and you will be handsomely rewarded."
These Christian evangelists embrace the essence of capitalism: You do this for me, and the trade is, you get something you want.
Jesus Christ himself, spoke of rewards: Heaven.
Heaven, the reward.
It may be unseen down here on earth, but it awaits up there, above the clouds.
Heaven represents the ultimate long term investment. It's the one thing you want in your portfolio, the thing you never want to sell off, even in a down market.
For me, all this is a little disturbing. It's very Ayn Rand.
As I understand Ayn Rand, never having been able to finish one of her books, but as I understand the argument is there is no such thing as an unselfish act. If you do something you know is kind or beneficial to someone else, even if that person doesn't know you did it, you know and you feel better about yourself, so you get the reward, or, if you believe in Heaven, well, you will get your reward by assuring yourself a place in Heaven.
It raises the big question about the question: Do you love God? Do you love Jesus? But, as far as I can see, loving God, for most Christians, is simply self love, or love which is similar to the love the chorus girl has for the sugar daddy--she can see all his virtues, see past his shortness, his baldness, his obesity, because, he is rewarding her big time.
So is that really love?
I would submit there are some forms of love which are pretty selfless, and any parent likely has experienced this sort of love. I firt experienced it when my first son, age 18 months stepped out of the bathtub and slipped on the wet tile floor and fell right on his chest. He was unhurt, but seeing the terror in his eyes as he fell and hearing the whacking sound as he hit, I was thunderstruck. I would have taken that fall a thousand times rather having him experience it. It was probably the first time I had ever experienced that sort of thing.
Mother wildebeasts will attack a pack of lions, or hyenas to protect their babies. You can argue about evolutionary adaptation and all that, but whatever the force is, wherever it comes from, as far as I'm concerned, it's mystical and pure and much superior to any Christian promise of eternal bliss, or any promise of seven virgins after you blow up yourself.
And it makes no sense, in a capitalist sense. You get nothing back for your impulse.
In fact, if you look at the world God has created, or at least the world over which God presides, lions eat lambs. You would take no lesson from what you see around you to offer a hand if you are imperiling yourself, or even if you do not imperil yourself.
If there's nothing in it for you: Both the lords of capitalism and the study of nature would say, don't be a fool.
Oh, yes, talk about ants and bees and cooperative insects and the current discussion of the role of selflessness in evolutionary terms.
But for my money, you should excuse the expression, one of the most wonderous things on this planet is that person who notices a cluster of metal nails and removes it from behind the tire of a car, because he sees if the driver backs out over it, it will destroy the tire, likely as the driver is speeding down the highway, oblivious, minutes later. The good samaritan gets no reward. Only he knows what he has done. For my money, if he feels better about himself, that does not diminish the grace and purity of what he has done.
If character is what you do when you know nobody is watching, then goodness is the good you do when you know nobody but you will ever know about it, expecting no reward but being happy you could help.
I used to see little acts of kindness, occasionally, in the hospital, committed often by people without status, a man who scrubs the room after a patient leaves, a clerk, an escort service person, a nurse, even a doctor, just some simple gesture, done wordlessly, in passing. It was one of the things which made me feel privileged to work in the hospital, to be among people like that.
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