I assure you of the fact that by the time you are through with this blog, you would either think of me as a heretic who takes sacrilegious digs at much cherished human values or someone who has a 6 inch nail stuck in his head or worse both. But I am probably going to air some of the views that I have read and heard, interspersed with some of my own connotations to try and make/create a point.
In his book "Selfish gene", the great biologist Richard Dawkins raises the point that every action performed by living beings is dictated by the selfish gene in a way that would assist the process of natural selection. Seemingly altruistic behaviour of an induvidual towards a group, have inherently ulterior motives of propogating the race, speices or the group itself and must be tagged as selfish. To quote one of his bizarre examples - Living beings sacrifice a hell lot of things for the upbringing of their offsprings. Rather than branding this sacrifice as selfless, he claims that it's the selfish will to propogates one's species which determines all the actions. I am sure most of his reasoning has more of a biological logic to it and doesn't have much to do with morality - or atleast thats what I want to believe !
But then consider this. If I understand human nature correctly, which I will never entirely, then I daresay that we always do things in life that bring us contentment and happiness. Also, a person who always seeks his own self-satisfaction can safely be called a selfish person. Your actions leading you to that particular state of mind, might or might not benefit others, but at the end of the day you have selfishly sought your own goal - which is a "sense of satisfaction". Lets take the example of a woman devoting her entire life to helping out the downtrodden lepers in a big city. One way of looking at it would be that she selflessly dedicated her life to them, and which I believe is beyond doubt. Another cruel way of looking at it would be, that she gained satisfaction by helping out the destitute...and that she helped them out, cause it gave her joy. Now, by the definition stated previously this would technically classify her as any other human being striving for her own happiness and thus selfish (Lord forgive me for such brazen statement...but I am just confused here)
I have closely observed and interacted with some people who have entered into full time charity, people who have abandoned their rewarding profession to help out the indigent mass. Time and again, they claim that the new choice has made them happier than their previous trade......so when they switched to charity, wasn't it for their own self-satisfaction ? Would they be in charity if they didnt enjoy it ? If their previous profession didnt leave them with an uneasy heart, would they have taken the plunge into charity ? Aren't they themselves much happier now than before, even though they seemed to have made a big sacrifice in abandoning a successful career ? Often the trait of selfishness has been linked to materialistic things, and I wonder how intangible virtues like state of mind etc can filter in while defining this ignomible human attribute.
I have thrown enough questions, only to seek answers (comments are very welcome) and guide my train of thoughts .......phew....the nail has finally been removed from my head !
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10 comments:
Nothing happens by humans without a purpose or motive. everyone has a agenda, secret agenda, and a hidden one, and that we act from them. Even the most generous person is gaining a advantage, while even the meanest person is capable of great acts of importance and value.
I think everyone has to stive for their own happiness as long as it is not someone else's expense.So, when someone does a charitable work it definately has to bring that person some happiness!
I think satisfaction is different than selfishness. I would define satisfaction as doing something which has either positive or neutral impact on others life while selfishness will always have negative impact on others life. Just to give an example, Lets say we are playing cricket. and to get to the strike or to make contribution, I intentionally get striker run out. Then this is selfishness as it has negative impact on others life. Another example is lets say two person is working on the same reserach problem. And to make your presence only, you create a bug in others system. this is act of selfishness.So in your article, bringing up the kids or doing charity is not a selfishness, unless it hinders the progress of someone else.
U know what pointy I had a big debate on a similar topic - profs coming back to India to work and all- back when I was in hostel and I was echoing the same ideas as you were..but u know what I am still confused..
Subbu.
Hi some nerd,
U have made some very good points. The two examples that u mentioned are surely acts of selfishness.
As I have said, I am still not sure what exactly classifies as selfish behaviour....and whether acts not causing negative behaviour are not selfish....
...anyways if u can reveal ur identity, we can probably have more discussion on this topic.
-pointy
I don't agree with the notion that if by helping someone, one feels happy, its selfish, because you are doing it to be happy. Also, it reminds me of a friends episode when Joey and Phoebe had the same arguement. Joey thought there are no selfless good deeds and Phoebe said there were. I beleive, in the end Phoebe loses the argument, even though she had sworn that "she will not let her children grow up in a world where Joey is right".......I feel ashamed that I can remember the exact line. I'm surely going to hell for watching so much friends.
.....and you could do without the apology/disclaimer at the beginning about hurting peoples sentiments. That sounds so damn apologetic. Nobody cares. This is the internets!
Pointy,
That was a good point...hmm..
Lets go to the basics. A kid is born. Doesnt know in the begining what to do. gets the affection of parents, family members, friends. Once he is grown up, he have choice to make. To return the love back to the family and live for their happiness only..This means its his responsibility and doing it. NOT an act of selfishness.
Other choice, he can devote his entire life for the society/ persons he doesnt know. like charity work..Not an act of selfishness. He is doing it for someone else as part of his responsibility. Third choice, he is doing both of the previous thing partly and depends upon the others to do the same. IDEAL SOCIETY. never the case. He does something for himself as doesnot know what else he can do. Like he play sports, goes to clubs, read books and so on. Is not hurting anyone else..Not an act of selfishness. On the same lines, he does arrange marriage. purpose, not love for sure, but just to kill time. can be termed as selfishness if playing games or reading books also come into the same category. But I doubt that. Tell me what should i do then which doesnt classify under the selfishness except suicide ( even then it can be argued that he commited sucide coz he doesnt want to go through sufferings of life).
So i guess the main point is we do things as part of our responsibilty not because of selfishness. Selfishness should be called only if he is doing something which has negative impact on others life.
Still I couldnt figure out Why do we needs kids when we know that he has to go through same cycle and is absolutely not required for you to pass your time also. Is it because we live our dreams in our kids, which we coudlnt accomplish in our life or think that we can give our kids what we didnt get from the life given to us??
I guess I will leave it here...Otherwise I would become psycho..
your fellow cricketer in PCG
Hey Pointy,
'Selfish gene' makes the right argument. You seemingly accepted it and then lost the point later in the blog.......
You see, it is the 'genes' that are selfish, not human beings per se, i.e., not all actions of human beings benefit themselves.
Through natural and sexual selection, the genes that could relentlessly build such infrastructure in the human body that could further their existence survived, others just lost the race. For eg, a beautiful girl might be a turn-on for you. That's because you are the descendant of humans who carried those genes that could build the neurotransmitter infrastructure to generate pleasure response on meeting beautiful babes. Imagine what happenned to the cave-men who weren't exicited by female company... in all probability, their genes must have died with them. So you do things (chase females) because they make you happy.... the point you made.
But are all selfish actions of your genes necessarily beneficial to you, the human being? Not quite. How if you were to meet the aforementioned female on the exam night? Our genes, it seems, haven't been able to design sophisticated enough mechanisms that would work well in all circumstances. Why? Exams, it turns out, are very recent phenomena.... and we carry the genes of our cavemen. Or even assuming that there were exam-like tests that our ancestors from the stone-age took, unless passing those tests conferred higher status on those who did well on them or increased their mating chances, what opportunity would our genes have to weed out those who get easily distracted?
Ok, so coming back to altruism, think of all possible explanations once again on those genetic lines. Maybe, the woman working for the downtrodden carried genes that generated more intense pleasure from charity than in other humans in much the same way that different people derive differential pleasure from alcohol or drugs.
Or maybe, her genes fooled her into believing that such work would further her status in the society, get her some recognition and therefore find her a good mate.
Or maybe she didn't know better(becoz of her upbringing) until she was deep into that charitable work. It is noteworthy that our genes have built strong disincentive systems against abandoning work in which we have apparently 'invested too much'.
On a final note, I just wish to point out that behind everything that happens in this universe there is always that underlying logic, that something which we call the laws of physics. Biology can be thought of as the derived logic for a smaller domain and psychology as a further derivative... each of those sciences in the decreasing order of accuracy.
Don't everyone have a purpose in life? I think, even people who believe that ultimately everything is meaningless, have a purpose. Happiness is a kindof bare minimum purpose for everyone... If having a purpose makes you believe that the person is selfish, then so be it... I cannot imagine a person who does 'everything' just for the heck of it...
Altruists have a more benevolent purpose, which is highlighted better than the mundane ones. A person can be selfish in some of his actions and not selfish in others, depending on the reasons he/she has for those actions….
e.g. A Prof who returned to his homeland:
This is a selfish action if he does that to live with his family and bringing up his children in a better environment.
It is not selfish if he feels that he is blessed with a good life due to his country (say he went to IIT) and he would love to do something in return for it….
If he has both the reasons, then he is selfish and not so selfish at the same time…
I hope I have not digressed from the question you have raised…
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