Utilitarian note and Historical note

The end or the result is not what a person should consider when living. The process and the orientation of living in the now is important. For a time I may have expected someone else, not me, to bring about change that would ultimately benefit the world. But it is not just anyone else that I should wait for. I have a mind, a body, a heart. I am capable of being human and being human I am capable of maintaining my own personal values and virtues for the betterment of others and for the betterment of a personal self-interest. Though both benevolence and prudence do not necessarily contradict. In acting out of self-interest I may in turn act also out of benevolence, and vice versa. The line between the two is hard to draw. Though my conscience relays to me in the form of guilt-after-the-fact if in fact my action was an action done out of self-interest. Regulating my actions, my conscience -- something good within human nature -- makes me responsible for each and every decision that I make.

Depending upon which decision it is that I make in any given situation, the outcome is not always the same. What then is history (a topic I've struggled to interpret)? Is it a paradox that westerners celebrate peaceful historical events that lead to violence as a friend of mine suggests? Like living, history is indeed a paradox, as is its relative interpretation and categorization. The pinnacle events that we celebrate in America have much to do with American history recorded within the borders of the United States because patriotic brain-washing is needed for democratic control and support of the people. Personally, I have read much of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's works and greatly admire his rhetoric and prose -- simple, yet deeply intellectual. His words mean much for the black community definately, but much more for all of humanity. The value of persons that he emphasized and his realization that only one race exists on earth (not including the other species in the animal kingdom) -- the human race -- was too true for his time. Truth hurts. It's amazing that human beings strive for it, yet settle for some falsity when the search becomes dangerous or threatening to security. History is not a search for truth then. It is an interpretation of past events that contains fragments of truth -- What did people care for? What was their reaction to circumstances...
To speak of history in terms of the world as static and the self as dynamic, is to withdraw from reality and maintain ignorant to the happenings of the natural world.