Selfishness, it's pretty regressive

I recently read a blog by Fanny Briceno that made the case for selfishness and arrogance as being the most enjoyable and progressive way to live one's life. Fanny further goes on to state that religion only hinders the progress of humanity because it discourages selfishness and arrogance as acceptable forms of behavior. This is an interesting notion that has been discussed throughout intellectual history. While I do think that Fanny is correct in saying that selfishness can sometimes be beneficial to society, I also think she is misguided in thinking that this kind of positive selfishness tranlates to all situations and justifies arrogance as an acceptable form of behavior.

While Fanny does take this notion to the extreme, she is correct in saying that selfishness can be beneficial to society. I think that this notion is best displayed in a person's overall goals to make money and live a comfortable life. When a person desires to make a lot of money for their own personal gain, society benefits. This is because when a person works hard, the economy improves. Also, the selfish desire for money can lead to work that benefits other peole, like in the medical or political fields. These practical examples show that a person can be selfish while benefitting society.

There does come a point though where selfishness can have a highly negative impact, an issue that Fanny so critically misses. A highly publicized example of selfishness huritng society is the Enron corporate scandal. In this scandal, Enron executives lied to their stockholders about the state of their collapsing company while selling off their own shares to make a large amount of money. These actions by the executives were objectively beneficial to them. But these actions also hurt society on a massive scale. Not only did the workers of Enron loose all of the money they had faithfully put into the company, but the rest of the American tax payers had to front the bill for the executives trial and imprisonment. These selfish actions were not helpful and could have been avoided had these executives thought about how their decisions affect other people.

Not only does Enron display the detrimental effects of selfishness, it also displays the attidude of arrogance that Fanny prescribes as an essential component to a fulfilled life. The dictionary definition of arrogance is: an offensive display of superiority or self-importance. The executives of Enron felt that they were superior to their workers, and were therefore justified in their selfish actions to sink the company for a high profit. This reveals ways that unhinged arrogance can cloud a person's judgement and hurt society. As a matter of fact, their arrogance hurt themselves as well because they had to face trial and punishment over their actions. This is why arrogance is not the best attitude about life because it ultimately leads to a distorted perspective of reality where one seems justified in hurting others for self-benefit.

Now that we understand the negative effects of selfishness and arrogance, we can more importantly move on to the reason that religion is not an impediment to societal improvement, but rather an aid. Most religions generally promote the idea of self-sacrifice in order to achieve self-fulfillment. This basically means that by helping and caring for others you are helping and caring for yourself. In a sense, this is a way of focusing selfishness in a positive way. Most religions do not say that you can't adore yourself, as Fanny asserts, but in fact encourage you to adore yourself so that you may enjoy the benefits of self-sacrifice. This is something that is good for both society and the self, and not a hinderance to progress.

At first the notion of selfishness helping society does seem enticing, but upon further examination we see that selfishness and arrogance can infact be very negative if taken to the extreme. It is with this notion in mind that religion should be seen as one way that people can focus selfish behaviors in a positive way that benefit many people.

Link to Fanny's blog: http://bricenof.blogspot.com/2008/04/selfishness-its-pretty-great.html