A World with Only Long Spoons

My daughter told me a story she had heard at kindergarten. In heaven, apparently, everyone uses long spoons. Spoons so long that they are useless for feeding yourself. It is a story about a world where you cannot eat anything unless the people around you feed you.

I think the same is true of words, which we use to nourish the spirit. They can be used to benefit ourselves, or to benefit others. When I put my thoughts into words like this and share my feelings with someone else, how they are received varies with the situation of each person who receives them, so there is no knowing where it will lead.

Some may feel understood and reassured, or encouraged, while others may feel attacked and take offense. Because that depends on the context the receiver brings, every message we send out is also a kind of gamble. You cannot tell whether a game of catch will work until you throw the ball.

Can Selfishness Be Justified?

Benefiting others is also benefiting yourself. Then does benefiting yourself also lead to benefiting others? If that could be proven, selfishness could be justified. Could we say that selfishness is also altruism? I hope you, as you read this, will think about it for a moment too.

This conclusion is based on a personal thought experiment, but it might hold in a world with more than enough short spoons. In a world with only long spoons, however, it does not hold. In a world with only long spoons, behaving selfishly means not getting to eat. The following simulation-style thought experiment shows why.

A World with Only Long Spoons

Suppose you are selfish and are struggling because you cannot eat with a long spoon. A kind neighbor takes pity on you and feeds you. Since you are satisfied as long as you yourself get to eat, you do not feed anyone else. That kind neighbor is fed by some other kind person. A very kind person would feed many people, but would get that much less to eat in return.

To make equality of opportunity even clearer, suppose there were a rule that each person can feed someone only once. Then at every meal, someone would go without eating in place of you, the selfish one. And little by little, some people would end up eating fewer meals. If kind people are in the majority, they will try to share the hunger equally, so gradually everyone grows thin. The selfish only care about eating themselves, so you alone stay well fed.

As this continues, eventually some people starve. In this way, people disappear one by one, until ultimately only the selfish survive. But in a world with only long spoons, you cannot be fed by selfish people who have no altruism. And so the selfish are wiped out too.

A World That Also Has Short Spoons

You might think that if there were short spoons, selfish people could feed themselves and would not be wiped out, but this time a fight breaks out over the short spoons. It would be fine if there were enough short spoons to go around for all the selfish people, but the selfish would evolve their selfishness further and try to hold extra short spoons, two or three apiece, so fighting over them would never end, however far it went.

Among the selfish people who survive that fight, some might even begin to protect their “right” to the extra short spoons they hold with “laws.” Precisely because they are selfish, some may be able to behave altruistically under the force of “crime” and “punishment,” but just as there are very altruistic people, there are also very selfish people, so sooner or later it all ends in ruin.

Rights, Laws, Crime and Punishment Are Unnecessary If You Can Use Long Spoons

The insight to draw from this is that rights, laws, crime and punishment are all concepts we would not need if we could use long spoons. They may be useful in the short term, but in the long term they inevitably cease to be useful.

Whatever tools we use, what matters is a caring heart. Perhaps we could even see the problems that can be solved socially through kindness as the true trial given to humankind. If we try to solve those problems selfishly, by treating only the symptoms, we will ultimately go extinct. Fundamentally, I think it comes down to whether we can keep one another alive together, whether we can live in symbiosis.

A Story Felt as Beauty

Thought through a little more deeply like this, the long-spoon story turns out to be one through which even small children can naturally understand why an altruistic world is necessary. Even if it is hard to reduce to words, it seems to me to be something that can be felt as beauty.

In Buddhism, too, there is a traditional story called Sanjaku Sanzun Bashi (chopsticks three shaku three sun, about a meter long), about the chopsticks seen by a man who went on a visit to paradise and hell, so this must be a teaching found in every religion.

My daughter loves stories like this, and when she hears such beautiful stories, her heart seems to fill up and she brightens. Life has a heart, and hearts resonate with one another. Beautiful stories set the heart vibrating.

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