The 1980s have been characterized as a period of selfish individualism that threatens the cohesion of society. But th...

shunhe August 26, 2020

Hi @andreaskormusis,

Thanks for the question! It’s the fact that one talks about the individual and the other talks about society that makes the uses of the term “selfish” different! For example, consider the following action. You and another person are in a room together. They’re about to press a button that will detonate every nuclear weapon on the earth. You also have a button next to you, and if you press it, the room will fill with poison gas instantly, which will kill the person before they can press the button. But the poison gas will also kill you. Now say you press the button. Could that be a selfish concern for the human species? Well yeah, you just saved everyone’s lives (or at least most people). Is that selfish for yourself? No, because you literally killed yourself for sure, whereas at least there was a probability you would’ve survived the nuclear blasts (and we can even stipulate that if you’d like). So these are two different terms that mean two different things; otherwise, they would both apply to the same situations, and we just showed that they don’t.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

andreaskormusis August 30, 2020

I see, thanks! Are there any ways i could practice this type of question more? As in questions with multi meaning words?