Decisively_Doubtful

Before you answer this poll first let me tell you what I mean by this question:

Firstly I don't mean "do you believe in a God and believe in his holy text" or whatever. I mean something that is somewhat devoid of religion.

Basically do you believe that being a selfless person is better or worse than being a selfish person?
Do you think that being selfless is the right thing to do and selfish the wrong thing to do?
Do you think that most of the world agrees with these statements or it is not so universal?

Without trying to skew the results, I can't understand how you could say that being selfish is on the same level as being selfless. There does seem to be a sense of right & wrong within us that tells us we should be selfless and not selfish.

fast

Welcome to IIDB :wave:

Better, but then again, I choose not to move the bars by which the terms are traditionally meant. One may argue that certain seemingly selfless acts have traces of underlying selfish attributes, but to change the bar by what is traditionally meant changes the meaning a tad bit of what it ordinarily means to be selfish--don't cha think.

Yes, but then again, only by the traditional standards by which the terms are ordinarily meant to convey.

Though not relevant, for the most part, yes.

I'm not saying that.

Like what--learned behavior.

fast

edited in: I don't seem to be able to answer the poll given the wording--it seems to lack a little exhaustivity.

JamesBannon

I can't really answer that question the way you've put it. Everyone has a self so we are all selfish to some extent. Without our individual selves we cannot really be said to be functioning human beings. On the other hand, a complete egoist has the attitude of a newborn child - the world revolves around them and only them. If this persists into adulthood the resulting behaviour can be very damaging to others because the egoist lacks the ability to empathise and the ability to make moral judgements. Therefore the problem, it seems to me, isn't necessarily one of selfishness versus selflessness, but rather when it is appropriate to be one or the other.

Peter Watts

I think we do have an innate sense of right or wrong.
Before someone argues with me, let me help others interalize what I mean:

Imagine that you're sitting at a cafe minding your own business.
Someone walks up to you and smacks you in the face, for no reason discernible to you or onlookers.
Imagine further that there is no law on the books to deal with what just happened to you.
You would know — independent of any man-made legislation, any social mores, etc. — that someone just did you wrong. They violated your personhood.
You may not be able at the moment to enunciate clearly why this act was wrong, but you would KNOW.
There is a rightness and a wrongness that transcends us. At Nuremberg, those who were prosecuting the architects of the Holocaust appealed to this universal code as a rebuttal to those who said they were just following their country's orders.

Reanimator

Other than the fact that being slapped in the face fucking hurts and enacts our fight or flight response causing us to either take action against the aggressor or flee, there wouldn't be anything necessarily wrong with that scenario. In the case you give us, what is right or wrong is dictated by our biology: If someone causes you physical pain, your brain tells you that that person is acting out of line. It is not some kind of transcendental morality, it our biological response.

Astreja

I do not automatically equate "selfishness" with "wrong" and "selflessness" with "right." However, a great many people do this very thing, so there is a meme in our culture which causes us to look down our noses at the non-selfless.

I think that selfishness was the earlier behaviour, and selflessness was adopted as an alternate strategy somewhat later. Both are important in our lives.

EssEff

I think this is a false dichotomy. Being selfish is wrong when it results in harm to another, but it's right when it's necessary for one's well-being or the well-being of family or other loved ones. Likewise being unselfish can have repercussions. It's unselfish to give money to charity, but what if that money is needed for your mother's heart medicine?

Decisively_Doubtful

But if you think about it selfishness will always lead to this: if you do anything for yourself when you could do something for others then in a way you're stopping them from getting that pleasure.

Doing something for your own survival isn't always a selfish thing: you could say that you have to make sure that keep living for example, because if you don't all that know you will become very upset by your death: you will have caused them pain. To avoid this you must try to eat enough to live.
What IS selfish however would be to eat excessive amounts of food or spend more than the money you need to on food: you are wasting energy/ money that other more needy people could do with.

Well which of the two can you be sure will be more valuable? If you give it to a charity you don't know it will definately save a life, whereas to give it to your mother you know you definately will. Also it will cause her great unhappiness to see you spend money neccesary for her own survival on a charity, whilst the charity will not feel the same great unhappiness that you didn't spend the money on them.

It takes some explaining I know, but the general principle of "are you doing something to maximise your own pleasure/ minimise your own pain" = selfishness or "doing something to maximise the pleasure of others/ minimise their pain" = selflessness.

Dlx2

I'm not sure which is more selfish; looking out for your own interests, or looking out for others' interests with the expectation that they'll look out for your interests. They're both selfish; the second one is just less honest and more manipulative.

Plognark

Not necessarily. If a person is open about it, I don't think it's manipulative, I think it's an attempt at fairness.

We human beings are hardwired math machines, when you get down to it. Ever notice how kids get freaked out if they think they're getting short changed? Try giving a huge piece of cake to one kid and a tiny piece to another and watch the tantrum and hostility ensue.

I'm sure it's influenced by evolutionary pressures in our social interactions, but we humans are hardwired to find fairness and equity in life, especially if we think we're the ones getting shafted.

Of course, I think we're also hard wired for self interest and preservation/promotion. I guess it's a balance between the two, although that's a really simplistic view. There's certainly more to it than just those two ideas.