...self-gain but not going farther than the social moral standard to accomplish those goals. I will show how psychological egoism and ethical egoism are false by showing how people sometimes do things because they just feel like doing them, and not all actions have a hidden meaning behind them. Psychological egoism is the theory that claims that anything you do, no matter what it is, is motivated by self-interest. That your motivation is influenced by your desires. That all of our actions even if they may appear to be altruistic, they must have a selfish motive behind it. Even with evidence of altruistic acts from today or in the past, believers of this theory will tell you that those actions can be traced back to acts of selfishness and not for the well-being of others. Last Sunday, while listening to the priest give his explanation of the Gospel, he narrated how once Mother Theresa found this malnourished young child in the streets. She noticed that there was a bakery nearby and walked to the bakery along with the child. Once in, she asked the baker to please give the child a loaf of bread, to this the baker answered by spitting on Mother Theresa’s face. She then clean the spit from her face and told the baker “now that you are done, can you please give this child a loaf of bread?” the baker stared at her and suddenly felt ashamed of himself and gave the child a piece of bread. When we talk about psychological egoism...
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...him, and left him perfectly fine a couple of minutes ago. As you drag out of bed and walk toward the crib you see your little baby crying and kicking. Nothing is wrong. He's not hungry,dirty, nothing. You pick him up slowly and notice that he instantly stops crying. You begin to put him back in the crib, but then he begins to wail again. You find this interesting. You might not see it, but the baby is acting very selfishly. Just wanting to get your attention when he is perfectly fine. He needs nothing but still cries for you when you are dying for only a few minutes of sleep. Babies are just an example of how the human species is naturally selfish even at birth. Since the day humans are born, they are brought into the world corrupted by selfishness,hatred, and cruel thoughts. Sinning since the day they began their life until they reach their end. The human race is naturally full of malicious thoughts and needs that eventually are brought out in actions or words. Evil is a word that has an infinite amount of definitions and can be described differently by others. Since evil has such a broad definition “...it is difficult to formulate a universal ethics, although there is, regardless of cultural differences, a considerable number of universal concepts and values to be examined in ethics” (Wolfgang G). Around the world, evil is seen differently throughout every religion, race ,culture etc. With this enormous range of possibilities it makes it hard for many to understand what makes...
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...Ryan Plunkett Ray Setters AMS 250 7 March 2013 The Culture of Narcissism Paper For over the past 30 years there has been a prevailing idea that American society has changed drastically. While it is undeniable that every person is different and there are always plenty of exceptions to the norm, in many ways our modern society has become very similar to what Christopher Lasch predicted in The Culture of Narcissism. Unfortunately, it would be safe to say that some modern people are in a state that is extremely pre-occupied with the self. The idea of narcissism came from psychology and is mostly attributed to Sigmund Freud. It was considered to be an extreme preoccupation with the self that distorted ones relationship to reality. This resulted in an inability to make a clear distinction between themselves as the subject and what existed outside them. They were so focused on themselves that they lost awareness of the real beyond them. Because the narcissist does not recognize the separate existence of 'the other' they tend to use reality as a mirror to reflect messages back to the self. The other is there to impress, to be admired by, and to get pity from. The Narcissist is so identified with his/her needs that the other person is simply there to be available for them. In his book The Culture of Narcissism Christopher Larsch describes the Narcissistic personality, “the Narcissist can function in the everyday world - and is often very charming. However, his devaluation...
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...Altruism and Prosocial Behavior Altruism occurs when our motive from our behavior is entirely for the interest of others and is not motivated by self-interest (Feenstra, 2011). Doing something for someone to make them happy with no alternative motive would be acting altruistically, because your ultimate goal was the happiness of the other person. The happiness of others is the true goal of altruistic motives is for the well-being of another person, not yourself (Feenstra, 2011). You might receive benefits because the person on the receiving end could show gratitude, but being altruistic is not asking or needing gratuity for actions that were made to make one happy. An altruistic person doesn’t look for anything in return for making one happy or doing a good deed for that person. When self-benefits are an unintended consequence of an action, that action is truly altruistic (Feenstra, 2011). The difference between egoistic and altruism is that egoistic is doing something for self-interest unlike altruism which has no motive for the action. Let’s say I do a good deed for someone by mowing their lawn and I do this because I know money will be offered and the money was my motive for mowing the lawn. An egoistic person motives involve an ultimate goal of self benefit. Anything one does as an egoistic person is geared toward self benefit, even though the act may be thought of as a caring act. The bystander effect is an overall tendency to watch while someone needs help. There...
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...Philosophy 202 Ethics Class July 25, 2013 Helping Others One day on the way home from work, I was driving on the freeway. I passed a car that had broken down and was sitting on the side of the road. There was a lady and her two little children that were stranded. It was hot outside and I stopped to see if I could help. I gave them a ride to their house, made sure that they would be ok and then I left. I never saw them again. I didn’t know this family; I didn’t stop because I thought that I may win an award or get famous because of it. I stopped because I have been in that position before and know how it feels to be stranded with your children. Why would someone help another person whom they don’t even know? There have been some controversial theories on the helping of others. One theory is from the egoists. A major believer in the egoism theory is the famous author, Ayn Rand. She believes that a person should only help another person if they hold value to them, or if in helping them they will receive something in return, which is all supposed to relate to one’s own happiness. Egoism claims that each person has but one ultimate goal: his or her own welfare. This theory also implies that not everyone can be an egoist. It relies on other people being altruistic. Most altruists believe that each person has an obligation to give pleasure and take away the pains of other people. Altruism involves the unselfish concern for others. It entails doing things only out of a desire...
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...Brian Yan All was good and well. The house was trouble free. There were no conflicts. This was prior to the Professor’s visit. In a couple of days, huge fights occur. Shots go off in the house and suicide almost committed. It was a completely different environment. This can all be attributed to the Professor. The professor is extremely selfish and it is this selfishness that is the source of all misery within the estate. For many years, Vanya and his niece Sonya, have been looking over the estate that belonged to Vanya’s sister, Maria who is also the first wife of the Professor. Meanwhile, the Professor and his young wife, Elena are living in city off the earnings of the estate. Retired with no job, he is simply a mooching cradle robber who needs constant care by Elena or Sonya. In the play, it is clear that he is no longer the brilliant man that he was once was. Naturally, the Professor is selfish because he has become extremely dependent on others due to his old age. He requires a lot from those around him and gives nothing back. Simply he is a burden as demonstrated in his own words to Elena “You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer. (Chekhov)” This does not only apply to Elena...
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...Universidad Pedagógica experimental Libertador “Rafael Alberto Escobar Lara” Upel Maracay. Name: Jessica Colmenares I.D 19.515.535 Being late says a lot about your personality. Nowadays, being late is one of the biggest problems in our country. People really don’t care to arrive early, even for important events. Are Venezuelan people accustomed to arrive late? This is a good question, and for my personal experience I think that we are accustom to arrive late which includes in classes. Is normal being 30 minutes late? This is not well seen by people from another country especially people from United States. I agree with that because I think that our time is valuable. We can make people understand the importance of arriving early and how other people could feel about that. In this essay I am going to talk about why people are late in Venezuela, why being on time is so important for academic success, for students, and how this behavior talks about your personality. For some people, being on time seems nearly impossible; no matter how important the event is. For example, I have a friend who when I asked her out and established a specific hour to arrive, she is always about 40 minutes late. One day, she made me wait for around 2 hours. I was really angry because I felt like I was losing my time. I thought this carefully because recently I have been late a lot and I hate people to wait for me and I don’t want to be an immoral person. I have been telling myself...
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...Jordan Hendry April 23, 2013 Writing – Mr. Williams In this Paper I am going to explain to you that I am convinced that all the problems you will encounter stem from one primary issue: greedy selfish people. People will always put themselves first. No matter what the coast is or who else they might hurt. There are major ways that selfishness and greed has lead us to the problems we find ourselves in. selfishness and greed are cancer. And sadly it is spreading like wildfire throughout our modern culture at an alarming rate. When you are young you are taught to “look out for yourself” to not let others take care of you. What began as an attempt at teaching kids to healthy self-confidence has become a problem; children and adults think they deserve everything and anything they want. We whine that it is not fair that other people have something they don’t have and live their lives expecting more all the time. Selfishness and Greed leads us to trampling and exploiting others to get what we want; this is not how we want our world to be in the future. In addition, selfishness in our world has resulted in many broken hearts and families. There has been countless numbers of marriages dissolved due to one or both parties wanting more than they give. Putting themselves first and their families last dissolving the most fundamental source of support and love. Looking out for yourself is important but not at the stake of your family. Sacrificing what we want in order to make someone...
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...Garrett Byrd Dr. Brown English-110 30 March 2015 Not Your Typical Grandmother Great characters make a story. As avid readers, we often remember our favorite stories not based on the story line, but based on the strong characters within the story. In the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” written by Flannery O’Connor, the grandmother is the central character. Posed as a “know it all,” she thinks of herself as a proper lady, honest, wise, and bases her life on the past. O’Connor portrays the grandmother as a very manipulative, highbrow, selfish, ungodly old woman, unlike your typical grandmother. These are clearly uncommon characteristics of what one would consider to be a maternal grandmother. It is these characteristics which make the grandmother such a strong and memorable character in O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” As early as the second line of the story, O’Connor introduces the reader to the grandmother’s manipulation. “She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind” (O’Connor 294). From the onset, O’Connor begins to set the stage and reveal the grandmother’s manipulation skills. “Now look here, Bailey,”… “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her then hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these...
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...There are ways to overcome human selfishness with the decision-making processes within large corporations, but they are extremely farfetched and unlikely. In order to overcome the selfishness you would need multiple people involved in the decision making process with high moral standards and a desire to make decisions that benefit others not just their own wallets. While it is a nice idea, most people genuinely like that don’t generally tend to get very far in large corporations. The people usually in charge are those who are “selfishly motivated and cannot perform actions from any other motive” (Fieser & Moseley, 2012). The Wall Street Journal wrote about large companies within the United States cutting jobs in America and transferring them to foreign countries. The impact was negative for our economy, better for a foreign economy, and best for the leaders of said businesses (Wessel, 2011). A solution to this scenario would be to bring at least the majority of the jobs back to America and take a slight blow to the overall profit, in order to decrease the odds of our own economy collapsing. Then again, psychological egoism runs rampant amongst those in charge and damaging profit for the overall well-being of the economy is out of the question right now. Psychological egoism has a small place in my own body of ethics and values. I do tend to be selfish when dealing directly with selfish people. So regardless of the circumstances I just may do some nice things and act certain...
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...Altruism and Prosocial Behavior Altruism occurs when our motive from our behavior is entirely for the interest of others and is not motivated by self-interest (Feenstra, 2011). Doing something for someone to make them happy with no alternative motive would be acting altruistically, because your ultimate goal was the happiness of the other person. The happiness of others is the true goal of altruistic motives is for the well-being of another person, not yourself (Feenstra, 2011). You might receive benefits because the person on the receiving end could show gratitude, but being altruistic is not asking or needing gratuity for actions that were made to make one happy. An altruistic person doesn’t look for anything in return for making one happy or doing a good deed for that person. When self-benefits are an unintended consequence of an action, that action is truly altruistic (Feenstra, 2011). The difference between egoistic and altruism is that egoistic is doing something for self-interest unlike altruism which has no motive for the action. Let’s say I do a good deed for someone by mowing their lawn and I do this because I know money will be offered and the money was my motive for mowing the lawn. An egoistic person motives involve an ultimate goal of self benefit. Anything one does as an egoistic person is geared toward self benefit, even though the act may be thought of as a caring act. The bystander effect is an overall tendency to watch while someone needs help. There...
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...Our 'must-have', “Me society” culture is damaging family life as materialism and a must have sense of selfishness become the norm in the U.S... The pressure on some parents to enroll their children in every Elite club and spoil them with technology and clothes to keep up with their peers is just one symptom of a sense of selfishness that has polluted our community in the past decade. And it's not just children who are suffering. Other parents, who are uncomfortable dealing with conflict, will try to smooth things over with material items. But a consequence of showering children with gifts is that they grow up believing they solve all problems and lead to a satisfying and happy life. Though, I rarely expect everyone to be good and helpful to me, I don’t even expect that people use me for their well being and behave in a manner to make me feel bad or worthless. I don’t expect that people should help us in return for everything we do for them, but we do expect that people would at least notice and weigh our efforts made to help them and not just take our efforts as granted .the best example I can come up with would be holding a door open for some one. Despite this action, I still come across people who are mean, arrogant, egotistical and selfish. Dealing with such people leaves me feeling hurtful and used to a great extent. More than, if one is a sensitive person with a soft heart then such associations might make them hard-to-forget, distressing experiences. One or two such...
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...New Narcissism 1. "New Narcissism" is a modern phenomenon, text 1 gives a very detailed description of the phenomenon. The author of text 1 presents Britney Spears as a self-destructive individual, who is a victim of the paradoxical development of our modern culture. But Britney isn’t the main focus point in this matter. It’s the Britney-obsessive Chris Crocker who draws his attention. Chris Crocker is known for crying like a mentally sick baby and howling: “leave Britney alone”, into a camera. He’s known for this particular quote, because he uploaded his video on the popular website, YouTube. The video has been watched more than 12 million times, by people from all over the world. But Chris didn't feel sorry for Britney, what so ever, he just wanted to obtain a lot of attention and become a celebrity. Chris got his 15 minutes of fame and a few days later Chris Crocker announced, he was in the process of making a new reality show on national television. This is a great example of new narcissism, Chris intentionally tries to get attention on Britney’s account, a very selfish and egocentric act and that is what new narcissism is all about. Narcissism is when you only think of yourself and your own needs exclusively. It’s when your self-esteem becomes a burden for others, it’s when you’re so self obsessed that you’re unable to see anything else but your own reflection. 2. Text 2 is written by Janice McDuffee, she begins her article by categorizing the college students as...
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... yet that seems to be strained these days. Many fields of expertise have created theories on the basis of Altruism. There are two main perspectives that have been set forth. Evolutionary Psychologists follow Maynard Smith’s Theory of “Kin Selection” (1963). Smith proposed that altruistic tendencies are passed on through genes of an individual’s offspring. That is why a person is greater inclined to help family over a perfect stranger. The Reciprocal Perspective is another theory that has been examined. It states that a person tends to be helpful to others only on the notion that the helpee will return the favor. If these broad views are true, why are there random people helping strangers? Just recently, a prime example of selfishness was followed by a very great show of true altruism. Adam Lanza brutally took the lives of 20 helpless children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary. The principal, a school psychologist and several teachers lost their lives protecting the children they loved so much. Vicki Soto was one of those heroes. While hiding her students in a small closet, she took the brunt of the attack as it descended on her room. She did not expect anything in return, most likely knowing that she would not survive another day. The...
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...supporters of psychological egoism will present arguments through theories such as Darwinism and Desire Satisfaction. This essay essentially aims to critically assess the substantiality of these arguments. In order to correctly assess the arguments in favour of psychological egoism, firstly it must be stated what is implied by these arguments. Psychological egoism has many differences to other egoist theories such as ethical egoism, which state we should be selfish. Psychological egoism however states that all human actions are uncontrollably selfish, and that this is part of our human nature. It should be noted before continuing that this essay will be assessing this more radical form of psychological egoism , which identifies that ‘selfishness is’ the only way one can possibly performs actions, disregarding any consideration of others unless this aids their selfish action in some way. Psychological egoism can seem plausible to its supporters for a variety of reasons. Some of the most common include the concept that desires are entirely our own and therefore pursuing any desire or action is selfish, which supports the idea that we pursue desires for our own satisfaction. A state of self- deception of our motives is also recognized as a major appeal of egoism. Finally the concept of morality is also used within psychological egoism arguments, maintaining that the knowledge that good deeds are often rewarded. It is claims such as these which, in the...
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