Everyone is selfish

Blasphemy!
Heresy!
I can see that happening but in limited contexts.

That is what most of you must be thinking about my heading at the moment, or somewhere along those lines, but most of you wouldn't stop to think about it. Am I not right? If I am, well then I am only human and can go far in the pursuit of perfection. That being said, let me proceed to elucidate on my proposition to the rest of the world.

Man by nature is a gregarious animal, we need to relate to people to in order to survive, well except for the few who would rather not. It would be hard to imagine a life where one is completely independent of his fellow man. Impossible almost, unless like previously mentioned, you are living on an island alone, naked. Why naked? Well I am sure in all possibility that you would not have made those clothes yourself now would you? I am talking about complete abstinence from the human race. That is impossible.

In the process of socialising we always assess if there is something that we can get out of the other person. Materially speaking, this could consist of goods others produce, services offered in exchange of compensation and so on and so forth. In that aspect no one would disagree with me in concluding that we are selfish, and rightly so, it has become a necessity in order to obtain certain things in life that one would spend too much time on anyways. Imagine you having to make a computer for yourself from scratch, I'm not talking about buying the motherboard separately, and then the speakers and when all the parts are there you just assemble it yourself. I am talking about building everything! The whole damn thing from scratch, literally. Insane! Over here we can easily say that selfishness takes on a neutral appearance.

But an interesting fact, that is not where this stops. It goes deepeer. Deeper than physical possessions. People who manipulate others for their means, yes, and the politicians, the sales-people, and all those who have a bad history with telling the truth (a disclaimer here though, I do not recommend stereotyping people, but this is how most of the world would understand, but more on stereotyping later in the future). These people you agree are selfish, twisting facts and thoughts to their own advantage. Quite obviously here, being selfish is not the right thing to do.

You must be sighing in relief by now thinking that this is over. Au contraire, there is something deeper.
Your friends, your family, your children and more.
Gasping in horror already? Too outraged and pissed off? A WTF moment?
How can they be selfish? Well let's see for instance, your friend needs you for his emotional needs, he needs you to be there when he is having a hard time, ever notice how people would come running to a particular person in need of something just because they know he has something they need. Sometimes we are all doing nothing and simply enjoying the company of others, still we need them for our entertainment in this case. The same applies for family and your children, and your religious leader, etc. You need these people to support your emotionally and give you a helping hand in life. Even parents. Why do most parents have children. Certainly not for pleasure, five minutes of pleasure and the next few decades providing for them? Is there really a logic to that? Anybody can see that five minutes of ecstasy does not justify spending half your life earnings. It is the need to continue one's progeny; not a single soul would like to see his name be wiped off, a child continues his name, and it certainly makes sense to give all your possessions to your child than to some random fool, atleast the child is your blood! This one instance gives all of us the chance to play creator. Not so unselfish now.

What about the people who give out charity and do other kinds of social work? Still selfish to me. They need this to make them feel better about themselves, so they can tell themselves that they are doing something about the problems of the world. I am not saying these people are suffering from inferior complexes or anything of the sort, they merely think that they will get the most satisfaction doing such work. Sure money is not what motivates them, but how they feel about themselves does. The fact that they are not doing this for money fog our view. Is that not selfish now?

So tell me now, is not everyone selfish? Is being selfish now a good thing or a bad thing as it has been shown in our history? Ought we to scorn the man who is completely self-involved? One need not look very far to find that there are others, who are selfish but do not seem so. Again, society has so conveniently blurred our vision.

Bad news is good news

"No news is good news", what we have always been told, but what I fail to understand is that people do not look at how good, the other half, "bad news" really is! I personally think it is better to know what kind of trouble one is in rather than be in total ignorance. At least that way you can proceed to rectify the situation. You actually get to DO something to change your situation whereas in the. Good news is bad news as far as I see, because it just gives one an excuse to linger around and do nothing, granted there should be such moments of absolute sloth, but good news really does not do anything to spur people onto greater things. Show me a successful man and I will show you a rocky road. No one has had it all good in their lives and there is no reason to suppose that a good life is what you need to be uber-successful.

Adversity brings the best out in man as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, previously known as Malcolm Little or as the world knows him as Malcolm X, once said "There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time," and his life was a testament to what he said. So I ask the intelligenstia, how can you say that no news is good news? That is a load of rubbish! Such "sagacious" sayings only hinder our development as people and dull our ability to think.

Imagine if one were not told about something that affects them adversely. Do you not think that they ought to be relieved when they hear about it in time? Now they have an opportunity to better their situation and that can always be done. You just have to keep an open mind about it.

Down the trodden path

Whilst returning from work to home, I came across this grassy patch of land on the corner of the junction leading to my abode, and on this foliate patch is a trodden path. I usually follow this path but this morning I was forced to notice and experiment on peculiar human traits. A quarter of the way down the path, a girl appeared from the other end and she amazingly got off thr path to make way for me, now I usually would do the same whether the other person moves off or not, but not today, instead I pursued my initial course and once I had passed her I noticed that she moved back onto the path! The striking feature is that she really did not need to come back to path, she could have maintained her initial bearings and that would have been a quicker and more efficient path nonetheless.

This led me to conclude that humans are creatures of habit and they would always prefer following a carved way than make a new one up. Is this is a good thing or bad? It really depends and like I have previously mentioned there has to be a balance for anything to be successful and again for human civilisation it is necessary for a balance to be maintained between habit and innovation. Too much of a new way would leave the world wasting much time trying to find new methods to carry out tasks when for certain tasks one need not do so. Balance my friend balance.