I'm not trying to villify selfishness, only address the criticism that usually follows this kind of statement. People look at any philosophy that says love yourself first and say it's just embelished selfishness, self-worship, narcisissm. They imagine it might lead to a Mad Max style dystopia of perpetual war.
There's a time for destroying and rebuilding things, but the kind of hostility that people usually associate with selfishness like corporations prioritizing short-term profits over the well-being of their workers is more a symptom of lack of long-term planning. What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
If I'm the richest person in the world and everyone else is fighting for survival, I still have to live in that world and suffer the consequences. If I contribute to my environment, I'm improving my own situation. There's no need to choose one or the other.
> If I contribute to my environment, I'm improving my own situation.
Yes, but a truly selfish person could improve their personal situation much more effectively by pillaging the commons, since any contribution you make to the environment is shared, but any money you can put in your pocket is for you alone.
The fact that you even think about the environment shows that you either don't have a easy way to profit from environmental degradation, or you're not a rational purely selfish utilitarian.
> What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
It's possible, but that just shows that you're not a truly selfish person since doing that takes more work. Truly selfish people think of ways to benefit themselves first, without regard for its impact on others.
> more a symptom of lack of long-term planning
If that were really the case, then over a long period of time you'd expect corporations that were bad at long term planning to get evolutionarily selected out. The fact that this doesn't happen means that either you're wrong, or there are very strong evolutionary forces that support short-term thinking.
Corporations with poor long term planning get weeded out and bought out all the time, even when they're among the most powerful in the world. It takes a global system of neoliberal economics intertwined with politics just to support the ones that do survive. Of course, we have a very limited frame of reference, as there are very few corporations even a few hundred years old, which in the very short span of human history isn't even a very long time.
I never claimed to be anything in particular. But I did state that there's an argument against the idea of needing to serve a higher cause to validate one's existence, that it seems very much like a motivational technique to coerce people into giving up their autonomy and intrinsic self-worth for the sake of someone else's interest. For a perfect example of this, look at Soviet propaganda, always emphasizing sacrifice for the greater global workers' struggle. Everyone was expected to be a little miserable as they worked together for the greater good. They didn't invent this idea, and it's been used many times throughout history.
I do think that with a wider perspective on the universe, the distinct line between self and other blurs. The meaning of selfishness changes when a person sees the people and things around them as an essential part of themselves. It's not just a matter of not being able to profit from pillaging the commons but rather a sense of personal loss when the commons are pillaged.
For example, I'm looking forward to all the scientific and medical advances that will happen in my lifetime. I know that increasing poverty, incequality, and war can be barriers to that advancement because the people who might push them forward will be denied access or killed. I might be motivated to make money selling weapons to regions suffering from war for a short-term profit, but I might be denying myself much more in the future. Maybe the person who was going to make the breakthrough to reverse aging was killed by one of my weapons. As one animal that can't survive outside of a nourishing ecosystem and a supportive community, I have strong disincentives for sabotaging my planet and my community, and I can't even know which acts of destruction might deny myself benefits later. I can only know that the only way to guarantee the best possible future is to do as little harm as possible.
> > What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
I think I was just trying to make a very narrow point, which is that our society does not actually perfectly align self interest with group interest, and so truly selfish agents would actually wreak havok.
You're saying it's possible to serve both at the same time, but purely selfish agents wouldn't care about that, which is why I don't think it's a good idea to encourage pure selfishness.
> The meaning of selfishness changes when a person sees the people and things around them as an essential part of themselves.
Yes, but that's generally not what people would hear if you tell them 'love yourself first'. Randian Objectivists seem like a bunch of selfish assholes to me :)
> For a perfect example of this, look at Soviet propaganda, always emphasizing sacrifice for the greater global workers' struggle.
It's human nature to look towards selfish interests first. It's completely natural that states, which need to mobilize people to work together, would urge otherwise.
The genius of modern capitalism is that it claims we can have our cake and eat it too -- look towards your own interests, and you will also benefit society. What people have forgotten is that is only true within a framework where capitalism is tightly constrained and controlled.
There's a time for destroying and rebuilding things, but the kind of hostility that people usually associate with selfishness like corporations prioritizing short-term profits over the well-being of their workers is more a symptom of lack of long-term planning. What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
If I'm the richest person in the world and everyone else is fighting for survival, I still have to live in that world and suffer the consequences. If I contribute to my environment, I'm improving my own situation. There's no need to choose one or the other.