“The man who does not value himself cannot value anyone or anything.”
– Ayn Rand
“Selfishness” is a bad word in our society. We grow up hearing “sharing is caring” and “be fair”. These aren’t bad things to do, but they come with a strong underlying implication that being selfish is bad.
It makes sense on the surface – you should be compassionate and care about other people. Nobody wants to hang out with somebody who is only focused on themselves, and don’t care about anyone else.
This may work for social situations, but when we let this mindset bleed into our pivotal life choices, things can get dicey. Biologically, every human cares about themselves more than anyone else. To deny this is to fight our own biology.
If everyone is focused only on themselves, then everyone’s best interest is taken care of. Everybody provides for themselves, and nobody expects anybody else to provide for them. This is an empowering mindset that gets lost when we put the focus on caring for other people more than ourselves.
When people begin to focus on other peoples best interests above their own, those people develop a dependency on the support. Eventually, they lose the ability to take initiative in their own lives which creates a vicious cycle.
When one places his own interests above anything else, he is able to satisfy himself before anything else. Once he is satisfied, it becomes easy for him to provide for other people.
In a capitalistic system, people are selfishly rewarded for providing value to other people. The market is the decider of value. If a business satisfies the market, they will profit greatly in the form of money, and the market will profit greatly in the form of the solution the business provides. If a business fails to satisfy the market, people will not gain value from it. As a result of this, the business will not profit.
This is more “fair” than putting your interests on the backburner for the sake of others.
Selfishness is a virtue. We are each born with this knowledge, and lose it with time.
We exist for our own sake, not for the sake of anyone else. The achievement of our own happiness is our highest moral purpose. Anything other than that is a distraction.