People are selfish. That is just unavoidable. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of people say and I don’t know maybe this is something everyone ‘learns’ when they get older.
I don’t agree with it though.
(There is the argument that it’s genes not people that are selfish since they are the ones replicating, so ‘altruism’ between people is possible and actually expected – I’m not getting at that though.)
I don’t normally like getting caught up in semantics but I think there are a lot of things that people do that shouldn’t be classified as ‘selfish’. The reason being that for me selfishness implies that you are putting your feelings above other people’s, that you are having a negative impact on others but you don’t care because you are being made better off. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.
For example say you give some money to charity. Also assume that you went to the effort to make sure that you gave the money in such a way that you knew it was being spent well. Was that selfish? Doesn’t seem like it to me. Yes you were thinking about yourself. You presumably feel good about yourself afterwards. So what? What has also happened is that you have made other people better off.
Now this type of action isn’t altruism – because that implies that you are worse off but others are better off. I asked my friend Bibby for a more suitable word for this kind of action and he suggested love. Now I don’t want to sound like a hippy but I like that idea.
I think people are capable of being loving. Of thinking about others as well as themselves. And acting in such a way that just makes everyone better off. And so not thinking about themselves all the time.
Certainly genuine altruism is possible. But I think it’s too much to ask for consistently. But I think acting in a loving way – helping others and feeling good about and so helping yourself – is something that we should all try and do.
So to those who go around saying that people do things for themselves I’d say you’ve missed the point. Why you do something isn’t really that important. It’s what you actually did that’s the crucial thing. So you could choose to only care about yourself, justifying it to yourself by saying that’s what everyone does. Or you could choose to care about others, realising that you can think about yourself at the same time
No one’s perfect. But in this respect I certainly know what type of person I want to be.
