Selfishness

"It was like a slap on my face last night, waking me up from the delusion I was in for many years. Of course, i stayed awake thinking about it till late night.It was his fault. My friend suggested that human genes were programmed to be selfish. Whatever we do are actually founded by our own selfishness. Even contributing to charity monthly is just a deed of self-indulgency. Because I think making others life better makes me happy, and there, I have a motive --- I want to be happy. It simply doesn't matter how you spend your money, charity or drugs, you just want fulfilment out of it. Just because the way that I choose to fulfil myself fall on the righteous side, it is just me being lucky.Suddenly, the values and principles I've hold up to all this while have collapsed. The world seems so pathetic. It seems like everything I do everyday, there's always something in it for me. And I was taught that when I give, I shall do it without asking for reward.Certainly what he said make sense. But something is not right, what is it?"

That was Yu's post on OUT and unfortunately I was the friend which he was blaming. There was a episode in Friends, where Phebie and Joey were arguing about whether there is something as selfishless good deed. There is none as I told Yu. Being selfish is one of the basic instinct for human to survive. The term selfish, however, does not merely refer to the actions that people actively behave for their own benefits sacrificing others'. It is rather a phenomenon or a fact that human and any other creatures are behaving for one principle selfish reason, not surviving as we normally think of but spreading our genes; if we need to die for that at some point, many of us will do. Jyri told me before of where this theory came from but I forget the qutation and the person's name (Jyri told me later that it was from Richard Dawkins). Such selfish behaviours do not need to involve any damage of others'. In fact, when the selfish behaviours of a person match the current moral standard of the society, it becomes a good deed and we call such person a kind generous gentleman/lady. Well this does look like just a matter of terminology at some aspect. If we call some selfish behaviours that benefit others to be good selfishness, there is a quotation that give a conclusion of the bad selfishness we are talking about:

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes – Oscar Wilde

So, don't do that!