Is it possible to be selfless?

I don’t think selfless is perfection at all. That would be draining in many ways, energy wise, emotionally and spiritually. You need to tend you your own needs to be fit, emotionally and spiritually balanced. The classis Yin and Yang. Don’t take more than you give and don’t give more than you take. That to me is perfection.

Selfish beings cannot be selfless in their own power, impossible, like trying to mate water with oil, or paper with fire.

Self comes and goes. It’s there sometimes and not there other times, blinking on and off with changes in circumstances. People think it’s around all the time because when it’s there it sees itself, and when it’s not there there’s no one to look for it. It arises when various situations conjure it up, and goes away when the conjuring stops.

It’s something of an oxymoron to talk about someone being selfless. If there’s someone there to be selfless, then they’re not selfless. It’s better to say that selflessness is our fundamental condition, but that self keeps popping up out of that selflessness. That’s neither good nor bad. Things are perfect just as they are.

I don’t like it when people say that if you enjoy the act of selflessness you perform, then it’s not really selfless because you did it for your own satisfaction. You’re only considered selfless if you do stuff you hate for others? I don’t get that.

Western Civilization is constantly equivocating on the word “perfect”.
And it all goes back to Plato and Aristotle.
Plato believed the “material” world was a shitty emanation of what he called the World of Forms, where everything was a flawless representation of it’s nature. Thus perfect only exists in some other place, and does not fit into our world. (Christians ran with this when they tried to figure out Jesus)
Aristotle believed the world we see is the real one. In that case, perfect is simpley as good as it can be, not as good as we wish it would be.

If selfless means you must give up your self to satisfy somebody else, why not just get it over with and give away all your money, and kill yourself so others can have your ration of food and water?

To aim to be selfless is a laudable goal and even when one might seem to fail, they have the opportunity to evaluate their own behaviour. The judgment of others is often inaccurate and lacks the correct perspective compared to the person aiming to act selflessly.

Success seems to depend on the frame of reference of the person assessing the behaviour.

People who are seen as “selfless” by some are often pretentious douche bags to me. They behave drastically for a cause, at the drastic expense of others and themselves. Another term for these people is “white knights” or “trolls in disguise.” In other words, there is often some sort of ulterior motive behind noble actions. We should not be fooled. The people who impress me are the ones who are good, decent people, but also modest at the same time. They don’t have much to prove.

No.