One of those persistent human myths is the one concerning the “selfless act”. It is a moral standard used to establish the commitment of the individual towards the whole. We associate it with ‘pure love’ or moral ‘authenticity’ and we enjoy believing it is stringless because we would like it to be so towards us. The myth is established when a direct link between investor and reward cannot be established, offering the opportunity to believe that there is no reward at all. What reward does an ant garner from feeding and working for the colony all its life? What reward does the omega-wolf get from protecting and caring for the dominant pair’s offspring? What reward is there in a soldier dying for his country? What reward is there in denying self, in general, whether it be through religion or through parenting or through a romantic sexual relationship or friendship? Here the rewards are masked behind pretense and morality - a pretense necessary for the very postponement of the immediate pay-back. We want to believe in the selfless act because our morality raises it into a virtue and a standard which measures our community acceptance. Our morality raises it into a virtue because it serves a community which profits from individuals behaving in ways which benefit the whole. Here the individual is compensated for any loss of individual interest or postponement of reward by being accepted into the whole as a desirable entity – a good person, or a moral person. Evolutionary psychology tells us that a daughter’s children are more closer to a parent than a sons because with a daughter the genetic relation is certain whereas with the son’s children there is a doubt. Many times these tendencies act upon the unconscious mind, which then justifies them using emotion. Here we see a hint of what indirect reward there is in these supposed selfless, thankless acts or behaviors. We forget that the mind is a survival tool in the service of the Self, meant to adapt and compensate and strategize on its behalf. What we often mean by survival isn’t individual but genetic. Mortality forces a compromise upon the individual, who is unable to survive intact and so projects its survival upon another or passes its essence onto another who becomes its representative. A species has evolved to survive genetically, not individually because death places a limit on individual survival. In the case of social animals a concession is made so as to ensure an indirect reward for a creature that lacks the ability to achieve a direct one. Sexual behavior, as social behavior, is an emotional clouding of reason’s control over the individual. A subordinate individual submits to the authority of another because it benefits more by doing so. It has grown so dependant on the group that it cannot function or survive outside it and is then forced to tolerate the group’s dynamics and morality, it tolerates short-term costs for the long-term compensation. The inebriating effect of emotion, readily seen in religious belief or in sexual turmoil or in any attraction to the Other or to Otherness, is meant to direct the individual into behavior which is not immediately or directly rewarding but genetically or indirectly so. Emotion clouds individual concerns so as to facilitate relationships. Social behavior would be impossible without it for creatures with brains large enough to have established some form of individual identity and self-awareness. Emotion is an evolutionary development, which facilitates social behavior and enables sexual intercourse and the subsequent behavior necessary for weaning larger brained creatures. Its chemical effects on the mind is equal or superior to any other artificial chemical in the way it suppresses reason and leads to uninhibited behavior (love is blind - hate is consuming etc.). We witness how reason is warped or repressed with emotion in religious belief or in how emotion often becomes unreasonable or even self-destructive or addictive. Religion, specifically, is quintessentially an emotional response to reality, where reason becomes detrimental and unwanted. Any supposed selfless act, whether it be for nation or tribe or ideal or family, is in essence an indirect act of genetic preservation, made necessary due to mortality. Every act is directed and springs out of Self and so is always selfish, even when this selfishness is indirect or masked with morality or idealism or religiosity.
Running into the buildings to save people during 911 was a completely selfless act. Dying to protect your friends and family is a completely selfless act. Going to work each day so your children can go to college is a completely selfless act. However, if you have a higher consciousness, then these are the most selfish acts you could possibly commit. If you know that your family and friends are a part of yourself, it becomes a selfish act. If you know doing whats best for the tribe is doing whats best for yourself, it's a selfish act, and if you know that doing whats best for other people, is good for all people it's a selfish act. However it's the long term rational selfishness, the positive selfishness, and not the short term negative selfishness which is common. The self is not always individualized. Insects have figured out the value of group consciousness, they are a higher level of consciousness than us, and they have a multi-dimensional consciousness to the point where all ants see themselves as one organism, as cells in a body. Humans on the other hand, almost never achieve this level of consciousness unless the world is falling apart, or during sporting events where our team is winning, for brief moments we are all one, but then we disintergrate again. I think only certain humans have group consciousness and then most of them only have it in a limited way, such as racial or tribal, or gang mentality, but very few have a species level consciousness and even fewer have an earth or gaia level consciousness or cosmic consciousness. The higher you raise your consciousness through dimensions, the more you can see that sharing is actually the most selfish action. Take a look at napster, people share because of greed not because they want other people to have music. Take a look at open source, people share code because of greed not because they want to share code for the hell of it. This is how ants, bees, roaches and insects work, and some humans have that level of organization today, and it confuses people who organize around money and short term gain, but the truth is if you look at the whole open source movement, the napster movement, and all the latest trends in technology, we are going from verticle to horizontal. We are decentralizing because thats how insects behave. The centralized power thing is not natural. African tribes have had decentralized government all along, and have been living like this all along. Native Americans have had the gaia consciousness all along and have been living in decentralized democracy since before America existed. None of these ideas are brand new, it's just we are now just discovering that it is actually more rational to share. If you have goods that I want, and I have goods that you want, we are always useful to each other as long as we both have goods we both want. With money this doesnt work, because at some point you or I will have all the goods and one of us won't be useful anymore. The one who isn't useful will simply steal the goods from the one who is. This is why countries which have income gaps are filled with crime. I don't endorse stealing, I'm simply saying the current system is neither rational or sustainable, it was never designed to be rational or sustainable as the system of our current design was built for control and greed. In specific, control of greed, as a form of greed control.
I completely agree, NO act is selfless! Even with the firefighters rushing into the WTC there is a somewhat hidden selfish motive, be it glory, fear of social loss of face or whatever. Any so called selfless act could be broken down as actually selfish. It's not really a newsflash though, just a matter of thinking through the composition of the human psyche.
Nothing Satyr ever says is new. It's all elementary social psychology. We put things into society. We get things out of society. Like, duh..
Well maybe you can say this to the many, on this forum, who talk about ‘selflessness’ as if it meant something real. “Elementary social psychology” for you, me and imaplanck but for most a fearful thing they must cover up and pretend.
Considered within the actual context, as intended, the expression is real enough and meaningful enough to most of us. Perhaps it is a qualia problem, one of those things you need to have tried yourself to appreciate the quality of it. --- Ron.
wow this is really coincidental i just did a report on egoism, which states that all acts, even acts of altruism, are done for the sake of the indidvisual because they cause good feelings like social recognition or respect, the feeling of power from making a positive influence, or jus the satisfaction from following a moral code. This philosphy also states that individuals should always do what is theri own interest, because if everyone does that then everyone benefits. There can still be cooperation because when two self interested people's wants conflict with each other, they will cooperate and work togetehr in order to avoid conflict which is in theri self intersts. I beleieve egoism to be true; it is kind of fundamental to capitalism and teh invisible hand, which obviously works.
The higher your consciousness, the more selfish you become. I say most people arent nearly selfish enough because people arent doing a good job protecting the children, the earth, the species, animals, and everythnig else because people have such a narrow sense of self.
Once again you are confusing what I am saying. I'm saying there is no definition of an individual, there is actually no such thing as an "individual". Individualists simply have a more narrow sense of self, than the hive like sense of self of the firefighter, or the community sense of self of the policeman, or the corporation sense of self of the CEO. The species level sense of self has nothing to do with you as an individual, unless you know exactly who you are (most individuals think they are their physical body). You are a being of energy, your body is just a body and there is nothing special about it, it's your actions that define who you are. If you have a higher consciousness, then you are aware of the eco-sphere, and you are aware of the fact that all of us are connected. Some people view people as cells in the human body, and know the human species (combined individuals) actually have a consciousness. The framers of the constitutions, the foundations of democracy, capitalism, all are based on the concept that there truly is no individuality in the sense that people think. The most selfish people, are the people who recognize their connection to everyone and everything else on the cosmic level, and who do what is best for humanity, the earth, and the universal forces. So yes, if you help your human brother or sister, it does help you, because as humanity gets better so do you, as we help each other our lives collectively improve together as well. Our environment improves as we become more aware of it and do the most selfish thing possible, which is to protect, defend, or make better the environment for all of us.
Yeah that is how it's supposed to be, but that isnt how it always is. That is why I say we arent selfish enough. I think people who are hardcore individualists, who think of themseles as a physical body, cannot see that society is a representation of themselves, and that the earth is a representation of themselves etc. If you don't care care of your own species, of course you cannot take care of the earth, and if you cannot take care of the earth, the earth cannot take care of you. That is the problem we have, we actually do have people who are selfishly confused, they are unable to think outside of their physical body to see that in reality all that humans have created in the past or will create in the future, is theirs, and is their true self. You are what you do, not what you look like. You are still confused. Let's redefine individual for a moment. When you look at your human body, it's made up of cells, but the only way your body can work as efficiently as it works, is because each cell if completely selfish, meaning it knows that it's true self is greater than just one cell. Humans are at a point where some of us know that our true growth as a species has nothing to do with the atomic scale. If every scientist on the were to just act random we could never get to the moon. If every atom were to just act random, and every cell in your body were just acting random, your body would not be able to keep a form. We have government, we have money, these are simply organizing tools, and they don't always work because people arent all consciously aware of the fact that you are a part of a bigger experiment. If you try to make as much money as you can, for yourself as a physical body, it's not like you take this money with you when you die, it's just paper you are earning, and it doesnt matter how you feel, it's not going to help anyone else so your actions are like drips in a pond. On the other hand, the people who built the internet, some who never recieved any joy or recognition out of doing it personally, did it so we could come online and have this conversation. What do you want to build and leave behind? What you do is who you are, not how you feel, or how much money you earn. So in the end people run into burning buildings to save others because it has to be done, to them if their consciousness is limited, it might feel like a completely selfless act, so to the individual it might be individually a selfless act in which the individual sees no gain whatsoever, but to the whole of humanity it is a selfish act because it protects the species. I admit, I'm not brave enough to run into a burning building, I value my physical body, but some people actually value the species, or the people, or whatever it is they choose, more than their physical body. This is behavior which is actually rational and predictable. Insects behave like this, bees will die protecting the hive. Ants will die protecting the nest, etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is, by the popular egoism definition, people can be selfless, but there are no selfless acts. The person who appears selfless actually just has a different sense of self, a higher dimensional consciousness where to them, self is not the individual, it is the whole.
Thats because to the person doing the action, it IS real. It is real to the individual. The individual might not feel like doing it and might not benefit at all from the activity. To the slaves who built America, it was REAL. To the people who die protecting you, it's REAL. These people don't even know you, but they did all this stuff for you, the least you can do is pass their energy on by doing stuff for others. In the end, they are you, their energy becomes your productivity. You benefit from slavery, because now you have roads and a country to built from. You benefit from other peoples energy, and some people know that all humans are energy. You essentially become what you build, and you are what you do.
The premise of this thread is incorrect. It is true that one can label a selfless act as selfish in some cases, but there really is such a thing as an act of which there is no emotional, psychological, social, or any other type of reward. I know there is such a thing because I have done it. To help someone just because you want someone to be in a better situation than they were before you helped them is a noble act that you still do not understand. Are we to count emotional gratification while witnessing someone happy as a selfish act? What about those who help others and have no emotional gratification whatsoever? Some philanthropists help just because they CAN help. Believe it or not, if you are in a position to help another human being, you should... just because you can. There is nothing more to it. That's it.
I have done it also. I understand. You are correct. It's important to seperate the difference between an act of selfishness, and a selfless person, a selfless persons actions are simply more rational in some cases and this is why it seems selfish to other people, because they arent inside of the mind of the person actually doing it, they cannot imagine why anyone would. A selfless person is simply a person who's sense of self is wider. A selfish person is simply a persons who's sense of self is narrow. A narrow band person has a very limited sense of self. In reality we are one being in seperate bodies, the best action you can do is what is best for the whole, or so says utilitarianism at least.
You are assuming that the only reward or payback someone can receive for an act is from another. The payback the reward is sometimes from the self that feels satisfied that it has lived up to its chosen ideal or when it acts in accordance to what it would like to think it is. This is often misconstrued as selfless when the self rewards the self for living up to an external standard or up to another’s expectations, even when the other doesn’t know. The religious feel the reward coming from the all-seeing God that knows what nobody else necessarily does. There in no such thing as an act with no payback or no consequence. Whether this payback is immediate or gradual, direct or indirect, short term or long term, conscious or unconscious, personal or through association, recognized or denied is besides the point. In fact the process of domestication creates individuals with little character and sense of identity who prefer escaping the direct consequences through association and find rewards using indirect methods; here self is expressed and diluted within a community. It has become intertwined and dependant on community and cannot even imagine itself separate or distinct from it. Women especially, being memetic/genetic filters, find their identity ion how they serve the whole and receive satisfaction, pride and purpose from acting in accordance to communal rules. The process of feminization has made men fall into this pattern of domestication. This is when the mythology of ‘selflessness’ becomes a cultural virtue, propagated through moral and religious doctrine, and those indoctrinated within the community’s norms enjoy, are rewarded in turn, by the notion of them acting selflessly on behalf of others. They do so while denying the underlying motive. The other concerns them because they depend and except something from the other. Perhaps not for any specific act but in general. Their interests are intertwined with the others and in acting for him they act for themselves.
You show a lot of disrespect for people who died to help you. You live in the same world with people who donated their lives to you so that you could live better, this includes soldiers, slaves, workers, and just about anyone who contributed and gained no recognition or money in return. No not all of them did it because they were "religious", some of them did it for the future which they knew they would never live to see. They did it because they had hope, and hope has nothing to do with personal gain because hope is just a form of optimism. You have a very narrow sense of self, step outside of your body.
"but there really is such a thing as an act of which there is no emotional, psychological, social, or any other type of reward." "Are we to count emotional gratification while witnessing someone happy as a selfish act?" What part of that self-gratification did you not understand, Satyr? Please do not assume that I do not understand the different types of rewards. I am as shrewd as any you will ever meet.
If you say so.....Is "selflessness" something like ghosts or god? You must first believe in order to then see or understand. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! A mother’s love, let us say. Show me how selfless a mother's love is. Choose a motherly love with no genetic ties...like a mother that has adopted her child. Now exclude any possible motive and reward. If you cannot do so completely then you cannot speak about “selfless love” as if it were God. Let us take a soldier that dies for his country. Let us exclude the possibility, as often happens, that he risks and/or dies not willingly but because he is drafted with political force or recruited with economic force or shamed into participating with social/ego force or through peer pressures and so on. Why does a soldier die for his group willingly, just as a wolf dies for its pack? Our sense of identity is linked to our self-awareness - a relatively new evolutionary leap. When the sense of identity is primitive or not well developed or retarded for some psychological or physical reason, the mind associates self with the group. Its sense of identity is completely mirrored in the other(s). Sartre claims that consciousness is a negating mechanism. It identifies by what it is not and not by what it is. It is, in essence Nothing trying to become Something. This Nothing fills the mind with terror…it can be called the horror of freedom. To be Nothing is to be Free. The mind, therefore, grasps at anything to find stability and to avoid peering into the void which peers back. It begins constructing an identity from what it finds around it and by distinguishing itself from the background through negation. The mind constructs a hypothetical and general Self. If its environment is economic it will associate self with economic and consumer labels and groups. If it is military it will associate self with military groups. Etc.....etc. The more developed a consciousness, especially self-consciousness, is the more discriminating (negating) it is. The more sensitive a palate is the more discriminating its tastes. The more proud a man is the more careful with whom he associates with, he is and the less tolerant he is. See now why pride has become a sin? It follows then that identity, to a more aware mind, becomes a more tenuous, discriminating matter whereas for the less aware mind, the more primitive and dull mind, self-identification is an easy affair. It finds self in what others say or reflect upon it. It readily accepts whatever the other(s) describe it as or how they react to it. (Self-consciousness) This is called indoctrination. You become assimilated, like an ant’s individuality has become assimilated within the colony or the bee’s within the hive or the cow’s within the herd. In the case of the omega wolf which sacrifices itself for the alpha male’s and female’s cubs this identity is linked to its genetic background. The other(s) is related to it, it smells like it and it has grown up with them. Their cubs share genetic material with the omega and are accepted as its own. They are it and it is them. It has no other way of knowing self than through them. It has no other self-identity - Its complete sense of self in linked to how it inter-relates with the pack - Its self-identity is dependant on the other(s). The same process occurs with humans. A boy is born within a cultural, social and geographical setting - within a meme. It is taught and raised to believe certain unquestionable, 'self-evident' ‘truths’, it finds self within the family and peers and later social groups it associates with. Its sense of self is inexorably linked with these groups. It dresses, behaves, eats and thinks like them. It is no longer an individual. Like the wolf does, the soldier dies for what he perceives to be indistinguishable from him self. To a third observer or an interpreter wanting to make such deeds virtuous because it suits the group, the act will be deemed selfless when the identity of self was so linked and dependant with the ideal and group it sacrificed for that it was being selfish indirectly or through a surrogate avenue. Existence is the pursuit of an absolute. In the case of self it is the Nothing trying to become something. Its every act and thought is towards this end and so cannot help but be elf projecting itself outwards. It cannot help but be selfish. Describe this act of absolute purity. Are we to exclude emotional rewards for emotional consequences, then? Why is this hypothetical ‘other’s’ emotion followed with your emotional response? Why does his hypothetical ‘happiness’ matter to you and why should your emotional reward be excluded as a recompense so as to save “selflessness” from the light of day? Are you seeking to cast light upon a phenomenon or to propagate a myth which soothes and comforts you? Why must an act be ‘selfless’ for it to be worth something to you? Why is love less, for you, if it is not a ‘virgin birth’? What about universal reciprocity bothers or frightens you? Why do we love that which loves us back and hate that which hates us? Well, as a loner, bastard, with a small penis, living at home with his mother and father I would think “self-gratification” is something I know much about. Your “shrewdness” should be proven with deeds and opinions and arguments not stated as a matter of fact. Words are cheap. There are individuals on this forum who believe they are making valid, good points when they don’t know what they are talking about or are motivated by the most basic instincts and needs and fears. I bet they too consider themselves shrewd.
I already did prove it. You did not. I clearly spoke about self-gratification and then you chime in with, "You are assuming that the only reward or payback someone can receive for an act is from another." Please.
And this constitutes proof of selflessness, for you? There is someone on this forum that believes he is proving God exists using the argument: “Prove God does not exist.” He also thinks he is proving Theology is a science by using 'epistemology' and 'ontology' in the same sentence as 'God'. In his mind these are a valid point which constitutes proof. Will you declare victory next or will you comment upon my sexual experiences or living arrangements? Having mommy and daddy dragged into this is terribly disturbing to me. I am soooo hurt. By the way: Unlike you I am not here to prove anything but the superiority of my thinking. Proving something would involve unquestionable, unshakable, unchangeable opinions and I have none to offer. I leave those for absolutists and retarded minds. My motive is to test my opinions against those of others. I want to find errors in them. I want to grow through the challenge. I could care less what you or your god believing, selfless, pure, kind, healthy brothers and sisters believe or continue to believe. Your enlightenment is none of my business nor do I pretend to have selfless reasons and motives. If you feel you’ve proven something then good for you and congratulations. I’m sure the universe gives a shit.
