The World Keeps Turning: Reasons for doing the right thing

Allen Woods

Allen Woods

By ALLEN WOODS

Published: 10-11-2024 8:00 PM

In our currently fractured world, many people delve into a bit of soul-searching. Social and political divisions create uncomfortable feelings of anger, frustration, even hatred, and it’s natural to question their sources and usefulness. I also believe most Americans want to “do good” by others, prompting reflection on our methods and motivations.

We see “virtue signaling” (high-profile, possibly ineffective, actions calculated to show off laudable intentions); ”greenwashing” and ”sportswashing” (hiding destructive acts behind supposedly positive environmental or sporting achievements); “performative politics” and “ethical grandstanding.” These terms had to be invented to describe the hypocrisy common in today’s politics and culture.

In an Aug. 16 New Yorker article, a youngish anthropologist and practicing Sikh, Manvir Singh, leads readers through his personal, ever-twisting path in assessing his own, and others’, motivations for doing good. He mixes scientific studies with the ruminations of multiple philosophers, and describes his attempt at organizing the chaos after science defeated some deeply held religious beliefs.

He arrives at a personal code of conduct that revels in the mystery and grace of a baby daughter, and is summarized after 40 dense paragraphs and more than 4,000 words with a simple aspiration: “I try to do right by people.”

His journey began when he discovered that the American burying beetle, widely celebrated for the co-parenting skills of a male and female pair, actually exhibited selfish motivations in cooperating (females went along due to a size disadvantage, males wanted to ensure future mating opportunities). Singh’s term for their ultimately cooperative behavior? “Evolved selfishness.”

His mental and philosophical journey goes beyond a mild resonance for me, achieving a booming, bass-drum beat because I had similar experiences at about the same age. I was immersed in a crowd of idealistic do-gooders, sometimes called “hippies,” who sang anthems and listened to speeches, read manifestos and chanted mantras.

Our first target was the Vietnam War, but also included a materialist culture that worshiped accumulated wealth, corporate control, and conspicuous consumption. Some predicted a new world order, “the dawning of The Age of Aquarius,” in which “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust” guided personal, national, and international relationships. It was a wonderful, and impossible, vision.

My assessment of people’s motivations at the time leaned toward Singh’s “evolved selfishness,” although some were simply selfish with nothing evolved about them. I believe that many of us, then and now, were attracted by the social benefits of belonging to an underdog in-group as much as its principles (illustrated for me in the movie “The Big Chill”).

Even Donald Trump, a confirmed nonparticipant in organized religion, speculated on why people wanted to “be good” in June, 2024: “Religion is such a great thing … you know you want to be good, you want to go to heaven ... if we don’t have heaven ... you almost say … why do I have to be good, what difference does it make?” He describes a religious person’s impulse toward goodness as a transactional relationship with God, the only type he seems to understand: “I’ll scratch your back (by doing good things) as long you scratch mine (by getting me into heaven).”

But his inability to dance the delicate, tangled tango of virtuous words obscuring fundamentally callous actions was highlighted (again) by a recent legal brief in one of his trials. On Jan. 6, 2020, he was clearly unworried about his path to heaven. When an aide notified him that VP Mike Pence was being hunted by a violent, armed crowd, Trump responded, “So what?” and didn’t try to stop them until much later.

In that moment, and many others, he showed his unevolved selfishness, willing to trade the safety, even the life, of Pence for a chance at remaining in power.

Regardless of other results from his first term, Trump has proven that he isn’t inclined, in Singh’s words, “to do right by people,” unless they pass the transactional test of swearing loyalty to him, and even undertaking illegal actions. He makes an exception for powerful people providing sufficient flattery (Putin, Kim Jong Un, Orban), who then fall into the “beautiful” and “perfect” category in which Trump himself resides.

I hope Trump supporters are aware of the fickle nature of his transactional “love.” The list of former supporters and officials to be prosecuted by his Justice Department for questioning or opposing him now numbers in the hundreds. Watch out for that first step into Trump-free speech and thought — it could be a dangerous one!

Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.