What's wrong with being selfish?

Question

what wrong with trying to be self-sufficiency and not helping other people? I believe that you should that you should only try to take of yourself and only yourself. What wrong in believing that

you should try to improve ones self and trying ones self? And trying to be very independent of others and not needing them?

Answer 1

It is arrogance that others don't like. People avoid selfish people.  

Answer 2

It gets boring after a while and you have to find someone who is willing to listen to your laments but will charge you a lot of money with no guarantee that your boredom will go away before your bank balance.

Answer 3

You are asking a bunch of questions here.

There is nothing wrong with being self-sufficient. But this is not the same as selfish. There is also nothing wrong in trying to improve oneself and to be independent, but again, these things are not selfishness.

What selfishness is is more along the lines of what you said about only trying to take care of yourself and only yourself.

What is wrong with this should be obvious. Let's imagine I am out walking. I walk past a shallow pond when I hear a child screaming. I look at the pond and I see a small child sturggling to stay above the water. As I am watching, the child's head goes under, and I know I do not have long before she drowns. Unfortunately, I also happen to be wearing a very expensive pair of pants that are brand new. Since time is running out, I have no time to remove them if I am going to prevent the child from drowning. I can easily wade in and save the child, but doing so will utterly ruin the pants. Obviously, the right thing to do here is save the child. It would be completely wrong to not save the child, and so there are things that are right and wrong above and beyond taking care of yourself.

People who promote selfishness might then argue something along the lines that it would be in my best interests to save the child. I will be seen as a hero, will likely receive a reward, and so on. But all of this misses the point. It is just as possible that I don't care to be seen as a hero. That I want no reward. All I really want is to be left alone, and I could judge that my best interest would be served by ignoring the child. It is obvious here that our judgments about the wrongness of letting the child drown are not changed by my judgment. Even though I can accurately judge that saving the child was not in my interests, we would still say I am underan obligation to save her. If you want to believe as you said that a person should only take care of themselves, you would have to abandon this very strong intuition.

I can give far more common examples of why the selfishness you describe is wrong. You have access to a computer, so you are likely, by global standards, a wealthy person. Every day tens of thousands of children die from a lack of basic nutrition, clean water, and cheap vaccines. By advocating an ideal of selfishness, you attack the most obvious justification for helping these kids. Obviously the only difference between you and them is an accident of birth. By claiming that people should only look after themselves, however, you are justifying a very unjust distribution of world resources.

The selfishness you describe is actually a very horrid ideology akin, many moral philosophers have held, to racism. Whereas a racist uses skin color to deny moral importance to others, the egoist uses an accident of birth just as arbitrary as skin color to deny moral importance to others.

Many of the world's problems today are either caused by selfishness (like pollution and global warming) or else exacerbated by selfishness (childhood malnutrition and global poverty.)

Moral objections aside, there are raional objections to your view. You state, for example, that one should not harm others. But this clearly clashes with pure selfishness. The question as to why we should not harm others poses a big philosophical problem for egoists. Either 1) we should not harm others because it is in our own interests 2) we should not harm others for some reason other than our own interests or 3) it is acceptable to harm others.

1 has the problem in that it is not always true. There are many cases where harming others is in our interests and such harm is either allowed by law or there is so little risk of getting caught (and/or the punishment is so light) that it is rationally worth it.

2 is what most moral systems hold, but egoism faces a special problem of acknowledging it. If 2 is cited as the reason to not harm others, then you are advocating some form of altruism and this violates the idea that you should only try to take care of yourself.

3 of course, allows you to harm others and so violates your idea that you should not harm others.

There are other philosophical objections to selfishness, but this is already getting too long.

Selfishness is not a respectable philosophical doctrine. But it is quite popular among young Americans. There are a number of reasons this is likely the case:

-there is something good about independence and self-sufficiency, and it is easy to mistake these virtues for selfishness

-young Americans are born in to wealth and rarely ever travel outside the first world. This, combined with  culture which teaches that people get what they deserve, gives the illusion that the world is fair and you only need to worry about yourself.

-young people in general like to think they are independent and even invincible, separate from the weaker masses. Selfishness fits very well with that mindset.

I don't know if you are a young American, this last part is just an attempt at an explanation as to why people like Ayn Rand, whose ideas are pratically laughed out of philosophy, enjoy such a wide following among young Americans.

Answer 4

Nothing is 'wrong` with it.

Do be aware that, like it or not, you are a member of a community,

and the community does keep accounts of favors given and received.

Answer 5

Part of being selfish is treating others well. With that in mind their is nothing wrong with being selfish. Most people are igoring their own problems but into the problems of others & they need to stop it & mind their own business. If we would all take great care of ourselves the world would be a great place to live. It is people who get into others business instead of focusing on creating their own life through focused faith that cause the wars & other problems.

Answer 6

There is nothing wrong at all with your definition. It is called rational egoism, or perhaps your form is logical egoism http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm

But egoism does not have to be at the expense of NOT helping others. The moral question is: Do you have the right to be selfish without helping others; or MUST you help others?

Egoism says you do not have to help others, necessarily, but that there are times when you should because it is to your own benefit.

And it has nothing to do with a false sense of entittlement or harming  people.

Answer 7

We werent meant to live alone.  People will get lonely if they only help themselves and there is always strength in numbers and having people support you.  You can never be so self sufficient that you will never need others.

Answer 8

There is nothing wrong in being selfish. In fact we are all oriented that way. But there is no reason for you to take away from another to fulfill your own desires. Thats what is essential to know. This world has more than enough to meet the selfish desires of each and every one of us.  

Answer 9

Nothing wrong with being selfish as long as you don't mind being by yourself.  Think you can be self-sufficient?  Experience can be a good teacher go for it.  Just one rule.  Don't expect anything of anyone else no matter how trivial it might be.  e.g. "what time is it?"  

P.S.  Warning.  Whatever you do, don't get married, have children, or get old.

Answer 10

LOOK AT PARIS HILTON

Answer 11

Eventually it gets lonely.

Answer 12

It's great to be independent but that doesn't require being selfish. When you are selfish to the detriment of others then it isn't ok.

Answer 13

Because it's SELFISH and so are you, apparently.

Answer 14

It means you're uncaring

Answer 15

A lot.  For one thing, it's as much a form of discrimination as racism or sexism.  An egoist divides people into two groups: the egoist and everyone else, and gives preferential treatment to one of them.  It's not the same division as, say, giving a raise to someone who works harder or going on a date with someone who's friendlier.  Like with racism, the egoist's grouping of people has nothing to do with their merits.  In short, the egoist has no special trait that justifies better treatment than other people.

There are a lot of other problems with egoism... if you accept it as your philosophy you theoretically have to accept a lot of ugly things about ethics (or bite a lot of bullets, whatever).