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As one of the godless, I can say that nothing about how I live my life is what you would call “selfish.” It’s not likely, though, that you’ve ever encountered a “godless” who’s not at least mostly like the stereotype. I’m definitely not.

That’s good. I’m glad to hear that you know people like that. They’re pretty rare.

This is my take on selfishness:

When I was in school, I was on the basketball team. It so happened that, I was told, I was the best player on the team. I didn’t care about that at all, true or not. I was never the kind of player who wanted all the glory, the most points, the most accolades, etc. I led the team in several statistics but that was a side effect of the way I played. I shot, I rebounded, I passed, I defended, as the game situation demanded. I was called a very unselfish player.

But that was wrong. I was the most selfish player on the team.

The goal in any sport is to win. Individual sports like running or golf require individual effort to achieve that goal, working entirely for oneself because that’s the nature of those sports. Nobody calls Usain Bolt selfish for being the best and taking the glory in an individual sport. That’s just the reality.

I pursued my selfish goals in basketball. The thing is, the only proper goal in any team sport is to win the game, for your team to score more points than the other team. That was what I wanted above all else. And I was damn selfish about it. When the thing to do to win was pass the ball to another player, that’s what I did. When it was to grab a rebound and start a fast break,that’s what I did. And yes, when the thing to do was to shoot, that’s what I did too. Almost instinctively.

In one 8th grade game, I personally outscored the entire other team. That’s what winning that game required. In a 9th grade game, I defended against a player who had scored 24 points the last time we played his team in a game I missed because I was sick. In the second game, I covered him on defense and he scored exactly 2. I scored maybe 4. But we won and nothing else mattered to me.

Players who showboat, hog the ball, and try to always have the most points aren’t (properly) selfish. They are completely centered on others, not themselves, needing acclaim because they have no self-confidence or self-respect. They think that if they, say, score more points than everyone else, whether or not the team wins, and get that adulation from outside it means they are worthy of it. But that doesn’t work. They remain empty inside and their lives are futile and meaningless.

I usually refer to proper selfishness as “rational self-interest” because the word “selfish” has for a long time now meant something else, something bad. People who shove others aside in the quest for outside validation are called selfish. I pursue my own rational self-interest ruthlessly. But rational self-interest requires that one not discard or discount the rest of the world and the other people in it. It often requires doing things that, to the selfish person (in that sense that “selfish” is used now), seem to go against one’s interest. But those things are, in fact, necessary to my own interests.

I put myself first, even when it means putting myself last.

If necessary and for the right reasons, I would even die. My grandchildren, to defend the country that gives me the best chance to live my best life, to stop a killer – those are some examples of good things to die for if it comes to that. That sort of death is in my rational self-interest because life, my own life, wouldn’t be worth living if I didn’t.

The formal definition of selfishness, before it came to mean, in effect, running roughshod over other people, was merely “concern for oneself.” As long as you have rational concern for yourself, which means taking into account everything that affects you and that you affect, you’re doing nothing wrong. You’re actually always doing good.