A personal reflection on how my experience of EA is similar to my experience of religious faith in that it provides a sense of purpose and belonging, but that I miss the assurance of my own intrinsic value and how that can make it difficult to maintain a stable sense of self-worth.
Note: I realize that my experience of religion and faith is probably different from that of a lot of other people. My aim is not to get into a discussion of what religion does right or wrong, especially since I am no longer religious.
I grew up with a close connection to my local church and was rather religious until my mid-late teenage years. I am now in my thirties and have been involved with the EA movement for a couple of years. To me, there are similarities between how I remember relating to faith and church and how I now relate to the EA philosophy and movement.
For me, both provide (provided) a strong sense of purpose and belonging. There is a feeling that I matter as an individual and that I can have an important mission in life, that I can even be some kind of heroine. For both, there is also a supportive community (of course not always for everyone, but my experience has been mainly positive in both cases) that shares my values and understands and supports how this sense of mission affects many of my important life decisions. This is something that I find very valuable.
However, in comparison to what my faith and church used to offer me, there is something lacking in the case of EA. I miss the assurance that I as a person have an intrinsic value, in addition to my instrumental value as a potential world-saviour. With faith, you are constantly reminded that God loves you, that God created you just as you are and that you are therefore, in a sense, flawless. There is a path for everyone, and you are always seen and loved in the most important way. This can be a very comforting message, and I feel it has a function to cushion the tough demands that come with the world-saving mission. The instrumental value you have through your mission to do good is in a way balanced by the assurance that no matter what, you also have infinite intrinsic value.
With EA, I don’t find any corresponding comforting thought or philosophy to rest in. If I am a well-off, capable person in the rich world, the QALYs I could create or save for others are likely to be much more than the QALYs I can live through myself. This seems to say that my value is mostly made up of my instrumental value, and that my individual wellbeing is less important compared to what I could achieve for others.
I believe that if community members perceive that their value is primarily instrumental, this might damage their (our) mental well-being, specifically risking that many people might suffer burnouts. The idea that most of the impact is achieved by a few, very impactful people could also make the people who perceive themselves as having potential for high impact particularly vulnerable, since the gap between their intrinsic value or self-worth and their instrumental value would seem even wider.
If the value of our work (the QALYs we can save) is orders of magnitude greater than the value of ourselves (the QALYs we can live), what does that mean? Can we justify self-care, other than as a means to improve ourselves to perform better? Is it possible then to build a stable sense of self-worth that is not contingent on performance?
I have read several previous posts on EA’s struggling with feelings of not achieving enough (In praise of unhistoric heroism, Doing good is as good as it ever was, Burnout and self-care), and to me this seems closely related to what I’m trying to address here.
I’m not sure what can be done about this on a community level. As an individual, I believe it will be important for me to find a way to maintain a stable sense of self-worth, while still staying intellectually honest with myself and committed to the EA ideals. If there are others who have also thought about or struggled with this, I would greatly appreciate your input.
First, of course, thanks, C Tilli, for the post, and thanks willbradshaw for these comments.
This pierced my mind:
I think my background is the opposite of C Tilli's: I have been an atheist for many years (and still am - well, maybe more of an agnostic, since we might be in a simulation...), but since I found out about EA, I think I became a little bit more understanding towards not only the need for comfort, but also the idea of valuing something that goes way beyond one's own personal value and social circle, that is sought by religious people (on the other hand, I also became a little bit supicious of some cult-like traits we might be tempted to mimic).
I am sort of surprised we wrote so much, so far, without talking about death and mortality. I know I have intrinsic value, but it's fragile and perishable (cryonics aside); and yet, the set of things I can value extends way beyond my perishable self - actually, my own self-worth depends a little bit on that (as Scheffer argues, it'd be hard not to be nihilistic if we knew humanity was going to end after us), and there's no necessary upper bound for what I can value. I reckon that, as much as I fear humanity falling into the precipice, I feel joy by thinking it may continue for eons, and that I may play a role, contribute and add my own personal experience to this narrative.
I guess that's the 'trick' played by religion that might be missing here: religion 'grants' me some sort of intrinsic value through some metaphysical cosmic privilege (or the love of God) - and this provides us some comfort. But then, without it, all that is left, despite enjoyable and worthy, is perishable - transient love, fading joy, endured pain, limited virtue, pleasure... Like Dworkin (who considered this to be a religious conviction - though non-theistic), we can say that a life well-lived is an achievement in itself, and stands for itself even after we die, like a work of art - but art itself will be meaningless when humanity is gone. Maybe altruism is just another way to trick (the fear of) death: when one realizes that "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die" one might see it not as realizing some external value, but as an important part of one's own self-worth. (if Bladerunner is too melodramatic, one can use the bureaucrat in Ikiru as an example of this reasoning)