It is said that we act in our self interests. However, rarely do we actually know and understand what our self interests are, courtesy of our brains and our brain/sense organs' functions.
Some choose the McDonalds meal, when a nice salad would suit our best interests better.
Some choose to gamble with money recklessly in risky loans that could never be repaid, at the expense of the entire economy and society in which they're able to make their money.
Some choose to destroy the environment in which they live, so they can have a greater amount of abstract currency.
And some choose to govern against the needs and wishes of a majority of the people of their territory, such that they get unelected or kicked out of power by force.
It's all thanks to a remarkable tendency in the human brain to get things wrong and to misperceive the situation, such that the individual and the collective (which is really a grouping of individuals when you look at it), get it wrong and end up at the bottom of the heap, rather than at the top.
We are self interested creatures in that we go towards that which we perceive is in our best interests.
However, we aren't always able to pick our best interests. And, some tend to be able to do it better than others, for their own sakes in the biggest sense of themselves, while others don't do it well for themselves at all.
Think about it.
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