What is true self-actualization?

Question from the Internet:

“What are the opportunities and obstacles to self-actualization in culture?”

This might sound like a paradox, but the greatest obstacle to self-actualization is the self itself. By default, we all exist within the self, view and experience in a 100% egocentric and subjective manner. When we talk about “self-actualization”, we want to achieve something according to our instinctively self-serving and self-justifying calculations, dreams, decisions and actions.

Moreover, knowingly or unknowingly, we want to reach this self-actualization at the expense of others to prove we are better, higher, more powerful and more respected than others.

And since we do not exist independently, in some kind of isolation and disconnected from others, our instinctively egocentric and subjective self-actualization takes us into confrontations and conflict with others, and in the end, it causes harm to others and ourselves.

True, positive and Natural self-actualization is about selflessly and unconditionally finding our most optimal, mutually responsible, and mutually complementing role and purpose in society and in Nature’s system.

We all have a unique, irreplaceable role and purpose in human society and Nature we can find and fulfil.

And then, through that role and purpose, we can limitlessly actualize, develop and fulfil ourselves through performing our most optimal, crucially important “cogwheel role” in the whole system.

And only through this positive and Natural self-actualization can we obtain rewards and pleasures we cannot even imagine through our original, very limited and distorted egocentric and subjective worldview.