Welcome to Selfishness.info

Many people think that selfishness is wrong, but nobody can live without being selfish. You cannot survive without acting in your self-interest. Everything that is good for you is selfish; to breath is selfish; to eat is selfish; to love is selfish; to live is selfish. Selfishness is the morality of life and freedom; nobody can live a good life without it.

Selfishness means that you are the beneficiary of your own actions; that you exist for your own sake and have the right to do what you want with your life. You do not exist for your own sake if your moral duty is to serve others.

Ethical and healthy selfishness

A morality of ethical and healthy selfishness means to act in your real self-interest without hurting anyone, and respect other people’s right to do the same. Each and every individual exist for his/her own sake and has the right to live his/her own life.

Without the right to act in your self-interest you do not own yourself and cannot live your own life. A morality of healthy self-interest gives you the right to be free and do what you want with your life instead of being a slave.

To sacrifice others is not in your real self-interest. A ruthless criminal destroys his own life. Healthy selfishness does not mean to be dishonest, narrow minded, short-sighted and rude. It means to live a good and healthy life; to be happy and achieve your own values.

“Contrary to popular opinion, all healthy individuals are selfish. Choosing to pursue the career of your choice is selfish. Choosing to have children—or not to have children—is selfish. Insisting on freedom and individual rights, rather than living under a dictatorship, is selfish. Indeed, even ordinary behaviours such as breathing, eating and avoiding an oncoming car when crossing the street are selfish acts. Without selfishness, none of us would survive the day—much less a lifetime.” – Psychologist, Michael J. Hurd

The selfish nature of values

Selfishness is inherent in the nature of values. A value is something that´s important to someone. Your personal values are that which is important to you. When you act to achieve your values you act selfishly; you act in your self-interest.

Thus, you can´t have values without being selfish. It´s the fact that your values are of value to you that makes them selfish. A totally selfless person is a person without any personal interests, and that´s a person without values.

The selfish nature of human rights

Selfishness is inherent in the nature of human rights. This is a self-evident fact. After all, the whole purpose of human rights is to protect people’s own interests. Selfless rights is a contradiction in terms.

All your rights are selfish. Your right to freedom is selfish. Your right to property is selfish. Your right to self-defense is selfish. Your right to live is selfish…etc. Therefore, a civilized and legal society that protects the rights of individual human beings is a selfish society.

Self-sacrifice is destructive

To make self-sacrifice the moral ideal means that humans should be sacrificed. You are a member of the human race, and to sacrifice yourself is to sacrifice a human being. To sacrifice other human beings is the other side of the same coin. Self-sacrifice and immorality goes hand in hand. Those who want self-sacrifice to be the moral ideal want to justify human sacrifice.

Dictators don’t want you to be selfish because they want to control you. A dictator’s goal is to turn people into puppets who blindly obey his wishes, and the altruist morality makes this easier. People can easily be controlled when they believe it is their moral duty to sacrifice their own interests and serve others.

”The wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit,” declares Hitler in Mein Kampf; a man must “renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests and sacrifice both.” - Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, p.68

Evil people get more power when good people are willing to sacrifice their own interests. Evil people can only be stopped if good people are selfish. It is only ethical selfishness that can prevent unethical selfishness.

The altruist morality of self-sacrifice makes it easier for immoral people to get what they want. The only way to stop them is to protect your own interests. Don’t support your enemies. It is immoral to support immoral people! Do yourself and society a favor: be selfish!