Will's Story of Self
In my ethics class we’re talking about egoism versus altruism. In a basic sense, egoism is doing the right thing because it benefits you, and altruism is doing the right thing because its the right thing. I don’t really understand why I want to help people, but I know it makes me feel good, so I keep doing it. In that sense, it sounds a little selfish, but Saumel Langley would never have attempted to invent airplanes if not for selfishness. An example of this could be when I was young, when a local humane society in my town was going out of business. I started a booth with my sister and some friends at the farmers market. We sold produce from our garden, banana bread, and some homemade crafts to raise money for them.
My dad is a landscape photographer and my mom works for the DNR, so I was kind of raised in the forest. I’ve always been interested in environmental because I want to protect my home, as it were.
I used to be afraid of speaking my mind and actually doing things until around senior year of high school when I realized that I could actually do things on my own with little or no consequences. Me and my friends organized a walkout for the March for Our Lives movement. The town I came from was very small, and close-minded, so there was considerable opposition. So much so, in fact, that there was an actual counter protest. We also had to cut through loads of bureaucratic red tape to get the walkout approved in the first place, so we ended up in a sort of ‘civil disobedience’ type situation. It was successful, and we ended up having a good discussion with the counter protesters. So that was when I kind of became myself.