What’s the deal with Altruism?
Hello and welcome to Reality Check.
Hi, I’m Mark Pellegrino and today I’m going to talk about altruism.
Altruism has been the dominant moral code in pretty much every culture around the world for thousands of years.
It’s been promoted by modern secular philosophers and religious thinkers alike.
It’s been preached from pulpits and lecterns for untold centuries.
So the question is, how can altruism be considered universally good for so long when it’s so obviously bad?
Wait, what?
When I think of altruism, that movie ‘The Good Son’ comes to mind.
You remember the one.
Macaulay Culkin.
Everyone thought Culkin was the cat’s meow with that cute little dimpled blonde face from ‘Home Alone’ but in reality, he was a psychopathic killer.
And that, my friends, is altruism in a nutshell.
Okay, wait a minute, you’re saying.
Altruism just means caring about other people, that’s all.
Stop exaggerating, dude.
No one dies practicing altruism.
Now those are the dimples talking.
Altruism literally means otherISM in theory and practice.
That means the other is morally more important than you.
What’s that mean?
It means you’re expendable. [Clip from Rambo] “I’m expendable.” You think this is crazy but listen to the words altruists use to inspire a good they hope to achieve.
Words like Duty. Selflessness. Sacrifice. The common good.
All supposed virtues meant to stir the heartstrings and make you feel weak in the knees, because the people using those words understand their constant usage has made them intrinsically good to you.
But what are these virtues good at?
Well, making you expendable.
You’re still not buying it? Okay.
Let’s see.
What’s the virtue of duty?
It’s the subordination of you for something else.
Whether it’s the unborn, the nation-state, the family, the Earth, the faith, the poor, the race that you are duty-bound to subordinate your hopes, dreams and thoughts to don’t matter.
Because you’re just puny old you, and they are the other, and the other is where virtue lives. Okay okay, hold on a second.
Selflessness? People always describe good people as selfless, right? “What a wonderful word that is to describe his devotion to his fellow man.” This is true but selflessness straight up means the abolition of yourself.
Why is the negation of you and the promotion of some other person, who is a you, just
like you, good?
Can you really consider a world where the abolition of you is a virtue, a benevolent world?
I can’t.
Are you hip yet?
No?
What’s sacrifice?
Working hard and saving when you could be playing, right? Wrong.
Sacrifice literally means to lose.
That’s what happens when you give up something of greater value for something of lesser value. You lose.
And that’s not good, it’s bad.
It’s not a virtue, it’s a sign that something is wrong.
As for the off-touted common good.
It’s what every dictator in history has murdered millions in the name of.
Rest assured when someone says there’s a common good to be achieved, it’s going to
be your expense and you better suck it up and be selfless because you’re duty-bound to sacrifice for the common good.
You noticing a pattern?
Altruism, or otherism, depends on loss, self-immolation, unhappiness on purpose, and even death to achieve its ends, which are and always will be not you.
That’s not cute and dimply, that’s psychopathic and it makes the world crazy.
Okay, now there is no immediate cure for the mass self-immolation psychosis brought on by consistently practiced otherism.
Or for the chronic guilt suffered by those who choose to live only partially devoured by this cannibalistic moral code, because let’s face it this crap has been around a long time and things that are around for a long time are super hard to get rid of.
But we can begin the process of divorce from this toxic morality by redefining morality itself, and its attended virtues, as necessarily life affirming not life denying.
After all the purpose of life is life itself and virtue should in some way be tied to
life’s perpetuation, not its termination, right?
[Clip from Coming to America] So a decent morality would start first and foremost with life; specifically your life, not someone else’s, because your life is the only one you can live.
And since you don’t automatically know how to do that, you need a map.
Virtues are the map.
Green lights not red that permit you to navigate the world successfully.
Green lights, like Reason to sort out your world.
Productivity to create a world you need.
Honesty because clearly seeing the way the world and you work is vital.
Integrity because actions and thoughts should be integrated.
And pride because you should feel good about living.
Wait but if virtues were life-affirming not negating wouldn’t that mean virtues would feel good and give joy at every level of their practice?
Weird. I know.
Now hating on otherism doesn’t mean others aren’t a part of your moral landscape.
Of course, they are.
They just aren’t the primary focus of every moral act.
You are.
Now the otherists have kept their monopoly on morality the way all creepy people keep their influence over others, by instilling fear and guilt, and they do this mainly by setting you up in a false dichotomy.
Either you’re an otherist or you’re selfish, meaning you are either the consumed or the consumer.
But there’s another option, never talked about.
The option of living without consuming anyone at all.
Living for your rational self cannot mean cannibalizing your neighbor to get ahead.
Reason, productivity, honesty, integrity, pride, and self-esteem do not demand that you assault yourself for another’s sake, or that someone assaults you for someone else’s sake in a circle jerk of negation.
They demand that you live and be happy.
So go on, live and be happy.
Check. Altruism is an ethical system which claims that man has no right to exist for his own sake; that the sole justification of his existence is the service he renders to others; and that self-sacrifice is his cardinal virtue, value and duty. Ayn Rand.
