Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist and popular science author, said in one of his books that there is a Selfish Gene in every one of us, a master gene inside us that controls and dictates every aspect of our lives, and sadly we have fallen slave to this gene.
We have become individualistic, uncaring and down right monopolistic in character, and obviously, we have forgotten the 16 attributes of love which I exposed in my earlier post.
The call for survival makes every creature (humans included) right from birth imbued with a warring instinct akin to the tearing down of our neighbor all the time. Like that in the animal kingdom, an instinct that follows the law of the jungle i.e. its kill or be killed.
Look at the business world, what do you see? The price of success is often depicted in the picture I shall show you above, justifiably captioned “big fish eats smaller fish”, though as you can see, sometimes it plainly fails.
Where do all these lead us?
Someone once said, “so long as there are men, there will be wars”. That can’t be true. I believe that man is capable of making every wrong right, if he wants to.
Firstly, we must rid ourselves of the Selfish Gene that’s inside of us, and take control of our lives. Our inner self must change for the better. The selfishness must be replaced by selflessness, only then can we produce the fruits of a selfless person which are among other things, the joys of sharing.
Like a newly converted Christian, we literally have to be born again, and then learn to care and to share.
Only when we are free from the “sin of selfishness” and able to humble ourselves, can we actually do good and be useful to others.
Yes, it does mean that we have to love ourselves less in order that we could love our neighbors more.
But have we got what it takes to rise to this call?
Let’s then look at the benefits and/or detriments, on both sides of the coin.
The virtues of a caring & sharing individual or society as opposed to the evils of an uncaring and monopolistic one, which do you think is the better society for us to live in?
A bright new world, with peace and happiness as the object and meaning of our success as opposed to a desolate and hurting world that thrives on selfishness and greed, a fearful future world aptly described by Einstein when he warned us a long time ago and said, “I don’t know with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will surely be fought with sticks and stones!”
A sobering thought, but one that could become real, and I think shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Somehow, we have to re-dedicate ourselves to the objects of a caring civil society by re-emphasizing on the joys of sharing and giving, not just materialistically but of ourselves in voluntary service too.
We have to re-define “the real meaning of success” in this pluralistic world that we live in, and if possible, make these 2 actions priority and on top of our World’s Agenda namely “the pursuit of PEACE & HAPPINESS for all nations”.
When we have arrived at that, I submit, then only will we ultimately find the joy of sharing, a complete and meaningful one. It is a challenge to mankind.
On a personal level though, I think that you don’t have to be a philanthropist to share. If we can discard our selfish nature, and be willing to give of ourselves voluntarily, we will find the “joy of sharing” quite satisfying too.
Like the elusive rainbow after the storm, we ask ourselves, what’s on the other side, can we ever find it? I mean the “joy of sharing”.
But let me ask you, have you tried finding it?
I hope you have enjoyed reading this piece as much as I have in putting it together for you.
This is my joy of sharing. Cheers!
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