Egoism In Support Of Love For The Other
Opinion (Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice): “Just how profound is this concern for status? A few years ago, a study was conducted in which participants were presented with pairs of hypothetical personal circumstances and asked to state their preferences. For example, people were asked to choose between earning $50,000 a year with others earning $25,000 and earning $100,000 a year with others earning $200,000. They were asked to choose between 12 years of education (high school) when others have 8, and 16 years of education (college) when others have 20. They were asked to choose between an IQ of 110 when the IQ of others is 90 and an IQ of 130 when the IQ of others is 150. In most cases, more than half of the respondents chose the options that gave them better relative position. Better to be a big fish, earning $50,000, in a small pond than a small fish, earning $100,000, in a big one.”
My Comment: That is, a person is willing to give up money, education, and intellect just so others have less! That is our nature: We perceive and appreciate everything relative to the environment. Therefore, the better environment we choose, the better options we envy, the greater achievements we can reach. It is useless to go against nature. You only need to learn how to use everything that it has invested in us.
How is it possible with these egoistic qualities to achieve integral interaction, brotherly participation, love for the other; what is required of us now at a new stage of human development?
That is why Kabbalah teaches us how to organize ourselves into small groups and create integral communities, like the connection of groups of cells into the organs of a body, and then the connection of the groups in the system, as in a living body, until everyone connects in a single organism—Adam.
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