Blood, Guts, and Self-Interest

There’s this famous quote about writing that says, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down and open a vein.” Whether that refers to an outpouring of emotion that accompanies the craft or the idea that writing is painful, the idea is clear: to open a vein is a big deal. Bleeding is a scary thing, an idea we humans are naturally not okay with. This has never been clearer to me than when I recently opened a literal vein to donate blood for the American Red Cross.

Because I experience no pain or discomfort from donating blood, I am a little biased. I too have heard the horror stories and urban legends surrounding bleeding on purpose and letting my blood be injected into other people’s veins. Evolutionarily, I do understand why we are afraid of bleeding. But rationally, as a more sophisticated being who can think and understand that there is a .0001 chance that anything will go wrong, I find the general reluctance to donate blood something no red-blooded person should be proud of.

I was raised, and I think most people are raised, to put others before myself. I am by no means able to lay down my life for another person, but donating blood seems like a very easy way to at least try to follow this pillar of wisdom. Giving blood isn’t even really putting others interests before mine, as no harm comes to me as a result and I sometimes even get a free sticker for my troubles. There is a need for blood in the world, and I have more blood than I need. I am thankful that I am healthy and robust, and I feel sorrow that not everyone is so fortunate. An hour of my time and a pint of my blood is a tiny, tiny way for me to do something about this. Other people need blood. I have blood. Why would I not give?

I’ve heard the reasons – it makes you sick, you don’t have time, you’re scared of needles, you have an irrational fear that your transfused blood will end up in a murder investigation. Those are all fair reasons, though they do nothing about the sick people who need blood to stay alive. I am scared by how often I see this one-for-one instead of all-for-one self-interest that people do not apologize for. We somewhat have political writer Ayn Rand to thank for this, who says, “Man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.” With all due respect to Ms. Rand and my friend Cameron, that is a terrible way to live.

The highest moral purpose in life should not be oneself. It should be other people. A little bruise on the inside of my arm is a tiny way to create some good karma, pay it forward, do unto others as I would have done unto me. I’m not being paid by United Blood Services, nor are platelet transfusions my personal crusade. The point is not to get people to donate blood. The point is to get people thinking about how their sacrifice is important, that is a good and right thing to give an hour and a pint to people who need it. It is a deep, difficult, and worthwhile thing to place someone else’s interest, a stranger’s interest, higher than one’s own. As deep and difficult as opening a vein.

One Man's Dungeon is Another Man's Dragon

Apologies for the extended hiatus. I flatter myself to think you missed reading my musings, lovely readers, and that you will start reading again.

At a common area here on campus there is a group that meets every day, and they are there for several hours at a time. They seem to have a strong sense of friendship and community, they welcome new members into their group, they eat together, they study together. From what I’ve gleaned while observing them as a sociological phenomenon, they look like a group of guys and girls that anyone would like to be a part of. That is, of course, excepting what it is that they do for those several hours: this subject field group in my study of people-who-don’t-know-I’m-watching-them is none other than the Fantasy Card-Game and Role-Play Club.
I’m sure that’s not their official name, and I’m sure that they all stopped caring if I watched them around the seventh grade. But as another part of my human behavioral study, I have also watched people watch this group, and I am fascinated by their reactions. Most people just smile and chuckle when they realize that there is indeed still a market for Pokémon card binders, or remark without viciousness, “I remember when those were, like, the coolest thing.” This is a perfectly natural and unjudgemental reaction; it’s about what I did the first time I noticed that the Dungeon and Dragons faction of society had relocated their fanastical battles from someone’s basement to the actual real world.
Then there is another group entirely – the group that would never deign to play an imaginative card game, or dress up as a wizard even once, or indulge the fantasy of a world where magic exists. When these people see the tables of knights battling orcs or supernatural beasts with special powers simulated on two-by-three cardboard, it’s not a smile and a chuckle that come to their faces. It’s a condemning snicker, a scoff, an “Omigawd, what a bunch of freaks” that leaves their lips. These reactions are thankfully infrequent, and while I realize I am overly harsh in my condemnation of these magicless nay-sayers, I also get overly upset with anyone who condemns a passion on a glance. Maybe these haters’ lives are so magical that they don’t understand the need for alternate realities. But I doubt it.
My real objection to those who laugh at a group of obviously intelligent people who display a sense of community and care is this: Why is uncool to have passions? Sure, I’m not so skilled at Dungeons and Dragons, and I wasn’t even cool enough for Pokemon when they were the coolest thing. But I appreciate anyone who is interested in anything. The time and effort it must take to learn all those rules, all those details of the elaborate other-worlds inhabited in those games, the community that is created when the players come together to ‘battle’, and even the open display of such a fringe passion, is commendable. We all have our own alternative realities, and it seems to me that the one of wizards and dragons that the card-players seem to favor is much better than the altered reality the rest of campus seems to like to escape to (that is to say, the State of Intoxication).
I have probably grossly misreferenced the games these people love so much, and I have probably misjudged both this group and those who condemn them. But from where I sit, watching them without having them watch me, to care deeply is to take a risk. To display one’s passions is to risk being watched, being lauded, or being condemned. And these are risks we should all be willing to take to make a few friends, have a little fun, or make a tiny piece of our fantasy worlds become real.