Selfishness

[Martin Hash]

Life seems confused and illogical because we are drawing conclusions from incorrect and invalid information - delusional information. The reason we delude ourselves is because the alternative would be to admit that people are self-centered to the point of being perverse. Animals are self-centered, it is natural to think people are just as much. Our evolutionary legacy: people who look out for their own selfish best interests are more likely to pass on their genes. In fact, scientific research has actually identified the existence of a “selfish” gene. (Of course, those who deny the baseness of the human animal, having no research to rebut it, attack the science with rhetoric and mysticism, or to attack the researcher.)

Our selfishness manifests itself in all aspects of our lives but even psychologists who have enough understanding to agree with this premise still do not appreciate how overwhelming selfishness actually is. It would not be inaccurate to assume that the vast majority of all we see, hear, and experience is distorted by our own selfishness, or the selfishness of others. Decisions supposedly made for altruistic reasons usually have a modicum of selfishness at their core. Our self-centeredness distorts our sense of importance in the grand scheme of things such that in our hubris we make decisions that affect others but are really in our own best interests. For example, “politics” is the word that describes the manipulation of selfishness.

Selfishness is often confused with envy, but selfishness is purely a matter of the individual, like lust, greed, avarice, gluttony, and other “sins” that are not necessarily destructive to the social fabric but probably detrimental to the person who is expressing them. When people condemn selfishness in others, they are displaying envy in themselves. Equally as important as not projecting your selfish interest onto others is keeping others from doing it to you.

[Haumana]

Cruising through your psychology forum is fun. This one brought Twain's "What is Man?" immediately to mind.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/70/70-h/ ... k2H_4_0001