Tax Lawyer's Blog

More often than not, the selfish person is insecure, fearful and filled with doubt. The selfishness springs from his belief that this is his only good idea, his last dollar, his one and only chance to avoid failure. “I need this, not you,” he says, because he truly believes he’s got nothing else going on, no other chance, no hope.

The irony, of course, is that selflessness (not selfishness, its opposite) is precisely the posture that leads to more success. The person with the confidence to support others and to share is repaid by getting more in return than his selfish counterpart.

The connection economy multiplies the value of what is contributed to it. It’s based on abundance, not scarcity, and those that opt out, fall behind.

Sharing your money, your ideas, your insights, your confidence… all of these things return to you. Perhaps not in the way you expected, and certainly not with a guarantee, but again and again the miser falls behind.

Does anyone else spot a paradox here?

If you choose the posture of selflessness in order to have more success, it is not selflessness, but selfishness. And if it then leads to success, doesn’t that mean that selfishness led to success?

I wrote a paper once in high school arguing that everyone¹ acts out of his own self interest. Even the apparently selfless man who does good deeds is motivated by selfishness because his altruism makes him feel good about himself. When he stops feeling good about doing good, he’ll stop doing good.

I’m sorry for going all Ayn Rand on you, but I do believe that people generally do whatever it is that makes them feel good about themselves. In other words, the motive of the man who feels good about himself because he has more money, a bigger house or a nicer car is no more selfish than the motive of the man who feels good about himself for being helpful to others.

What do you think?

Footnotes:

¹   Even the self-flagellating member of Opus Dei is acting out of a selfish interest. He does it for salvation.