Let's talk about selfishness. I think that most give
this word has a negative meaning, because a selfish person is presented as not considering anything but his own interests, as if a person who acts solely for the interests of others is a model of beneficence. But the one who constantly acts for the sake of others is an extremely unhappy person.
From childhood, he could be hammered into his head that he needed to live for the sake of someone other than himself. Bring flowers to a woman, give life to the motherland, give birth to cannon fodder for the motherland, enter a certain institute, it’s good where we are not, we didn’t live richly and we won’t. Moreover, these little people, behind these "highly moral" phrases, cover up their own inability to navigate life.
In fact, a person can be happy only when he lives for himself. I mean, first of all, his understanding of his own desires, and not those imposed on him by his society. That is, the good of a person is his personal good, which makes him happy. In the case of altruism, personal good is opposed to the good of other people. That is, from the standpoint of altruism, acting in the interests of others is good, while acting in your own interests is bad. This concept already includes a feeling of guilt that if you do not act on the basis of someone else's ideas, you will feel bad. From here we can conclude that a person can act altruistically, simply because he is guided by a sense of guilt, this is not a kind of moral act, since such a person is simply afraid of being condemned by this society in case
Such an altruistic principle even forms a kind of perverted morality, when they consider their relationship with each other as a kind of exchange - you to me, I to you. When people are being prepared for war in another territory and they are told that they are going to fight for their country. In general, how can one do good by killing anyone, and it is precisely for this that these people are being prepared. And all this is a renunciation of the principle of self-interest. Although, of course, those who initiate such actions are thereby defending their interests.
The value of collectivism in the formation of altruism.
If we analyze what the essence of altruism is, we can come to the conclusion that it is formed on the basis of collectivism. The role of collectivism is such that a certain common interest is instilled in a person, for the sake of which he must act, and allegedly, if this common interest is observed, everyone will benefit. BUT it is a big delusion that you can serve your interests by motivating your actions with some common good, because this is contrary to the natural law of survival. As we can see, the ideology is aimed at deforming the natural laws of human existence. Any ideology puts forward, by and large, one single idea - the idea of abstract collectivism around some basic idea. This basic idea justifies the idea of collectivism. And, just the same, altruism follows from it. A person performs actions for the sake of someone or some idea.
Happiness in human life - is it necessary?
But, as moralists think, it is not an act for the sake of someone or something that violates human nature, but the fact that this act is already a consequence of its destruction. The idea of altruism is presented as highly moral, and, thanks to this property built into it, by default it should deprive a person of the choice - whether to act for himself or for the sake of another, forcing him to act for the sake of another. A truly ugly picture emerges, a person may not even know that he never lives for himself, he does not know what is good for him.
Why selfishness is good.
It is precisely this way of posing the question that suggests itself for a voluminous answer to it. I think that most people, when they hear the word egoism, evoke an extremely negative reaction, because this word is associated with a kind of pathological person who is ready to go over their heads just to get their benefit from interacting with other people. But this is an extremely wrong picture, connected, by and large, with a distorted understanding of the word egoism. Society is presented to a person as a deliberately altruistic organism in which a person, as its organic component, lives for the sake of others.
And this is a sad picture, because such behavior can simply be the result of a lack of understanding of one's own interests, and it is terrible when a person's actions for the sake of others replace actions for their own sake. But selfishness, understood as pathological following one's own interests, is wrong, because following one's own interests in the case of real selfishness is a consequence of observing the natural law of survival, that is, such behavior contributes to the preservation of life. But preservation is not in the animal sense of the word, but in the conscious. It is through the understanding of one's true desires and, as a result, the observance of one's interests, that a person becomes prosperous. Society also becomes prosperous if it consists of such people.
The path of loneliness is not a choice!
This absurd idea of altruism, as a kind of favorable form of existence for its bearer, does not correspond to human nature, because a person is initially selfish. No ethical, socially conditioned forms can be superimposed on real human egoism, because ethics is born only on the basis of satisfaction of all the needs of a particular person. That is, only being satisfied himself, a person moves to a certain social level of contact, where his actions have social significance.
In altruism, however, there is a certain equalization, which is initially built into it and is, in fact, it. Altruism is understood as a conditioned reflex that should work in a person when, say, he is told to go to war to kill representatives of other countries. And, in fact, from a psychological point of view, it's all the same kind of altruism. An altruistic person is not responsible for anything, because his altruism is explained by “lofty” motives - he performs an action for the sake of others. It turns out that in order to balance a society with such a morality, a person who sacrifices himself must expect others to sacrifice themselves for him. A sick society is looming in which no one is independent, but at the same time, a certain abstract dependence of people on each other is a fastening motive, because one,
On the example of beggars in the subway
When I, for example, go to the subway, sometimes I see a man on crutches with his legs wrapped inside enter the car. He does not begin to say anything until the train starts moving. And when the train moves off, the performance begins in the form of his indistinct mumbling about his hard life. And then I carefully begin to watch how people will react to it. One day I saw a woman, as if on cue, take out her purse and give him some money. And this "disabled person" has everyone who gives him money. In people, apparently, an innate sense of guilt is triggered, and they perceive their handout as a kind of benefactor.
Selfishness is not the opposite of altruism
The key point that eliminates the biased attitude towards egoism is that egoism itself is not opposed to Altruism. It is precisely because of this preconceived notion that it is reflexively perceived in a negative connotation. In fact, selfishness is an action in accordance with the nature of one's self-identity.
In this sense, only a selfish person makes the world around him better, because he does not go against his own nature. If egoism were opposed to altruism, then in its essence it would be a manifestation of the opposite extreme of the same altruism.
Altruism breeds perverse morality
Altruism breeds perverse morality, because a person who acts for someone else will expect others to act for him. It turns out that this is a kind of hypothetical morality, built on the idea of a certain expectation of action from others, as a response to one's actions. In fact, a prosperous society is a society that is built on the personal well-being of each person. In this sense, society, as a social system, is a means for the personal well-being of each person. Because only in such a society there is harmony.
A perverted interpretation of the phenomenon of egoism means an action committed as an opposition to a form of behavior in which a person without hesitation does something for others to the detriment of himself, and if he does not do it, he feels guilty. Actually, altruism is manipulation with the help of guilt and nothing more. A holistic person in this case does not feel guilty.
The most interesting thing is that a society with individualistic roots turns out to be more collectivist in nature than one in which collectivism is proclaimed as a principle of existence. This happens because an individualistic society lives on the principle of cooperation, and a collectivist society on the principle of action for the sake of an abstract ideological goal.
Altruism in Russia.
In the post-Soviet space, a type of such an altruistic person was nurtured that he even has no idea that it is possible to live on the basis of his own interests. For centuries, the pseudo-collectivist model of society has contributed to the mutilation of the egoistic nature of man. As a continuation of this article, but a discussion of the already opposite side of selfishness.