is it instinctual for people to take for them selves before taking for the better of all?

Question

People would rather put food in their own mouth before someone in greater need. This is just one example and I am not trying to be specific in any way in regards to the above. Why are we not think more as a whole?

Answer 1

Human instinct is survival, procreation, comfort, and love in that order. We can't get passed step one until we have secured survival for our selves. Once we've done that, the human capacity for empathy (and desire to be loved) plays a bigger role.

In other words, other people's suffering becomes relevant if insanity inducing hunger or despair aren't blocking our better nature. In the world of plenty we live in, especially in America, you'd expect more people to care--to care more that is.

One possible explanation is this. People are dumb. The ability to fully empathize is not purely emotional but intellectual. The more aware a person is, the more they've actively tried to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, they more apt they are to care.

I think most people (including if not especially Americans) are very good at insulating themselves because it's comfortable. it's easy (one of our higher instincts being seeking comfort). It's easy to stay stupid and unaware.

It was once explained to me that there are levels of consciousness, the higher the level the more another's pain is felt. Some people are emotionally retarded. Some people are intellectually lazy. Some people are both. And this explains why the greatest country in the world, founded by some of the greatest human beings who have ever lived, is also the least charitable. We are free. Sometimes free to suck

Answer 2

Greed, I think that sums it up. Ego would be another reason. Ego creates a persona that says this is what I must do to survive. I must be protected at all times. I must get everything i desire. The ego is all about itself greed must be removed but first the ego must be recognized for what it is, A consuming machine. Is it instinctual? In a way yes our ego's develop at an early age for protection which in today's society we don't really need any more. Ego has become more of a hindrance than anything. If every person can look inward and recognize their own greed at the source and cut it off before it transforms into a thought process the world would be a much better place.

Answer 3

I think that in most cases it is simply easier to think of the more immediate need, which is one's own. It's not selfishness, exactly, but simply a difficulty in thinking beyond one's immediate situation. One person cannot feed millions of starving people, but that one person can usually feed him/herself. If the problem is too large or too remote, a person will be less likely to think of it.

This does not mean people are innately uncaring. For example, look at the outpouring of money and other assistance that went to victims of Katrina. I know many who gave money, supplies, and volunteer time, or even opened up homes to refugees from Mississippi and the New Orleans area. I suspect that, in this and many other disastrous situations, it is not so much that people pretend to be less selfish or change for the situation, but simply that they are presented, in powerful ways, with the plights of those hurt by misfortune. People are not heartless, by and large, but they must really see and feel someone else's need - and a way to help with it - to know enough to do something about it.

Answer 4

There are two major factors. The first is fear or alarm. The second is habit. When the world has a predominant theme such as every man for himself, then it seems necessary to play along with this and then we get caught in habit so that we see no other way.

Answer 5

No, it is not INSTINCTUAL.

I
And many, many people don't "put food in their own mouths before another's." Think of all the mothers of dying children, who feed the child before themselves.

Think of how they have to TELL you on a plane to put your own oxygen mask on first; the natural URGE is to protect the child.

Think of how often you read about someone throwing him/herself in front of a car to push a child out of the way, or diving into a lake to save a drowning person, and on and on. Or what about the many people who drive into a tree to avoid hitting an animal?

Human beings have NO INSTINCTS. An instinct is a SET PATTERN of behavior that is innate; for example, a spider must make a web (very complicated behavior); there is no choice and mistakes are few, and the spider knows how from instinct. All animals know how to nurse, how to find their mothers' teats. In a short while they know how to get food for themselves; they even know the poisonous from what they need (and we're speaking of natural, not domesticated animals--who have many of the same problems as humans).

BUT a human baby can't do this. It was proven in a test by which they put babies, who were "rooting," that is sucking--which is not a pattern of behavior, but merely a very rudimentary movement--next to their mothers' breasts, BUT onto their mothers' bare arms. Those babies cried and cried and would have starved, if their mothers didn't move them right to the nipple. Note, also, that a human being must be TAUGHT not to eat something poisonous; there is no INSTINCT to let them know healthy from deadly. (Think of all the devices that have been invented to keep toddlers from drinking cleaning products!--no instincts there!)

Animals have very ritualistic mating behaviors, patterns of rituals, that are always the same for the species--INSTINCTS, and instincts for caring for their offspring.

Human beings, even in this most primal need, have only URGES, needs, drives, and must rely on trial and error to know how to woo and proceed, and are often at a loss with how to take care of an infant, despite the urge, drive, need to do it well. (Note here, also, many humans do NOT care for their young, do not choose to; this is completely anti-instinctual for most animals.)

II
What human beings do have, and to answer your question, are drives, urges, intuition, needs, but what causes human beings to fulfill those (and to know how to fulfill them) are two things:
1. CULTURE
2. INTELLIGENCE.

When our culture fails us, we are often, as in your example, selfish and self-centered; we might, though, overcome that through our individual learning and intelligence.

When our culture is a collective one, communally oriented, then we will be more likely to put others' needs before our own; also our intelligence will tell us that it is for the best, even for our own selves, if the needs of our support system are met.

This is a great time to ask this question, because this culture, meaning the U.S. has become a culture of greed, and like any neurotic culture (compare Nazi Germany), that culture will fail, unless saved by the intelligence of the opposition, a subculture, if you will--or in a worst case scenario, an invasion and overturn of that neurotic culture.

Great question
.