The Unselfishness Trap
by Harry Browne
[From How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, 1973]
The Unselfishness Trap is the belief that you must put the happiness of others ahead of your own.
Unselfishness is a very popular ideal, one that's been honored throughout recorded history. Wherever you turn, you find encouragement to put the happiness of others ahead of your own to do what's best for the world, not for yourself.
If the ideal is sound, there must be something unworthy in seeking to live your life as you want to live it.
So perhaps we should look more closely at the subject -to see if the ideal is sound. For if you attempt to be free, we can assume that someone's going to consider that to be selfish.
Each Person Seeks Happiness
We saw in Chapter 2 that each person always acts in ways he believes will make him feel good or will remove discomfort from his life. Because everyone is different from everyone else, each individual goes about it in his own way.
One man devotes his life to helping the poor. Another one lies and steals. Still another person tries to create better products and services for which he hopes to be paid handsomely. One woman devotes herself to her husband and children. Another one seeks a career as a singer.
In every case, the ultimate motivation has been the same. Each person is doing what he believes will assure his happiness. What varies between them is the means each has chosen to gain his happiness.
We could divide them into two groups labeled "selfish" and "unselfish," but I don't think that would prove anything. For the thief and the humanitarian each have the same motive to do what he believes will make him feel good.
In fact, we can't avoid a very significant conclusion: Everyone is selfish. Selfishness isn't really an issue, because everyone selfishly seeks his own happiness.
What we need to examine, however, are the means various people choose to achieve their happiness. Unfortunately, some people oversimplify the matter by assuming that there are only two basic means: sacrifice yourself for others or make them sacrifice for you. Happily, there's a third way that can produce better consequences than either of those two.
A Better World?
Let's look first at the ideal of living for the benefit of others. It's often said that it would be a better world if everyone were unselfish. But would it be?
If it were somehow possible for everyone to give up his own happiness, what would be the result? Let's carry it to its logical conclusion and see what we find.
To visualize it, let's imagine that happiness is symbolized by a big red rubber ball. I have the ball in my hands meaning that I hold the ability to be happy. But since I'm not going to be selfish, I quickly pass the ball to you. I've given up my happiness for you.
What will you do? Since you're not selfish either, you won't keep the ball; you'll quickly pass it on to your next-door neighbor. But he doesn't want to be selfish either, so he passes it to his wife, who likewise gives it to her children.
The children have been taught the virtue of unselfishness, so they pass it to playmates, who pass it to parents, who pass it to neighbors, and on and on and on.
I think we can stop the analogy at this point and ask what's been accomplished by all this effort. Who's better off for these demonstrations of pure unselfishness?
How would it be a better world if everyone acted that way? Whom would we be unselfish for? There would have to be a selfish person who would receive, accept, and enjoy the benefits of our unselfishness for there to be any purpose to it. But that selfish person (the object of our generosity) would be living by lower standards than we do.
For a more practical example, what is achieved by the parent who "sacrifices" himself for his children, who in turn are expected to sacrifice themselves for their children, and so on? The unselfishness concept is a merry-go-round that has no ultimate purpose. No one's self-interest is enhanced by the continual relaying of gifts from one person to another to another.
Perhaps most people have never carried the concept of unselfishness to this logical conclusion. If they did, they might reconsider their pleas for an unselfish world.
But, unfortunately, the pleas continue, and they're a very real part of your life. In seeking your own freedom and happiness, you have to deal with those who tell you that you shouldn't put yourself first. That creates a situation in which you're pressured to act negatively to put aside your plans and desires in order to avoid the condemnation of others.
As I've said before, one of the characteristics of a free person is that he's usually choosing positively deciding which of several alternatives would make him the happiest; while the average person, too often, is choosing which of two or three alternatives will cause him the least discomfort.
When the reason for your actions is to avoid being called "selfish" you're making a negative decision and thereby restricting the possibilities for your own happiness.
You're in the Unselfishness Trap if you regretfully pay for your aunt's surgery with the money you'd saved for a new car, or if you sadly give up the vacation you'd looked forward to in order to help a sick neighbor.
You're in the trap if you feel you're required to give part of your income to the poor, or if you think that your country, community, or family has first claim on your time, energy, or money.
You're in the Unselfishness Trap any time you make negative choices that are designed to avoid being called "selfish."
It isn't that no one else is important. You might have a self-interest in someone's well-being, and giving a gift can be a gratifying expression of the affection you feel for him. But you're in the trap if you do such things in order to appear unselfish.
There is an understandable urge to give to those who are important and close to you. However, that leads many people to think that indiscriminate giving is the key to one's own happiness. They say that the way to be happy is to make others happy; get your glow by basking in the glow you've created for someone else.
It's important to identify that as a personal opinion. If someone says that giving is the key to happiness, isn't he saying that's the key to his happiness? To assume that his opinions are binding upon you is a common form of the Identity Trap (covered in chapter 2).
I think we can carry the question further, however, and determine how efficient such a policy might be. The suggestion to be a giver presupposes that you're able to judge what will make someone else happy. And experience has taught me to be a bit humble about assuming what makes others happy.
My landlady once brought me a piece of her freshly baked cake because she wanted to do me a favor. Unfortunately, it happened to be a kind of cake that was distasteful to me. I won't try to describe the various ways I tried to get the cake plate back to her without being confronted with a request for my judgment of her cake. It's sufficient to say that her well-intentioned favor interfered with my own plans.
And now, whenever I'm sure I know what someone else "needs," I remember that incident and back off a little. There's no way that one person can read the mind of another to know all his plans, goals, and tastes.
You may know a great deal about the desires of your intimate friends. But indiscriminate gift-giving and favor-doing is usually a waste of resources or, worse, it can upset the well-laid plans of the receiver.
When you give to someone else, you might provide something he values but probably not the thing he considers most important. If you expend those resources for yourself, you automatically devote them to what you consider to be most important. The time or money you've spent will most likely create more happiness that way.
If your purpose is to make someone happy, you're more apt to succeed if you make yourself the object. You'll never know another person more than a fraction as well as you can know yourself.
Do you want to make someone happy? Go to it use your talents and your insight and benevolence to bestow riches of happiness upon the one person you understand well enough to do it efficiently yourself. I guarantee that you'll get more genuine appreciation from yourself than from anyone else.
Give to you.
Support your local self.
As I indicated earlier in this chapter, it's too often assumed that there are only two alternatives: (1) sacrifice your interests for the benefit of others; or (2) make others sacrifice their interests for you. If nothing else were possible, it would indeed be a grim world.
Fortunately, there's more to the world than that. Because desires vary from person to person, it's possible to create exchanges between individuals in which both parties benefit.
For example, if you buy a house, you do so because you'd rather have the house than the money involved. But the seller's desire is different he'd rather have the money than the house. When the sale is completed, each of you has received something of greater value than what you gave up otherwise you wouldn't have entered the exchange. Who, then, has had to sacrifice for the other?
In the same way, your daily life is made up of dozens of such exchanges small and large transactions in which each party gets something he values more than what he gives up. The exchange doesn't have to involve money; you may be spending time, attention, or effort in exchange for something you value.
Mutually beneficial relationships are possible when desires are compatible. Sometimes the desires are the same like going to a movie together. Sometimes the desires are different like trading your money for someone's house. In either case, it's the compatibility of the desires that makes the exchange possible.
No sacrifice is necessary when desires are compatible. So it makes sense to seek out people with whom you can have mutually beneficial relationships.
Often the "unselfishness" issue arises only because two people with nothing in common are trying to get along together such as a man who loves bowling and hates opera married to a woman whose tastes are the opposite. If they're to do things together, one must "sacrifice" his pleasure for the other. So each might try to encourage the other to be "unselfish."
If they were compatible, the issue wouldn't arise because each would be pleasing the other by doing what was in his own self-interest.
An efficiently selfish person is sensitive to the needs and desires of others. But he doesn't consider those desires to be demands upon him. Rather, he sees them as opportunities potential exchanges that might be beneficial to him. He identifies desires in others so that he can decide if exchanges with them will help him get what he wants.
He doesn't sacrifice himself for others, nor does he expect others to be sacrificed for him. He takes the third alternative: he finds relationships that are mutually beneficial so that no sacrifice is required.
Everyone is selfish; everyone is doing what be believes will make himself happier. The recognition of that can take most of the sting out of accusations that you're being "selfish." Why should you feel guilty for seeking your own happiness when that's what everyone else is doing, too?
The demand that you be unselfish can be motivated by any number of reasons: that you'd help create a better world, that you have a moral obligation to be unselfish, that you give up your happiness to the selfishness of someone else, or that the person demanding it has just never thought it out.
Whatever the reason, you're not likely to convince such a person to stop his demands. But it will create much less pressure on you if you realize that it's his selfish reason. And you can eliminate the problem entirely by looking for more compatible companions.
To find constant, profound happiness requires that you be free to seek the gratification of your own desires. It means making positive choices.
If you slip into the Unselfishness Trap, you'll spend a good part of your time making negative choices trying to avoid the censure of those who tell you not to think of yourself. You won't have time to be free.
If someone finds happiness by doing "good works" for others, let him. That doesn't mean that's the best way for you to find happiness.
And when someone accuses you of being selfish, just remember that he's upset only because you aren't doing what he selfishly wants you to do.
Poke any saint deeply enough, and you touch self-interest.
[From How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, 1973]