Mandy Rice-Davies Applies: and, la Donna e mobile again.

madfilkentist has posted a thoughtful piece on the concept of selflessness, to which he attributes many if not most of the evils of the world.

He conflates, in this piece, the kind of selflessness which some of us rightly regard as a virtue, the willing setting aside of one's own desires for the benefit of others, with the loss or abandonment of self that happens in a mob, or an army, or a cult. In the process, he claims that the recent incident wherein someone was trampled by the crowd during a sale happened not through a bunch of individuals trying to gratify their own individual desires, but because the people doing the trampling were part of a collective organism moving towards some collective goal.

To me, selflessness in its true sense can only be exhibited by an individual, because the members of a mob, or an army, or a cult, have at that moment no selves to set aside. One must have a self to be selfless. But that individuals do do this, and that it is almost always a good and praiseworthy thing when they do, seems to me beyond question; and it seems to me a shame that actions such as the giving of a coat, on a cold day, to someone who needs it more, should be identified with mob violence or fanatical zealotry, or that the supremely selfish individuals in that shop who refused to care about the person between them and the things they wanted should be allowed to hide under the excuse of "I wasn't myself."

Obviously, I don't agree with madfilkentist on this. Equally obviously, both our viewpoints on this particular thing are governed by our different views of life in general. Hence the title of the post.

In other news, the Countess has now got a wheelchair. This is good because, since we had to take the Red Cross's one back, she hasn't left the house, or her room that much. Hopefully the trend towards greater activity will now resume. Also, this one is lighter, wider and more comfortable. On the other hand, it's something else we had to pay for, and ouch.

EDIT: madfilkentist has now actually banned me from commenting, so I can't (for instance) congratulate him on his part in getting a software company to moderate the absurdly draconian terms of their licence. But it should save us both a degree of grief in the long run, so I guess that's okay.

(no subject)

Having found a way to get Dreamweaver to open, there is now a new short story on the site. First of several.