Raplog

"I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good." --Cymbeline, V.iv.209-210. An English teacher's log. Slow down: Check it once in a while.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

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.

9 Comments:

Blogger maurile said...

Well said.

The notion that a person who enjoys being charitable to others is therefore acting selfishly by doing so robs the word "selfish" of any meaning.

That sort of thinking may have its place in, e.g., behavioral economics where, for the sake of hypothesis-testing, it is stipulated that a person always acts so as to maximize his own expected utility. Thus if a mother wants her son to be happy, it is (by definition) because her utility is in part a function of his, and increasing his utility is therefore seen as a means to increase her own.

But even in the cold language of the dismal science there is plenty of room to recognize that some people's utility functions depend hardly at all on anyone else's utility, while other people's so depend a great deal.

We may as well come up with descriptive words to distinguish the first group from the second -- and "selfish" and "unselfish" seem as good as any.

5:08 PM  
Blogger G.Rap said...

Apart from the shudder I get when I read the phrase "people's utility," your comment is welcome. (I recommend reading Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walked away from Omelas" as an antidote to the Benthamite thinking about the utility of people.)

8:54 PM  
Blogger Russ Nickel said...

Your definition of "selfish" seems to have a negative connotation. What if by "selfish" those crazy youngsters simply mean something along the lines of "acting in a way that aligns with your deepest disposition." Everyone has something inside of jhemself that make jhem want to do certain things, either good or bad. It could even be something like the soul. It could be the thing that evades moral luck, that would guide your personal actions no matter the situation you were thrust into. Maybe in being "selfish" we are all just realizing that intrinsic part of us. We don't have to be acting toward our survival or pleasure, unless of course pleasure is defined as aligning our actions with our disposition. What makes you Dr. Rap? Well whatever it is, you are doing it very well, and it would be impossible for you to do anything else; not acting for yourself would be contrary to your very being and impossible.

10:51 PM  
Blogger G.Rap said...

The word "selfishness" has always had a negative connotation. To say selfishness is neutral or good is to say something always thought to be bad is neutral or good. In order to speak about what Russ means by the (mis-)use of the word, he must come up with another word that does not already have negative implications. And no, Russ's interpretation is not what they really mean. They really mean that everyone is, in the old sense of the word, selfish (not self-sacrificing, not selfless, not virtuous, not idealistic but totally in the service of numero uno, all other values being illusions). Being true to one's deepest soul or self and being selfish cannot mean the same thing or language falls apart.

Speaking of which, I do not now and will not in the future accept these nonsense terms like "jhem" as Standard Written English. They are examples not of the evolution of language but of the willful and arrogant imposition upon the language and its users of a particular political agenda using words that simply do not and cannot exist in English. And to anyone with an ear for the language they sound moronic. It may perhaps happen that someday these terms will become accepted, but never by me and only over my dead or at least brain dead body (God forbid).

5:00 PM  
Blogger Russ Nickel said...

I honestly think you're dead right about the selfish thing, but cut me a little slack on the word-making-up bit. Making up words can be fun! Babies do it; Shakespeare does it. You know, fun! I didn't have a political agenda. Anyway, I hope that you canstort my decontraption without too much adverse dissinence.

<3 I'll never try to force any of those silly words on society.

11:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you do a disservice to Nietzsche by oversimplifying him, but let's not get into that again.

DB

3:58 PM  
Blogger G.Rap said...

Slack duly cut for Russ. As for Nietzsche, no slack to be cut. Of course I've oversimplified, as any brief comment must. However, my disservice to him (to whom far too much service, lip and otherwise, has been paid) is nothing to his disservice to the world.

4:19 PM  
Blogger Pseudonyms Are So Last Year said...

I view the principle that "all people are exclusively selfish" as close kin to something like Marxist materialism in some ways.

Sure, you can choose to observe only a highly selective subset of human action and interaction and conclude that "the entire history of the human race is a struggle between the wealthy classes and the worker classes for material goods." Your philosophy will appear very reasonable; it will probably even be logically internally consistent. However, it will be essentially specious because its ostensible correctness is predicated on rejecting all elements of human action and interaction that are not of a material nature out of hand as being either meaningless or as having some obliquely materialistic motive.

In the same way, you can reasonably conclude that all humans are selfish and that humans are SOLELY selfish by paying rapt attention to the elements of human experience that clearly pertain to selfishness, rationalizing the selfishness of other human actions that are not obviously selfish, and by rejecting the rest of human experience as meaningless. And in the end, your rationale for rejecting as meaningless or irrelevant those phenomena that are not in accord with your philosophy will be that humans are essentially selfish, and that any human behavior that does not manifest selfishness is therefore irrelevant. Sure, your arguments will sound very convincing if expressed glibly enough, but you are still proving your conclusion with your hypothesis.

The "humans are exclusively selfish" theory and Marxism both seem to be clear instances of circular thinking to me. All you need to come to the former conclusion is the firm conviction that selfishness is the essential human motive, and all you need to reach the latter conclusion is the firm conviction that money is the essence of human existence.

4:57 PM  
Blogger G.Rap said...

Right on, B McM.

10:00 PM  

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