IN> Selflessness Paradox

[Daniel Childers]

Re enlightened self-interest:

It very well *might* be in most people's interest to set up death camps
and kill all members of an unpopular group and distribute their property
among everyone else. People *do* invoke enlightened self-interest as
a good reason to demand a world government with a policy of quickly
and drastically reducing the numbers of humans in the world (to save
the environment); I have never seen any such take one step further
to say that the population reduction should be targetted at undesirable
groups, but really, once you want to get rid of a lot of people quickly,
getting rid of bad people first only makes sense.

A further counterargument: many meritorious acts do NOT get a
reward, and cannot be reasonably expected to do so. No, not even
in IN--any number of meritorious acts that are not your Destiny
will not get you into Heaven. Some things, you do because they
are right--*even if* you would benefit more from doing the wrong
thing.

Getting back to IN: one could use Claribel's argument to argue that
selflessness is an illusion, that *all* acts are selfish--and I'm sure many
demons do. The purpose, of course, is to confuse the angels into
pondering a philosophical dilemma instead of acting. If you actually
manage to convince an angel or two that selflessness is actually
selfishness, so you might as well do the selfishness that benefits you
more directly, well, hurrah!