Human nature is selfish. It’s not a product of declining societal values or poor parenting; it just is the way it is. Selflessness doesn’t usually contribute to survival as a biological individual, and aside from the occasional warm fuzzy, it’s not a behavior that’s generally rewarded. So, people are selfish beings, the exception (though not 100%) being parents and their children.
At the same time, in contrast, people expect others to make sacrifices for them. In fact, they’re often seriously offended when someone doesn’t make a sacrifice for them that they think they are entitled to. Friendships end, relationships end, and animosity ensues. This is the part of the equation that confuses me.
If people are inherently selfish, why do they expect selflessness from others?
I think the answer lies somewhere within the fact that we are social beings, and in the nature of selfishness itself. Being selfish, we expect things from others. And we punish selfishness in others because we want to promote our own success. We want to receive, not to give, yet we punish others for not giving. Here arises selflessness: we subjugate our own wants and needs for those of others in order to avoid being socially punished. Or, to sound less harsh, we give up some things we want and do some things we don’t want to do in order to make other people happy with us.
A balance is struck between the social discomfort of being punished for selfishness and the personal discomfort that arises when we aren’t selfish. It strains our relationships with people when our wants and needs aren’t in line with their wants and needs, because we’re forced to make accomodations for them that make us uncomfortable.
It gets even more complicated when we consider how society views overly selfless and overly selfish people: badly. We may admire selflessness in people like Mother Teresa or Gandhi, but that’s because we see no evidence of personal harm as a result. And we admire the success of selfish people, but tend not to like them. Swing too far to one side of the spectrum, and society starts to frown on you.
This is something we don’t really think about every day, but it can have a huge impact on our happiness in relationships with other people. We tend to look at things only from our own points of view, but when we look at the actions of other people from our own point of view, we’re going to have a very inaccurate view of what’s really going on.
When someone’s upsetting you, don’t just look at the behavior that’s bothering you. Look at their position and motivation behind that behavior.
I’m not suggesting that you excuse every selfish impulse and action in the people around you; sometimes, it’s reasonable to expect others to suppress their selfishness on your behalf. After all, a relationship (friendship, partnership, whatever) is give and take, on both sides. What I am suggesting is to consider the big picture, and not just yourself, before judging for being selfish.
Beyond your own outlook and feelings about a situation, consider your own behavior towards the other person, the nature of your relationship, and the other person’s needs. Then, decide what degree of selfishness and sacrifice is reasonable on both your parts. You can’t just judge the other person’s behavior by these standards, though; you have to judge yourself the same way. Is the amount you give in a particular relationship equal to the amount you take? What about in general? Do you take more than you give, or vice versa? Do you expect too much from a casual acquaintance, or too little from those closest to you?
Some awareness and understanding will go a long way toward making you happier and more satisfied in your personal relationships, and some reflection will go a long way toward improving those relationships by allowing you to form more reasonable expectations of the people in your life.
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“selflessness: we subjugate our own wants and needs for those of others in order to avoid being socially punished.” That’s not selfless at all, that’s still selfish.. Selfless is giving, without expecting a reward..except perhaps the joy and betterment of other living beings.
I wasn’t trying to say that what I wrote was the definition of selflessness; you only caught half my thought.
I was saying that it seems strange that being a society of selfish beings, we expect people to be selfless. However selflessness serves a purpose in society, so people are expected to go against their nature. And what you quoted is what I see as a likely reason that people do it. Not to get a reward, but avoid punishment.
You say, “selfless is giving, without expecting a reward.. except perhaps the joy and betterment of other living beings.” Not quite; that’s generosity. And it’s easy to be generous; it doesn’t cost you a thing (other than whatever it is you’re giving away).
Selflessness is not just giving without expecting a reward; it’s giving to others at the expense of yourself. It’s going hungry in order to feed your neighbor and taking the blame (and getting fired) for a mistake your coworker made. And the reward of “the joy and betterment of other living beings” certainly isn’t very strong motivation to do that. Yet people do.
We are all selfish – not necessarily in a bad way. It’s just human nature. Our survival instinct dictates that we put ourselves first. Social success also means that we have to put ourselves first; if we didn’t, we’d never ask for a promotion over someone else or compete to win a prize. But being a society of selfish beings, how did we start expecting selflessness from people?
That’s where my original comment comes in, the second half of which you quoted. We’re social beings; if it were truly “every man for himself,” we couldn’t function as a group. So while selfishness is natural, selfLESSness is a result of having to live with other selfish people. Everybody has to suck it up a little bit, go against selfish human nature, and put the group before themselves.
Being selfless brings the reward of being an acceptable and contributing part of society.
And all of this is a roundabout way to get to my original point – people are selfish, but it doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them human. So while it’s reasonable to expect a certain amount of sacrifice from the people in your life, you shouldn’t ALWAYS expect it. When someone does something selfish that hurts your feelings, instead of getting pissed off, try to remember they’re human. And so are you. And guess what? You do selfish crap to people that pisses them off too.