The Selfless Giant

In my local paper (Derby Evening Telegraph) tonight there are two letters that more or less sum up the prevailing attitude to the economic crisis and the prospect of job losses. The first is a letter in the form of poem entitled "Looming cloud of redundancy". It begins "Redundancy is in the air, the chopper is ready to fall", and it ends poignantly with the words "No thought for our future - who cares?" Aww, poor thing.

The second is signed by public sector union Unison (among others) and goes by the heading "Global public health care plea". It urges readers to sign a pledge demanding that the World Bank insist that private healthcare provision be extended to people in the world's poorest countries. What a noble gesture!

It's easy to be angry at Unison, an organisation that gets a large chunk of its funding from ordinary people who expect it to concentrate on defending their living standards, for choosing instead to promote the rights of complete (though no doubt thoroughly likeable) strangers in the furthest corners of the Earth. But before we all start clamouring for "British jobs for Britishers" let us recall how hard it is these days to appear in the least bit selfish. Unison might be paid to defend its members pay and working conditions, but putting this into practice and actually asking for something for its members is not a straightforward task for union reps, which is why I am not a member.

Then again, not being a member of a collective organisation is no solution to this problem. Writing poetry to send to the local newspaper might at best win you some sympathy (similar to the heartfelt feeling I expressed at the end of the first paragraph), but can you eat sympathy? Can you impress the neighbours with sympathy? Can you get Sky Sports on sympathy?

Whatever happened to selfishness? Not the sort that gets condemned in soap operas and Tonight with Trevor MacDonald, but the sort that identifies the interests of one's own family and friends as one's own (wait a minute - that is the sort that gets condemned on Trevor MacDonald, especially when a builder is involved). Not so long ago, this sort of selfishness was known as charity-that-begins-at-home. It was assumed that community interests might be served if people first looked after themselves and their immediate neighbours, like ripples spreading across a pond. That's the sort of thing promoted by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (pictured) in his book Cosmopolitanism - a sort of universalism that grows through people responding to each other through immediate connexions unhampered by cultural barriers.

Appiah's philosophy is by no means perfect but at least it avoids the abstract universalism expressed by Unison, wherein we accept without question that the complete stranger is more of a brother to us than our own brother.

Where does it leave us when facing job cuts? Well, first thing is not to assume that just because you might want to keep your job, defend your pay, or even ask for more, you are somehow being immoral. In pushing for these things you might find that you end up forming immediate ties with people whom you previously thought existed only beyond some cultural barrier. And forming a handful of these ties will probably do more good morally than all the business plans put together by your employer for surviving the credit crunch. Universalism - the view that all men are my brothers, and that all old people are my granny and grandpa, etc - begins with a bit of selfishness.

We don't need poetry. We don't need to think of those less fortunate on the other side of the world. Let us talk to our neighbour, and let him talk to his, about the problems we face here and now. And let us rediscover the chain that links us to our neighbours across the globe.