"There is some powerful mystery between all these perfect, solid things... and that is my God. My God is what I don't know."
--The One Electronic, from Rice Boy by Evan Dahm.
måndag 25 juli 2011
torsdag 7 juli 2011
Why Selfishness?
This is... perhaps a weird thing to be thinking, but it's something that has been bothering me for a while:
What reason is there to be selfish? Why have we accepted the axiom that "I should try to benefit myself"? Why do we somehow believe that there's any reason to do so?
I mean, put it like this: There are maybe 7 billion people on the planet. Why do I care that a particular person out of these 7 billion is better off? What reason do I have for that? Is it just that I'm more acutely aware of that person - that I can hear that person's thoughts, that I can perceive that person's hunger and thirst?
That doesn't really make any sense, does it? That's like saying "There are plenty of paintings in the world, but I can see this one most clearly because it's standing right there, so therefore it must be the most important painting in the world and I should care about it more than I care about any other painting."
What reason is there to be selfish? Why have we accepted the axiom that "I should try to benefit myself"? Why do we somehow believe that there's any reason to do so?
I mean, put it like this: There are maybe 7 billion people on the planet. Why do I care that a particular person out of these 7 billion is better off? What reason do I have for that? Is it just that I'm more acutely aware of that person - that I can hear that person's thoughts, that I can perceive that person's hunger and thirst?
That doesn't really make any sense, does it? That's like saying "There are plenty of paintings in the world, but I can see this one most clearly because it's standing right there, so therefore it must be the most important painting in the world and I should care about it more than I care about any other painting."
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