Selfishness; Good Or Bad ?

Selfishness; Good Or Bad ?

Selfishness; Good Or Bad ?

Selfishness is an act that is hated entirely, by everyone or everywhere. But, at the same time it is reality that humans are intrinsically selfish. Go anywhere in the world, no matter how altruistic people you meet, you will find them being selfish for one reason or other.

Selfishness is defined as being concerned for oneself regardless of others. But it would be the biggest lie ever told by anyone to say they are not selfish. We all claim that we care for others and we actually do but at some time for our happiness and comfort we prioritize ourselves to others. It is not only difficult but it would also be impossible to find a person who will agree to leave himself at a disadvantage by helping you.

My stance on the topic is that there is nothing wrong in being selfish, for being selfish means caring for yourself and loving yourself. And especially in today’s unbalanced society, everyone has a right to chose best for themselves.  Furthermore, it depends on our view of thinking, as a selfish person can also be interpret as the one who is concerned chiefly with own personal pleasure and one can find pleasure in anything. One can also get pleasure by helping other, if that means one is selfish than there is nothing wrong in being selfish.

Selfishness exists everywhere. For instance, when we help needy people it gives us  contentment more than than the poor. A teacher is the most respected and selfless  personality whose only aim is to impart knowledge and work on character building of his students, when his students perform good, no one feels more ecstatic than him. Was he selfish the whole time? No, because a selfless good deed never exists.

A deed, no matter what’s purpose it serves, it makes us happy too and selfishness means pleasing yourself hence there is nothing weird or bad about selfishness. excess of anything is never good hence when people go a long way to please themselves by hurting others, it never benefits them.

A somewhat similar illustration of this phenomena directed in an episode of TV Sitcom ‘FRIENDS‘ Joey believes that there is no such thing as selflessness whereas phoebe thinks the other way and wants to prove him wrong. After several attempts, phoebe despite having a deep dislike for Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) she makes a $200 pledge to a local station during a fund drive where joey is taking calls. She considered it a great selfless act as he gave her money to the organization she disliked. But she felt so happy to help her friend joey and somehow she realized  her selfless act is ruined as it made her happiest.

I hold the opinion that one has to be selfish to become successful, like in a competition the competitor does not think of the other and why should he, because his main focus is to win and if it is selfishness than it does not matter. As I said, it depends on us how we view it. It is nowhere said that one can only become selfish by hurting others. We all want good or I’ll say best for ourselves. We all want to surpass each other. We are living in a tough world where we are all greedy and where we have the right to think for ourselves first.

And at last, selfishness sometimes turns good too. Our school asks us for donation for poor and I want to make my name in the school and look good than my friends hence I donate a lot of money. I did it for myself but somehow it turned out I did a very good act. And still if people call it selfishness than I will accept it.