Selfishness

Even though they shouldn't, people still amaze me. I don't understand the selfish nature that society has. We see it every day. You know, it's the guy having to cut you off in traffic even though there is no one behind you. The person at work who you ask if someone walked by and they respond with "It's not my turn to babysit" because you were imposing on their holding up the wall time. The worst I think is when someone has their arms full of something (groceries, presents, animals, whatever) and a person just watches them fight to try to open a door instead of actually helping the person get the door. Would it really hurt you to open the door to let the person through? I sadly see this scenario more often than I would like.

I have heard the expression the "me generation" because of how selfish people are these days. This got me wondering how all of this started. When did people as a whole become so selfish? Were they always this way and I am just noticing this because I am older and a little wiser? Or is this something that all of a sudden happened, where people started thinking "screw them, it's about me!!" So I went to the trusty tangled interwebs to find an answer!

I put into my favorite search engine "When did society become so selfish" and here's what I found...

Some people blame video games and movies for the selfishness. Movies and video games apparently promote it in some fashions. I can understand this to a point, especially with the younger people who have grown up with this stuff all their lives. There aren't many video games or movies that promote team work. The games have to have some sort of 1 player option or they wouldn't sell as many games. Newer games like Halo and Call of Duty can connect to the internet where you can play as a "team" but there's still tons of individual stats. Movies are very similar. Usually movies center on one main person. Everyone else basically lives in that person's world. So this is a good argument for selfishness for the video game generation but what about the generation of baby boomers who are out there flipping the bird and cutting others off when driving because it is so important that they get somewhere before that other person?

Many people say that it is "human nature" or "we have always been this way." This one I can see the argument for. Many stories/tales/history has shown selfishness over the years. This includes stories of King Arthur. I love Arthurian Legends and although chilvary by the knights is talked about quite often, the knights who act this way are the heros because of the selfish bad guys. Like one of the rival Kings to Arthur capturing Queen Guinevere to be his instead of Arthur's. I am told that the Bible makes refrence to selfishness as well but I am not well versed in the Bible so I apologize that I do not have an example here.

Putting together these two theories makes a pretty reasonable one in my crazy head. Lets look at it this way....Lets say that way back in the day there were an equal amount of selfish acts as there were unselfish ones. That lasted for hundreds if not thousands of years. You fast forward into the 1900s when movies started becoming popular. These movies unknowingly started to promote selfishness because it was cool to be like the main character. Continue that into video games to add even more fuel to the fire and you have the selfish society that we have today.

It's an interesting concept. Tell me what you think. Do you think this stuff is totally crazy? How do you think all of this selfishness came about?