For most of my life, I believed I understood what it meant to act in my own interest. Like any responsible parent, I worried about earning enough to provide financial security, saving for uncertain times, securing good healthcare and giving my child the best education I could possibly afford. These seemed like the obvious responsibilities of adulthood. If someone had asked me what it meant to protect my family’s future, I would have spoken about savings, insurance, property, education and perhaps a stable career. Looking back, I realise that my understanding of self-interest was not wrong. It was simply incomplete.
We often treat selfishness as a moral failing. The word itself evokes greed and indifference, as though every act of self-interest comes at the expense of someone else. Yet there is another way of looking at it. Every parent who sacrifices for a child’s education is acting out of self-interest. Every individual who saves for retirement seeks quality healthcare or works towards financial independence is trying to secure a better future. There is nothing ignoble about that. In many ways, civilisation advances because millions of people pursue these aspirations. The real question is not whether we should act in our own interest. The question is whether we have understood what our interests truly are.
The thought occurred to me while reflecting on my son. Suppose I succeed in everything I have planned for him. Suppose he receives an excellent education, finds meaningful work, earns well and enjoys financial stability. Like any parent, I would feel that I had fulfilled my duty. But what exactly would I have secured? A degree is only valuable in a society that rewards knowledge and merit. Wealth is meaningful only in an economy governed by trust and predictable rules. Good health depends not merely on private hospitals but on clean air, safe water, scientific research and effective public health systems. A comfortable home cannot insulate its occupants from a city where institutions no longer function, where public spaces deteriorate or where civic trust steadily erodes. In trying to build a secure future for my child, I had quietly assumed that his future could somehow be separated from the condition of the society around him. That assumption now strikes me as profoundly unrealistic.
Children inherit far more than the assets their parents leave behind. They inherit the quality of the society into which they step as adults. They inherit the integrity of public institutions, the culture of civic behaviour, the standards of public discourse and the freedoms protected by law. They inherit rivers that we chose either to preserve or pollute, forests that we chose either to protect or destroy and democratic institutions that previous generations either strengthened or weakened. Long after my influence over my son’s life has diminished, these forces will continue shaping his opportunities every single day.
The realisation forced me to reconsider something I had never questioned before. I had always imagined that the future could be assembled through private effort alone. Work harder, earn more, save wisely, invest carefully and provide the best opportunities possible. There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it overlooks a fundamental truth. Every private achievement rests upon a public foundation. My son’s education depends upon the competence of teachers who educated thousands of other children. His professional life will depend upon colleagues, employers, judges, scientists, engineers, journalists and public servants whom I will never meet. The roads he travels, the laws that protect him, the markets in which he works and the freedoms he enjoys are all products of collective choices extending far beyond the walls of my home.
Perhaps this is why the distinction we often make between personal interest and public interest is far less meaningful than it appears. When I care about the quality of public education, I am not merely concerned about another person’s child. That child may one day become my son’s doctor, colleague, employer or business partner. When I care about honest institutions, I am not performing an abstract civic duty. I am protecting the very systems upon which my own family will depend. When I value freedom of expression or an independent judiciary, I am not defending philosophical ideals. I am preserving safeguards that my child may one day need without warning. Even environmental protection ceases to look like an act of altruism once viewed through this lens. No inheritance I leave behind can compensate for polluted air, depleted water or a climate that steadily undermines the quality of life my son and his children will experience.
Modern life, however, encourages us to think differently. Whenever a public system weakens, we search for a private substitute. We send our children to private schools when public education disappoints us. We purchase health insurance when public healthcare struggles. We install air purifiers instead of demanding cleaner air and buy bottled water instead of protecting rivers. Gradually, we begin to believe that enough money can free us from dependence on society itself. It cannot. It merely postpones the moment when that dependence becomes impossible to ignore. No gated community can isolate itself from the city around it indefinitely. No amount of wealth can manufacture trustworthy institutions, breathable air or social stability in isolation. These are assets that only a functioning society can produce.
Perhaps our mistake lies in confusing immediate advantage with long-term self-interest. Human beings naturally optimise for what lies directly before them. We think about the next salary, the next school admission, the next promotion or the next election far more easily than we think about the condition of society twenty years from now. Yet our children will spend far longer living in that future than we ever will. Their lives will be shaped less by the wealth we accumulate for them than by the country they ultimately inherit. Every compromise made today with institutions, public trust, environmental stewardship or democratic values becomes part of that inheritance.
This has changed the way I think about responsibility. I still want my son to receive the best education possible. I still want financial security, good healthcare and every opportunity that hard work can provide. None of these ambitions has disappeared. What has changed is my understanding of what those ambitions require. They demand more than individual effort. They require a society in which education retains its value, institutions command public confidence, freedoms remain protected and citizens continue believing that honesty is not a disadvantage. Without these conditions, private success becomes increasingly fragile, no matter how carefully it has been planned.
Perhaps, then, I misunderstood selfishness all along. I thought it meant protecting my family from the uncertainties of the world outside. I now realise that the future I want for my child cannot be built by withdrawing from society but by caring about the society he will inherit. The greatest inheritance I can leave him is not merely what I manage to accumulate during my lifetime. It is also the condition of the republic in which he will spend most of his time. If that is true, then caring about clean governance, strong institutions, environmental stewardship, public education and individual liberty is not an act of idealism. Nor is it charity towards strangers. It is simply a recognition that my family’s future is inseparable from everyone else’s. I set out believing that I was acting in my own interest. I have come to suspect that I was merely thinking too small.
Perhaps I was never truly selfish. I simply never understood how large my own self-interest really was.
(Views expressed by the columnist are personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or policy of the news portal)
