The contradiction is that the self is the same in all cases, and what differs is not selfishness, but dickishness, yet you persist in using language which distorts this into blaming people for something that is inherent to their consciousness. Your vilification of selfishness is exactly equivalent to vilification of life, it's not a metaphorical connection, but a direct congruence. To be alive is to be selfish. Period. If you have no selfish wants, then eating, breathing, etc. are of no concern to you and you will die. You dig? Selfishness is inherent to living. You can't have one without the other. Self-interest and pursuing selfish goals is life.

Selfishness is perhaps the single greatest achievement of the universe: The existence of individual identities which can converse and agree and disagree is not possible without a sense of self, not possible unless individual beings have self-interest. Selfishness is literally the best thing that has happened to the universe, though my bias as a self is pretty clear, here.

Your appeals to be nice are rooted in your selfishness. There's no spectrum, no continuum. We are always all the way selfish. Period. We are self-interested, and that self-interest may include wanting other people to be happy, for various, ultimately personal, reasons.