every action is selfish...

U take the position that he shoud have refused to co-operate ?

no. i think that god should have let the party police discover that jesus and reported him. then the romans catch him.
or maybe the neighbors were complaining. idk, but judas was not necessary.

what about assisted suicide?

like if someones mother begged them to kill her while she was in pain....and the person unplugs her life support, despite the fact that his own morals and beliefs went against it, and he really loved his mother and didn't want to lose her?

FOR SURE, every action that I take is INTENDED
to be selfish (tho not stingy) and as beneficial to me as I can POSSIBLY make it.

I am the captain of my own ship; it is a PLEASURE CRUISE.





David

Yeah; what about it ??

If he loved his mother and was obediant, then he's still obeying his mother.
you could say that to some degree, you agreed enough to assist, or that you didn't disagree enough not to.

for you to say that every action i take is beneficial to ME wouldn't be true. Because YOU couldn't validate or prove that statement in any possible way. You aren't me, you aren't anyone but yourself, who can truly point the finger at another and say "You think or act this way because I think and believe it to be so!".?

and even if it were true, whatever true means.. how could anything be completely beneficial to anyone? Couldn't some of their actions have some degree of benefit while at the same time being harmful?

I am not saying that it is COMPLETELY beneficial, I am saying that to some degree that it is in some way helping the doer.

That statement is meaningless since you can not prove its opposite. It's like saying "every planet in the universe is moving away from each other". It sounds good but is meaningless because it can not be proven unless one planet is standing still. A meaningful statement should be "every planet in the universe is moving away from each other relative to Earth," or "every action is selfish relative to the action of BlaBlaBla."

I think every act is a selfish act in and of itself. It is just that we have given a negative connotation the to the word selfish and who wants to appear in such a negative light where as altruism is given such a glowing light?
The world is an unfair and dangerously cruel and hostile place.
To often we view the world as if we were standing outside it looking in instead of seeing that we are also part of it.

If we can honestly and fairly, with out bias, look at this objectively we will see that when a person throws himself or herself in front of a person firng a gun at someone... what they are actually sacrificing? what they are trading off, what are they truly sacrificing? is their greater belief, at least in in their mind, that they are saving another person lifet, is i more honable than their own, a magnanmous selfless act which holds a greater value to them, the idea, not so much the person they are saving, that the idea of their own self physical preservation becomes a lesser concern and idea and somehing they can easier live with if they survive, to what they themselves feel is the greater one, that the belief of saving some one is good? We act on what we believe and consider, again, the idea or ideas that we each hold as our own, via adaptation and orientation that we have come to accept and make our own. Or are they afraid they will suffer surviors guilt?

These morals that we hold may be peer driven and thus we may act out, or not act out, not wanting to look bad or be judged negatively by our peers, parents or the mores of society. Nature and or nurture with our Dna seemingly responding in kind also? or out of a feeling of pride and self worth?

If higher intelligents is also the base for human morality then Iwould say a different morality would or might more prudent or needs to exists for us. Yes, we are social animals, our boon and bane, because we also have a greater sense of our individuality requiring something other then a pack animal mentlity.

We are not talking about what justifys the ends. We are talking the means and the why. Some times the means to a befinitial end occurs for both parties and some time for only one side and sometimes for neither.

We can only act as individuals even if it appears that we act in concert with others. Individuals make up team sports. We act according to our needs, whims and emotes and our dna.
We can't live other's lives only our own, nor can another individual live someone's else life save their own.
I think because of that, morality is subject and relative, but that does not mean a concesus moraltiy cannot be forumulated... as difficult as that sounds.

We are always doing what we want to be doing. Even if we feel that we would rather not be doing what we're doing, we also feel that if we were not doing it, something that we don't want to happen would happen. If we didn't feel that way, we wouldn't be doing it.

So there's really no chance of us not doing that thing that we would rather not be doing.