I may not have lived long enough but the long I have lived is enough to say that everyone has a certain level of selfishness depending on our own interests. Some people are extremely selfish and think only of themselves, others have a very small percentage of selfishness while others just claim they are not selfish. Actually let’s not think about this third group, it’s like when someone tells you that you can trust him or her yet you know pretty well you can’t.
But all that is not the kind of selfishness I am talking about. Think about the type of selfishness that divides us. When we are growing up we get to learn about the specific groups that we belong to. Our families, our tribe, our county, our country, our continent our planet and so on.
I hope you are realizing the many times I used ‘our’ because it is this word that determines the level of ownership and interests we have amongst us.
It is most often than not that we support the groups we conform to, especially when another group is against us without giving a thought.
It is a matter of people being divided by all aspects of life, the social, economic, political, ethnic, racial and gender. Back in 2007 and 2008 Kenya went into a tribal clash war with every tribe only caring on their own interests. This led to a division due to peoples interests. That is just one example, how many times have we heard the African Americans demonstrate because they feel discriminated by another race? How many times do we hear war between countries? Or in a broader topic, think about all the alien movies you have watched and how humans are against the aliens.
Yes, this is an opinionated piece and everyone may have a different opinion. But many are the times that we fail to realise that other people apart from us are also important. We fight our battles with others from our own point of view with less or no consideration of what other people want.
It is the self-interest that divides us and we should seek a way to overcome it.
