"Given two actors, oneself and someone else, there are four types of possible behavior; Selfishness, Altruism, Spite, and Cooperation. Selfishness is harming someone else in order to help oneself; Altruism is harming oneself in order to help someone else; Spite is harming oneself in order to harm someone else; Cooperation is helping oneself and helping someone else."
I often feel like I yo-yo between being selfish and feeling altruistic ... I'm not sure, regardless of all the Barney episodes in the world, that I actually understand how cooperation is achieved. Sure, I can read the logical definition and comprehend the words used... but actually having both parties gain from an event or experience.... how does that work?? John Kramer (AKA Jigsaw) always set scenes where cooperation was the ultimate ruler -- if you cooperated, you could save each other with the least amount of pain to oneself and if you didn't, you'd likely both/all die..... when it has been set up to work that way, of course the mechanism of cooperation is obvious, but it is the real life scenarios that throw me for a loop. When two people want such very different things, when two people come from such very different background and experiences, when two people see and interpret the world in such very different ways, how is cooperation actualized such that both parties come out on top?
This is why D/s relationships make more sense to me -- if one is always the leader and the other the subservient follower, is this not, also a form of cooperation -- or does it fall more into altruism?
Only, at some point, I always feel the selfish nature creeping in, over-taking my altruism and throwing all else to the wind, demanding that my needs in the moment out-weigh all other elements. And sometimes, I just can't stop myself, like this selfishness has been rolled into a ball, held at bay during other interactions and suddenly breaks free, rolling with its own momentum forcing it into the daylight and refusing to be halted................. (yeah, I think I just tripped over my own tongue, but I don't know how else to explain that feeling??)
Is it wrong to be selfish? To be altruistic? ... spite seems like an obvious one to avoid, but is it really so obvious? Why does cooperation trump all others? Is that really the most viable option???!
some days I am more confused than others :(
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it not even if i have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." -- Buddha
