Why do we do anything? The true motivation behind human actions

[Reshma]

So to believe choice and free-will is rather a selfish act itself because you must believe that you are different from every thing esle.

I have a different view on this. Doesn't the ability to exercise free-will and choice makes us essentially HUMANS. The question is: Is the nature of the choice we make-- Selfish? The irony here is, the greatness of an individual is not solely dependent on his abilities, power and talents BUT largely on the kind of choices he makes--for good or for bad.

The fact is every human is indeed unique. The spirit of our existence is to co-exist in harmony and unison inspite of our differences

 

[GeD]

I have a different view on this. Doesn't the ability to exercise free-will and choice makes us essentially HUMANS. The question is: Is the nature of the choice we make-- Selfish? The irony here is, the greatness of an individual is not solely dependent on his abilities, power and talents BUT largely on the kind of choices he makes--for good or for bad.

Yes, if someone were to believe that they had free-will, the nature of this choice is selfish. Because that person assumes that they control their destiny - that they are more powerful than the rest of nature. Their being human beings, or their choices being supposedly good or bad has no bearing on this. It is selfish in nature.

The fact is every human is indeed unique. The spirit of our existence is to co-exist in harmony and unison inspite of our differences

Uniqueness with co-existence is not an argument against selfishness. Survival requires banding up and working together to defeat a common enemy. This co-existence is a product of the necessity of that kind of power. If you take a look at history, it shows us that existence is more likely to be dependent on conflict than co-existence - taking life, eating life to continue life. Competition (doesn't have to be nasty) with animals and other people is highly rampant - even when with people we co-exist with. In fact, the conditions of co-existence seem to be temporary and always changing sides.

 

[NoGeniusJustSensible]

tut tut... so should be all die cos we shouldn't be selfish?
i don't think people are selfish... well some are... but depends on the situation and the act... we obviously live for ourselves... but that doesn't make us selfish... it just keeps us alive... if it were an act of selfishness... to not be selfish we shouldn't want to live...

 

[Nomy-the wanderer]

I'd say a human being is eccentric, when u r born as a kid, u consider ur self the sun and everyone else orbits around u, everyone elkse should work to satisfy u...

And then growing up, u find that out there, there r many eccentric creatures juts like u, and u start to understand ur limits, that everybody else is as eccentric as u r, that soemtimes, uv'e to do things for others as they may do for u...

The world selfish isn't a lovely one, and growin up u notice that u can't be selfish and accordingly, u try to help people, to prove urself to be unselfish, and interested mroe in people than urself. Still u r self-eccentric and whenever u prove something like that u r happy and this turns to be in ur favour, more than other's...

If u r unhappy doing it, u'd be a creep, because if u r goin to do soemthing for soemone u should be hppy to transmit ur feeling to him..

I'd say ebign eccentric isn't that bad, cause sometimes it helps u realize that there's something more, a little effort u need to do in favour of others...U r still eccentric, looking for ur own good, at least ur self satisfaction..

But that doesn't make u bad..

Selfishnes sis another form of disease, specially for adults, it consists - for me- of course, of underestimating what happens to anyone outside ur orbit..U consider that people are their for ur own good, but why r u here? Because poeople should try to make me happy...
Unless u realize that this is a circle and what goes around comes around, u'll stay imprisoned in ur own galaxy, no one will help u out cause everyone except for u, will realize u r selfish..

 

[Brady]

I'm not 100% selfish, but I am definitely selfish to an extent.

Basically, I live life to appreciate and love God for everything he has given me. My dad tells me that it's a crime to not live up to your potential, that's abusing your gift. My selfish desires are really a desire to fulfill my destiny. If I sit at home doing nothing all day, what good am I doing? I'm certainly not helping myself or anyone else. But if I become successful, then I give back to society, I have helped myself, helped others, and done what God wants me to do.

My point is that selfish desires are the impetus for success, but generosity and understanding for others are what makes you a complete person. You can't have one without the other. I believe someone who is both selfish and generous at the same time is the best person (somewhat of a contradiction, but not fully so). Someone who tries his best to accomplish his goals, but is always willing to help others. In other words, he tries his best, but always motivates others to do the same and gives them a helping hand.

 

[pippythemonk]

I believe that humans are all selfish, but to different levels. You really have to take into consideration the spin that society and things like the media have put on selfishness. The fact of the matter is, the mental genetics of humans are generally the same (save the extremes; genius and retardation) and selfishness all depends on how your mind has been brought up. To actually determine whether or not human nature is selfishness, one would have to design an experiment where the extremes tested; in one area, all social forces would boost selfishness and idolize the selfish, and in another social influences would boost selflessness and caring for others. The control would be like a lord of the flies situation with kids on an island and no rules. Unfortunately, this will never happen in America because no single person can control the media. Maybe Puerto Rico...

 

[WeeDie]

All individuals, human, plats, animal alike, surely seems to be environmentally and genetically conditioned to priorities concernes of ones own tribe or genepool. The combined conditioning is the _program_ that one is run by and its "selfish" output is a perfect representation for the logic of gametheory. Free will is conditioned by the same standards and so is ones feelings of affection. However, if the conditioning is stretched to the extreme where individual specimens sense of identity become concerned only for themself, a specimen with a program of identity that encompass all mankind could get a lot of advances by exploiting the logic of so many selfconcerned identities. If so, ascetism would be a major survival script in todays society. What survives is best adapted to the environment, not necessarily the most selfish program. The ascetic doesn't have to do what he does in order to survive and hence have selfish motives in the background - survival would just be logical outcome of its actions. This logic applies to more then ascetism. The will to survive is by no means the highest function of an individuals program of behaviour.

 

[Renge Ishyo]

"Selfish" means doing something while *only* thinking of the benefit to yourself. I'm sure there are some humans that only think of themselves and don't consider the standpoint of other animals and hence, only act if they have some benefit and don't act otherwise, but most humans do not have that luxury. If you have a family for example, you will have to do things for others even if you do not want to do it or it has no benefit. Same thing if you have a job, etc. For example, when my parents bought a house the previous owners abandoned their cat and the responsibility for it's survival fell on me. It was either feed it and take care of it or it goes to the pound (read: dies). So I buy it's food, feed it and clean it's living space, change it's water every day. What do I get out of it? Fleas. It's not like I am asking the cat for anything in return (and in fact, I am losing money and inconvenienced by the whole thing). I am doing it because I don't think it's right to just kill the cat because it had crappy owners.

People misinterpret "selfish" into a blanket term meaning that every action comes from the "self." Of course it does, ultimately your mind commits to something and you do it. That does not mean that every action is done primarily FOR the self though. Not even close. The people who think in such a way are people I fear...for they will harm other humans mercilessly using the self righteous "excuse" that ALL the other humans are just as selfish as themselves...

 

[saysua]

All humans are selfish to a certain percentage-I highly doubt it's 100%-it is a subjective categorization, which doesn't have a reliable measurement because there are so many factors attributing to a particular action.

But is it humanly possible for cessation of that "selfishness" to eventually occur through the continual practice of a religion such as Buddhism? Not unlike Pavlov's theory, can we condition ourselves to selflessness, or is it that within the field of trying to attain selflessness we are in fact being selfish for wanting such a goal.

I just want to hear your thoughts.

 

[Renge Ishyo]

It's circular logic. Obtaining 100% "unselfish" or 100% "selfish" behavior for your entire life is impossible. The reality is more of a mix (with some leaning more to one side than the other). Think about it, if people were always selfish would we even understand what the word meant? NO, we would have no way to discern between selfish behavior and unselfish behavior if behavior was only one thing all the time. The reality is that we are a bit of both depending on the situation. I am not saying that being selfish is always bad, in fact, I firmly believe that NO person should be "unselfish" by seeing to someone else's needs at the *expense* of their own needs. One needs to attain the means to his own survival before he can extend his efforts to the survival of others.

For society to be healty, there should be a sort of mutualism taking place where people are working together for mutual survival. Such mutalistic relationships DO exist in nature, they are not exclusive to humans (for example, bacteria in plants fixing N^2 to help the plants get nitrogen, both species benefit as the bacteria lives off the plant). By definition, if you do something for yourself that also benefits another, you are not being selfish because selfish requires that your thought process consider ONLY yourself. Being "selfish" is looked at as being negative because in certain situations it leads to the destruction of a possible mutualistic situation where one person decides to live at the expense of other lives (more of a "predatory" than mutalistic situation can easily develop with such thinking). The other lives (eventually) fight back against the predator and this leads to a sort of Darwinian conflict over who gets to live. Society doesn't like conflicts (as in many cases we have enough resources that there is simply no good reason why both animals can't coexist) so selfishness=bad for us in certain situations. It's up to your to figure out in which situations you need to stand up for your own right to live and in which you need to cooperate. Doing so is not being "selfish", it's called being a responsible adult.

 

[steersman]

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.

 

[Castilla]

Does every love expects reciprocity?
If so, then it is only a trade...

 

[Renge Ishyo]

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.

Emotions are chemical reactions. It is equally possible for someone to receive an "intense" pain as it is an "intense" joy (emotions that are equal in magnitude in their observable effect on the individual, I'm sure both of us have had examples of each somewhere in our lifetimes). My view is that it has to do with the strength of the reaction in the body at the time when the emotion is being produced. For example, when you first went on a roller coaster as a kid you might have had an "intense" experience because you were experiencing a new stimulus and information was pumping very rapidly to your brain. I bet the emotion wasn't the same the 100th time you went on the roller coaster (even though the ride "experience" remains constant).

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. What I really want to know is that if the purpose of philosophy is to open everyone's mind, why do most philosophical arguments that I read try to generalize human behavior in a very rigid way?

 

[steersman]

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.

They are not connected in regard to the question posed at the beginning of the thread - however, I believe it is necessary to question our own motivations because the question more or less shapes how we act. Who here is being completely honest with themselves? It's not that I don't think there are people who see love (or one of its subsidiary emotions) as the apotheosis of human experience, it's just that these people are rare, usually confined to religion, and don't normally visit PF.

 

[Renge Ishyo]

In terms of the importance of questioning one's motivations in order to become a better person, I am certainly in agreement with you (though I would stop short of calling it "necessary" as many people seem to survive without ever stopping to think about this sort of thing). Certainly this type of questioning is a form of "losing innocence" of the sort that we experience as we grow up. I remember when I was a teenager I thought I was in "love" with a girl who I knew in advance I could never marry. However, I was fooled by my crotch into thinking I was "madly in love" so I went ahead with it. In "reality" as I understand it to be at the moment, I was really young and horny and here was a girl who was interested in me and I was willing to ignore that I knew it wouldn't work to satisfy that (at the time) unquestioned impulse. Because of that decision both of us got attached. When the inevitable breakup occurred once we realized we could never marry, we both suffered. Now I understand what that particular "feeling" means more clearly, so when it triggers, I can keep myself better under control. Lesson learned.

It is true that we have inherent biological impulses that can cause us to make poor or selfish decisions at times if we just let them run rampant and don't learn what those impulses are and how to challenge them. The part where the conversation loses me is when people claim that ALL human actions are selfish. That sort of extremist thought is dangerous, and it serves as a sort of denial that we humans possesses the ability to modify our behavior and do unselfish things. Humans DO possesses the ability to make decisions that benefit themselves as well as others and the more control over our bodies we have the more ability we have to overcome "selfishness" should a situation arise where we need to act in an unselfish manner in order to avoid conflict (even if in doing so we have to go against what our "feelings" are telling us to do at a given moment).

 

[Rade]

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

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.

 

[FluxCapacitator]

In my experience, I've found there are several groups of people: the selfless, the admittedly selfish, and the closet selfish.

Selfless people are a minority, they truly do everything they can to help others. These are not only the people who move to third world countries and sacrifice everything they have to help people who were born at a disadvantage, but people who ernestly spend most of their time thinking and acting for the welfare of others.

Closet selfish people is a little term I made up for people who deny how selfish they are. They'll often say how kind they are, they'll try hard to help other people, but when push comes to shove, they'd help themselves first. Rich people who make token donations to random charities while driving $70,000 cars fall into this section, as do people who do community service in order to appear like a selfless person. In short, they do a lot of good things for others while reserving the best for themselves so that they can keep a clean conscience. Sadly, a majority of people fall into this category.

Lastly, we have the selfish people, who do nothing unless it serves them in some way or form. It's also pretty clear cut, and there aren't too many of these in the world.

Obviously people can fall at various ends of the spectrum, but just about everyone is in one of those categories, with most in the middle one.

As for myself, I'm not in so much denial as to not consider myself as selfish, because most of what I do is just for me. However, I don't go out of my way to harm others, so I can sleep at night without any problems. Being selfish is what capitalism is all about, anyways. I'm good for the economy ;) .

 

[Reshma]

I don't think people are that selfish, but people are more cynical and I am not denying that I myself end up behaving like a cynic most of the time. I tend to assume the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in selflessness of others which is bad and I'm desparately trying to change. I guess cynicism is also a form of selfishness because I'm concerned chiefly or only with myself.

 

[Smurf]

I think the best way to describe the motive for human behavior is "Self Satisfaction", be it through possession of material wealth, or a warm fuzzy feeling after doing something 'nice' like donating to charity.