• ArtZuron@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    Effectively be definition, society is altruistic. It can’t exist if everyone is perfectly selfish. There needed to be a balancing act between selfishness and selflessness, including some mixture such as “selfish altruism.” Help me I help you. That’s quite possibly the basis of civilization in general.

    That being said, as beings subject to natural selection as well as self preservation and wants, we are generally selfish by nature. Whether we can override that or not depends on both our nature and our nurture. We did so far enough to form communities and eventually civilizations, of course.