Selfishness: A Psychological and Culture view

When I was young, i used to listen old stories from grandmother and a cousin of my grandfather. Most of the stories are from their flashbacks and their culture and some bad things happened in their generation. Many stories are how they suffered on the 1889 great Indian drought and followed by killer malaria, diarrhea. These two events created shock waves to their minds and the generation changed how they were before, they were lack of confidence about their next day’s food. They have to be very selfish to survive on those tough times. As per Indian culture, all the religious books and religious thoughts encouraged sharing and selfish less. But later on those sad events are main reason for selfishness. The main reason for India’s population growth is also selfishness, those olden times there were no advanced medicine available, so most of the kids dies less than their 1 year or with in hours of birth or before their teen age. Due to this that time Indians try to give more than 5-10 births, to save at least 1-2 but most of the time 1-2 only not survived.

After the green revolution and advancement in health care, now all are fine and nowadays most of us not try more than 1-2 kids and we have surplus food production also. But due to “old habit never dies”, we are stick with selfishness. Selfishness is a faded thing with generation, the young generation now not that selfishness like older one. The main reason is, they were not through any of “life and death” situation and the distance from 1889 sufferer generation and the level of confidence is higher. There is plenty available for them to share between them also. In other words, live and let live others are the mantra for current generation.

I used to observe now a conflict between generations about how selfishness should one have? Mom and Dad had heated conversation with younger like why you gave your food to XYZ? Why you helped an unknown senior citizen to cross the road and you missed your bus to school? First I thought when people gets older they tend to become selfishness but I was wrong it is the generation and lack of confidence. Kid is confident that she can survive without a one time food and catch up everything she missed the day of teaching. Psychologically who ever not have enough confidence and greedy are main for selfishness. Culturally almost all culture encourage selfish less through religious books and sermons etc.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice post.You can be selfish when the person asking for help doesn't deserve it (or don't need it).But can't be when it comes to someone who really needs your help.I have seen many people who use "so called friendship" as "curry leaves" thrown out while eating.Having said that i haven't changed even though i went thru all incidents like "curry leaves".You know what at the end, you r what u r and people can say what they want...

Macchu
Yes. You are absolutely right. It is like "use and throw" policy, good thing is it wud work only time. Thanks for your comments.
Here's my view ab't selfishness

IF U DON’T LIVE FOR U’R SELF, WHO WILL? IF U LIVE FOR U ALONE, WAS IT A LIFE? MAKE U’R LIFE MEANINGFUL BY BEING IN BETWEEN
Yes, Anna thats exactly right. Thanks for your comments.
sukumar said…
Good one Subba. Interesting to note that the selfishness could be due to historical reasons. While that may be true, these days it is also due to the amount of competition that exists in India for everything which is a direct result of our mammoth population.
Thanks Sukumar for your comments. I agree that amount competition is there, but not that much with earlier generation, for example, in TN now there are more than 1 Lakh engg seat avaiable and India is creating more jobs than any other country. So my observation is selfishness decreasing with new generation.
1,00,000 engg seats is not sufficient Subba. We have a gargantuan population. Further, there is no reason to believe that if we had 2,00,000 engrs passing out, all of them will be absorbed. So there is significant competition, otherwise what explains people not getting engg seats even after they get 80%+ seats.


In general, there is no excuse for being selfish. I am just pointing out for a cause.
Yes, Sukumar, your point also making sense that even though we have more and more engg seats, still some not getting seats as expected.Looks like we have to move faster to completely come out of this selfishness mindset.
Unknown said…
One of your nice posts. Years back I saw my self talking this but not this depth.
Recently came across a post of Jeyamohan (Tamil Writer who belongs to Nagercoil)in his Blog.
http://jeyamohan.in/?p=2255
Hope youve Tamil in your system.
Thanks Anna, I will read it, i have tamil fonts. Thanks
Unknown said…
One more ref by the same author
Jeyamohan - his lecture at Freemont, California 9-5-2009.
A bit on education too.
But has much to do with your post.
http://jeyamohan.in/?p=3891

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