zeno wrote:ElephantEyes wrote:Self-serving just means people who are willing to put their own needs as a priority. This is how the majority of people operate. Most mothers will feed their own child before someone else's child. This doesn't make them disordered. It makes them a responsible parent. If she has extra food and is generous, she will probably take in the hungry child. But, if she neglects her own child for the sake of the other child, she will be seen as negligent. Because, her own offspring is her primary responsibility, and that is what comes first. This is what keeps order within society.
In that paragraph alone you touched on several different types of need. Like I said, different things entail different (often competing) needs -- your body, your "conscience", the reproduction of your genes, society, and so on. And I think it makes very little sense to say that feeding your child is "self-serving", unless you really consider the child as part of your own "self" (which would be a mental disorder). So that's really a case in point. If you "follow your genes", you'll seek a partner, have sex, have children and endure sleepless nights and so on. It's good for the maintenance of the species, but not necessarily good for you individually.
Need is always relative though. What's needed for personal well-being isn't always the same as what's needed for the continuation of the species. Our genes generally guide us towards the latter.
We were talking about the continuation of species. Feeding one's own child does that. As opposed to neglecting one's own child for another's. So in that sense feeding one's own child over someone else's child, results in helping your own genes survive. So its self-serving. And, it results in the continuation of the species.
Though its true not everyone's genes are wired to motivate them to seek an appropriate partner to make the ideal situation to raise children in and pass along their genes in the healthiest and most efficient way. Such people are disordered. Hence, psychology. They may be "following their genes" but these are disordered genes, which have somehow survived natural selection, but are not adaptable in an efficient way.
Too much Cluster B is not adaptable, neither is too much Cluster A.
The maintenance of the species requires very flexible and resilient people who can endure lots of stress and ultimately make sure their own children survive and procreate. Altruism doesn't have much role in that process.