Lifestyle > Train of Thought
Can one be totally unselfish?
TraceOneInfinite:
People aren't looking at the larger picture when they talk about the supposed "great virtue" of unselfishness. If you carry it out to its logical conclusion, and say that everyone passed their happiness to someone else in order to be "unsellfish" you would see that nobody actually benefited from thsi unselfishness.
People are only looking at what is seen and not what is unseen. Lets say a woman doesn't love a man who is her either her husband, or hypothetically the man her family wants to be her husband. Say she actually loves another man who also loves her in return. But she stays with her husband to please her family and husband and not be selfish. What's seen is her supposed "unselfish" act saving a family. But what's not seen is the fact that she has passed by what she truly needed and wanted and her heart is broken along with the other man who loved her having his heart broken.
Lets take this to the business world. Lets say that Bill Gates didn't want to appear to be selfish, so instead of spending capital to produce computers that people truly need and want, he spent his money on biulding schools in Africa. Well, the people in Africa may or may not benefit from these schools, they could even hate the schools, but people would not hate the computers because they have shown their desire for computers by spending money to buy them. If they don't want them they won't buy them.
Last point, see people often make the mistake of viewing the world as either you take advantage of others or sacrifice your happiness for others. If this were true, it would truly be a grim world.
Thank God, there is a third option in which you can be selfish and still benefit others at the same time. Again, look at Bill Gates, he provides a sevice people need and want (benefits others) and they reward and benefit him buying spending their money on his product. The other example is a woman "selfishly" marries the man she truly loves in spite of her family pressure to marry someone else, and the man she marries benefits greatly from this supposedly "selfish" act.
Point is, without selfishness people would not get what they truly want.
Maestro Minded:
--- Quote from: 7even on January 25, 2008, 06:00:28 AM ---If I were a person that had an untameable urge to torture random people to death, I'd kill myself. It is not always good to strive for what's best for you as an individual, one has to put things in relation to each other, if your advantage far outweighs the harm done to the rest of them niggas, then yes, strive for it. If the opposite is the case, don't. Call me a Kantist, but I wouldn't act in a way that I'd hate another nigga for.
--- End quote ---
If you had the urge to torture people to death it would probably be in your best interest to commit suicide to ensure you won't have the opportunity to feel any guilt since torturing people would go against your ethics and your morals.
TraceOneInfinite:
--- Quote from: Eleven 2 Three on January 24, 2008, 06:42:37 PM ---Being the Objectivist that I am, I regard selfishness as a virtue. Selfishness is simply the "concern with one's own interests". It would be a negation of the facts of life to place anyone else's interests above your own. Therefore, I strongly believe in ethical hedonism as being the way to act socially, as opposed to 'genuine altruism'. If there's nothing in it for you to gain, you have no reason to act. Gaining is a vague term though; just someone showing you their respect, or even the feeling of a moral virtue can be enough to make a seemingly unselfish deed an act of ethical hedonism.
I believe it all starts with your view on mankind. If you have a certain vision of what man should be like, and what should be considered virtues and what they should be praised for, you will be able to judge them for what they're worth. 'Unselfish' behavior then becomes an pledge for your own moral purity. How unselfish is that, really? It's perfectly selfish.
--- End quote ---
Eleven, nice post! I am very impressed!
I'm curious if you are a follower or if you have studied Ayn Rand's teachings on objectivism. Being that she was the most renowned objectivist I can think of. She wrote some great novels that illustrate the virtue of selfishness. For example, in one novel (I think it was in Atlas Shrugged), there's a wealthy man who's head of a giant construction business, and people are always complaining that he's so selfish and they convince him to biuld a railroad that nobody ever ends up actually using. But then when he's selfish and thinks only of his profits, whatever he biulds goes to great use, and no time, energy, or capital is wasted.
I agree with some of the ideals of objectivism, but I don't personally like Ayn Rand though because in a strange way she believes that everyone should think for themselves as long as they come to the same conclusions as her cause she was very arrogant and thought herself to be the most "rational" and since she didn't believe in compromise this cause her to lose many of her closest friends.
TraceOneInfinite:
--- Quote from: 7even on January 25, 2008, 04:11:18 AM ---^Is exploitation a virtue to you?
--- End quote ---
7, the world is not that grim. That's a limited view to believe we either have to exploit others or sacrifice our own happiness.
There is a third option and that is one of mutual benefit. If I want to sell you my watch for 20 dollars and you want to buy my watch then we are both gaining in return something we valued more than what we gave up.
Even if you do something for someone else "unselfishly" you probably do it because your self-esteem is increased by the act of genorosity, so you value your increase in self-esteem more than the 5 bucks you gave to the bumb.
Lets use a more extreme example. Lets say I'm a shrude business man who only cares about his bottom line profibility. And I biuld a sweatshop factory in Thialand. Ofcourse to everyone I look so evil and selfish, but actually I am providing jobs for people who otherwise wouldn't have had them. Those sweatshop workers desire the dollar a day I give them more than they value the free time they could have had with their families, and they prove this because they chose to work there. Not only that, but now I can sell you a nice t-shirt back in Europe at a price that is affordable to you.
7even:
--- Quote from: Maestro Minded / LME on January 25, 2008, 07:48:29 AM ---
--- Quote from: 7even on January 25, 2008, 06:00:28 AM ---If I were a person that had an untameable urge to torture random people to death, I'd kill myself. It is not always good to strive for what's best for you as an individual, one has to put things in relation to each other, if your advantage far outweighs the harm done to the rest of them niggas, then yes, strive for it. If the opposite is the case, don't. Call me a Kantist, but I wouldn't act in a way that I'd hate another nigga for.
--- End quote ---
If you had the urge to torture people to death it would probably be in your best interest to commit suicide to ensure you won't have the opportunity to feel any guilt since torturing people would go against your ethics and your morals.
--- End quote ---
In my opinion you are stretching the term of selfishness in this thread. You basically want people to behave at random to not act selfish. Of course whenever somebody acts consciously he/she in one way or the other acts in a way he/she thinks is "best" in some way. I don't think that phenomenon makes an action selfish. But I already talked about this in my first post.
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