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“All acts of kindness are, at heart, acts of selfishness. People do not ever act solely for the benefit of others. They perform good deeds for the satisfaction they get from the experience. Acting for ones own satisfaction is, by definition, selfishness.” - Anonymous No matter if you do a kind act for yourself or for others there is always a selfish basis behind it. When doing a kind act for someone else, but you achieve a greater kindness, then you are being selfish. I experienced this last semester in Mrs. Garcia’s class. We were assigned a Act of Kindness assignment were we had to perform ten acts of kindness over the weekend, so all weekend long I would rush to anyones aid. However I wasn’t doing this out of the “goodness of my heart”, …show more content…
Not once did I think about how the other person felt, or if I was really helping them. Another example of someone doing an “act of kindness” without paying attention to what really helped the other person, is the narrator from The Scarlet Ibis. The narrator is the older brother of Doodle, a weak boy who was expected to die at a young age, but when Doodle lived he was unable to walk. Due to Doodles incapability to walk, the narrator had to drag Doodle around in a wagon. The narrator made many attempts to daunt Doodle into not wanting to go along with the narrator, but Doodle continued to go with the narrator on the walks. The narrator took Doodle to Old Woman swamp, and Doodle and his older brother began to bond and become closer. One day the narrator was embarrassed to have a brother who could not walk, so he decided to teach Doodle to walk. When they succeeded, they made plans to make it so Doodle could do anything like the other boys his age before Doodle started school. Weeks went by without any success, but the narrator’s pride would not let him give up. Doodle started to become weaker having nightmares, coughing fits, and falling down more often. Then a storm came, bring an exotic bird with it. The strange bird was a Scarlet Ibis, and as the
In the book, “Touching the Void”, climber Simson Yates was,”unable to lift his friend up and losing his own grip on the mountain ended up cutting the rope to Simpson to save himself” (Survival 9). This particular incident isn’t selfish considering they both would’ve died if Yates continued to lose strength as he pulled up the rope. Also, in the “Titanic”, Bruce Ismay, “was ruined” because he got in a lifeboat even though there, “was no longer women or children in sight” (Survival 1). This is clearly not selfish since no women or children were left to aboard the lifeboat, anyone would do the same considering the circumstances. Lastly, in the Grand Central Station incident when the lady witnessed an explosion underground and she states, “people were frozen or screaming, but nobody was moving towards the emergency exits, even as smoke began to fill the cabin. After realizing everyone around her were too paralyzed to react, she took action, crawling over several rows of people to the exit” (Survival 6 & 7). This isn’t selfish because there was no time to get people to focus on the exits, so she took action and saved herself which was just common instinct if you weren’t the people,
Even forms of human beings preforming selfless acts derives from ones desire to help others, which in a way makes that person feel importance. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, better known as Mother Teresa, devoted her life to helping those in great need. To many these acts may appear as selfless and gallant acts that are not performed by anyone with any type of ego. Yet when taking a psychological look at why she performed such acts they may appear a somewhat more for herself. Every time anyone does anything, even when for someone else, they are doing it for some type of feeling that they experience. With the holiday season approaching, there will be a specific emphasis on giving unlike any other time of the year. We give yes to show gratitude for someone we love, but also to experience the joy in seeing someone enjoy something they them self-caused. Even while being selfless humans have the unique ability to still be doing something that involves caring for them self. This outlook toward the human condition completely debunks Wolf’s claim that “when caring about yourself you are living as if you are the center of the universe.” When choosing to do anything positive or negative, for others or for yourself, you are still taking your self-interest into consideration, making it
Selfishness is a common trait in the world, it’s not a hidden factor, but very well-known as being one’s self-interest. The story “Hunters in the Snow” by Tobias Wolff, discusses how each character in the story deals with different kinds of selfish ways. One character, Tub, deals with eating problems and lies about it. Frank deals with a secret life that he is hiding from his wife. Kenny is always comparing something to his liking and if he does not like it then he will complain. Self-absorption is when someone is focused on their self and only themselves. It is known to be a regular’s human’s condition, it’s something majority of human beings have. Selfishness may also kick in during survival incidents. For example, a boy and his friends
Selfishness is a disease of the soul that every person experiences several times throughout their life. To say that it has never been experienced would be hypocrisy. To say that it is a “good thing”, would be erroneous. Although as humans we like to lie to ourselves, it is no question that selfishness can make any person act like a fool. It consumes us and makes us into someone we are not. Whether it leads to getting people killed, falling in love, or buying alcohol, selfishness always leads to destruction.
...ss” in all cases of “unconditional kindness”. The benefit received by the altruistic individual defeats the purpose of the action being altruistic—it is not true kindness unless the giver receives no reward for their actions.
Ethical egoism is diametrically opposite to ethical altruism, which obliges a moral agent to assist the other first, even if he sacrifices his own interest. Further, researchers justify and rationalize the mental position of egoism versus altruism through an explanation that altruism is destructive for a society, suppressing and denying an individual value. Although the ‘modern’ age unsubtly supports swaggering egoistic behavior in the competitive arena such as international politics, commerce, and sport, in other ‘traditional’ areas of the prideful selfishness showing off, to considerable extent discourages visible disobedience from the prevalent moral codes. In some cases, the open pro-egoist position, as was, per example, the ‘contextual’ interpretation of selfishness by famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, can be described as a ‘grotesque anomaly’.
For someone who believes in psychological egoism, i t is difficult to find an action that would be acknowledged as purely altruistic. In practice, altruism, is the performance of duties to others with no view to any sort of personal...
“Sometimes it 's easy to walk by because we know we can 't change someone 's whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place.” ~ Mike Yankoski
According to the article, Altruism and helping behavior, it is common for people to help others. Altruism is defined as “the desire to help another person even if it doesn’t benefit the helper” (Altruism and Helping Behavior. Print.). Helping behavior is “any act that is intended to benefit another person”
Regardless of the situation, everyone should think about the others around them and put their needs before their own. Their survival and the survival of those around them depends on the selflessness of each person. Just as Lane Wallace said on page 318 of our textbook, “A guy who provides survival training for pilots told me once that the number one determining factor for survival is simply whether people hold it together in a crisis or fall apart.” Those who hold it together in a crisis, and manage saving those around them, are selfless. To be selfish in a crisis would be to only hold it together for yourself, but to be selfless in a crisis, would be to hold it together for those around you and yourself. While it depends on the circumstances, survival of those around you requires selfishness, and that is far more important than being selfish in a
Being friendly and selfless are tasks that most people do daily and without fail. Whether it be on purpose or intrinsic, the act of altruism happens all the time. Altruism has been around for a long while, but it was never truly defined until the French philosopher Auguste Comte coined the term altruism (Mastin 1). Being an antonym to egoism is another reason the word altruism came into existence. Today, however, altruism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the, “disinterested or selfless concern for the well-being of others” (“Altruism” 1). Although there are many subcategories of altruism, three of the more specific forms are pathological altruism, narcissistic altruism, and animal altruism.
So many people can be so selfish. In The Giving Tree, the boy keeps coming back for more and more. He takes whatever he can to make himself happy not others. He takes everything from the tree not worrying that he is hurting the tree. The boy asked the tree for money and the tree gave him apples to sell on the highway. The boy took the apples leaving the tree and not returning for a while until he needed the tree’s branches to make a house for himself. Some people are selfish isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact. You can easily tell that the boy is the most selfish person i have seen. He was looked after by the tree and now he is taking from the tree. Some people are so selfish, like the boy, but some people are so giving enough to help the people.
Before a case can be made for the causes of altruism, altruism itself must first be defined. Most leading psychologists agree that the definition of altruism is “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare.” (Batson, 1981). The only way for a person to be truly altruistic is if their intent is to help the community before themselves. However, the only thing humans can see is the actions themselves, and so, selfish intent may seem the same as altruistic intent. Alas, the only way that altruism can be judged is if the intent is obvious. Through that, we must conclude that only certain intents can be defined as altruistic, and as intent stemming from nature benefits the group while other intent benefits yourself, only actions caused by nature are truly altruistic.
...esult, the more directly one sees their personal efforts impact someone else, the more happiness one can gain from the experience of giving. Sometimes generosity requires pushing past a feeling of reluctance because people all instinctively want to keep good things for themselves, but once one is over this feeling, they will feel satisfaction in knowing that they have made a difference in someone else’s life. However, if one lives without generosity but is not selfish, they can still have pleasure from other virtues.
I believe in selfishness. When you hear the word ‘selfish,’ not many good things come to mind. You probably think of self-centered people who only care about themselves, and never others. Well, I’ve learned that caring about others and helping society out actually is a way of being selfish. When you try to help another person into trying to lead them onto a good path or trying to help somebody in desperate need, you have that feeling that you need to assist that somebody. Those feelings make you help that certain human, which basically makes you a selfish being considering you are helping that person because you care about them. You feel the need to support that individual, you are doing something you want and your choice; to aid that person