Bigot

Di na makakita. There are many instances when people wonder what happened with their friends and acquaintance who could not “see” them anymore. It seems that they have become invisible to the eyes of others. People change, alright, but to be gracious enough in greeting others despite the status or whatever caused the confidence could be deemed unusual if not abnormal in some ways.

According to www.learning-mind.com, features of egotistical behavior are a tendency to talk about oneself all the time and a lack of humility. What then, is egocentric? Everyone is self-centered at times. It refers to a limited worldview, with a person focusing only on his needs. An egocentric person may become obsessed with them. Egocentric people often show a lack of empathy for others. They cannot see things from a different point of view than their own.

When a person start NOT to care for others and feel NOTHING towards them except contempt, these ones are edging towards being egocentric. They start not liking others to the point that affiliating with the “unwanted” seem to be a stressful task to do. They then see others as “different; of low quality and forgettable!”

Psychological egoism (Chung, 2016) is a view that claims that all human actions are motivated, at bottom, exclusively by one’s self-interest; it claims that everybody, in the end, is an egoist. This is a very strong claim. It does not merely claim that only some or the majority of human actions are generated from considerations of self-interest; but rather that all human actions – including the ones that apparently seem to be acts of benevolence as well as those acts that seemingly stem from one’s moral conviction – are ultimately motivated solely by a concern for one’s own exclusive personal good.

But then, we have the capacity to weigh things and draw a line between being ethical and being abnormally egoistic. That is the reason why reflections are encouraged by the sages and psychologists for us to be able to evaluate our inner drives, motivations and the inclinations of our dark half.

Others link with the powerful and the rich for the benefit of getting something. They look down on the poor and the helpless and place them on the margins. There are those who affiliate with the good-looking ones and bully the “ugly” group. They seem to draw some sort of energy from the attention they get for being with the IN crowd. They benefit from the actions they have chosen to do.

But isn’t it also rewarding for the SELF to love and embrace all people? Being with the marginalized group and helping them out could be meaningful and rewarding. Choosing to be affectionate could be beneficial to the SELF as well. That is the thin line between being able to understand and being a bigot. Ethical egoism must prevail in us rather than that of unhealthy one. We understand that we need each other. We just do not label ourselves so to be able to thrive. The rich and the poor; the beautiful and the ugly have things which could be shared to us…and vice versa.

Ethical egoism is often equated with selfishness, the disregard of others’ interests in favor of one’s own interests. However, ethical egoism cannot be coherently equated with selfishness because it is often in one’s self-interest to help others or to refrain from harming them (Rand, 2017).

Things like these could be cranial and stressful to some. But it has to reach our consciousness since we are the captain of our ships. We need to understand our own selves rather than dismiss such thoughts since we need to radiate knowledge and values to our small and big communities.

In this world being mandated by material things, it is but proper to touch base with our spirits rather than NOT being able to identify the real us and continue to thirst for things which are not meaningful and substantial.

We do not have to close our eyes to others. We have to look at them and SEE OURSELVES from their strengths and frailties.