Happiness is found in selfishness :

everybody doesn't?

In Canada real men prefer beavertail

I agree with the principle of balance.
I agree with the principle of of self-responsiblity.
I disagree that either constitutes "selfishness".

What are happy people like? I haven't met that many...

You must have met some?

Hello George,

Where did I say either constitutes selfishness? And what do you mean by selfishness?

And why don't you be unlike everyone else that's ever had a problem with anything I've said here (?)- you could try quoting something you specifically disagree with...and say why/how you disagree...not just that you do.

You said "I would like to say that I think the word ‘selfish’ is wrongly
tarnished in the English language, mostly because we have only the one word
for ‘focusing on the self’, whether we focus on ourselves for self development,
growth, and self esteem…or we focus on ourselves because we simply don’t
care about others (the bad part)."

But the word itself means focusing unduly on oneself. You can't just decide
that you don't like the meaning of the word and change it to suit your needs.

Now if you were to say "There is some behavior many people would call
selfish, but which I think is not selfish," then I'd have no objection to your
use of the word.

I only have shellfish in months that have an r.

I agree with George. Vikorr, few of us are disagreeing with what you're saying about balance between selfishness and selflessness; what we're disagreeing with is your desire to make this balance part of the definition of selfishness rather than calling it simply balance. What is it about the word "selfishness" that you are so attached to? If you're trying to preserve the importance of looking out for oneself, then great. No argument here. But looking out for oneself is hardly a sufficient condition (to borrow the vocab of another thread I was just perusing) for selfishness. If you agree (as you seem to) that all of the other necessary conditions for selfishness are collectively undesirable, then why hold on to the term "selfishness" at all? Rather than trying to stretch the definition of selfishness to include things that are unselfish, why not just use a different term (like "balance") and be done with it? Doing so still gets you everything you want, rhetorically speaking, and has the added bonus of not requiring you to rewrite the dictionary.

For many seafood lovers . . .







Happiness is found in shellfish nets.

Cool.



Glad that you agree with the concept. Actually, I'm not particularly attached to the word 'selfish' itself, though of all the words in the english language, if you were to condense the concepts I've expressed into just one word, the closest single word (in root word & suffix combination meaning) would be selfish, which of course has a negative meaning (which is why I said the English language is poorly equipped to talk about this subject)...and Because of these two qualities, I've seen the word misused many times to mean 'putting yourself first'.

"Putting yourself first" often leaves many people feeling guilty, unecessarily, when it is in fact, an important ability to growing your sense of self and self esteem.

I notice that particular groups of people don't quite understand the difference :
- 'Nice guys' especially, suffer from not understanding the difference.
- Submissive females often don't understand the difference
- People in unhappy relationships often have this very problem (though of course there can be many other reasons for unhappy relationships)

Hence my use of the word...it's the easiest way to show that putting yourself first is in fact, not a bad thing (unless of course, that's all you ever do), and is actually very important to leading a well balanced and happy life.