I read about Pippa Bacca this weekend in the NYTimes. She was an Italian performance artist. I was saddened to read that during her "trip for peace" performance she was raped and murdered. It's taken me a few days to wrap my head around this incident and I still don't have words to describe how it makes me feel.
Sometimes, I think that I wear rose colored glasses - wishing that the world I lived in was better, greener, happier, safer - and trying to find the poetic in everything, even the mundane. Sometimes I think that my work can make a difference, at least in one person. How did Pippa Bacca's life change the world? Did it bring the global harmony she was seeking? Did it bring out the best in people?
-Altruism-coined by Auguste Comte, the French founder of positivism, in order to describe the ethical doctrine he supported. He believed that individuals had a moral obligation to serve the interest of others or the "greater good" of humanity. Comte says, in his Catechisme Positiviste, that "[the] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.... This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, who we are entirely."
