With these kind of debates, it's important to look at the subject in question objectively. By literal definition, "selfish" is simply a quality of something that reflected or acted upon desire or stimuli of self. More or less, you donated to charity because you felt the need to do what you felt was right. Your opinion. You. Hence, the act was "self - ish" because it reflected some part of yourself.
By figurative definition and the socially mutual use of the word, "selfish" is a quality of a direct lack of consideration for anything that is not yourself. You politely refused to donate to charity because you wouldn't have enough money afterwards to sustain your own needs. Or, you ignored your friends and stayed home because you wanted time to yourself. Or, you refused to help your friend's sister move out of her house because you had an extreme dislike for her. Regardless of the magnitude of the selfishness, this was an act displayed by you putting favor of yourself over the favor of others.
Personally, I think there's a huge difference between the two uses of the word. "Selfishness" in and of itself is a fact, a product, and a necessity for every living organism. The kind of selfishness that is normally considered "selfish" in the social definition is that which allows the self to be placed on a higher pedestal when comparing the self to others. So, while helping my best friend recover from an injury may be selfish in the way that I take value in him/her as a person, it doesn't necessarily have to be "selfish" in the way that I seek personal pride or ego boost as "being a good person" for the sake of such. Society has just placed a singular mutual definition to the word, and applied a stigma to it.
Words are just weird that way.
imho everyone is selfish, even if they don't know about it and are 100% sure they are doing soemthing jjust for another person.
How do you define selfish? I mean is it doing something that benefits you and nobody else or is it also doing something that benefits other people and eventually benefits yourself? I feel that you can't survive on purely benefitting yourself and I do not think it is in our nature - yes you could argue that we do things for others because it feels good but then you could say we eat because it makes us feel good not because we need it to survive. This is wrong. I think the same logic applies to goodness to others, you could say that you do it because it feels good or that it benefits you but really then you are not seeing the whole picture - we are not selfish because helping others benefits the survival of us as individuals as well as our species.
nope
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price[/url]
tried to prove that they were, couldn't even after he gave up all his stuff and was living homeless in the gutter, also it should be "are people selfless"
there is a certain evolutionary pressure though to work togather as a group though, through sharing resources we are able to have larger groups of people survive togather instead of competing against each other. perhaps there is a genetic disposition to work togather, but thats been a question for a long time
[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;42839384]If it wasn't pleasing would you still do it? considering buying/helping costs you time and money usually.[/QUOTE]
I don't see why anyone would do anything for each other if they didn't get anything out of return. I mean the whole point of doing something for someone is for a good reaction like something to make you feel good. If people felt nothing or bad then no one would do anything for each other, plain and simple.
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