The Virtue of Selfishness

I wish to explore a couple ideas about leadership that have been bouncing around in my head lately. And the question I wish to explore is this “Is there such a thing as a truly selfless leader?”

I think I need to start with some definitions and a scale.

Rational self-interest is taking as it’s assumption that man will choose as a course of action a pursuit of their passions and what brings them happiness. However it is not complete selfishness for it disallows the individual to pursue happiness when it damages the abilities of others in their pursuits of happiness.

Selfishness--- Self-interest ---------------------------------Selflessness

|--------------------|------------------------------------------------------|

------------....----- ^------------------(Leadership)-----------------^

Here we have a scale on the one side we have complete selfishness and on the other complete selflessness. In the middle somewhere is Rational Self-Interest. Rational self-interest is at the far end of the leadership scale, for once a man places his own interests too high, he falls into egotism and begins to abuse of others.

If we get close to either end of this spectrum we become less and less productive as a leader. And it comes to a point where we cannot operate as a leader at all.

A selfless person ignores his own desires and dreams and pursues another’s dreams. This causes an inability to lead. These selfless servants cannot act alone. They have given up their own individual desires and need another person to come along so that they can have a shared goal to become passionate about. And so these selfless people switch from borrowed passion to borrowed passion as they move from person to person.

To become a leader you need to have a degree of selfishness, you need a dream and a purpose that drives you into sacrificing other less important desires, both of the self and of others. The farther to the left one gets the more the more they sacrifice towards their purposes and the faster and farther they move. They become less concerned with making certain people can follow and keep up but the increased fire ignites a great many others to follow along in their wake. We see the passion of a great leader, and this passion is addicting and causes others to become excited and to begin to hold that passion as their own. This unites people in the dreams of the leader.

Those people we see making great strides that we look to for inspiration, have learned how to use their selfish natures to bring about great good. We love these great leaders, these our selfish heroes.