A quote from an article named “Not Everyone Is Self-Interested” on objectivisminddepth.com says,”People can also intentionally sacrifice out of a sense of sheer moral duty. They can give in order to feel less guilty, under a morality that extols self-sacrifice. he self-interested thing to do would reject the morality that tells them to sacrifice. Wanting to “be a good person” according to a morality that advocates self-abnegation, is not a self-interested motivation. Self-interested is to be motivated by the approval of yourself or others in acting according to your supposed duties under the morality of altruism.” The point of this excerpt is to show the point that humans, although partially do act with self-interest in mind, do in fact, not intend to act for it primarily. This is because of a social stigma that accompanies people who act solely for themselves. They are looked down on and are considered to be selfish and cruel. This apathy that the person has towards others creates a way to make them become more interested and involved in the process, making them want to help others, to become accepted. However, do not get me wrong here as this process itself is not self interest at all. Self-interest is meant to benefit you, rather with sheer moral duty, it does the opposite, and works against a person in ways they do not originally want. As most people do, they bend to social stigma and become the status quo, making it so self-interest is not at all the primary motivation driving humans.
Consider that we have an automatic setting. Now, as one may presume, it can be robotic, its something we go to first off when we have something to do. In this case however, it regards a persons mindset. Automatic examples are, as follows, thinking someone is in your way, rather than you thinking how you decided to be there yourself. A prime example, yet unpopular with its intense truth, is that in a way, if in this automatic mindset, the whole world revolves around you. In an except named “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace talks about how automatic and easy it is to act in you natural state, which in this case, is self-interest. “If I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. If I choose to think this way…, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities. The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. “ Here, Foster recognises that people have a tendency to act in their own skin, meaning that they revolve around themselves, that’s their automatic, and it’s easy. However my point here, is that although some act this way, most people tend to act against it. This works with my first point, as this is usually because they bend against themselves for stigma, or the rare chance that they consciously and maturely make that decision. The fact that we consciously make the choice to go against our automatic setting, we provide a precedent for ourselves to act not in favor, but for others. Also by doing so, are influenced by social standards and pressure to continue acting that way, so primarily we don’t act on our as as grown being, but more when we are younger and spend less time acting primitive than not. It is important to understand that it is a reversible effect, that rather than acting for ourselves, we act in repentance of ourselves, to calm the waters of our psyche and allowing ourselves to become better people for others, and not just ourselves.
In conclusion, self interest is not the sole motivator for humans/human interaction/human action. Overally, there is many other motivator/motivating factors that can cause a person to act/interact. Some of those being, Sheer Moral Duty/ Social Stigma and Awareness Vs. Automatic Response. That being, this is why I stand in negation of the resolution “Humans are primarily driven by self-interest.”
