Everyone has, at some point, done something selfless. It may be a small favor to a friend or family member, or something bigger, such as starting up an organization of some kind to help people. Either way, any selfless act can be traced back to one thing: selfishness on the part of the person giving the help.
First, you must ask yourself why people perform these selfless actions. They like to help people right? When they help people, they get a good feeling in their mind that they have made a positive difference. Everybody likes this feeling, and understandably so. However, it is very possible, in fact, probable, that the “selfless” deed was done in order to get this feeling, thus making the action more one’s own benefit than someone else’s, and that makes the action selfish.
If this is true, then it means that every time we helped someone out of our own will, we were really doing it so that we could get this feeling of pride. We want to be proud of ourselves, and helping people does that for some. It is my conclusion, that directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously, everything we do for others can be traced back to our own desire to feel good.
I’ve been working on wording that for a while, so if you guys could give me some feedback, I’d really appreciate it.
agreed. its been noted that selfishness drives human thinking. though when a selfless act is comited it usually involves using time, energy, effort and resources to help another - these which can be used to help ones own self advance / self gain. as you said, only to finally receive the satisfaction and/or the “feeling” of helping later once said deed is done.
Although, could it not be said that this in its self is a ‘selfless’ act ?( lol what a sentance ) where one would rather attain this positive feeling from helping others then say buying a new car - a totally selfish act where time, enery and resources is spent totaly on reaching his own “good feeling”.
I agree that we have all done something selfless (altruism). I don’t agree that ALL selfless act can be traced back to selfishness on the part of the person giving the help. It is true for the most part that people get a good feeling when they help someone out, and I think they should. I see why you see it as selfish but I don’t think it is. If it was, and we assume that we are all selfish, then people would go around just helping people out in order to feel good about themselves and we wouldn’t have the problems we do - my experience in life has been that people are twice as fast to hurt someone instead of help them. But the truth is, that many times we help when we don’t want to. Moreover, sometimes we help without even thinking about it. Eg. I may be walking down the street and a person on a bike is riding by and they may be about to fall over and I will instinctively reach over and try to grab them in order to stop them from falling and hurting themselves. It may be argued that I will feel good about myself in the end, but I didn’t do it for that reason. Nor did I do it for selfish reasons subconsciously, I did it subconsciously because I know that if I was on a bike I wouldn’t want to fall over either, because it hurts. So I associate myself with the other person (sympathize) and try to save them pain. This association is the reason any human being knows anything about other human beings when it comes to understanding individuals around you. There isn’t enough time in one’s life to investigate all people like a book and act according to what the person is like, there is assumption on many levels. We assume that falling on the ground from a bike hurts, and that it hurts people in general. This may not be true for all people (eg. massichists, spelling?), but it is generally true and safe for us to assume so.
Hairyguy stated:
What if you are conscious of your act of helping someone and realize that it will help them while also realizing that you will feel good about yourself for it, but you know that the happiness they get from your help is higher than the happiness you will get from doing the act? Do you still consider that selfish? For example, the average person walking down the street that comes upon a homeless person asking for change, may consciously choose to give that homeless person some change. But the happiness the person giving change will be miniscule while the homeless person receiving the change may be exstatic.
I am reminded of something I learned about economics, Pareto Superiority is the view that for an economy to thrive we need to have transactions between two or more people that will make atleast one of them better off while the others are also better off or they don’t take a loss in value. For instance, if I trade you a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey for a basketball, as long as you value the jersey more than the basketball and I the basketball more than the jersey than we have both come out winners. In applying this way of thinking to the scenario of the person giving change to the homeless person, as long as the value of the happiness gained by the person giving change is greater than the value of the change itself and as long as the value of the homeless persons gaining that change is higher than not having it, we have an efficient transaction that will make happiness thrive.
A fine example, that. It’s been almost a week and I can’t come up with a good rebuttal to that, so I’m afraid I’ll have to echo my earlier post.
If the change is given for any subconcious reason (i.e. to avoid the emotional pain of seeing somebody homeless,) then it once again becomes a selfish act. As I said, there would be different degrees of how selfish certain acts are, for example, giving a homeless person change as opposed to say, eating all the Oreos. Giving the change is not at all selfish unless it is given for the above mentioned reason, or a similar reason. Eating all the Oreos, however, is very selfish as it does not in any way benefit any other person except the eater, whereas the change-giving benefits the homeless person.
After reading this thread, I now realize how pessimistic the original theory was. In fact, the whole thing is solely based on how I view the world. It’s all based on our individual opinions and/or definitions of the term “selfish,” as well as the examples.
Selfishness is not a bad thing if pursued in certain ways. I like to see people around me happy, so if I perform altruistic acts for that end, I’m being selfish, but still everyone benefits.
selfishness has nothing to do how much others benefit as long the action is performed to please yourself. like i said there are different degrees of selfishness.
I hold the primary justification for selfless acts is really Dawkins “selfish gene”. I am positive that we all carry that and it is probably the main reason we have progressed so much. Another motive is probably that selflessness is social interaction and cooperation, which if analyzed, comes down to rather the same thing. So in a way it really is selfish just not on the part of the original agent.
You’ve misinterpreted Dawkins, there is no selfish gene, he’s arguing that every gene is selfish (in a non-intentional way, it’s a play on words). The only way a gene can survive is by propogating itself in a gene pool and the only way it can do that is by making a positive difference to an organisms future status by making it run faster, more virile, etc. (there’s a few other ways, all “selfish” but we’ll keep it simple).
People who argue that every act is an essentially selfish one just misunderstand the meaning of selfish. Someone is selfish if they act in their own interest at the expense of others, someone is not if they do the opposite.
Now being disposed to acting altruistically (so that one helps everyone) because they feel bad if they don’t act that way doesn’t make them selfish in any meaning of the word. It is just that you have wrongly defined selfish to mean “being disposed to bring themselves pleasure”. I doubt it is logically possible to act against this desire (if you now wish to prove me wrong by doing so you are doing it because of the overriding desire to prove me wrong, which you have judged to be most pleasurable to you). The point is that we can reinforce selfish impulses or we can supress them, so they cannot be the same as you seemed to have insinuated, where one always acts selfishly in order to gain the most pleasure. In other words we can create in ourselves a disposition to act selfishly or altruistically and that is (a fairly) conscious decision. Remember we may justify it to ourselves afterwards (I’m not a sucker, I’m helping out a poor person, I’ve made a real diffeence to his life or conversely, why should I give money to him, the waster, I’ve earnt this money, its mine). If you think we can’t choose to stop acting selfishly you’re wrong, you’ve merely defined the relation (as used by humans) badly.
While I agree that every selfless action has a positive repuurcussion, the action of selflesness is done when by performing your action you make someone else feel better than yourself. And even though you may feel good about what you have done, it is more impotant that they benefit more from your action than you do.
I have been through alot of crap in my life, so when I sit in my house on the 4th of July to post things on the computer to help people with their problems or give them advice on a paper, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I am doing it out of selflessness, but perhaps I am. I really don’t need to do this, I have taken care of all of the things that I needed to today and could just as comfortably spend the day laying on my bed daydreaming but I am not doing that, so I am from a certain perspective behaving quite selflessly. It is selfless for the fact that I do not expect anything in return, that is what selflessness is all about.
There is a Buddhist saying, I believe it goes like this. “There are two kinds of people: selfish people and intelligent selfish people.” This implies that the intelligent selfish person finds their happiness in helping people while on the other hand the selfish person relies for bits of happiness in materialistic things etc. to provide for their happiness.
I personally like win-win situations of this type. Too many people think life is a zero-sum game.
The kind of selflessness that i envision is more in line with that of Aristotle’s ‘magnanimous man’ and certain portions of Nietzsche, especially his Zarathustra (see: The Bestowing virtue, for example). A person who gives out of his excess, because he must, and never notices a loss. This helps to foster what Stephen Covey has called an “abundance mentality”, One becomes spiritually rich, an inexhaustible well.
One type that could be opposed to this would be that of the ‘shopkeeper mentality’. A person that always calculates his own advantage in all circumstances. Someone who pays too much attention to the ledger and loses sight of the market. Some utilitarians might be placed here. Krishnamurti, in one passage, talked about adults that practiced tit for tat or quid pro quo. You do this for me and then i’ll do that for you. He then went on to contrast that attitude with the attitude of Children that just innocently do things together.
“…Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also…”
“…Except you become as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven…”
“…And if we learn better to enjoy ourselves, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm…” (R.J Hollingdale’s translation of Thus spoke Zarathustra part 2 chapter 3 pg 112)
There is nothing wrong with selfishness. The demonization of this quality is a result of nothing more than judeo-christian idealism and its pervasion into our society. Like most other aspects of our nature villified by this school of thought, it ensures guilt and is useful to control.
Cult basics 101
As for the original post, I agree 110%
There is no such thing as true altruism.
However, as Sandsloth already noted, there are many brands of selfishness and many shades in the spectrum between selfishness and selflessness. The problem is not so clear cut. There is a brand of selflessness that attempts to possess the spirit of the other person, and a type of selfishness that disregards the other. The best lives will endeavor to encompass the best of selfishness and selflessness both within one integral package. I believe my magnanimous man does just that because he gives from his strength, not from his weaknesses.
What is the self? This can go a long way in answering if an action should get called selfish or selfless.
Perhaps the individual who does an action with the intention of helping another has a larger sense of self. Perhaps he identifies himself with humanity, rather than his individual body.
So an altruistic action may indeed be selfish, but the individual who does the action does not focus his attempt.
So what does it matter if an individual acts with the intention of benefiting another? Does that intention matter? Will unconscious motive of pleasurable emotions matter more than a conscious motive of doing good?
A thief can function as an example of an individual with a very small sense of self. He acts exclusively for his own benefit completely disrespectful and unfair to all others.
Can an individual do an action that benefits another with the motive of experiencing a pleasurable emotion? Sure. Is that the exclusive reason why anybody ever does an action that benefits another? Certainly not. Such pleasurable emotions might aid in reinforcing altruistic behavior, but are not the only cause.
Morality results from the necessity of group interaction.
Imagine if every mother acted selfishly. A baby is incapable of self sufficiency. Compassion is part of our evolution. Without it we could not be such complex organisms. We would not have the years of sheltered development it takes to grow into maturity. We are born unfinished, without altruistic action none of us would exist.
The mother in question would be torn by guilt and sadness if they let their baby die (assuming no psychological problems), as well they feel a warm happiness that comes from nurturing. Indeed this is compassion, working in one of it’s evolutionary roles of ensuring survival. But acting on a motivation that makes you feel good or aleviates your own pain isn’t altruistic, regardless who else besides yourself benifits.
