On Selfishness

More than a few times over the years I have heard students claim that everyone is selfish. According to this belief, even people we call selfless, good, or self-sacrificing are “in reality” pleasing only themselves. That they get pleasure from being “what society calls good” does not mean they are any less selfish than those who get pleasure from being bad.

This pseudo-doctrine has settled upon the modern imagination as a noxious fog, exuded when the mixture of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism (good is pleasure minus pain) with Nietzsche’s moral solvent (good is envy in disguise) in Freud’s psychoanalytic cauldron (good is superego’s rationalization of ego’s survivalist suppression of id) spilled into the popular press. The result: behind every good move is a “real” motive, which is invariably selfish.

In fact the actual adoption of the belief that every choice is a selfish one can lead to nothing but boredom. Once we agree that everything we do is for selfish reasons, what else is there to say? It is an assumption that recognizes to no distinctions, evokes no practical or moral or spiritual discussion. It is the end of conversation. Which is why the young would be so disappointed if one were simply to agree with them in accepting it. Without the presumption of resistance, the selfishness doctrine dies of its own vacuity.

Let’s accept for a moment the hypothesis that we are all essentially selfish. I am; you are; Einstein is; Descartes is; Mother Theresa is; Saddam Hussein is. Now what? What am I to do about being me, or you about being you? What choices are left us to make? And why would any choice be significant? If all motives are selfish, then choice is only illusion, the selfish preference of this form of selfishness over that. Whether I should apologize to you or hit you again harder is a question exactly like whether I should order vanilla or chocolate. Who could care about anyone or anything if we really believed in this universal selfishness?

If we are all only selfish, then talking about selfishness is like talking about our need for oxygen. We all need oxygen, saints and sinners, our beloveds and the villains who torment us. So what? Shall we ignore everything about people except that they need oxygen? Wouldn’t that go against our natures, which, whether or not they are totally selfish, certainly militate against boredom?

Now let us entertain an alternative assumption. Let us say that all creatures are mostly selfish but potentially unselfish. They are selfish in various ways, in accordance with their natures, and yet they have an area of freedom in which they are capable of choosing either to be consistent with their own natural selfishness or, alternatively, to sacrifice their own selfishness in certain limited respects in the name of some value or principle (other than selfishness) that they find to be meaningful.

If this alternative assumption is true, it is not wrong to say that all creatures are selfish, but it is wrong to say that all creatures are only selfish. Now there is space for us to distinguish between good selfish beings and evil selfish beings, between kind selfishness and uncaring or brutal selfishness. If despite being rather selfish we still have some freedom to be more or less selfish, selfish in better or worse ways, or even unselfish, then we can begin to talk about things that matter to us. To solve for x, we cancel out the common factors on both sides of an equation. Similarly, only in agreeing to leave our common selfishness aside can we discuss what besides ourselves we may value. Only then can we find interest in being human.

This more complex assumption also has the advantage of corresponding better to what we actually experience in life. For almost no one, including one who believes that all human beings are only selfish, actually behaves or judges himself or others as if that assumption were true. In practice we all make moral distinctions as well as factual ones. Who would be content to say “out of selfishness he stole my wallet; out of selfishness I didn’t want him to”? Whether they say so or not, most people will also believe “he was wrong to steal my wallet” or “his selfishness is immoral; mine is not.”

Nothing that simply is can be morally bad. Only beings that can freely will alternatives based on moral imperatives can be said to be bad or good. If we are merely nature following our natures, whatever we think we’re doing, then even the word “selfish” is meaningless. We are just being what we are being, wanting what we want, and freedom is illusory, discussion is vain, and the assertion that we are all selfish is pointless.

There is undoubtedly a measure of selfishness in most of our choices, but the word “selfish” has meaning because we use it in the context of the freedom not to be selfish. And only belief in that freedom is consistent with our actual experience. We are, by nature and in practice, choice-making beings. We judge, decide, pick, and prefer constantly throughout our waking lives. By our choices we fill our lives with meaning, and in comprehending our choices and their consequences we slowly come to comprehend who and what we are. To say that all our choices amount to the same choice—selfishness—is to say we make no real choices at all, that we already know all there is to know about ourselves.

The belief that there is not also a measure of freedom to choose the good despite our measure of selfishness, that there are not better and worse ways to please the self, not higher as well as lower satisfactions—this belief dissolves all culture, art, and civilization, all discussion and argument, all human conversation. A universally selfish world is a universally boring world in which souls are but belly-feeders and mind is a waste of matter.

If at the end of his life a man discovers, on reflection, that he has been selfish all his life, that is a meaningful discovery only if that selfishness has been chosen, only if another route had been possible. Similarly, if a young person argues that selfishness is all there is, we are not in the presence of logic or wisdom or insight or experience. We are in the presence of a devil’s advocate, an intellectual faddist, or a soul in despair. Knowingly or not, all three crave healing refutation.

Response to Comment on Atheism post

Brandon writes:

"Happened to stumble across your very interesting weblog. It's refreshing to read something on the internet which doesn't appear to be written by Huxley's infinity of typewriting monkeys (by the way, it would take 6 billion monkeys longer than the scientifically estimated age of the universe to work out Hamlet--I recently had to calculate that for a class).

"Personally, I find atheism to be extremely ironic.

"The principal object of atheists' execration is FAITH. I would define faith to be the retention of a belief despite a void of relevant empirical evidence. Religious people of the Judeo-Christian bent certainly possess faith in a high degree, and they eagerly acknowledge this. I think that most atheists overlook the fact that they too have faith. Atheists believe in an article of faith which cannot actually be proven: the nonentity of a higher intelligent power. How do you prove the nonexistence of something that is so far from tangible? Humans can't prove the nonentity of Russell's teapot, let alone the nonentity of an intelligent higher power. So atheists possess faith. Perhaps in not nearly so high a degree as adherents of major world religions, but they believe without evidence nonetheless.

"I think that agnostics are, in a way, 'more atheist than the atheists' because they do not presume to have faith; agnosticism in its most general form tenders answers only within the realm of collectible empirical evidence.

"So, as a young scientist, the question I find interesting is which belief label gybes best with science. The only reasonable conclusion is agnosticism, because faith is science's only anathema. In fact, the current scientific thinking, established to enable the study of quantum phenomena, holds that any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid question at all, but something approaching a dangerous error. The 'god question' certainly qualifies as such a question.

"I hate Wittgenstein. I hate him. But sometimes I am forced to agree with his general conclusions, and I think that in large part religions questions of the variety 'is there an intelligent higher power?' are a syntactic set-up with commonly-held paradigms as the culprit and with language as its accomplice."


Here is my response:

“So, as a young scientist, the question I find interesting is which belief label gybes [sic] best with science. The only reasonable conclusion is agnosticism, because faith is science's only anathema.”

The conclusion is false because the premise is false. Faith may seem to be anathema to many scientists, but in fact real scientists know perfectly well that all of science is founded on faith in the first principles of science. For example, it cannot be proven by science or by any other empirical activity that the laws of nature are constant (i.e., if the laws of gravitation are true today they will also be true tomorrow). Neither can it be proven that human logic is a consistently valid method of deducing truth. (One cannot “prove” that if A=B and B=C then A=C. It is either self-evident or not, but we can’t prove it.). These are axioms, or, in other words, articles of faith. They make sense to us, and they seem to hold true. But we have nothing outside them by which to know (as opposed to believing in) their validity.

Hence science itself, like all human knowledge, is founded on faith. The faith of an agnostic is that it is unpleasant or uncomfortable or wrong to believe in anything, that the only valid kind of human intellectual endeavor is knowledge. Well, I hate to break the bad news, but that belief in the sole validity of knowledge is an act of faith, as absolute, as unprovable, as anyone’s belief in God.

So, Brendan, I’m afraid that “as a young scientist,” if you mean to be a rational young scientist, you’ve got to rejoin the community of human beings, ALL of whom live by faith in one kind of thing or another. Not to live by faith (in whatever it is you believe in) is not to be a conscious human being. And science is no freer of this necessity than the wackiest religion out there.

“In fact, the current scientific thinking, established to enable the study of quantum phenomena, holds that any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid question at all, but something approaching a dangerous error. The ‘god question’ certainly qualifies as such a question.”

What “current scientific thinking” ought to have said is that “any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid SCIENTIFIC question.” But human beings have all sorts of questions that cannot be empirically resolved, and some would say that those are the MOST IMPORTANT of the questions we can ask. And, to quote you, the “god question” certainly qualifies as such a question.

“I hate Wittgenstein. I hate him. But sometimes I am forced to agree with his general conclusions, and I think that in large part religions questions of the variety ‘is there an intelligent higher power?’ are a syntactic set-up with commonly-held paradigms as the culprit and with language as its accomplice.”

I don’t know why you hate Wittgenstein, but perhaps that feeling has more validity than your embrace of his conclusions. In any case, if the question of God’s reality is a “syntactic set-up,” you might want to ask who is doing the setting up? Since syntax is our only way of communicating, or perhaps even of thinking rationally about things, then maybe there is more meaning to be found in the set-up than you give it credit for.

And if syntax, and hence human rational thought, does NOT correspond to ultimate reality, then science too is out the window, and then we may well ask whether there is a greater reality than what we can comprehend with human syntax. The answer will obviously not be able to be proven, or even formed in language. And yet we may have access to it in other ways—like faith.