Please identify the author and source of that quotation so it can be read in context.

I don't think there's anything in life, ultimately, that is not an attempt to serve self interest.

It seems to me that positions like "in the real world it's: "might makes right," "nature is red in tooth in claw," "everyone is an atomized, self-interested utility maximizer," or a New Age, "the world is love" etc. are more interpretive lenses than statements of empirical fact. They are ways of fitting empirical observations into a narrative. There are always plenty of counter examples, but these can always be read into the interpretive lens.

There might be various justifications for such an interpretive lens, but they cannot come from an appeal to a "real" world as filtered through that same lens, or else the justification is circular. It's sort of like how everything from anonymous self-sacrifice for strangers to extreme self-harm can still be rolled into "self-interested utility maximization," but only at the risk of making such a statement a vacuous tautology.

I think this is simply a pathological way of viewing the world, one hostile to human flourishing. Surely, it is better to be in a good marriage, based on love, than to be in a zero sum struggle for utility. That some people are able to paint everything in terms of "self-interest" is arguably just a sign of a sort of spiritual illness. This is precisely Dostoevsky's point in Crime and Punishment vis-á-vis the new social theories of his day.

At any rate, Homo oecononimicus wasn't born from "empirical findings" but exists in liberal political-economy from its earliest days, were it was simply borrowed from Calvinism. It's an unfalsifiable grounding dogma used to make sense of observations. The irony then is that society seems to make many positive efforts to transform citizens into Homo oecononimicus.

It's from this thread, there isn't much context it's pretty much the direct quote in all it's entirety.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16203/does-zizek-say-that-sex-is-a-bad-thing

I think this is simply a pathological way of viewing the world, one hostile to human flourishing. Surely, it is better to be in a good marriage, based on love, than to be in a zero sum struggle for utility. That some people are able to paint everything in terms of "self-interest" is arguably just a sign of a sort of spiritual illness. This is precisely Dostoevsky's point in Crime and Punishment vis-á-vis the new social theories of his day. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I get that it's not a healthy view of the world, it's just more like wondering about the limitations of our ability to know and if the means such relationships and connections are more selfish than actually sharing anything.

Objectively 'sex' is masturbation by means of another body; beyond that we interpret the process of opening-closing this desiring circuit with any number of fantasies (i.e. projections), especially those which subjectively intensify (someone's) self-pleasuring experience.

Somebody is doing it wrong.

It's from this thread, there isn't much context it's pretty much the direct quote in all it's entirety. — Darkneos

I don't want to know where it's from. I want you to edit the OP to properly identify the source of the quotation.

Somebody is doing it wrong. — T Clark

In a world teeming with unwed mothers and unwanted bastards, absentee fathers and neglected children, I suspect very few are doing it right (whatever that means) while the majority routinely confuses chemistry (attraction, arousal) for "connection".

what we do isn't "pure" (by that I mean for the benefit of someone else) but rather is ultimately just rooted in selfishness. — Darkneos

Even anonymous sex in the dark has meaning to the two (or more, I suppose) people sexually engaged. When one masturbates alone, it's for the benefit of the self. Masturbate with somebody else at hand, and it is no longer exclusively for the self.

When two people who are fond of each other, or in the initial heat of new love, sex is reciprocal. One's gratification is enhanced by the others' responses, in a pleasurable spiral.

Of course, relationships can become desiccated and chilled; ordinary nurturing acts (like preparing food) can become onerous--never mind sex which might continue as a perfunctory routine close to masturbation with nobody present.

What humans do is never ("Never?" "no, never!" "Never?" Well, hardly ever.") pure anything. No pure good, no pure evil, no pure selfishness, no pure generosity...

Somebody is doing it wrong. — T Clark

And again the conversation about sex is held mostly by men, on men's terms ...

And again the conversation about sex is held mostly by men, on men's terms ... — baker

You say “men’s terms,” I say “men’s perspective”. This is a mostly male forum. Expecting anything else is silly.

And again the conversation about sex is held mostly by men, on men's terms ... — baker

If this is a serious assertion, i take it you are commenting on life in 2010?

Or in terms of a relationship generally, I mean we are happy to see the person and like being around them right? And I know that people like to do things for other people they care about, but is that because it's out of something like love or is it some selfish motivation to not see the person you like suffer because it hurts you? — Darkneos

The funny thing with all those questions is that it takes the 'me' (or in this post formulated as 'you', but for all intents and purposes the first person singular) as the self evident locus of agency. There is a 'me' and a 'not me' and then the question becomes, do I care for the 'not me' for its own sake or for the sake of the 'me' who is interacting with it. However, asking this question already implies prioritization of some kind of self independent of the relationships it has with the world.

That perception is, I think, not warranted, because the only sense of self we have is through interaction with the other. We are relational beings. A sense of self is constituted in interaction with the other. From that perspective, a relationship, or better, falling in love, is a thorough identification with the other in the sense that what happens to her, happens to you and vice versa. It is a unity with the world, with that considered other than you. If that is the case, the question becomes moot. There is no self independent of its relationships and so the question whether a relationship is really selfless or selfish is moot. Relationships are what constitutes the self. A meaningful question to ask is whether this person or that, as a pole of a relationship, is a pole that keeps the relationship intact or not. In the first instance, it is an altruistic person, in the second a selfish person. Those are just figures of speech, though.

The funny thing with all those questions is that it takes the 'me' (or in this post formulated as 'you', but for all intents and purposes the first person singular) as the self evident locus of agency. There is a 'me' and a 'not me' and then the question becomes, do I care for the 'not me' for its own sake or for the sake of the 'me' who is interacting with it. However, asking this question already implies prioritization of some kind of self independent of the relationships it has with the world. — Tobias

That's not really what I mean, more like wondering if such connections are possible. There's a difference between "everything is connected" and the emotional connection people share.

I agree with Jamal that the OP suffers from the lack of a clear citation of the text.

Yep. And since Darkneos is refusing to edit the OP, I'm closing this discussion.