Selfishness as a practical problem

I hate when meditation fuckers teachers tell me I'm a selfish bastard and I need to be more selfless, altruistic, or self-sacrificing. Fuck that shit. Fuck those guys. They can go to hell. Let ‘em burn.

They want to convert me to a particular fixed ideology of what a perfect human is, and I'm not having it. Fuck them. That's what cults are made of. That's what politics is made of. Fuck them all.

That being said…

I have to admit, people like when you take an interest in them. And, it can be fun to do so. And, it is practically useful — people tend to give you more of what you want with them when you take an interest in them. And, when I'm caught up in knots thinking about me and my problems I tend to find that tedious and miserable and it tends to get in the way of flirting with girls. When I have space in my head for others, I tend to enjoy that more and I tend to be more useful and to enjoy being more useful. Although I hate to give the holy fuckers any ground, it sure seems like extending one's care and attention to others in addition to oneself, is practically, selfishly useful.

To the extent I have run into a “problem” with being selfish, it’s merely that obsessively and excessively thinking about one’s own problems regardless of context kind of sucks. This is a practical, personal, emotional problem connected to fixed patterns of attention.

And to the extent there is value in being whatever not-selfish is (it’s not self-less!), it’s practical value:

• Internal. Being aware of others can be fun and rewarding.
• External. People tend to like and reward you, in myriad ways, for taking an interest in them. Also, knowledge is power, et cetera, et cetera.

One could even “problematize” these and say the problem is that by “being selfish” I’m “losing out on” the positive value of being not-selfish.

There’s nothing “wrong” with being selfish in this sense. It’s typically unpleasant and ineffective, but not wrong. But, one might rather enjoy life and be effective.

One also might have some hesitation around that — I know I do. As I’m living life I notice dozens of little impulses to connect with people. That person there, I want to know her name. I want to talk to that person about learning this line dance at this time I have this week. I want to help this person with this line dance. And if I’m not afraid and it seems appropriate, I just act on it. I don’t always act on those little impulses to connect.

What generally gets in the way is, as a wise man once said, fear of getting hurt. If I go talk to that person, maybe it will be awkward and feel forced and we won’t make any connection. If I talk to that person about learning this line dance, maybe we won’t be able to schedule a mutually agreeable time and place and maybe that practical scheduling problem will turn into a social-emotional problem of hurt feelings. If I narrate this line dance it might stress them out more or I might mess it up and confuse them and also I’ll “have to” feel incompetent. With the exception of “having to” feel incompetent, these are all legitimately possible and reasonably common, but not guaranteed or overridingly likely, outcomes.

It’s just — they aren’t really that bad, logically — so the challenge is acting in the presence of bad feelings around bad possibilities.

If you do want to enjoy life and be effective in this way, getting there is a practical project which admits of practical approaches which address these hesitations in different ways:

• Fake it til you make it. Talk to people before you care about them, in order to develop care about them. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Wonder what they're feeling.
• Act on the slightest inkling of caring, the least velleity of interest in other people. The smallest, weakest desire to go talk to someone, without having any good rational reason to do so. Don’t demand before acting to know what that desire means about you or them or how you feel about them.
• Formally practice caring. Practice metta to develop a nonconceptual sense of liking people. Practice tonglen to be able to see their pain without flinching, or feeling obligated to solve it. Practice opening awareness as a solid base for tonglen.
• Forget about directly solving caring and practice generally being okay with experience. Practice things like opening awareness (shi-nè), moving awareness (lhatong), and liberating emotion (essentialized Dzogchen trek-chöd). Find the experiences of basic okayness these lead to. Do nothing outside of meditation to practice, but let basic okayness arise naturally in awkwardness, in hurt feelings, in stress and mistakes and confusion and in feeling incompetent.

Any and all of these could at different times be valid and useful approaches to the “problem” of selfishness.

There is no existential or moral problem with selfishness at all. You may experience selfishness as a practical problem — or you may not. If you do find it a practical problem, it admits of practical solutions.