If you ask around, everyone will tell you that the engine of the world is love.

But it's true?

In my opinion, absolutely not, egoism is the engine of the world.

And it could not be otherwise. The whole universe, subjectively from the point of view of each of us is born with our coming into the world and ends with our death.

Our personal universe, the only one of which we have direct knowledge.

Certainly we are told that it existed even before our birth and it seems that it will exist even after our death, but do this really interests us?

And who is at the center of this universe?

We obviously.

So each of us can only have an egocentric and selfish view of the world.

Is this bad? Absolutely not, this is simply the reality of the facts.

Those who boast altruistic reasons for their actions, except for a few, very few saints, are simply lying consciously or unconsciously.

Altruism does not exist, and it is good that it does not exist because it is an unnatural behavior and does not lead to anything good.

Leveraging on this feeling, on this completely invented drive there is only damage.

What needs to be explained, in order for each of us to have socially useful behaviors, that is useful for the community, are the selfish reasons that are implicit in social behavior.

Kicking a zebra alone leads to death, hunting it in a group leads to a beautiful primordial barbecue.

This social behavior is dictated selfishly by the fact that putting yourself in a group to hunt brings strong personal advantages to all the members of the group.

Giving a part, however unusable, of one's harvest to those who have had a bad year is a selfish behavior: it leads to a compensation system that, in the future, could save the life of those who save it today to someone else.

Preparing mutual aid systems, pension, public health, public school, etc. it is a way to guarantee a minimum standard of living.

Even love affairs must be based on healthy selfishness, being with a person because it improves our life, and will work well if it is mutual, but a relationship based on altruism has very little chance of lasting because it is asymmetrical.

Love is the magical union of two egoisms, not of two altruisms.

Why is focusing on selfishness functional to increasing the level of civilization?

Because it is the advantage of the individual that determines the success or otherwise of social behavior, especially in critical situations.

Civilization serves to determine conditions such that there are no situations of mors tua, vita mea, because in the face of such a choice every sentient human being will choose his own life compared to that of the other.

The history of civilization is the story of how to create conditions such that this situation is increasingly rare and the advantage of the individual is also the advantage of the community to which it belongs.

What is generally called selfishness is, in reality, simply stupidity and/or ignorance, that is the inability to recognize one's advantage in actions that bring general benefits to the community of which we are a part.

If for the stupid there is little to do for the ignorant, that is, the majority of those with selfish behaviors, there is a winning strategy: to explain in a simple way what are the advantages for the individual of a socially useful behavior.

To make a very simple example, you cannot convince the majority of people to do recycling by saying that this leads to a better world, better explain how much they could reduce the share they pay for the service.

Finally, trying to do this exercise, if we can NOT find a valid reason, let's ask ourselves questions about the sensibility of the behavior that we are propagating, because a behavior that does not create advantages for the individual, most likely does not even create it for the community.