Why be good?

[henryp]

Wallym: yes, I think I am extremely "hard wired" to want to prevent pain and suffering whenever I can, and to never be the cause of it. I feel absolutely awful if I cause someone else pain or upset, and beat myself up about it way too much.

I think we're dealing with two slightly different issues, maybe I can "split the fishtank" (that's not a phrase).

1) I don't care about other random people, so I'm not going to help them any more than I need to

2) I don't care about other random people, so I'll happily screw them over anytime I can get away with it for my own benefit

These are kind of two extremes, even within the scope of what you are saying. I get the idea that you are much closer to 1 than 2. Of course there are different degrees of "screwing over" too, from minor things up to killing people for their underpants.

I don't kill people for their underpants.  But if child slaves are making my underpants in Malaysia, I don't mind.  I don't really have a lot of opportunities to screw people over that I don't care about, without risk of consequence.  Society has been set up in a way that, for me, that opportunity just doesn't arise often.  


I find a lot of my behavior that is 'bad' is about avoiding/not doing things, rather than doing things to other people.  Sins of omission as the good book would call them.