Selfishness Compass

One could conceive of selfishness compass

It would comprise of two axes

Horizontal could measure the degree of self-absorption, self-interest

Vertical could measure the degree of IGNORANCE

At an extreme left there would be utter self-absorption, utter self-obsession,

with utmost disregard for the interest of others,

An utterly solipsistic perspective

No inhibition in disregarding others, discarding others, using others and dispensing with others, sacrificing others

And belief in no value of others, or the world

Only you

On the far right there would be utter self-sacrifice, if you will

Or would there?

Actually it wouldn’t

If you care for all mankind — you care also for yourself

Therefore you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself

You would thrive

But you would never thrive at the expense of others

And maybe you’d see others win over yourself

Maybe it would give you more pleasure

This is the realm of utter LOVE, selfless-inspiration, love-inspiration, empathetic love

You selfishly make others win, because it makes you experience love

You love seeing others win

How would this horizontal axis work thus?

Why would someone crack your skull just to see what your mind is made of,

while someone else would give their last money to you, because you looked like you needed it more?

I would not know, would I

Empathy vs sociopathy?

(Delusional) belief in something higher, vs (delusional) belief only in existence of oneself and one’s goals?

The latter ties into the vertical axis: IGNORANCE

At the bottom there would be one utterly ignorant of the rest of the humanity

And how the rest of the humanity engages in mutually-beneficial transactions

Some more explicit, some less

At the extreme, it looks like the extreme left, extreme selfishness, it’s very similar

Extreme ignorance of others, and their feelings and their interests,

and extreme ignorance of the value of treating them well, or treating them anything better than horribly

And at the peak there would be the opposite: profound understanding of human relationships

On a business level: the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services

On an interpersonal level: the tacit balance sheet of every relationship

On a societal level: social contract, social order, tradition, law, morality, value of community, value of the state, value of cooperation, value of peaceful conflict resolution…

Indeed it is a matter of ignorance

Some of those rules we learn intuitively

But that is a problem — because we rarely learn them well enough

And then we fight with one another — instead of building wonderful things together

And some of us have little intuition so they barely learn it at all

They treat others like shit, get shit in return, and wonder why the world doesn’t appreciate them

Alas they are not even aware of all the rules they transgressed, and in their estimation they were being upright

Now, to populate this compass with data,

Most likely it would go diagonally, from bottom left (selfish and ignorant) — to upper right (enlightened and loving),

The centre would be evenly populated,

By more empathetic people and less empathetic, but nothing extreme

And by people more ignorant of the nature of relations, and less

I think this is a useful mental model, a useful heuristic

(of course not a deterministic model of the world and society — a heuristic)

It’s useful to place oneself on it

Useful to place others on it

The very act of placing others on it makes one LESS ignorant of society and relations — therefore elevating oneself in this compass

Likewise placing oneself

Obviously we must learn to get along

Trivial as it sounds: it’s simply a matter of life and death

Of not killing one another

Instead curing cancer, for instance

And of not ruining each other’s lives, fighting and hating one another

Instead loving each other

Simple