SELFISHNESS
SENSITIVE ISSUE, MISDEFINITION, MISCONCEPTIONS
Unwise is the man who seeks to do good for mankind and care for mankind, but does not include himself as part of mankind!
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Though you'll have to do some sorting and use of your brain to tie this all together, the pieces are here. It will be edited later, but I wanted to post it so I could easily access it in the search engine (and not accidentally start over again because I forgot!)
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Selfishness: Having or showing concern only for yourself and not for the needs or feelings of other people.
Self-interest: Being concerned for one's own survival and well-being as a primary motivation.
Reality: Man evolved in such a way as to insure survival of the genes, not as a "good" thing, but simply from the reality that those who survive were the ones who passed on their genes. There is no morality involved in that real world.
Outrage at another being selfish and/or the desire to put pressure on another in an attempt to control him is a form of primitive self-preservation, assuming that selfishness must mean danger that the person would do something bad out of not caring about the other person. But true selfishness in its pure sense is also one where the rights of others are honored; it does not mean do harm to others' self interest in order to get more for oneself. It is a "misunderstanding" to think that a person who is self-interested (which is every single human being who is sane) would necessarily do harm.
But what is "rational selfishness" (which could be called enlightened selfishness)
Unmitigated selfishness, just as unmitigated altruism (sacrifice to one's great detriment, is an extreme - and taking selfishness as limited and stupid and wrong is an extreme view, one that is not well-considered. Selfishness and altruism occur on a spectrum, not as the extremes (but it seems that many people are doggedly determining the opposite point of view in the most extreme version they can think of - so they are leaving the bounds of rational consideration)
which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.
The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others
Those who are outraged at others being selfish are operating based on right/wrong morality and the related emotion, rather than objectively looking at reality; sometimes the moral codes imposed are authoritarian and the opposite of other parts of the same moral code system!)
Selfishness is often considered to be "wrong", "immoral", "bad". It is judged and reacted to by others.
Why bother?
Because it seems to threaten cooperation and safety (trust). We have "evolved" to cooperate, in our own self-interest, in a sense. But what actually has occurred is that those who have a tendency toward cooperation have survived long enough to pass on their genes AND to have their children survive long enough to pass on those genes. It is strictly a mechanical thing. We are the ones who add meaning to it - and that meaning tends to be that which would encourage more cooperation, so that we can survive better.
The meaning we add is often formed along the way to being able to force or punish another to cooperate. We use "make-wrong", our own morality as the right morality, outrage as a reactive response (as a way to increase the "force") The problem is not that we do what is in our best interests which is what would cause greater cooperation for another, but that we disappear into ineffective thinking and destructive behaviors - ones that affect the other person but also damage ourselves.
How does it damage ourselves?
We get into a "fight or flight" upset because of our strong emotion. (Remember, we only have strong emotions from what we think are big threats, which are ones that are important in their impact on us. The strongest reactions are always related to a threat of our survival, loss of limb, and losing our ability to be effective in our lives (which is a threat to survival).
Am I doing any of these? Then look deeper and decide if it is destructive, neutral, or beneficial
What do I make wrong?
Who do I make wrong?
What and who do I have a strong emotion about?
