Because we are all humans, we are born with some innate capacity to take care of ourselves, strictly speaking, oneself, and this goes beyond the need to feed and clothe oneself. We are perhaps more selfish than we would ever want to admit to ourselves, but it is also this selfishness that allow us to survive at all.
The prerequisite of survival is selfishness: cooperation may be an excellent way of improving our lives, or even chances of long term survival, but without selfishness, we cant even talk about cooperation, not when cooperation is tolerated ultimately for the condition of personal survival. (if personal survival is not guaranteed most of the time, then no one would ever cooperate.)
Thus it is no surprise that language has evolved around this concept of selfishness, and came up with many defensive phrases. Phrases like "I told you so", "I knew that would happen", "You should have" etc. are actually defensive, with the intent of putting the spotlight on the other person, shifting the blame away from oneself.
While on the receiving end, such phrases sound especially offensive and annoying, they sound equally irritating to others who are merely observing the exchange, for subconsciously, they recognise the human's baser instinct to be defensive and shift blame away from oneself, and from a community point of view, any egoistic maneuvers are to be condemned.
Hence there developed an interesting relationship between self and society, a paradox if Kant were alive to say it: the self wants to, needs to in fact, be selfish, but the society frowns upon such acts; the society however, is not any abstract entity overlooking the whole mankind, but made up of countless other selves who themselves want to and need to be selfish.
In short: while we all need to be selfish, others dont like us to be, even though they need to be selfish as well.
For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! — Nietzsche, The Gay Science
2 comments:
hey great post! and makes me think bout volunteering..we often look upon it as a selfless act. but is it really all that selfless?! who would do it if it's not a win-win situation? we want to get the satisfaction of helping or for some, the exposure to the kind of setting we would like to work in while the other party receives the caring and concern. we merely mask everything under a desire to help. to satisfy that desire is in itself a selfish act cos there's a motive.
but i guess there are different levels of selfishness. society frowns upon the kind of selfishness that would harm others, thus the negative connotation. and the kind of selfishness that is for self-defence and leads to a win-win situation, society accepts it and doesn't see it as selfishness.
methinks its ok to be selfish. it just looks bad to other people. even though they need to be selfish too. We cant avoid being selfish, basic survival is selfishness already (depriving others of the limited food resource).
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