Is the selfish really selfish or stupid?

While living in this world, we often see selfishness all around us. People are so driven by their self-interests that they do huge damage to the organizations and the societies for their petty interests. We see the people stoop to new lows of greed, sycophancy, and hatred. The more greedy a person is the more restless he becomes. The more he gets involved in sycophancy the weaker he becomes. The more he develops hatred the more tense he becomes. Yet humanity, in general, is becoming more and more greedy, sycophant, and full of hatred. 

I do not think that human beings are so stupid that they can not understand what is good for them. Even the most greedy people teach Ramayana and Mahabharata to their kids. We will not find any of them teaching their kids to follow Ravana. Then what is the reason that we are so greedy?

I have always been intrigued by this phenomenon. I have analyzed the behavior of the businessmen because I belong to that community. I have also analyzed the behavior of the professionals because I qualified as a Chartered Accountant. I have also analyzed the behavior of my fellow bureaucrats because I work in a bureaucracy. I feel that we have certain basic needs. For example, a baby needs milk to survive. If he feels hungry, he cries and the parents arrange milk for him. Once his stomach is full, he just plays around and is not bothered about the milk. All the grown-ups also have certain needs such as food, a home, and money. The problem is they stop playing around. They become so obsessed with their needs that they fail to notice when this need takes the form of greed and resultant sycophancy and hatred. What they just needed to play around, became their mission in life, and almost the whole of the charm of life is taken away by that greed.

Since all these people in the race are quite intelligent and intellect is very good at supplying logic, these people keep suffering the whole of their lives and yet remain so convinced in the correctness of their life choices that nobody can challenge that. They in turn spoil the entire system and make life difficult for others to just satisfy their needs and play around. Since such people outnumber others, it becomes very difficult for everybody to live life the way it should be lived.

Probably, the only solution for a person, sitting at the crossroads, to understand reality and decide the right course of his life is to take a mental break from this continuous feeding by society. For example, Vipassana camps have helped me a lot. During these Vipassana camps, one is away from all types of interactions with fellow human beings including over mobile phones and physical interactions. We get a lot of time with ourselves, to understand what is going on inside. The Vipassana technique allows us to observe what is actually going on inside and to experience that in reality in the form of sensations. We see the temporariness of these sensations that drive our life generally and once that temporariness of the sensations (that are the source of all motivations for life decisions) is observed, one gets connected to the permanent. In fact, it is both ways. As one gets connected to the permanent, in the form of breath, one is able to observe the sensations without reaction. 

There are many other ways and means to get this break. For example, I have experienced similar outcomes when few people were willing to examine life, from a third person's perspective, sit and discuss. We often do the same while discussing life at the J Krishnamurti Foundation Sunday dialogues. In short, such breaks allow us time and space to observe our own momentum from a bit of distance. While driving the car at a high speed, it is not possible to observe the beautiful nature on the way because of our focus on the road.

By driving fast, we reach the destination soon missing whole of the beauty on the way, just to set another destination in our mind and again drive fast to reach there. This makes me again and again think, whether the selfish is really selfish or stupid?