These are not mutually exclusive.

I can have friends outside of work and still feel lonely WFH all day. If you have a family, it can be the exact opposite (too many distractions).

It is not selfish to need some degree of separation between work and life.

He said encourage, not force. That's not selfish at all.

At least if the person has any authority/influence, "encourage" in a work context means something different than my encouraging you to try out a new TV show.

It doesn't. Encouraging is positively motivating someone, nothing wrong about that.

If someone in authority "encourages" you to work from the office, that isn't a positive motivation. It's a "polite" order.

No, it's not. That's an order. You're redefining the word to mean what you want. When my boss encouraged me to work from office, they said there will be pizza - where is the order in that?