We are all driven by the same “engine”

Opinion from the Internet about human nature:

“I grew up in extreme poverty, in very poor neighborhoods. I did not find the selfish, egoistic attitudes that you mention inherent in those around me. But this was before social welfare had become so prevalent.

In fact, I found that many of the people with those attitudes were those who actually receive public funds, while the working poor seemed to be the most charitable and friendly to others.”

You are right of course, when people are trying to safeguard their day-to-day survival, the temptations of the ego are less obvious, they simply try to survive. In such conditions, they even realize and understand that by helping each other they can survive better.

But when people do not have such basic problems and can get more than what they need, then the selfish ego starts flourishing. Then we start to feel that insatiable desire for more and the thrill we get when we succeed at the expense of others.

It is all about development, about the development of the ego. This unfolds on a personal level and it also unfolds from generation to generation. We can watch it “live” in such “developing countries” like India or China for example, where after decades of living on absolute minimum now people develop to middle-class life and beyond. And the same will happen in Africa and every other place, as we are driven by the same selfish, egoistic engine — regardless of whether we are aware of it or not.

These countries will go through the same pitfalls of egoistic development within decades what western countries went through in centuries, making those egoistic shockwaves much sharper, stronger.

The importance of knowing what desires, intentions, aspirations drive us is that without it we can’t understand the cause and effect processes we go through individually, collectively and as a result, we are chasing our own tail when we try to ‘solve” things.