Being egotistic is not evil, our ego is our greatest asset — if we learn how to harness it!
Opinion from the Internet about Humanity and egoism:
“I think that our emotions and perceptions follow our beliefs. So, say somebody holds a belief (i.e. all people are selfish)… While you can probably find (and even off the top of your head think of) a lot of evidence for this, I might suggest that they look at evidence that goes against it, because that can exist too… Or, at least, it tends to wind up being much less black and white.
I feel like the first step in that process is finding anomalies and winding up feeling confused and disillusioned for awhile, while the mind settles into being open to new perspectives.
Challenging more depressive thoughts isn’t an easy thing to do. I’m not sure why, but these types of beliefs seem to come with much more power than the optimistic ones, for some of us.
Anyway, I think it’s possible (to an extent) to teach yourself out of this, as long as you’re curious enough about what else the world might have to offer… And if you’re willing to let it surprise you a little bit, occasionally.
This is what I’ve personally noticed over the past 6 months, but it’s always more interesting for me to catch a glimpse into how other people experience change. It can be so different for us, even when we’re coming at it from the same direction.”
You are completely right. Perception of reality, research, understanding requires contrast, comparative research as one side of the coin can’t exist without the other.
And you are also right that in Nature there are always pairs of qualities, like love exists against hate, selfishness against being selfless, egotistic against altruistic.
Now Humanity being egotistic is not my idea - apart from finding the vast amount of evidence for it though the helplessly recurring vicious cycles in history, combined with our own seemingly inevitable march towards self-destruction - this is the conclusion of a very special, millennia-old science that has been studying Human nature in contrast to Nature’s system for almost 6000 years.
The unique empirical scientists who conducted their research - especially through themselves, in their connection with other people - don’t damn anybody for being egotistic. It is the opposite!
Being born egotistic, selfish is our greatest asset we received purposefully from evolution itself! It has been the totally self-serving, self-justifying, exploitative Human ego that fueled our progress, development so far. Just let us compare ourselves to other developed primates and see the difference!
We started from the same - so far unknown - root, from exactly the same environmental conditions. And we can see the difference between chimpanzees for example and Human beings today. One remained basically unchanged for millions of years while the other is probing faraway galaxies, building civilizations, searching for the meaning of life.
We received to ego from evolution so we reach a state in our development when we realize that the ego without being harnessed, balanced, purposefully channeled can destroy us like cancer.
And we reached this in our unique, revolutionary generation. So now we have to search for the other side of the coin and find the forces, qualities that can help us neutralize, harness the ego, direct its awesome force towards positive, constructive goals, purpose.
We won’t find such positive forces in us, but we find them in Nature and in Nature’s evolutionary force that drives the whole system towards a most optimal, final integration.
So our unparalleled task in this special generation - otherwise standing on the threshold of self-destruction - to learn how to copy Nature’s selfless, altruistic behavior on ourselves, complementing, “building” the true Human being, that comprises both sides of the coin on one hand 100% selfish, egotistic, on the other hand acquiring similarity to Nature by clothing into Nature’s selfless, altruistic qualities.
By that the original cancer-like, single-cell Humans will be able to build the mutually responsible, mutually complementing Human super-organism that will merit being the crown of evolution! Moreover through the unprecedented contrast between egotistic, subjective, and altruistic, objective perception finally we will have the necessary comparative research that can help us attain reality in its totality - from one end to the other.