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Originally Posted by SmartAlx  No. Now what are you going to do? Does me saying 'no' prove that I am wrong? No it doesn't. Besides I don't need to do what you ask. It's obvious. It's common sense. |
Then science does not back you up. Science is not common sense. It is not obvious. It is empirical. It has data that conclusively demonstrates its claims. If it does not, then it is not science.
You don't need to do what I ask. You are wrong.
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Originally Posted by SmartAlx Why did you take so long? Is it that it took you 6 years to BELIEVE it because the opposite is pretty obvious. You even admit it when you say "Most people seem to share it with you, in some variation or another." If it took you so long to believe what you do now, then you did once believe the same as the rest of us and you should then be able to understand what I am saying. |
It didn't take me six years to believe it. It took me six years to figure out why I couldn't believe the opposite. I didn't understand why everyone had the ridiculous idea that selflessness is saintly, yet that no one was ever truly selfless. The best that was ever come up with was an insipid claim that it's a mutation that helps the survival of the species... except that this has nothing to do with genetic mutation at all.
People like you like to wave your arms and say, "Be selfless! It's the right thing to do!" But you cannot explain why. The motivation you yourself put forward: that you could then count on others to help you in your time of need: is as selfish as it gets. It's a parent who raises a child not out of love, but out of the hope there will be someone to take care of them when they're old and frail.
When I act, I do not act expecting people do good things in return. I know they will. I know they are, without prompting, because they are also me. When I fall on hard times, then I have a challenge before me. In surmounting it, with what help I provide myself, in the form of others or not, I discover knowledge useful to everyone. I share that, the same way an immune system shares information about the illnesses it has bested. (And there is no failure to surmount a challenge; there is only that I have not gotten there yet.)
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Originally Posted by SmartAlx Your concern should be for the welfare of other people instead of yourself. |
My concern is
always for other people
and myself. I don't draw lines in the sand excluding myself from everyone else. When I do something, it is either good, in which case everyone benefits, or it is not, in which case everyone does not.
I cannot count on myself. I am only one self. What a useless instrument I am! But when I see that I am everyone, I realize I
can rely on myself. I can count on myself to fail, but I can also count on myself to succeed so overwhelmingly in the face of every odd. I know that I've succeeded, and I have faith I will again, because I am not just little old me. I am an extension of humanity. In caring for the world, I care for myself.
You've ended up so busy drawing a line between where you are and where everyone else is that of
course selfishness seems evil to you. Selfishness is that which happens only inside that little circle you've defined as your self. Why do you bother with this circle? Why is it so important for you to say, "This is me," and then to look at others and say, "These are not me"? Is this, itself, not a selfish thing to do?