Allbeama wrote:Regiria wrote:Mystic Skeptic wrote:Seriously, one of the core believes I have is that the foundation of freedom is personal responsibility. People have to be able to choose their own course of action and live with the results - even if it is disastrous. I always figured most people are smart enough to make sound and wise decisions with their life. There will always be people who make dumb decisions, but I always presumed that the majority of folks are smart enough to do the right thing for their own self interest.
That was your first mistake.
I would like to add to this thought, because the phrase self interest is always one that I think carries a broader meaning than the people who like to throw it around in brilliant rhetorical fashion tend to think it has. Acting in one's own self interest, first of all, is no guarantee of anyone doing "the right thing". To decide for example, that you should exercise because it is in your self interest, you would have to accept the premise that exercise serves your self interest better than not exercising. Seeing as humans tend to have different opinions and different methodologies to obtain those opinions, not everyone is going to conclude the same thing regarding what serves their self interest best. Someone might conclude that murdering a man and stealing his money is in his best interest, because then they would have more money, and possibly have experienced the joy of murdering someone. Does that make it a moral imperative for all people? Hell no. It is just the reasoning, however it is percieved, of a single individual. In effect, the "right thing" to do probably has more going on than whether or not it is in your own self interest or not. Especially when we are discussing morality.
I find it hard to disagree strangely, though for different reasons, self-interest varies, while rational self-interest is always beneficial, irrational self-interest which I call greed to make the distinction is not, however irrational self-interest is rarely in one's self-interest, when you murder someone you are often caught and punished, the punishment should be in any case capable of providing a deterrent against that action. However we must not trick ourselves into think laws are what keep us from murdering each other, we don't go about murdering and raping and pillaging because it isn't in our rational self-interest.
For a definition, rational self-interest is an action which benefits a person in the short term with minor adverse long term effects, or long term with minor adverse short term effects, essentially it is the rational choice of the most beneficial action. Irrational self-interest is the taking of a minor short-term effect for major long term negative or vice-versa.
Further we must define the fact that not every mind acts in the same manner, as you said what is rational to some is not to others based on the effects, however self-interest when rational will always be beneficial to the person, the positives outweighing the negative in the long and short term. So long as these conditions are met and not intervened with rational self-interest will always be taken by the sane mind.
All fully functional people are capable of rational self-interest, and when a person takes the opposite route they will sooner or later be adversely affected to such a degree they are forced to accept rational self-interest, barring intervention which artificially inflates benefits or lessens risk.
Note: Apologies, I am almost certain this will sound redundant here and there.