In this blog post, we will examine the dangers of selfish choices and the positive effects that the right life has on individuals and society.
Everyone has had to do group work at least once in their lives. Unlike individual assignments, group work is performed by several people, so you can learn things that you cannot learn from individual assignments. Through group projects, you can learn leadership and followership, as well as a sense of responsibility for the tasks you are assigned. Additionally, collaborating with others enhances communication skills and conflict resolution abilities. However, as seen in the prisoner’s dilemma game, you may gain more benefits by not cooperating in group activities. As such, there are people who want to do nothing and expect others to do the work for them, so-called free riders. Therefore, let’s look at the strategies needed to prevent this and, furthermore, the reasons for living a righteous life.
Several rules are necessary to prevent free riding. First, have students work in the same group for one semester or one year. Additionally, group members should evaluate each other, and those who free ride a certain number of times should be expelled from the group. The basis for these rules is the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis. This hypothesis states that when interaction between two parties is expected to continue, each party will engage in altruistic behavior out of fear that the other will retaliate in the future. If the relationship is short-term, people will choose the strategy that benefits them the most, which is to defect. However, if group activities continue for a semester or a year, members must maintain ongoing relationships with one another, making it difficult to easily choose to free-ride for short-term gains. Mutual evaluations serve as a form of retaliation. Through evaluations conducted each time, it will be possible to identify those who attempt to free-ride. In addition, rewarding those who participate actively can further increase the participation of group members.
What would happen if we all decided to free ride when doing group assignments? Not only in group assignments, but also as members of society, if we do not fulfill our responsibilities for our own convenience and shift the burden to others, our society will eventually lead to destruction. Therefore, we must live a righteous life, fulfilling our responsibilities without harming others.
Living a righteous life ultimately helps individuals survive. There are many meanings to living righteously, but let’s think about it in terms of not harming others. As explained in the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, if you do not harm others, others will not harm you in return. In 1984, Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan solicited strategies that would yield the highest reward in a prisoner’s dilemma game. A variety of strategies were submitted, ranging from highly sophisticated strategies designed to continuously revise one’s predictions using Bayesian methods to random strategies that chose actions randomly each time. However, the winning strategy was the simplest one: “tit for tat.” This involves starting the game cooperatively and then mirroring the opponent’s previous action. If the opponent cooperated in the previous round, you cooperate in the current round; if the opponent defected in the previous round, you defect in the current round. In addition to this game strategy, reciprocity can also be observed in the world of vampire bats and chimpanzees. Vampire bats share the blood they have sucked with other bats, and chimpanzees groom each other’s fur under the principle that “I am willing to help others only if they have helped me in the past.”
Therefore, in order to live without being harmed by others, one must not harm others in the slightest. Let us consider the meaning of living correctly in the context of family and kinship. What does it mean to live correctly in this context? It means fulfilling one’s role. Parents must fulfill their role as parents, and children must fulfill their role as children in order for the family community to be maintained.
Parents must take good care of their children, and children must be filial to their parents to build a harmonious family. If one fails to fulfill their role, the family may collapse. The kin selection hypothesis explains that altruistic behavior arises within families to increase the survival rate of genes. Therefore, if each member fails to fulfill their role, both parents and children cannot live smoothly, ultimately threatening the survival of genes.
In this way, if one does not fulfill one’s responsibilities as a member of one’s family, it can threaten not only one’s own survival but also the survival of one’s genes. Let’s extend the concept of living right from the individual to society. Living right helps maintain social stability. What would happen if everyone were selfish and only looked out for their own interests? Imagine a world where no one bends their arms.
In a village where people know how to help others, instead of struggling to eat alone with their unbending arms, they feed each other, ensuring that everyone’s hungry stomachs are filled. However, in a village where people only care about themselves, each person places food in front of them and struggles to eat with their unbending arms, but in the end, they cannot eat and are forced to starve.
In this way, when everyone only looks out for their own interests, society declines and eventually collapses. The complacent thought that it is okay to be selfish if only one person is doing it can ultimately affect society as a whole. Therefore, rather than living a selfish life, we must live a righteous life by helping and caring for others. Some may question whether it is necessary to sacrifice one’s own interests in order to live a righteous life.
When you get on the subway, cutting in line to get a comfortable seat or littering on the ground because you are too lazy to walk to a trash can that is far away may give you short-term benefits. However, if you think about it carefully, what would happen to our society if everyone acted in this way for their own convenience? Our society can be likened to a doughnut. That is, society is interconnected, and one person’s selfish actions can have a significant impact on the whole society. When someone in a position of social authority abuses their power or commits corruption, the repercussions are immense. Many people suffer as a result of one person’s wrongdoing. Since society is closely interconnected, we must live rightly, as our wrong actions can harm others.
Finally, living rightly ultimately helps individuals achieve self-actualization. In movies and dramas, we often see characters sacrificing themselves to save their teammates. In real life, during a gas explosion in Busan in 2006, firefighter Seo Byung-gil saved two residents but lost his life when he was buried under the rubble of a building. Why would such people sacrifice themselves to save others? They made decisions and acted according to their own judgment in an emergency situation. They believed that pursuing what is right was their highest value. They achieved self-actualization by upholding their belief in living rightly. Maslow divided human needs into five stages: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and finally, self-actualization needs. In this way, it can be said that humans ultimately live for self-actualization. Through self-actualization, we can ultimately achieve happiness. Actions that deceive one’s conscience for momentary convenience only bring guilt and suffering to oneself. On the other hand, those who live their lives correctly may face difficulties and hardships in the present, but they will ultimately lead happy and meaningful lives.
Those who try to free-ride are criticized by their peers and ultimately fail to have a positive impact on their own lives. A selfish life may be sweet in the short term, but it can lead to great suffering in the long run. On the other hand, a righteous life may involve temporary difficulties, but it ultimately bears sweet fruit. Therefore, rather than chasing immediate gains, we should look ahead and live righteously.
