#altruism

So I think the most complicated variable in our society right now is two factors of how we currently operate in regard to a push back at emerging social norms. The most chaotic variables in society today are becoming violent variables that many of us havent figured out how to address.

The new hatred and skepticism towards kindness, softness and gentleness in our civilization.

and

Men’s resistance to their domestication.

Outlets for criticizing the emerging PC culture like the Alt Right/Alt Lite have become the forefront for displaying a disregard for masculine restraint and an untethered sense of call to arms to violently defend the “Might makes Right” worldview.

Trump, Le Penn, an ever more Corporate America and an outspoken anti gay Russia have contributed globally to the skepticism of altruism and the task of the “Universal Golden Rules” and an embrace of “whats mine is mine” and radical interpretations of unilateral liberty justified by skewed understanding and co opting of regional constitutions.

Notably, the question arose when discussing a particular punk scene where it was asked, “why do they all have to break windows and trash places?”, whilst at extreme music venues.

The observation of how early Metal culture had brandished the male camaraderie ethos and how the boys club of the early Metal scene was held as the “last bastion of free male display”. The pit of the concert at Punk and Metal shows has at least been the only place where young men can freely rip there shirts off, beat their chests, cover themselves in alcohol and scream and bellow their pent up energy as male animals in an ever increasingly male domesticated world where their female counterparts are ever more the subject of unilateral respect, as women in our world demand the compensation and the level playing field to achieve what men have always had the privilege to for centuries of history.

This coupling with the Trump presidency’s allure to the various cost cutting mentalities to every corner of regulation in our society.

The glamour of “rugged individualism ” and the sense of morality that pushes “Social Darwinism” onto our civilization has lead to a basic class war with every segment of society that cant defend itself with money, representation or privilege has contributed to the hatred of kindness in our world.

“Men’s Rights Activists” have spear headed the call for skepticism towards a caring society and pushes for the flags of traditionalism as men and the strong feel threatened by the meek’s emerging representation in society.

Especially the subject of “safe spaces” have been the spotlight for how the “might makes right” philosophy’s battle with the philosophy of caring for the meek and poor and sick.

Just the fact that the tenants of Alt-Right/Lite philosophy calls for a movement to “trigger” people just to hurt them and hopefully make them display their weakness in the face of strength, makes them blatant “violence rights advocates”.

It actually happend that a group of Alt -Right trolls sent a journalist critical of Richard Spencer and the ethno nationalism of the Alt Right, and a sufferer of epilepsy, a strobe light effect gif to trigger an epileptic episode. Literally attempting to send political dissident to the hospital.

Just the fact that someone may have even a medical condition is warrant enough for this new persuasion of “violenteers” to in effect erase weakness from this world.

The world right now is trying to create a chimera where “might makes right” is inseparable from what it means to be a man.

It is understandable that men like all humans are animals and do need accommodations just as women do.

The remedies discussed were to possibly create an environment, literally a place or even just an atmosphere for men to feel like they can beat there chests and rough house as they naturally may need to.

A literal safe space for men.

However, the task isnt to invalidate men from theire masculinty or theire sense of power but help them see theire differences as a bonding element rather than a separating one when met with a feminine society.

The Intent to fix this problem must be one where we find common ground in the sex war. Where it’s not Feminist vs Men’s Rights Advocates but men and women fighting for equalism.

That men can be just as free as women and women just as free as men.

The difficulty is dispelling men of the toxic masculinity that our corporate world pushes on them. Women also suffer from toxic femininity as well and is also pushed by unregulated capitalism and our consumer media. Men and Women should be just as interchangeable as a left and right hand.

The battle of the sexes is one thing to fix while the hatred for the meek continues to plauge the human soul.

Forests and oceans cant defend themselves, animals ultimately cant defend themselves yet we have a culture where people see this weakness as one to exploit as it’s our due as apex predators. Trophy hunting, military funded video games and media, Sports, Hollywood movies, even food chains perpetuate “might makes right” even down to the way your frame the understanding of beef in our food.

The news shows us that our society is willing to beat people literally into submission by using riot police, police militarization, tazers and even kill ethnic minorities with impunity when the meek try to demand fair treatment.

The pariah may not be men but it is certainly the seduction of power and money that clouds the hearts of men.

Men can be good fathers, good sons, good boyfriends and husbands and brothers if they can be saved from the toxicity of whats sold to them.

winged-light:

A friend called me brave the other day. Why? “You don’t look away.” This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

We were talking about moral obligations. About the fact that millions of people out there are starving, or unvaccinated, or being abused or oppressed, or sick with infectious diseases, or dying of old age. And perhaps, you know, as smart educated citizens of a wealthy country, we are obligated to actually attempt to do something about that. Donate to charity, or become politicians and make sure money is spent on vaccines and not wars, or do medical research, or heck if you don’t feel ambitious enough (or just Enough) for any of that then you can always volunteer at a soup kitchen. Just. Don’t just sit there. Don’t just become an accountant and watch TV in your spare time and never give a shit.

I think you are obligated to substantially devote your life to helping others.

And my friend can’t cope with that, or claims not to be able to cope with that. My friend says that if he even thought about that, then he wouldn’t be able to handle the obligations, so for his sanity he needs to pretend that none of it is happening. He needs to just become a programmer and not give a shit, because if he gave a shit then what if that obligates him to give away all his possessions and starve? My friend thinks his life should be principally devoted to enjoying himself, with maybe a little side of helping others.

This is bullshit! Of course it doesn’t obligate you to give away all your possessions and starve! In what universe does that help anyone? When has any sane normal person ever advocated for “the best way to help the world is to kill yourself”? Never. Literally that is so obviously not what I am saying that if your interpretation of “you are obligated to help others” is “I am obligated to hurt myself” then you are wilfully misinterpreting me so that you have an excuse not to care. You want to look away. You want to not see.

I look away all the time. We all do. I am not spending my entire life constantly aware of the suffering of the world, staring unflinchingly at the darkness. When I decide to play one more League of Legends game before I asleep, when I decide to buy twenty bottles of Pepsi Max because it’s tastier than the supermarket lemonade, when I save money because I’m more scared of running out than I am of the guilt of not donating it…. I am not thinking of my moral obligations in those moments. I am just being a human being who is fallible.

When I make my major career choices, when I sit down to plan out my budget for the year, when I encounter a difficult moral conflict - then I think, okay, I need to take into account ETHICS here. When I light a candle at a vigil or sing a meaningful song, I think for a moment of ETHICS. When I read books where the protagonists are morally obligated to defeat an evil dragon because they’re the Chosen One, I muse briefly upon ETHICS.

Does it hurt? These people seem to assume it would hurt. Because, you know, I think about how millions of people are suffering, and about how I’m failing to save them all, and then I feel guilty about playing video games. Surely it must hurt! If it didn’t hurt, why doesn’t everyone do it?

Of course it doesn’t fucking hurt.

There is something so exquisitely beautiful inside me. This vision of a world where everyone is safe and happy and kind, where we all work together to pursue knowledge and truth, where the world is covered in beauty and artwork and humanity stretches our arms out to the stars… it’s astonishingly lovely. The light! There is a drive inside me to build that world. I was born with it. It glows a little within me whenever I help someone, whenever someone thanks me, whenever I learn something new, whenever I build something that will last, whenever I teach, whenever I heal, whenever I hold someone’s hand. It is the opposite of guilt and the opposite of fear and the opposite of hate. THE LIGHT! When I am tempted to stand by and do nothing but instead I speak up and act, the light warms me. I would rather have the light than anything else in the world.

The light is pure. It dims a little if I lie to anyone, but especially if I lie to myself. It dims if I know something is wrong but tolerate it anyway. It dims if I treat myself as more important than another human being. It dims if I stop hoping. It dims if I start making exceptions to the rules.

Am I good enough for the light? FUCK NO. But it is holding on in there, dim, flickering, somewhere in the depths of my soul, underneath all the gunk I buried it in. Yesterday I decided to order takeout instead of giving the money to charity, and the light is still there. I cannot emphasise enough: THAT IS A MIRACLE. I think perhaps this is the miracle that the Christians were trying to describe, in their own broken and false way, when they spoke about how we all sin but Jesus loves us anyway. I can lie about the dog eating my homework, and next time I am kind to someone… the light will still fill me with the same warmth. How astonishingly beautiful! How incredible! The best feeling in the world, and I never build up a tolerance, I never lose it permanently, I can only ever temporarily dim it a little?

The place where the falling angel meets the rising ape, indeed.

You are a HUMAN BEING. That means you were born with the exact same light, I’m pretty sure - I mean, it seems like a pretty complicated thing and it would be very weird if I had the genes for it but it somehow didn’t evolve in the rest of the species. You were born blessed with the exact same MIRACLE. If you are kind to others, it will feel good. If you see all the suffering in the world and decide to devote your life to trying to improve the world, it will feel good. If you learn true knowledge and teach it to others and they thank you, it will feel good. Miraculous! Amazing! Beautiful! How wonderful is it, that we were born with the capacity to take joy in doing the right thing? How astonishingly lucky are we, that it doesn’t feel like a chore?

Perhaps your experience varies. But if I pretended, even for one singular moment, that I was not driven to put an END to all human suffering, to devote my life to my ethics, to help everyone in the world who needs it, to build that vision… then I’m pretty sure I would not feel the light anymore. The light is too pure and delicate and naïve to survive that kind of self-delusion. That vision of a better world does not include one single suffering innocent, and how could it possibly inspire you or warm you if it did?!

If you are suppressing your light, then YOU are the one who is looking away. I think perhaps you are the one who is brave, to be able to confront the world without the light at your side.

You are not obligated to live up to the standard of a person who always makes the right decision, always prioritises helping others, always chooses goodness. God knows I don’t; but the guilt that I don’t isn’t crippling. The joy that the light is still inside me, even though I fail, is overwhelming.

You are not obligated to meet the standard, but if you refuse to even see the standard, if you refuse to say “I want to live up to that standard” because you think it sounds unreasonable and overly demanding, if you say things like “I couldn’t possibly believe that because I don’t want to feel guilty for not giving up my guilty pleasures”, if you say “I don’t want to try to be a good person because it doesn’t sound fun” - there is something deeply wrong with you. There is something deeply offensive against humanity in that.

I want to be perfect. I’m not. That is not, and will never be, a reason to pretend that perfection isn’t the goal. To say rubbish like “it’s unreasonable to aim for perfection” or “utilitarianism is overly demanding” or “it’s cruel and mean to say that people aren’t good, so you can’t possibly require people to devote their lives to goodness to be considered good” or “it’s overly stressful to think about ethics all the time so you should basically just try not to hurt anyone”. Just live with the fact that you’re not good enough! It doesn’t hurt that badly! It really does not! How have you lived long enough to be an adult and still not come to terms with the fact that sometimes you will apologise for erring? How haven’t you learned to forgive without forgetting?

And people will go online and talk shit about “moral purity” or suggest that having overly high standards is bad? What is wrong with them? The light is pure. Doing something wrong and not feeling guilty about it, lying to yourself that it was right, does suffocate the light. I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it. Spending too much time around people who unapologetically hurt others, that’ll strangle the light. Knowing what the right thing to do is and being too afraid to do it, that fucks up the light. I’ve felt the damage from doing that and I never ever ever want to feel it again.

I’m not a firebrand. I am just a guy with a very small candle and I am trying to shield it against the wind. Yes, I am obligated to devote my entire life to helping others. No, that does not make me brave. How sad to think that. I would be brave if I succeeded. I’m going to go and play video games now, fully aware that it is the wrong thing to do, acknowledging that it is the wrong thing to do, apologetic for doing it - and yet later today when I work on projects intended to improve the world, that light will still be with me, because I refuse to pretend to myself that there’s nothing wrong with me wasting time.

Can we not…. talk about this? Do people feel odd talking about the light? I rarely see anyone talk about it, and yet it is one of the clearest, most driving, most defining experiences that I have. Even the synaesthetic part of feeling a very small candle, a glow, it’s the clearest image. This is a universal human experience, right….?

Thinking on this…

The usual way I think of the difference between the “perfect” person I might want to be and the person I am is in terms of “reflective consistency”; I want to want things different to what I want, to be things other than what I am.

The thing I want to be is this very pure, very idealised, untiring optimiser who wants to work and works towards an awesome world until such time as nothing more can be done- with then an ability to enjoy the world with mundane pursuits.

The thing I actually am kinda wants some cake, is a little thirsty, and fairly tired and isn’t even making particularly great progress on their flashcards this evening between reading fiction. It steps into those shoes occasionally, and makes small sacrifices like 10% to charity which don’t require substantial lifestyle changes.

Humans aren’t reflectively consistent; they don’t have the property that given the power to change their reasoning they wouldn’t do so. I definitely relate to seeing a thing I wish I was and not being that.

I think I relate to it pretty differently in a bunch of ways though.

- I am more or less comfortable accepting the reflective inconsistency without either continually fighting it or having the distorted model of myself that would come from actually thinking of myself -as- the thing I want to be.

- Internal conflict, guilt, etc is (I think) very costly, and seems very painful and ineffective at producing people who in fact do more. Crippling is bad. I’d rather work out how much my current self wants to spend time trying to improve the world and do that, even if it means accepting that I’m not as good as I’d like to be. Particularly for trying to do more altruistic stuff than actually makes you happy, you’re System 2 fighting System 1 there, and System 1 will turn off your ability to get out of bed if you predictably make it sad. This is not going to help anyone.

- I don’t think of perfection as the goal, because I don’t allow myself to have goals that I don’t expect to change my concrete behaviour. I think of high goals, and especially the ability to say (including to yourself) you have high goals, as something to be earned by genuine action in pursuit of them, that couldn’t be just as easily explained by pursuit of a lesser goal. I shouldn’t be allowedto think for a moment about ethics while lighting a candle and feel good about it if I didn’t do it at ways and times that actually mattered.

- This is because I think a lot of the really nice stuff you get in the course of a goal of improving the world- warm feelings about being on the side of good, fantasies of nice futures, emotionally compelling songs- comes to you for having the goal, not for actually improving the world. If I let myself say that I have that goal, without asking myself, “Okay but what have you done for it lately, would hearing you say you had that goal let someone predict your actions better…”, if then it’d be easy to never actually act on it. Instead of having the goal, I’d have the goal of having the goal. And I’d rather have a strategically-picked lesser goal for real than a higher goal in fantasy.

- I think keeping in touch with the context of the wider world is very important for prioritisation and can help lend weight to the desire to help it, and maybe a little context to one’s own travails. I think if you’re properly setup mentally, you shouldn’t feel much of a need to look away.

- I don’t really find anything particularly amazing about a *want* to build a better world existing. It’s… there, but if I want it to make me happy I have to do something for it. Or identify as someone giving their all to bring it about, but this runs foul of a bunch of problems above that would mean I was bringing it about less.

- Maybe because I don’t identify that way, I don’t really experience the mix of joy of having this incredibly perfect vision + crippling guilt from not living up to it, and don’t think I’d want to; it sounds like it’d mostly be a daydream, not clearly hedonically better on net, probably make me function less. I prefer my more reasonable but very earned-feeling satisfaction about what I’ve lived up to and self-acceptance. So I don’t think this is a universal human experience!