Selfish I

Selfish is the solid ground for altruism.

people know me knew it is not the first time i talk about this kind of "evil" stuff. by the way, let me just repeat what i said before.

Selfish -- in most daily life, it is referring a person that ONLY take care of one-self, and so, it is a bad thing. however, when people describe somebody is selfish, what is it mean? why selfish is bad? what is wrong for people only take care of themselves? are we taught to be independent? Do we want to be independent? why it is bad?

when people describe John (Hi! john, is you again.) is selfish. it means that John does not care those beside him. John only care about himself happiness, and benefit (no matter physical or metal). So, if John also care about others, then he is not selfish anymore.

Ok, everything makes sense at this moment. But hold on. we have just made a formula:

care others = non-selfish
only care itself = selfish (don't skip the ONLY)

so, the level of CARE indicated the selfish level. if so, then, what is care? how do we know someone is care about others? How do we know John is care about Mary? Can we observe the behavior of John toward Mary to know that? Can we feel that? (by the way, feel is another word i hate, what is feel? can we see, touch, smell the feeling? no, all you can do is feel to feeling. that's mean, feeling = god. a thing that we cannot prove it is exit, even in logical sense.)

Care, which is a sharing of emotion and situation, such that you can put yourself on others position to imagine what the other needs, and act correspondingly. (it is not a good definition, it is too long.)

with this definition, problems come. since everyone has different needs, even for same situation. i admit that there are dozen of behavior in common, like eating when hungry, sleep when tired, etc. but there are more things we act differently. like, someone will study-hard before exam, someone play-hard before so. the different come form a lot factors, like personality, physical situation, pass history, mind set, gene, what ever causes that made you. therefore. except for very basic needs, we just hard (not impossible) to care others. that's why we need to cooperate, we need to tell people know what i needs, we need to open our mind, we need to sharing time, to know each other better. That's why we need manner. Thus, non-selfish is a kind of luxury.

lets think about John is some kind of disable, that he is already spend so much time on his business. or, his life philosophy is somewhat different. so, John will act different for what Mary (or others) think it is suitable. if John act impolite, of course everyone can accuse him for rude. however, in some case, john does don't offense any rule but just make Mary inconvenient or just unhappy. Mary may say nothing but selfish.

Jesus said : "for give them, they do not know what they did." it is also suit for John. since all Mary need to do is talk her needs to john. In HK, it is very usual to hear "selfish". if someone always demand others not to be selfish, is he/she the most selfish? always demand others take care for him/her.

so, far, i haven't talk to the key points. "Selfish is the solid ground for altruism." however, the previous post already touch some key ideas.

• · Is the first step to know one-self
• · Then we know we need to take care other, since we live together
• · From ourselves, and extend to others
• · Care others without self-satisfaction is harmful to one-self, and is not true heart