The art of "selfishness"

Everyone hates selfish people, but we are all selfish. No one is not selfish. The philosopher Hume once said that "human nature is selfish." Selfishness is the gene of life. The famous British evolution theorist Richard. In his book "The Selfish Gene", Dawkins analyzed the selfishness of organisms from the essence of life and focused on genes. He pointed out that "a prominent feature of successful genes is ruthless selfishness." We and all other animals are genetically created machines", which leads to the conclusion that "people are born to be selfish". Although his conclusion has caused controversy, it does not affect our selfish understanding of people. What we want to discuss is why in life, the selfishness of some people is not particularly annoying, and it is easy to understand and accept, while other people show a little selfishness, which makes people unbearable and arouses strong feelings of disgust. To clarify this problem, we need a new understanding of self-proprietary.

Selfishness is a very complex phenomenon in human society. Our past understanding of it, whether from motivation, behavior, or effect, is somewhat one-sided. Strictly speaking, we have always misunderstood selfishness. The education we have received since childhood is that "selflessness is a virtue and selfishness is a sin". This kind of educational philosophy is certainly good, but in fact, more people grow up and just understand it as a slogan after entering the society. When facing the real life of the society, they use the principles taught by life to treat them. The misunderstanding of selfishness is manifested in the narrow understanding of it. I think there is only one kind of selfishness, and that is selfish. This brings confusion in action. When we talk about someone being selfish, we get the impression that this person has very low moral standards. No one is willing to talk about this issue publicly. But with the complexity of human and human social development, this problem cannot be bypassed. Real life reminds us that we should have a broader grasp of selfishness.

Defining selfishness only as self-interested behavior is not enough to summarize all the characteristics of people's actual use of this concept, and it is even more difficult to explain the complexity of the interests and the results that people face in human social life.

To fully understand selfishness, we should understand the broadness of selfishness from more angles. Selfishness has its prerequisites. When there is no mutual relationship and interest, selfishness will not appear. When you are alone, it doesn't matter whether you are selfish or not. Selfishness always arises when there is a connection between people and society when there are material and spiritual benefits, as well as the enjoyment and performance of related rights and obligations. In addition to selfishness that is extremely harmful to others, selfishness and good and evil You cannot draw the equal sign directly, so how do you define selfishness? I think there are at least three aspects to consider: First, when a person has an interest relationship with others and society, he first considers himself, and more importantly, his own interests. This is a human instinctive reaction, not good or evil. Second, when people think that they are not in conflict with the interests of others and the society, the motivation to consider their own interests brings objectively self-interested behavior. This is reasonable and selfish. The development of human society, especially the occurrence of market economic activities, is driven by this force. Adam, the originator of the market economy. Smith once revealed that the fundamental of the market economy is that "people pursuing their own interests tend to promote social interests more", thus objectively realizing "human selfishness promotes social progress". the goal of. The developed market economy is actually the result of selfishness. Looking deeper, isn't the pursuit of freedom and fairness in civilization and progress for mankind in essence also satisfying the selfishness of individuals? Third, when people think that their own interests are in contradiction with the interests of others and society, they sacrifice the interests of others and society for their own interests to satisfy their own interests. This is selfish and selfish, which we should despise and reject.

From the above definition of selfishness, we can further analyze the hierarchical multiplicity of people's selfish possession, and different classifications can be made. We know that any human behavior, as long as it is not entirely the result of external forces, as long as there is the conscious choice of the actor, even if it is subconscious, then its behavior must always conform to the actor's own wishes, desires, and emotions. And values. To put it bluntly, behavior comes from motivation, and motivation determines behavior. From the perspective of people's behavior motives, selfishness can be divided into three categories, namely "malignant selfishness" that harms others and self-interest, "reasonable selfishness" that benefits others and self-interest, and "selfishness" that self-sacrifices others.