ON SELFISHNESS

Timmy Zhang, AP Lang. argumentative essay

When there is an apple on the table, the decision of either eating it or giving it

to people who are more hungry is the difference between selfishness and

selflessness. We all need basic necessities, like food and shelter, but we

sometimes share essential and non-essential items to others out of altruism.

Though the concept of selflessness conveys the best of humanity, mankind’s

practical future to survive and fight against challenges like climate changes

depends more on selfishness since more productivity and the beneficial state of

being morally lenient for your own interest matters significantly.

Diving into human’s past and present, we can see how self-interest exclusively

results in technological and social breakthroughs that benefit our future. In the

Industrial Revolution age, European countries like Britain became large powers

with a large, comfortable middle class because of steam engines and the textile

industry whose productivity bought wealth for the middle class. These

technologies emerged from patents that the British government issued to

investors, who want to earn money for themselves. They were encouraged to

invent machineries for their own well-being. Adams Smith had argued for such

benefits in his laisse-faire theory where the invisible hand, representing our self-

interest, eventually delivers better products and services to everyone because our

wants for ourselves are potent to drive us to produce the best product and

service. Even in the current days, major breakthroughs in space rockets by Elon

Musk’s Space X program becomes successful because his company wanted itself

to profit from the U.S. government’s billion-dollar initiative and fame SpaceX

had from working with NASA. The technologies they produced, whether shifting

mankind from Agricultural livelihood where people are starving to convenient

urban lives with much less starving or from present days to future’s potential

Space exploration with potential scientific breakthroughs and resources, all

signified how self-interest pushed us to develop better technologies and serve

mankind’s future with greater potential.

In the mean time, acting selfishly is easier for much of the human population,

and managing this selfishness well creates our better future. During Europe’s

Enlightenment period, Thomas Hobbes, a famous British thinker, called

humans “evil” in a sense that we are born to take over others’ food and

territory, which was a result he observed after being though the English Civil

War. Chinese philosopher Xun Zi’s argument was stated in a similar manner

by saying that we are naturally evil, and Chinese rulers should accommodate

our nature to act in favor of desires. Given that we are all so selfish, the

society’s future cannot be dependent on us acting in Christian ways to love our

neighbors: we will resist it, just like how the majority neglect or refuse to stop

climate change because factory causing emissions create massive profits.

When we cannot be so selfless, following the economy’s self-moderation and

utilitarianism where hardwork must be paid should be best to resolve

problems to move towards an economically stable while socially secure future.