Why is contributing to society not a priority for us?

Question from the Internet:

“Why aren’t my societal contributions a priority?”

Our contribution to society is not a priority to any of us because we are all born with an inherently self-serving, self-justifying subjective and individualistic nature.

Thus in any given situation, our priority is always to serve ourselves and fulfil all our desires vastly beyond our actual necessities. And most of the time, this unfolds through ruthless competition and success at the expense of others.

So, it is not enough that we do not properly contribute to society; but we even harm society since we take whatever we can for ourselves.

Again, we are all born like this, regardless of what we actually think about ourselves and our contribution to society. We are neither evil nor are we sinful since we are all born with this nature without free choice.

On the other hand, today, we have enough historical and contemporary experience to see that this behaviour is wrong. After all, we also have a unique human intellect that is capable of critical self-assessment and initiating unique, unprecedented self-change and self-development.

In the end, we will value contributing to society as much or even more as self-service when we come to understand and actually “viscerally” feel that in a globally interconnected and interdependent world, our individual success and survival fully depends on the success and survival of the whole society and even humanity.

When we understand and feel that we are but single cells in Humanity’s single, living organism and humanity is also inevitably an integral part of Nature's integral system, we won't make separation between ourselves and others, but we will view the whole system as “ours”, as a single entity.