Self-interest and the Promotion of Justice

Sister Margaret John Kelly, D.C., Executive Director of the St. John's Vincentian Center for Church and Society sent me these thoughts on my observation about the limits of self-interest in promoting social change:

"The whole question of self-interest is a critical one and needs a lot more analysis at the personal and global levels. Too quickly we accept the Ayn Rand definition which is really egotistical and non-relational. I think we also err by looking on self-interest purely in strictly material terms, although that is where it is most obvious and conspicuous.

"Do you think that self-interest may be the stepping stone to awareness and conversion, turning a heart of stone (or of the bottom line) to a heart of flesh? Maybe I am thinking of a developmental alchemy where experience shatters assumptions or humanizes the theoretical, especially the statistical or removed lives which are easy to ignore. For example it may be necessary to gain support from the advantaged for the educationally disadvantaged by stressing the need for employees who are well-trained or for keeping youth off the streets and reducing crime and the potential increased taxes for  incarceration, etc. I have seen this work from both points of needing workers but also fearing crime. It has resulted in attitudinal and systemic change and a fair number of educational initiatives and some change of hearts as well I think.  It may be  the old story that effective communication, as well as evangelization, needs to begin with assessment and start where the people, or at least some of the people, are.

"From another angle ....if we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves (and "as ourselves" is critical to define as is the lived meaning of love as "desiring good for the self and for the other") we can see that "self-interest" is not essentially material nor can it be individual. It will be seen as relational and as social and based in our common humanity. It is a way of honoring God and moving to wholeness personally but also relationally for the common good.

"I myself am just beginning my thinking on the positive aspects of self-interest as a vehicle for personal ihnsight as well as social change because I am one who focused in the past too much on the materially self-interested and the Rand model, but I have been  moved recently to reflect on Vincent DePaul who was not above reminding leaders, the aristocray and the hierarchy in 17th century France that civil distress and a growing underclass benefits no one. He knew that heads would roll, literally and figuratively and of course they did for several decades. More in the fire and brimstone style of the day Vincent often reminded the affluent that they would be judged finally on what they did for the poor starving, abandoned infants who would 'stand in judgment on them on the last day.' Matthew 25 is pretty intimidating even today. Vincent hit the earthly motivation as well as the eternal salvation/damnation continuum. Francis DeSales also reminded us that 'more souls are won over by sugar than by vinegar.' Of course, some will challenge that we may be flirting with manipulation in that scenario. While the homily at our closing mass on Saturday warned against the greatest treason, 'doing the right thing for the wrong reason', perhaps some degree of self-interest is at heart 'the marvel and mystery of mere man.'"