Selfless acts are in reality self serving.
I am 17 years old - just turned 17 on the 15th. So most of my psychological theories are just hypothesis. However unlikely it may be that i may happen to know some truth about the human psyche someone had to think up this stuff in the first place so it isnt impossible for me to figure it out on my own.
I think, and believe, that all acts regardless to whether they are apparently selfless, or indifferent, or selfish are all in the end self serving. There are a few stages to my logic. The first stage is the background information on how i "think" humans seemingly illogical minds worked before i came up with the first sentances idea. The second stage is why my idea makes sense and is likely to be correct. The third and last stage is what this means to us all.
The first thing that i think, and want you to understand is that human perception is broken down into two aspects of one concept. Those aspects are the lack or abundance of pain. You must understand that when i refer to pain i am also refering to discomfort, unhappiness, anything even remotely unpleasent including guilt. The lack of pain includes happiness, comfort, pride, encouragement, ect. An abundance of pain can be thought of as a lack of pleasure and an abundance of pleasure can be thought of as a lack of pain. No matter what the sensation, it always can be placed into one of those two aspects.
Some examples are that you are tired and unhappy but eating a sandwhich would make you happier. You will only go to get the sandwhich if the pleasure of the sandwhich and the trouble of getting it is more appealing that sitting there and resting.
You help a poor person selflessly, meaning you get nothing in return for say money or clothing. The truth is that that sacrifice makes you happy, you feel as though you have done a good honorable thing. You make youself happy, and if helping someone didn't make you feel good, or relieve pain or guilt you would have no reason to do it.
You may find my opinion offensive, that i break down human "free will" into simple animal like logic. To disprove me you specifically do something that contridicts what i have stated to be true. You probabally feel vindicated that you have proven me wrong. You were angry that i challenged something very important to you, and to make yourself feel better you convinced yourself that i was wrong.
People do this all of the time. They dont know it, and if i suggested it to them, most of them wouldn't take the time to consider what i said to be at all true and then another large majority would smile and nod and ignore me completely, and then another ground would be indignant about it and bitch at me for being so ammoral and godless. I have looked at people, and how they act and i try to understand them. Since i am a scientific person i tend to believe that everything can be explained. I really do this because i need a scape goat like everyone else. I need someone to blame my faults and failures on, however i cannot rest with simple scape goats. Since i understand humans so deeply i can look all the way down to barest human nature of people. If i call those things my scape goat it will be perfect. Because normal scape goats always leave the observer to wonder in distaste if the one claiming innocence could have prevented the reason to need a scape goat, whereas my scape goat is perfect because it is almost like i Cant change. I find that i cant change those deepest fundamental tendancies. That may not be true, it may just be another thing i think, im not sure. It might be a real subconcious scape goat that i could possibly "beat" but so far i can only guess it is true. Well this has a positive angle. I have used these ideas to build a peace inside my mind, as opposed to forever hating myself for knowing things and never using it for my benefit or even something remotely harmful. At least using it and not letting it go to waste.
In society we make morals and ethics to govern the people without government. Using a combination of subtle evolution of the society and propaganda the norms of society will change to suit the government and the governed. I once posed the idea of a world where there were no morals or ethics. They immediately believed that the world would decend into chaos. I dont know about the rest of you but i have no moral qualms with killing. Life has little value to me. However this does not mean that i hate life and want to destroy it. I do hate humans and wish they were dead but i do not have the power to fulfill that wish. I do not go out and kill people not because killing is "wrong" i don't do it because you can be arested for it. And im sure most people out there do feel that killing is wrong on some level, or just feel that the act of killing is too grotesque and disturbing for them to pull off but if they ever get so pissed off at one person for something or another the last barrier in their mind is always the threat of jail. A side effect of people learning ethics and morals to make the judicial systems life easier is that people end up feeling bad for things they really have no power over or just plain dont matter. If someone ever listens to my ideas for long enough they eventually become angry at the idea that there is no right or wrong, and that anything you do or think is neither evil nor saintly. They sometimes think that what we want and do no longer holds validity because it can be understood in an ambiguous and impartial universe.
What it means to us is that when we do something selfless we are actually satisfying ourselves by doing something selflessly, and when we do something selfish, we are not being evil. We are doing the exact same thing as when we were selfless. Niether should be looked upon as special or evil. They are natural, unavoidable tendancies. By admitting to the prior we make our lives happier by acknowleding the latter.
This is where you find the back button.