Thoughts on my mother lead to thoughts on rational self-interest

Mar 08, 2008 10:57

Good grief.

So, I'm sitting peacefully eating my breakfast, relaxed on a beautiful dreary Saturday, when the phone rings.

The mother says, "Okay," and I instantly know what will happen next. Backtracking slightly, something was mentioned this morning that was not to her liking, opening a few old wounds that mainly stem from my own previous actions toward my parents in college. My mother was extremely not pleased about the outcome of the situation. Nor was I pleased about her attitude, which I knew stemmed from her having a hard week at work (one of my biggest pet peeves is people carrying home stress from work). Somewhere along the line, in retaliatory backlash, I said I would take care of myself as I always do. And I knew instantly that I would be hearing more from her in the future.

So, the phone call comes that I had been expecting. And I decide to time her soliloquy, just for shits and giggles. Twenty-two minutes later of her nonstop speech, during which I laid the phone on the counter and half-listened just to get the general idea, she says goodbye and hangs up.

I had moments of anger when I heard some of the things she talked about. These flashes of the utmost fury at her biased and frankly idiotic assumptions. And the rest of her speech was blather about random things concerning such apparently applicable subjects like how I reuse my towels for a few days rather than instantly wash them after once use. Humorous, isn't it. (Little do they know that its actions such as these from people in general that have helped push me even further into the solitary abyss my fierce independence and fear of reaching out to others.)

And now, in retrospect, her blabbering doesn't seem of any great import to me. I love my mother and usually, I respect her advice. My family and I have been nothing but amiable for several months now. I hardly see them, to be honest.

However, she still carries this self-righteous-i-am-mother veneer once in a while, and while I have in the past reacted poorly to the words she says (for which I know she will apologize later), this time, it's nothing more than a cold caress that passes before I put on my fleece.

So, yeah, I didn't mean any offense about taking care of myself. I know that they are kind enough to let me stay so I haven't any rent to pay. They renovated the basement, and they provide a great deal of love and support, but... aside from their past help during college and then the year of my own personal Great Depression, at some point I've taken the reigns of my own life and other than the shelter and utilities situation, I handle the rest of my life on my own. You know, like an adult should be doing at my age.

So, chalk this up to another level of experience and a deeper feeling of pessimism. I want to expect the best from people, and I try to feel that way about my family, but I do know better. This really has not surprised me, I'm sad to say. But what can you do? In a world where entropy rules, where 90% of the people are the worst type of selfish - self-centered and self-centric but denying it and blaming others for all their problems - how can we (existentialist, pessimists, realists, egoists) even bother to depend on these people?

Far be it from me to try and change the world's point of view, or on a lesser scale, my mother's. I'm living for my own sake, not for my mother's or anyone else's sake. I hate passive-agressive behavior. It's too bad that my mother has to give a poorly organized and insult-spiked speech of over twenty minutes rather than say, "I'm sorry, but what you have asked is against my own self-interest, so I will need to reject it."

Statements such as the latter, sprinkled liberally throughout the world as ethical self-interest spreads, would save the human race from a great deal of our problems. But since that won't be happening any time soon (thanks in part to universal morality, fear of change, and general ignorance), I'll sit here and surf the internet and drink my coffee and write a run-on sentence, because that pleases me, and I live for only myself.

philosophy, machiavelli had it right, the family

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