Why Does Selfishness Seem Inevitable?
The Selfishness of Immediacy and Its Flawed Logic
When we think of selfishness, we usually picture someone who shamelessly puts themselves before others, seeks exclusively their own benefit, distancing themselves from the common good to build a world tailored to their desires. However, something has changed in how this selfishness appears today. It is no longer typically an ethic stance or a deliberate behavior. It is more a way of being in the world that imposes itself without necessarily being wanted. A lateral result, induced, often unnoticed.
Selfishness comes from the Latin ego, meaning “I”, and the suffix -ism, denoting system, doctrine, mode. Selfishness is, etymologically, the “system of the self”: a way of organizing the world from and for oneself. The self as a center of gravity, as a criterion of measure, as the final filter for what deserves attention.
This logic solidifies with modernity, when the autonomous individual—free, rational, self-mastered—takes center stage. Capitalism, especially in its Western version, brought this figure to its peak: life organized around individual progress. A narrative in which personal merit, ambition, competition, and success function as absolute values.
In that context, selfishness stops being a moral flaw and becomes a strategic virtue. Whoever prioritizes themselves, maximizes their performance, does not stop for others, is rewarded with visibility, prestige, income. The entrepreneur, the self-made man, the influencer, the disruptive leader: all are figures of that self-sufficient ‘I’ who overcomes obstacles, often including other people.
But behind that empowerment aesthetic lies a less visible condition: it is not always about people choosing to advance. Many times, it is about people who can no longer stop. Who do not know how to relate except through demand or self-display. The exaltation of self increasingly becomes the mask for an impossibility: for inhabiting the world without constantly revolving around oneself.
What Is Dopamine and What Does Its Imbalance Mean?
Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in the brain’s reward system. Its function is to signal what deserves our attention, motivate us to repeat behaviors that are beneficial, and keep us oriented toward what brings us pleasure or meaning. It activates when we eat, solve a problem, learn something new, explore the unknown, or go through difficulty and come out stronger.
It is also released when a work of art moves us, when reading transforms us, or when a deep conversation changes us. In these cases, dopamine acts as an emotional compass that says: “this is worthwhile.”
But it is also released by much more trivial stimuli: a WhatsApp notification, a like on Instagram, or a TikTok reel designed to catch our attention for just a few seconds. In these cases, dopamine no longer accompanies a symbolic process: it becomes pure, repetitive, immediate stimulation. It no longer arises from a search, but from a system calibrated to capture our attention constantly.
In evolutionary contexts, dopamine release had a functional purpose: it pushed us to seek food, solve problems, connect with others, get out of comfort zones. It was in the service of adaptation, exploration, growth. But in the hyperconnected, stimulus-saturated context we live in today, that system has been disrupted. It is no longer triggered by what is valuable, but by what is available. And it no longer signals a path, but creates a peak that fades quickly.
Every time we receive a digital reward—a like, a message, a reel—the brain experiences a brief dopaminergic surge. But since that stimulus is not accompanied by a process of elaboration or symbolic integration, the peak drops immediately. And to escape that drop, we seek another stimulus. And then another. And another. Thus a loop forms that has no end, but also no direction.
The dopaminergic system, overstimulated, raises its threshold. What once gave pleasure is no longer enough. Listening to a whole album, reading a book, holding a conversation without checking the phone seem like titanic tasks. The individual loses the ability to sustain attention, becomes increasingly anxious in the face of silence or emptiness, and develops a compulsive relationship with any form of quick gratification. They can no longer wait. They no longer know how.
In this state, desire becomes impoverished. It stops being symbolic—that is, structured by a narrative, a meaning, a shared projection—and is reduced to pure drive. The individual no longer desires to understand, relate, transform. They only need to feel something—anything—now. And when the body moves into that mode, there is no time for waiting, no room for the other, no place for conflict that demands to be processed. Only urgency, stimulation, and fleeting relief.
Unintentional Selfishness: When Waiting Is No Longer Possible
In an environment saturated with immediate stimuli, where dopamine sets the pace of every impulse, selfishness is no longer a conscious decision. No one needs to choose to put themselves above others. They simply cannot do otherwise.
When the body is trained to respond to instant rewards, waiting becomes unbearable. It is not just annoyance: it is emptiness. And in a dopaminized organism, not feeling is intolerable. That’s why the individual acts according to a logic where immediate gratification is the only form of emotional balance.
Thus, anything that does not reward immediately is perceived as a threat or obstacle. The other—with their timing, their silences, their differences—shows up as something that interrupts, not as someone who complements. There is no room for conflict, for ambiguity, for the necessary wait of true encounter. Everything is reduced to a formula: if it’s not now, then it’s useless.
And thus the selfish gesture occurs. Not because the individual wanted to do harm, nor because they think themselves superior, but because their system cannot tolerate the discomfort of sustaining the other when it does not gratify. Ignoring, rejecting, detaching are not acts of coldness but of physiological defense. What is triggered here is not malice, but urgency. The self cannot stop because if it stops, it collapses.
At this point, selfishness is no longer an ethical defect. It is a form of affective myopia. It is not about cruelty, but about an acquired inability to see beyond the moment. The future fades. Depth becomes unreachable. The symbolic, irrelevant. The relationship with others is shortened to the limits of what is useful, convenient, or pleasurable. Anything involving delay or emotional effort becomes a threat.
Here unfolds one of the subtlest mechanisms of contemporary self-deception: selfishness disguised as self-care. The individual no longer perceives themselves as someone closed off, but as someone who “sets boundaries”, “protects themselves”, “does what’s good for them.” The narrative of well-being replaces the possibility of reviewing one’s own affective responsibility. Thus, what was once an ethical dilemma now feels like a healthy form of autonomy.
But in such defense, something profound is lost. Because true learning demands going through discomfort: tolerating not knowing, making mistakes, waiting, persisting, holding on. None of these conditions are compatible with an accelerated reward system that only tolerates the immediate.
When desire becomes trapped in the urgency of gratification, there is no room left for novelty. Wonder, complex thought, the surprise of the unforeseen are lost. Everything becomes repetition disguised as variety: new forms of the same stimulus.
The same happens in relationships. The real other, with their difference, their timing, their ambiguity, becomes intolerable. The bond becomes a transaction. The other is welcome while they gratify. When they don’t, they’re discarded.
Breaking from that logic does not mean giving up pleasure. It means redefining it. Recovering the ability to wait, to get involved, to sustain. Not out of sacrifice, but because what is truly valuable does not appear instantly, nor is it obtained without passing through the discomfort of not constantly affirming oneself as one already is.
Disconnecting from that selfishness, which was never a choice but an adaptation to the constant noise of an environment saturated with addictive stimuli, may be the first step to reclaiming an emotional compass capable of orienting us beyond repetition and the prefabricated. A compass with direction and meaning, one that doesn’t always point toward ourselves but toward what we do not yet know.
And perhaps, already tired of reaffirming ourselves again and again, we can choose the path of uncertainty—and perhaps wonder—where something truly new may arise.