Selfishness

[CelestialBody]

 

[Angel]

It would depend on the situation.. sometimes a person who doesn't have the details will see a person's actions as selfish, when they would think otherwise if they knew all of the information.

I am unsure what my own personal thought as to what true selfishness is... I'll get back on that.

 

[scylis]

being selfish is when you act for your own benefit at the expense of others.. at least, that's how i see it..

and, yeah, lots of things can seem selfish if you don't know the whole story

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[mig]

Surely all of us are selfish to some degree.I try not to be,but, unless you analyse each action or word before doing or saying then an element of selfishness may well creep in.I don't like hurting people but,quite inadvertently,I probably have.

 

[Ally C]

I've pretty much been accused of that all day long. Not going to go into why. But tell me, what do you think is selfish? Looking for a definition here...and some serious discussion.

What Angel said. The people / person in question could be adjudged to be selfish in that they may be putting their beliefs and / or needs ahead of yours. I'd need more information to comment further on your specific case, but understand that this is not your intent.

As for 'selfishness', we can all be guilty of it. I've just came from Iris' thread about respect, and a lot of what was said there is translatable to this subject. For some 'serious discussion' I'll throw in the following from my idiot's guide to philosophy (all of my guide books are in this format!):

utilitarianism is an approach to morality that treats pleasure or desire-satisfaction as the sole element in human good and that regards the morality of actions as entirely dependent on consequences or results for human (or sentient) well-being.

but ...

egoism and altruism. Does morality require a person to act for the good of others, or can its requirements be consistently seen as means to self-fulfilment for the moral agent?


It has been argued that all actions can be described as 'selfish'. For example, helping an elderly person cross the street is selfish in that we do it because we feel good about ourselves, and not necessarily about the well-being of the person we are helping. I have problems with this form of critique as it is very reductive. Selfishness, like any other character trait we could care to mention, is co-dependent on circumstances such as the company we are in, and how we react to and interact with one another. A bit of give-and-take is required; as long as any bouts of selfishness (intended or not) recognise others as more than mere instruments to our own fulfilment then the outcomes of being selfish are diminished in importance and make less of an impact on our daily lives. Others may limit our personal ideas of self-fulfilment, but I think it is entirely possible for us to respond to this without recourse to a 'counter-selfish' [or indeed pre-emptive] strike. Then again ...