Selfishness- A bad trait! Positive selfishness is not bad ... my friend told me.

Selfishness is a relative term. It depends on how it is used and in what context. For instance, being selfish with your money can be a negative thing. It goes against everything we are taught. Being completely selfish with it is when someone is referred to as miser. However, if you are in a circustance where you only have $1.00 and someone asked you for half of it to help them out, and you know if you give it to them your family will not eat, is that selfish? There are different ways to look at selfishness. Again, it can apply negatively or positively depending on the situation. To a degree, your friend is right. There is a self preservation that some could consider a positive selfishness, because if you don't look out for #1, you will end up being taken advantage of. People can call it what they wish. Being selfish is one thing, a negative of sorts. Being positively selfish might be an incorrect way of describing someone, but I can see how it could be applied.

I do not believe in positive selfishness. That is an oxymoron. There can not be anything positive about being selfish.

Selfishness is thinking about only yourself. Positive selfishness is better to be called as self-confidence. Thinking about how you can relate to others or to the public about your talents and believing in yourself that no matter what happen you believe that you will be successful. Having too much self-confidence can lead to selfishness. That is thinking about yourself only, like you don't care anymore whether others are hurt or not.

In some ways being selfish allows me to share more. If I give away everything, then I have little left over. If I save what I have and create more with it, I now have more to give away. Just because I have something doesn't mean you are entitled to it. And because you want something doesn't mean you are entitled to it. I don't feel that others are selfish when they don't give me something. We all have love to give away to some extent, whereas many of us do not have many material things to give away. Selfishness is the term that someone else gives to you if you don't give them what they want. That is nonsense. How do you define a very selfish person? Is it based on what other think selfishness is? When I refer to you, I don't mean you personally, but people in general.

On certain occasions selfishness i good. If we are doing something for our good or for others, then being selfish is no harm. But it should be only at the time of necessity. It shouldnt become as our habit. I totally agree with your friend saying that Positive selfishness is good and i am sure that one day in your life even you will have to follow this :)

No,positive think never be a selfishness.It gives you strenght to overcome any problems. It builts your mental strength. Positive thinkings is to think positive which gives you strength to stand at any position.If you are in the worst condition,then what will you do? You have to think positive to come out from it completely. The thing was already done,now you can do nthing with it. Now to think positive think how you get benefit frm it. To get as sock less as possible.If you will not do this, you will go in depression. No one can help you as much as your thinking can help you. So, now I hope you atleast get that positive thinking is not selfishness.By that way your just helping ur self without hurting anyone.

Positive selfishness? i do not believe that anything positive would be termed with selfishness. For me selfish people tend to think about themselves and how certain decisions could favour them. I do not believe that "becoming selfish for the sake of its benefit without harming the others interest" should be termed as positive selfishness. That should have another defination but as far as i am concerned selfishness on the long run harms the person that possess the trait as he might be too smart for himself.

Selfishness is bad no matter which way you call it positive or negative and there are to many Selfish People in this world today

Being selfish is bad - period. Everyone lives for themself, maybe its time to live for others. To do something good for others. To put our near & dear ones before us and think about them too. Otherwise I believe there is no point in living.

Selfishness is one of those concepts that aren't terribly clear. It may be selfish for one person to do a thing and self-less if another does it. And who can survive if every choice is self-less? Sometimes surviving seems self-less to me. There were times when I wanted to give up and die. But that would have been selfish because of those I'd leave behind who needed me. So when I made choices to survive was I being selfish or self-less. Let's say that I have a life-threatening disease and my family is dependent on my income. Do I give them the things they want rather than provide myself with medicine or diet that would help me survive? It gets complicated sometimes. Working ten hours a day on a job may seem selfish to the people who want you to be somewhere else. But if you are working to provide for your family it becomes a self-less behavior, even if you enjoy the work. So is it selfish to work at a job that you love or is it more self-less to work at a job you hate, assuming they both provide enough for your family needs. I believe that as mature adults we must make some selfish decisions in order to be self-less in other things. And we have to know what our values are so that we can prioritize them and balance our lives. All the time, though, we need to be aware that our values and priorities change with time and life. So what might be a definite answer today may not be the same answer ten years from now.

I feel very strongly about selfishness. It is the defect that I despise the most. I believe that because of selfishness, crimes and injustices are committed because they don't care about anyone else; only themselves. I think everyone can be a little selfish but if it becomes extreme, then it should be corrected because it can bring problems.

I know people that are considered to be totally selfless, and those who are actually selfish (or very self absorbed). One of the most rewarding things in this life to me, is to be able to go above and beyond, and to help others who are in need. I have so many people I want to 'give back' to, and so am working on a way to be able to do so, with my limited resources (at the moment). Of course, there are also times when we just have to 'say no,' if too much is being demanded of us, and we need to look after our own needs first, so that we can be there for others.

People with selfish attitude seldom think of others.They just want to be self sufficent, happy and never bother to care about others feelings.Its like hurting someone. I dont like people with this behaviour but we cant help this and definitly have to move out in this world with selfish people too.

Well, it's interesting that you should bring that up. You, see, any non-Christian worldview believes in a monster- Frankenstein. The Christians believe in a different monster- Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. You see, the Frankenstein adherents state that man is basically good, and can find his own way to heaven, achieving salvation through his own good works, and that his actions are moulded by society- Just like Frankenstein. Conversely, the Hyde adherents state that Man is a triple nature- Good- some undefined entity, in the human case, God. (By the way, Robert Louis Stevenson also stated in the book that man had a good nature- he said something that I can't quote exactly, but runs something like, "The potion was neither diabolical nor divine, it simply opened the gates for my current nature to spring forth. Had I approached the task while in a gentle and holy humour, surrounded by thoughts of charity and goodwill, an entirely different creature would have arisen, one which would be the epitome of goodness. As it was, my evil, kept awake by ambition, was at the fore when I drank of the potion, so it was my evil nature which sprang forth.") Good (God), Evil (Satan/Hyde) and the man caught between (Man/Jekyll). The Hyde crowd states that man cannot save himself, and that he must turn his eyes to Christ to be saved. Therefore, the whole phenomenon of "positive selfishness" stems from the Frankenstein worldview, id est, that man can save himself. Adherents WILL try to mask this with such fine-sounding phrases as "self-esteem" "self-worth" and the like. Do not be fooled. Selfishness is selfishness. The Frankenstein adherent states that man simply doesn't know that he can save himself- therefore, we can be safe in the knowledge that, by being utter, selfish pigs, we can already improve ourselves and move towards salvation. Any person with a lick of sense, of course, will instantly see the lies that surround such an idea. However, people buy it. NOTE: If you want more information on this phenomenon, read the book The Deadliest Monster by J.F. Baldwin.