Virtue of Selfishness - Individualism  

Show Notes

• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 11/18/2008 5:58 AM UTC

  Fear the day when Selfishness, like hate, becomes a crime.
  

  "You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures.  We're after power and we mean it.  Your fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it.  There's no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.  Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens?  What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt.  Now that's the system...that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll

  be easier to deal with."

   

      - Ayn Rand

  Selfishness has been maligned by society, by preachers, by parents and teachers.  Some would have you believe that all selfishness is bad and all selflessness is good.  That the selfish acts of a wall street investor which serve only one man must be innately evil, while the cowardly acts of a domestic terrorist who kills and damages to protest injustice to an enemy at war is valuable and good.

  Doesn’t the Bible even teach us that selfishness is bad?  The implications of selfishness inspire divergent views within religious, philosophical, psychological, ideological, economic and evolutionary contexts.  Aren’t the ‘enlightened’ ones purged of their selfishness and live only for the benefit and well being of others?
  

  
  Our society praises our president – elect, who would have you believe that he became a community organizer out of a sense of altruism, a higher purpose then the pursuit of money or self – interest.  He left college and moved to Chicago.  A man born in Hawaii, finishing college as a lawyer, does not choose the windy city out of concern for others.  He stuck out as unusual, as he applied for his first job as a community organizer.  A young man in his mid 20’s who had never known prejudice or poverty.  He jumped right in to work with people in the projects, joined a local church to understand the black community.
  

  
  I noticed an important fact after watching the Barack Obama biography so well played on national TV before the election.  The women interviewed spoke so well of him, and how he listened and helped them get funding for a community project.  But watch closely or you’ll miss it, these women were speaking of what he had done for them 20 years ago, how he empowered them, but guess what?  They were still in the projects.  He wasn’t, they were.  Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.  Beware of the selfless man who leaves his flock in poverty as he himself pursues his personal agenda.
  

  
  "If concern with poverty and human suffering were the collectivists' motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance."
  

  While I believe in a world of black and white where things are right and wrong, I don’t believe that selfishness or selflessness is either right or wrong, good or bad.  I hate grey, or as a better man put it, “be not lukewarm”.  We happen to be created as selfish creatures, that in fact is what the bible teaches.  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  The bible implies that you love yourself.  In fact it somewhat requires that you understand how you love yourself, or you’ll not have a clue as to how you should love your neighbor.

   

  The statement, "love your neighbor as yourself" is not a command to love yourself. It is natural and normal to love yourself. The statement, "love your neighbor as yourself" is essentially saying treat other people as well as you treat yourself. The idea of loving yourself as a command of Scripture is not accurate. The Bible presumes that people already love themselves too much. 

   

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very aware that the bible teaches that we are to take our eyes off ourselves and care for others, but that’s only possible if we understand and harness our selfishness.  If we deny or pretend that we aren’t selfish and succeed in the illusion of  selfless or collective purpose, we deny what’s true and we deny what God wants us to understand.

   

  I believe that Bill Gates was and maybe still is, though I wouldn’t be privy to that knowledge, but I believe his success came from being a very selfish man.  The few bios I’ve read and my own experience with DOS showed that he fought to own and profit from a solution that brought operating systems at a reasonable price to every piece of computer hardware developed.  He didn’t defraud anyone outside the law although he walked awfully close to that line in his rise.  His selfishness built an empire, his selfishness protected it from predators and now he’s semi-retired and one of the largest philanthropists on the planet.  He and his wife keenly invest in projects now, that are truly selfless and deserving of his fortune, he’s investing in education.  Not the education of the impoverished with utopian ideals that keep them in the projects, but the development and discovery of self realization in young people that allow them to claim their independence.

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  • selfishness
  • crime
  • collectivism
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