Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

silver-and-ivory:

approximatelyarticulated:

silver-and-ivory:

I am mildly surprised when I hear that Effective Altruism stresses people out (though I don’t at all intend to imply that this is invalid).

For me, when I heard about EA I felt relieved. It felt too good to be true- the ability to save thousands of lives, for a few hundred dollars every month of future income, with very little additional effort required.

I suppose that some of this is that I don’t make any significant income yet and also I’m supposed to Save For College at this point in my life.

But I think the major part is that I’ve always felt as though being Moral required some manner of personal virtue.

This might be that you do volunteer work, or that you pour yourself into activism, or, more recently, that you police your vocabulary and statements against structural kyriarchy. It might require that you devote your life to finding a peace treaty for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which I had dreams of doing in the 7th and 8th grades) or that you somehow find a solution to poverty and implement it.

These were just the things you had to do, so as not to waste your potential and intelligence. Otherwise you had tried hard but were kind of a failure anyway.

And then I heard about EA and Earning to Give. This was earth-shattering in terms of how it opened up my future and my choices.

I could be slightly unkind to someone in my life without destroying my moral character forever. I could be horrible and evil and racist and, as long as I still donated enough, I’d be solidly in the black in terms of morals. (Though obviously it would be better to not be horrible and evil and racist.) I could fuck shit up and still be good.

Most importantly and most terrifyingly, I could pursue an immense number of possible careers. Indeed, I could pursue math — my dream —, which I had regarded as kind of a guilty pleasure before. And as long as I got enough income, eventually I could start to donate 10% of it every month, and that would save lives and improve happiness and ensure the future of humanity— and I would be an acceptable person.

I suppose that this places a lot of emphasis on general economic success in my life. But for some reason that’s less daunting than pressure to be Extraordinary.

I’m a newcomer to EA, and I’m not sure I’m ready to take the step yet of labelling myself an “effective altruist” – but I take it seriously enough that I’ve already donated to charities recommended by Give Well, intend to donate a lot more once I start working again (I’m currently a college student who didn’t work this school year), and am seriously considering earning to give in the future. The reason EA appeals to me so much is quite different than yours, but I share the same feelings of relief as you do.

My backstory before EA is that, for most of my life, I was naturally a very empathetic person. And while I wouldn’t call myself scrupulous, I definitely pondered the pros and cons of various moral issues a lot as a young adolescent, and felt deeply connected to “doing the right thing.” It was definitely really important to me. Being a good, “loyal” friend was also extremely important to my identity and something I thought about a lot. Then once I started identifying as somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum around that age, I also started caring a lot about social justice, feeling viscerally enraged whenever I saw anyone being bullied/harassed for whatever reason, and quickly made “fighting the kyriarchy” a central part of my character. In general I thought a lot about “doing the right thing,” and made striving towards it a part of my character, just because I naturally cared about it.

However, in the past few years, my personality has changed drastically, for reasons that are far too complicated for me to get into on Tumblr but that I don’t even really understand myself. The upshot of it is that I’ve been extremely apathetic lately, do not feel the least bit enraged when I hear about various injustices occurring, don’t feel this effusive affection for my friends anymore, and in general am just not interested in most of the things I used to be interested (moral issues and otherwise). It’s kind of like being depressed, except I only have like one symptom of depression and the rest of the diagnosis definitely doesn’t fit me. In the past, one of the main ways that I construed my moral identity was through personal relationships, a huge part of which had to do with uncontrollable feelings of love and compassion, and this has completely been taken away from me. I can still go through the motions of “being there” for a friend, but I simply don’t care about my friends in the same way I used to, and I don’t think I’m fooling anyone now. (I also struggle with expressing affection I don’t actually feel – which would feel fake and dishonest, but perhaps reassurring, versus not expressing anything I don’t actually feel – which would be “authentic,” but makes me feel like a bad friend.) Thus, I am finding it extremely hard to be a “good person” in the context of being in any kind of personal relationship with anyone at all. Most of the things that used to allow me to do good in the world and to help others feel entirely beyond my control, and besides the actual consequences of my actions (or non-actions), I oftentimes feel like a bad person simply because I don’t feel the “right” things.

When I first discovered EA, I was absolutely shocked that there was anyone in the world who conceived of morality in this way – through choices and consequences rather than natural feelings and sympathies. At the time, I just thought it was a fringe movement (which I guess it kind of is, but not the philosophy behind it), so I was even more shocked when I first read moral philosophy in college and quickly realized that throughout the history of Western philosophy, most philosophers have talked about morality in terms of choices. “Virtue ethics” was an outdated theory that is no longer as popular as other normative theories, and the “ethics of care” (which is pretty much how my moral intuitions used to align) is a new maverick philosophy that is challenging the dominant model. The fact that action-based philosophy – whether deontological or consequentialist – was the norm was absolutely shocking to me, and made me start to think maybe I could find a different way to be a good person.

Then I read more about EA online, and EA specifically – as compared to ethical theory in general – is so helpful and so promising because it (essentially) tells you what to do. It was great for me to find out while reading philosophy that apparently there were more ways to be an acceptably moral person than I had thought, but EA was even more than that; it was a laundry list of “things you can do, now, to do morally good things!” These were easy things that I could do. I have some money to spare, and the act of hitting a donate button a website to save someone’s life is so fucking easy compared trying to be a good friend, which lately feels impossible to me.

It’s not that I think all the other moral goals I feel like I’m currently failing at are unimportant now. I certainly don’t feel that way at all. I continue to view them as just as important as I did before – I want to be a good friend, and I want to be an active, participating member of my political community who stands up for what is right. And I know that I have to find a way to succeed at those things insofar as I can (because part of my non-participation currently is just due to apathy and laziness; it’s not entirely outside my control). However, the amazing thing about EA is that it gives me a way to start crawling out of the hole that I feel I’m trapped in. It is helping me start to fix two huge problems I’m having now – one, that I am simply objectively not doing much to help others right now, even though I know I have an obligation to (which is in fact how I currently conceive of morality), and two, that I’m struggling to reclaim my sense of identity. It doesn’t solve either of those problems, but it’s… a place to stand in the meantime. And it gives me a lot of hope.

The reasons you describe are actually really similar to mine!

Like-

Then once I started identifying as somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum around that age, I also started caring a lot about social justice, feeling viscerally enraged whenever I saw anyone being bullied/harassed for whatever reason, and quickly made “fighting the kyriarchy” a central part of my character. In general I thought a lot about “doing the right thing,” and made striving towards it a part of my character, just because I naturally cared about it.

Oh god this is literally me a year ago. Less than a year ago!

As for this-

I can still go through the motions of “being there” for a friend, but I simply don’t care about my friends in the same way I used to, and I don’t think I’m fooling anyone now. (I also struggle with expressing affection I don’t actually feel – which would feel fake and dishonest, but perhaps reassurring, versus not expressing anything I don’t actually feel – which would be “authentic,” but makes me feel like a bad friend.)

I have had almost exactly this same feeling, and I think it might be linked to neurodivergence. I’m tired of caring and tired of Rallying My Feelings to care and also tired of pretending to care. I am tired of making efforts for other people that are difficult. Actually, that’s one of the things I liked about EA as well.

These were easy things that I could do. I have some money to spare, and the act of hitting a donate button a website to save someone’s life is so fucking easy compared trying to be a good friend, which lately feels impossible to me.

This so much!

Also agreed on virtue ethics and ethics of care as well; it pretty much failed for me and contributed directly to my scrupulosity.