IntroductionSociety places so much importance on this silly little feeling; or at least feelings similar to it. Compassion, altruism, empathy, love, whatever form it takes, is still the same damn thing: a stupid waste of time. I hate love, and all the ramifications and subdivisions of this emotion of vicarious attachment. I don't just mean romantic love, as if I'm somehow bitter about past romantic relationships and take my frustration out by attacking romantic love. This would be completely untrue. I don't criticize love just for the hypocrisy it brings, people only paying lip service to its value, without committing themselves to any sense of compassion. I am not one of those who's been unloved their entire life and thus whines that love is just a myth. When I say I hate love, I mean it! I don't pick and choose, and I don't have any ulterior motives for my criticism. When I say I hate compassion and love, I hate the whole damn thing! Emotional WeaknessLet's start off with the three biggest emotional disadvantages of compassion:
Anyone who thinks this package of emotional baggage that comes with compassion is somehow worth the effort is clearly a masochist: they want to suffer, and then whine about their suffering to people who don't give a shit, like me. Stop whining! Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with masochism, not the physical kind. You cut open your succulent flesh because it makes you emotionally happy, giving you an emotional thrill. But masochism from grief or guilt? This type of emotional masochism is ridiculous! Cutting skin can make you emotionally happy, but being emotionally unhappy (e.g. from empathy) makes you what? Unhappy! Pure stupidity! Love is also inverted conceit. People might accuse me of being conceited, but by definition, conceit and/or arrogance is overestimating one's self worth. My self esteem is right on the money. When I say I'm better then you, I'm right, and I know it; thus I'm not arrogant. Anyway, love is an overestimate. People on self-report questionnaires rate their friends and family as above average more than is statistically possible. Not everyone you like is above average, you ass! This is inverted conceit, where you irrationally overestimate the worth of other people instead of yourself. Being confident in the abilities of those you love is illogical. In fact, the higher people score on questionnaire-based confidence scales, the lower they score on logistics IQ tests, on average. Thus, most confident people are stupid. People who love, are similarly stupid. Evolutionary DisadvantagesVery few Earthling species are ever altruistic. While some mediocre forms of love and attachment are present in the animal world, when it comes between choosing to save the self or the animal you supposedly care about, the trending pattern is to save the self. While a mother bear will valiantly fend off predators from eating her baby, while a naked mole rat will sacrifice itself to save the hive from invading predators, and while some chimpanzees taught to use sign language can communicate grief and pity, these occurrences in nature are very rare. For example, predation and parasitism, which are selfish and compassionless means for survival, are much more prevalent in the animal world compared to symbiosis and cooperation. The reasons for this are purely evolutionary. The evolutionary strategy, and the status quo of all living things, is to perpetuate your genes. All living things want their genes to be famous, and remembered forever as the historical progress of the universe moves forward. Ah, genetic immortality. Anyway, if you sacrifice yourself to save another, you sacrifice your genes. The dead don't have much sex (although I'd like to change that), and thus don't spread their genes. Thus, the selfless gene in an organism can't be expected to live very long, 'cause it always seems to want to commit suicide. Selfless genes are very depressed, 'cause they know that I'm right and they are stupid. However, selflessness might be a good evolutionary strategy for saving one's offspring or family, as they share some of your genes. This explains why selflessness is almost exclusively towards family in the animal world. So you people who hand out spare change to bums on the street, you are evolutionarily unfit and must die, by the decree of nature! Anyway, it's not that perpetuating your genes is really a great goal or anything. What the fuck do I care about my genes after I'm dead?! My family and bloodline can burn for all I care when I'm gone. But it just goes to show that at least nature doesn't care about you caring about others, and neither do I! Also, it is noteworthy that grief is just an evolutionary punishment. That's all pain of any kind is: punishment. Pain is your nervous system punishing you when you do wrong, to teach you a damn lesson! Some pain is more educational than others. Why would you let grief tell you what to do? Oooo, someone you know died, why the fuck are you being punished for their failure to live? Shouldn't you, the logical part of your brain, be the one to decide if someone dying is a problem for you or not? People who feel grief obviously can't decide for themselves, they need their little emotion to tell them what's wrong and what's in their best interest. Listening to your emotions and not your logic makes you little different than a subhuman animal. Evangelical Selfishness is Not SelfishNow I know what some of you are thinking, and I want you to knock it off right now! Some of you are formulating in your pea brains the absolutely simple and generic argument that: "If everyone were to cast off compassion and selflessness, we would all be in chaos and we'd all stop working as a species". Well no shit, genius! Mammals such as humans need to cooperate to survive, and they do this via mechanisms of compassion, etc. But my goal is not to convert the rest of the human world to my awesome cause, because I don't like to share. These are my beliefs, not yours; get away from me and get your own, parisite! But really, a self proclaimed selfish person who is evangelical about their egoism is actually quite selfless. If I want what's best for me and me alone, I certainly want others to suffer from the psychological disease of compassion and selflessness. If others are giving, then I'm more likely to receive. If I'm less giving, then in the end I have more. So this formula applies to me: ([Me = selfish] + [Others = selfless]) = Great Success!If you want others to be selfish and try and exploit you, then that is not in your self-interest and you are in fact being selfless. Ha! Jokes on you! Some might accuse me of being evangelical by merely writing this article. But, come on! No one is going to be converted by my pearls of wisdom. People aren't that smart! You overestimate people's ability to understand reason, especially my reason. Don't you remember what I discussed with you about overestimating other's abilities in the "Emotional Weakness" section of this article? It's very selfless, and therefore not a good idea. ConclusionSo compassion is only good if you're not the one who has to feel it. Some people say that selfless love is such a wonderful, magical feeling. Well it's not. Love is just a form of valuing something to a very high degree. It is nothing more then that. When you truly love someone, you are simply valuing them higher than is normal for most others. The happiness this sense of high regard brings is nothing special. If I were to really love a useless rock, for example, thus attributing extreme value to it, it may bring me happiness because I feel I have something important. However, it is still just a fucking rock, and the value you assign to it is misplaced. Would we really idealize someone who is obsessed with a rock? No, this person would be a moron, and the same goes for unconditional love directed towards humans. Your happiness would be meaningless, as is your existence and love itself. If you're going to value something, be reasonable and make that value conditional. Don't love people, love the many uses they often have. However, once they've outlived their usefulness, why in the Hell are you still talking to them?! Their purpose in your world has expired, and they are in due need of being obsolesced. Don't love the useless; love the uses of what would otherwise be a useless person. |