by "Phoenix Quill" on Yahoo answers.

The pursuit of self interest is the basis of all human behavior.

Confidence just means you think you are good at the pursuit

"Selfish" is a VERY poor term.

It describes anti social behavior that is typically NOT in a persons self-interest.

The notion that the self can only get what it desires by giving up the desire to get,
Is the cognitive dissonance that creates the mental toxin know as Liberalism.

It inability to understand the logic of nature, result in actions that do NOT produce the desired result, or in results that are not consistent with one's true desires.

Which in turn erodes confidence.

To have confidence WITHOUT competence is NOT good.

The task of education is to create COMPETENCE.
This in turn creates CONFIDENCE.

If you just create CONFIDENCE, you get a bunch of idiots in denial creating havoc

Author's Yahoo account info:

http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=Ao95iU2XTYRoa0MOkOnWNnaGxQt.;_ylv=3?show=yuuvBSKsaa

"Taking our lives for granted" by MMM.

MMM | MAY 13, 2006 – 9:40 PM |

It’s amazing how much we take our lives and the things we’ve been given for granted sometimes. We just forget how lucky we are for it all.
Maybe we just get too carried away with the details of our lives and we become somehow self-centered, thinking that our problems are the biggest, that our jobs are the most tiring, that our dreams are the ones not coming true, that we’re the ones who are accomplishing the least in the world and the depressing list goes on.

But we have to stop and look around us every now and then, to think and see how well we’re doing in our lives.

It happens to me almost daily; I’ll be stressed out because of a number of different things, from work, to family, to money to all the other stuff, and I feel myself getting lost in it all and starting to fall into that negative spiral of thought; but then I pass next to someone, our eyes meet, and I find myself living their life for that split second, discovering their conditions, imagining all the details, only to realize that I’m lucky to have the life that I have now, with all the happiness and success that I’m living everyday.

These people I pass by aren’t just people who are unlucky or poor, sometimes they’re people who seem to be better off than me in life. But in that split second, when our eyes meet, I see how I would never give up my life for theirs, if only for the fact that this is my life, a life I am proud of, and that I worked all these years to build.

At moments like that, I realize how much I sometimes take my life and everything in it for granted, and I remember that we should thank God everyday for blessing us with it all.