I Only Care About Me.
We are all important to ourselves. Nobody else cares about anything else. Just watch around. If you are sitting in the room full of people, they are all busy minding their own business and trying to look important, while doing as little as everyone else around. They love themselves so much that even while they are listening to others, they still think about themselves and how good do they look. It's like if God came to a random person and started telling him the secrets of life, that person would just think: "Damn, God is speaking to me. I must look fabulous at the moment. I always knew that I am special."
And later, he would hear God saying, "So, my son, live this way, and you will be forever free and happy. Goodbye now."
And we all laugh at those people because they are everywhere around us. The only thing we don't want to understand is the fact that we also belong to the group. Oh yes, I bet you that you were thinking about yourself while reading this text rather than focusing on the words. I bet that you were thinking about the response to the text and making your own opinion on this matter before you finished reading. Good news - we are programmed this way, and there is no need to worry about that. Bad news - we are programmed this way so that we wouldn't see things further than ourselves.
Think about the last time you actually observed something without making any conclusions or judgments. When was the last time you observed something with an empty mind without any prejudice (no matter positive or negative)? I think I am yet to learn this skill. But maybe it's only I, who cannot stop loving myself. Or maybe we are not supposed to care about anything else? After all, even if we saved the world from bad guys, we would only do it because we want to survive. Or we want other to survive so that they could bring us joy. But it all leads back to us.
I'll give you an upvote for honesty and transparency, but I think you're missing an important property of our species: we're social creatures. Does an ant or a bee in a collective only care about itself? Clearly not as they will self-sacrifice for the collective as needed to protect the hive. And yet, they do it for themselves because "they" are the hive. They are a collective super organism. I think we, as individual humans, a social species, are more connected then we realize.
I prefer to think in this way:
I want to help create the world we all want to live in.
To me, that honestly reflects my empathy, compassion, and love for others as I also value myself.
I agree with this and would add that the hyper individualism that we see in our Western society is mostly a learned social construct. A lot of Eastern cultures are much more collectivist then we are and they often think in terms of "us" rather than "me."
Our political economic climate essentially breeds individualism by emphasizing fear and scarcity and placing a high value on competition, self-interest and greed. I think that survival of the fittest is actually a misguided notion that people do not fully understand. Not only that, a lot of organisms in nature (including humans) demonstrate far more cooperation then competition.
That's one of the reasons I like DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) the STEEM blockchain uses over POS (Proof of Work). At the same time, our consciousness does give us a level of "individualism" which can serve us well (keep us alive, healthy, motivated, etc). I think some cultures could use a bit more individualism in order to incentivize great people to do great things. Like most things, we need balance and I think it's clear to most people the western hyper-individualism you mention is way out of hand.
I agree that we need balance - both as a species and as a political economic climate. I can only imagine how far our species would progress if it actually worked together with mutual interest and cooperation in mind. The destruction of planet and humanity would halt, and progress would thrive. Its a bit of an idealistic Utopian mindset, but I actually do believe its possible.
I get what you say, Luke, and I cannot disagree with that. But I am trying to figure out here where does all the "I want to help create the world we all want to live in" comes from. In my eyes, it is a selfish wish of self-realization and making yourself feel better. I have just the same idea/dream, by the way. I am not saying that we don't need to be social, but rather that we are social because we that's how we justify ourselves. And that is perfectly normal. I mean, if all the people wanted to help others to make themselves feel better, we would live in a damn happy place :D
And yet again, do we emphasize others because of others or because that makes us feel like good people? These are very interesting things to think about.
It comes from our desire to live with freedom, autonomy, joy, prosperity, fulfillment, love, etc, etc... by helping others, we help ourselves. That's how our species works.
I can agree with you, Luke! But only on the surface. I still believe it is important to know why we choose to help others or let me put it this way - are we helping others to help ourselves or vice versa? After all, if I give you $100 because I want to feel better inside, I am being selfish (and I happen to be kind/loving/caring at the same time but that's just the side effect).
What you described is the selfishness that has clouded the current generation. Ideally, things should be different. We should try and walk in others' shoes before judging and all that.
Oh no. I am not selfish at all, at least I don't think so. However, my unselfishness is also just one of my ways as an individual to justify my goodness and righteous thinking. I mean, have you ever thought if you are doing good things more for others or for yourself?
@writingamigo, as @lukestokes said above, "by helping others we help ourselves."
Yeah, I get that. But if you look deeper you will see that there is a reason for every action. So are we helping others to help ourselves or vice versa? It is pretty important to know the difference, IMO. That's why I believe we are selfish because we first do things for ourselves (they just sometimes happen to be beneficial for others as well).