Selfishness and Society

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by wil

Back to being selfish and its benefits. I wish my kids to focus on being selfish for the next ten or more years, getting the education or skills required so they can be constructive, productive members of society.

Your insistance that Bill Gates is selfish is amusing but now carrying it over to your children is even more pressing. I submit the selfish route leads a person to enjoying parties and luxuries rather than working and obtaining an education. The selfish route is anything BUT working for others for mutual benefit. You are trying to label self improvement as being selfish, while in a household the selfish is more akin to the opposite: being lazy. Who really benefits from working? In any household, who is the more selfish: the one who works out to keep in shape and does chores for the home improvement, or the one who becomes a couch potato in front of the TV? The one who goes to school and studies to be more productive, or the one who becomes a couch potato in front of the PC? The one who employs his neighbor when he has the money, or the one who counts and stuffs his cash under the mattress? The motive you have assumed that drives Bill Gates or anyone to WORK is for greed... for the control over their neighbor. Do we really know that Bill Gates has fantasy dreams of having everyone working for him? What good is money if it is not used to employ a neighbor?

If there is greed or selfishness in Bill Gates I submit that it is more hidden: like knowingly putting out a product that has bugs in it for the sake of making cash. Or, knowingly taking out competition by subversive means for the sake of making more cash.

As I have helped a few individuals from the street who have suffered from their own addictions, selfishness is a visible trait that helped place them there in the first place. Gambling, drugs... there was in part a visible core value of selfishness and self gratification.

In summary I submit: selfishness is in the art of trying to get cash without working, and in getting others to work without getting paid. Would you truly advise your children to equally be selfish?

[Tao_Equus]

I have to laugh, slightly hysterically, Wil, at your assertion that the US is the greatest philanthropic nation to have existed. Quite the contrary, it is the greatest rapist and pillager in the history of the nation state. The whole economy and lifestyle of the US has been dependent for the last century on corruption and the theft of other nations resources. America is far from being a NET giver of aid. For most of the last 50 years for every dollar that has left the US 8 dollars has been received. As much as 80% of so called US aid is never received as it is either never actually given after it is 'pledged' or it is spent on paying high paid US quangos consultancy and administrative fees. Like the war on Iraq, US aid is nothing more than another way to pilfer your taxes into the nepotist coffers of those you so freely elect.

In addition, any western European or Canada, Australia or New Zealand do far far more for its average citizen than the US where it matters, in healthcare, social security and protection of rights.

In the US you have 'the world series' for football...or is it baseball...which, so typical of the self aggrandisement for which the US is famous, has nothing to do with the rest of the world. Likewise you have the 'World Bank' supposedly independent but in actual fact a US government body charged with extorting as much from the developing world as it possible can and to implement financial packages that thwart any effort of true development. between that the similarly US controlled IMF and through use of treaties like GATT the US has had a stranglehold on global development to fuel its own profligate consumption. How very bloody noble of you!! But now the greedy *******s you call your heroes have their eyes on what till now they have let you squirrel away. They see that what you have accumulated is more valuable than what they can still extract from the worlds poorest. All this bollox of a credit crisis, all our taxes going into 'the system' to create 'fluidity'. Banks going bust, getting bailed. The banks we have our savings in, our mortgages and loans with all struggling. Yet the private banks of the mega rich capitalists are booming. Record deposits over the past few months that read more like a continental GDP stat than private deposits. And this liquidity of your tax dollars are not thrown in to give you a help but go straight to the already mega rich.

Globally the rise of China, Russia and India over the past decade have changed the international economy. China could bankrupt the US tomorrow if it wanted. The American citizens who have for years feasted on the little bit of cream that sloshes over the side of the bowl belonging to their corporate Gods are facing a new future. No more cream. Your mega rich have sealed the carton and put it in the fridge, well out of your reach. Wil....my buddy, America will soon see what it is like to be truly shafted up the.... And I never saw a people less prepared for reality than middle class Americans.

Tao

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I have to laugh, slightly hysterically, Wil, at your assertion that the US is the greatest philanthropic nation to have existed.

Hey, I thought he was taking the wet; but no, apparently not.

s.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Yes.

A question that should be posed is: Why do the institutions of power, that is the church, the government, the education system, want me to be buy into this selflessness stuff? What do they gain from having us all think that we should never insist on our own interest first?

Chris

So they can void the notion of individual rights and conscience, and that we must surrender our power as individuals to them. (All under the fear of 'mob mentality,' of course.)

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

Did I say anything that was NOT a fact?

Facts or not, the distortions of the facts are plain. Sure, we use the sun's energy daily, but we do not use it up. It gives of itself freely and will continue to do so until, as you say, it has died. Fossil fuels contain stored energy--pulled, yes, from the sun, millions and millions of years ago. When they are gone--more specifically, when oil reaches the point that it takes more energy to extract than it actually provides--we will be back to using energy that is directly from the sun. We won't be able to wait around the millions and millions of years that it takes for oil to replenish itself. We can talk about coal if you like, but 1) although it may be more abundant at this point (I dunno), it is also a finite fossil fuel, and 2) it's even dirtier than oil when burned, and 3) I don't think it will run cars or have the versatility that oil does. We can talk about solar panels and Tesla's machines and hydrogen, but the infrastructure for all of that stuff will consume energy to make--much more energy than is available from a daily dose of abundant sunshine. If we (or more correctly, the powers that be) are going to make that infrastructure, they'd best stop making documentaries about it and start mass-producing it (rather than weapons etc.) I won't talk about nuclear power as a viable option, because it is much, much more toxic than burning oil.

Anyway, I am recognizing that I have done quite a job derailing this thread from the topic of selfishness to the topic of fossil-fuels. There is a connection there, but my focus has become more on the ecological impact of fossil fuels. I may need to create a new thread for that so that we can focus on debating the merits and demerits of selfishness.

Originally Posted by cyberpi

A number of moralistic arguments presented on this thread have holes and misguided distortions in them.

Well, then present the distortions in a clear way. Your post was absurd and comic, but not much of a valid criticism.

Originally Posted by cyberpi

Whether it is the sun or the sun stored in a fossil fuel... energy is energy. The fact that you oppose is this: To do anything good... to be good... requires using energy. The other fact that you might oppose is this: everything including the earth and the sun has a shelf life.

Now you are just ascribing beliefs to me that I haven't expressed, and telling me that I oppose using energy, which is definitely not true. If you were correct about that, I would probably be very stupid and very inactive.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

Originally Posted by wil

And I did not say I expect my car or anything else to pay for itself.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wil
Oops caveat, it has to pay for itself. ie it has to work.

Now Pathless, you know that is not fair, taking my words out of context. The first quote is in response to Bishadi indicating that I thought a car was supposed to pay for itself, where I really said that his wonderful H-car or cng car needed to have lower annual operating costs while providing usefulness (ie carrying load, safetly, travel distance, etc) We both agreed that tools and such paid for themselves hence the second quote.was in regards to what I consider a tool ie the solar cell must create hydrogen at a rate which makes the cost of the solar cell less over the long haul then creating hydrogen by conventional methods. Unfortunately currently unless I moved to the desert southwest and focused the light that isn't the case. Here around DC we have blue skies in the mornings often, but as we watch the jet trails widen across the sky we are likely to have no sun in the afternoons.

Sorry, wil. It seemed fair. After all, you did say "I did not say I expect my car or anything else to pay for itself," which clearly contradicted what you had said earlier.

You're right, though. I picked on you. It was cheap. It was a potshot. I took it anyway. You left yourself wide open, dude.



Plus I thought it was important to call you out on such a blatant contradiction in your own claims. If you meant something different, that's okay; however, you didn't communicate that very well, I don't think.

[wil]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I have to laugh, slightly hysterically, Wil, at your assertion that the US is the greatest philanthropic nation to have existed.

Please quote me Tao, if I said that it was not my intention.

I've repeatedly said here that I am not holding the US as the be all end all for anything, but asking over and over "What is?" Now I did say if you look at the charts readily available US is the highest giver in dollars, way down the graph when it comes to percentage of GDP. I never claimed greatest philanthropic, if I did my bad, show me. And is there quid pro quo, I'll bet there is.

Arrogance, we are top of the chain as you so aptly state. And I agree. Hence my request throughout this discussion on what do we create, what is the best system to start growing for worldwide government and trillions and trillions of people?? We can state how we've screwed things up, if it benefits the fix, but just for jollies, what is the use?

[wil]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Sorry, wil. It seemed fair. ... You left yourself wide open, dude. ... you didn't communicate that very well, I don't think.

I love you man! Communication of the nature of the thought in my brain to words leaves much to be desired. I'm often missinterpretted. And as communication is the responsiblity of the communicator, tis my fault. When I put my foot in my mouth, kicking me in the knee is appropriate.

Originally Posted by seattlegal

So they can void the notion of individual rights and conscience, and that we must surrender our power as individuals to them. (All under the fear of 'mob mentality,' of course.)

Namaste SL, can you expound on how selfishness relinquishes power?

[wil]

lookee what I found

The Way We Live Now
Good Instincts

By JIM HOLT

Published: March 9, 2008
Charity, do-gooding, philanthropy it’s all just selfishness masquerading as virtue. So says the cynic. ...and also the not currently cynical on this subject wil... in a study published last year in Science. Nineteen students were given $100 each and told that they could anonymously donate a portion of this money to charity. The students who, on average, donated the most showed heightened activity in the pleasure centers of their brain as they gave up the money. Their generosity was accompanied by a neural “warm glow.”

But is altruism really best understood as an urge wired into us by selfish genes?

It may be enlightening here to consider an analogy between altruism and prudence. Caring about others is a bit like caring about one’s future self. You altruistically give money to relieve the misery of others; you prudently put aside money now so that you will not be miserable in old age. What is the source of this concern each of us has for our future selves? From the evolutionary point of view, the answer is simple: our forerunners who lacked such a prudential instinct died out.

But that is not the end of the story. Consider Mr. Improvident, who is just like us except that he is not wired to care about his future. (There’s one in every family.) Mr. Improvident gets no neural kick from saving for tomorrow. Yet we can see that he has an objective reason to do so. He is, after all, a person extended in time, not a series of disconnected selves.

We ought to be able to see a similarly objective reason for altruism, one rooted, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel observed, in “the conception of oneself as merely a person among others equally real.” My reason for taking steps to relieve the suffering of others is, in this way of thinking, as valid as my reason for taking steps to avert my own future suffering. Both reasons arise from our understanding of what sort of beings we are, not from the vagaries of natural selection.

But can an objective reason, by itself, motivate selfless generosity? In the Oregon brain-scanning experiment, curiously enough, two of the students who were the most liberal in their charitable giving were “outliers” who seemed to get no neural reward for their generosity. They did not benefit from the warm-glow effect. Yet they were outstandingly altruistic anyway. Even the cynic might rejoice a bit in that.

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Well, then present the distortions in a clear way. Your post was absurd and comic, but not much of a valid criticism.

There was no intention to criticize, but I can see why you take it that way. I could have equally posted the same towards occupying land, or for having other resources like water, or vehicles, or computers, or appliances. If someone claims selfishness in the ownership and use of anything, or in the seeking of benefits of cooperative faith in each other via education or employment or business risk taking, then I recognize a serious error in their physical model of this world. An error because all things good and all things evil, all things desired and all things undesired require energy and resource. Fact of life. All activity requires energy.

The physics of the sun is rather telling... the efficiency of it is pathetic. The overwhelming majority of energy from the sun is lost into space. The Earth captures just a small, tiny, miniscule, nearly insignificant fraction of that energy, and that fraction directly or indirectly powers practically everything here. The only exception I am aware of is the decaying heavy atoms used in nuclear energy, of which I am not a fan of either. There are other losses that make man's consumption of energy appear less significant. When I see hurricanes I see a tremendous amount of energy being used that could have been captured and put to better use.

I am an engineer so if someone comes to me decrying how much energy that I have used then I simply pull the calculator out and ask them to show me how to be more efficient. I rarely lose the arguments there but if I do then I'm thankful to have learned something better.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

If someone claims selfishness in the ownership and use of anything, or in the seeking of benefits of cooperative faith in each other via education or employment or business risk taking, then I recognize a serious error in their physical model of this world. An error because all things good and all things evil, all things desired and all things undesired require energy and resource. Fact of life. All activity requires energy.

Yes, and I'm not sure what you are getting at, or what you are directing these posts at. If you are implying that my criticism in this thread of wasteful consumption and extravagant hoarding and wasting of resources and wealth has equated all energy use as selfishness, I think there's been a miscommunication somewhere.

Just a recap, to clarify for myself as much as anyone else:

• I do not think that selfishness is a virtue or a positive driving force in societies and social relationships
• I believe that capitalism, as it has been practiced in the United States, where I live, is extremely wasteful, selfish, and irresponsible
• The waste created and energy depleted in the pursuit of technological "progress" and the hoarding or money and resources by exploiters of energy (whether stored in fossil fuels or in animals) is ecologically damaging
• Damaging the planet that you live on to make a profit in the very short-term is an extremely selfish act, and one that denies rights to many other forms of life, now and into the future
• Selfishness, differentiated from healthy self-interest (which is necessary for any organism to survive), denies the rights of others. So even if a person does later attempt to repay some of the resources and energy that they have effectively stolen from society/the ecosystem, those future efforts are dependent on their selfish actions, which robbed society/the ecosystem in the first place...

It's a bit sketchy, but these are my beliefs. Someone who egregiously exploits life and then wants to be considered a philanthropist by doing some good (handing out scholarships, starting a foundation) in the future is still a thief, and has done serious damage to society which I don't think can be mitigated by throwing little pieces of the energy (now degraded into the form of money) that they have stolen back at the problems they have created.

[path_of_one]

That's a pretty good recap of my position as well, Pathless.

I'd say that in individual cases, what may appear to be selfish in the short-term may be proven, on inspection, to be efficient long-term planning. And it's not always a negative balance. But I think that is very, very rare.

My points a while back are not about the rare Bill Gates of the world- the uber-genius people who make billions and then found charities. Or even the small business owners who employ 40 people. My points were about the aggregated effects of millions (the majority) of ordinary lower-middle class to upper-middle class Americans whose values center on consumption and whose accumulated effects are environmental degradation and human exploitation (both of themselves and of others).

And I think Tao Equus is right- there are few groups in the world less prepared for the changes that are anticipated by science in the next 30-50 years than the American middle classes. Most of them have no skills that are actually productive or useful outside of the modern system (i.e., they haven't a clue how to sustain themselves if needed). And most are focused on the latest fashion trend, or what the celebrities are doing, or whatever insignificant capitalist-driven crap is fed to the populace on the TV, rather than positively affecting society and the earth.

Nature will self-correct. The question is, can we act wisely enough to circumvent some of the suffering.

As for selfishness, I still say that it is not a problem to have a balance between self-interest (in terms of using what is needed) and concern for other beings. That is not selfish. Selfishness is by definition self-interest to the exclusion of interest for others. And that leads to short-term planning and lousy decision-making- neither of which is ever good for social continuity and environmental sustainability.

No comments on the energy issues. I'm not a physicist or an engineer. My one random comment: I think super-cool technological progress in the 3rd world has been made by generating energy out of manure. Won't power a fridge and so forth all day, but it gives villages a few hours of light in the evening, enabling the kids to study. And besides, it's just awesome to power a light bulb off of manure.

[wil]

Namaste all,

Funny you mention biogas, I remember reading about a family in the midwest who's kids wanted to go into the dairy business with them but they didn't have the land to handle the waste from more cows.

So they started a manure digester to contain the waste captured the methane and not only paid their electric bill, but got significant money back from the power company for generating electricity, all while tripling their herd and increasing revenues for the farm....how selfish is that?

Did they get off the grid for some altruistic reason? Are they producing electricity for their neighbors without having the utility company have to increase output because they wanted to help? Are they operating greener because they are environmentalists? No, No, and No.

It was necessity, a need to feed their family that resulted in a societal benefit.

oops another example of how we can produce more on less land and create more than we did in the past (not many dairy farms create electricity) but there are a lot of dairy farms and feed lots that will. One point for the sacred cow!

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Pathless

I believe that capitalism, as it has been practiced in the United States, where I live, is extremely wasteful, selfish, and irresponsible

I find free market capitalism the best and the most ancient form of cooperative agreement and business in this world. If Jesus was a carpenter then I rest my case.

Originally Posted by Pathless

The waste created and energy depleted in the pursuit of technological "progress" and the hoarding or money and resources by exploiters of energy (whether stored in fossil fuels or in animals) is ecologically damaging

False. Waste can be cleaned up but it takes even greater use of energy. For example you have a home and over time it becomes a mess because you didn't take the time and energy to clean up. So you must take a day or two and do nothing but cleaning... which in itself burns more energy. That scenario or lesson is repeated over and over at every level of industry and human life.

Originally Posted by Pathless

Damaging the planet that you live on to make a profit in the very short-term is an extremely selfish act, and one that denies rights to many other forms of life, now and into the future

You don't know the power of God... the planet is NOT damaged and it is not being damaged. It is being overrun by people but a few catastrophes could easily solve that problem. The sun however is dying... every day since birth. When the sun dies then this planet will really be damaged.

Originally Posted by Pathless

Selfishness, differentiated from healthy self-interest (which is necessary for any organism to survive), denies the rights of others. So even if a person does later attempt to repay some of the resources and energy that they have effectively stolen from society/the ecosystem, those future efforts are dependent on their selfish actions, which robbed society/the ecosystem in the first place...

Stolen? That right there is the accusation wherein I find both your physical math of economics, and your moral argument faulty. All energy except the decaying atoms comes from the Sun, and it is NOT the possession of society or government to tax it or to account for its use by individuals to ensure that it is for the benefit of society. Individuals make agreements on how to use energy within society... not the other way around. You are denying the rights of individuals in choosing how to use energy whether it be efficient or wasteful, whether it be for themselves or for society, which by the reasoning in your very first sentence is: selfishness. You express the selfishness of society in denying the right of the individual in choosing how to use energy. You insist that energy be used for the efficient greater good of society... why? Is a nameless and faceless society truly worthy?

Originally Posted by Pathless

Someone who egregiously exploits life and then wants to be considered a philanthropist by doing some good (handing out scholarships, starting a foundation) in the future is still a thief, and has done serious damage to society which I don't think can be mitigated by throwing little pieces of the energy (now degraded into the form of money) that they have stolen back at the problems they have created.

There is no mess that can not be cleaned up... except the fact that the sun is dying. Cleaning up requires the use of energy. The true accounting of what is done is within the physics itself... anything and everything that uses energy is being recorded. Smile... everyone is on a giant unseen camera every second of their life.

[path_of_one]

Originally Posted by wil

how selfish is that?

...

It was necessity, a need to feed their family that resulted in a societal benefit.

I don't think meeting necessities is selfish. Self-interest isn't the same as selfishness.

And dairies, in general, are bad for the environment no matter which way you stack it. Really bad problems with water pollution. Bad life for the cows. Not a great food source for people (not very healthy, not very efficient use of grain).

But I do like ice cream and cheese. I just buy organic, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, etc. Hey, I'm no saint.