On the subject of altruism and selfishness I noticed that people are essentially decision making machines. And when someone has to choose between him/herself or to someone else, they will always choose themselves because 'what's in it for them' if they would choose the other over their own? Well, there are reasons, but in most cases it all boils down to obligation, guilt, shame, thinking you're low self value and thinking not being deserving of it, keeping the peace, or wanting to receive external approval etc. i.e. the stuff that we're conditioned with and which are essentially just emotions/ideas that limit us in choosing ourselves over others, and getting our needs met.
Something I also thought was funny is that we also help others when we can identify with them (we put value towards that we can identify with), because we believe that when we help others we also help ourselves in the process. When there is nothing of common interests to detect between people, they simply won't care because people essentially only seek themselves in everything, and the more they see of themselves in something the more they like it (for example; customizing your game characters, like-able every man movie characters, music, art to name a few), if there is nothing of ourselves in them we simply dislike and disgard it as having no value.
Interestingly though, if we hate something or someone we actually still put value towards it. We still put a lot of energy towards it, and actually care about it, though we would not want to admit such a thing to ourselves.
Also helping others make us seem wise and interesting, and make us more important and what's even more important is being of more value. But it has to be authentic, if you try to come across as valuable, when you're really not, people will see right through that and resent you for it, unless you're a good bullsh*tter. And when people think you're more valuable, you put yourself in the position that when you were gone the quality of the others would significantly decrease. So they'll treat you better, because they don't want to lose that value. But if you can't keep up the same amount of value, people will value you less. That's also one of the reasons people hurt, undermine or sabotage other people, because they want to get an advantage over them, value wise.
Also on the subject of family, we feel more obliged to help our family out than the next best friend, simply because we want to give our blood line the best opportunity to get its sh*t together, and pro-create and multiply as much as possible, to make it stronger because we would have more chance of survival and people supporting the same blood line and the same interests or beliefs.
I could go on and on about this, but I recommend reading upon narcissism and universal or psychological egoism, because this will give you a good idea how people essentially are, and when you can accept that you won't be as distraught when you do notice that some douchebag has once aggressively decided to choose himself over you. And you just see that person as a healthy human being just doing what's in its nature, and you don't care because that is as it is, and it will never change (unless evolution would change it's whole model).
Like I said, the more aggressive (instead of assertive) a person is, the more scarcity minded he/she is. They're just out there to fill their lacks, have their needs met and get the best opportunity of survival for themselves and their offspring, and some people have a lot of lacks and will stop at nothing to get them filled.
When people say that it's wrong to be selfish, they're basically denying their own human nature. Although constant aggressiveness will eventually get you nowhere (it's quick fix), assertiveness is the way to go in the long run. Also when you notice that you invest more into a person than they're investing you, means simply that you're more prone on choosing others over yourself, or that you put less value on your services than that they do.
Something I also thought was funny is that we also help others when we can identify with them (we put value towards that we can identify with), because we believe that when we help others we also help ourselves in the process. When there is nothing of common interests to detect between people, they simply won't care because people essentially only seek themselves in everything, and the more they see of themselves in something the more they like it (for example; customizing your game characters, like-able every man movie characters, music, art to name a few), if there is nothing of ourselves in them we simply dislike and disgard it as having no value.
Interestingly though, if we hate something or someone we actually still put value towards it. We still put a lot of energy towards it, and actually care about it, though we would not want to admit such a thing to ourselves.
Also helping others make us seem wise and interesting, and make us more important and what's even more important is being of more value. But it has to be authentic, if you try to come across as valuable, when you're really not, people will see right through that and resent you for it, unless you're a good bullsh*tter. And when people think you're more valuable, you put yourself in the position that when you were gone the quality of the others would significantly decrease. So they'll treat you better, because they don't want to lose that value. But if you can't keep up the same amount of value, people will value you less. That's also one of the reasons people hurt, undermine or sabotage other people, because they want to get an advantage over them, value wise.
Also on the subject of family, we feel more obliged to help our family out than the next best friend, simply because we want to give our blood line the best opportunity to get its sh*t together, and pro-create and multiply as much as possible, to make it stronger because we would have more chance of survival and people supporting the same blood line and the same interests or beliefs.
I could go on and on about this, but I recommend reading upon narcissism and universal or psychological egoism, because this will give you a good idea how people essentially are, and when you can accept that you won't be as distraught when you do notice that some douchebag has once aggressively decided to choose himself over you. And you just see that person as a healthy human being just doing what's in its nature, and you don't care because that is as it is, and it will never change (unless evolution would change it's whole model).
Like I said, the more aggressive (instead of assertive) a person is, the more scarcity minded he/she is. They're just out there to fill their lacks, have their needs met and get the best opportunity of survival for themselves and their offspring, and some people have a lot of lacks and will stop at nothing to get them filled.
When people say that it's wrong to be selfish, they're basically denying their own human nature. Although constant aggressiveness will eventually get you nowhere (it's quick fix), assertiveness is the way to go in the long run. Also when you notice that you invest more into a person than they're investing you, means simply that you're more prone on choosing others over yourself, or that you put less value on your services than that they do.
