If Not Now When?

One of the most important figures in Judaism is the Great Rabbi Hillel, who once remarked, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?  If not now, when?"  This quote has been posted on the top of my blog since the beginning, however, it has not yet been fully addressed.  After several months of blogging on the topic of altruism and self-interest, I have come to the conclusion that this quote is, as I suspected, an appropriate maxim by which to live life.

It is difficult to definitively conclude that any action is purely altruistic because the mere act of helping others causes most people to derive some sense of personal satisfaction. Thus, defining actions as altruistic or self-interested is more arbitrary than it is useful, and more theoretical than it is practical.  It is more important to ask the question of for what purpose we dedicate our lives and how we define our relationships with others than how we act.

If we believe Hillel, then the answer I to strike a balance.  "If I am not for myself, who am I?"  Thi seems to suggest that if we do not have some sense of self-interest, then we lose our identities.  In my English class this year, we discussed at length the idea of storytelling, and the idea was proposed in one discussion that if we do not as a society defend our own narrative, then someone else will fill that void.  This is not only unadvisable, but dangerous.   Allowing one group of people to define another's collective narrative leaves the door open for hatred and acts of violence, for instance, the narrative of the Jews that Hitler told in the 1930s that culminated in the Holocaust.

"But if I am only for myself," Hillel says, "who am I?"  Our human identity is not only defined by how we defend our own narrative, but how we interact with others.  Compassion, and an understanding of the other, are important components of what it means to be a human being.

And most importantly, "If not now, when?"  Striking a balance between living our lives for ourselves and for others is difficult, but it is urgent.  As one of my teachers says, "do something good for yourself and for others; start with others."  For some people, being altruistic is a prerequisite for helping themselves, and for others, self-care is a prerequisite for being able to look out for others.  Either way results in the same end--the same balance.  That is a deeply personal choice, but if the end result is the same, either is permissible.

Environmental Protection: Why Do We Do It?

For what reason do we protect the environment?  Why might an elderly person plant a fruit tree even if it will not bear fruit for several decades?  There are many possible motivations for this behavior.

There are certainly some self-interested, economic incentives for preserving plant and animal species.  Frequently plants possess medicinal qualities, and certain types of endangered animals can attract tourism.  Perhaps when we see a picture of a polar bear balancing precariously on a thin sheet of ice, we feel compelled to donate merely so that we can ease the guilt we feel for living lives that pollute the environment.

We protect the environment to save ourselves.  Changing temperatures, ocean acidification, altered precipitation patterns, deforestation, etc. all have very tangible effects on human beings, not just plants and animals.  We describe climate change as a threat that we should be concerned about, and that narrative may just be the single best way to compel people to act because of its simplicity: it is rooted in the logic if self-preservation, for most people.

One interesting exception, however, is elderly adults.  The elderly adult who makes a concerted effort to protect the environment will probably not live to see the tangible effects of their work.  So why do it?  

Perhaps some elderly people have an altruistic urge to protect future generations.  If they have no children of their own, they are taking the time, and perhaps bearing an expense, in order to protect people that they have never even met and have no personal stake in.  But if people are acting out of compassion for their own children, then that begs a question of whether protecting your own children counts as an act of altruism.  It all depends on your definition.

And some acts of environmental protection have little foreseeable human consequence.  Thus, saving the kinds of plants and animals may not have any direct effect on humans can be considered a form of altruism.   More often than not, no one is motivated to save the last dozen exotic insects of some specific variety in the Amazon because it will radically alter the course of life for any human being.  Perhaps it is compassion and altruism drive this sort of endeavor purely for the sake of scientific knowledge.

It is only through understanding why people choose to engage in environmental protection that we can gauge how to best motivate them.  We should play simultaneously on people’s altruistic and self-interested tendencies: we should raise awareness so that people are sufficiently concerned for their own futures and we should imbue people with a love of nature so that they can have compassion for it.

Image from: http://www.boomsbeat.com/

The Week That Changed The World

I would hazard a guess that when people think of Richard Nixon, the first thing that comes to mind is typically Watergate, an incident so heinous that it often overshadows his shrewd foreign policy toward China.  

After more than 20 years of virtually no contact between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China, President Nixon visited Beijing in February 1972 to meet with Chinese leaders including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in an effort to improve relations.  President Nixon famously called his visit “the week that changed the world."  The U.S.-China relationship proved to be, and continues to be, a mutually beneficial relationship.
  
Despite the interdependence of the U.S. and China, the two nations are very suspicious of each other nowadays.  Washington has made the assumption that China is on a quest for total hegemony in East Asia. Consequentially, President Obama has begun to place a greater emphasis on America's presence in East Asia.  Beijing perceives this "Asia Pivot" as an imperialist plot to stifle China's rise.  Whether or not America is on a quest to contain China, or more extremely, to exploit China, is a hot topic.

But what were Nixon's original intentions?  Certainly the President of the United States and Mao (an ardent communist) were strange bedfellows.

Andrew Nathan, a professor at Columbia University, and Andrew Scobell, a political analyst for the RAND Corporation authored an interesting article about Beijing's fears argue, "In the Chinese view, Washington's slow rapprochement with Beijing was not born of idealism and generosity; instead it was pursued so that the United States could profit from China's economic opening by squeezing profits from U.S. investments, consuming cheap Chinese goods, and borrowing money to support the U.S. trade and fiscal deficits."  

Yes, it would be very difficult to make the case that America's intentions were truly idealistic or altruistic.  As realists, President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger believed that all states behave in a self-interested fashion, and as such, so should the United States.

On the other hand, the Chinese view fails to take into account the advantages for China of establishing relations with the United States.  China was not a victim of the "week that changed the world"!  The U.S.-PRC relationship has proven to be mutually beneficial.  

It's interesting to see how people will twist history to support current policy.  The concept that the United States made overtures to China in order to destroy China is a prime example.  That view makes little sense in the context of Cold War history, but it is not difficult to see how it makes perfect sense in the context of modern-day Chinese nationalism.

Crimea

It seems that the only thing preventing the media from talking 24/7 about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight is the situation in Crimea.  If you’re reading this blog right now, then that means you have access to modern channels of communication, and thus, you’re probably somewhat familiar with the recent string of events. 

Over the past couple of weeks, the Russian Federation has seized de facto control over the Crimea.  The new pro-Russian Crimean government held a referendum in which a supposed 97% of the electorate voted for Crimea to join Russia.  The West quickly denounced the election as illegitimate and has promised to punish Moscow for its act of aggression.

President Putin has tried to spin Russia’s intervention in Ukraine as an effort to “protect ethnic Russians.”  One has to seriously doubt this claim given that there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Ukrainian government is or was discriminating against ethnic Russians.

And if there are any countries in the world that act on behalf of idealist, altruistic principles rather than calculated self-interest, Russia is certainly not among of them.  The Kremlin is not fooling anyone here!  Russia’s actions over the past few weeks are clearly part of their design to reclaim its former glory.  (After all, Putin once remarked that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical calamity of the 20^th century.)

No matter how selfish, aggressive, or power-hungry nations may be, they often will exert surprising amounts of time and effort attempting to frame their blatantly reprehensible actions as altruistic.  The Crimean referendum was held under crisis conditions, there was no option on the ballot to maintain the status quo, and many ethnic Tatars chose not to even come out to vote out of protest.  Putin has also been claiming (confusingly) that many of the armed, uniformed men who took over airports and government buildings in the Crimea are simply not Russian.

If President Putin was really feeling altruistic--and felt compassion for all minority groups that want to determine the status of their own borders independently--then he should also be okay with holding a secession referendum in Chechnya!  And Dagestan!  Somehow, I think he might just not be okay with that...

This phenomenon is not unique to Russia.  Some might argue that President Obama’s “Asia Pivot” strategy is not an attempt to maintain stability in the Asia-Pacific and promote free trade and human rights, but rather, a design to contain China’s rise and to cling to regional hegemony.  To those who believe that power politics are the only factor behind the behavior of nations, all principles—including human rights—are just facades.

In essence, President Putin is making use of the principle that we inherently would prefer that others behave altruistically than out of self-interest.  The problem is, no one’s buying Putin’s definition of altruism. It's just an effort to save face or to whip up domestic support.  Well played.

TPP and AGOA

Free trade agreements are designed to be a win-win, or else no party would sign them in the first place.  But who are the actual winners and losers?  And how are they presented to the American public?  The TPP and AGOA are two examples of current free trade agreements.  Arguments surrounding the former tend to be more self-interested whereas arguments surrounding the latter tend to package the agreement as an act of altruism.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the TPP, has gotten a lot of news coverage recently, both in the United States and around the globe.  If agreed to, it would further link the economies of the United States and some dozen Pacific nations.

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, albeit a left-leaning think tank, the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have an adverse effect on income equality in the United States.  This chart shows that if the Trans-Pacific Partnership were to be ratified, the top 10% wage-earners would see their wages rise, while everyone else's wages would decline.

If wealthier Americans began making the argument that the TPP ought not to be ratified because it would create further income inequality, or voted based on that principle, it would certainly be an act of altruism. 

But government is about creating an environment in which all people can satisfy their wants and needs.  And in a democracy, there are tons of competing voices, all shouting for their own interests.  To an extent, every self-interested individual, or group of individuals, tries to get what they want, and hopefully, a democratic government will be able to work out a solution that addresses these wants.

The debate over the TPP is no exception.  Take, for instance, the variety of domestic interest groups that oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  There are labor unions, which want to make sure that outsourcing doesn’t become even more prevalent.  You have farmers, which want to keep subsidies and other economic protections in place, just to name a couple.

But free trade is sometimes painted in a more altruistic light, and its self-serving properties are mentioned as an afterthought, particularly when it comes to Africa.  As part of a political internship I did over the summer, I attended the Rainbow/PUSHCoalition’s annual international conference in Chicago.  I sat in on a panel discussion about U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, and the rhetoric was very different from that of the TPP.

The academic panelists were much less political.  They focused on what the U.S. can do to help African countries than they did on how to help American jobs.  Many members of the panel called on Congress to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), set to expire in 2015. Signed into law by  President Clinton in May 2000, this legislation is intended to “expand U.S. trade and investment with sub-Saharan Africa, to stimulate economic growth, to encourage economic integration, and to facilitate sub-Saharan Africa’s integration into the global economy. The Act establishes the annual U.S.-sub-Saharan Africa Economic Cooperation Forum (known as the AGOA Forum) to promote a high-level dialogue on trade and investment-related issues.”

But I also got to hear a more political perspective.  Governor Pat Quinn also attended the event, and he noted that among the 50 states Illinois is the leading exporter to Africa. He named Illinois companies Caterpillar and John Deere, which now sell high-tech agricultural equipment (such as combines with sophisticated information technology) to African farmers.  Governor Quinn did a much better job, I thought, of explaining how this trade is not simply charity, but rather, beneficial for the American economy, as well.

Now of course, Singapore and Nigeria are not in the same economic situation, and thus AGOA and the TPP are designed for somewhat different purposes.  But how we balance our own interests and the interests of others, domestically and internationally, is a dilemma that will never go away when it comes to trade agreements.