The Rose of Persia

‘I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.’                  - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

The subject of altruism is a much debated topic and is commonly defined as helping another without any expectation of personal gain. Psychologists and philosophers alike have suggested that it is part of human nature to look out for one’s interests and behave in such ways that would benefit the self also. Does this necessarily make the act a selfish one? I don’t think so. In the same way that not everything which is not true is not necessarily a lie either - there is grey, as well as black and white.

In The Dawn by Friedrich Nietzsche, he maintains that emotions such as pity even are not in themselves selfless but are motivated by self-interest. This line of thinking is in accordance with that of Aristotle’s in Poetics, in which he says

‘for our pity is wakened by undeserved misfortune, and our fear by that of someone just like ourselves’.

Aristotle suspected that it is impossible to feel pity if one has absolutely nothing to lose and likewise by those who think themselves to be beyond all misfortune. The feeling of pity for Aristotle goes hand in hand with the feeling of fear, which in turn is experienced by the realisation of how similar we are to the person(s) facing misfortune.

A group of Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island, WA, wave the American flag and give the victory sign as they are forcibly evacuated to an internment camp, March 30, 1942.

via reddit

The Ottoman surrender of Jerusalem. 1917.

Fidel Castro and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, 1960

At a segregated drinking fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956. Photograph by Gordon Parks.

“I’m really into semiology.”

“Oh yeah–what’s your sign?”