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Originally Posted by CoolBee  I'm interested that you perceive being unselfish as being a martyr? |
Yes, being unselfish means acting without accordance to your interests--acting in self-sacrifice. If you make an unselfish action, that action is necessarily not in your best interests, and actively hurts your ability to flourish in this life. The Oxford English Dictionary defines selfishness as a primary concern with one's own interests. Therefore, to act in an unselfish manner you would have to put your own interests as secondary and behave in a self-sacrificial manner. An example of this, may be, giving $10 to a homeless man on the street whom you don't know, don't value, and is likely addicted to drugs, when you were going to spend that money on making your fiance a romantic home-cooked meal. In that case, you sacrificed a greater value for a disvalue, but sacrificing a greater value for a lesser value is also sacrifice.