Improve Your Welfare Being Via Enlightened Selfishness



By Siya Manci, 21 March 2016

As an individual you might have tried not to be selfish but be selfless which is the norm or value of almost every society. That one should not always put himself first every time, but to work for the benefit of other individuals as well. You might have tried to be kind and benevolence towards other people, in order to meet their needs. However, at the end you are still not happy and fulfilled, feel like you have been used.  

What you need to know, you will never be able to meet the needs of all people you are not Jesus Christ, neither all people around you or those seem important to you. If you want to be fulfilled, that is be contempt with what you have and happy you need to develop your wellbeing first. To be able to meet the needs of others, meet your own and be satisfactory firstly, then you may begin to consider helping others to meet their needs. One way to do that, is what idealistic and philosophic people call enlightened selfishness.

The philosophy of enlightened selfishness is that you should take care of yourself first, meet your needs, take into account your own self-interest, improve your emotional, mental, physical, spiritual (if you are theistic) and your social wellbeing first. Enlightened Selfishness is not a pure selfishness neither pure selflessness. But it puts you in middle of both extremes of selfishness and selflessness. Did not King Solomon say? “There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there a wicked man who prolong his life through his evil deeds; do not be over righteous, neither be over wise-why should you destroy yourself? Do not be over wicked and do not be a fool-why should you die before your time? It is good to grasp one and not let go of the other, whoever fears God will avoid both extremes” –King Solomon 10th Century B.C. The main point here is that, it’s good to be righteous but do not let people use you for your righteousness. He finalises by saying that you should avoid both extremes. In this case, both the extremities of selflessness and selfishness.  
      
When you have the ideology of enlightened selfishness, you achieve your own self-interest before you meet interest of others. As you’ve read it’s not pure selfishness, for you will then meet other people’s interests. In other words, this is a win-win situation. You do not achieve or accomplish your desires at the expense of others, neither do others accomplish theirs at your expense. If one has enlightened selfishness, people will not call him selfish neither will he feel being used for his selflessness. If all people were to have enlightened selfishness, the society would be well improved with everyone’s welfare being improved. 

It will be good for you to take hold of this, in order for your social life to be in a way that you would like. So you cannot not complain about being used and not happy neither fulfilled. Another important thing, you can never meet all people’s interests, for you have different ideologies, philosophies, perception and perceptiveness of this world. But meet the interests of people important to you, not anyone.              

    



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