Totally unselfish?

I was talking with some friends of mine about this the other day. Is it possible to do a TOTALLY unselfish act? What do you all think?

I think it is...I mean there have been great humanitarians who died in poverty that no one knows the names of...

No.

I believe every action you take has a reason, action is choice therefore it has purpose...it does something for you, it has meaning to and impact upon you. Everything we do, in some way, serves our own need/purpose...we may not understand what that need/purpose is, but conscious actions cannot be without purpose.

Therefore I do not believe there is such a thing as a completely unselfish act, no matter how noble, how brave, how generous, how sacrificing...ultimately we will do it to fulfill some need within us.


Peace,
ALIEN

I tend to agree with Alien.

It is extremely difficult to be totally unselfish in this realm.

It is in the intent to be unselfish that matters.

In higher realms it is less of a problem as I understand it.

what bout the people who died in the plane on 9/11 when they charged the cockpit. seems pretty unselfish and heroic.

hmmm

a good example of being unselfish, difficult to think of a better one.

Is heroism a totally unselfish act, I don't think so.

In psychology we learned that the two main drives that people have is security and significance.

Basically significance means that we want to feel as though we have made a contribution to the planet. That us being here somehow made a difference.

The people that charged the cockpit probably saved a lot of human lives. Saving lives is a significant contribution. Therefore, by charging the cockpit, they were indeed fulfilling one of their 2 main psychological drives.

[Edited on 31-10-2003 by greenkoolaid]

true but what if they didnt think about that? what if they just thought about saving other people. then they did it for them and not themselves. unless they did it to save people they care about and then were doing it for themselves again. i dont know i cant really think of a really good one. let me ponder this for a while.

A drive is not a conscious thing. All creatures on earth have drives, and most are definitely not aware why they do things. All creatures on this planet have the drive to reproduce. Creatures want to pass on their genes. If a species did not have the drive to reproduce it would quickly become extinct. A cockroach does not know why it must mate, it doesn't even know that mating results in the birth of more cockroaches. It just simply has the drive to mate, and so it does.

But I mentioned significance as a main human drive and not reproduction. Reproduction is a way of obtaining significance. By passing on ones genes a human can obtain significance. But there are other ways as well. Humans have developed a higher consciousness than other creatures and we can reason.

But underneath it all is the main drives.

We want security, for ourselves, for our children, for our friends, for our country.

We also want to feel like we made as big a difference as we could have, and that our lives mattered.

Why do people sign their organ donor cards, when you are dead what do you care if someone else lives because of your kidneys. It is because by saving someone else life that makes their life that much more significant. Same as crashing the plane in the field made those peoples' life that much more significant.

They may not know why they wanted to save lives, but they did it anyways.

Neo,
Quote-"hmmm, a good example of being unselfish, difficult to think of a better one."-End Quote

How about the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of all mankind?

this month was the 30th aniversary of the paratrooper sergent who died smothering a bomb in a railway station to protect children waiting for a train in northern ireland.

what he did was totally and i do mean totally unselfish.

what bout the people who died in the plane on 9/11 when they charged the cockpit. seems pretty unselfish and heroic.

We don't know that they charged the cockpit, and we definitely don't know if they died when they tried to charge it. Officials have been changing their story on this particular point, actually. However, the original story (which has now been officially retracted) put across the idea that they engaged in an unselfish act, and the story helped the nation pull together. Sadly, it still remains to be seen whether the plane was actually shot down by US military. Therefore, the entire story is questionable at this point.

I suppose shooting the plane down would be an unselfish act too, right? After all, it would still save lives.

Even heroism is selfish, IMO. A hero acts because he/she wouldn't be able to live comfortably with the guilt if they didn't. They think it's the right thing to do. Saving others is not the motivation in such instances. Doing what they think makes them a good person is, IMO.
Besides, if you think you're going to die, some become a bit braver, since they have nothing to lose.

[Edited on 10-31-2003 by Satyr]

Originally posted by postings
Is it possible to do a TOTALLY unselfish act?

I think it certainly is possible, as long as you don't feel good about it, or even dwell for a second on feeling good that you don't feel good about it...

If you can feel bad for not doing something, then yes, the act itself would be selfish too, even if on a subconscious level. Of course, it's only our human rules that determine whether you are doing "the right thing" or "the wrong thing".

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar

Originally posted by postings
Is it possible to do a TOTALLY unselfish act?

I think it certainly is possible, as long as you don't feel good about it, or even dwell for a second on feeling good that you don't feel good about it...

Very well said Masked .....

Someone gave something to someone else, but hid it so that no one could ever find out who it was that gave it. Totally unselfish, or no? There would be no recognition there right?

.

Probubly the best example...

Mother Teresa

www.ewtn.com...

[Edited on 1-11-2003 by smirkley]