Further to yesterday’s piece mentioning Foster Wallace's take on selfishness I can fairly say I have found it difficult to adapt to the realisation that human morality is not very well accomplished. I will probably never quite get used to how self-interested people are although I am better able to live with it through time. One gets no shortage of practice from daily experience. Most folks I know, even those close, don't care much about me outside of their own narrow concerns. The small compassion afforded me is little more than the veneer expected by convention. These concerns might be about physical health, financial solvency, death of a family member and the likes. Spiritual and emotional health (mine) are by comparison virtual taboos. They are not to be spoken about and if they are tend to be veered away from at the soonest.

The important values for me are my thoughts and feelings and the creative work I have built my life around. I don’t know anyone who is remotely interested in these. Never does a person ask what am I thinking, what am I writing about, did I compose a song, what was it saying, what did it sound like, what do I plan to do with it. It is curious because these things are at the heart of me and I have sacrificed everything else in order to live in accordance with their dictates. Yet no one asks. If they were genuinely interested these facets would be at the top of their curiosity. But this is not to be. One is merely paint in somebody’s picture. Even those who live close and huddled have surprisingly little interest in each other. They are often blind to the other beyond how they are being serviced. True character and real feelings are often obscured by the fogginess that proximity confers on relationships. When I talk to individuals about their partners it sometimes seems as if they were each talking about different people.

All this has been and continues to be a source of disappointment, both for my own selfish reasons and for what it indicates for humans ever being able to rise to a respectable morality.