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.