Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Nothing wrong with taking credit

America or Germany or any other country is often praised for superior achievements while individual Americans or Germans need to show humility lest they be deemed braggarts.

Even in sports such as tennis, where there’s a dominance of individual performance, taking credit for doing well is rare.

Either bona fide or feigned humility appear to be what’s acceptable and practiced, albeit sometimes with a wink.

But why? What’s wrong with laying claim to one’s achievements provided one is honest about them?

Yes, one can get ridiculously arrogant, such as the late great chess master Bobby Fisher was. And here and there, close up to a good shot, most tennis players exhibit pride on the court, at least with body language. Still, the idea that “we are great” is far more easily put out there than “I am great.”

I think most folks are too intimidated by all the preachings that surround us concerning how we must be unselfish, how taking credit is vanity or conceit, while praising our fellows is nearly always deemed to be appropriate, commendable.

Some of this goes hand in hand with the practice of judging people as ethical or moral only if they benefit their fellows, not when they do well for themselves.

The Princeton University philosopher and famous animal liberation champion makes a great deal of how we must all be altruistic. Recently he chimed in on the current economic downturn with an essay on how despite suffering setbacks, we all have the obligation to send resources to people in poor countries.

That is what will make us decent people, not being prudent and attentive to our own needs and wants and those of our intimates.

Which of course raises the issue of why other people are so deserving of support while those urged to provide the support are not.

What seems to underlie much of this is that for centuries the major religions tended to denigrate people as sinners, mostly, who need to redeem themselves by serving other people. And this probably came from comparing people to angels and God, mystical entities who certainly had it all over us “mere” humans.

Even in the increasingly secular modern era, the view of the human self didn’t see all that much improvement. I have in mind, for example, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ influential idea that people are mostly power hungry and if not restrained by a supreme authority would just as soon destroy one another than live together creatively and productively.

Original sin got transformed into basic (vicious) instinct! And with that many human tendencies and activities also got besmirched.

Sex, which is human as well as animal about us all, is a good case in point. Rarely has it gotten a sensible, levelheaded treatment in the major religions or philosophies.

But when you consider it without prejudice, are human beings really so bad? Sure, they can be and often are but on balance they would seem to be rather decent, hard working, conscientious, and kind — at least most of them, most of the time.

Tibor Machan advises Freedom Communications, parent company of this newspaper. E-mail him at: [email protected]

 
 
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