Yesterday, as I sat down for one of my thinking sessions, I came to a realization that, for lack of a better word, astounded me. That realization was that we are all selfish. And not just at a minimum; entirely selfish.
None of us are selfless.
This doesn’t have to be a downer though (I’m not saying this just to ruin your day), there are many positives that come out of us being selfish. First of, the good news is that we are not intentionally selfish (which is a good thing); We are selfish as a by-product.
We are selfish as a by-product of us having feelings.
I’ll start from there.
Feelings
Let’s start off with the basics; the definition of feelings.
Feelings: emotional or moral sensitivity (especially in relation to personal principles or dignity).
Feelings are self-centered. They’re focused on the person that has them; Your feelings are centered on you, and someone else’s feelings are centered on them. Feelings are at their basic, a self-centered thing; A selfish thing (concerned chiefly with one’s own). Thus, any action done out of feeling is bound to be a selfish thing.
Let’s look at various scenarios to see whether or not this is true.
Daily life is selfish
Why do you eat an apple or drink orange juice? Do you just do it to do it? With no thought behind it whatsoever? Not likely. You (I’m presuming you’re normal) eat and drink to satisfy a feeling that you’re having. Whether that feeling is one of hunger, or of thirst, you satisfy it (or at least try to).
Normal cycles of satisfaction usually go like this:
- I feel hungry –> I eat food –> I feel full/satisfied.
- I feel thirsty –> I drink water –> I feel quenched/satisfied.
- I feel tired –> I sleep –> I feel rested/satisfied.
The list can go on and on. But the pattern is already distinguishable:
Everything that you do daily is done in order to satisfy a feeling.
Everything you do is done in order to satisfy your feelings. Just try to think of one action that you’ve ever taken which did not make you feel; it’s impossible!
Okay, now that we’ve got selfishness in daily life covered, let’s look at the most obvious side of selfishness; the evil side. This shouldn’t be too big of a jump though, selfishness in wrong doing is by far the easiest side to see.
Wrongdoing is selfish
Hitler was a selfish human being, I don’t think we’ll disagree on that, but let’s take a closer look at his selfishness.
Why did Hitler kill countless innocents?
Did he do it in order to piss off the world? Or did he do it in order to make millions of people miserable? Well, I doubt he did it for any of those reasons. I think those are a by-product of what he did, but I believe the main reason he killed so many was in order to satisfy only one person, himself.
See the current doctrine at the time, set by science, was that human beings evolved from negroid (blacks), to mongoloid (asians), to caucasoid (caucasians). Thus, people at the time viewed asians as better than blacks, and caucasians as better than everyone. This combined with the failing German economy and the view that Jews were taking jobs away from their rightful owners led people to view, more like place, Jews in a similar light (as below Caucasians). Hitler, believing all this, felt that all non-caucasians had to therefore be killed (in order to keep caucasians from mixing with them of course). He felt that a country devoid of all non-caucasians (and gays, Jehovah’s witnesses, and people with disabilities) would be the best country to live in. Thus he went about and tried to satisfy his feelings (we know how that turned out).
Hitler killed millions in order to satisfy his feelings.
And the same can be said for other ‘villains’ in history, such as the 9/11 terrorists. They felt that the World Trade Center had to be demolished, and thus they crashed two airplanes into the twin towers in order to satisfy their feelings.
Since both Hitler and the 9/11 terrorists were acting out of feeling and of trying to satisfy their feelings, they were both being selfish… But so was Mother Teresa.
Wait. What!?! Did I just link Hitler and Mother Teresa?! Yes, yes I did, please calm down and listen for a bit.
Selflessness is selfish
This is the oxymoron and the shocker of this whole theory (what gets more oxymoronic that selfishness in selflessness?).
Even when we are helping others, we are selfish. Even when we’re kind, we are selfish.
All because of those darned feelings of ours.
When you give money to the poor are you not happy? Yes, you are. Because you just gave something to yourself in the process; the feeling that you are caring.
When you help a homeless person by giving them all your spare change it’s obvious to see that you’re doing it to make them feel happy, but do you realize that you’re also doing it to make yourself feel happy? Do you realize that through making them happy, you yourself are happy? This is because you’re happy for other reasons. You are happy in that situation because you feel caring. You are happy because you feel kind.
To get back to Mother Teresa; Did she not take a vow of poverty in order for her to help the poor and in the process feel closer to God? Did she not feel as if she was a caring person by doing so? Did this not make her feel happy about herself?
When you take care of a loved one do you not in fact feel good about yourself? Do you not see yourself in a positive light? Do you not feel glad about the fact that you are helping another human being? About the fact that you’re caring?
What I’m getting at through all this is that we are selfish, and that we can’t help but do so.
By the meer fact that we have feelings, and act out of them, we are selfish.
So how does knowing we are selfish better us in any way?
The right thing to do in this situation would be for us to throw away our feelings, for us to shun anything that invokes feelings, and for us to stop acting out of feeling… but that’s impossible, it’s what distinguishes us as humans afterall (and besides, being feeling-less comes with it’s own set of problems).
We can’t be feeling-less, and thus we can’t be unselfish.
The best thing we can do in this situation is to realize that “Yes, we are selfish. But how can we use this to do good?” We have to live with the fact that we are selfish and move on.
As Seneca preached that we have to look towards the fact that we are all going to die in order for us to truly enjoy life (look at the bad in order to see the good), we must do the same with selfishness.
If we’re all selfish, how can we train ourselves to be selfish in a good way?
I’ll leave you with that.
photo credit: wonderferret