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Does everything we do have a hint of selfishness at its root?

wildcat

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All I want for christmas is to know what "force meat" means.
A dish served to school children on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Something pink.

We had it in 1952. When my daughter went to school in 1989, I asked her if they still have the Tuesday and Friday pink drill.

She said yes. The teacher sees to it that everybody gulps down the last spoonful.

Force meat, we called it.
 

sassafrassquatch

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A dish served to school children on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Something pink.

We had it in 1952. When my daughter went to school in 1989, I asked her if they still have the Tuesday and Friday pink drill.

She said yes. The teacher sees to it that everybody gulps down the last spoonful.

Force meat, we called it.
How is that at all relevant to what I said?
Pretty much. People do good things because it makes them feel good. If they don't do something they think they should they feel bad and no one likes to feel bad. So everything we do is inherently selfish even the selfless things.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Force meat.
 

sassafrassquatch

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To have to eat the pink stuff made the children feel good?

Come on, man. Just speak plainly and say what you mean, you could have made your point in the first response and avoided any confusion.

What is up with you and this pretentious manner of speaking?
 

wildcat

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Come on, man. Just speak plainly and say what you mean, you could have made your point in the first response and avoided any confusion.

What is up with you and this pretentious manner of speaking?
Force meat. A most plain language.

You said: Everything we do is inherently selfish even the selfless things.
When under force you do something, is your self in effect?

The bad feeling is.
 

INTJMom

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A dish served to school children on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Something pink.

We had it in 1952. When my daughter went to school in 1989, I asked her if they still have the Tuesday and Friday pink drill.

She said yes. The teacher sees to it that everybody gulps down the last spoonful.

Force meat, we called it.
Well! I'm glad I don't live on Mars!
 

redacted

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Nov 28, 2007
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Force meat. A most plain language.

You said: Everything we do is inherently selfish even the selfless things.
When under force you do something, is your self in effect?

The bad feeling is.

wow. that's what you meant? heh, we're not all mind readers.

it seems like you're points are always relevant and cool when they're explained properly... it's just that it takes like 3 or 4 other people asking you what you mean for you to explain it in a straightforward way.

anyways, though, i really like the point you made here. when you're forced to do something, you aren't in control. but you're always in control of your reaction to it/your feelings towards it, and that reaction is selfish.

although, it's easy to make the argument that no one's really in control of anything...it's just a bunch of subatomic particles following predefined functional physical laws. so in that sense, you're ALWAYS forced to do whatever you do, because it's not like a subatomic particle can be like "oh, i'm just not gonna follow the laws of physics this time!" so even emotional responses are forced as well.

and free will is just a story we tell ourselves.

but yeah, the way i think of the whole thing is this: there are many different perspectives you can take on the same thing. so like, there's the physics perspective, in which you're talking about positions of particles and physics equations. then there's the chemistry perspective (atoms, charges, molecules, reactions). and infinitely more. and they are all true at the same time.

but the one we're in most of the time i call the "socialized human perspective". in this perspective, we use terms such as "free will" and "choice" and "good" and "pain", etc. this is probably the perspective i should have stayed in while answering the original question. so, yes, everything we do is selfish unless it's forced (forced being a term grounded in the socialized human perspective).

and in any different perspective (the physics one for example), "free will" and "choice" are meaningless terms anyways.

i hope y'all can follow what i'm saying.
 

Nocapszy

no clinkz 'til brooklyn
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Why did this post go unnoticed? This is probably the most pivotal one in the thread -- or am I aggrandizing it for nothing?
I was going to ask how we were defining "selfish."

I don't think that just because we happen to be geared to do things that can at least partially benefit ourselves that we can label those actions negatively as "selfish."
True enough - so the other side of the coin is, can anything truly be selfless? For some reason, I can't help but think that the OP would have been more satisfied with himself and the resulting posts had he worded it that way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
In fact, I think that "good" happens because we choose to expand our ego boundaries to include other people (perhaps even humanity in general) and thus when we do something good for them, it's a similar feeling as in doing good for oneself... even if the action overall has some immediate negative impact on oneself.

(We empathize with others because we see ourselves as connected to them; and so we care for them like we would care for ourselves.)
Does this go to say that you believe in an inherent right and wrong (whether we've figured out what it is or not) among the human race?

And "selfish" then would be a conscious decision to not expand one's definition of "oneself" beyond oneself, even when others are in need.
One question; does it actually have to be a conscious decision? Perhaps an unconscious reaction or a disorder? Do sociopaths decide to be sociopaths?

Er... I guess that's more than one question. Well, I had one question when I started.

Also, would you say that things like theft or rape are selfish acts? Because you might make the argument, correlating to what you've lain down that, helping the self, is actually helping everyone connected, if you made the conscious decision that stealing was actually 'good.'
 

ygolo

My termites win
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Aug 6, 2007
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No. An act is only selfish if it is possible to have chosen to do something else (e.g. it is not selfish for you to return to earth after jumping, even if you intend and receive some benefit from it). If there is no choice, no alternative, no other option in the matter, then an act cannot be selfish. Now, if every choice, every decision, that we make and its associated act, is tainted by selfishness at its root, then it is impossible for us to choose otherwise, since the act of choosing is itself always a selfish act. However, in this case it is impossible to not be selfish, and there is no choice, no alternative, and no other option. Therefore, there are no selfish choices.

Evidently, this is a contradiction. Either, you can reject the premise that an act is only selfish if it is chosen, or reject the premise which associates every possible choice with selfishness (i.e. adopt a different definition of "selfish"). I prefer the latter.

(Edit: technically, it is not the impossibility of an act which is relevent, but whether an agent thinks that an act is impossible. For example, if you thought that it was possible to defy gravity, then falling to earth might be a selfish act, even though, objectively, the act was not possible. In consequence, an agent can be selfish even if it were impossible to be selfless, objectively, because they might think they were choosing among alternatives. However, if you think that every choice is selfish, then you fall back into the aforementioned paradox. In other words, a selfish choice is contingent not on the truth, but what an agent thinks is true, even if they are wrong.

In consequence, it cannot be true that every choice is selfish if selfishness must be a choice, because if we hold the view that every choice is selfish, then there is no choice but to be selfish, and thus no selfish choices. Objectively i.e. the universe does not contradict itself.)

Don't you hate it when various re-interpretations of a point are used as strawmen to the stage that it is not worth trying to clarify all the various confusions that come up?
 
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