Wednesday, 11 March 2015

The selfish-self and the selfless-self...

My friend Amadou says every human being is made up of two selves - the selfish-self and the selfless-self and I believe. The selfish-self is that self that is concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits and welfare, to the exclusion or detriment of others.

The selfish-self may cause a thoughtless admiration of oneself, tempting the ego into doing or urging others to do just anything, in so far as it promotes one’s own happiness, or singling out others just for the heck of it, and consequently making consideration a notion to be desired but unattainable.

Alternatively, the selfless-self is the self that is willing to get out of one’s selfish-self. It is the sharing and caring self - the self that does what is morally expected and not what it wants others to see or conceive. It is the self that demonstrates genuine concern for not only what is pleasing, but for the welfare of others in the pursuit of what's desirable.

It is the only self that can stop you from pushing others into deep shit, because it will force you to ask yourself: ‘what if he wanted me to do what I am asking him to do - will I do it if I were in his shoes - will the consequences of what I am asking him to do be more productive than destructive to him - what if I relieve him and be selfless enough to do it myself?’

If your selfless-self is too little, you may not love for your brother what you love for yourself, or even do as to others what you want to yourself. So you see, that’s double breach right there - violation of a saying from the Hadith and the Golden Rule. It doesn’t take an expert in the field of ethics to know that

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