Last week I had one of those “Ptolemaic moments” when I wrongly assume I am still the center of the universe and everything else turns around me and should follow my wishes.
It all began when I sent a proposal for a story to a certain publication. The story was about fraud affecting thousands of unsuspecting immigrants. The editor sent me an email simply saying, “No.”
With my ego bruised by the negative and my curiosity awakened by the short answer, I contacted the editor and politely asked her if there was any problem with my proposal or with the story itself.
She told me the negative to use my story had nothing to do with the quality of my proposal or the originality of t he story. It had to do with the fact that the very same day the publication had a similar story.
I thanked her and I then told myself that the real problem was that I needed my own (and daily) “Copernican revolution.” I thought I was the center of the universe when in fact most things in my life are beyond my control.
I think I’m objective in my judgments and very open to others. For that reason, my recent Ptolemaic moment, when I intensely experienced an extreme form of individualism, took me by surprise and I was only able to overcome it only with the help of a colleague.
I know I am not the center of the universe. Two decades of marriage and two teenagers are home are a daily reminder. And, at another level, both my faith and my philosophical formation teach me so.
I am not in favor of replacing hyper-individualism with “communitarianism.” Both extremes are pathological. But I do recognize we live in a society of unparalleled hyper-individualism when each person gives himself or herself the right to judge anybody else and being judge by nobody.
The undeniable contradiction I see is that in this society we want to solve huge social problems, including some global problems, on the basis of a hyper-individualistic approach that by definition lead us to believe the rest of the world turns around us and to see others as “inferior.”
When such an attitude extends to the whole nation, it becomes a fierce ethnocentrism, similar to those of the past, but even more dangerous because it is being supported by a techno-scientific infrastructure that didn’t exist before.
Could we reform economy, education, health, immigration, and other complex social realities on the basis of a hyper-individualism that blind us to the dignity of the other? Could we promote the well-being for all of us if each of us thinks to be at the center of the universe?
Perhaps the real question is if there will be still a place for us, the non-hyper-individualistic type, in the new trans-human paradigm now being constantly promoted. From that point of view, a Ptolemaic attitude is not a deficiency in ethics, but a good mechanism for self-preservation and defense.