”The road to hell is paved with good intentions because all the do-gooders in the world, whether they’re doing good for others or doing it for themselves, are troublemakers. “Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown,” said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree.
We white Anglo-Saxon Protestants — British, German, American — have been on a rampage for the past hundred or more years to improve the world. We have given the benefits of our culture, our religion, our technology to everybody except perhaps the Australian aborigines. And we have insisted that they receive the benefits of our culture, even our political styles — our democracy. You better be democratic or we’ll shoot you.
And having conferred these blessings all over the place we wonder why everybody hates us. See because sometimes doing good to others and even doing good to oneself is amazingly destructive because it’s full of conceit. How do you know what’s good for other people? How do you know what’s good for you? If you say you want to improve then you want to know what’s good for you but obviously you don’t. Because if you did you would be improved.”
— Alan Watts
