Tell me why being selfish is wrong.
Exactly as the title says. Tell me why being selfish is wrong.
I'm not of the opinion that a rational, considered self-interest is wrong. I think it's usually the best way to go. In fact, I would say it's kind of like our default setting, but I've seen quite a few people post recently about how being selfless is good. I disagree.
Why do you think that selflessness is good? Why do you think that selfishness is bad? Do you think it's the other way around? Or maybe neither is good nor bad?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on -
Why do you feel the need to insert the phrase 'learning about healing'? You really can't explain what you mean there without driveling out a large volume of malarkey. We aren't taking a medical course, or even first aid course, if we help a perfect stranger. You seem to be addicted to attaching metaphysical BS to perfectly simple concepts.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on -
Healing is a process which can happen in any area of life, whether physical, psychological, or any other.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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@Simon Paynton
Well we've already determined that helping a perfect stranger contributes nothing towards a medical degree or even first-aid certificate. I personally can't see how it would provide any insight into psychology either. Of what sort of 'other' do you speak? Something 'spiritual'? Metaphysical?
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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Heather - "healing" means the process of making healthy and whole, and this can apply to literally anything, if we take a human perspective, which after all is what we're talking about in morality. It's also shorthand for self-preservation. Now, of course, not everything being made healthy and whole is good for evolutionary fitness. I can fix my machine gun and then it will function very well to kill people with.
This process of "self-preservation / making various things healthy and whole" can be coupled with "cooperation / empathy / fairness" to produce "evolutionary fitness", and that is morality in a nutshell. It can be shown that as we are a social species, then very often it is best for everyone and best for the individual to couple these two areas together.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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Yeah, you covered all that in your second point when you said, "we are making a better world for everyone, including ourselves and our own people" but I was just wondering why you always have to through in metaphysical allusions that obfuscate your point. I guess that's just you though.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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But that is my point, it is metaphysical (spiritual/philosophical). It doesn't just mean mending a broken leg, it means mending anything at all, from a human perspective. I see this principle existing throughout all of living creation. We can't talk about something like that without getting metaphysical.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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Actually, we can't progress any sort of conversation once one engages full blown malarkey that is completely unfalsifiable. You can likely babble about skyfairies and emotional telepathy with others who can't process reality and both of you will feel like you are advancing some great idea - but for the rest of us it all just sounds like cult-speak.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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If it's completely unfalsifiable, then that would suggest that it's correct.
It sounds like cult-speak - this is true, because it's the essence of all serious religion.
Sam Harris concentrates on achieving a state of well-being. I concentrate on achieving a process of mending on all possible fronts, combined with cooperation, fairness and empathy, to achieve the greatest possible good for the individual and the group.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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Unfalsifiable does not mean correct at all. Unfalsifiable refers to an idea for which there is no means of testing. For instance, if I told you my roommate was a dragon, but he only ever appeared to me and/or 18th century Scottish poets, you couldn't test that statement; it would be unfalsifiable, which has nothing to do with it being correct.
Personally I don't care if you want to waste the rest of your life creating a perfect delusion for yourself - but realize that I'm not going to play along when you spew your BS here.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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Anyway, it's not so much unfalsifiable, as a collection of facts made into a type of religion or a philosophy by which to live and become happy. This process is one of the fundamental driving forces in nature.
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Permalink Reply by Lewal on -
Why do you think that selflessness is good?
Altruism is an evolutionary imperative.
Why do you think that selfishness is bad?
Opportunism is the root of all evil.
Do you think it's the other way around? Or maybe neither is good nor bad?
No. There's a consensus. There's civilization and law. There's an attempt on the part of humanity. And that means something. It means that we want to be better, that we can be better, and we know it. It means we've looked at what evolution has made us, we've taken it into our own hands, and we've said "We can make this better." There's a reason no one takes Ayn Rand seriously.
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