Is it wrong to be self-centered?

kickycan wrote:

We don't do everything for our own self interest. What about a person who gives his own life to save another person's life? That comes from caring more about another person than yourself, doesn't it?

Well -- maybe it doesn't come from that at all.

I think a reasonable case can be made that the act could be one of self-center -- no matter how it looks at first blush.

Lemme give it a try.

In order for the act to be what you are supposing it to be, Kicky, we would have to make an assumption that may not be valid. We would have to assume that "retaining life by limiting danger" means more to the individual doing the "saving another person's life" than "attempting heroics."

A person who dies climbing Mt. Everest obviously thinks that "retaining life by limiting danger" is not as important as attempting something grand and spectacular.

So perhaps the person "saving someone's life at the cost of his/her own" actually was indulging something he/she considered to be of greater self-centered value than not taking the chance.

In any case, most people attempting to save another's life, really are not attempting to die, but rather to make the save and return safely from the save.

A person hijacking an airliner and crashing it into a building, on the other hand, is giving up his/her life, but obviously in pursuit of a greater self-interest.

What I am saying here, perhaps not too convincingly, is that it would not be logical to assume that risking one's life cannot[i/] be in one's self-interest.

It may very well be so.

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Frank- What you say makes perfect sense. A suicide bomber is not blowing himself up simply to kill himself. The point of suicide bombings, in the thoughts of the people who do this stuff, is that they will become martyrs, and will ascend to heaven, with the requisite number of virgins by their side. Although ultimately self defeating, the raison d'etre of suicide bombers is intensely self-centered, though twisted.

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It strikes me that the participants in this thread have, metaphorically speaking, been looking through the wrong end of the telescope. In addressing the question "is it wrong to be self-centered?" people here have been focusing on the term "self-centered." Yet it seems to me that the focus should rather be on the term "wrong."

After all, as others have pointed out, there are times when it is "good" to be self-centered. If the discussion continues, then, to concentrate on what it means to be "self-centered," the result would only be a catalog of instances of "good self-centeredness" and "bad self-centeredness," without any principle determining the moral nature of any degree of self-centeredness. In other words, focusing on the nature of "self-centeredness" gets us no closer to answering the question of whether it is "wrong" or not.

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joefromchicago - The problem is, that self-centeredness has gotten a bad rap. When many people think of self-centeredness, or selfishness, one of the first things that come to mind is gaining something for oneself by stepping over another.

True rational self centeredness involves having a clear sense of priorities.....one of which is dealing with all people not as a bully, a leech or a moocher, but as a trader.

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Wasn't this the main theme of Fountainhead by Ain Rand?

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"Is it wrong to be self-centered?"

Not necessarily, i would simply say it is human.

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In response to both Joe and Setanta...

...I iterate what I said (and asked) earlier...

Quote:

Is it possible to be other than self-centered?

I question whether a person can be other than self-centered.

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bzgootch, Yeah it is. It's a basic idea of her objectivist philosophy.

Anyway, here's the deal, in my humble opinion. Going by the definition in the original post, no it is not evil to be self-centered. But I don't think that takes the sting out of the term "self-centered" as an insult, because, as Pheonix says, when people call someone self-centered, they mean that the person has put themselves first at the expense of another. That is the real definition of self-centered when it is used as an insult. Re-defining it doesn't necessarily change what the insult means in context.

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Frank, I think it is possible to be other than self-centered. I'm still sticking with my earlier example of someone saving somebody else at their own expense, although your refutation certainly makes sense and could be argued.

Here's another example though. How about in our everyday lives when we are just doing routine tasks, without any thought at all. Have you ever been driving a car, and you get to where you are going without remembering the drive at all? That to me seems like it would not be self-centered or other-centered. You're just on auto-pilot. You wouldn't have your best interest, or anyone else's interest, at stake at the time, and that state of just "being" is not self-centered.

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kickycan wrote:

Frank, I think it is possible to be other than self-centered. I'm still sticking with my earlier example of someone saving somebody else at their own expense, although your refutation certainly makes sense and could be argued.

Here's another example though. How about in our everyday lives when we are just doing routine tasks, without any thought at all. Have you ever been driving a car, and you get to where you are going without remembering the drive at all? That to me seems like it would not be self-centered or other-centered. You're just on auto-pilot. You wouldn't have your best interest, or anyone else's interest, at stake at the time, and that state of just "being" is not self-centered.

Yes I have.

Most of the time -- probably all of the time -- I am being EXTREMELY self-centered at those times. Usually when it happens, it happens because I am indulging in reverie -- which is one of the most self-centered of activities.

Think about it for a bit. Isn't that the reason YOU lose track of time and space?

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I'm not sure about that. I'll have to think about that one.

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Okay Frank, I'm hanging on to this argument by my fingernails, but here goes. When we are in one of these states, we don't remember any of the thoughts we had. If we don't remember any of these thoughts, then how can we say for sure that we were engaging in reverie? Reverie implies that you are actively thinking about something. Isn't it possible that, while doing repetitive tasks, we aren't consciously thinking anything at all? We are only doing, without thought. And if there are unconscious thoughts going on at those times, how do we know that they are self-centered in nature?

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kickycan wrote:

Okay Frank, I'm hanging on to this argument by my fingernails, but here goes. When we are in one of these states, we don't remember any of the thoughts we had.

Perhaps you don't, but I do. When I am coming out of a reverie -- no matter how compelling it was, I at least remember what I was...reverieing...about.

Quote:

If we don't remember any of these thoughts, then how can we say for sure that we were engaging in reverie? Reverie implies that you are actively thinking about something. Isn't it possible that, while doing repetitive tasks, we aren't consciously thinking anything at all?

Anything is possible!

But I gotta tell ya -- for me, my mind is never quiet except when I am asleep -- and even then, Nancy has to wake me twice a night because something is going on and I am reponding aloud.

Quote:

We are only doing, without thought. And if there are unconscious thoughts going on at those times, how do we know that they are self-centered in nature?

My suggestion -- ask yourself these questions.

If you find it to be true for yourself -- perhaps that is the way your mind works. I don't think mine works that way -- but....

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You know, Kickycan, this begins to be interesting to me. Not the question of "is it wrong," but rather, the question of what constitutes self. I have read the speculation that our dreams are episodes in the internal life of our "other-than-concious" minds. Perhaps the experiences of which you speak are also times at which the non-conscious portions of the mind are "running their tapes." This might suggest that we each of us have more than one self. It would require an identification of those "other-than-conscious" states, and a determination of what "goals" those parts or ourselves might have.

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Frank, in my earlier example about driving a car and not remembering it, you said that it has happened to you. If you don't remember the time that passed in that situation, how can you remember what you were "reverieing" about?

Setanta, you said that we each of us have more than one self. What about the possibility that each of us do have only one self, but that self is connected to everything and everyone else, and in those "other-than-coscious" states, we are actually just connecting with our collective world, which isn't a self-centered process, I don't think, but rather a state of being "outside" ourselves.

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kickycan wrote:

Setanta, you said that we each of us have more than one self. What about the possibility that each of us do have only one self, but that self is connected to everything and everyone else, and in those "other-than-coscious" states, we are actually just connecting with our collective world, which isn't a self-centered process, I don't think, but rather a state of being "outside" ourselves.

Countdown to this thread being hijacked by the non-dualists in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .

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Well, Kickycan, i did not say that this were the case, i only speculated--in fact, i do not know this is the case, but was only interested in a discussion of the idea. I don't believe in an unconscious collective self, simply because i see no convincing evidence for it. In that dreams, and perhaps reveries as well, don't, or at least don't need to involve the conscious mind, the possibility of "other-than-conscious" states existing suggests itself to me.

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Quote:

Frank- What you say makes perfect sense. A suicide bomber is not blowing himself up simply to kill himself. The point of suicide bombings, in the thoughts of the people who do this stuff, is that they will become martyrs, and will ascend to heaven, with the requisite number of virgins by their side. Although ultimately self defeating, the raison d'etre of suicide bombers is intensely self-centered, though twisted.

If I may digress briefly to share something... Saw a photograph yesterday of a Palestinian kid wearing a toy bomber belt in much the same way I might have worn a toy cowby gunbelt as a kid. Chilling.

As you were.

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I am not convinced that we are made of two separate selves. I choose to speculate that the unconscious and the conscious, are somehow physically interconnected. The problem is, that science has not yet discovered the mechanism by which this works.

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Setanta, I agree that there are other-than-conscious states. I'm just not sure if I get the connection between the possibility of "other-than-conscious" states existing and the possibility that we have more than one self. I think you were right in your first post, that we need to define the concept of self in order to discuss this.

I'd love to debate this with you, but maybe one of us should start a new thread about this. It feels like we have taken the original idea of this topic and run with it in our own selfish direction. In a discussion about being self-centered. Ironic.

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Is it wrong to be self-centered?

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