Self Less Good Deed

I was watching Friends yesterday and it was the episode about selfless good deeds. Joey tells Phoebe that there is nothing like a selfless good deed. He is confident that every good deed is selfish.

Made me wonder – yes, it is there on my mind. Is there anything such as a selfless good deed? Or all good deeds are basically based on some selfish reason, even though the selfish reason might be feeling good about oneself?

And if there is no good deed, who is to blame? 

Nature of man? 

The way society functions? 

If someone goes out to help another human being while taking trouble upon himself, wouldn’t society term him as a fool and laugh at him? 

So, that itself makes sure that every man first has to take care of himself and then think of the other person. 

So, the first lesson is taught by society. 

It also depends what category we put this into. 

Does taking care of oneself selfish? 

It is not. And if it is not, then a good deed without harming oneself is not selfish.

Now, the question is why would a human being want to help another person? Let us keep ideals aside for a while. Keeping in mind, that man is a species who would do anything only if he sees some kind of benefit in it, the least profit would be to feel good about himself in helping others. There can be other profits, but feeling good about oneself can be the least measurable as it is the person’s inner ego getting boosted and no concrete gain. Now, the other question is what is wrong in feeling a little good about oneself? In fact, if someone does a good deed and then thinks bad about it, the whole purpose of that good deed goes into waste as it will be clear that the person is having ill feelings about it. So, there is a fundamental need for the person to feel good about doing a positive deed, otherwise, the good deed doesn’t remain a good deed after all.

So, it is a vicious circle and it goes round and round.

I understand when Joey says that but then Joey is someone not real or should I say that Joey is someone who is true ideal to be real or too ideal to be able to survive in this world. Hence, this question by him is ok. But, for someone who is real and who actually lives in the world, a good deed which boosts the doer’s ego, is by far the best selfless act. At least, it doesn’t have ulterior motives associated with it. Ulterior motives are scary, ego boost is not!

And yesterday, during my regular dose of the idiot box, I caught this line from the tv series, Scrubs: 'There goes nothing'...

Don't we all sometimes hang onto 'nothing'?

Don't we all fear losing that something 'nothing'? 

Why do we feel that we have that 'nothing' when it actually is 'nothing'?

Is this the other name for hope? 

We hope for something and then make our actions tuned into achieving that? And, if any of our actions actually does something opposite, we get this feeling that we have lost that 'nothing'?

There is this famous saying as, 'The world stands firm on hope'....Is hope that 'nothing'?