The quality of a society is more important than your place in the society
~ Ruut Veenhoven (Father of Happiness Research)

Ruut Veenhoven is a Dutch sociologist and a leading authority on happiness studies. He has a solid reason for making this claim. Prioritizing oneself over all else may take off to a promising start but it will eventually end up destroying the very environment it needs for its own continued success.

When we try to justify any unethical behavior to our parents, they respond by asking “What happens if everyone were to say and do the same thing?” We usually treat that as a rhetorical question because it is a hypothetical situation. In reality, such behavior can take over a community or organization and when it does, it destroys all trust within, which in turn means that even the person who was previously winning through crooked ways will now start losing.

Selfish behavior may lead to short-term gains but it also ends up poisoning the land you have been standing on all along.