Self...ish?

We spent a good deal of class yesterday discussing the possibility of being inherently good, bad, or a tabula rasa. I would like to explore the possibility that human beings are none of those previously mentioned. My personal first reaction is to say that humans are selfish by nature. We desire only the things that are beneficial to us. An example would be doing charity work. It seems like a perfectly selfless and noble thing to do, but we only do it because it makes us feel good. Confucius knew that our motivations play an extremely important role in our nature as human beings. Confucius stated (roughly) that if your motivations are not good then the action is meaningless. I would disagree with him in that respect. A selfish action may be meaningless when attempting to reach benevolence, but in a not so benevolent world, all actions have meaning. Some self motivated things that people do promote good things for others. An example would be Walmart. This is a corporation that helps consumers "save money" and "live better" but they are ultimately in business to make money. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world and it did not become so through benevolence. I want to steer away from saying that people are "bad" because they are self motivated. If self motivation was removed from human nature, we would have no goals, no ambition. The technological, social, and economic advancement of our race may very well hinge on selfishness.

My question for this blog is: If people were-hypothetically-truly good and selfless beings, what would happen to us as a race? Would we continue to advance as we have?