The world is getting better
I’m reading Peter Singer’s book The Life You can Save (you can freely download the book from the website), in which he makes a profound observation. He challenges the assumption about our behavior that permeates western, and particularly American, culture: “the norm of self-interest”:
Alexis de Tocqueville, that sharp observer of the American psyche during the formative years of the United States, noticed the norm even then: “Americans,” he wrote in 1835, “enjoy explaining almost every act of their lives on the principle of self-interest.” He thought that in doing this they were underplaying their own benevolence, because in his view Americans were, just like everyone else, moved by spontaneous natural impulses to help others. But in contrast to Europeans, Americans, he found, were “hardly prepared to admit that they do give way to emotions of this sort.”
