Essay on Grades: Virtue and Trey Jones Selfishness
Submitted By treyjones62
Words: 516
Pages: 3
Trey Jones
Selfishness
People have right to be selfish. Maybe its not their fault. Maybe it’s the way society made them. Or maybe they were raised that way. Their parents probably never taught them how to care for others. Most of us assume that selfishness is both wrong and unhealthy. But is this true. Selfishness means acting in one's rational self-interest. Contrary to popular opinion, all healthy individuals are selfish. Choosing to pursue the career of your choice is selfish. Choosing to have children—or not to have children—is selfish. Insisting on freedom and individual rights, rather than living under a dictatorship, is selfish. Indeed, even ordinary behaviors such as breathing, eating and avoiding an oncoming car when crossing the street are selfish acts
Modern culture is pervaded by a taboo on selfishness. It teaches that to be selfish is sinful and that to love others is virtuous. To be sure, this doctrine is not only a flagrant contradiction to the practices of modern society but it also is in opposition to another set of doctrines which assumes that the most powerful and legitimate drive in man is selfishness and that each individual by following this imperative drive also does the most for the common good. The existence of this latter type of ideology does not affect the weight of the doctrines which declare that selfishness is the arch evil and love for others the main virtue. Selfishness, as it is commonly used in these ideologies, is more or less synonymous with self-love. The alternatives are either to love others which is a virtue or to love oneself which is a sin. Selfishness is seen as someone who is self-absorbed, negligent on the take of new (prenominal) s, and only cargoes for oneself. Selflessness, on the other hand, is otherwise. I under in addition the dry land why people are selfless be run acts of kindness towards other people feel