well if everyone pursues their self interest, then who the hell is going to attend to their self interest? b/c presumably everyone else is looking for their piece of the action too, no? oh wait wait wait. there will be people that get satisfaction out of fulfilling other people's self-interest b/c its in their self interest. dandy. i mean women scrub the fucking floor because they enjoy it right? they get a sense of satisfaction out of keeping that floor spic and span. and slaves, well we all know they're dumb and they like pleasing massuh. jesusgodamnchristalmighty. how should we divide up the housework? or any shitwork for that matter? well you do what you like and what you're best suited for. hel-lo.
these parecon people want to build an entire social structure on people calculating their self-interest. not only that, the idea is that all organizational structures have a self interest to pursue as well. everything! including --and whathefuck this is scary--whether art is in the interest of the community b/c why should the community support [dist resources to] an artist who produces art the community doesn't like or want. well hallelujah!! i wanna live in a world like that? no fuckin way. imagine that community full of mostly people that you don't particularly admire. weeeooooo.
i'm in a cranky mood today so take it with a grain of salt coz most of the time i think people are better than that and i actually trust people to get it right most of the time. but not today and not the way people have been behaving like on this ratfucking list lately.
let me just rant some more. dlete now coz it's more o the same o same o. i do not want people to support abortion coz it's in their self interest to do so [eg., 1967 abortion act in britain was passed because middle class thought it was in their self interest to stop the working class from having babies w/o being properly ties tot he ole ball and chain]. i don't want men to support abortion because it's in their self interest to do so--that is, responsibility free sex for them [which only means that responsibility is on women for getting the abortion, taking care of the bc, and of course nothing has necess changed re the madonna/whore complex in this society which means a woman who has sex is, in the end, a slut]
no no no. and i don't want my partner to do their fair share of the housework because she realizes that it's in her self interest to do so. like my father who does it merely to avoid the haranguing and not because he truly understands why and what needs to be taken care of.
does anyone get the difference here? this is the problem. this is what ange has been talking about. these are very concrete examples of what she means.
this idea--this assumption of a binary between self-interest/altruism-- is exactly the kind of dualism that ange was talking about that gets produced here when you posit a natural human nature.
is self interest such a fucking good thing when it comes to choosing whether you'll have a disabled child or not? is self interest a good thing when it used to meant that people sold babies for a buck? if you have a partner, would you like to constantly think about all the ways s/he might have chosen you in order to please whatever self interest s/he might have had. i mean do you sit around and say to yourself, my partner loves me because of my wallet, or my nice ass, or my between the sheets manner, or good looks or perhaps even my plain looks, or because of what you do for her or tell her or make him feel or whatever? you want a world completely ruled by self interest so that it's acceptable to think of everything that way: what the hell do I get out of it? won't you just be a little bit ticked if you'd invested quite some time in that rel. only to learn that his self interests had changed and someone or something else meets those needs now? say you have children and it meets your self interest when its an infant b/c you like infants and it pleases you to be a proud papa. but 5 yrs down the line its not so fun anymore, they're not so cute and it's in your way coz you want to spend some time developing your talents at learning to play the piano and you just don't have time for a kid and you've got new friends who don't like kids. so dump the kid cause its in your self interest. why not? your friends don't like kids what would they care. no one's going to judge you really.
i'm off to have a few beers which i probably should have had two days ago.