My Life and Times Part IV

Things were at a relatively stable equilibrium, at least for a while. The next big thing to happen to change my perspective on the world was the beginning of school. I had previously been to preschool and pre-K, but those could never really compare to the experience of kindergarten. Not only were there many more people than I was used to, I had to get along with them as well! For what I can remember, I rarely played with any of them, and I was fairly indifferent towards actually going to school. I found myself simply going along with whatever in an attempt to placate the scrutinizing eyes of the other five-year-olds. However, I found this very difficult. I was actively involved in the outside world, and was interested in learning, while they were not. I now know that I had felt as if I were the enlightened pariah of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I continued on in such a manner until roughly third grade, when I met my first friend. He was fairly similar to me, and basically confirmed my views that the other nine- and ten-year-olds were rude conformists, simply choosing the easiest path. It was as if it was us two against the world, and we gradually enlargened our views. We saw school as if it were merely a secondary, almost lesser world than another, more perfect, intellectual world. I see now that we had inadvertently stumbled upon Platonic Dualism. Unfortunately, much like Plato and Socrates, were shunned as outsiders. I could never understand why people would not want to share their relative social wealth with me and my friend. It was at this point when I began to think about the near limitless possibilities if everyone were to be perfectly equal. We know this now to be a form of Communism or Marxism, but at the time all I could think of was why anyone would ever have to go through friendlessness. Of course, in retrospect, I see two reasons why this couldn’t have happened. The first is that humans are inherently selfish, and really only do seemingly selfless acts to accomplish something that is worth the act to them. It’s why capitalism works and why Adam Smith was right in his the wealth of nations. The second reason I now see is that Communism rarely works. People would get greedy and bored with things would wish for ways to differentiate themselves from others. Also, if we are born inherently selfish, there is all the more reason why this could not work with fourth and fifth graders who are closer to birth than any adult. Not only this, but even in nature selfishness is inherent. Having now read Stephen Jay Gould, I see that his argument that selfishness is inherent in natural selection is also very compelling. If any given organism weren’t selfish, how would its species ever propagate?