Defending the Truth

I don't know if I actually believe this, but this could be considered a philosophy:

The reason why anyone does anything is for personal happiness or to stay away from personal unhappiness.

Share your thoughts. Can anyone give me a counter example. Don't say religion because people join religion for a relationship with God and therefore happiness. And don't say helping others, because people help others because it makes them feel better. Also don't say self-mutilation or anything else that should cause pain or unhappiness to a person because they do that because they feel it is better than an alternative, and therefore they are doing it for less unhappiness than the alternative.

Religion doesn't promise only personal happiness.

In fact, it promises tests and trials.

But it is true those particular verses are often left out of the brochure. For example, if churches advertised mainly on Jesus' saying such as "take up your cross and follow me," or "give up all your possessions and minister to the poor," they might not do so well in the P.R. department.
Slogans such as "come feel our fellowship and the love of the Lord" sound so much better.

Also, I would say yes, helping others does make one "feel better." But it's a different kind of "feel better" than one might get from self-indulgent things. It's a much deeper, more meaningful "feel better."

I didn't say what churches teach.. I said what religion actually teaches.

I think that it is more basic than that. Human beings are animals, and we have certain basic animal behaviors though we process them through a large brain. The two main motivating forces are a desire to gain pleasure and a desire to aviod pain. Pretty much everything that we do falls into one category or the other.

Maybe it's because I am English, but I can't actually fathom out what you are attempting to ask here.

Do you mean that you believe that people only ever do things for their own selfish reasons? I would call that cynical rather than philosophical tbh.

There is truth to that. Who wants to be unhappy?

Boomboy, all actions for the sake of self-interest is already a philosophy; it was popularized by Ayn Rand and is called objectivism. Though most philosophers don't really take her seriously.

Obviously, everyone wants happiness; it's a link between all humans. But I don't think all actions are specifically for the purpose of self-interest. Genuine compassion puts the interests of others before yours'. Granted, Buddhism says one can obtain enlightenment and happiness, but the key to enlightenment may never be obtained if you seek enlightenment for your own satisfaction. Buddhism essentially teaches the total abdication of one's own self-interest for the interests of others (true compassion) as a precondition to enlightenment. In other words, you've reached enlightenment once you truly don't care about enlightenment and happiness for your own sake, but so that you may be in a position to help others.

Now, I'm sure there are ulterior subconscious yearnings for the happiness of self, as it is biological. But not everything is purely self-interest. Compassion (interest of others before the self) is actually just as biological too. Surely, without compassion, the human race wouldn't have survived its evolution. Just because own 'feels good' when they're being compassionate doesn't mean the motives behind the person were purely in their self-interest (otherwise, it really wouldn't be compassion in the first place, and one wouldn't get the 'reward' of 'feeling good').

I guess what I'm saying is that, to say that people act in their own interests is being obvious. But to say that ultruism doesn't exist is just being naively pessimistic.

Yes. It's the difference between pleasure and true happiness.