👑 Why You Will Always be Selfish

Image of two children, one eating a hamburger while the other is watching intently.

We despise those that are self-interested.

“You’re so selfish!” one often says as a response to something one doesn’t like.

However, the above statement seems to be somewhat ironic. If you weren’t also selfish, then why does their selfishness matter to you? The above picture is a great representation of this. The child that is eating the hamburger shamelessly is selfish. And so is the one that is angrily glaring at him.

So Why?

Selfishness appears to be the fundamental driving force behind our survival. Selfishness can also be referred to as the ego, or our self-preservation mechanism, and it seems impossible to be human without it. Everything we do is motivated by selfishness. Even love. More on this later.

I invite you to provide an example that is not rooted in selfishness.

Selflessness vs Agreeableness

There seems to also exist a group of people that are seemingly incredibly nice and would readily hear out your problems or do whatever favors you ask of them. It seems unwise to call these people selfless though.

One can put others before themselves because of fear. One can have the identity that they should be putting others before themselves in order to feel like themselves. If they don’t give to others, they wouldn’t know how to live with themselves. That is back to selfishness.

Is It Possible to be Selfless?

Many people will react in the following way, “Well I agree that there are many selfish people in the world, but there are a rare few, like the Gandhi's and the Martin Luther Kings that cared about more than just themselves. There are the mothers that give unconditional love to their children. There are those that love and they give but never take. What do you say to those that put others before themselves?”

Giving grains to a group of begging children

The real question is: were these people selfless in the absolute sense?

• For Gandhi and Martin Luther King, they were selfless to “their” people but were they selfless to the ones oppressing them?
• For the mother, they are selfless to their child, but are they just as selfless to the troublemaker that lives down the street?
• For the lover, they are selfless to their partner, but are they selfless to their partners father or family?

Insights

It seems these people were able only to be selfless towards those that they saw as a part of themselves. It appears you can only be selfless to yourself and those that you love are those that are an extension of yourself.