Selfish

Recently I’ve been debating with a friend about selfishness in the world. He argues that basically anything people feel or do comes from innate selfishness, conscious or otherwise. At first I thought, “Get off! That can’t be true, right?” But then I tucked it away.

A day or two later I found myself wondering about selfless acts. Are they a myth? I told myself that I would find an example to prove my friend wrong.

I was trying to get into my friend’s mind and see his point of view. This way if I couldn’t find anything selfish about scenarios I thought of or came across he might not either (and I’d win the debate!).

An obvious example would be doing good deeds (i.e. helping out charities, animal shelters, unfortunate kids, giving money to homeless, etc).

It is easy to point out the selfishness in this example. Doing good deeds sounds well…good. They are appropriate, kind, considerate, and deemed respectable, indeed encouraged throughout society as a whole (depending on how good is defined and in what context said deeds are carried out).

However, being good has rewards. People may do good deeds in order to feel better about themselves or to help a greater goal of some sort. Any way one looks at it, there is a selfish aspect tied in somewhere whether conscious or not.

There was another example discussed of a mother saving her son or daughter but that was deemed technically selfish as well since the mother would be “happier” and “healthier” with her son alive and not dead, therefore even though a mother would most likely act on pure instinct to save her child deep down she would be selfish for saving them. (My other good friend, F, disagreed most vehemently about this. Fair enough.)

Does this mean altruism doesn’t exist? I’d like to think it does. It’s a bit disheartening believing that everything people do is somehow linked purely to their own desires. I don’t think this should stop people helping others. If good deeds are generated through selfishness then I reckon it’s a win/win situation.