Sue's Young Adam Review

[bladestarr]

Congratulations Sue, you have written an excellent (and as far as I can see grammatically and factually flawless) review! Not only was it correct in every way I can imagine, but it was also extremely interesting without resorting to made-up words and colloquial language (my favorite weapons of choice).

Aside from that, now I think is a good time for a Mini-Bloviation™. I feel that the word 'selfish' is inadequate for it is used to describe several concepts. The phrase that most sticks in my mind here is "people are selfish by nature". I do not agree to this idea, so I have "created" a new term: "self-interested". Yes I know it already exists, but I feel it is severly underused. The thing that differentiates this term from selfish is that a self-interested person can (and in my definition does) take into account how his/her actions will affect others, while a selfish person either does not think of others or acts intentionally to harm others while at the same time advancing him/herself.

To make a long story longer, I believe that all people by their nature are self-interested, but that can turn into selfishness if a person stops considering others and how his/her decisions will affect them.

Now that I go back and look at that, I realize there was absolutely nothing "mini" about that Bloviation™. I blame it on my 2nd grade teacher. One day in class she gave us each a letter of the alphabet and told us to make up a new word that starts with that letter. I had "F", so I made the word "finkleheimer" which means "pickle juice". Years later I learned that the word "brine" existed and adjusted the definintion of the word to "brine after exposure to cucumbers for an unspecified duration of time". Ah, youth!

-BladeStarr: changing the English language since 1988 ;D

[Lissa]

Dude, read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand says the same thing, but in- shoot, my copy's outside- well over 1000 pages. (And just in case you didn't get the point of the story, well over 60 pages of monologue from John Galt.)

And I've read Young Adam. Selfish fits the character in the conventional sense of the word. Actually, I don't think he's self-interested at all, as that would imply that there's a self to be interested in. (I adore Ewan McGregor. I've been avoiding this movie, precisely for the reasons Sue cited. I HATE movies like that. If I want uncomfortable and depressing, I'll go watch Life as a House, thanks.)

[Head Mutant]

If there's a thread out there that Lissa can't plug Ayn Rand into, she hasn't heard of it!

[DARTHMADLER]

So what differentiates a considerate person and a "self-interested" person?

And out of curiosity, why do you disagree with the notion that people are selfish by nature?

[bladestarr]

A considerate person would then be a person that would go out of their way for others, even at their own expense (as long as it does not extremely harm them), while a self-interested person would only do for others if it would not harm themselves and may or may not benfit themselves. And I disagree that people are selfish by nature because I do not belive that humans are ANYTHING by nature beyond being procreative mammals. Anything else we may call 'human nature' I think is really a sociological creation. I believe that humans are by nature a blank slate, not born with any preconceived notions or habits aside from the basic physiological ones that all mammals are born with.

[DARTHMADLER]

Ah, so you're on the Nurture side of the Nature vs. Nurture argument.

What do you consider the basic mammal instincts?

[bladestarr]

Yes I suppose I would be. And as far as instincts, probably just the basic physiological and biological, such as the instinct to survive: eat, sleep, breathe, procreate and protect their offspring. That kind of thing, which could also imply being 'self-interested' because obviously all creatures wish to continue their existance as long as possible, so they ARE interested in their own best interests.

And as far as the whole 'selfish', 'self-interested', 'considerate' thing would go, lets do an example: a person about to walk through a door with someone behind him. A 'selfish' person would just walk through and keep on going, perhaps slam the door backwards if it gave him some sort of thrill to do such a thing. A 'self-interested' person would either go through the doorway and push the door further open as he was going, or may hold the door open for the person if he did not have anywhere to be right at the moment (and if it gave him some sort of pleasure to help another person). A 'considerate' person would hold the door open even if he was already 5 minutes late to his meeting. So you see the different levels here. NEXT!

[DocD83]

What do you call the people who hold the door for you when there is no way you're going to be there anytime soon, making you have to choose whether to keep your pace and make the guy uncomfortable or break into a trot to get there in a reasonable time frame?

[bladestarr]

Oh, that's just me. Don't mind me, I'm just not too bright sometimes. ;D