Ultimately, I would tend to agree with you on that, Don. The most highly developed people in either a spiritual or a moral sense do just as you say: they make concern for others paramount. It is their selfless service to others that sets them aside as absolutely remarkable beings in a world that is commonly ruled by self-interest.

If you read Mark Twain's superb biography of Joan of Arc, for instance, that is precisely the point that Twain is making about her life, and it's why he bothered to write the book in the first place. He was mightily impressed with her character. (He spent a decade researching her life before writing the book, and he read all the transcripts from her trials and other records from that time period which were still being kept in the National Archives in France.)

It's also what distinguished Jesus...if we can go by what's in the New Testament. He made concern for others paramount.