Life, or something close to it.

Yup, it’s true. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is stupid. And it’s something most of us have known for a long long time, except we don’t realize or don’t want to. To give a word to the claim it’s called ethical egoism. I didn’t know that till recently, (ignorance is highly underestimated) and Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, called it objectivism. According to her, the moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self interest. Which is just another way of saying, be selfish… be happy. We are human beings, selfish by nature. We have to learn to accept our intuition. Being selfish is within us all. But don’t worry it’s not a grim premonition; it’s in fact a full-proof path to happiness. We are selfish by disposition, it’s almost a species thing. Or so you can believe, to placate the guilt burning a hole in your heart or you can accept what I say is true.
All our actions, more or less, are guided by feelings self interest. Let me demonstrate using an example. Imagine you are a scientist with a high-tech, fully equipped, research laboratory, hypothetical situation of course (hence the ‘imagine’). Anyway, so you’re a scientist, researching and trying to find a solution to cancer. You also happen to have a rival, or rather, a peer working on the same thing. If asked, both of you would reply, that you were doing this to help the people suffering with this dreaded disease. Because, we all like to see healthy cancer free people. And, it’s only natural to reply as such, being respectable scientist, it’s what is expected of you. You might even believe what you say. The research continues for months and years, time keeps ticking away but you have to do this, for the people .But just when you are really close to a positive result, your ‘peer’ beats you to it. He somehow cures cancer. After all the drama, the eventual result will be the same, the people will still be cured, cancer will still be driven out of their ever grateful bodies and we will have more healthy cancer free people. In a way you get what you wanted without completing what you should have. This was what you said you wanted. But after all that, will you have the heart, to share the joy that is present in this human miracle? After all this years of research will you be able to be grateful that finally cancer is cured even though you had nothing to do with it? Though it’s what you said you wanted, didn’t you actually want the person to bring about this miracle to be you? Weren’t you, behind the entire philanthropic charade, actually driven by the selfish desires that dwell in the heart of every one of us? Weren’t you a selfish human being? But more importantly wouldn’t you have been happy, had your selfish desires come true?
In the give and take relationship, the giver is supposed to feel better than the taker. I find that very hard to believe. And the people put forward the argument that you feel happier when you give than when you take. If I allow myself to believe this for a moment, even then these are selfish motives really. Because you are giving, first and foremost not because you like to see the smile on their face but because it makes you feel better about yourself. You are actually using the other person’s misery to help yourself to a large helping of that much needed, much desired feel good sensation. And though it may sound horrible, it’s actually not that bad at all. If giving is what makes you happy, then there’s no reason to stop. It doesn’t become wrong if it’s based on greedy intentions. The end result that comes out of it is still the same. The ends always justify the means.
Religion, gives the bribe of heaven, eternity in paradise and the fear of fire of hell. So you don’t do this because you’re afraid of hell, or do this because you want to go to heaven. But in religion things are always done because God said so. And we listen to God because we do not want to anger him. We have to be on his good side when Judgment day arrives. And to be in heaven you have to score good marks at your assessment. Your primary interest is to get into paradise, stay happy and do everything to prevent yourself from burning in earth, sorry hell, I meant hell. Religion, more or less, uses that selfish inclination, to make you follow its path. And then there are other issues of reincarnation and rebirth in various religions that make you do the right things. Not because doing the right thing is right but because doing the right thing gets you better chance at a better life next time around.
We of course, leave out the saints and the enlightened ones from this discussion. Because well, they are pretty infallible, patient, without desires or rather suppressed desires, almost perfect and therefore boring. We, the rest of the population, are human beings, imperfect to the core. And that’s what is good with us. Being selfish is only wrong because that’s we have been told from day 1. But we know, our brain, the rational part of the body, puts self-improvement as the paramount objective. We are individuals, before we are a family, a society, a community, a city, a country. We need to look after our interests first, and if, as a side effect others too get some pleasure out of it, then well and good. If not, at least we are happy and therefore our paramount objective is complete. We can then look ahead to creating a happier society and a happier world. Anyway, this is not a rule of physics that has to apply to everyone. These are just a chain of thoughts, that some may find right, some may find wrong and some may find it right though wouldn’t want to admit it. I am not saying that you have to think only about what will suit you best, before you think about how others think or feel, or what affect it will have on others, before you decide on doing something. No, wait. That’s exactly what I am saying. But there’s a silver lining behind all this. Most of the people inhabiting our planet are pretty miserable, which can only mean most of us are leading religious, philanthropic, altruistic, selfless lives. .(enter WINK emoticon here).