idea21
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I think it's a good idea to write about personal motivations for altruism. It's undeniable that the most important aspect of altruistic action is the effects it has on people in need, but there's no greater cost-benefit for altruistic action than exploring and expanding the emotional complexities involved in what we generally call "prosocial behavior."
Why not be a saint? There's nothing magical about it. We're used to psychopathic, autistic, and neurotic personalities. We must view "sanctity" as an attainable human reality, related to well-known concepts such as the altruistic personality and psychological altruism. It's feasible to control these types of experiences by making use of all the resources of rationality and humanistic sensitivity informed by science.
All altruistic behavior has its motivations, and psychological rewards are legitimate, both in the exclusively private sphere and in lifestyle and community settings.
Delving deeper into this issue could be the greatest contribution to effective altruism.
From the perspective of the process of civilization as the embodiment of human cultural evolution (moral evolution toward prosociality), concern about long-term altruism becomes unnecessary. All human problems will be solved if we remain constant in a culture of controlling aggression and fostering the altruistic personality (empathy and the rational development of an economy based on altruism).
Whether this will lead to the voluntary self-extinction of humanity in the long run or whether it will lead us down the path of transhumanism to "become like gods" is something we should not worry about today. If you want authentic "effective altruism," take the path of virtue ethics and avoid getting into the dead ends of the dilemmas inherent in utilitarianism and deontology.
It's always valuable to bring the issue of speciesism up for discussion. If altruism refers to preventing the suffering of others, we will always depend on the truthful information provided to us about which living beings are at risk of cruel treatment. The case of shrimp is one among many. Another may be the lethal activity of predators in the wild (wolves, lions, etc.).
My contribution to the matter is that the best investment in developing altruistic activity would be to effectively participate in ensuring the psychological transformation of people from altruistic ideas to people emotionally motivated to altruism. You can save 20,000 shrimp, but if you turn 20,000 Homo sapiens into altruistic activists, you will have saved many millions more shrimp. There's nothing more utilitarian than developing the sensitivity of hundreds, thousands, since we know that all human beings are prone to psychological altruism (based on empathy) and that such inclinations can be activated by natural stimuli.
Imagine that you pursue a career as an actor and become a big Hollywood star. You use your fame to preach universal goodness, and your money to create a foundation of psychologists and other social scientists, whom you task with designing a mass social movement capable of making altruistic behavior attractive as a lifestyle.
There you have it.
Thank you for your comment. I start from the idea that the most effective altruism is not based so much on mutual support - in the material sense - as on participation within a culture of altruistic values where support is above all of an emotional, affective nature. We would then be more in the field of "virtue ethics" than of a utilitarian type. Economic acts would be a necessary material consequence of an emotional state. Here I am with Hume: reason is the slave of the passions (but we can rationally shape our own passions: that is psychology).
The most intelligent altruistic action would be to help build that emotional state that would compose an altruistic ethos. That was what the so-called "compassionate religions" did before, but today we have more cognitive instruments... apart from those they already had. Jonathan Haidt comments that the ancients did not know much about science but were good psychologists, and he himself names an "emotion of elevation" as a motivator of behavior.
On the other hand, in books such as Larissa MacFarquhart's "Strangers Drowning" we find contemporary evidence of sufficiently motivated altruistic actors. What is missing is an ideology of behavioural improvement.
Inequality has reached obscene limits in our time, considering the technological advances. A social system that allows such immorality cannot be stable. Moreover, history shows that labor productivity and technological progress can occur under all kinds of social conditions. And greed is not necessarily related to increased productivity.
Moral dilemmas should never be an obstacle to making moral decisions. Morality, above all, is a way of life, that is, it is "practice of virtue." Considering a moral dilemma must be done in the context of a moral attitude within a cultural conception. Errors or exceptions constantly appear in moral dilemmas. Should I save the lives of a million chickens even at the cost of the life of a human being? In my opinion, your action of saving a million chickens at the cost of a human life would not be considered virtuous in the culture in which you find yourself. And you would not be a virtuous person if the attitude of the majority were indifferent to you to that extent.
All moral progress implies nonconformity, an overcoming of the resistance of the majority, but this virtuous action must imply a lifestyle in accordance with virtue itself in understandable terms.
For example, conscientious objection to military service may be considered a betrayal of a politically respectable ideal (as in Ukraine now invaded by Russia) and an immoral act for most people... but if the conscientious objector expresses his commitment to pacifism, altruism and benevolence in a convincing way, he will still be within the realm of comprehensible virtue and may lead to moral progress. And that does not imply that a moral dilemma has been resolved.
Impressive work, but it is not difficult to convince people of the risks of capitalism when it comes to facing longtermism challenges. We have the "social market economy", in which there are supposedly democratic controls on capitalism.
But from an imaginative perspective, an alternative to capitalism based on a purely altruistic economy is not inconceivable. An altruistic economy should not be confused with a socialist economy (legislation for the common good), but rather should be related to individualistic cultural conceptions such as the ethics of caring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_care
Since EA is an organization that promotes prosocial activity outside of politics, it is worth asking whether it would not be more valuable to consider the non-political factors that enable social change. Note that there is a flaw in the Darwinian (and Machiavellian) interpretation of human relations because it presupposes that power relations are not affected by internalized cultural changes over time. How can Marx or Machiavelli explain that the oppressing classes that crushed Spartacus gave in to British workers unions in the Victorian era?
In fact, Darwin might have been able to explain it with his vision of "group selection."
Let's look beyond politics.
Whether EA is considered an autonomous social movement or part of a more complex social change movement, it cannot be considered "conservative" as long as it is based on a rational analysis of human relations that it considers perfectible in the future in the sense of extreme prosociality. Without traditions and without prejudices, conservatism is not possible.
However, every movement for social change appeals to the logical judgment of individuals and it may be quite obvious that a non-political social change would not be part of the threats that are usually perceived by many conservatives.
In a civilizational sense, the best interpretation of a movement like EA is as part of a cultural evolution - moral evolution - that promotes empathy, benevolence and control of aggression. This will not be seen as a threat by all conservatives.
It is possible to draw a parallel with the monastic phenomenon in the Middle Ages. Nobles and kings promoted communities of unconventional lifestyle where charity, poverty and control of aggression - or "sin" - were practiced. Nothing could be further from the lifestyle of conservative elites. Promoting virtue was considered to pacify the social order.
A very valuable post, because it addresses altruism as a social fact, with the emotional and motivational implications that can make an altruistic social initiative viable or not.
Altruism cannot depend on solitary willpower, just as children who pass the Mischel test do not do so by forcing their will, but by using parallel strategies.
The great success of altruism—yet to come—will always depend on understanding altruism as the economic dimension of a lifestyle based on mutual love, charity, and benevolence, somewhat in the old-fashioned style of the Christian ideal (although stripped of the old traditions of the supernatural, of course). And this is no longer "utilitarianism" but "virtue ethics."
In a lifestyle based on prosocial emotionality, the rewards of altruistic action will be framed in a close environment of affective human relationships. This emotional experience will more than compensate for the maternal sacrifices that altruistic action may require and the temporary demands of leading a non-aggressive life in a society like today's, which is still far from an ideal of benevolence.