Tammuz wrote:Venomous Prime wrote:Loki120 wrote:Venomous Prime wrote:I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
When you help people you help them because it makes you feel good about doing the right thing right?
So, in the end you are still doing something because it makes you feel good.
That's also known as being selfish.
I had a lot more to say but my mind is drawing a blank all of a sudden.
What do you have to say about this?
This reminds me of the episode of Friends where Phoenbe is trying to prove that it's possible to do a completely selfless act. In the end, she just donated money to PBS but reasoned that it was completely selfless because she actually hated PBS.
But technically she only did that to prove her point
selfishness is not defined as doing something that makes you feel good. if your SOLE reason for doing something is to make yourself feel good then you are being selfish, if you help others becuase you feel it is appropriate to help others( i.e. handing a lost wallet to the police, becuase you feel it is the right thing to do) despite it being easier for you not to help, then you are not being selfish even if it makes you feel good.
it's about motive, not reward.
Doing the 'right thing' to fufill their own sense of justice-- again, not selfless...
I find 'feeling good' and satisfaction can be two completely different things.
EDIT: By the way, what's anyone's thought on that FWN quote?
EDIT 2:
Kranix-76 wrote:The very word itself poses an interesting complication to that question: "selflessness," an implication of a quality being outside of the self. Yet, unless one holds that the idea of "self" is an illusion, it seems to be an infinitely improbable condition to act without any regard to the agent: the self.
This doesn't mean altruism isn't a worthwhile goal; rather, it seems to suggest that "selflessness," in a literal interpretation, is a futile pursuit. However, adopting a collectivist view--that all beings are equal and connected, either figuratively or spiritually--brings the focus to compassion. Suddenly, each action that the self takes holds a greater importance to the whole of sentience, and so the feeling of satisfaction in expressing compassion through action is a feeling that is distributed along all of the connections that exist, perhaps in ways that cannot be seen in our limited perspectives...
Then there's the more existential approach, that doesn't fault the presence of adherence to the self in "selfless" acts; the choice is of importance, and the satisfaction received by making a beneficial choice is perhaps the only measure that we have of having acted in a justifiable way. Thus, it is not whether the act is selfless or not that is important, but rather the choice that led to such an action, trading one means of distinction (in this case, establishing "selflessness" as a false categorization) for another...
In either case, the supposition would be that "selflessness" itself is not important, but rather the ethical weight of the actions themselves, which--admittedly--opens up a whole 'nother can of worms...
Just my thoughts. My thoughts on self are that their is no real 'self' as we define in our own language-- a single, indivisable, absolute biological being. Even 'biological' suggests that what was one being at one point will be another seconds later.
If 'self' is defined as what one looks for and performs for, than look no further than what the voices in our heads tell us to do. But that in itself leads to the expansion of self to other organisms, causes, and ideals, and thus the self expands to not just this fleshy being, but the whole flowing experience in itself, everything touched and everything touching, everything seeking and everything sought. It holds true that action defines who you are, and thus 'selfless' in the true sense is speaking of nothing. As Nietzsche says, we are all selfish, but can define many, many things as ourselves, a 'dividual.'