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Feature


Be Selfish And Give


Ken Olisa, chair of the Powerlist Foundation, argues that we only ever do things because we want to, but that’s not a bad thing if the end result is something positive


I


’d like to have a bet with you. On a scale of 0 to 10, how selfish would you say you are? I bet you answered somewhere comfortably in the middle: four, five or possibly six.


I also bet that your logic would have been


something along the lines of acknowledging that being selfish is morally wrong; but so is lying, and so giving yourself zero would be wrong, too. So you picked a safe middle score. I’m sure that whatever number you


selected it won’t have been 10. But 10 is the correct answer. We humans


are all totally selfish – by definition. We only do things because we want to, because they somehow satisfy our inner desires. Tey make us feel better. So what? Why is this important? If


everyone is selfish, it’s not much of a defining


BECAUSE IT MADE US FEEL GOOD


WE DID IT FOR PURELY SELFISH REASONS –


point and therefore not really worth talking about. Well, I think it’s important because in


our sound bite, celebrity obsessed, hyper- judgemental world, too much time is spent questioning people’s motives rather than the effect of their actions. In the 2012 budget being a philanthropist


bizarrely became the height of anti-social behaviour because rich people were accused of making charitable donations, not to help others, but to reduce their tax bills. At this point, I need to declare a couple of


interests. Firstly, some of my best friends are philanthropists. And secondly, last year, my wife, Julia, and I made a major donation to


96 POWERLIST 2013 | WWW.POWERFUL-MEDIA.COM


endow the new library at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Why did we do that? Certainly not to


avoid paying tax. We pay our full UK tax bill each year – no dodgy schemes, no offshore companies, no fiscal acrobatics. We did it for purely selfish reasons –


because it made us feel good. And, for the rest of our lives, we will continue to feel good seeing young men and women advancing their learning in an architectural masterpiece that our hard work and good luck made possible. But not only will it make us feel good in


our lifetimes – it will go on improving the life chances of students long aſter we’re dead. Te minimal life of the Olisa Library is 300 years. Te Oxford English Dictionary defines


philanthropy as ‘practical benevolence’ which reminds us that there is another form of selfish behaviour – ‘practical malevolence’. We are all selfish, but some of us get our kicks from helping others while, sadly, there are those of us who are the opposite. It is self-evident that the prosperity


of society depends on the first group outnumbering the latter group by as much as possible. In 2012 – when arguments about


tax and philanthropy were raging – I attended a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of American banker, George Peabody. Anyone who has travelled around London will be familiar with the many elegant redbrick blocks of mansion flats that enhance the streetscape from Mayfair to the outer suburbs. Tese beautiful examples of Victorian architecture are George’s legacy – part of a social housing portfolio of 100,000 dwellings. I have no doubt that Mr Peabody derived


great pleasure from the consequences of his wholly selfish act of endowing the Peabody


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