- #71
steersman
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It is my guess that those who believe we are not always selfish also believe that love is the highest form of emotion that is able to (ever) be experienced.
It is my guess that those who believe we are not always selfish also believe that love is the highest form of emotion that is able to (ever) be experienced.
Either way, I don't see the connection between the topics of emotional intensity and selfishness. They are two completely unrelated topics in my view.
I do not agree with this definition of "self-ish"-- what you define here is the "self-less" person -- the person that requires harming other people to advance self. Consider the word -- a self-ish person is concerned with self only, and a selfish person would never harm another person to advance self interest, except in the justified situation of self defense against action initiated by others. By definition, a truly selfish person lives by the moral code to never "initiate" harmful actions against other humans. All of this is made clear in the book by Ayn Rand, "The Virtue of Selfishness". And consider the many religions that place the highest moral virtue on selfish actions (such as being born again) that insure that one gets to live forever in a very nice place indeed after life on Earth --by whatever name that place is called. Such people are truly selfish in the correct sense of the concept as defined by Rand. And do we not look with a questionable eye at those who claim to never do anything for themself, always for the other ? I fear that few people are truly selfish as I have defined above, and hence the great evil we see in this world because so many humans have been incorrectly taught to equate advance of self (e.g., selfishness) with harming other people, as shown by the definition provided above by K. Mann.Kenneth Mann said:I've noticed that in the discussion that has gone on in this string so far, much of the disagreement (or confusion) has resulted from semantic differences rather than from actual differences in opinion. Put simply, it is quite difficult to express ideas clearly if there are no clear and unique definitions for the terms used. To this end, I have tried to come up with (a start at) more concise (if somewhat arbitrary) definitions for some of the main terms used. These include:
1) selfish (adjective): striving to promote the welfare and advantage of ones-self, at the expense of one or more others. This may or may not include resorting to acts that are unethical, illegal or immoral. An act of this type requires some (overt or otherwise) component which is performed with the express purpose of disadvantaging one or more others. Theft, cheating and class discrimination are examples of this type of activity. [selfishness (noun), selfishly (adverb)]KM