Anonymous said...

Ok... First off; thanks anonymous for two things. After reading through your comment a few times, I finally went back to my post to find where I used "selfish" so I could look at it with fresh perspective. I noticed that my use of that horrid word was way at the bottom. I really appreciate that you read through the entire posting before commenting.

Secondly; you caught me! The entire post, I avoided comparitave words that use human feeling as their base. Which is right where selfish falls. (and why I smiled after using it.) -- positive / negative are great, because they're opposites. True selfish is opposite selfless, but even then their definitions aren't true opposites just positions adverse to eachother. (yeah, I know that doesn't make sence... I'll try to use an example below.)

So yeah; I made my own selfish definition; talked to a college who went off into left field with the "who cares what others think of you? just be yourself." statement... so I finally shot off into www.m-w.com/dictionary/selfish the dictionary and here's what we get.

"arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others"
My definition being: Selfish is any action performed regardless of its consequence for others.

I am being selfish in saying I want people to be positive to me. Some people are naturally negative; hell, some people I've really pissed off (and there are quite a few!) Who am I expecting them to be positive to me? Saying that I may not deal with them unless they treat me with respect. *smile* Clear to me; selfish this is.

Here's what I said...
Why is it bad in my opinion? Not because they hurt others and themselves; but because in the future I'll have to deal with someone that these "negetive" people have turned. And those people will take from me. (yeah, I'm selfish. so what? *smile*) And it will take more positivity from me to make them give back. (which is often not worth my time)Thoughts? Am I just full of crap?

And Anonymous' reply...

Anonymous said...
You cannot say that by "wanting something" from another person is necessarily being selfish. I'm not saying that it cant be, because it can. It depends what you want. People would not interact with others if they didn't want something out of ythe whole thing. Now this something could be love, companionship, sharing, etc. All these things are positive, but we want it from another peroson. Is this then selfishness? I mean it si essentially personal gain. Everything we do is, even so called "selfless acts" are personal gain. So why not try and be positive. Its not worse than being a negative person bringing people down.

So after all that is done with; I'm confused on your last few sentances. Could you shoot me another comment and maybe explain a little more on this one please?