There are three types of people. I’ll start with the second for reason’s you’ll understand later.
The second type are those who put their own needs first, but in second place is the goal of not harming other people. The problem here is that A. the vast majority of people belong in this group and B. most societies treat this arrangement of priorities as evil. The truth is these are no intentional priorities. These are the natural bent of these people and this is how they live their lives, and it’s not necessarily evil. In fact, the combination of those two priorities, even in that order creates a lot of good. Inevitably as you try to better yourself, if you are not allowing yourself to exploit and harm other, means that you will with very few exceptions, help others. The vast majority of Good that comes about in the word comes from these people.
The first group are those who by their very nature put other people first. The truth is that in reality these people are few and far between. They are rare, but when we see them we very much respect them (typically)
The third type of people are those who have the first priority of their own needs and have no other priorities. Obviously societies consider this evil as well, as they should, but the problem is that people in this group learn quickly that they need to make people think they have different priorities. More often than not these people will work hard at convincing everyone that they are really part of the first group. They will start charities and benevolence funds and rake in lots of money. They learn how to exploit the guilt the people in the second group have for not being in the first group and convince them that by giving to their “charity” they will be proving they are part of the first group. And of course then these 3rd-group-people keep as much of the money as they can and use a minimal amount to maintain the ruse.
Thus the vast majority of charities are actually scams, designed to line the pockets of selfish people as the exploit others and can even con some of the 1st-group people into helping them so they can have an even more convincing façade for their charity.
All because we do not recognize that the people in the second group are in fact good people who help a lot of people. It’s almost impossible to make yourself rich, while maintaining the principle of not harming others, without inadvertently helping others a great deal.
The more pressure society puts on this second group to pretend to be part of the first group, the easier it is for them to be exploited and manipulated by the third group.
There’s nothing wrong with having your own self-interests as your first priority as long as your second priority is to not hurt other people. You are part of, what I believe to be, about 95 percent of the human race.
