Lifestyle > Train of Thought

Can one be totally unselfish?

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Nigga_With_An_Additude:
yall are missing the point..........

we need good and bad because good wouldn't be good if we didn't have bad yall feel me?

we need selfish people because God has to have someone to save,see if we didn';t have people to save then this earth would be a good place andf not as bad as it is..............

basically alll of us need to love each other and try to get along

on the other hand.......
I have been totally unselfish at times because as a chaplin I feel I must do over and above what I am called to do............

Mr. Prikkebeen:
back to the gspot, you.

Elevz:

--- 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 ---

It is not like whims are worth going after. If you really felt the urge to torture random people to death, that does mean something about your diffuse feelings about your own life. That's not the best for you as an individual, even though it may seem as if it is. Suppress reality enough and you will believe it is.

You shouldn't act in a way that you'd hate someone else for. You shouldn't hate someone for what you would have loved to do either. That's simply the task of passing judgment, which is one of the most important things for a man to do. Know what you value, know what you reject. There's nothing more important to a thinking creature.


--- 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 ---

Obviously not. Someone who tortures people to death just for fun, can't have a strongly rational base of ethics and morals. You wouldn't do that if you cared for life. It's narcissism at its finest, and a negation of the facts of social life, and therefore of one's own existence as a human being.


--- Quote from: Infinite on January 25, 2008, 09:37:01 AM ---
--- 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.
--- End quote ---

Thank you. I actually am pretty much a strict follower of Rand's philosophy, having read a bunch of her books and agreeing with nearly all of it. Besides, you did mix up two of her most famous books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged there, in your description. Atlas Shrugged being about the (female) head of a railroad company struggling in a world that's collapsing around her because the people of virtue have withdrawn from society; The Fountainhead being about an architect who refuses to compromise his purity and ideals, to make it accessable for the masses, so he doesn't really get a lot of commissions but he does feel the greatest joy in doing what he does.

Ayn Rand did not believe in compromising ones ideals, but surely one should always strive to get the best out of the situation. You can't deal with politics without compromising if you ask me, but that doesn't mean you should sell out your beliefs to that which might attract a few more voters. Be real about your thoughts, and people might agree, or they might not. I don't know anything about Rand's personal life, but if she were being so stubborn as to make life impossible for herself, that would impose a huge flaw in the way she translated her thinking into actions. Yes, have your beliefs and stand by them, but don't condemn all of mankind just because some beg to differ. I can't imagine herself having optimized her achievements if she really was that stubborn.

Besides, I can understand why she had problems with people who think differently. She supposedly found a truth about man's existance, and she also experienced the evils of the ones who opposed that truth. It pretty much makes it impossible to deal with anyone who even to the slightest bit feels sympathy for that evil (being altruism and collectivism).

7even:
Whims are something worth going after if satisfation is something you truly value, nigga.

Elevz:
Ever heard of the pleasure principle?

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