Credit: I, Robot

I’m watching how deeply my self-serving bias goes and, oh, my, it goes right down to basic, vote-changing, decision-making level.

Prime Directive: All decisions must support me.

Everything else flows from that.

Of course I assume that everyone else acts in the same self-serving way.

I treat people differently: When I see a friend acting self-servingly, I turn away. But when I see a “foe,” I watch closely and mentally take notes.

And afterwards, if there’s any fallout from my self-serving actions, I apply a goodly dose of guilt and shame that cements over the cracks in the constructed self that emerges.

How can I look out there and see corruption when I corrupt myself many times a day? I even watch myself listen self-servingly to myself saying that. What self-serving use can I make of that admission?

Everything, everything is seen through this self-serving lens.

***

It’s true to say that way, way below it lies self-love. I can feel it now whereas a decade ago I could not.

But that love of self has to come up through many layers (bodies, dimensions, whatever) to be felt at the surface. Or one has had a heart opening and so there is some back-and-forth communication of love.

By the time it reaches the surface, it’s overwhelmed by superficial but strong currents of self-interest. In the past, it has never been expressed. It hasn’t reached that level.

So, therefore, I cannot say I’m fully self-expressed. My self-servingness limits my expression to only what serves me. It shapes my expression in that I subject the “truth” to expression which serves me – words, inflection, timing, etc.

All of this is done with high intention. I might call it “making a good impression.” Or “putting my best face on.” Or “putting my best foot forward.”

I have in reserve justifications, excuses, and denials to buttress my position if challenged.

Rather than being an urban monk, I’m really more like a Ninja Turtle.

***

The worst part of the self-serving bias is that it requires me to hide.  And that triggers off a whole array of mechanisms – withholding, deflecting, redirecting, etc. – to keep what’s hidden hidden as well as hiding the fact that I’m hiding.

I no longer present myself. I present my “mechanism,” I, Robot.

None of this will fly on the Fifth Dimension, where the truth can be seen in our aura. Mind you, we won’t “need” anything on the Fifth Dimension either, so the need to be self-serving (to serve our survival) will go away.

I think a person ages over time – for however much longer we do age over time – in great measure because they become more and more narrowly self-serving.

That’s one experiment I don’t intend to run to find out.