Does selfishness create greatness?

[Djoser]

We're taught to share because the surrounding environment will teach them to be selfish. Morality merely serves as a guide of what's supposed to be right although contradicting society's lessons.

Of course a baby will cry if it has something taken from it. It's a baby. Hell sometimes, a baby will give someone something of theirs just cause. My niece and nephew did that when they were babies. My niece would just walk up to me and hand me something she had. Also, it's not hard to think of where morality came from. It's mostly aligned with religion, right? Did the Incas, Navajo, Ashanti, Aborigines, and other cultures around the globe teach morality?

Whose children are generally greedy? Which society are you talking about? Not all of the world is the same exactly place despite globalization. Humans while similar and related to animals, we're still unique. Even animals have society and order. Humans as a growing population would need some order in order to function at large. Hence the confederacy by Iroquios and so on.

Also, no human, if selfish, is completely selfish at heart because the children will have to be fed. Don't feed the children, they won't grow and the society won't survive. An inherently and completely selfish society wouldn't last. Because in order for a society to function, people must take care of one another. A society is composed of people, plural.

Charels Manson spent a large amount of his life in correctional facilities. He was raised by his Aunt and Uncle after his mom and other uncle robbed a store. He described his reunion with her as his happiest childhood memory, despite the fact that his mom sold him for a pitcher of beer. When he was 12, he took a razor blade to a boy's neck and sodomized him. He's been in and out of jail since he was 12 or so. He also believed an apocalyptic race war was going to occur soon. Manson's actions were far from "nature" and more like "fucked up upbringing".

Thomas Edison was a businessman. Being selfish would get him more money and recognition. He was especially jealous of his assistant and protege, Nikola Tesla, who surpassed him in everything, and was far more successful. Even topping his lightbulb invention with the flourescent light bulb, that lasted longer, brighter, and more energy-efficient. Tesla was just an inventor and scientist. So when Edison made the lightbulb, he also had the dollar signs in his eyes. Also, Tesla started making claims that he could improve his inefficient designs, and if and when he did that, Edison would lose money.

Also, define greatness. And even if you do achieve greatness, will you be happy?

Do you want to be great or achieve your ambition?

You're looking at a horrible example of society. You're looking at an individualistic society. If you look at others and look into some history, then you'll find your answer. However, you can look at your own community. Amongst most ethnicities, Latinos have always been cited to be thriving and successful due to having a strong sense of community that others lack. And communities aren't selfish.

[Younes]

I think you are hinting at Rational Choice Theory Mario, you should read up upon it.

Quote:Rational choice theory, also known as choice theory or rational action theory is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior.[1] It is the main theoretical paradigm in the currently-dominant school of microeconomics. Rationality (here equated with "wanting more rather than less of a good") is widely used as an assumption of the behavior of individuals in microeconomic models and analysis and appears in almost all economics textbook treatments of human decision-making. It is also central to some of modern political science and is used by some scholars in other disciplines such as sociology[2] and philosophy. It attaches "wanting more" to instrumental rationality, which involves seeking the most cost-effective means to achieve a specific goal without reflecting on the worthiness of that goal.

Quote:The "rationality" described by rational choice theory is different from the colloquial and most philosophical use of the word. For most people, "rationality" means "sane," "in a thoughtful clear-headed manner," or knowing and doing what's healthy in the long term. Rational choice theory uses a specific and narrower definition of "rationality" simply to mean that an individual acts as if balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage.

Weather it has boosted society, we can look at history, when the pharaoh ordered the building of Pyramids in order to ensure his own afterlife, is a selfish move, using the nations funds to ensure himself rather the society, but on the other hand it gave us amazing architecture and new ways & techniques in building constructions, but it's hard to define when and when not an action is, selfish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

[1871]

(06-30-2012 01:36 PM)marioalosangeles Wrote:  You see, society is a technology invented for the purpose of order.

Incorrect. Society has evolved and there was society at the very earliest stages of humankind..

Quote:mario
Man did not start as a social animal, but as a scavenger that eventually learned to use it's abilities to hunt.

Incorrect again - study anthropology. Mankind as hunter gatherers were huinting and gathering as groups from the earliest times - and of course they were not the only species to do so.

Quote:Mario

Being that our minds developed to such a point where we could find solutions to what for other animals seemed as a complex problem, we began to hunt in groups,

these skills were developed from hunting. People didnt develop then start hunting

Quote:Mario

not because we felt it in us to do so, but because it was a better tactic for survival "as long as I get my cut, we can work together"

Yes because humankind felt it in them to do so because they worked in groups because hunting was more effective. Its the same in other species such as lions, chimps, dolphins, wolves, etc, etc - this isnt just something particular to human kind.

Quote:
So this brought me to think further. Why are we taught to share when we are growing up? When does this sense of "morality" take place?

I think Kropotkin answers this question in Mutual AId

Quote;

Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886, dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are mentioned in a footnote in Chapter I of this book), and three of them dealt more especially with the subject under consideration; namely, Les Sociétés animales, by Espinas (Paris, 1877); La Lutte pour l'existence et l'association pout la lutte, a lecture by J.L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Böchner's book, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's lecture has more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men. As to Büchner's work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour -- whom I often do not know at all -- which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy -- an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.


http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_arc...intro.html

Quote:(story time)
Ok, so a boy was raised in a small town where he barely had any contact with other people, he had no father, and his mother left him in order to be together with some man she fell in love with. He was never taught to be nice, to share, to "love" all he knew was that the only person in life he had did not want him anymore. This brought out his true nature, because being on his own meant he had to depend on his instincts to survive. Although he later in life begins to socialize and becomes part of a group, his intentions remain selfish for the rest of his life.... Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you.... Charles Manson.
A man who was able to manipulate minds so well, that he was considered a God to some.

and an asshole to everyone else. Manson did not grow in complete isolation but was formed by the negative aspects of the society he grew up in and bad parenting as well as the fact that he was just an idiot psycho with right wing delusions. The great and succesful people were the innocents whose lives he destroyed.

Quote:Mario

Now having all that said. I ask the question again. Does selfishness create greatness? Do people who want money and power achieve higher levels of success?[/quoye]

There isnt one formula. Generally hard work mainly, commitment, talent, skill. Depends what you mean by success or greatness. Plenty of examples of people who were succesful just because they were keen on doing something and became succesful because of it.


[quote] Did Thomas Edison think of everyone when he perfected the light bulb, or was it a motivation caused by selfishness? What can I do to be in a better position? How can I make my name be known forever, how can I be great? How can I???

why would you want your name to be known forever? Who knows the name of Joseph Lister? Louis Pasteur? They were truly great. Truly succesful and saved milions and millions of lives even now as we speak - long after their deaths.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/louis_pasteur.htm

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_lister.htm

Commitment. Dedication to the task in hand, Not thinking about your own ego but instead what it is you want to achieve. Say with music its just about expressing what you want to say in an interesting way, that connects to peoples humanity by connectiong to your own - forgetting about your own ego, some humility and being genuine.

[psy0nyd3]

We were social animals long before we were mankind or hunters. As H. Habilis we even had the most primitive "Oldawan" knife technology and we rolled in groups. Yet we still occupied the niche of a tertiary scavenger, meaning we were usually 3rd in line to snag a piece of a kill. Immediately upon slicing off an arm or leg we'd scurry back into the forests to share with the family group. Standing at only 4 feet, we were quite a delicious snack for any predators that happened upon us. If we weren't social we'd never have survived and propagated across the globe like we have.

As a solitary creature we could never have invented ANY technologies. Technology is built upon layers and layers of individual innovations that are passed down to new generations through culture. Had we been solitary the knife tech one guy invents would die with him.

[marioalosangeles]

Interesting stuff guys. I humble myself and admit that I am not an expert om this subject (as you can already see) I'm only using what I have read to create an argument and see what response I get. I'm in search of answers...

[shakur420]

(06-30-2012 01:36 PM)marioalosangeles Wrote:  ...Man did not start as a social animal, but as a scavenger that eventually learned to use it's abilities to hunt. Being that our minds developed to such a point where we could find solutions to what for other animals seemed as a complex problem, we began to hunt in groups, not because we felt it in us to do so, but because it was a better tactic for survival "as long as I get my cut, we can work together"...

I don't know if I buy that. It might have been due to circumstances and not inherent feelings/needs (or like was said, it's just not true, I don't know). I don't know anything about the subject, about us being "social", but what I do know is my 3 kids. There's a stage they go through, usually in the first year, the second kid went later, went for a while, where they just cling to mommy. No matter what, they don't want to be away from mommy for a second. Moms goes into the bathroom, just that door in between them makes the baby go crazy. It's something my wife was prepared for, she'd read about it. It doesn't have anything to do with breast feeding or anything cause the 3 of them breast fed for different lengths of time, and the last kid for sure, started acting like this long after he stopped. Whether the same behavior would come out if the kid grew up with a single dad, or 2 dads, an orphanage, etc., I'm not sure. Not even sure if this relates to us being "social", or it's just some dependency shit, just wanted to point it out.

[Djoser]

^Wouldn't that be the same as women having a stronger connection with their children? I've heard that mothers go through a similar thing with their children throughout the childhood.

The way a child interacts with the father and mother are different regardless. I can recall doing the same with my mother after some years. In the beginning, I was more clung to my father and treated my mother like crap. To the point of her calling me a little demon. Then I became attached to her. Although, in my defense, my father disappeared when I was four. So all I had was my mother and grandmother(I was closer with her and more clingy with her than anyone else).

Also it could be 'cause, as an infant, the mother fulfills the physiological needs that the father can't. The father, at the point, can't fulfill any social needs, there aren't any. So the child then can relate to the mother more. This explanation makes sense to me.

http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachm...bowlby.pdf

[shakur420]

Yeah, yeah, like I said, I'm not sure. I haven't looked into it, but what I understand about people and how they work, my own experiences with experimenting with manipulation, there's a huge amount of nature and nurture that affects who people are. Is this a nature thing, where it's behavior inherent to the mother? Or a nurture thing where it's about behavior towards whoever plays that "mother" role? I really don't know, I mean this goes deep into the whole "if you have gay parents, you're more likely to be gay", and a whole bunch of other things, like why twins who are genetically identical (fraternal, paternal, I don't remember which one) and have very similar upbringings can turn out radically different, but I meant more to point out that the behavior is show in children who have very little exposure to social/anti-social environments. I remember my wife telling me that when she read about it, it was a recognized stage in babies/toddlers or whatever. My guess is they didn't exclude kids who grew up outside the classic "mother stays home and father works" environment. It might have also been displayed in kids that grew up in foster homes, orphanages, etc. I don't know, like I said, don't know that much about it.

I mean, just the example of growing up in a jungle is so inaccurate as a measure to see if we're social. Like, the jungle and the experiences there will naturally have an effect on the kid/person. If they grow up in a jungle, they don't grow up in a vacuum, right? There's shit that happens, and if there were 2 people who grew up together in a jungle instead of 1 person by themselves, it'd be different too (think of Blue Lagoon). I just don't think those types of questions give us very a useful basis, or controlled experiment situation or whatever. But kids growing up in similar environments - homes with parents, different types of parents, similar neighborhoods, economies, situations, etc. - give us a better look at what's inherent and what's learned.

[Djoser]

For the jungle examples, we can look at feral children. But the amount of detailed cases is real low. So there's still no accurate picture. The only thing I've gathered from that type of situation is that, developing language for feral children is extremely difficult as language must be learned before a certain point within a child's life.

Yeah, the twin thing is really weird. Twins can be brought up in two completely different environments but still have similar careers, lifestyles, and personalities. Yet, when brought up together, they can be vastly different.

One thing I do know is that when it comes to the child being obedient or being disciplined, the father has bigger influence. My mother always said that it's something in the father's voice that gets children to listen. In my case, it was true. But it's not one hundred percent. My niece wouldn't listen to me mostly cuz I never had to discipline her so when I had to, I'd had to be really assertive. But for my sister, or her grandmother, she'd listen at the drop of a dime. My own mother too. I was told that it was because my niece knew and perceived me as someone young like her, not as an adult figure. She related to me differently as opposed my mother(her grandmother). And that went on for years until she was about 4 or 5.

[shakur420]

Yeah, like discipline, I find it, in my kids at least, to be a learned behavior thing. The more consistent me and my wife are, the more they listen. If one of us slacks off for a week, threatening punishment but not following through, they'll start to ignore it and will only listen to the one who means what they say. Usually that's me, but when my wife starts following through with time outs and all that shit, they start listening to her a lot more.

Chris Rock jokes about dad's and discipline, lol, but are there any studies on that shit? Is there any large consensus on shit like that? I figured it's just an old wives' tale.

[Djoser]

Some studies indicate that the presence of a father and his positive behavior brings out positive results in kids. That's a no-brainer, and I can find that in a typical ABC news report. I haven't found anything that actually explains the connection, if there is one.

---

Another thing, it should be expected that kids would show more selfish behavior at least because today's media has a bigger influence on kids and purposefully. Companies hire psychologists to help create more entertaining ads that create a want within kids so kids will nag to their parents to get them something or take 'em to Chuck E. Cheese. And from what I've seen around me, lots of parents are becoming punkasses, and give in. Also, some parents are indirectly letting the media raise their children by letting it tell them how to. All these dinner table commercials, Above the Influence shit, and being all alarmed about sexting on Tyra Banks stupid show. Nowadays, it's like Parents vs. the Media.

---

Quote:Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with them, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about six months to two years of age. When an infant begins to crawl and walk they begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment; these, in turn, lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's perceptions, emotions, thoughts and expectations in later relationships.[2]

Quote:Research by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth in the 1960s and 70s reinforced the basic concepts, introduced the concept of the "secure base"[5] and developed a theory of a number of attachment patterns in infants: secure attachment, insecure-avoidant attachment and insecure-ambivalent attachment. A fourth pattern, disorganized attachment, was identified later.[6]

Attachment Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory

Quote:Bowlby’s (1982) ethological theory of attachment postulates
that children in secure relationships use their caregiver as a “safe haven” and “secure base” from which to explore their environments. Attachment theorists believe that over time children develop representations, or “internal working models,” of their early
experiences with their caregivers that will guide both intra- and
interpersonal well-being (Bowlby, 1982). Although Bowlby emphasized the importance of a secure attachment to one’s primary
caregiver, a role almost exclusively reserved for mothers in most
species, some early attachment research revealed that many infants
are likely to be distressed on separation from either parent (e.g.,
Kotelchuck, 1976) and direct attachment-related behavior toward
both mothers and fathers on reunion (e.g., Lamb, 1976). Thus,
although father
child attachment remains understudied, it appears
that attachment relationships can and do form in most father
child
dyads (Lamb, 2002). Furthermore, father
child attachment security has been implicated in numerous child outcomes, such that
securely attached children show fewer behavior problems (Verschueren & Marcoen, 1999), greater sociability (Sagi, Lamb, &
Gardner, 1986), and more reciprocated friendships (Verı´ssimo et
al., 2011) than those in insecure relationships. Indeed,
father
child attachment security appears to be important for children’s nonclinical outcomes, and may well lower their risk for
internalizing and externalizing forms of psychopathology (Phares,
Rojas, Thurston, & Hankinson, 2010).

Brown, Geoffrey L., Cythia Neff, and Sarah C. Mangelsdorf. "Father Involvement, Paternal Sensitivity, And Father-Child Attachment Security In The First 3 Years." Journal Of Family Psychology 26.3 (2012): 421-430. Family & Society Studies Worldwide. Web. 1 July 2012.

http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-um.res...ehost-live

And John Bowlby and Mary Aisnworth seem like names of interest on the subject.