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brushstrokes ::hello, i am july

Aaron from Edmonton, Alberta writes in:
"Is it wrong to be selfish?"

Well Aaron, that's a pretty general question. There's different kinds of selfish. There's different kinds of selves. Even if you're goal is to progress all of mankind, you're still being human selfish :] (what about the rest of the animal kingdom >O )

Your self is layered: you're a body, a mind, a thought, a memory, a moment, a set of ideas, a family, a group of friends, a society, a country, a species, a planet, a universe. You can adopt a whole spekkoek of identity ((I think I self-identify with ideas more than anything))

Some acts benefit one of your selves while harming another self. For example, if you are hording food from other people who are starving: you're being selfish with your body-self while lamely managing your society-self. If you join the army: you're being selfless with your body, lame with your friends-self (if no one wants their friend to die), selfish with your country, and lame with your species. Selfishness can be good: some systems work best when all parties are being completely self-interested (in computer science this is called a greedy algorithm). Evolutionary darwinism, for example: self-interest of the organism drives adaptation and complexity of the whole biosphere. Capitalism is another loose example: ideally the self-interest of the society is directly tied to the self-interest of the individual (though we've been totally disregarding the planet-self). Greedy algorithms only work when competition is fair (example: monopolies harm the entire economy; high-tech species like humans tend to overpopulate, hunt other animals into extinction, and harm the biosphere). It may seem like it is a bad idea to even act for the selfish interest of the human race in the first place, but think about this: if a planet-threatening asteroid was heading for Earth, guess who has all the freaking nuclear warheads and space-travel capabilities to pull an Armageddon and save the planet? That's right: nukes = save the planet.

Selfishness is not all that clear; everything is intertwined, selves are tied together, you have to intelligently consider everything. If you legitimately ask a girl out, you're being selfish to your body, your Aaron mind, your Her mind, your combined mind with her, your family, your species, and it's all good. But say someone else likes her (another you). Hmm. What do you do when you're both you? (If your opponent is you, then you win the girl either way.) Recall that fair competition can be healthy. If you compete to be the brighter bird in the forest, the more melodic singer, the more elegant dancer, the more secure nest-builder, the more humorous or creative or poetic or interesting monkey, then you serve to benefit the species by developing awesomeness and competing against others in sexual selection. You could also lie and make your opponent look bad-- but you would not want your opponent-self to play by those tactics, also you would be deceiving the very girl whose soul you're trying to connect to. Also as a species you might not want to select for dishonesty traits and rather select for compassionate ones (on the other hand, deception may be a sign of cunning/intelligence). Plus all that time spent deceiving could have been spent writing her a song :]. Recognize empathy as a turn-on. Recognize that winning a girl by means of pure awesomeness feels better than anything, and your relationship will be strongest, and you will have a clear conscience.

If you want to ask yourself whether you're being selfish, you might consider that everything is absurd and nothing matters. You might also intelligently consider your influence on all these levels, and which selves are more important than other selves and for what reasons, and how your actions butterfly through the whole system (karma). Violence begets violence. Being a dick begets being a dick. For example, if you pull a Hitler and try to conquer Europe, you might appear to be benefiting yourself and your country and your race, but it's a bad move if you care about your name, your legacy, and your lasting impression on history as a douchebag.

But maybe you don't particularly care about anything greater than your person. Just you. Okay. How do you intelligently manage your person then? Even your person is many selves: your body, your mind, your ideas, your role in society, your role with your friends. Especially your mind, which can believe its any self or hierarchy of selves. You probably want to avoid cutting off your left hand so that your right hand gets all the attention. Being selfish in the moment can hurt your future self. For example, if you manipulate a girl to sleep with you, that may benefit your present self.. but you may end up with a lasting reputation as a douchebag, and maybe deal with guilt. Or for example, if you cheat on your girlfriend: either you tell her and she hates you and she has trust issues for the rest of her life, or you hide it from her and you live in paranoia and you're never again able to bond the same with her on the deep levels of your souls and psyche together. If you don't have a clear conscience, if you're in a self-created hell, then you're missing out on the awesomeness of having a clear mind. But you can also destroy yourself. Evolve. Realize you used to be a dick and adopt a new awesome self. Ego death + rebirth. (I feel like this was originally the function of baptism. This also feels like the original meaning of the Buddhist/Hindu cycle of rebirth). If you're in an argument, you can make amends. If your country is evil and militant, you can overthrow the government and install a democracy. Mmm, fresh new self, hot off the oven.

Also, when being selfish, recognize the parts of your self which extend beyond your lifespan --- the IDEA of you. People's memories of you. Your legacy. What people remember you for. Your lasting impact on the world. The wake you leave behind. The infinite chains of cause-and-effect you set off. Your imprint in chaos. Biology dies, but ideas are immortal.

Also, if you recognize other people as yourself -- other yous from other points of view running around in an illusion of isolation -- then think about it.. you're making love to every beautiful woman on the planet simultaneously. You're skydiving out of planes, studying octopuses at the bottom of the ocean, and orbiting space. You're composing symphonies, engineering computers, writing novels, generating ideas, ending wars, and busy being the most complex thing in the known universe. You're freaking humanity. (You're also acting like a tumor on the planet, crippling yourself with war, spreading hate, and raping all these women simultaneously -- so it can be a difficult perspective to overtake. But you can short-circuit this by only identifying with awesomeness m/) But the useful thing about this perspective is that you can bypass jealousy: When was my left hand ever jealous of my right hand for doing all the fapping?

Nothing's even whatever. Also: everything is absurd. Sometimes purposely depriving yourself of things you want.. feels even better, you get existentialism points. Sometimes by not pursuing desire you gain that which was originally desired. I don't really know anything. This is just one perspective. Situations are more complicated than I make them seem. But maybe reading this has spurred your mind to think in some way. I hope you gain insight on your problem. CJ