Only The Selfish Give To Charity

This post does what it says on the tin. Only selfish people give their hard (or not so hard) earned cash to charitable causes. That includes buying gifts for family and friends, giving spare change to random strangers in public, that direct debit you set up a few years back donating regularly to the NSPCA, buying copies of Big Issue on the way home after a day at the office... All completely selfish acts!

Humans are biologically engineered to act in a way that benefits them the most. There is very little we do in our everyday lives that is not intended to bring us some kind of personal gain. You smile at people in the street hoping they will spread the happiness a bit and make your local environment easier for you to live in (whilst hoping people think you must have a great life to be so positive first thing in the morning and feel just that tiny bit jealous). Known for your generous nature at work? More cakes = more positive gossip = more likely you'll get promoted, or at the very least find it easier to control your minions once you get that promotion. You go along to support that environmental campaign to save the earth: in order to feel like you might have some sort of control over the future and pump up your ego. Not to mention that small fear you harbour that if you don't help to fix things, then it might get inconvenient when you're in old age and have to live in a flooded, burnt out, crowded bio-dome with no fuel and diminishing food supplies. You choose not to have kids to help decrease the global overpopulation (yeah, everyone knows it's because the brats are so damn expensive, noisy, time-consuming and waaaaay more selfish than you are - can't have that). Bought shares in that sustainable tech firm (more likely to make a high profit: ethical-companies-make-more-money). Splashed out on expensive jewellery for your wife's birthday (hoping for kinky sex later on).

Everyone acts in a completely selfish manner. And for good reason. A human wouldn't last very long without the basic desire to survive, and everything we do involves some sort of calculated risk that gives us a sense of whether the action we are about to take will help to prolong our life or in fact decrease it. But it does have the knock-on effect of benefiting other people. So don't feel guilty.

Keep giving and keep feeling smug. Everyone's a winner!