I am moving house at the moment and something really ticked me off the other day. When we rented the place we have now the owner told us if we fixed the garden he would come and pick up the rubbish from the garden. Face to face he said this. Now, later when we contacted him to come and collect the rubbish he didn’t come and get it! I was mad. Now I could name the person and probably give you his address but would that really make me feel better? So I have decided to vent in this manner: Does it pay to do the right thing?
Why bother giving?
We live in a world where materialism reigns. I am reading a book at the moment by Professor Chris Argyris called Reasons and Rationalization in which he argues that people often create defensive reasoning to protect themselves from having to learn. I have met people who are in need and I help them… not because I am a saint but because it’s the right thing to do. Letting people go on there merry way when you can help is wrong. Listen to yourself when you say when you make excuses for not doing the right thing. You are using defensive reasoning so that you can feel justified by doing nothing. Instead of always taking from people… why not shock someone and give. Take just one step to ruining this cesspool of materialism WE created.
It’s a great thing to take advantage of others for your own self gain?
The whole world use ‘dirty’ politics to step over people on a daily basis. If we all just turned around and changed our thinking a revolution could begin. If we all started giving, sharing, building things together instead of retreating back to our suburban hideaways… the world would change. What would it take to stop being ambitious? I don’t think this generation has what it takes in order to make it quite frankly. All they seem to care about is what kind of life they will lead. Where are the conscientious? Where are those that actually want to make things better for all instead of the solitary one? All I see are people taking advantage of me and ripping me off! I am saying this as much to me as I am to anybody reading this: stop taking advantage if you are and start creating opportunity. All it takes is a shift of thought.
Collaboration is dead?
I have met many kind hearted people in my time and some of them I work with. However, the majority of people I meet are so utterly self-consumed that it’s truly sickening. Can I hold people at fault when I find myself equally as bad? I think not. What I want to see happen again is collaboration. I don’t mean the style of ‘group work’ that they teach in universities. That’s bogus nonsense. I am speaking of true honest to GOD collaboration. The kind of working together that gave the world cybernetics, the systems movement and so on. What we have now is advanced siloitis. A silo is something you use to store wheat in not build knowledge and work that can power us into the next century (if Al Gore is right we may be dead by then anyway). Let’s stop retreating to our ‘areas of specialisation’ and work together to form a powerful whole. Sorry, I am dreaming aren’t I? People are too petty to work together because the blinding lights of ambition cripple us. I will move on to my next point.
It’s good to be selfish?
I read an interesting blog post by Steve Pavlina the other day in which he argued that selfishness and selflessness are strongly related. I tend to agree. Our western mindset focuses on creating logic boxes that form limiting belief structures in our brain which form in us silly dichotomies. The strategic view is to consider the interacting wholes and any part relevant and then move between them. I find that there is overwhelming ambition in modern society but very little of what Steve Pavlina calls selflessness (service to others in his words). There are some things that we need and some things others need both at the same time. You cannot dismiss one without understanding the other nor can you remove one and keep the other. People who are overly selfish are so for a deep seated reason. The person who lied to me about taking away my garden rubbish probably sleeps like a baby because he is extremely selfish. Me on the other hand gets angry at the thought of it. Now I am being selfish because I want to find this person and dump my rubbish on his front lawn! If I continue down this path I will slip into ‘revenge’ mode and want justice for something that really isn’t that important.
Revenge is noble?
Consider the idea of revenge. The oft quoted ‘spanish proverb’: revenge is a dish best served cold reminds me that getting my own back cuts me on the same level as my enemy. To get revenge is not noble neither is it grand… even though for a moment it may seem that way. When you stoop to the level of your betrayer (in my case the person who made me a promise then recanted) you are now the same as they are. It’s noble to walk away and let it go. It’s right to do that but it does not pay. As you imagine revenge sitting there in your garden think of this: why am I now thinking the same way as the person who did this to me … because you are being selfish. You have now fallen to the bottom. Do yourself a favour and dip to your selfless side and think through what you are doing. I guarantee you that initially as you do this it will be hard but after a while you will find it easier to let things go. It takes practice, imagination and time but it’s all worth it.
Clearly there is a big cost in doing the right thing and sometimes the cost is great. Consider the life of some of the greatest leaders we have known: Jesus, Gandi, Martin Luther King and so on. What price did they pay for doing what was right? A price that some would say is far too great. I reckon, we all are faced with paying a price each day for doing what is right. Pay the price because by not paying it might make yourself as worse as those who didn’t pay for it for you. If you begin paying it, you just never know what it could to do to your life.
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