Selfishness As A Timeline

"It would have been better," popular wisdom said, "had Kytorski gone a 
different route." 
Paul, the closest friend of Kytorski, explained his version of the story: 
"Y'see, people are all too used to hearing the story about their 
perception being wrong. When you talk about selfishness, you need to 
go the angle of explaining why the new explanation of selfishness is 
quite similar to the old version of it. You do, of course, risk people 
being suspicious and thinking you're trying to 'pull the wool' over 
their eyes, but at least they're listening, as opposed to going on a 
spiel about how selfishness is destroying society." 
Reporter: 
"Well, Paul, that's the question, isn't it? IS selfishness 
destroying society?" 
Paul: 
"Well, Mr. Reporter sir, that sounds like a bit of a loaded question, 
which is the perfect opportunity to explain myself. And I think I 
could even use Kytorski's mistake as an example. When Kytorski was 
asked this question, he basically blew up, telling the reporters - you 
were one of them, yeah?" 
Reporter: 
"Yes, I was. I wasn't expecting you to be so civil. I kind of figured 
you and Kytorski were starting a cult." 
Paul: 
"Yes, and that would be the demonization effect from polarization of 
the unknown, which I talk about in my book that I haven't written 
which might make you wonder if I'm simply talking bullshit." 
Reporter: 
"Yes, well - proceed to explain." 
Paul: 
"Yes. Yes, well, you were one of the reporters he blew up at when he 
said that 'the media, it shall take longer than I prefer to catch up 
with my theories! This angers me and I attack!' And, yes, he had an 
annoying habit of talking about himself in the third person, and since 
we associate people who come up with new theories with being mentally 
unstable - hey, couldn't hurt." 
Reporter: 
"He had a sword with him and nearly cut my arm off." 
Paul: 
"And that sword is no longer in his possession. Kytorski is, 
fortunately or unfortunately, currently locked up, and probably 
working on his theory in there when he's not in a straight jacket. 
Kind of makes the initial thought of him being a genius less 
appealing. 
Anyway, to apply to theory of the enlarging of his circle of 
selfishness, to explain the benefits of not acting like an ass to the 
reporters because of his impatience, such as a more ready acceptance 
of his theory, more public respect, and also the correlate of not 
being put in the slammer, though this aspect I find personally more 
behavioristic, and so I don't like that direction, since people might 
focus on behavioral tactics instead of conceptual ones... That 
explaining how acting in a different way benefits him, that in this, 
as it were, enlightened state, he might choose by himself to behave 
differently." 
Reporter: 
"But, he didn't." 
Paul: shrugs He didn't. And I'm sorry for that. Does it disprove the 
theory, meaning that extending the circle of one's self-centeredness 
doesn't work? Well, no, I don't think so. Extending the circle of 
selfishness does not mean that the extension will include all of your 
or others' wants and desires - it's not a brain to brain link. It's 
not a cure-all. It's not some magical remedy that will all-a-sudden 
make the most murderous people so harmless they wouldn't swat a fly. 
There is certainly that promise, of course, if there is an abundance 
of skill and patience, but it's not exactly that simple. However, I'd 
say that these are the extreme cases (which work by virtue of 'if it 
worked for him, it's sure to work for me!). In addition to that, I 
consider it a sort of unfinished theory about unfinished people. It's 
very you-centric. It's about communication, in my opinion. My twist on 
it (and I suspect where I differ from Kytorski) is that I think all of 
this is an evolving process, and that we've been gaining a lot of 
understanding of ourselves as we've as a collective recorded more of 
what we call history, and that this fast-paced 'media-age', which is 
rather intimidating to adults oftentimes, have not grown up with it 
and fear - I think, legitimately - the rising careless rebellion of 
teenagers in relation to authority... That, in a think in a very real 
way the two competing perspectives - teens in the now and adults in 
the old - are really the same perspective. I think that 'extending the 
circle of selfishness' expresses both the teen view and the adult 
view, thus bridging the gap. I, however, have no proof of this; it's 
merely memetic speculation that falls in the area of to be proved 
later, or to be shown as seriously false though true in a way that 
wasn't expected. 

So, in a word, the intention of this very rough theory is the 
reuniting of two opposing views, via a small tweak in semantic 
thinking, that instead of people having mutually-opposed goals, a 
meet-up in the middle makes for peace and productivity. An example of 
this could be seen with two former enemies agreeing about some other 
entity as something to oppose, thus becoming united for the duration 
of the opposition. 

Will this happen all the time? Of course not. Kytorski is a prime 
example of this. It is, of course, preferred. So, also, to do some 
speculation on this case, what went wrong? The end result is that 
Kytorski, in our collective opinion, think that in acting the way he 
did, did not benefit himself, in his own point of view (this is an 
important point: cigarettes may be bad for you in the long term, but 
quite beneficial in the short term, making smoking a good cost/benefit 
ratio), as much as he could have had he acted with more posture. Of 
course, it could be argued that had he not acted that way, we would 
not have this excellent almost-ironic example for me to work with; 
however, I had not encountered such a subtlety before I started this, 
and do not feel prepared to work it out to full detail at this moment. 
Therefore, we will assume that he was and is working on an unrelated 
theory." 
Reporter: 
"You've been talking for 25 minutes. Our program is a 30 minute show, 
and the introduction was 2 minutes long." 
Paul: 
"I understand that there is want for me to wrap this up, primarily 
from my own lack of stamina. Since there is no actual hurry, I'll 
point out that this event is not actually occurring, and is framed in 
this way because it is maintaining the author's interest in fleshing 
out some of the theory for Diane. 

There are two main points for the attempt to enlargen one's or someone 
elses' circle to fail on: lack of comprehension, and the emotional 
neural network prematurely activating. That is, any lack of 
understanding on either part makes the circle smaller and more likely 
to stay that way, since there is a dual desire for understanding as 
well as for interesting things. And, when a formerly hyped 
polarization becomes activated enough for the inevitable of something 
like a strike from anger, or seeing someone as the devil manifest. In 
other words, a failure of explaining, and a successful activation of 
blinding emotions. 

This can also occur at the same time - for example, if you don't 
understand what the hell I'm talking about and get frustrated by it, 
and this happens three more times after you read this, you may 
conclude this to be unintelligible junk. Should other people mention 
it or like it, you might either ask them to explain it to you, or get 
pissed at the mention of it. Supposing they attempt to explain it to 
you and don't succeed, this would amplify the frustration. 

If this is paired with an enormous amount of enthusiasm for this, you 
might come to try to parody it, mock it, and any matter of methods to 
express your frustration, as well as trying to explain why it's 
unintelligible. If neither side succeeds at convincing the other (I.e. 
a failure of understanding or some sort of comprehension), the common 
method of solving this is that of war, along with more extreme 
versions of parody, that end up being unsubstantiatable for their lack 
of coherency. 

I think that the awareness of this theory, by way of an understanding 
of alternate possibilities, will speed up a process that's already 
naturally underway. I do not want this theory to be thought to be 
absolute, the letter of the law, or to be followed to the letter. I 
expect much revision, as well as this first version I'm positing as 
perhaps laying the basis, but quite wrong in light of further 
developments. 

In addition to the base theory of expansion of self-centeredness as an 
alternate view to the view of the dichotomy of self and others, with 
the according urges to altruism, I posit that part of the problem of 
debate has been thus: 
1. (My concept of Debate assumes that there are two opposing and 
entirely unalike forces, though this aspect of the word has softened. 
I point out this nitpickiness to illustrate changes in word that we've 
grown up with, as a further point of communication failure in relation 
to explaining benefits.) 
2. That we are dealing with words ill-defined, which was already 
obvious, I think, though to point it out here is helpful, I hope. The 
connection to this is both the explanation that this is partly why 
explanation often fails, as well as pointing out that the best proof 
one can offer is that of ultimate reality, as well as what has 
'evolutionarily' worked to win, such as violence, which is why debates 
quickly escalates to it; it works for being the dominant view. 

This all said, it seems to be, more often than not, that we generally 
get along or try to get along. If this is the case, why is there even 
an issue of selfishness VS unselfishness? 

Let's assume (and I think this will be an easy assumption given the 
two dominant types of worldview in regard to internet debates, 
Christianity and atheism with the addition of what is either called 
evolution or Darwinism hold) that we all started off with much fewer 
of us. Perhaps, only 10 people. These 10 people generally get along, 
enjoying each other's company. There is additionally, curious enough, 
few to no conflicts. The extension that you're waiting for is more an 
more people on the earth via reproduction. Now we have, let's say, 200 
people, and they cover more land. 

As time goes along, these 200 people become 2000 (I forgot about the 
fubar number of 201; it's a theory that states that we can only 
conceive of about. 201 people as actually being people), and smaller 
groups, about 9 of them, become distinct entities. Much like with a 
computer simulation, you could watch these 9 groups interact, wage 
war, take over each other, and continue to propagate until we reach 
where we are now. 

But why did they start waging war in the first place? Why did they 
form separate groups? My guess with this is that the interests of each 
of the 9 groups had gone along slightly different paths, resulting in 
a need for explanation. As you might imagine, their ability to explain 
might be inadequate. And because either one 'clan' wanted more land, 
or something similar to that, and the other clan or clan didn't, the 
rest of the semantics were spoken in fists and blood. 

Suppose you fast-forward a little in the time-line to an event that 
many people on the land called America called 1776, or other familiar 
names, and you see an example of a similar dispute occurring with one 
party leaving to a different piece of land (and killing quite a few 
people while doing so). I imagine that the argument used against them 
in regard to fairness might have been 'love it or leave it.' They 
left. As you might be aware, I have been involved with a movement that 
called itself by various names, with an apt one being anarchist, 
though this label is disdained for its connection to chaos and 
violence. The same argument of love it or leave it has been used many 
times. But it seems the response (sine it would be quite hard to do 
this), has changed considerably, even to, 
"Look at your own lives. Do you just go outside each day and say to 
yourself, 'Hey! I think I'll beat someone up today!' No! You have an 
excellent example of anarchy right in your midst. Why should we move 
when we can change the people here instead by talking with them so 
they don't act like assholes to us?" 

Accordingly, I posit that saturization via a high amount of 
connectedness becomes, though it's obviously quite the curse at first 
if you don't understand what's going on and what you're doing, a spot 
of eventual perhaps global ability for each of us to extend our 
circles of selfishness via all of the viewpoints we hear, via the 
interaction that computers and the internet enable. So instead of 
bumping minds and heads only when our clan and their clan grow to the 
amount that we're encroaching on each other's lands and war ensues, 
that we'll have already had many many memetic wars that are, 
essentially, harmless, after which we may find ourselves as one big 
clan, making, happily, such concepts strange. Is there a danger of 
falling back into clanship? No, it is an inevitability. 

I do not promise world peace, but an interesting alternate view to the 
one of self and others as a dichotomy, as opposing forces. If you'd 
like to get all Zen-like or game-ish about it, I offer up for 
examination the view that you start with no self, realize you have a 
self, and gradually level up to include more and more people, or, 
intents, or, points of view, into your self center. More power, 
essentially. Perhaps, more persuation ability and the like. Sorry for 
keeping you so long." 
Reporter: 
"Oh, it's been worth it, thank you." 
Paul: 
"I sure hope the readers feel the same way. Thanks for having me."