Extraversion and Selflessness are Different Things
Selfish vs. Self-Contained
I feel compelled at times, both by virtue of my nature, and by virtue of my position as an individualist, to defend private, personal enjoyment against the charge that it is selfish. My claim is that there is nothing wrong with a retired woman who spends her days making a beautiful, private garden for no reason other than that a beautiful garden should exist (i.e., she is not building a public garden for the benefit of others). If it makes her happy, that is no sin.
There are those who disagree. They believe there is something wrong with an individual devoting her time and effort to creating a beautiful garden if she is unwilling to share it with other people, that it is a failure on her part not to put that time and effort into something that would benefit other people. They will not accept the argument (an argument I believe) that she is not doing it for her own sake, but because a beautiful garden has intrinsic worth, regardless of whether or not anyone sees it (i.e., that there are some activities which are their own end and which are inherently good and therefore do not need to be justified by appeal to something or someone else). But even if she is gardening simply because gardening makes her happy, there is nothing wrong with that.
There is a line of thinking that all private enjoyment is suspect, because individuals are meant to live for other people, and not for themselves, and therefore the only justification for any activity is that other people must benefit from it. Taken to its extreme, this line holds that private enjoyment is wrong because it takes away from the time and effort which could be spent making other people's lives better. But the world isn't zero sum, and this idea is false (and has given rise to all of the greatest evil mankind has ever known, from the Nazis to Stalin).1
We will set aside the argument that individuals left to their own devices are liable to get up to all manner of trouble. Some people believe this. They may be guilty of projection. But they have a point. It is true that we need societies to civilize us. It is true that we sometimes fall into temptation when left to our own devices. It is true that we need other people. Man is a political animal. But groups can get up to all manner of trouble when left to their own devices, too, and often the trouble the group gets up to is more depraved, destructive, and downright evil than anything an individual can manage by him- or herself. Moreover, the temptations faced by groups are often greater than the temptations faced by individuals.2
Individualists are sometimes criticized for believing that it is good to leave people alone. In my experience, when people are left alone, they often come up with all sorts of creative ideas that make the world a better place.3 But individualists are further criticized on the grounds that our vision of society is an isolating one. And that in our digital age, the natural impulse of human beings when left up to their own devices (i.e., the impulse to go out and engage with other people voluntarily to do things) is thwarted by online entertainment. But there are far worse things in this world than not bothering people. And so I feel compelled to defend the person alone, who doesn't bother other people and does no harm in the world.
As with anything, there are selfish people who spend too much time alone, and there are unselfish people who spend too much time alone. There are people who tend to their own private enjoyment in a way that is selfish and there are people who don't. There are people who are naturally other-directed who are blessed with a kind of natural selflessness. And there are people who direct their selfishness outward, such that they constantly seek out other people and focus their attention on others, but in a way which involves only ever considering themselves. Narcissism is a form of extraversion.4
Because I am naturally self-contained, I make an effort to do right by other people when I am with them. I feel some sense of obligation. I’m not naturally inclined to go out and help other people, so I make some effort to force myself to do this. I don't always succeed.
But because I am an individualist, I also understand that other people are individuals, and that their lives and stories and hopes and fears and dreams are not mine. While I don't always succeed, I try not to impose myself on them, because I recognize that each person has a will of his or her own. I make an effort to take other people as they present themselves, and try to let them speak for themselves. Maybe I don’t always understand other people. But at least I don’t pretend to, which is more than I can say for many of my intellectual opponents.
What I find is that too often some of the harshest critics of selfishness are themselves the first to impose themselves on other people. They have opinions about how other people live, or about their appearance, or about their manner of speech. These critics sometimes operate from the impression that other people live to serve them, that other people exist for their benefit. This is really what we mean by selfishness, not "being self-interested" (all people are at least a little self-interested, and there is nothing wrong with that). Of course, I have very strong opinions about how human beings should dress and behave and live. I tend not to voice them, because it generally isn't my business to impose my views on others, unless they ask me for my opinion. This isn't because I believe all decisions are good or that morality is relative. I believe that right and wrong are matters of objective truth, that some ways of living are depraved, that nature has moral laws, and that societies should not be entirely neutral on the question of virtue. But that doesn't give me the right to act as though I am the arbiter of morality. There is an ultimate judge, and He is not me.
Selfishness is not a matter of the amount of interaction you have with other people. It is a matter of how you interact with other people. If your interactions are governed by using them as an object for some purpose (whether yours or, very often, some great Cause), you are the selfish one and they are not selfish for resisting your will. It is not selfish to want other people not to bother you. It is selfish, generally speaking, to bother people. If you sincerely wish to help people, you have to consider first what they want, and only second what you think they need.
Some people will roll their eyes. Others are tired of this argument. But I will never stop pointing out that the Nazis said and believed that they were serving the greater good. And the Soviets did as well. It is in fact because they believed their actions were bringing about the common good that these evil regimes were able to justify their barbarism. This is the ultimate justification. Appeals to the greatest good create a license for the sort of evil these regimes engaged in. They did in the 20th century. And they will in the future. They will every time someone comes up with a new theory for why their tyrants will be immune from the temptations of the Nazis or the Soviets.
The primary point of my story “It Was Good for Her” from 2022, was to explore the temptations groups can use to corrupt individuals.
And some that will make the world a worse place, but there is a limit to how much destruction any single individual can do by him- or herself.
There are two primary forms of narcissism, both of which require constant validation from other people, both of which require the attention of other people to cope with internal insecurities.