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Do you ever feel bad for living for yourself?
Question by Jaime: Do you ever feel bad for living for yourself?
and not doing more charitable work, like living overseas to help the poor and helpless?
well some countries are unfortunate to not have enough resources…
Katie…good post, but I’d like to add, don’t feel like you need to save people because all of us need to save ourselves.
erm, let me add there’s a difference between salvation and helping…
Best answer:
Answer by Shani-chan
Yes, all the time. So I ballence it out by letting my friends copy from my math book.
But seriously, yes, yes i do. I feel guilty for that all the time.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
No. The poor and homeless should help themselves. People need to stop relying on each other so much and start being more independently efficient.
Like you wouldn’t believe, I feel so guilty that I’m trying harder to help anyone that needs me the most. I can’t even glance at a collection plate without putting the largest amount I can afford in. My mother is also scolding me for still being friends with people that are obviously screwed up, but someone has to be their therapist.
Edit: Not everyone has made mistakes that have let them to have a poor life like that, if they did you are essentially blaming children for being born to the wrong family. We all make our own mistakes but they don’t merely effect* oneself.
i used to but i don’t care anymore unfortunately. i don’t know what happened but it doesn’t cross my mind very often.
I don’t feel bad. Just because I have it better than those in a third world country, doesn’t mean i’m going to give up my hard earned stuff to equalize the wealth. Not to mention the worlds current available resources can not currently support everyone on the planet right now.
If they can’t help themselves they made mistakes where we didn’t. I have no obligation to help them. This choice is inhumane, but it is rational. And it is the only rational-inhumane choice I believe in.
I do feel pain for them. But not guilt.
Nope, never. I take care of myself and i expect others to do the same. If theyre born in a third world country that sucks but it wasnt my choice to be here while they got stuck there, it was luck of the draw, so i see no reason to feel guilt there. My money stays in my own pocket for the most part, i worked for it and i feel im entitled to everything i earn. Just because someone has a need dosent mean i owe them something, i didnt put them in that situation. 9 times out of 10 they did it to themselves. I guess that might sound cold, but ive always played the hand that i was dealt and i expect others to do the same.
There is a moral dilemma going on in the practical philosophy of living: Can I do good for others without being morally REQUIRED to do it? When someone tries to “live for himself” for a few moments, someone will come along to challenge what he is doing. He then thinks to himself, “This guy doesn’t know I spend 20 hours a week working for free in a food pantry, and what I’m doing does have the momentary appearance of being selfish, so I guess I’d better just keep my mouth shut and quit being selfish and go do something to prove I’m NOT selfish.”
The moral dilemma is this: Do I have the RIGHT not to work in the food pantry (etc)?
One of the most moral statement of personal responsibility both toward oneself and toward others came from the novel Atlas Shrugged:
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor let another man live for mine.”
This means you can work in all the food pantrys you want to until you die, but NOT because you MUST, which would be “living for the sake of others.”
Nor will you allow others to live for your sake, giving up their own self-needy desires to fulfill your needs, in the manner of the man who was chastised in my first paragraph for being “selfish.”
NEVER feel bad for living for yourself. It is your life. Don’t pretend you should not or cannot be the “Good Samaritin” while being at the same time selfish. But don’t think you must help everyone to their feet, or you won’t have the time or energy to help yourself up and to meet your own goals.
You do have the right to live for yourself. You even have the right to be a literal “Mr. Scrooge” but is being someone everyone hates “living for yourself”? It’s much easier to live for yourself when you are seen to be someone who does not ignore the lives of others.
You just don’t have to live FOR others.