On selfishness. Avoiding getting caught up in semantics and definitions, this is the most vital area. I don't want to just disagree. I want to look at the meaning behind the words selfless and unselfish.
Okay, I agree in the sense you mean that many people act from unselfishness and for the greater good. But there's karma. To me it's still selfish.
I try to think about this and have done from a professional point of view too, because as a salesman I used to try to figure out what makes things tick. Similarly as a golfer.
I end with a kind of dichotomy or dual nature to how things work. It's as though to get what we want, we have to ignore our own existence. To make a sale, one's own interests have to disappear while the customer's being morph's into one's own so that they become the reality. Which seems sort of stupid, and maybe I should describe it better than that.
It's about empathy, but more than that. Harvard Business Review [if I remember rightly] did a study over a decade ago to find what makes a successful salesman. They found that two essential ingredients are empathy and ego-drive. Which bears out the conclusion I've come to. To sell, one must tune in completely to the prospective buyer, becoming one with them. But, simultaneously, it's really about ego and self. It's the ego-drive which provides the impetus.
By being successful in the empathy side of the equation, the customer reflects the success back onto the salesman.
Similarly with golf. To do a good shot, it's as though one's own being has to be subsumed into the ball and surroundings. A microsecond after one's mind goes into thinking about what's going on and becomes self-conscious and thinking about oneself instead of what's being created in the external world, the whole shot goes to pieces. By going into harmony with the externality, the full benefit of that is reflected back onto the person doing the shot.
Maybe. Just as maybe the customer won't buy. There might be no reflection. The effort might really end up selfless.
It's a generous, courageous and selfless spirit that's needed. But at the same time, the purpose is to succeed and have one's own ego and being fulfilled and brought to glory.
In another sphere, I'm selfless with my family, but my reality only exists inasmuch as my family exists. My existence is defined by their presence [to a large extent anyway]. I expect nothing from my offspring. Love flows downwards. It's their lives, not mine. I provided nurture, discipline, encouragement, protection, for them. They benefit from all the effort and cost. Not me. But that process creates me and my satisfaction.
The better I create their reality, without thinking what's in it for me, somehow, by magic, I get more out of it.
Another is CDMA and cyberphones. In 1989, I was wondering what the heck to do. I thought of cellphones using encoded signals across the whole spectrum simultaneously rather than narrow bands. Then I fluked meeting somebody from QUALCOMM in August 1991 and a couple of years later, put all our savings in to support what I thought was a great thing. In a way, that was unselfish, risking everything to make something that might or might not work.
It's a bit like being a salesman; you have to think about what will be achieved for everyone who uses CDMA. It's almost an act of faith because the future isn't all that predictable. But by succeeding through thick and thin, everyone does well. Apart from satisfaction, a pile of cashflow comes back. So it wasn't really selfless, though in a way it was.
Globalstar was much more unselfish! Again, it was a great thing which I thought needed doing and I could afford to carry the risk which others with more limited funds couldn't take on. But really, it's still selfish. I hoped to create something really great. It failed, so I lost it all. But by not expecting anything back, in a way I don't feel I've lost anything, though objectively I have.
I think Buddhists have some ideas about this stuff too, involving absence of desire for self. I've never studied it, so that's about all I know.
Anyway, so I still think you Yanks are bloody selfish!! Going around the world doing good works, defending freedom and other countries. If you do it all right, you'll get heaps of reward and ego-satisfaction and all good stuff back. Greedy buggers! We don't go and be unselfish just anywhere do we? We pick and choose our unselfishness, being the selfish types we are.
It's a strange paradox. We succeed for ourself by ignoring ourself.
As I say, it's a half-baked theory, but there seems to be something to it.
Happy travels to Cameroon and Ghana.
Mqurice
PS: Wow, Google is amazing. Bingo, "What Makes a Good Salesman" not 15 years ago but from 1964!! I must have seen a reprint. harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu |
