Selfishness is killing America.
We’re all going to die. You can’t stop it.
Over 100 billion people have died since humanity’s infancy. One. Hundred. Billion. You and I and everyone else represent less than 8% of the people that have ever existed. The span of your life, my life, all of our friends and family- it just represents a grain of sand on a beach. We are insignificant compared to the universe. Just keep that in the back of your mind.
Selfishness is strangling housing in the Bay Area.
Selfishness over perceived loss of property value, over killing your view or your sightline, these petty things that hold back forward movement, progress, advancement for the future- selfishness has strangled housing in the Bay Area. This is the same selfishness that has only further stratified the class cold war between the shrinking middle-class, and the wealthy.
Instead, what little precious land that can be acquired must maximize profit, and so instead of regular housing that stands a chance of being affordable, everything is constructed as “luxury”. And thus, selfishness of property owners acts as a force function for class war.
The reality is that something such as the Manhattanization of San Francisco will only drive UP property value. The piece of land your house sits on will become more valuable, as a larger building on that same plot can contain more units of housing than the structure that already exists in its place. Over time, all benefit instead of the myopic, selfish views of property owners that prevent them from engaging in anything but NIMBYism.
Selfishness strangles freedom.
Wanting to impose your restrictive religious based values onto an entire diverse nation is selfish. That selfishness drives the country towards what is merely a different shade of Islamic Fundamentalist Religious Law. In fact, given Judaism, Islam and Christianity all root from the same place, we should stop calling it Islamic Fundamentalism. We should just start calling it Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic Fundamentalism. All are guilty here when it comes to religiously-driven laws.
To impose restrictions on the freedom of someone to pursue what was held most dear in the Declaration of Independence that literally helped found this nation, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, is undeniably un-American. If the freedom of someone to do something that doesn’t cause injury to others is restricted, it is anti-freedom.
Freedom for someone to do something that doesn’t prevent you from pursuing your own happiness, life or liberty- that’s not anti-anything. In an permissive-system of freedom, it will be difficult to find someone unhappy with their freedom.
Kurosawa showed it well.
In Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, the seven men helping to defend the poor farming village from a gang of 40 bandits have to make the tactical decision to evacuate the three houses on the opposite side of the bridge, and destroy the bridge. This was the only way to close the defensive perimeter up to give them the advantage. Defending the three houses would make them lose the rest of the village.
In one scene, one of the men from the families who live in the three houses throws down his weapon and tells the others from their side to leave with him. The Samurai pulls him back in line with the rest and explains that to defend the three, all would be lost.
Kurosawa makes it clear that sometimes to protect all, some must sacrifice a little, for if everyone is selfish in their needs, all will be lost.
You are going to die someday.
It’s true.
Once upon a time, your job was to help secure a livelihood for your family. That was your responsibility. To build something that could endure for your future progeny. This wasn’t unlike what Feudal lords did in Medieval times. But we’re not the same anymore. We aren’t isolated tribes solely dependent on ourselves. We’re larger than that. We’re a city. A state. A nation. A world. There’s only one home for all of us, Earth. There’s nowhere else to move.
It’s time for people to realize that humanity is your family, and we have a responsibility to progress civilization through freedom and liberty, and to help one another. Because you’re going to be dead one day, and you should give a fuck what kind of world your children or neighbor’s children are going to grow up in.
I have no stunning revelations or plans here.
All I can tell you is that if we don’t all start considering the greater good, there’s no way we can ever get anywhere. Because you, me, we’re all dead at some point. Might as well leave an actual legacy for the future.
