People are constantly telling me that I am selfish and that I need to put others ahead of me. My first question to these people is, “Why?”
The usual answer is that it is common courtesy or that it is simply moral to put others ahead of one’s self and these are the generally accepted answers that society permits.
But it seems as if nobody ever questions the validity of these statements.
Nearly every person in existence has been indoctrinated with the belief that we should put others first.
Nearly everybody seems to fully accept the statement that we should sacrifice ourselves to other people.
But almost no one realizes what these statements mean and what the acceptance of these axioms does to one’s self.
All we really know is that people like Stalin and Hitler were cold and lifeless people who cared about no one, and that they were people who were all consumed with themselves. This is what we call selfishness.
Then we observe the consequences of these people’s actions: both of these figures killed millions of people in order to get what they wanted. They stopped at nothing and let no rational man stand in their way.
This is generally the accepted definition of being selfish, and by this definition being selfish is something irrational and evil as society says it is, but it is not.
One mistake has been made. The word selfish is defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1995, as someone concerned with one’s own interests and having little concern for others.
What people do not take into account is that Hitler and Stalin were not selfish at all. Both of their goals were to have power, to rule over men, and to be seen as great. But this is not selfishness at all. Their primary concern was others: the power over others, the rule of others, and the opinion of others.
This is the true antithesis of being selfish. And yet this is how selfishness is defined.
This is the standard by which people are judged every day, one that is incorrect and, basically, a lie.
True, rational selfishness is acting for one’s own interest in complete disregard for other people. Acting in one’s own interest does not include actions that cause others harm, as intentionally harming other people is never good for one’s self interest. When people do harm others, they are not being selfish, they are being cruel as well as doing damage to themselves. This is selfishness as defined by barbarians, not rational, thinking people.
Rational self-interest is thinking, working, and producing, not destroying, not hurting, not stifling one’s thoughts, not aborting one’s vision in order to see the world as the barbarians do.
But this is what has replaced the virtue of selfishness. This is what prevails in this new Millennium.
People have been indoctrinated to believe that selfishness, as defined by Hitler and the like, is evil, and that the only alternative is to be selfless (what people don’t realize is that this word literally means without self).
People now believe that the only choice in life is to either rule others, hurt others, and hate all, or to be ruled by everyone, take the pain of every one on his or her back, and love everyone from the lowest thief to the noblest thinker.
What people don’t realize is that both of these choices leave you with no choice. They both take away your right to choose. They both say that you must rule or be ruled, you must serve or be served, you must hate all or love all.
But there are alternatives. Alternatives in which objectivity, not servility are prime, and where one need only be concerned with the welfare of those who he or she chooses to be concerned with, not a general welfare and not the masses who negate their ability to think and act, therefore to live, for the sake of laziness.
There are other options in which one has to be neither the sacrificial lamb nor its slayer, where one has to be neither the slave nor the slave driver.
But that choice is yours. It isn’t a choice your friends or your parents or teachers can make for you. It is an individual choice, a choice to think and to feel rationally, a choice to love and a choice to live, not their negation.
Only you can decide to ask and to answer this question. If you don’t though, don’t worry, the decision has already been made for you
