People pretend to act for the benefit of others while they are surreptitiously manipulating circumstances to suit themselves. It is this hypocrisy that I find distasteful in our society. True service is rare and notable.
It appears true to me that one must love onesself first, before one is capable of loving others. I think we lack self love in this culture because of our dualistic religious background that tells us it is bad to love ourselves. This inability to connect with our own internal power, spirit, soul, energy, whatever you want to call it, is IMHO the cause of the modern western malaise.
The only person that you can control is you. I control me. Our first responsibility is to take care of ourselves, to develop ourselves, to become our very best happy selves, for the benefit of ourselves and everyone around us. If we neglect ourselves in service to others, we quickly decline into nothingness. We must respect and care for ourselves at some minimal level just to survive, but to truly serve, we need to give ourselves what we need to thrive. This is not "selfish", it is simply BEING a self-actualizing self.
So no, I do not agree that selfishness is a major root of society's problems. I think hypocrisy is. The subjugation of the self causes us to deny ourselves first, and others later, when they do not succumb to the social pressure to be selfless like us. It creates a culture of blackmail and bullying, which is precisely what we have going on. If we put more energy into nurturing ourselves we'd naturally give more goodness into the world. Neither the Christian nor the Objectivist version is complete. The flow of energy/love is circular and infinite. By loving ourselves we open the door to true generosity, instead of forcing it because we think we "should" be "selfless".
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It appears true to me that one must love onesself first, before one is capable of loving others. I think we lack self love in this culture because of our dualistic religious background that tells us it is bad to love ourselves. This inability to connect with our own internal power, spirit, soul, energy, whatever you want to call it, is IMHO the cause of the modern western malaise.
The only person that you can control is you. I control me. Our first responsibility is to take care of ourselves, to develop ourselves, to become our very best happy selves, for the benefit of ourselves and everyone around us. If we neglect ourselves in service to others, we quickly decline into nothingness. We must respect and care for ourselves at some minimal level just to survive, but to truly serve, we need to give ourselves what we need to thrive. This is not "selfish", it is simply BEING a self-actualizing self.
So no, I do not agree that selfishness is a major root of society's problems. I think hypocrisy is. The subjugation of the self causes us to deny ourselves first, and others later, when they do not succumb to the social pressure to be selfless like us. It creates a culture of blackmail and bullying, which is precisely what we have going on. If we put more energy into nurturing ourselves we'd naturally give more goodness into the world. Neither the Christian nor the Objectivist version is complete. The flow of energy/love is circular and infinite. By loving ourselves we open the door to true generosity, instead of forcing it because we think we "should" be "selfless".
It's paradoxical.