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there is no such thing as a selfless act

Good day Maya and Tryptamine*Dreamer

I tend to agree with both statements but with a bit of twist

It is true I think that we do not have any control over out thoughts, beliefs and what we stand up for
that we are in fact like robots.

Personally before I did shrooms I had a certain type of belief, then I took shrooms and that belief changed, What Happen?
Well the shrooms played around with my neurotransmitters and viola nee belief. just like replacing Microsoft windows for Linux or changing the desktop theme.
So I think that humans are like robots plus I think once robots become self aware they will also think they make decisions even though the decision they make will be what humans program them to make, and how they feel about those decision will also be how they were programmed to feel about it.

Where I agree with Maya is that yes humans do have control over our actions, not total control, but quite abit of control in that we can have and intention and do the actions that will bring that intention in reality.

But then it is weird, because robots would also have intentions, but they will only have the intentions that humans programmed them to have and they would theoretically think it is their own intent and they would then put together all the action to bring it into reality.

So then maybe we are also just programmed, we like what we like we do what we do and we intent what we intend because we were programmed to.

To get back to the topic, if we are all programmed then we are neither selfish nor and we not we just following the program.
 
Hallucinating that you did something which you did not do ie replace your operating system.
Free will includes serving the machine (human body) because we have not chosen to be alive.
Without that choice being made for us by sporadic abiogenesis, then we could never ask the question.
Whatever the origin we have no choice but to exist.
Struggling to die may not seem like much of a challenge but by natural selection we are the beings which tolerated being with feelings of being happy and this leads all life to naturally be that which preserves and enjoys life the most.
There will always some part of ourselves that struggles with this.
Family bonds ensure we stay alive, warfare as well, and our constant need to destroy and the bliss we feel upon dying all stem from this root of non-compliance, redirected at our parents and self-hate directed toward others in war.
Clearly this gives a strong argument for partial free will. Yes you can choose but all chooses play part in our life and death, so they are not random.
There is no reason behind life and yet knowing this changes nothing. We are capable of free will, but are trapped in an irrelevant universe.
 
Wow this topic must be debated about a LOT. I've had this exact same discussion with a close friend once too, lasted about 4 hours in which my opinion was that indeed selfless acts do not exist. Just about every argument heard in this topic was brought up in that discussion too. He tried to come up with examples that were undoubtedly selfless but in every example I could point out a selfish motivation. At the end he had to admit that my point was valid but made the very good remark that selfish motivation is something a lot easier to prove than selfless motivation. In the end I think this is indeed an endless debate which will never be undoubtedly proven or dis-proven. It makes for a very interesting discussion though. My core argument being that if you look at evolution, selfishness makes much more sense than selflessness because the selfish has a better chance to survive. Even if an individual performs an act for the betterment of a group of people and not directly for himself, the betterment of the group is the betterment of the individual so in the end is a selfish act too...
 
This entire topic seems largely semantic/pedantic...i.e. someone said you're being selfish for wanthing to take drugs instead of help your grandmother. Then, while on those same drugs, you defensively start rationalizing why this is just another way for the "man" to keep you down.

But really, where does the desire to be a good person come from? Is it the basis for humanities survival?
Is survival selfish? It predates, greatly, any of our own "selves," and is supremely unselfish because it's the only thing separating us from ignorant bliss. Survival continues the suffering, and bringing someone back from the dead would be SUPREMELY selfish, if it were possible.
 
Oh so curious. Interesting debate going on here. Question: So if a person does something for another, even when they are complete strangers in person, never met, never will, if help is requested in so many words, (between the lines or not) and then received, is the giver doing a selfish or selfless act? Sure , the giver feels good with that 'hope' that it helps; but other than a warm fuzzy feeling, (which is great) there is nothing else received other than the notion that perhaps, just perhaps something good came of it. Does that mean the giver is selfish?
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
But really, where does the desire to be a good person come from? Is it the basis for humanities survival?
Is survival selfish? It predates, greatly, any of our own "selves," and is supremely unselfish because it's the only thing separating us from ignorant bliss. Survival continues the suffering, and bringing someone back from the dead would be SUPREMELY selfish, if it were possible.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting point. Are some people really better off alive?

There will always be people who act and those who don't. When I lived in China, the spectator culture of watching but not interfering was way more prevalent. They call it kan renao 看热闹 which sort of translates as "watching liveliness". People will watch all kinds of calamities without interfering. In some Buddhist traditions, non-interference is the most compassion course.

In the west we seem obsessed with the parable of the good samaritan in some ways. It's as though a person doesn't have value unless they are proving how good they can be. I think to talk about altruism we first have to decide what is an act of good.

Let's turn this on its head then. If someone saving someone's life can be twisted to make it seem like they really did it for selfish purposes, what about ending someone's life? How many of us would feel comfortable with euthanasia or homicide to defend another person? I think the personal sacrifice would be much more evident if someone had to kill someone, since it goes against social ethics.

To me altruism is clearly seen in doing something that you wouldn't necessarily want to do. Saving a baby from being hit by a car is something praise worthy but what about putting down a baby who is so sick that it will surely suffer a wretched death otherwise?

Altrusim can be seen in mercy, when there is absolutely nothing you can gain by yielding to another person's need.
 
you are right... we are all inherently selfish human beings... to a certain extent.... people like Dalai Lama, for example, is a true spiritual and emotional leader of our modern culture... but for the regular people in modern society, most are really selfish people and only care about what they can get, achieve, and accomplish themselves...
 
It's a hard thing to do, to truly, honestly and sincerely do something nice for someone, something selfless, without doing it for the feelings of 'wow, that was a nice thing I just did.'

There's this one guy who sits at this one corner in town with a sign, asking for money. I was stopped at the light one time, and I had a few bucks in my pocket that I could have parted with, but I had to really think about why I was doing it, if I was doing it for the right reasons, because I genuinely wanted him to have the money and not because I felt guilty or because I wanted to feel like I had won some karma points.

I came to the conclusion -- before the light turned -- that I actually did want him to have the money, and so I gave it to him, but it took me a minute. It's not that there's necessarily anything wrong with helping someone out and feeling good about it, but, you know, I would like to think that it's possible for one to have more genuine intentions than just, "oh, well, I've got some money I can part with and it will make me feel less guilty about everything I have when there are so many others without"
 
I do things every day that I don't need to or really gain something from besides the fact that I can take the time to do it when no one else really does.
That makes me feel kinda good. But is it for me all along idk.
 
^yes but you don't consider the feels before you act. the feels are just the consequence, and that only takes place IF you have the time to dwell on it. in other words, it is not part of the primary drive to act in the first place. you help someone because you think it is right, or you're bored or you're intuitively predisposed to OR you hope for a reward, or many other things.
 
all things for feel good. Or have feel good in common in some way. Feel good tied to having needs met, and security, for starters. We are social creatures and spend a good portion of our lives being taken care of or taking care. As social animals it would be tied pretty deeply to feel good about helping. Maybe we make sacrifices because of an internalized image of the "greater good", and feel empathy, or have some sense as to the position of another.
 
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I have often done things for others without expecting anything in return, and sometimes walk away feeling no better than before I did them. Sometimes I walk away thinking that was a bit of a pain (selfish thought I know). Not sure, but I feel that some hide behind the guise of calling good deeds selfish as a way to excuse themselves from ever having to think about anybody else... not meant as a personal attack in any way or a self-righteous post just a viewpoint.

edit: @ what 23 : good points but I hardly find empathy tied to feeling good... I see what you are getting at though.
 
The more you apply mind to altruism, the less it makes sense. The desire to do good is something embodied, and the mind rationalizes it later with its stories about what happened. Another word for good is inherent "rightness", or truth. When you are embodying an experience that feels right, it is said to feel good.

In another thread ebola? was expressing dissatisfaction with morals and ethics always boiling down to "because it seemed like a good thing to do." If you take mind out of the equation, inherent good exists. That goodness often appears in moments of pure action.

I think we do a lot of things without "self" getting involved. Our entire subconscious is a world without self.
 
When I first heard "that there is no such thing as a selfless act," I was kind of taken aback as well. The person I first heard it from (a Buddhist priest) was quit intelligent, so I thought about it. It's bad to be selfish, and I like to think of myself as being at least a little bit altruistic. Maybe the hardest thing about the idea is admitting to oneself that everything one does is selfish on some level. But denying it is hypocritical or self-righteous.

Going back to the original post, the idea that there is no such thing as a selfless act is common in Eastern religion. In both Hindu and Buddhist religions, everything we do is motivated by selfishness. As an example, dose one volunteer or donate at teh local food bank because you are actually overwhelmed by feelings of love and compassion for the poor? Or are you acting out of some vague sense of guilt or trying to be a "better person" or some nagging feeling of responsibility or something similar?
 
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Not sure if I've posted in here already, but I had another though on this topic.

I don't think there is such a thing as a selfless act, because implied with "selfless act" is an act that is considered "good". Obviously we're not talking about a selfless act that does harm here, that would be a negligent action. But my main thought is because there is no such thing as a a "good" or "bad" act, or people, that there can essentially not be a selfless act in this regard. Good and bad simply don't exist outside of our human relative thinking.

So in essence, the question is framed wrong and does not require an answer. How can you answer a question that is wrong?
 
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