My Journey

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest -(Napoleon)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Selfishness - a virtue

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What exactly is Selfishness?

The popular usage of selfishness is for a sinful adjective where one person behaves in total disregard to consequences of his/her actions on others. Such selfish person will be ever ready to do anything just to satisfy whims. But is there any positive aspect of selfishness; is it justifiable to be selfish? The answer lies in how we define selfishness.

One of the first people to speak about the positive aspect of selfishness was Ayn Rand which was illustrated in her book “Fountainhead”. The virtuous aspect will be clear if we see the alternate (correct?) definition of selfishness.

Selfishness is related to one’s own self. A person will be selfish only when the person is independent; true to mind, thoughts and values. All the actions by such person will be out of convictions; will go through all kinds of difficulties and obstacles but will never compromise with the values and thus be selfish. The most distinguishing feature of that person will be ‘integrity’ i.e. such a person will ‘walk the talk’. And will never sacrifice others for own needs or will indulge in any ‘desire-satisfaction’ acts. Such a person will be ready to suffer all kinds of hardships to live for the ‘self – values’; and most importantly a selfish person will never be hypocrite.

The popular usage of selfishness as sinful behavior implies acts which are done for whim-fulfillment, and not for ‘self’. Every person has some biological and psychological needs and these needs are ‘objective’. A person will always strive to fulfill these needs. Humans live in social world and to satisfy the objective needs there will be interactions and those interactions has to have the virtues of benevolence, rationality, integrity etc(to be fulfilling). Hence such persons will never act in disregard to others rather act in regard to oneself. So the ‘real’ selfish acts will never be sinful.

The truth of concept of objective needs can in some way explained by the theories given by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene”. Dawkins answers questions like; why are people? What is Man? Is there meaning to life? He explains that this is all for the gene to survive. Gene – the unit of heredity will do anything to survive, an animal is nothing but a machine made to survive the gene. Thus there is selfishness in any animal, and this selfishness is for the objective need’. Gene is the basic and abstract unit of selfishness.

In fact if one has to judge whether the feeling of love, friendship, respect or admiration is true or not then one should see if the person exhibiting such a feeling is selfish or not. If for that person love, friendship, respect etc are catering to the objective needs then it is a true feeling and the person will always be committed. If they are just for whim-fulfillment then those feelings are shallow and there will be no commitment. To understand ‘Self’ is the prerequisite to selfishness. A person is most true when he/she is selfish. Love, friendship and respect is nothing, but token of satisfaction of those objective needs.

posted by greensatya @ 8:25 PM  

28 Comments:

  • At 8:36 PM, Blogger Youssef said…

    Most interesting.

    Dawkins is my hero. I've read him since The Selfish Gene came out.

    Currently reading The Ancestor's Tale.

    All the Best, J.

     

  • At 6:42 AM, Blogger Raj said…

    I totally believe that selfishness is a virtue which is why I happily admit that I am a very selfish person :) Akanksha once gave a five minute speech on "Is selfishness a virtue?" or something so she must have somthing to say about it.

     

  • At 7:38 AM, Blogger Y said…

    It was a very thought provoking post. I would want to read Richard Dawkins book. At the end it boils for standing and working for what you think is right. What you think is right and how you work for it, will define if its a virtue or a vice.
    But it gets very confusing at times for me. Havent read the Bhagwad Gita, but in a way wasn't Arjuna's conundrum also related to asking if he was being selfish or not? I have read some very concise accounts of Arjuna's questions and Krishna's answer. I wont get a clearer picture till I read the Bhagwad Gita myself in its entirety. But now extending Arjuna's arguement, I find it valid to certain issues raised when talking about economic development too.

    If you see even in stock market investing, to be successful you have to be selfish. George Soros stood for his objectives, in other words was selfish but when I look back he didnt had to do what he did.

    I think as usual my comments are not making sense to me due to their eclectic nature.

     

  • At 10:51 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Joseph - Welcome ! Yeah Dawkins comes out with radical ideas. Tell us about 'The Ancestor's Tale' when you are through.

    Heather- The concept says that everything a selfish person does is for his self, even love and appreciation.

    Raj - you bet. Waiting for Akanksha to drop by...

    Yogi - Me too is confused :p, you have brought about different themes. Hey, today the lead article of Economic times has something about Bhagwad Gita, you may want to read it. (though the lead article of ET is always trash, but this one seems better)

     

  • At 1:26 PM, Blogger Akanksha said…

    hey i wanted to put up post like this but smhow never got around to it...
    but u wrote it really well..
    when people think abt selfishness they always think of it in terms of gaining smthing at the expense of others which is just the opposite of what selfish is... when u r selfish u r donot use other people u r self sufficient..

    one of my favorite examples is that even when a mother doesnot eat and feeds her child.. she is not being selfless or sacrficing something bcoz rather than eating what makes her happier is feeding the child.. hence again she is being selfish..ie gaining happiness

    the only thing i dnt like is people misunderstandin this and hurting or pulling down other people to gain smthing all under the cloak of following the virtue of selfishness..

    for example :

    Selfishness as a virtue :
    Create sm product that is better than your rivals and then driving them out of the market due to healthy competition

    Crime under the cloak of selfishness:
    Bribing,bad publicity,strikes to pull down a company

    i kno this example seems simplistic but i just dnt want people to think that hurting smbdy or pullin down people or being rude or mean is being selfish..
    when u do allthat u dnt believ ur SELF enough to be above all this !

    phew.. i think i almost wrote a whole post here .. its jsut that i feel really strongly abt this topic

     

  • At 1:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I would love to add what Ayn Rand says about love itself:

    "Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another."

    Which is to say,if A falls in love with B, it is the reward B has won by virtue of his/her own moral qualities, which have given joy in someway to A.

    Very correctly put. But you see, human beings are subjective and sometimes irrational individuals whose actions are often driven by circumstances. Therefore, the feeling of "love" could have been developed for A due to the "perceived" goodness of B in the eyes of A, rather than B´s noble moral qualities.

    Finally, everything boils down to Perception and Circumstances, which influence each other and shapes the individual´s thought patterns, character and finally, behavior.

     

  • At 1:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Visit here for more of such quotes by Rand.

    I certainly enjoyed them.

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html

     

  • At 2:02 PM, Blogger Akanksha said…

    i love this quote by her:

    There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

    coz this is what is happenng nowadays

     

  • At 2:29 PM, Blogger Twilight Fairy said…

    Green, when did you last visit India? :p.. "real" SUV's have been there since ages!
    Also read abt ur lockout.. that's why I always checked at least 10 times for my keys, before going out anywhere. I also made sure I always had my cellphone on my person and also the phone numbers to get the extra keys :D even when going out the common laundry.

    Data management - it's true, everything in Finland is linked with the SSN. and that's why things are a little easier for the ones who have an SSN compared to those who dont.

    BTW you the *only* Indian in that place? that's sure unbelievable!

     

  • At 3:36 PM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Akanksha - You have put it brilliantly. The example is perfect. People take 'selfishness' as acts for 'Whim' fulfillment, it's not. Selfish acts are those which satisfy 'objective' needs. The popular usage of selfishness is totally wrong. A selfish person will have 'self' i.e. values, thoughts, and the person will live for it- eg- Roark in Fountain head.

    'Fashionable non-conformist'- you know yesterday someone put this in one of the comments and that started me to put this post. This article, I had originally written for OVI magazine, but I wanted to put in my blog as well. Rand has hit the nail on head with this term.

    Anon - Yeah this is the correct definition of love. This is one of the reason that most teenage love are not successful, cause at that time one is not sure about one's own needs.

    Subjectivity and circumstances may develop love but that love won't be real and won't last. Unfortunately most of the 'real world' love is like this. In one of my previous post, I had reviewed movie "Closer" which deals with reality of love. Love at first sight is never true love.

    Rand positions Roark as her model of what an idea man should be ?

    Thanks for the link (if you are same anon). It has good collection of her quotes.

     

  • At 3:41 PM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Twilight - I just left a comment in your blog. Hmm, I used to take my keys while going to laundry (not cell phone though) but it was my bad luck that day.

    I think anyone in Finland needs to get SSN, those from EU as well, if they are staying for more than 30 days. As you pointed out, it helps in many way.

    Yeah me only Indian, but today I read(interpreted by colleagues) in newspaper that one Nepalese restaurant has opened here. I will check it out, may be some Nepali guy is there and may be they serve Indian food as well :)

    Hameenlinna has population of approx 48K.

     

  • At 6:33 PM, Blogger The Cat said…

    'Self' is the creator of all the suffering that exists in the world. Curb the self, and the main basis for unhappiness and discontent is removed. I've read extensively on Buddhism, and the tenets basically say that the fact that we associate every thing with our own Self is the reason for all desire and discontent. We keep banging on 'my love', 'my happiness', 'my friend', etc. And if we rise above all that, that is, raise our level of consciousness, then we'll attain Nirvana. Kill Your 'Self'. And thats all there is to it.(heh! thought an alternate view would help. ahem. :p)

     

  • At 6:50 PM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Aaki - alternate view !! most welcome, bring it on.

    I have used Rand's philosophy and Dawkins theory to prove 'selfishness is virtue'.

    Rand's philosphy is based on 'Theory of Free Will' i.e you have choice to choose good and evil as your 'self'.

    Dawkins totally goes against any religion.

    Buddhism is based on 'Principles of Determinism' i.e cause and effect. You do something and take birth again to bear its effect, so buddhism says that do something(karma) that has no effect
    (resulting in Nirvana). This is the desired "SELF" in Buddhism. But 'SELF' is there.

    Moreover the 'self' in my post is related to objective needs and not whims (power, lust, greed..etc.)

    Thus I can still related to Buddhism. :)

    Hope you agree...and thanks for bringing the alternate view. The discussion on this post has been most stimulating so far..

     

  • At 7:25 PM, Blogger A G said…

    Satya,

    A question- if selfishness is inherent in all of us, then how can it be a virtue? Or for that matter, a vice? Just because selfishness is not a vice does not make it a virtue, does it?

    So the (next) question is- is selfishness inherent in all of us?

    Yes, and it doesn't need Dawkins to answer that question. Nor do I think that the Gene is the base unit of selfishness. Currently accepted scientific theory states that atoms combine together to form molecules. These bonds are either ionic (give-take) of covalent (shared). Is that selfishness?

    If genes can said to be selfish, so can atoms or for that matter sub-atomic particles. After all, we are all driven by the same energy principles, aren't we?

    http://www.numsum.com/spreadsheet/show/417

    Cheers,
    Abhinav

     

  • At 7:51 PM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Abhinav -

    A question- if selfishness is inherent in all of us, then how can it be a virtue? Or for that matter, a vice? Just because selfishness is not a vice does not make it a virtue, does it?

    For selfishness one needs to have self. We say a person has got self, when the person has some independent values and integrity. There will be needs for this self and for these needs there will be interactions. All these interactions have to have integrity, rationality, benevolence etc. So all these having being spawned from selfishness makes it a virtue. Ofcourse there was no need to classify it as virtue, if it was already accepted so. But it is the popular usage which classify selfishness as vice that we have to explicitly mention it as ‘Virtue'.



    So the (next) question is- is selfishness inherent in all of us?
    Yes, and it doesn't need Dawkins to answer that question. Nor do I think that the Gene is the base unit of selfishness. Currently accepted scientific theory states that atoms combine together to form molecules. These bonds are either ionic (give-take) of covalent (shared). Is that selfishness?

    So, you agree that selfishness is inherent. I used Dawkins to illustrate it, but there can be several other concepts. And there are many who don’t accept Dawkins’s theory.

    Well ‘selfishness’ of atom, umm I don’t know much about it, may be maybe not. I tried to develop on human interactions. Don’t have any ideas how to extrapolate it to atoms or molecules.

    If genes can said to be selfish, so can atoms or for that matter sub-atomic particles. After all, we are all driven by the same energy principles, aren't we?

    I think this is unrelated, but everything in world is same, except for number of electrons, protons and neutrons. Wood and plastic are same, except for the difference in number of electrons ….. in the atoms of both. So the principle of energy remains same.

    That was an interesting spread sheet.
    Thanks for your comment.

    Sometime back I had written a post on 'Difference between Honesty & Intergrity'.You may want to read it as it relates to this post.

    http://greensatya.blogspot.com/2005/08/honesty-integrity_08.html

     

  • At 2:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The word "selfish" word is used in two contexts. The popular day-to-day usage refers to those acts that violate or disregards one's obligation to others. For example, if a friend has helped me during my hour of need and if I now refuse to help him when he needs me, that would be truly "selfish" on my part.

    In philosophical term, "selfish" word refers more to the tendency of oneself to act in such a way so as to ultimately benefit himself/herself (not necessarily at the cost of others). It is more like a ultimate strategic objective. There is nothing wrong with this behavior. This is what Ayn Rand was refering to. Thus, if my friend has helped me in the past with the sole purpose of receiving a return favor from me in the future when in need, that would be an selfish act on his part. Obviously, there is nothing wrong in that.

    Two usages are not consistent with one another. Those who ask others to act selflessly (second usage) cannot be more selfish. Think of it for a while. If I ask my friend to help me without expecting any return help (thus selfless act on friend's behalf), my friend can accuse me of being seriously selfish. Thus, when one asks others to act selflessly (under usage two) he/she is indulging in selfishness of variety one (planning to renege on one's obligations).

    Ashish

     

  • At 2:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    See my post

     

  • At 6:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    hi satya,

    you may want to take a look at this: http://randomgraphs.blogspot.com/2005/12/selfishness-and-values.html

    i found it interesting.

    ur article is also very interesting. i have a few questions, though. will try to formulate them properly... then i shall put them forth.

    regards,
    mandar

     

  • At 8:09 AM, Blogger A G said…

    Satya,

    I don't agree with this statement

    "We say a person has got self, when the person has some independent values and integrity."

    The only thing required is a sense of identity. Anyone (or thing) that has a sense of identity has a self. It/he/she need not be a student of moral science. Is a crocodile not selfish?

    So, what constitutes identity? ;)

     

  • At 9:41 AM, Blogger XVSA013 said…

    so many ppl read Ayn Rand, and they turn around and cannot display a shred of objectivity or rationality in their lives ...

    thts right satya, what Ayn refers as selfishness is not active "seek and destroy" ppl without care or regard ... but, one's of own ego and its role in "existance", which is otherwise futile.

    like one man's ego can lift an otherwise miserable creature out of her miserable pathetic life into something better ... ego. selfish?

     

  • At 11:05 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Ashish - You have summed it up perfectly well. Yeah, there are two usages, one popular and one philosphical.

    Just to add, Rand's philosophy also says that "a selfish person does not sacrifice himself for others nor does ask others to sacrifice for him" and this forms the basis for her rejection of 'altruism'

    I am checking your blog in few minutes..
    thanks for the comment.

     

  • At 11:06 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Hi Mandar,

    Thanks for the link, I will shortly be checking out the post.

     

  • At 11:11 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Abhinav - Self or self-identity or individuality are common words but so difficult find.

    Look around you and how many people have these, how many have original ideas. Most people just do things cause it has been done like this. How many stand up for their own ideas, even if it conflicts with the established ideas. How many people have values ? even if they have values, how many have courage to follow these values? courage to walk their talk ?
    How many people have honesty ? and if they have honesty, how many have integrity ?

    This all construes self-identity, and it is not commonly found.

     

  • At 11:14 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    'always on the other side' aka 'veera' - yeah it is true, there are so many people who swear by Ayn Rand but how many follow her idealogy ?

    True, selfishness caters to one's own ego and a man lives for himself.

     

  • At 11:43 AM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Veera (always....) -- What can I say ?

    I agree the fashionable things are always dangerous, either 'fashionable non-conformist' or 'fashionable Rand readers'

    The basic character can't be changed, so I am not sure an anti-thesis of Roark can become Roark or not ?

     

  • At 1:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hey Satya,

    Here is what I found in a PLAYBOY interview of Rand.

    "PLAYBOY: Weren't Hitler and Stalin, to name two tyrants, in control of their own lives, and didn't they have a clear purpose?

    RAND: Certainly not. Observe that both of them ended as literal psychotics. They were men who lacked self-esteem and, therefore, hated all of existence. Their psychology, in effect, is summarized in Atlas Shrugged by the character of James Taggart. The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others. That is not the same thing as a productive or creative purpose. "

    Find more of this on http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

    Some have a novel way of destroying others´self-esteem, by constantly reminding the latter of their weaknesses and exalting their own role in having upgraded them. This is one way of increasing their own self-esteem at the cost of others´.

    Elsworth Toohey was another such character in Rand´s novels.

    They will keep hammering on what they have done for others till they drive the latter to insanity and will refuse to accept that the latter would anyway have reached the position with or without their help (as it will challenge their own self-worth), if the latter was destined to acheive his/her destiny. To quote Coelho, if you follow your dream,the entire universe will conspire to help you acheive it.

    No one can claim to have understood Randian philosophies in its entirety. Anyone who does that is either lying or does not know what he/she is talking about.

    One can at the best, argue one´s own interpretations of the same in light of their experiences. Only the ignorant will judge others´ interpretation, once again, claiming superiority (for obvious reasons).

    Enough of this. I guess life is a long enough journey to show us how we have understood lofty philosophies and our own selves, if not for others, for our own sake.

    Keep the up the good job Satya. This will be my last post on your blogs.

     

  • At 2:42 PM, Blogger greensatya said…

    Hey Anon, the explanation give by Rand to playboy is perfect.

    I was taking all the comments in light of this post and replying keep in view that. But I must say I don't understand other things which you are saying?

    Anyway, it was really good to have you on my blog and put your insights, so I would still wish you to drop by.

    Thanks for the commment.

     

  • At 6:10 AM, Blogger Freeze said…

    I'll be reading all your posts later... ;) then i'l sit and comment. looks like this post is popular, lookin at all the comments.

     

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