Jeff Russell

I went for a walk and thought about it and I think maybe I figured out my confusion, which is simply this: I don't understand what self-reflection, or indeed occultism, has to do with any of this.

But let me back up. What jprussell is talking about is that some author says that everyone is selfish. But, like, no they're not: some people are selfless—and not just saints, there are plenty of normal people who are just plain kindly-natured, and there are tons of not-so-kindly people with self-consuming or martyr complexes, too.

So why is the author saying that? Presumably to justify his own selfishness, or at least justify his struggle with it, right? But, IMHO, this is just the Christian myth repurposed: that you are an irredeemably awful monster and here's what you should do about it. But I guess I fundamentally find that myth silly: it's not hard for some people to be a good neighbor, and saying no really it is doesn't change that. I can absolutely see how such a myth is valuable to people like Saint Paul or Augustine of Hippo or Bill Wilson who really did struggle with their problems and needed such a myth to help them overcome them, but not everybody has the same hangup. I think it was Raymond Smullyan who said something to the effect of, "there's a wide variety of religious beliefs because there's a wide variety of people in the world." So while I think the author's model of human behavior may make sense in some situations, I can't imagine that it's broadly useful.

So to bring this back around, the author that jprussell was quoting was making the point that most people think "I will be nice to X because I want X to perceive me as nice" instead of "I will be nice to X because I want X to be happy." I find that to be insane, but perhaps that's merely because my own hangup is that I struggle to get out of bed and endure through the pain of the day—it's easy to want to be nice to other people so that at least somebody will be happy even if I can't! (Perhaps it's also that I really do want other people to be happy, and if those people are selfish monsters, then my trying to make them happy must be a sinful act since I'm empowering someone to do more harm. This line of reasoning doesn't seem to be conducive to living a good life, though, which is why I think that one of the assumptions in it must be false.)

And so I think my confusion is that you're making the assumption that the author's point is fundamentally sound and correct, hence self-reflection and self-examination is fundamentally crucial to make sure you're balancing your own (selfish) desires against others' (selfish) desires, and since occultists spend more time on self-refection than others, then occultists are presumably better-than-average at being selfless. You're also, I think, making the point that since America is hyper-individualistic, and since individuals must be fundamentally selfish, then America is hyper-selfish, exacerbating the problem.

But since I reject the author's point from the get-go, neither of those further elaborations followed and I was confused why they might.