Why we should be more selfish
On Self, Non-Self, and No-Self
One is “selfish” if one cares only for oneself. Like a soldier who betrays his squad to the enemy, so that he could escape with his life.
Most religious and moral systems tend to look down upon selfishness — something not to do; something to be avoided; something that is even evil.
But then, the question arises, what is the opposite of selfishness?
How does someone who is not selfish behave?
The dictionary will tell you that the opposite of “selfish” is “selfless.”
More specifically, one is “selfless” if one cares only for other people. Like a soldier who volunteers for a suicidal mission, so that his squad might escape the enemy, and thus be, themselves, saved.
Many would consider the second soldier a hero. Even a sort of saint.
But there is a problem.
Was his behavior completely selfless?
I agree — he did save his comrades.
But what about his family and friends?
Would they have been completely happy to lose a son, brother, husband, father, or friend in violent circumstances?
Likely not.
Our heroic soldier’s “selfless” act was at best a tradeoff. Selfless from some points of view, but selfish from others.
So, what led to this paradox? An act which, at the same time, is both, selfless and selfish?
Both “Selfless” and “Selfish” have something in common: “Self.”
What is a “self”?
Intuitively, our “self” is closely related to our body, and the things related to our body. Like the feelings it senses, the places it goes, the people it meets, and the things it owns.
And around this body, we draw an imaginary circle. Inside the circle resides “self” and outside reside “other people.” Let’s call this circle the “self-circle”.
The exact definitions of both “Selfless” and “Selfish” depend on the size or diameter of this imaginary self-circle.
But now I’m going to make quite a strong claim, with which you might not necessarily agree.
My claim is this: None of us, not heroic soldiers, not saints, are capable of being selfless. We are all only selfish. Or in other words, we only care about the inside of the self-circle. We care about nothing on the outside.
The moment we assume that we care about the outside, and that we can be selfless, all sorts of misconceptions and paradoxes (like the one above) arise.
“Wait, what?,” you might say. “That can’t be right! There are so many people whose actions or even entire lives are entirely selfless.”
I agree with you completely, except for one small point. You are using the wrong word: “selfless.”
These people are not selfless. They are selfish. Except that they have increased the size of their self-circles to include other people. In many cases, many, many other people.
And what happens when ones self-circle is of infinite size and diameter? When literally every being and everything is contained inside it?
Is such a person perfectly selfish?
You could say that. You could also say that, for such a person the concept of “self”, and related terms like “Selfish” and “Selfless” are meaningless.
They have transcended self.
