Essays on Selfishness,Selfishness In Elie Wiesel's Night
WebSelfishness is defined as the act of being someone who lacks concern for others, only caring for personal gain. Often, people are selfish due to a lack of empathy, misinformation, or a lack of information. The ability of literature to have us experience different worlds WebSelfishness is defined as the act of being someone who lacks concern for others, only caring for personal gain. Often, people are selfish due to a lack of empathy, WebDec 6, · Ayn Rand's The Ethics of Emergencies speaks about the value of selfishness or self-interest. Although "selfishness" might seem negative at first, Rand's explanation WebVictor Frankenstein’s Selfishness as The Reason for His Downfall. words | 2 Pages. In literature, the protagonist commonly possesses a negative trait that ultimately WebFeb 6, · Selfishness and Greed IELTS Essay – Model Essay 2 Modernity has lost its moral compass with a society plagued by avarice and egoism. In modern society, ... read more
The artist only paints a picture that may well be very desirable, but the choice is up to the observer to blindly follow the artist in the need for a pleasing fantasy or not. Selfishness Literature Review. Selfishness Murder Novel. Humans seem to love putting themselves first above all else. We tend to always seek for Selfishness Environmental Issues Human Nature. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Selfishness Caring Humanity. Then I created what I think to be the perfect society, full of selfless acts. Allow me to explain this from the beginning. Fifty years Selfishness Society. To this end, Count Jean des Barrets coincidentally sees Monsieur le Comte trying to In literature, the protagonist commonly possesses a negative trait that ultimately becomes their biggest flaw.
Of these many possible flaws, selfishness can potentially be the worst of them. Posted January 15, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader. When someone says, "You are being selfish," there is no doubt that you have just been criticized. The message from your critic is clear: You are paying too much attention to your own wants, needs, and well-being, and not enough attention to others. Selfish behavior is often described as immoral. A good person thinks of others first. According to some experts, selfish behavior is not only immoral, but it is also bad for your own psychological well-being.
Renowned positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has written an essay claiming that research supports the Chinese proverb that ends, "If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else. Nonetheless, if you read enough self-help literature, you can't help but notice a different view about thinking of yourself first that seems to contradict the bad press about selfishness. The label self-care refers to prioritizing your own physical health and psychological well-being by engaging in good eating habits, exercise, sleep, relaxation, and enjoyable activities every day. Proponents of self-care like to point out that unless we take care of ourselves first, we will not be well enough to help and take care of others. As flight attendants tell passengers, "If you are traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your own mask first , and then assist the other person.
So, is selfishness thinking of yourself first good or bad? When I am asked questions like this, my first response is to ask "Good for what or whom? The simple and wrong answer to this question is that when I behave selfishly it is always good for me but bad for others. True, there are many cases where people benefit at least temporarily at the expense of others. The most obvious cases are criminal acts such as assault, theft, and fraud. Harry Browne refers to the use or threat of violence to take from others what they do not want to voluntarily give up a one-sided transaction. Steven Covey calls this a win-lose transaction where one person gains while another loses.
There are also noncriminal win-lose transactions, the most common one being emotional manipulation. If I pressure you to do something you do not want to do by making you feel guilty if you don't, or by yelling or withdrawing or being unpleasant in some other way, I got what I wanted at your expense. The reason that one-sided or win-lose transactions are not always good for me is that there are negative consequences for me that outweigh the temporary gains. Obviously, criminal acts can result in fines or incarceration. But even mere emotional manipulation can have disastrous long-term consequences. If you exploit people they become less likely to cooperate with you voluntarily. They may even seek revenge against you or ask powerful relatives or friends to seek revenge against you.
More importantly, someone who engages in emotional manipulation to get what he or she wants develops a reputation as someone not worth dealing with, someone to shun and avoid. Reputation is no trivial thing, because happiness is very unlikely to be achieved alone, in isolation from the rest of society. To be happy, we need a network of people in our lives who like, love, and respect us, and to build such a network, we need to play fair. I therefore call engaging in one-sided transactions "bad selfishness" because ultimately this behavior is bad for both the selfish person and the people victimized and exploited by the selfish person.
Then there is what I like to call "neutral selfishness. If I take five minutes to brush my teeth to avoid the ill effects of tooth and gum disease, this is a form of neutral selfishness. In looking after my dental hygiene, I am neither taking away from someone's well-being nor adding to it. The same would be true if I take 10 minutes every morning to meditate. I know there are people who might nitpick about whether there are really any neutral selfish behaviors. Some will say that I could have used the five minutes I spent brushing my teeth or 10 minutes I spent meditating to assist people at a homeless shelter. There are always people in need, so any behavior designed for my own benefit takes time away from what I could be doing to benefit others. But, as the self-care movement has pointed out, how much help can I be to others if I don't look after my own physical and psychological health first?
Taking care of myself puts me in a better position to do things that benefit others. Therefore, I continue to believe that some selfish behaviors are nearly neutral; they do not immediately help or harm others. They may represent time taken away from directly helping others, but they also put me in better condition to help others. In addition to bad selfishness and neutral selfishness, there is also what I call "good selfishness," which benefits both ourselves and other people. Harry Browne refers to good selfishness as a two-sided transaction , an exchange where two people willingly part with something in order to gain something they value.
Because both people are winning something they want, Covey calls this a win-win transaction. The clearest example of a two-sided transaction is a simple swap. I Love You single for your copy of The Beatles' first stereo pressing of Please Please Me because each of us values the other's record more than the one we own, we both feel like we are gaining in the swap. Of course, in modern economies we do not directly swap goods and services for all of our exchanges; money serves as an intermediary for two-sided transactions. But two-sided transactions involve far more than economic exchanges of goods and services. Any time we do something with someone else because we enjoy the activity more than doing it alone, we have a two-sided transaction.
If you go to a movie with a friend, you "exchange" knowing glances, laughter , and conversation, all of which enhance the experience for both of you. The same can be said for attending concerts, watching sporting events, and sitting on the beach. Some activities, such as putting on a theatrical production, playing basketball, engaging in sexual intercourse, and taking a course in positive psychology, actually require the participation of more than one person.
Posted January 15, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader. When someone says, "You are being selfish," there is no doubt that you have just been criticized. The message from your critic is clear: You are paying too much attention to your own wants, needs, and well-being, and not enough attention to others. Selfish behavior is often described as immoral. A good person thinks of others first. According to some experts, selfish behavior is not only immoral, but it is also bad for your own psychological well-being. Renowned positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has written an essay claiming that research supports the Chinese proverb that ends, "If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else. Nonetheless, if you read enough self-help literature, you can't help but notice a different view about thinking of yourself first that seems to contradict the bad press about selfishness.
The label self-care refers to prioritizing your own physical health and psychological well-being by engaging in good eating habits, exercise, sleep, relaxation, and enjoyable activities every day. Proponents of self-care like to point out that unless we take care of ourselves first, we will not be well enough to help and take care of others. As flight attendants tell passengers, "If you are traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your own mask first , and then assist the other person. So, is selfishness thinking of yourself first good or bad?
When I am asked questions like this, my first response is to ask "Good for what or whom? The simple and wrong answer to this question is that when I behave selfishly it is always good for me but bad for others. True, there are many cases where people benefit at least temporarily at the expense of others. The most obvious cases are criminal acts such as assault, theft, and fraud. Harry Browne refers to the use or threat of violence to take from others what they do not want to voluntarily give up a one-sided transaction. Steven Covey calls this a win-lose transaction where one person gains while another loses. There are also noncriminal win-lose transactions, the most common one being emotional manipulation. If I pressure you to do something you do not want to do by making you feel guilty if you don't, or by yelling or withdrawing or being unpleasant in some other way, I got what I wanted at your expense.
The reason that one-sided or win-lose transactions are not always good for me is that there are negative consequences for me that outweigh the temporary gains. Obviously, criminal acts can result in fines or incarceration. But even mere emotional manipulation can have disastrous long-term consequences. If you exploit people they become less likely to cooperate with you voluntarily. They may even seek revenge against you or ask powerful relatives or friends to seek revenge against you. More importantly, someone who engages in emotional manipulation to get what he or she wants develops a reputation as someone not worth dealing with, someone to shun and avoid. Reputation is no trivial thing, because happiness is very unlikely to be achieved alone, in isolation from the rest of society.
To be happy, we need a network of people in our lives who like, love, and respect us, and to build such a network, we need to play fair. I therefore call engaging in one-sided transactions "bad selfishness" because ultimately this behavior is bad for both the selfish person and the people victimized and exploited by the selfish person. Then there is what I like to call "neutral selfishness. If I take five minutes to brush my teeth to avoid the ill effects of tooth and gum disease, this is a form of neutral selfishness.
In looking after my dental hygiene, I am neither taking away from someone's well-being nor adding to it. The same would be true if I take 10 minutes every morning to meditate. I know there are people who might nitpick about whether there are really any neutral selfish behaviors. Some will say that I could have used the five minutes I spent brushing my teeth or 10 minutes I spent meditating to assist people at a homeless shelter. There are always people in need, so any behavior designed for my own benefit takes time away from what I could be doing to benefit others. But, as the self-care movement has pointed out, how much help can I be to others if I don't look after my own physical and psychological health first?
Taking care of myself puts me in a better position to do things that benefit others. Therefore, I continue to believe that some selfish behaviors are nearly neutral; they do not immediately help or harm others. They may represent time taken away from directly helping others, but they also put me in better condition to help others. In addition to bad selfishness and neutral selfishness, there is also what I call "good selfishness," which benefits both ourselves and other people. Harry Browne refers to good selfishness as a two-sided transaction , an exchange where two people willingly part with something in order to gain something they value.
Because both people are winning something they want, Covey calls this a win-win transaction. The clearest example of a two-sided transaction is a simple swap. I Love You single for your copy of The Beatles' first stereo pressing of Please Please Me because each of us values the other's record more than the one we own, we both feel like we are gaining in the swap. Of course, in modern economies we do not directly swap goods and services for all of our exchanges; money serves as an intermediary for two-sided transactions. But two-sided transactions involve far more than economic exchanges of goods and services. Any time we do something with someone else because we enjoy the activity more than doing it alone, we have a two-sided transaction.
If you go to a movie with a friend, you "exchange" knowing glances, laughter , and conversation, all of which enhance the experience for both of you. The same can be said for attending concerts, watching sporting events, and sitting on the beach. Some activities, such as putting on a theatrical production, playing basketball, engaging in sexual intercourse, and taking a course in positive psychology, actually require the participation of more than one person. As long as all partners in these activities are willing participants who are getting something of value that is worth what they are investing in the activity, these are all examples of two-sided transactions.
All are forms of good selfishness—interactions that are good for both people. A moment's reflection on the three kinds of selfishness tells us that if you want to maximize your happiness and who doesn't? As obvious as this might seem, why do so we so often hear that you have only two choices: to be selfish which is bad or to be selfless and serve others first which is good? I have both an optimistic and not-so-optimistic answer to that question. The optimistic answer is that critics of selfishness are talking only about bad selfishness, and when they urge us to "do for others" they really mean to do for others in ways that are beneficial and rewarding to us which would make the doing a two-sided transaction.
So, I think these people have good intentions, but they confuse the issue by pitting selfishness against selflessness. But I've also seen a darker answer that explicitly condemns self-interest in favor of advancing the interests of other people. While researching my blog post on seva selfless service; part I , part II , I found that while some ashrams make every attempt to find meaningful work that fits a new member's skills and interests, other ashrams intentionally assign unpleasant, mind-numbing, back-breaking drudgery. A rationale for the latter is that practicing unpleasant tasks will liberate a person from ego-attachments.
Perhaps this is true, but what if it is not? What if this is just a way to trick others into doing difficult work that you would otherwise have to do yourself? In my first post on seva, I described other dark examples where talk of the virtues of sacrifice and service is a trick to exploit and manipulate others: "I'm thinking of preachers who fleece their flocks , becoming ultra-rich by preaching the virtue of charitable giving. I'm thinking of war-lords who gain power by exaggerating external threats and convincing patriotic young people to sacrifice their lives in unnecessary wars.
And I am thinking of any kind of 'mandatory service' program, because, in the words of James Joyner , 'the idea of mandatory voluntarism is as creepy is it is oxymoronic'. Those who would manipulate us into doing their dirty work give us a false choice between bad selfishness gaining at the expense of others and selfless sacrifice doing good for others at a cost to you. Given only those choices, it's no wonder that our moral sensibilities vote for the latter. A slightly different version of this false choice pops up when people say that good relationships are based on compromises, where my partner and I take turns sacrificing for each other.
Fortunately, there is a better, third choice: Why not practice good selfishness, which benefits both ourselves and others? John A. Johnson, Ph. Johnson Ph. Cui Bono. Good, Neutral, and Bad Selfishness Despite the negative connotation of "selfish," selfishness is not always bad. Posted January 15, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader Share. About the Author. Read Next. Can Asking Specific Questions Deepen Any Relationship? The Development of Responsiveness to Outer Expectations. Back Psychology Today. Back Find a Therapist. Get Help Find a Therapist Find a Treatment Center Find a Psychiatrist Find a Support Group Find Teletherapy Members Login Sign Up United States Austin, TX Brooklyn, NY Chicago, IL Denver, CO Houston, TX Los Angeles, CA New York, NY Portland, OR San Diego, CA San Francisco, CA Seattle, WA Washington, DC.
Back Get Help. Mental Health. Personal Growth. Family Life. View Help Index. Do I Need Help? Talk to Someone. Back Magazine. January Knowing what you value will help you build the most meaningful life possible. Back Today. News 4 Ways to Avoid Making Poor Life Choices. Are There Better Alternatives to Spaying and Neutering Dogs? The Idea of the Mobile Personality Revisited. Essential Reads. Testing the Visual Mandela Effect.
Selfishness Essay,Selfishness Essay
WebVictor Frankenstein’s Selfishness as The Reason for His Downfall. words | 2 Pages. In literature, the protagonist commonly possesses a negative trait that ultimately WebDec 6, · Ayn Rand's The Ethics of Emergencies speaks about the value of selfishness or self-interest. Although "selfishness" might seem negative at first, Rand's explanation WebSelfishness is a wisdom step, for one to easily accomplish his long lasting happiness. This happiness always bonds together with rational; rational performance tends one to WebJan 15, · According to some experts, selfish behavior is not only immoral, but it is also bad for your own psychological well-being. Renowned positive psychologist Sonja WebMay 14, · It already came to a point where selfishness has become one of the things we acquire because this is us and there’s really nothing we can do about it. We tend to WebFeb 6, · Selfishness and Greed IELTS Essay – Model Essay 2 Modernity has lost its moral compass with a society plagued by avarice and egoism. In modern society, ... read more
We cannot return from the age of the jet plane to the age of the bullock cart but we can certainly return to these traditional values to try to create a modern world that has both, material wealth and prosperity and also respect for the family and the local community. Schmalleger, F. My Genocide class senior year introduced me to the idea that everything a person does is selfish. Collective action as a social exchange. Surprisingly, people in the U.
A young woman named Kitty Genovese was murdered outside of her apartment, selfishness essay. On the other side, parents have selfishness essay greedy too. If Mme. So, I think these people have good intentions, but they confuse the issue by pitting selfishness against selflessness, selfishness essay. In your mail, there's something from UNICEF. Such individuals would more than likely obtain this gain by committing illicit activities, such as robbing a bank, but use their winnings for fairly self-absorbed means to further their consumption of whatever suits their fancy.
No comments:
Post a Comment