Not What I Can Get! What I Can Do For You Is What Will Make Both Of Us Happy!

The New Old Age Column in the New York Times presents some endearing winners. One among them was today’s: When Wishing Makes It So. Click on the hypertext of it to go where I have posted it on my archive.

It describes a program equivalent to the Make A Wish Program for Children. This is one for seniors. My first impression of Make A Wish for Children was that it was a feel good endeavor that singled out one needing recipient in a field of so many equally needing getting nothing. Does winning this lottery for one compensate for all of the pain and loss left unattended?

When I see it described in the program for seniors I see a less flamboyant program dealing in more modest gifts perhaps providing more of them across the board. I at least hope so.

It strikes me these programs are evidence of a greater conversation and action, taking a course somewhat foreign in our current cultural style. It is something seen more in our younger community members who learn in school and on the internet the benefits of helping one another as beating the other out for grades. This carries over into approaches of life motivated by what can I do to help you rather than how can I get that so you can’t.

I am reading a book right now entitled The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. The book has profound insight into what has been wrong and what needs to be right in our culture as we deal with one another.

Its primary premise is that for too long, certainly since the enlightenment emanating from the middle of the last millennium, we have considered man to be the raw savage of Spencer definition as formulated by the rational philosophes and other philosophers and social thinkers of the enlightenment.

Man became defined as a raw savage striving to acquire in competition with all around him. We heard and believed in the term “survival of the fittest.” We firmly believed that in competition of many; one against the other, equilibrium would be found protecting the greatest number in the acquisition of material things.

This view has permeated all of our society before, during and since the enlightenment. It is not only the coin of economy it is the style of all modern intercommunication. Each striving to secure their best interests, doing so good will assuredly result whatever it may be.

In our foreign policy this is the most terrifying. Mutual Destructive Stalemate is our formula providing the greatest protection against devastation.

In the book Rifkin espouses another way, a far more sensible way. He suggests and recommends a way far more natural to man and for more plausible in finding solution to differences.

His is simply; operate out of empathy for one another. Not only feel empathy but do empathetically, just as Confucius, Buddha, Hillel, and Jesus would have us do when they said “do not do to another that which you would not want them to do to you.”

Rifkin proposes this as “Win Win” Through and Through! And it is.
In this context it is worth checking back to read an article I posted of Rifkin’s speaking of all of this on February TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2010 “Empathic Civilization': Is It Time To Replace The American Dream?"
This is food for much thought as I ponder the article I posted today and about the need we need to get about fulfilling in this time of stultifying limited resources. It needs to be us. It is the rest of us who need to do it. Corporations won’t, no profit in it, Government is the beast essentially starved, and it can’t do it. Charitable, Religious and Non Profit groups are trying but need more support and less committee review.

What is mostly needed is our change in attitude. We need to quit protecting the perimeters around our enclaves, like walls and doors around our house, and start opening the doors to the neighborhood and the community stepping out and asking “What can I do that will help?” “What do you need from me?”

In his book, in his article Rifkin speaks of our more natural inclination to help one another and compete with each other. We need to start utilizing this natural inclination and improve lives around us and our own lives in the process.

It will help us get nearer the goal of helping all of us as calamities hit as Alzheimer’s bearing down on us is soon to do.

So… How does this fit into the article I posted today? This program is quietly helping out where help is effective and highly beneficial to the recipient. It is truly a program of giving in key places where giving helps.

We need more of this! We need more of this! We need more of this!