This post was inspired by Venom’s post about taking the word “selfish” as a compliment. I myself am often accused of being selfish, and it’s a very common accusation leveled against MGTOW in general, so I thought I would take a moment to analyze the nature of self-interest and selfishness.
Using the terms synonymously for now, selfishness/self-interest is the basis for all human action. Both Plato and Aristotle (and later Aquinas) argue that all human actions are motivated by some perceived benefit. An objective analysis of the motives behind your own actions and choices will reveal this to be so. Because humans have free will, and the will is naturally ordered towards what is good (that is, what is desirable), humans will always choose or act based on what they perceive as beneficial to them.
Even moral actions stem from self-interest. If you give money to a homeless person, your act may be described as “selfless” insofar as there is no obvious benefit to yourself. However, even the most selfless acts imaginable ultimately stem from self-interest, insofar as you believe that performing them makes you a better person, and thus improves you in some way.
I agree with the notion that the essence of MGTOW is self improvement/self actualization. Self-interest is what allows you to become the best version of yourself. Humans make choices based on what benefits them, but there is a real distinction between perceived benefit and actual benefit. Objectively analyzing whether a particular action truly benefits you or not is an essential step towards making smart decisions and living a happy, healthy life. MGTOW reject marriage precisely because it fails an objective, rational cost-benefit analysis. Thus, like Venom, when people accuse of me of selfishness, I generally take that as a compliment. I live for my own happiness, not to please everyone else: not to please feminists by serving women, and not to please tradcucks by serving the system.
However, traditionally the word “selfish” was used to describe the vice of following self-interest at the expense of virtue. Understood in the true sense of the word, selfishness does not benefit you. It makes you stingy, miserly, and uncharitable, which weaken or completely sever your ties to your fellow men. Before you start protesting that breaking ties with other men is usually a good thing (with which I would agree), recall that humans are social animals by nature, and that relationships with other people are (or at least should be) mutually beneficial, since many together can accomplish what one alone cannot.
A man who follows his self-interest will gladly break ties with people when their relationship is not mutually beneficial, as rightly he should. However, he will retain and strengthen relationships of mutual benefit. A selfish man is so focused on his own self-interest that he drives others away from him, which, ironically, means he ends up hurting himself, as he deprives himself of the benefit of healthy relationships.
Aristotle’s “Ethics,” a treatise on morality, famously make the claim that virtue is a mean between two extremes: one excessive, and one defective. I argue that self-interest is a virtue (or at least, the habit of objectively discerning the choices and actions which benefit you is a virtue). This being the case, feminists represent the excessive vice (i.e. selfishness) because they demand everything for themselves while offering nothing in return, and tradcucks represent the defective vice (a sort of misplaced selflessness) because they want men to offer everything to women and the state, while asking for nothing in return.
In summary, I don’t disagree with Venom’s post at all. Selfishness, properly understood, is in fact harmful, both to yourself and to others. However, because our society is so gynocentric, I posit that when a man is accused of selfishness, especially by women, he is probably in fact merely self-interested, but not necessarily selfish. The virtue of self-interest and the vice of selfishness appear to be the same thing from the perspective of gynocentrism, which calls on men to sacrifice everything and expect nothing in return.
Women are better at multitasking? Fucking up several things at once is not multitasking.
Penman_Frey 2 years, 2 months ago.
