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Greed and selfishness: The Greatest Gift to Humanity
Are humans inherently evil?...... many claim humans are good because they have the ability to display emotions and empathise with those who suffer the most. I beg to differ. There may have been a time I believed humans are caring and compassionate and helped people in need. That all changed, Now I know that humans act only and only out of their self-interest.
No matter what happens, the human character always resorts to its primal instinct, the instinct to ensure their own success, the instinct to fuel its own ego. I believe that even noble acts have an ulterior motive attached to them, a rich person donates when he/she has a PR issue, a middle-class person donates when he/she needs reassurance of their kind nature, a politician only spends on people who will ensure re-election and in all of this process the poor — they feed off the people with money as long as they can and never aim to get to the top because simply put they have a good life of free items which they obtain by manipulating the self-entitled pricks.
The true question is, is this the way our society should function? In a self-centred, uncaring, uncompassionate and greedy manner? Well I submit to you that, that is already the case. No matter any good deed you look at, it will most definitely be linked to a human’s greed or a human’s personal needs. To give you one example:
Alfred Nobel
This man as you must have already guessed is very closely linked to the Nobel Prize, a prize given to researchers and thinkers actively working towards the progress of the world. He is the person after whom the Nobel prize is named after and his fortune was the initial basis for the cash prize which comes with the award.
The initial reaction is to hail him as a ‘noble’ man if you may, but the truth is far from reality. A little-known fact - Alfred Nobel is also accredited with the invention of dynamite – the single most destructive invention of war. Be informed that the Nobel Peace prize is named after him. The reason why Alfred Nobel even gave his fortune for the Nobel Prize was to leave behind a legacy which did not include dynamites but something like the peace prize.
Isn’t that wonderful, to get the background behind one of the highest forms of credit in academia and activism and realise it was fuelled by one man’s greed to leave behind a legacy which was inspirational rather than destructive.
The reality is that everything in this world is motivated by self interest and greed. Nothing is done from the intention of doing something good. However, let me ask you this, why discredit the good, greed and selfishness provides? Why dismiss that because of it being motivated by someone else’s self-interests? It’s still doing good, isn’t it? Nobel Prize is still motivating research, thinking and activism, isn’t it? Now does it matter that its motivation was someone personal, greedy intentions?
So, in the end, to conclude I would say this, Humans are inherently selfish, uncaring, uncompassionate and greedy essentially call it— the human character. Well the truth is, simply put that the Human character being all those things is the single best thing for humanity not because it promotes those qualities but because it leads to good deeds.
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