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The Tai Lopez Show

When Is It Good To Be Selfish And Greedy?

The Tai Lopez Show

Tai Lopez

Business

4.86.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2014

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People say that to be happy you have to be unselfish.

But are they right?

Because we all know selfish and greedy people, who seem to have it all.

We have all been betrayed by someone who went on to live a seemingly perfect life.

Who went on with seemingly no consequences...

So there has to be something more to this - a more elegant explanation
of the conflicts of life.

A root explation of our selfishness... Of our altruism...

About our DNA and "Nature vs. Nurture..."

In today’s Book-Of-The-Day, “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins, we
examine this question of whether we are born greedy and 'evil' or if
we only learn it from our environment. You can buy it from me here http://bit.ly/16gFhPR plus get a bunch of other bonuses for free.

I consider this to be one of the 5 most important books that every
human should read.

Yesterday I was talking about it on my Book-Of-The-Day TV show (check
out a new episode everyday at 11:30 am PST on www.tailopez.com/tv)

One million people have read "The Selfish Gene" since Dawkins first
wrote it in 1976.

He had a noble goal in writing it.

He explained, “My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and
altruism. Apart from its academic interest, the human importance of
this subject is obvious. It touches every aspect of our social lives,
our loving and hating, fighting and cooperating, giving and stealing,
our greed and our generosity.”

Dawkins was right. The question of selfishness vs. unselfishness is at
the core of every major decision you will ever make.

Who to marry. Who to make friends with. Who to protect. Who to ignore.

Get this question wrong and you will get your life wrong.

Most people approach the question all wrong.

Whether it’s people who believe in religion or atheists, the confusion
knows no boundaries between the sacred and the secular.

So what did the scientist Dawkins discover and explain in this book?

[make sure to check out my Book-Of-The-Day deal to get your own copy
of “The Selfish Gene” and my own personal notes]... http://bit.ly/16gFhPR

1. Although selfishness is our natural inclination, we are not always destined to follow it:

“Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily
compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to
learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to
be altruistic. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we
are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up
to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their
designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to”

I like that Dawkins recognizes that you and I have the chance for some
level of enlightenment, however little it might be. We have some
mastery over our genes. We’re not doomed to take advantage of people
or to act in a more base manner.

No, you see it all around you.

Altruism.

And not just the kind of natural altruism that we have towards our
family, friends, and loved ones (which in a sense isn’t really charity
at all because of the possibility that we can be paid back).

You see people giving to people that have no chance to give back to them.

There is still hope.

2. The secret is to become a simulation machine, not just a
robotically programmed automaton:

Read the rest at TaiLopez.com

If you're in financial scarcity now, or if you're making decent money but you know you should be making a lot more, @ 12 pm PST on "10 Rules to living the Entrepreneurial Lifestyle: The New Rules of Money" http://bit.ly/1GvRE5BLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

What are we talking about today?

0:02.9

We are talking about one of the most controversial books.

0:08.4

So welcome to today's TV show, The Book of the Day Show, my new show.

0:16.0

We're talking about Richard Dawkins, a million copies sold of this sucker right here.

0:22.0

Now I want to give you a warning on this book.

0:26.2

This is one of those books that for various reasons, a lot of people have a lot of emotion

0:34.0

about.

0:35.0

Richard Dawkins is one of these guys.

0:38.2

I don't know your particular religion, your faith, but I will tell you this.

0:44.9

The secret to having a brain that finds out the truth.

0:51.0

And I believe all of us, no matter what our specific beliefs are, specific faith, whether

0:56.6

you are coming to this show today as an atheist, as a Christian Muslim, Jew, Buddhist,

1:04.0

New Age, whatever it is, I hope that you are driven by the search for truth.

1:12.9

Now you know, the famous saying is what is truth.

1:16.8

So let me define truth as this for the sake of this conversation.

1:21.8

Truth is not an absolute at all times.

1:24.2

I think everybody would agree with that.

1:25.6

There are times where things are gray areas.

1:28.2

So what truth becomes is a search for the most accurate expression of something.

1:33.8

So we're all about accuracy here.

1:36.8

What's one of the number one ways to increase the accuracy of what you believe?

1:41.6

For example, right now there's a little off here on my YouTube channel.

...

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