The Theory of Sensible Selfishness

Daniel Quinn is best known as the author of Ishmael, a novel that in 1991 won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship. Ishmael has been in print continuously since its publication in 1992 and is available in more than 25 languages. Throughout the U.S. and Canada and in other countries, Ishmael is used as a text in a range of classes that include anthropology, history, ecology, literature, philosophy, ethics, biology, and psychology, at age levels from middle school through graduate level.

Mr. Quinn established Ishmael to encourage authors to seek "creative and positive solutions to global problems." His book does exactly that; poses the problem rather than the outright solution.
Within the text The Law of Limited Competition is posed as a universal law of ecology (rather than a legal law).
My Senior English Honors Professor Theodore Zawada, introduced Ishmael to the class in a very cliché manor- what a happy go lucky “Pay it forward idea” he had: Save the world.
That’s it. Save the world.
He said “No ones project has ever worked, but I advise you give it your best try and your efforts will be graded” What an inspirational man he was.
I imprisoned myself in my own mind for several days and embraced my inner Hitler. This idea began with mind control. Maybe I could look at techniques the media uses to inform people, then I could switch it up and use a new technique.
I looked at the sympathy route: we feel bad but who cares it’s not even relevant to us. Empathy: that wears thin because yes we were once in that position but we aren’t anymore. Awareness: but you become immune to a stimulus, no more impact. Alright consequence: death penalty… enough said.
We all know our world is doomed and we all know why but why the hell aren’t we doing anything to fix it. Ishmael says this is because we all choose to live our short life of glory. It’s not a crock, it’s natural.
All of this finding my Hitler within left with my solution. Survival of the Fittest is natural born animal instinct. Humans are selfish not because they choose to be but because without your own life, you can’t help anyone else. Here is where my theory comes into play.
I scrapped pieces from Survival of the Fittest and Limited Competition and overall Ethics. I call it, Sensible Selfishness.
Sensible Selfishness: Verb. A theory that says, to benefit the overall species a predator may compete to it's best ability, but it may not go beyond that - and their main concern must be with self rather surroundings but still live by the laws of morality and it may not reduce the natural ability of it's competitors to compete.
If there is a group of people with a leader who tries to help everyone, the group will fail. But if you have a group and each person only worries about the benefit of themselves then the group as a whole will succeed.
This has held true since the dawn of time and it began with animals. Humans came in and manipulated the system and stopped living by Survival of the Fittest. We live by survival of all and that’s simply not how the world was meant to work.
Sensible Selfishness does not say that you should simply stop caring about others. It simply states that self benefit should always be placed above the benefit of other as long as you’re not lying, cheating or purposely hindering the ability of others to succeed.
The quote I like to use when demonstrating Sensible Selfishness is “Give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish he’ll eat for a lifetime.”
The idea applies to natural disasters and AIDS in Africa but more specifically it applies to the concept of welfare, the government funded health care plan etc. It simply applies to anything and thus, this theory will save the world we live in. The world we are doomed to. If each person could come to the same consensus that each of us live for ourselves, we'd each thrive and thus the nation would thrive.
You can't help someone else until you've helped yourself. Period.
-By Jasmine Carol Simonson

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