Every action is a selfish action...

[B]

I dunno but I got to thinking on my home and figured that you do is all about you even if it involves someone else. It could be a selfless action to help charity but is that really why we do it? I believe we do it so that we could feel important, we can be ones who could truly say we stood up and helped them. It's all about us. Yet, whoever said all selfish actions are wrong should look at the world around them, every thing we do is selfish. If we take a bullet for someone else it would be because we want them to live.

I dunno, I guess I just wanna hear what everyone else thinks. o.o I hate being bored, I talk philosophy with myself. D=

[Jo]

I don't beleive that for one second. It isn't selfish, because that word is meaning taking interest in ones self and if you help another person it isn't selfish per say. What about Audrey Hepburn or Mother Teresa? These women risked their lives to help others. For example Audrey Hepburn and her work with UNICEF' she went to Ethiopia and seen what other probably never will. People constantly dieing, starving, children sick.

Another example. Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her - she was like the Pied Piper."

You don't need a personaly reason to help another, it's almost a need really. The real tragedy are the people who do nothing at all. That is the selfish action.

[B]

(Didn't know you replied to this. xD)

They risked their lives to help others because they wanted to. Even selfless actions are selfish. They do because they want to see those people happy. They want to see those people live. I'm not saying selfishness is bad.. to a certain degree. I'm just saying that everything revolves around what we want. It's basic human nature to attempt to get what we want. Whether it's stealing money out of the church's pot, to saving suffering children. We WANT that money, we WANT those children to live. Without our own selfish desires there will be no crime, no cooperation. We'd be soulless organisms. "You don't need a personaly reason to help another, it's almost a need really." Take a gander at your words after the comma. What WE need. What WE want. Heroes don't risk their lives because they are forced to do something, they risk them because they WANT to do something. They feel they cant, they feel they could, they want to. For the children, for themselves. Get where I'm getting at?

[Jo]

I don't beleive you. It's only selfish if something substantial is gained.

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway."

[B]

But isn't there even a flicker of that substantial feeling when you save someone's life? Could be a stranger for all you know. You could've done it for many reasons. As long as there's a reason behind any action there is selfishness, as well as selflessness. There once was a great man who said that cold was just the total absence of heat for we don't measure temperature in cold rather we measure them in how hot, not how cold. However when it's 65 degrees heat outside some people still say it's cold. That man was Albert Einstein. So isn't selflessness the total absence of selfishness? How is it then, that they are two different theories?

[Jo]

Why is there two different theories about the beginning of time?
There are things beyond our means. It is that doubt that selfishness is there. And why are you arguing that everything is selfish. Yes we take things for granted, but many others are grateful. Is it so selfish to feed your family? To live. To be loved? If so then yes we are selfish.

The dictionary term of Selfish goes as the following. devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.

Selfless: having little or no concern for oneself, esp. with regard to fame, position, money, etc.; unselfish.

Not everything revolves around ourselves. Why do we even exist then? If the bible is true then that selfishness will lead to our own damnation and then there would be no God. No love, nothing of anything joyuous. Not worth being here.

[B]

Very good point. The plot thickens. It's true that not everything revolves around us and yet isn't true that everything does revolve around us even when that axis is revolving itself upon one more important? Old scholars believed everything revolved around Earth. It's a fact that we revolve around the sun, however from our plain vision doesn't the sun start somewhere and end at the other end? Is it not that time revolves securely around us? For without us is there really any time? Any cares? Is it not that we signed our selfish existences when the first person of the world signed his/her selfish thought by not ridding itself? From there on mankind have acted on its own selfish will to keep our species alive. Is that not selfishness? Is it not selfishness when we are in our mother's womb that we don't strangle ourselves with her umbilical cord and instead come out into life to be a burden or joy among others? We only do things that some part or thought wants us to do. Selfishness is light's darkness. Where there is light there is darkness. Where there is a selfless person there is a selfish person. Where there is a selfless action there is a selfish will.

Perhaps this subject just too debatable to come out with a convincing answer that would sway the other. Shall we now agree to disagree or do you believe there are words that could defeat my beliefs?

[Jo]

I say we agree to disagree or we'll both end up majoring in philosphy in college and work at burger king or something as degrading.

[B]

Hahaha. Nice debate though. =)