How Selfish Are You?
July 6th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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Several readers have informed me they’re experiencing tremendous difficulty with the issue of selfishness vs. selflessness. Deep down they want to live lives of greater service to others (STO), but they note that their current lives are designed almost entirely around service to self (STS). This in turn often leads to feelings of guilt, but usually the guilt isn’t enough to spur action.
There are abundant belief systems which set STS and STO in conflict with each other, usually favoring one over the other.
First there’s the STO-favoring side. Serving others requires the “death of the self.” The ego is seen as something which must be transcended. In order to become enlightened, one must sacrifice one’s own needs to serve the greater good. Many societies hold people who seem to fit this model in high esteem.
On the other hand, we have the STS side. People are inherently selfish and cannot be expected to act against their own self interest. Selfishness is rooted in our biology, even encoded into our genes. We’re ultimately Pavlovian stimulus-response machines driven by pleasure and pain. Those who seem to serve the greater good only do so because on some level it gives them pleasure, or they’d feel pain if they didn’t.
I think both viewpoints are dysfunctional. They assume STS and STO are in conflict. But are they really?
Where does STS ultimately lead?
What would happen if you were to fully embrace the STS path and take it as far as you possibly could? What would be the most selfish life you could possible imagine? What’s the greatest pleasure you can think of?
Would you become like Hitler and want to conquer the world and put everyone and everything under your control? Ok, so imagine you’ve just become the supreme leader of the planet. Then what? What would you do with all that power? If you didn’t have to keep struggling to maintain it, you’d probably get bored after a while.
For many people the STS path is rooted in fear. The more money, control, and power you achieve, the more fearful you become of losing it. The pursuit of greater power is endless. Your situation is never totally secure.
But what if you could somehow master this path and achieve total, absolute security? What would you do then? What would you do if you had no fear?
Perhaps you’d want to contribute something… make some kind of difference… leave a legacy. If fear and security ceased to motivate you, then what would step in to take its place?
I think the pursuit of STS, if you think it through far enough and imagine yourself succeeding at every step, will eventually lead you to some form of STO.
Where does STO ultimately lead?
But what if you start from STO? What if you put others entirely above yourself? What if you aspire to make the greatest possible contribution you can, whatever the cost to you personally? Where will that lead you?
Imagine you succeed massively at serving others. You’ve cured every known disease, rebalanced the ecosystem, ended poverty and suffering, and maxed out everyone’s self-esteem. You’ve solved all the problems of humanity. No one even needs your help anymore.
What will you do then? Enjoy it? Work on yourself for a while? Won’t this eventually lead you back to STS?
Synergy between STS and STO
Now I’m well aware that you’re not going to be able to max out the STS or the STO path within the span of a human lifetime. There will always be more to do on either side. But this line of thinking got me curious — if maxing out one side leads you back around to the other side, then what does that mean?
To me this indicated that STS and STO both lie on the same path. When you travel to the end of one, you hit the beginning of the other. Perhaps STS and STO are far more twisted together, like a giant Mobius strip.
Biologically this made sense to me. In order for humans to survive, STS and STO must be in balance. If we became totally STS but not STO, we wouldn’t care for our young (among other problems), and we’d eventually die off. If we became totally STO but not STS, we’d fail to take care of our basic needs and would probably die from neglecting our health.
In order to be optimally STS, you must be at least partially STO. And in order to be optimally STO, you must be at least partially STS. Sometimes being selfish is the most selfless thing you can do, and vice versa.
If you want to serve the greater good, you have to serve your own needs. You have to take care of your health, your financial needs, your education, etc.
If you want to serve your own interests, you need to support the community around you which will help you succeed. At the very least you may do this financially, by buying products and services from other people.
Diagnosing congruency problems
STS and STO must remain in balance. It isn’t a matter of choosing one path over the other. You need both.
But what about situations when they’re in conflict? Certainly I don’t deny such situations exist. But rather than spending lots of time trying to figure out when to choose STS and when to choose STO, I suggest trying to work on your life path itself to bring STS and STO into greater harmony.
For example, suppose you’re in a situation where your job is almost entirely STS. You do it for the money or for other perks or for a feeling of security, but your work doesn’t serve the greater good in any meaningful way. Suppose your company manufactures junk food, the kinds of products that are only going to harm people’s health in the long run. But your company (and you) get paid to do it.
Then in your off time, you do volunteer work, spend lots of time with your family, and so on. In your personal life you try to be a lot more STO.
STS and STO are in conflict. They’re not in balance.
How many companies do you know like this? The work they do is almost entirely STS, serving the needs of the company and its investors, but then they also dabble in community service projects and slap a cutesy mission statement over the whole thing. Internally they’re driven by one set of values (mostly greed), while externally they project a different set of values (mostly service).
This is pure schizophrenia.
If you find yourself in a situation like this, you can start by getting clear about where you’re overly STS and where you’re overly STO. Where are you being driven too much by self-interest and damaging others in the process? And where are you sacrificing too much and hurting yourself?
No cheating
When many people find themselves in an unbalanced situation, they try to cheat.
They attempt to redefine STS or STO to fit their current situation. For example, a greed-driven corporation may try to come up with a cutesy mission statement that casts an STO light on its business goals. But no one buys it. It’s nothing but a whitewash and has no real power to motivate people. Most of the corporate mission statements I’ve seen from Fortune 500 companies fall into this pattern. They’re written with such fuzzy, imprecise language so as to say nothing of substance. I’d give them more credit if their mission statements began with, “Our mission is to make our investors filthy rich and to squash our competition.” I think that would be a more accurate statement of purpose than what makes it through the PR filter.
What happens to individuals who find themselves in an overly STS situation is that they try to rationalize some STO components. They try to find the good in what they do. Hey, at least I’m paying my taxes. If I don’t do this job, then someone else will. I’m just being a good provider.
Don’t lie to yourself. You know the truth.
Finding the path where STS and STO are congruent
It’s not easy to find a path where STS and STO are congruent. But it is possible. On such a path, greed and service are both pointing you in the same direction. While you’ll still need to manage minor conflicts between them, the big picture is balanced. You’ll be able to see that pursuing STS and STO will take you down the same path.
What is the greediest path you can take? I think if you answer this question deeply enough, you’ll find that it’s also a path filled with service. What is the path of greatest service? Is it not also a path marked by great pleasure?
I hit the incongruency wall as I built up my games business. Parts of my work were STS (like sales and marketing). Other parts were STO (like writing free articles and coaching other developers). But each part seemed to be separate. I’d usually either be doing STS work or STO work. I’d even try to balance my time between the two of them.
After several years of that, I began seeing that this manner of living was nuts. So I opted to define a new way of working where I could spend the majority of my time doing work that is both STS and STO.
The greediest thing I do for myself is to work on my own personal growth. Growth is my driving force, my greatest STS.
The most service oriented work I do is to help others grow. If I can give someone a perspective shift or teach them a new skill, it has the potential to change them for life. And then they may go out and use it to do more STO work.
Well, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine the kind of work where I could have my cake and eat it too. I realized that there would be tremendous synergy between working on my own growth (greed) and helping others to grow (service). The more I work on my own growth, the greater my capacity for service. And the greater my service, the more it feeds back into my own growth.
This was how I ideally imagined things working, but now that I’m about nine months down this path, I have to say that it’s working.
For example, my decision to write this blog entry is motivated both by STS and STO reasons.
On the STO side, hopefully this blog entry will benefit someone who reads it. It might have no effect, or it might help a lot of people. Also, this blog entry will help generate more traffic to this site, which will hopefully benefit even more people. And there’s tons of free content here now, so it’s very accessible to a wide audience. I have no doubt that this web site is doing people some good. Every week I get feedback to that effect. Many readers have told me about multiple shifts they’ve experienced and how dramatically their results have improved.
Then there’s the STS side. Writing this blog entry helps me clarify my own ideas. It will generate feedback that will help me see what I’ve written from other perspectives. People may poke holes in some of it. This may in turn help me to re-evaluate my own thinking, which means that I’ll grow. The ideas from this blog post may also end up in a future book, speech, or seminar, which means that people who read it today are helping me beta-test these ideas. Also, each new blog post helps generate more traffic, which means more ad clicks (immediate revenue) and more newsletter sign-ups and RSS subscribers. That means a bigger audience to buy info products down the road — books, audio programs, seminars. It also means more people who might hire me as a speaker or who might attend a seminar of mine 5-10 years from now. And that ultimately means more income, which means that new growth experiences become accessible to me. New growth experiences for me means more ideas I can share with others, which feeds back into STO.
So what I do is driven both by greed and service. To me they’re the same thing. Serving others is being greedy.
Ongoing conflict resolution
Whenever I encounter conflict between STS and STO, I look at the big picture. I try to figure out why the conflict is occurring and engineer it out of existence. It’s not easy, but I feel that the more I do this, the more harmonious my life becomes.
For example, what if some mega-corporation offered to pay me an insane amount of money to give a motivational speech to their sales staff? And suppose this corporation’s purpose is totally incongruent with my values, so by helping their salespeople to sell more, I’d be contributing to a greater problem. Maybe the company has a hideous environmental record. This seems like a conflict between STS and STO. Do I take the money and give the best speech I can? Do I take the money and give the salespeople bad advice that will do them more harm than good? Do I decline the offer?
Given my values this kind of situation is one that could very well occur (although the above example is a bit exaggerated). I have no interest in helping companies make money in a destructive manner, regardless of pay. But at the same time, I do want to help the people who work at such companies, and corporations hire enormous numbers of speakers each year, so it isn’t a market I want to write off entirely.
My decision was to focus on the kinds of speech topics that would allow me to still speak for certain corporations without compromising my values. I won’t speak on business-growth topics like sales or marketing to corporations which I’d rather not see grow. But I am open to speaking to their people about topics like living consciously, the kinds of topics that could plant the seed for change. That may seriously reduce the number of people who’d be willing to hire me as a speaker, but the extra money is not worth the damage to my integrity.
When you work on a task where STS and STO are both aligned, motivation skyrockets. Having worked like this for nine months now, I’m simply not willing to lose one side or the other.
There’s a good chance you find yourself in a situation where STS and STO are in conflict. Maybe it’s your work, your relationship, or your family. Take some time to think about how you could set these two powerful forces in harmony. Instead of having them work against each other, set them both after the same goal. Allow your greed to fuel your service and your service to fuel your greed. Accept and integrate both the selfish and the selfless parts of you. Learn to use both the dark and the light sides of your nature.
July 6th, 2005 at 4:34 am
If most of the Fortune 500 mission statements are bogus then that means that most of the Fortune 500 companies have made their money in an STS fashion, not having the STO balance needed for a fulfilling life, and are driven by greed. So for the sake of arguement. I have a better chance of obtaining my wealth if I choose a career that leads me to be more STS than STO, such as producing candy bars or opening a fast food franchise. Is this true or is it possible to achieve great wealth using a happy balance between the two?
I also noticed that your STS reasons for this blog posting are heavier than your STO reasons. Is this common or does STS and STO ever fall into a 50% 50% balance?
Or did you simply have more to say about the STS side given it’s the one easier to iew since it is for you?
July 6th, 2005 at 4:35 am
Love your posts, but sometimes they seem unrealistic. They work very well for someone in your position – IT, Internet, etc. – someone a little spoiled, someone with options.
But how about the regular dude? How about a farmer? How can be selfish and selfless at the same time? Work less in the field and volunteer more?
How about the burger-flipper? It’s minimum wage job! Sure it creates toxic food but he doesn’t have anywhere else to work.
How about the 3rd world textile worker? He’s loosing his health working with dangerous stuff, but he’s happy that he finally HAS a job paying more than $30/month.
How about the accountant who ONLY knows how to do accounting? And he’s asked to cook books. And he can’t say no because loosing your job when the rent must be paid and the kinds are hungry?
I am lucky too, pretty much in your position, but I can’t stop and think that much more people are in a no-option situation. Maybe my examples are overly dramatic but I wonder if the issues and questions facing a homeowner speaker from Las Vegas are a little different from the ones facing the single-mom waitress from La Ceiba Honduras…
July 6th, 2005 at 5:54 am
>If we became totally STS but not STO, we wouldn’t care for our young (among other
>problems), and we’d eventually die off.
I am afraid Steve that this not the case. We love and take care of our children because our genes are selfish; the more we care about our offsprings the more copies of our genes will be propagated and thus be able to reproduce again. So our genes “program” us to act in an STO manner but they serve their own STS pursposes. At least this is what Richard Dawkins (a well respected evolutionary biologist) says in his book “The Selfish Gene”
July 6th, 2005 at 5:56 am
@Dustin: Yes, I think that if material wealth was your primary goal, you could certainly achieve it via an intense focus on STS without much regard for STO. It’s certainly been done before. I listed more STS reasons for myself because they’re more complex and sequential. However, the STO reasons are slightly more compelling to me. It’s not about a 50-50 balance though — the ideal would be 100-100, where both STS and STO are synergizing rather than compromising.
@Catalin: Don’t be a “regular dude.” Regular dudes settle for far less than they’re capable of. If the present situation looks like it has no options, think farther ahead. What can be changed over the next 5 years, 10 years, 20 years with daily action? And if the situation looks really hopeless, then what can be done within your entire lifetime? How can it be made better for future generations? Those questions have led people away from regular and towards greatness. Regular people don’t visit this site though, so I don’t write for that audience — this site is intended for people who earnestly want to grow.
In my opinion the most realistic option available is to do your absolute best, regardless of your starting point.
July 6th, 2005 at 5:59 am
>Then in your off time, you do volunteer work, spend lots of time with your family,
>and so on. In your personal life you try to be a lot more STO.
How about companies that destroy the environment, or pay extremely low wages to third-world workers, or.., or… and then donate money to charities? Does this make them behave in a balanced STS-STO way? I think not…
July 6th, 2005 at 6:59 am
@Angelos: Sounds like you’re agreeing with me….
July 6th, 2005 at 9:45 am
I’m writing this only having read half the article so far because I don’t want to forget my point but…….
These thoughts came up while reading some other entries of yours as well but it basically seems like your philosophy (or religion) is that you think there is a perfect goal for everyone and it involves helping everyone become their best. Even in your 20 minutes to your true life purpose entry the purpose you personally came up with seemed so amorphous and about as soft and fuzzy as you claim the mission statements for fortune 500 companies are.
You bring up things like selling fast food is bad because it’s not congruent with helping people but really, what is? Is selling shareware game software? I’m sure your justification is it funds you to do this site and that puzzle games help the mind but it’s really no different than fast food and those justification sound like the same ones you claim other companies make up. By all the entries I’ve read so far I’d infer you’d have to conclude playing games is arguably a waste of time compared to all the things we could do with our lives (note, I’m a game programmer too). So is spending money on them. That money could go to feed the homeless or visit a friend or save for retirement. That time wasted playing could have been used to advice people or help them or work to put your kids through school or whatever. The time and money making them could have been used to cure cancer.
Are there any jobs or careers out there that fit with the stuff you’re preaching? I can’t think of many. Doctor, Teacher, Researcher. It really seems like if I went down the list of jobs that would fit your ultimate ideal there are very few that would make the cut.
Sorry, I’m not trying to pick on you, I’m really trying to figure out what your ultimate point is because from the sum of what I’ve read so far I infer that your philosophy ultimately leads to very small set of possible good choices. That at the core of your beliefs there really are only a few of valid “true purposes” all about the same as yours and that based on those purposes there are really only a couple of ways to live and a couple of ways to get your STO and STS to meet.
Maybe that’s exactly what you’re saying but for reason I find myself rebelling against it thinking that there’s got to be more variety.
July 6th, 2005 at 10:37 am
@Gregg:
I’ve only posted my general statement of purpose on this site — I’ve never posted my mission statement. My mission statement is over 800 words. That’s where all the details are filled in.
I agree with your points about shareware games. That’s partly why I decided to leave the entertainment business. While I do think the games have some merit in that they’re mentally challenging, and I’ve seen them put to good purpose (such as a teacher using them with autistic students and reporting improvement), it’s certainly not the best I can do. I’ve been transitioning out of that business for more than a year, and my goal is to be completely out by the end of 2005. That will allow me to live far more congruently.
If I felt the games I was selling were hurting people more than helping them, I’d have already shut the business down and found a different way of transitioning, but I am still seeing positive feedback regarding the mental benefits of the games (most are logic puzzle games), so I opted to transition more gradually and keep the games selling as I transitioned. So far I’ve already discontinued half a dozen products, ceased all new game development and publishing, and discontinued all new marketing efforts. If I had been still focusing on that business full-time, my income right now would probably be 10-20x higher, possibly more.
Within the scope of purpose there’s tremendous variety, but I wouldn’t define it as a subset of STS work — that’s way too limiting. Think first in terms of what you’d like to do with your life (forgetting about money), then think about how it can be made into a practical career. Go top-down, not bottom-up.
July 6th, 2005 at 11:02 am
My philosophy is this:
I do 95% STS, but without walking on bodies. I don’t sell harmful products.
For me, focusing on STS is liberating, and I find that by doing so I also accomplish STO things like having employees.
I find that focusing on STS is absolutely liberating. It’s like a “no bullshit, nobody tells me what to do” policy.
Also, my energy, working time, etc, is limited. So if I didn’t focus on STS, I wouldn’t get enough selfish things done and I would suffer quite a lot.
Because of my focus on STS I’m now a business owner and I’m happy and protected from pain. Also when I’ll have kinds I feel I have something to teach them – how to be focused and how to succeed, for example.
I know someone who is a Christian and focused on STO. She simply destroyed her life. She is a doctor, but instead of choosing a speciality which pays well, she chose to be a general practitioner because that was the position she felt she was helping others the most. In my country (Romania), a general practitioner doctor gets paid like shit (a lot lower than an engineer and this after learning and practicing for 12 years) and takes lots of abuse from patients and superiors.
So.. she destroyed her life for STO. Now she is very unhappy and stressed out – the signs of stress show.
If she had chosen another field like gynecology or something, she would have a lot of money and be a lot less stressed.
Being as focused on STS as possible without harming others is a “no bullshit philosophy” and leads to success and happyness.
July 6th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
It seems to me that you didn’t answer the core of Gregg’s question, stuck somehow around game developement.. I really like your site and posts(was following you from your shareware days). Well, I see in your blogs a bit the approach Gregg was reacting on, where it may seem to people that you state that many other paths/activities are something like waste of time or at least a bit less important compared to what you do. Of course that’s understandable if you love what you do. I believe you are aware that for many people their “meaning of life” may be completely different from yours and they 100% believe it is the best path for them. So maybe not stating that some path is better than another >>from YOUR point of viewdeclare
July 6th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
@Paul: If you’re asking whether I feel some paths are better than others, the answer is yes. But you must consider the path itself as a whole, not the present situation taken out of context. One thing I feel makes for a better path (for anyone) is how consciously it’s being lived. Is the path random, like a ship without a rudder being tossed around, or is the person plotting a course and living consciously?
I don’t presume to know which particular path is right for anyone else. But I do believe that the exercise of conscious choice and courage is superior to passive lethargy and fear, regardless of the individual. Ignoring the responsibility for this choice is beneath the dignity of human beings.
July 6th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
Maybe I missed something, but it seems you equate STS behavior at one point with wrong-doing (i.e. selling unhealthy food). Though you then throw in the “long run” qualifier, which has the hidden requirement that someone *else* had to abuse the product (food). In other words, no wrong-doing was committed per one single candy bar (or whatever). There is an implication that this is bad (or selfish, either way it seems to be put in a negative light) behavior. That the person who consumes too much candy/fast-food/etc. has no fault in the matter.
Every once in awhile, I enjoy a candy bar. I could not imagine growing up in a world without it. It’s a simple pleasure. It seems you were talking about an employee in this respect, but what about someone like the founder of Hershey’s or somesuch? Did they not provide a service for the “greater good” and over the “long run?” A counter-example might be Philip-Morris which more than likely has created a “greater bad” over the long run.
I think what I don’t really agree with here is that, how does one know what is an actual service to others? Maybe what you feel is a public service is actually a hindrance (this is not directed at anyone personally).
One of the great ideas behind the free market of the USA is that the self-interests, goals, and desires of individual members makes for a better society than those of a select minority choosing for the whole. I’m not saying what we live in is near ideal, just that the idea behind it is, in my opinion, an amazing idea.
I think the individual knows what is best for him or her, so I do not see how a person can reasonably “guess” or assume they know what is best for others. And more to the point, isn’t that just a tad arrogant and *selfish* itself? The idea that you are in a position of giving and the other person is in a helpless position. Then there is the fact that few even realize what is good for themselves, let alone what is good for others.
We’ve all heard the phrase “no man is an island,” and it seems your entire essay revolves around it in a way. When applied to the free market it would mean that someone must purchase your service or product. In theory, it must enrich their lives or you go out of business. On the other side of the coin, some of the most content (appear to be) are those that have capitalized on their personal interests. The greater good be damned. Yet what they provide is far superior to anything done based on market research, demographics, etc. I think you can find countless examples of this today. The point: both the provider and the recipient are fully satisfied. Things that come to mind are music and comedy. You don’t really want a comedian or comedy show that caters to the viewer.
And there are mysteries such as Oprah. She seems to be going for that “service for the greater good” thing, yet many people loathe her. Ghandi, probably considered one of the most “selfless” people around starves himself to make a point. To me, waving your own death in front of others is quite selfish behavior.
I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from here, though. I do not think that STS behavior implies or necessarily results in any disregard, disrespect, or rudeness towards others (short or long-term).
July 6th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
I wish to add a few things that might conflict with your core belief in human reasoning and understanding.
Personally I don’t believe it is in our core to simply put ourselves first or do things based on a ‘response system’ that would bring us pain or pleasure, we are not simply complicated robots that are merely responding to our environments. We couldn’t be! (I could never accept that as the truth).
We are more then that! Everyday goes by and we have hundreds of stories of selfless heroes who go out of their way to put their lives in danger to help others, you can’t possible believe that is due to their need for self fulfillment? By your ideology we would never put our selves into harms way unnecessarily, especially for a stranger dying on the side of the road, but we do.
The term humanity is a strong one, call me an idealist, but if we try to view ourselves in this black and white manner then what hope is left for humanity to move forward from its current state of misery and self destruction.
July 6th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
@Tim: I’m sorry but I don’t fathom what you might be asking.
@Alborz: The pleasure-pain model isn’t mine; I was simply stating it as one of many paradigms. I happen to agree with you. I’m sorry if the context wasn’t clear.
July 6th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
“Hillel would say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Pirkei Avot 1:14
July 6th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
This post is very interesting. To be honest I’m utterly surprised at how many people missed Steve’s point on this one. This article is actually highly consistent with and complimentary to his other article and posts (e.x. “Living Congruently”) but this one has really sparked an odd reaction. Maybe it’s because the STS/STO issue can be quite touchy. I think the human EGO gets really jumpy once you start to talk about STS/STO because so many people tie their identity to their livelihoods. Nobody wants to attach labels such as “greed” to their identity, and I think that even the most draconian of corporate CEO’s likes to have some notion that his activities are changing the world for the better (and he/she might be). In my opinion, Steve is really talking about acceptance of the many dimensions of your human nature (love, greed, hate, caring, etc) and being able to consciously balance these facets of your nature in such a way that you achieve an empowering congruence. Now we are assuming that this balance is desired and positive, but you can easily imagine the clarity and elimination of negative thinking you would likely realize.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
@Joel: Yes, that’s exactly the point of the article. I also wondered why some people seemed to miss the point and reacted to parts of the article taken out of context. Either I didn’t write it clearly enough, or those people only skimmed it quickly before posting their reactions, or a mixture of both. Maybe it’s just an artifact of my writing style.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
Steve, speaking of balance, I find that once I fulfill all my selfish needs I’m able to serve others. Here the key thing is to keep ‘my selfish needs’ simple but fulfilling. Its more like saying I want very little, But I’ll make sure that the little is the best thats out there.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
I grew up in communism. Communism is a flawed method for running society.
Why? Because communism only works if everybody is selfless and works hard for the sake of society. So communism starts from the idea that man does STO.
Capitalism, on the other hand, was successful because it starts from the idea that man does what it’s in his best interest. So capitalism starts from the idea that man does STS.
Capitalism succeeded, communism failed. Why? Because in fact the human nature implies that we do STS (service to self).
I find that a strong belief in STS is liberating for me personally.
I also find that most people around me who openly and strongly belive in STS are happier, less frustrated, less stressed, more interesting people, while people who belive in STO are usually fustrated, stressed and unhappy.
I think that psychology (not pop-psychology but scientific psychology based on studies and statistics) can confirm this. Doing and beliving in STS is considered a healthy trait.
In spite of the fact that I strongly appreciate and practice STS, I take great care not to harm others, because I also belive in that.
July 7th, 2005 at 2:55 am
Steve, I enjoyed the article.
Here is a quick comment about rationalization (just meant to fruitfully complicate matters a bit). One way we can lose our grip on how our lives are actually going is by rationalizing our actions, deluding ourselves about what we are actually doing. I mean that we might be engaged in an STS behavior but somehow snow ourselves into thinking that it is STO. We sometimes tell ourselves a story, in other words.
It turns out that one place where this story starts to take shape is easy to put our fingers on. When you are considering some action, you consider it “under a description,” which just means that you describe it in one way or another. The key point to notice is that one action can be described in more than one way (some ways will seem more STO, some will seem more STS). Long story short, it is vital to slow down and be conscious at that stage of giving a description to your action, and to and keep yourself honest at that moment, because if you allow yourself to slip on the description, slipping on the action won’t be far behind.
July 7th, 2005 at 7:18 am
Steve
When a person starts to get beyond greed and realizes that people are more important than things, they start to realize their potential. Money and power is not what life is all about, although American Culture constantly sells us that elixir.
We need to give because it is the right thing to do, not give in order to take. I was very disappointed in your conclusion. Don’t allow greed to fuel anything, work on reducing it – that’s humanity.
July 7th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
One question I’d like to ask is if you still bother replying/reading replies to blog entries that aren’t your most recent, Steve? Sometimes I feel like I missed out on the opportunity to ask questions because you made a new entry before I got to this one.
I have been increasingly concerned with my own attempts at starting a shareware business. I got to this site from Dexterity, and have found all your points, especially this one, as very impactful.
But I am concerned. You sort of imply that the only valid purpose in life is the one that you chose. I don’t (at least not at the moment) want to lecture people about personal growth. I want to do something I feel is meaningful and altrustic with my life, I can think of a lot of ways I could use games to help benefit people outside of entertainment. However, your own movement from the shareware industry seems to imply that you don’t feel that path has nearly as much merit? I really want to contribute as much as I can to society (STO) but my selfish desires want to make computer/video games.
Do you still play games yourself?
July 7th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
@Scott: Most of the time I don’t reply to new comments made on posts older than a few days. Plus I don’t always reply to every comment on the most recent posts.
I did not mean to imply that I think my path is the right one for others, only that I think it’s the right one for me. I can see many valuable ways of making a meaningful contribution via the gaming and shareware industries, but I did not feel that was the best for me personally. It was part of my path for over 10 years, but I wanted something different for the next 10 years. I don’t regret starting my software company at all.
I can’t say I play games much now. I doubt I’ll play any this month (I haven’t thus far). If I did play something, it would most likely be one of the games I’ve published and just for maybe 15 minutes during a break.
July 7th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
Great article, and even more interesting discussion
I think the balance of STS and STO simply depends on what stage your own growth is at.
If you’re at an early stage of growth, you barely have enough resources to cover your own needs and growth. In that case, you ought to be strongly STS.
If you’ve gathered enough resources (resources meaning money, knowledge, wisdom, etc) to cover your own needs and growth, then you’re able to start a more STO focus. Resource-wise, I’m fairly low on the scale. I shouldn’t feel selfish about not giving, when I really don’t have a lot of excess resource to give.
There’s a perception that STO work is more valuable and more honorable – I’ve just realised I have this bias too. A lot of the self improvement literature puts a higher value on STO work, so the lesson’s been well drilled into me. This article has made me re-examine that belief.
My conclusion – STS work is not the same as being selfish.
Let’s define ’selfishness’ as meaning “having an abundance of resource, and not sharing it around”. If you’re working to fulfil your needs and growth, you’re not being selfish. You’re doing what you need to do, and you shouldn’t feel bad about it. If you’re a single parent flipping burgers for a living, don’t let anybody on a high horse call you selfish. You’re not.
I need money to buy a place to live and support my growth. So, I do my job and run some investments to make money. It consumes most of my time, so I don’t spend much time on STO. Should I feel guilty about it?
The real value of this article has been making me look at my own beliefs about selfishness and service. I had some semi-conscious guilt about my STS activities, but now I realise I shouldn’t be guilty about fulfilling my needs and growth.
The title of this article is provocative (hey, it got me reading!) but somewhat misleading I think – I must admit I read the article a little defensively, and it seems to have rubbed some other readers up the wrong way too. I don’t think it’s Steve’s intention to call us selfish. Rather, he wants us to examine our own balance of STO, STS, and selfish activities, and let us do the name calling ourselves.
You may realise you’re a selfish person. You may realise you have STS and STO in balance. In my case, I’ve realised I’m very STS, but that’s simply what’s right for me at this stage of life.
July 8th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
“I don’t presume to know which particular path is right for anyone else. But I do believe that the exercise of conscious choice and courage is superior to passive lethargy and fear, regardless of the individual. Ignoring the responsibility for this choice is beneath the dignity of human beings.”
Yep my post was just about the first sentence, that was what Gregg was reacting aswell. Otherwise I agree(and try to live) with you on the path of activity vs. passivity and fear, I wouldn’t read your blog If I wouldnt;)
July 10th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Get used to it.
It happens to everybody. 
Experiment and learn how to react.
For software authors, it’s software piracy. For articles authors, it’s this thing that happened to you.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:45 am
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