Selfishly acting selflessly…
Opinion from the Internet on acting according to self-interest:
“Gonna agree and disagree here. I don’t think action with self interest is bad or good. It just is. Like gravity. Why would you ever choose the lesser of two options? You wouldn’t it direct make sense. You will always choose the one you think is better. Even in the situation where you scarifice your life for another’s. Or due to your pride or honor in thinking that they deserve to live more than you do. Or you couldn’t live with yourself if you hadn’t sacrificed yourself or done anything. So again self serving. Granted a beautiful sacrifice but your still choosing what you think Is better.
Now where I would disagree is that it seems like you think acting self servingly is inherently bad. Which I disagree. Lots of people do good things because it makes them feel good. I have a much more optimistic view of our future than it seems you do. Even animals are self serving. They just don’t have the capacity to think about it that deeply.
The only selfless good act you can do is one by accident. Like if you bump into sometime accidently and it saves then from being hit by a bus or falling off a ledge too their death or something.
Sorry if I misunderstood what your were saying.”
You are right of course.
Probably I didn’t express myself clearly, I agree that the inherent self-service is neither good or evil. This is how it is.
Gravity is the perfect example as we also draw everything towards ourselves.
Our inherent nature resembles black holes, but again, this is how we are born, we have no free choice about it, so we can’t blame for this even if we find that such a behavior is harmful in the context of the global interconnected and interdependent conditions we live in.
Even when we come around to start consciously making “selfless” calculations, we will do it from the very clear understanding, emotional impressions that such “selfless, altruistic” action, behavior will provide us with a qualitatively much higher, more peaceful, prosperous and sustainable existence.
We can learn and feel that in this global, integral world the benefit, health and survival of the individual is directly, intimately intertwined with the benefit, health and survival of the whole collective.
We need to go through the same evolutionary jump single-cell organisms made when combining into multi-cellular organisms for the clear evolutionary advantage.
But in our case we have to make the similar evolutionary jump consciously, justifying why we are the “crown of evolution”.