120 philosophical essays you must read in your life

Chapter 67

Chapter 4, Section 7, On Selfishness

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The ant's untiring and non-stop working spirit is commendable, but it is a very harmful creature to a flower orchard.Selfish people are like ants, but what they harm is not the garden but the society.

People should use reason to distinguish self-interest from self-interest.When seeking your own interests, do not harm others, let alone the king and the country.

People can't expect to be the center of the circle, and everything is aligned with it.For a king, he may be able to do this, because he represents not only the interests of individuals, but also the interests of the country.But for a citizen, selfishness is a virtue that should never be taken.This kind of person always distorts everything according to his own self-interest needs, and then he will harm one party and disrupt the society.

Therefore, when selecting good talents for the country, the monarch must have a sharper vision, and don't let such people make up for it.Because, once such selfish guys are appointed, they will sacrifice everything related to public welfare for their own self-interest, and become the most shameless corrupt officials.What they seek is the happiness of their own family, but what they endanger is the entire country and society.As the saying goes: "Light someone else's house and cook one of your own eggs", this is the nature of extremely selfish people.

In fact, this kind of person is the easiest to win the heart of the Lord.Because in order to achieve self-interested goals, this kind of person would rather flatter and flatter by all means.

The behavior of the selfish is the most shameful.This is the kind of rat-like behavior that burrows through a house and moves in just in time before it will collapse.This is the kind of fox-like behavior that tricks a bear into digging a hole for it, and drives the bear away as soon as the hole is dug.This is the kind of crocodile behavior that pretends to cry sadly when it is about to tear the prey that falls into its mouth.

However, the kind of "people who only know how to love themselves but don't know how to love others" always end badly in the end.Although they are always planning how to sacrifice others for themselves, the god of fate often makes them themselves, and eventually become their own victims.After all, no matter how good a person is at planning for himself, he still cannot get out of the giant hand of the gods who control fate!

【Together with you】

Selfishness is an instinctive desire that lies deep in the human heart.Selfishness is the hotbed of pathological psychology such as greed, jealousy, revenge, miserliness, and vanity.No one wants to work with a person with excessive selfish desires, so it will never be a great tool.The villains in the world are all fooled by their selfish desires; while the gentlemen in the world are all open-minded, capable of restraining their selfish desires and leading to success. "Humanity" never really bows to its knees, but continues to burn beneath the ashes that are temporarily sprinkled with "hyena-ness."

(End of this chapter)