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Selflessness is often considered another word for greatness; a selfless person is regarded as a true human being ready to help others and most importantly live for others. He is respected everywhere and he takes no concern for the respect he gets – he is selfless. Everyone likes to adapt this ‘accepted virtue’ and seeks to attain satisfaction and contentment in his life through it.

So I thought it would rather be a ‘virtue’ to help everybody this way – helping them know what they are to do to become true persons (if they desire to); helping them know more about their want. So I decided to write out about two men – a selfless and a selfish – under a similar situation, and the way they act. Their actions are strictly in concord to their belief structures. The selfless man believes in altruism and the selfish man believes in egoism.

Let me consider an event when both these men cross a very busy street, busy with heavy and fast flow of vehicular traffic – with their respective mothers.

As the selfless man starts to cross the street with his mother, his mother slips and falls down. He finds there is another woman who has fallen too. Initially he tries to help both the people lying on the high speed lane. He realizes he has no choice but to choose one of them. He pulls out the other woman safe out of the street. His mother dies.

In the same situation the selfish man helps his mother out. The other lady dies.

The two men are true to their beliefs. Both of them are avid followers of their principles in a sense that they long for perfection in what they have opted to believe in. They have their priorities and their priorities are defined by their virtues. The altruist man has his virtue as selflessness and the egoist has it as selfishness.

When religion in taken into account first, then next the ethics and morality, in this particular show of actions of the two men, the selfless man is unreservedly the murderer of his mother. Though he has saved a life, he has committed a sin and a moral crime – of letting his mother die. It his mother that declares him the murderer. In the case of the selfish man he is religiously, morally and ethically right. Though he has left the other lady to die, he has not made any mistakes. Here the selfless man has saved his mother because he lives for others and not himself – living for himself would require him to have his mother saved and that would have been the ask to leave the other woman die.

Coming to the psychological impact of the actions of the two men on themselves. The selfless man can never be happy letting his mother die. He will live the rest of his life with a guilt inside him that will ultimately turn into a supernatural punishment after his death. He has let his mother die. On the other hand the selfish man may feel empathy for the other lady but he is glad to save his mother. He couldn’t have had a better opportunity to serve his mother. Though he has done something not for him directly, but his action gives him happiness and contentment which is for him.

So if selflessness that makes a man let his mother die a virtue? If selflessness is followed to its core, does it lead to guilt in a person’s life? Does selflessness make a man a murderer? Is it wise to thrive to follow such an idea? Is altruism a sin?

Selflessness is a ridiculous idea. It is an incomplete principle and incomplete by principle. When a principle is taken as an end to us – an idea that shall remain with us as a premise till our end, then it must be complete and final in every way.

Selfless – the word itself looks threatening. Self – less. Without self. No respect, no value, no recognition, no existence of the ‘self’. Altruism preaches: live for others; it asks for self sacrifice. Is makes one become a slave of the other – a self surrendered slave – with ones own will – much worse than enforced slavery. It is a slavery out of own happiness – a happiness that is not final – that has strings attached to it – that carries guilt with it. Selflessness gives a happiness that makes one feel guiltier. Selflessness preaches being happy is a sin. Selflessness asks abandonment of ones happiness. It asks to thrive of the other’s happiness.

Altruism promises contentment. Is that promise itself not a selfish desire – a desire for contentment. Whose contentment? Ones own? Or the others’? A final principle can’t be self-contradictory. A virtue can’t promise what it calls as evil. Altruism in principle is suicidal.

But these ideas have been accepted because they are accepted; accepted and taught – by our elders, parents, teachers, preachers, friends, enemies, television, newspapers, magazines, unauthenticated scriptures – needless to say, by every human being who has been taught the same thing by one of these things. Selflessness is taken as a virtue because it is called as a virtue by everyone around. People do not know what they must do to be happy and most desirably, be satisfied. So when they are said that it is selflessness that is going to give them happiness and satisfaction, they adapt it. Or should I say, try to adapt it.

Altruism (or selflessness), being incomplete as a virtue, creates more contempt and dissatisfaction. When a person attempts to be selfless, he starts with destroying his self. Later he sacrifices himself to the will of the society. He sacrifices his ideas, his abilities and his values. He believes this is the right way towards everlasting happiness. The more he does this sacrificial act, the more he looses of his life. The more he looses makes him even more unhappy and dissatisfied. But he never doubts the principle he has opted for. He doubts his inefficiency. He puts in more efforts to become more selfless. He runs around in a circle – he never finds contentment.

Selfishness gives contentment. It provides with a complete finality of a principle – a virtue. The word ‘selfishness’ is always misunderstood and it will continue to be so as long as people don’t allow consciousness to overcome their ignorance. Selfishness makes a person an individual a ‘self’ – a unit himself living for the sole purpose of his happiness. Selfishness preaches the idea of putting ones own life before the other’s. It makes a person complete as an object himself that has its own existence – giving him self-respect and recognition. The means to his end can be chosen by himself that give him the liberty over his actions and endeavors.

Everybody is selfish. Breathing, eating, and requirement of shelter are the basic needs of everyman – the needs are for him - selfish. He requires love – for mental fitness – for completeness – selfish. No human can deny his being of selfish. So why should he try and make altruism as his ideal? Why should man search for a principle that promises of selfishness in return? Why should he not follow the virtue of selfishness in the first place itself?

In a free country it is the individual who has to be given freedom – it is the individuals who make a country – not the boundaries. A free country is free only when the self-esteem of every man is upheld. He is happy only when his needs are met. All the requirements are defined under selfishness. How can the desire for basic necessities be evil? How can selfishness be evil? Is eating food to fill ones own stomach evil? Is breathing evil? We live ‘our’ life. Is its evil to do so? Is being free evil?

No religion asks man to sacrifice himself for others. We are here in this world for ourselves – so that we get the right credits in our account – so that we reach heaven. We pray for ourselves. When we pray for others we do it for our happiness. Everything is selfishness.

When a man makes a lot of money he is termed selfish. Whenever he thinks of himself he is called selfish. Whenever he acts in his self-interest he is regarded selfish. The reason is that people are jealous. When they can’t do something for themselves and when they find someone else doing it, they feel jealousy. They can’t make lot of money, they can’t think of themselves, they can’t do things in their self-interest – they want to be selfless or called as selfless. So to make those egoist people be accepted as evil in the society, to destroy them, they call them as selfish. The society has never dared to find out what selfishness is, it accepts the egoists as evil to the society.

So if this is how things take shape then every person who breathes, who fills his stomach, who prays to God – they are must be declared as evil. They are doing this for themselves and not for others. Or do people know what actual evil is? Who defined evil for them? The so unauthenticated so-called religious scriptures? Or themselves?

Selfishness can never be escaped. It has to be accepted in every way. It is a complete idea – in every sense. It is not wrong living for ourselves – for the things of interest to us – for the matters that are of our concern – our happiness, our desires, our satisfaction, our contentment. Being selfish means being more concerned with things of out own interest – people we love, things we value, our religion, doing everything that gives happiness and satisfaction: everything without making a sacrifice. Doing the above is not evil. It is a virtue.

Being selfishness doesn’t mean that we do things that cause to hurt others or cause any destruction. For this purpose moral ethical codes are necessary. Religion has defined all this for us. Any idea not defined under religion can be decided on our own value judgment – rationally.