Selfishness as human nature?

There is an explanation of how selfishness developed phylogenetically from the lowest creatures and is based on survival and the development of the ego follows naturally. The ability to sympathize or understand the point of view of another creature is a later development. This is found on page 222 of:

Human Evolution: A Philosophical Anthropology By Mary Maxwell

I dont have any scientific proof about selfishness being human nature, but i think that the state of the world is proof enough. Some scientists predict that it would only take 20 billion dollars to cure world hunger. In the united states, we spent more than 20 billion dollars on ice cream last year. Also half the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day. We make choices to ignore certain things and to live in a state of ignorance or false bliss. We know these things are going on, yet we still continue to want to buy mp3 players, or new cars that we do not need. The biggest thing i can give you however is from the bible. Jesus said the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. We are all born sinful, therefore we need a savior to redeem us of our sins. We are selfish and mean in nature, that is why God had to show us the way to live, Jesus said that he was the way the truth and the life (John 14:6). It is pretty much obvious that we are selfish in nature, but i do believe that it is a balance between being born that way and our environment.

Selfishness varies within different ages. Children do appear to be the most selfish, because they don't understand life. They will soon leanr how to deal with selfishness, when they start to go through life.

Some older people get selfish, because they are unhappy with something.

Well children have to learn to not be selfish about other kids playing with their toys, about considering other people so I'd say selfishness is human nature that has to be corrected. Religion serves the same purpose.

what's "American human nature"? The shape in elementary terms describes our democratic device of government, which ingredients the individuals the splendid to grant for the problem-unfastened good by democratic political establishments.

There is something to be said for the notion that it is human nature that finally destroys any possibility for communism as a Utopian paradise. There are many flaws to the theory of communism – including the necessity for planning in a non-market system – but finally the thin line that separates the ideal of communism from the New Leviathan depicted by Bukharin[1] (and based on Thomas Hobbes’ play) is only that under a well-intentioned communism, by the workers and for the workers, man’s very nature will change and without economic classes in society, the state would wither away.

Bukharin argued that the pluralistic laissez faire economy had given way to a “collective capitalism,” state power was entrenched in all branches of production; statization would culminate in a “state capitalist trust.” The state would have a monopoly on the economic power of the nation. In addition, he argued, already the state “as if driven by an unquenchable lust, had spread its organizing tentacles into all areas of social life.”

If in communism the economy is also centralized, would this not also happen under communism? Marx explained that “the chief function of state power is the guaranteeing of the process of exploitation.” So, the state itself would not be necessary, and the workers would own this monopoly of power, they would own the means of production, they would cooperatively run the production in society as enlightened workers without coercion. Bukharin and Preobrazhensky explain in thus in the ABC of communism:

The basis of communist society must be the social ownership of the means of production and exchange. … In such a social order, production will be organized. No longer will one enterprise compete with another; the factories, workshops, mines, and other productive institutions will all be subdivisions, as it were, of one vast people's workshop, which will embrace the entire national economy of production. … It is obvious that so comprehensive an organization presupposes a general plan of production. … In the communist social order, there is such a plan. … Mere organization does not, however, suffice. The essence of the matter lies in this, that the organization shall be a cooperative organization of all the members of society. The communist system, in addition to affecting organization, is further distinguished by the fact that it puts an end to exploitation, that it abolishes the division of society into classes. We might conceive the organization of production as being effected in the following manner: a small group of capitalists, a capitalist combine, controls everything; production has been organized, so that capitalist no longer competes with capitalist; conjointly they extract surplus value from the workers, who have been practically reduced to slavery. Here we have organization, but we also have the exploitation of one class by another. Here there is a joint ownership of the means of production, but it is joint ownership by one class, an exploiting class. This is something very different from communism, although it is characterized by the organization of production. Such an organization of society would have removed only one of the fundamental contradictions, the anarchy of production. But it would have strengthened the other fundamental contradiction of capitalism, the division of society into two warring halves; the class war would be intensified. Such a society would be organized along one line only; on another line, that of class structure, it would still be rent asunder. Communist society does not merely organize production; in addition, it frees people from oppression by others. It is organized throughout.

The cooperative character of communist production is likewise displayed in every detail of organization. Under communism, for example, there will not be permanent managers of factories, nor will there be persons who do one and the same kind of work throughout their lives.[2]

As Lenin said in The State and Revolution “the whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor and pay.” But, he went on, “From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves … the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether.”[3]

Another assumption that allows this ideal to be differentiated from the Leviathan is abundance. Forgetting the cardinal economic rule of scarcity the advocates of communism, in part because of this idea of communal and Utopian new human relations and in part due to the sharing of profits, assume that there will be enough produced that each person will experience satiety (from the same source):

At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed. There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. 'But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?' Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products. A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades.

Part of our animal heritage. Hard wired to eat to survive, soft-wired to choose how to go about doing it.