(February 19, 2011 at 2:45 am)Gregoriouse Wrote: To explain I'll evaluate what I mean by selfish as applied to the pleasure principle: generally we wish for people to succeed and fulfill their role in society as best as they can. Humanistically we would like them to have a happy and prosperous like. Or to rethink this in other words, we'd like then to be selfish like the rest of us while conforming happily to social norms. on the contrary imagine a selfless world. No one wold ever take a job promotion because we would want the other person to have it. money and goods would have little to no value because we would only want to use them to help others. Ironically in being selfless and trying to give we expect the other person to take what is given. we expect selfishness. If we didn't have it society would come to a halt.
Sounds like you're hinting at a possible contradiction, because society will come to a halt if we are'nt selfish, but we are taught to be selfless.
But then again, if people are selfless, they will wind up helping each other. Consider this, suppose you're selfless. In order for society to function, someone else has to play the roll of selfish for you, but not for them, in order for them to be selfless.
