THere is totally nothing wrong with being selfish, and i'm sure
alot of people will agree when they start to remove all those
negative connotations associated with the word and begin to
understand what it means.
Don't forget that everything we have and enjoy here, is because of
a selfish economic system: capitalism. Without it we'd still be
living in the pre-industrial ages.
To quote a passage from my favorite author Nathaniel Branden:
"One of the greatest causes of suffering on this planet is poverty.
It follows, therefore, that if one is genuinely interested in
relieving suffering and is disposed to approach the problem
consciously, one would wish to understand how poverty is
eliminated. Fortunately, the answer is known.
Prior to the industrial revolution and the birth of capitalism,
poverty was the natural condition of almost all of the human race.
It was not perceived as an aberration but as the norm. Ninety-eight
percent of the worlds population lived in conditions unimaginable
to a twentieth century citizen of the United States. That was
poverty of a kind that makes what we call poverty today look like
luxury. Then, dating from the time of the American Revolution, the
ideas of individualism, human rights, and political-economic
freedomcapitalismbegan to sweep the Western world. To the extent
that capitalism was accepted, which varied enormously from country
to country, the result was an unprecedented rise in the standard of
living of millions and millions of people that would have been
inconceivable a century earlier. Infant mortality rates dropped and
life expectancy leapt upward. In the brief span of less than two
hundred years the West witnessed a growth in material well-being
unequaled by the sum of human progress up to that time. At every
step of the way, the freer the country was, the faster the rate of
progress and the more rapid the decline of poverty."
If you understand this you wouldnt preach selflessness when it is
essentially selfishness that helped lifted so many millions from
poverty in the first place
