Forums › Life › Spirituality, Morality & Religion › How Selfish are we all Really?
Ok. So again, like my other topic, this has something that has been at the forefront of my mind for most of my adult life. I spend alot of time deep in my own thoughts, which is usually where these ideas come from hehe.
Selfishness. Something we all are taught is that it’s a bad characteristic. Selfishness, not helping your fellow friends, family and just generally other human beings. Obviously we are all selfish at some points. Plenty of us could point out day to day things where they might have been able to choose a more selfless option.
The more you start to delve into your own self conciousness the more you start to realise just how “pre pathed” we are. I think we delude ourselves to thinking we have a myriad of choices throughout our lives, when really we are directed by basic instincts. More so than just sex, love, jealousy etc. If you look to the more basic animals on the planet, we practice the same, yet more complex behavioural patterns. What is usually described as the purpose of life, is to live on. Successfully as possible as to ensure the longevity of our genes. Simple. Of course on a different subject you can decide what meaning we give life, but that’s a different topic.
In modern life we make choices all the time. I have been thinking lately how often these choices ultimately benefit us. Even when sometimes on more active layer of conciousness, they seem to be helping others.
A quick example could be giving a homeless person some money. So immediately you feel good. And you automatically associate the reason for this happiness being that you have made someone else happy. However, is this happiness you’re feeling not a benefit to yourself? Directly concluding, you have done something that has made you happy. And consciously justified this happiness.
So that’s a simple example. If you go a little deeper into possible situations, though… Everyone is plagued by insecurities. It’s normal; a product of our complicated emotions. Alot of these can cause people to make choices in their day to day lives to comfort these insecurities. For example, a person who lacks confidence in social aspects and peer acceptance. They may be overly nice to their friends. Consciously telling themselves they are just a good person. Whereas really, they are being comforted by the result of their actions.
So far this may just seem extremely cynical. However I disagree. I think we often overestimate the complexity of our psyche. Afterall, emotions are just an extension of instinct. Over the years the basics have become more complex as as is the nature of evolution. It’s no coincidence we feel happy when we’re healthy, or have a particular discomfort to pain.
Overall, these emotions have direct relations with our ultimate goals. To live, spread, and adapt to anything to carry on being successful.
Now back to my original point. Selfishness. So if you assume the fact that all our actions are based on a necessity based on our instinctive needs, they why would be doing anything that puts ourself behind in any way? Every action we take can be rationalised and matched to the criteria of successful life.
Since my realisation of this over the last few weeks it has felt rather sad to be honest. It has made me wonder about how humans will carry on to develop. As our once basic instincts and emotions continue to intensify in complexity. And even more interesting, add the more common knowledge and acceptance of what our thoughts really mean. Look back 100 years ago, there was no such thing as psychology. Science of the mind? It was all magic and fairy tails whipped up between our ears constructed by god. Just knowing something makes a big difference to our development. Although I will say, ignorance most definitely would be bliss…
oioi…
it appears that the very same thoughts cross our minds…
and eventually you come to the conclusion that feeling sad is also an emotion, and then you see that emotion is unnecessary, but then you become numb, and we all know you cant function when you are numb – you cant grip a mug when your hands are numb. you cant grip control of your life when emotions dont exist -emotion is present everywhere and majorly influences every decision.
it appears that ultimately research and insight to this topic begins to become less and less useful, and more or less just documented – sort of like a store record… at first it may be useful to keep track of stocks etc, but 200 years later it is useless.
so thinking about this doesnt really help.. but it can not be stopped.. its viral. you wonder how humanity will continue.
as you mentioned, one of the dominating instincts of the human mind is to survive. and that is not just as an organism, but as a species. that perhaps slightly influences your questioning of the future of humanity…
but my personal solution to these questions, is that, if you strive to survive – do not let it be of age and phsyical longevity – let it be of remembrance. what i mean is that, dont try to survive for as long as you can by being alive for as long as you can – you can never win: 120 years max.
the answer is in being remembered… live a culturally prosperous life…
dont try and be rich in monetary wealth, money is part of day to day living. it will not be remembered after your death – much like you dont remember going for every shit last week – its just part of day to day life – it is a waste of brain functionality to remember these things, so naturally we dont. and your money will be worthless after you are gone.
you may say you want to leave money for your children. what benefit is that? no gratification is found with that money unless it is earned… or there is no connection to it.
money is a quickfire solution to keeping a society in order.. and it really doesnt work… at the end of the day there is always somebody who suffers. you can not avoid one group section of humanity being at disadvantage to the rest so long as a system of monies is within circulation. because, for example..
the rice farmers are paid little, and the rice is sold cheap. they are the losers in this situation.
now turn it around.
the businessman now has to pay a large amount for his rice – the farmer is paid better. now the businessman cannot afford to eat. now the businessman is at disadvantage.
as long as this money system is within circulation, there will always be somebody at disadvantage, you see?
so forget about money, dont try to be rich its worthless and will not be remembered, it does not help the survival of your own organism, or the survival of humanity as a species.
allow yourself to be remembered as an organism – make a large impact on everybodys emotion and you will be remembered well and you will live forever… be diverse in culture, generous in everything, and allow yourself to be subject to as much experience and knowledge as you can..
live to learn, and learn to live forever!
you might now be thinking, well thats just emotion.. its just part of our functional system. well look at it as a whole: by doing the above you can live forever… the dominant instinct is to live forever.. thats how, in my opinion, it can be achieved.
and since everything is related to emotion, you might aswell make it positive emotion. so just have a damn good life and do as much as you can before you die and cant do anymore, because you will only be remembered for what you did do.
its kind of difficult though, sometimes you just think.. emotion is just an evolution.. it doesnt mean anything…
but that just makes you feel life is worthless, which it probably is…
but we might aswell trick ourselves into feeling it is worth something… might aswell make out that emotions are real, and then make all of them emotions positive
because at the end of the day, who doesnt want to be happy. you cant deny it.
if you do, and you truthfully do, its because being sad is your happy… kind of like reversed polarity.
my 2 cents.. you probably cant understand half of it, just my inner ramblings
ez
also, yes, ignorance would be wonderful.
I think generally humans are selfish. This is neither a good or bad thing. It is simpley a fact. I think that it is reason and moral thought on why we do things. Also to give you the example of the homeless person, most/everyone is dependant on money, and i think being giving someone somethink that is valuable in your life and seeing them benefit is the reason i think why we are happy when we are selfless sometimes. When i am selfess i do not think of the happiness that ensues in my self i think of the happiness that insues in someone else. Undoubtably this ends in me being happy but it is not the initial aim. I have tried to answer this as simpley as possible (not even sure this makes sense).
many a time ive had the debate over whether there is any such thing as a selfless act
and ive come o the conclusion that there definitely is.
Just because you feel good for doing a good deed does not mean that the only reason you did the deed was to feel good. When I give money to a homeless man it is not only to get a warm feeling inside, its because I fell empathy for them and want him to enjoy a small amount of something. The pleasure I extract from the situation can be incidental.
You could argue that quite often acts of charity are 50% selfless and 50% selfish, or some other percentage depending on the person. I would even argue that if any amount of selflessness exists then the deed cannot by definition be selfish
Also plenty of people have given their life to save someone important to them. I think most people have someone they would do that for. And thats definately not for a smug charitable feeling.
Apart from anything else denying selflessness exists is like denying empathy exists. Cynical people can sit and construct arguments that all acts are ultimately selfish but thats just playing around with definitions in my opinion. It doest change the fact people are capable of wanting to make other people happy as well as themselves.
josh that is very fuckin good..iacchus also
my thoughts;
selfishness, like violence, is not innate in humans, it is a product of social stresses/influences. i will try to expand on this…erm..
humankind has gone through cycles of prosperity and deprivation, and it reacts to these accordingly. violence is an evolutionary reaction to reduce populations when they outgrow their resources. selfishness i think is linked with this.
with the reduction of humankind down to the individual, rather that the community, violence is all that can ensue, if everyone only sees from their point of view, conflicts are bound to happen. damn it is hard to get actual thoughts down as words!
on a different note:
generally i consider myself a realtively selfless person. but do i just do selfless acts because it makes me feel better, like i get off on it in a strange way? or do i genuinly commit them through empathy?
i think the op was also getting at this
empathy i think is like the opposite of selfishness, how can feeling bad for other people be selfish?
haha as has been said ‘ignorance is bliss’
my friend and i were talkin about this very issue the other day, we no longer see a 9-5 career with a salary and money and car etc as the be all and end all of life or as our purpose in it(like our society/culture would have us believe) . but it would probably be easier if we did. because there would be no more searching for the actual purpose (is there one etc?).
so if there was a chance to turn back the clock and become ignorant(bliss?) would you take it?
im not so sure..i take some sort of satisfaction in ‘seeing through the facade’. but it can be a comfortable facade.
How selfish are we really? Think that depends on who we are and whats going on in our lives.
Its not a subject i would have discussed two weeks ago but after what happened then I am reassessing my level of selfishness and whether I need to adjust it to make sure I get my stuff done: I just had people I thought were good friends take advantage of me for their selfish ends. Suffice it to say I will be vetting any further visits to these people houses with respect to the guest list to ensure it doesnt happen again.:you_crazy
Selfishness can be a self protection mechanism: if you are totally unselfish you may never get your stuff done as you are over generous with your time for others….There needs to be a balance which ensures you are sufficiently selfish to look after yourself while not being so selfish as to hurt others.
@mishap 367750 wrote:
haha as has been said ‘ignorance is bliss’
my friend and i were talkin about this very issue the other day, we no longer see a 9-5 career with a salary and money and car etc as the be all and end all of life or as our purpose in it(like our society/culture would have us believe) . but it would probably be easier if we did. because there would be no more searching for the actual purpose (is there one etc?).
so if there was a chance to turn back the clock and become ignorant(bliss?) would you take it?
im not so sure..i take some sort of satisfaction in ‘seeing through the facade’. but it can be a comfortable facade.
i dont think id choose to return to ignorance since now you can see how stupid it all is – couple of years ago i aspired to be a wealthy capitalist…
now i just want a modest job that shelters and feeds me, and for the rest i wish to live a cultural life… why get as rich as you can its gunna do fuck all!
@Dom_sufc 367425 wrote:
A quick example could be giving a homeless person some money. So immediately you feel good. And you automatically associate the reason for this happiness being that you have made someone else happy. However, is this happiness you’re feeling not a benefit to yourself? Directly concluding, you have done something that has made you happy. And consciously justified this happiness.
My views on selfishness and selflessness change a lot, depending on my mood and which convincing argument I’ve heard last.
But to be honest, let’s assume for a second that everyone is selfish, without a selfless bone in their body, and only ever try to maximise their personal happiness. In the world at the moment many, if not most people, (from my experience anyway) will commit selfless acts like the one you described.
So even if everyone is selfish, there’s no denying that they carry out acts that help other people. Why? Well if everyone is selfish then they gain some happiness from doing this.
Which is my point: It doesn’t matter if people are being selfish or not. It seems that for a lot of people, part of their happiness is determined by other people’s happiness, which means that it doesn’t matter whether they are doing selfish acts or not, if we assume that everyone is selfish, it still helps other people.
If people do have the capacity to be selfless then great, if not, then they’re still acting selfless in order to to be selfish, so it’s not necessarily a depressing thought. In fact, through education, and preaching selflessness, it’s possible to change how people want to be selfish.
This would mean that it is in fact a good thing that people are always selfish.
If people have the capacity to be selfless, but choose not to be, then it would be much harder to change their views, they would have considered being selfless and have decided it’s not for them.
If they have to be selfish, then by teaching them to carry out selfless acts then they may reason that it is in their selfish interest to do so, therefore helping others while helping themselves.
(Not that I’m saying this would be a conscious decision, just that they have the capacity to make the unconcious re-evaluation of what best serves their interest.)
It’s a pretty utilitarian kind of argument I guess, and I’m not sure if I personally believe it but it means that maybe selfishness isn’t that depressing.
I’m not completely sure if this all makes sense, it may be a bit rambling or unclear, but hopefully you see my point.
the limits of this argument are probably reached by the fact that it is written using a western language, and so we are restrained by the definitions of the words themselves, as such…
There r 2 types of people in this world – Givers of positive energy and those who suck energy from others to make themselves feel better
@Diceface 380301 wrote:
There r 2 types of people in this world – Givers of positive energy and those who suck energy from others to make themselves feel better
sometimes you gotta suck a little to give a little
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Forums › Life › Spirituality, Morality & Religion › How Selfish are we all Really?
