Selfishness

What is the difference between selfishness and self preservation if any or are they two different faces of the same coin? I personally don't think they are the same. A subtle difference separates them. But the difference is so blurry that we often oscillate back and forth from one end of the pendulum to the other without we ourselves knowing where we are. At other times not knowing or pretending not to know serves us well.

While it is perfectly alright to further your interests but it amounts to selfishness if others are hurt in  that pursuit of yours. Now if others got hurt because of their own naivety (suppose a pedestrian jumps a red light and lands underneath your wheels) then at least you have the benefit of doubt on your side of not being hurtful intentionally. But if you know well upfront about the adverse fall-out of your actions on others and still execute it in your self-interest, then however smart you might get with words it falls under the category of "selfishness".

Selfishness also may amount to selectively caring for those or investing in avenues where the potential of return is good. We may not care for our parents as they are a spent force and anyway their days on this planet are numbered (for that matter anybody's days are numbered, it is just that their numbers might have reached single digits or so).

By contrast how much do we care for our spouses or children may be thinking at the back of our minds that the same will yield good results in future. Now I am not trying to belittle the noble thought of caring for your children lest someone sees me as a monster trying to do so. Every child is a prince/princess to his/her parents. 

I am not trying to drive a wedge by highlighting these contrasts but only get appalled when people while justifying their choices start perverting the paradigms so that they come out clean.Hey! Nobody is judging you.Maybe it is a "self preserving" biological mechanism of trying to save yourself from pangs of guilt that clicks in automatically without you even knowing it. May be it depends on how open a person is to criticism or how closed he is thinking "Mine is the only way to live.There can be no other better way of doing things than the way I am doing" forgetting that even the Gods have been put to tests.

Self preservation on the other hand is the art of acting in order to survive despite all odds. You don't offer yourself as food to a predator in case it pounces upon you. Rather you kill it. Nothing wrong here. You fight a war if it is brought upon you by someone trying to steal something in your possession. You are not acting in selfishness here but out of an inborn instinct of self preservation. Selfishness stems out of greed whereas self preservation does not stem out of anything. It is lying dormant in you and becomes active only when your existence is threatened.

It is here that the "survival of the fittest" comes into play as the species that evolves over a period of time/acclimatizes itself to the changed surroundings etc will be the one to survive and preserve its self. 

Self effacing is quite another dimension of a person who may have evolved beyond those realms where these things have little meaning. This is for another audience and not for ordinary mortals like us. Let me bask in the glory of ordinariness.