How does one define being selfish, and when does one draw the line? What are the things one finds absolutely appaling from that perspective and what one can do, given the pressing circumstances?
I think really the difference here is what you're doing with your selfishness. Are you just dedicating all your resources to yourself? I'd say that's within your rights. Are you extending your selfishness to behavior that affects other people beyond their access to your property? That, I'd say, is more of a problem. If you own a pool and you want to be selfish with your pool, fine. Nobody wants to swim with you anyway. If, on the other hand, you own a car and you like to be selfish about your travel on the road, that's a beast of a different color. Suddenly going the speed you want to go doesn't just mean you're moving slowly, it means you're making everyone behind you late. Finishing your breakfast sandwich instead of looking for a gap to turn into is no longer just a matter of you yourself, but a matter of the poor bastard behind you. When your selfishness causes you to take my possessions we again have a problem. Or when it means you leave your dog's shit in the middle of the sidewalk. Things like that. Basically, if your selfishness goes beyond just depriving others of your generosity and becomes actively mistreating or disregarding other people I'd say it's a problem. We ought to think about ourselves, though. If people can take care of themselves there are less areas where we need to rely on one another. To use a traffic metaphor again, consider the person who keeps letting people in front of them go, regardless of right of way or the natural flow of traffic. To their eyes they're being generous, they're making someone's day easier. Were they to pivot their heads, though (or just look in their rear view mirror for once) they'd see that they're complicating more people's lives than they're improving. Why? Because the flow of traffic is designed for people to concern themselves with their own passage in a timely manner. You're already doing the best thing you can do if you just drive to the place you're trying to go as quickly as you can. I think there's more that can be done socially than that, but it demonstrates how taking care of ourselves helps everyone by making things operate smoothly. Sorry for all the driving stuff, I spend a lot of time on the road. I think it gets the point across though.
Thank you for such a well-written definition: it makes the matter much clearer for me. However, there are areas where this definition might fail, and I believe it is important to think those through while we're on the topic. One example being a promotion for which you and one other person are eligible for. The promotion offers more work, for which you are ready, in exchange for considerably bigger pay. Both you and the other person are skilled enough to be deservant of it and are putting in around equal amount of work in while you're in the office, or wherever you are. One day, several days after announcing the potential promotion to you and the other person, your boss calls you in and, in a private conversation in his/her office, asks you whether you feel like you deserve the promotion more than the other person. Do you say you do, earning yourself a better place but leaving another person out of the opportunity?
That's true. Still, isn't it too selfish to claim myself a better fit? For all I know, the other person is doing as good as me - how am I to decide that I'm better if we both possess the around equal amounts of the skill and the discipline that the new position requires? Would it be more or less selfish to decline answering the boss' question or to answer it with "It musn't be up to me to decide" or "Let the results of our work decide for us"?He's got no reasonable expectation that you should do otherwise.
Do you believe both of those technologies to be a product of reasonable selfishness solely - or, rather, of advertising and selling oneself? It seems to me that either of those are used because they're a better alternative to something rather than simply better fit for everyone and everything. Certainly, there are situations where both bows and Hubski win - ranged combat and thoughtful conversations, respectively - but when declaring itself to be the better way rather than a better way for something, doesn't that make the declarers selfish beyond reason? In the same manner, does declaring oneself to be better than others or best publicly make one's selfishness somehow harmful to others? If your point is to sell yourself, telling about your overall goodness of a product might help you but will harm others, for they're now unable to sell themselves, - which is fine while reasonable selfishness is concerned, but what about lying about your qualities?
Well there's a difference between recommending yourself for a job and running around telling everyone you're superior to them. The point isn't to think you're better than everyone, it's to try to advance your own interests, often at the expense of someone else who was trying to do the same thing or something incompatible with what I'm doing. Everybody acts in their own interest competitively and we're generally left with the more feasible solution, though maybe not our favorite one. Not always, though, which again opens up vulnerability to those plans. I don't even think you'd get past foraging societies without this sort of selfishness. You certainly wouldn't have civilization on the scale that we see it today. Not in human beings anyway. For that matter, though, I don't even know that a mobile species can survive without some degree of selfishness.
I've gone through a lot of pretty substantial changes lately, so I think I'm going to take some time to try and establish a new equilibrium before I worry too much about the general moral scales. That said, my work is pretty morally satisfying. I might just let that be my contribution until I get a bit more settled into my new roles.
I've come to realize something: nobody else will ever put your needs or comfort first. You have to do it yourself. I'm not sure exactly what the optimal solution is, but here is an attempt: * By default, be selfish. Only consider your own needs and comforts. * If all of your needs and comforts are being met, and you cause disproportionate work for someone else's needs and wants, that is "too selfish". * If not all of your comforts are being met, you have choice on whether to choose your own direct comfort or to help someone else (humans, being social creatures, do gain a form of happiness from pleasing someone else). Note that this is a choice between comforts that affect you. * If you are being pressured into helping, someone is trying to take away your choice. That alone is justification for not helping.
Interesting. I don't follow this, though: Disproportionate in relation to what? To what other people put into another person's needs and wants? What if they help to push you to help them? I suppose the last point takes priority over disproportionality if the conditions are met. What do you see the act of helping others as? Is it reasonably selfish? Unreasonably selfish? Altruistic?and you cause disproportionate work for someone else's needs and wants, that is "too selfish"
If not all of your comforts are being met, you have choice on whether to choose your own direct comfort or to help someone else (humans, being social creatures, do gain a form of happiness from pleasing someone else)
Humans, being social creatures, do work together to make things easier overall. Some people, whether by innate ability or by circumstance, do have an easier time doing certain tasks, so it is most effective for the common good if each person does what they are best at. If you've ever studied basic economics, this will be familiar. Now, I'm not saying it is reasonable for everyone to act in what the manner would be if everyone worked for the common good. The simple reality is that people won't (and I'm sure it can be argued that they can't) always do that. The possibility of so acting is a necessity. Promoting the common good is selfish in the end - though others will also be selfish in receiving (by not thinking/caring about the cost to you). But it is important to keep each possibility open. --- One way I have said this is "Everybody is always selfish. Some people just have a larger sense of self". That is, your self may cover your family, your tribe, your city, your nation, your planet, or even all life. I'm not saying there is a "right" extent of self for any circumstance. But when you don't ever expand it, that is "too selfish".Disproportionate in relation to what?
What do you see the act of helping others as?
Brilliantly put. It put me off guard when a friend of mine suggested that those who act towards others do so to gain self-esteem or an appreciation for themselves in their own eyes, implying that acting towards others is inheritently bad, for you're as if serving others with that. At the time I had the idea of altruism being separate from the self: I thought that people could either act towards others or towards themselves, or, to put it more precisely, to work towards others' pleasure and comfort or their own. It's interesting to see this idea fall apart: we do act selfishly when we help others, but it may result in benefit for others, from which we reap pleasure of self as well. Why not? I understand that it's impossible in the way we picture ideal, but why not strive for it - that is, to help others either rather than or as well as yourself?One way I have said this is "Everybody is always selfish. Some people just have a larger sense of self". That is, your self may cover your family, your tribe, your city, your nation, your planet, or even all life.
Now, I'm not saying it is reasonable for everyone to act in what the manner would be if everyone worked for the common good.
Because when only some people follow the ideal, it is likely to lead to a worse situation than the all-selfish case, and all you will accomplish is being an enabler. Now certainly, we should act in a way that allows the ideal if people start to cooperate. And if there are only a few dissenters they can be socially shamed into cooperating. (and social shaming is, scientifically, a good thing.)Why not? I understand that it's impossible in the way we picture ideal, but why not strive for it - that is, to help others either rather than or as well as yourself?
It limits the negative effects of evolution (which, I might point out, includes both genetic and environmental/social mutations). Remember that evolution is random, it does not have any direction. And in particular, it has no requirement to head toward an optimum, only cull certain negative mutations. Some negative mutations have a direct personal effect - a physical deformity, or a mental failure to hide from a predator. But others have an indirect, social, or delayed effect - imagine, say, an individual who failed to collect food for the group to survive winter, or even raided the stores instead of collecting when food was common. It is clearly in the group's best interest to punish that individual - either by excluding the individual from specific group activities, or even outcasting or attacking. Afterwards, the contrary individual will either conform or perish. Remember that fwd-fwd-fwd-re-fwd story about the 5 monkeys and the banana on the ladder, where they would get sprayed if one of the monkeys went for the banana, so they beat him up even after replacing the monkeys one by one? It is often used (correctly) as a story warning that we don't understand why we perform social punishments. But it is also a demonstration of evolution's protections working "as designed". None of the monkeys had any reason to believe that anything had changed to negate the need for the social punishment - and remember, evolution has no motive to be perfect. As a higher-thinking species, we can of course ask ourselves whether any specific social punishment is actually giving any benefit. Since our social behavior is learned over millions of years but our history only lasts thousands, we cannot of course remember where they all come from (if there even is a single cause). But we must realize that every single one of them has some cause, either a problem that we still face today or else a problem that we (or some subgroup of humans at least) faced in the past. The internet is often stated to be a place that you can be anonymous. And yet, all internet cultures spontaneously enforce a very strict social rule: you do not change your identity. If you take some action under one pseudonym, you cannot just start using another to escape punishment or make it seem like your position has more support. If you have some affiliation with a company, you must not promote that company or degrade its competitors without revealing your affiliation (but if you do reveal your affiliation, there is no punishment for holding your position, although it does allow you to be punished for other reasons). This all comes from a variety of sources, but what made me start to put it all together was reading an article called something like "Why do birds sing?".
The simplest way I can define being "too selfish" is being someone who takes more than you're willing to give. I am a pretty selfish person, but I make a concerted effort to maintain balanced relationships.
"Willing to give" and "giving" are different traits. I might be willing to give but would not give because I'm an asshole, or because I'm scared of public opinion, or because I'm angry at the time etc.The simplest way I can define being "too selfish" is being someone who takes more than you're willing to give.
That's fair. And, in that case we can default to the "actions speak louder than words" scenario. However, the reason behind why you do not give can still define your level of selfishness. There's a big difference between me being willing to help you on moving day but having to work that day vs. me being "willing" to help you but staying home to watch Netflix 'cause I'm in the middle of a season.