Selfishness is now a virtue.

Has being selfish become a virtue?

Do “double standards” now get praised?

Definition---- selfish- chiefly concerned with one’s own interest, advantage, belief to the exclusion of the interests, needs and beliefs of others.

Protests about climate change and other people’s lifestyle etc. involve obstructing others, delaying, or preventing them going about lawful activities and pursuits; this is selfish. Yet the people being selfish expect to be praised, they expect the whole world to congratulate them.

This arrogance has become a virtue, even breaking the civil laws, and having to appear in court is now almost a praiseworthy thing, they claim they are being victimised and suffering for their attempt to save the planet. Yet those with an addiction to illegal drugs appear in the same courts, some of those convicted of drug related offences, believe their drug taking is just an expression of individual freedom of choice, yet they are not held in esteem by the self-selected group of middle-class media savvy supporters.

Many people will be horrified to be thought selfish, yet they make assumptions, and they blindly use double standards which are basically selfish, since they allow themselves to act in a way they condemn in others. A simplified example is the person who gives money to their own children to buy a home yet echo and support socialist demands for inheritance tax be used to prevent others, wealthier than themselves, giving to their children. Those who demand that economic migrants be treated the same as genuine asylum seekers fleeing for their life, yet also turn aside from a homeless ex-service person suffering from Post traumatic stress which has induced alcoholism or drug dependency. Those who expect governments to use tax money, which is everybody’s money, to achieve an objective that only a few genuinely believe to be worthwhile. These are selfish people.

In everyday life we witness selfishness dressed up as personal choice and a “right”. The leisure cyclists on rural roads holding up vehicles trying to get to a hospital appointment or visit lonely elderly relative. Then getting to the end of “their right to exercise” and driving back to a city in their large motor car, which has been parked across the entrance to a field preventing the farmer from lawful access.

City rulers who go on about the right of their residents to clean air but send millions of gallons of sewage out into rural areas to be processed. Urban areas which expect unlimited fresh water to be stored in a rural community until the urban area wants it. These have all become accepted selfishness. Crowds of drunken people roaming the town centres creating noise and claiming they have a right to enjoy themselves. While making so much noise that local infants are kept awake and then those “enjoying themselves” leaving vomit and litter for someone else to clean up. The music festival customers who shout and scream support for calls to taxing the rich to help the environment, then leave mountains of rubbish to be cleared up and delt with by others. Selfishness has become normal.

In every social group there will be some who feel entitled to support while others feel they have to always support themselves, even if they suffer deprivation. Strangely it often occurs that those willing to suffer get accused of being selfish by the very people who feel entitled. The ones feeling themselves entitled, have a mindset that everyone should strive to help them reach their personal goals, and those who are deprived and do not have the means to give, get accused of being selfish because they do not give. Parents who deprive themselves to support their children, then end up without the means to continue that support and get thought of as selfish by their children. Instead of being thankful for the support they did receive they resent to failure to continue that support. There are well paid managers of charities that exhort the public to give money to help victims of disease and disasters. Many people earn money from these exhortations, from the managers, the advertising designers, the media companies to the bank which processes the receipt of funds. The celebrities who proclaim their personal caring and virtue in order to ask the public for yet more money imply selfishness in people who do not donate, yet the peopel giving £x a week or month have far less income than those asking them to give.

Organisations exist to demand others make sacrifices that the organisers do not make. People demand the right to roam over farmland but would call the police if a farmer parked their tractor in their front garden. Selfishness is now a virtue.