We could argue whether these tendencies come from God or from our genes, but perhaps, if you believe that God is the mastermind behind the universe, it comes to the same thing. The proper, or decent, self is one where the good is revealed and the evil restrained. Most of us are hungry for a self of which we can be proud. More and more people, especially the young, in the affluent societies of the West, share this hunger. Paul Ray, an American sociologist, calls these hungry people Transmoderns and believes that they account for a quarter of all Americans.
Proper selfishness starts by reinterpreting self-interest, insisting that it is more than economics.
Margaret Thatcher, in her heyday, talked of self-responsibility, not selfishness. That was unfortunate, because self-interest cannot be seen simply in monetary terms, even by the most materially minded. It is important to correct the definition, because if our self is more than an economic item, then growth based on self-interest has to mean much more than economic growth. Many of those who found riches in the eighties were still hungry for something more at the end of the decade, for money may be necessary but can never be sufficient to satisfy all our hopes for ourselves. One tradition, the Christian one, has it that life is not about the satisfaction of needs, although that is inevitably part of it, but the chance to test oneself against all the challenges and so to prove oneself.