In this post, my focus is on selfishness as a potential side-effect caused by achieving independence or freedom. I think the level of independence or freedom we attain is positively correlated with the amount of attention we pay to our “selves”; therefore, highly independent people are prone to selfishness.
Think about a neighbor whom you depend on for a daily ride to work. The dependence creates a bond between you and your neighbor, and the bond brings in the attention to the “other”; thus, selfishness steps back.
On the other hand, in our odyssey to independence, the main point of interest is the “self” and we seek routs that provide it with freedom. We may lose, break, or replace many of our ties to people, society, organizations or any other entities that we depend on. As the ties loosen up, the amount of our interest and attention is reduced: We don’t care about those subjects as much as before. At all decision points, independence of the self has the priority #1; therefore, we are heavily concentrated on the “self” and oblivious to the “others”. That’s about the time when individualism kicks in, followed by selfishness.
Talking about the sequence of Dependence->Bonding->Caring, some people fake independence by reversing this sequence. To pretend to be independent individuals, they replace Caring with attacking, invalidating, or humiliating the entities that they depend on - or seemed so in the public eye. It’s similar to an exaggerated state of denial. Let’s take an example from a larger segment of the society: governments. Iran is certainly dependent to the west to restore its economy. Foreign investments are needed to renovate oil wells and industrial infrastructures; modern technologies to upgrade communication networks; or even fuel to get the cars moving on the roads. However, the Iranian officials pretentiously claim independence by challenging the west and considering the sanction resolutions as “pieces of trash paper”. Such fake independence is only a big lie or a result of self-justification.
Moral of the story? We need some extra effort and attention not to be driven by the selfish side of our nature in our journey towards independence to avoid the sweetness of independence be ruined by the bitterness of selfishness and isolation.
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Ditto!
ReplyDelete3 non sequiturs:
The solution maybe to shift the process of "caring for others" from a subconscious/unconscious by-product, to a completely conscious one.
In the process of our evolution, humans will "need" less and less to be good, but "choose" to be so increasingly (or at least this is the hope for humanity!)
However, when independance is deemed a highly precious value, the resulting inter-dependance of caring becomes a counter-value. How do you resolve this contradiction?
Agree!
ReplyDeleteAfter all, "caring for others" as a consciously chosen attitude is much more valuable than the unconscious one, which is hard-wired mainly for the purpose of survival.
I'll think about your question!
Not sure I entirely agree because the word 'selfish' is a very broad term and there are many different ways of being selfish. If we suppose by selfish you mean 'self-absorbed' then I agree, the independence means that the person will not 'care' or do much for other people, and in return will not expect much back. This is by definition the 'western' culture of living.
ReplyDeleteHowever the term selfish can also have a very dependent value where the person continuously depends on others to do them 'favours' and help them out of situations. This person is completely ignorant of the other party's situation (their willingness, time, other obligations,etc.) and expects them to have no other concern in life but 'caring' for their problem. This is the opposing end of the spectrum where selfishness becomes highly dependant.
...thinking about it, 'self absorbed' is probably not a good term either as it can depict both the independant and dependant nature of selfishness. Its probably not a good idea to try and label them, but the point I was trying to make is that selfishness can be both extremelt dependant or independant.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm only referring to independent-selfish in this post. 'Western Individualism' term might be more accurate compared to the broad term of 'Selfishness' in this topic, especially when considered jointly with the other post titled "Interdependent or Independent".
ReplyDelete