 One of the one of the topics you've written about you've written about quite a bit lately is kind of the this general idea that people who are secular And think that they're you know beyond Christianity and they've gotten beyond religion and they are now people of science or reason or whatever and yet they're still stuck on the morality of Religion so walk us through that Yeah, when you're When you're a fish Swimming in water. You don't know that the water is what you're in. It's it's just the world to you and That's the the way that I think a lot of people think about morality and and altruism the altruism is the only morality they've ever known and They equate it with with morality as such and so They think if I'm gonna be a moral person whether I'm Christian Jewish atheist doesn't matter. That's about that's about not caring too much about my own interests. It's about sacrificing them to others and Part of the reason I'm interested in this question is because I think there are secular people out there some of whom are more rational than others and who pride themselves in in Not being religious and because they think religions are rational but if they were to realize that The morality that they treat as a given that they that they think is the only morality there ever was Is actually a product of religious thinking and religious ideas I think they would drop it and so there's there's a there's some work to do there with showing them that that's in fact true that that if you look at the logic of Altruism it it it ultimately comes from religious ideas if you look at the history of altruism it comes from historical religion and one thing we see today. I think is there certain strains of Secular thinking certain kinds of movements, especially on the left Which is you know traditionally the secular wing of our politics It's becoming more and more obvious that the morality that they rely on is a religious morality and that the two The two movements that I have in mind here are one of them is wokeism And the other is effective altruism So before we get to those let's let's take a step back and Talk a little bit about what about what altruism means and and what it means in the culture and and then So let's start with that what what does altruism actually mean? I mean a lot of people when you mention altruism. I think I think generally in the culture They'll say yeah, it's being nice. It's being polite. It's opening doors. It's it's thinking about the other. It's taking other people's You know the fact that you your actions have another people into account Why is it's important that it's not that really? because yeah, a lot of people use it simply as a synonym for benevolence or Any kind of other regarding behavior and that's the big mistake Altruism is a moral theory that says that you derive your moral justification for living by You know from service to others So you can have egoistic reasons Self-interested reasons for having the regard for the rights of others even for helping certain other people out in certain cases That's not altruism. Altruism is the idea that morality is all about other people and especially About sacrificing yourself to other people And what in this context is sacrificing mean? You know when we say sacrificing to other people again people have a very benevolent interpretation of sacrifice and Jordan Peterson goes on and on in some of his videos about oh You know you invest now and you reap the benefits in the future and he conflates sacrifice with investment What is what what is the word sacrifice actually mean? What do we mean and what what should it mean in a culture? It means giving up a Greater value for a lesser value or for a non value it means not for instance you You love your wife your wife is sick You spend a lot of money to save her life. It means I don't know spend the same amount of money But for saving a stranger or spend more money to save lots of strangers who mean nothing to you Which by the way is exactly what the effective altruists are advocating these days Yeah, we have strangers 10,000 years from now not just depends on which version of effective altruism, but yeah So I'll just it's about sacrifice about rejection of your own values The word itself the concept itself In the way we use it today. I think was coined by Comte The French philosopher. Yes. So is it a modern concept? Is this cut? Is this a generated from modern philosophy? I mean the term is definitely pretty modern because it comes from Comte who's 19th century French philosopher, but the idea of it that this is the Primary concern of morality certainly goes back before Comte It goes back You see it Even in secular philosophers earlier than Comte you see it in in the manual count in various forms You see it in the utilitarians you see it in Hume in in certain ways and You obviously see it in Christianity and Christianity I wouldn't say is quite the same as as altruism because altruism is the idea that's other people who are The the the moral target They're the ones who give your life moral justification for Christianity Other people are of secondary concern to your moral obligations to God But of course God is still someone other than yourself and you're still supposed to sacrifice for him And the first thing he usually tells you is to give things to other people You know in order to please him so A lot of these a lot of these doctrines fundamentally come from from religion for that reason So so can you walk us through how How religious how particularly Christianity, but religion generally is altruistic What is it about the the the teachings That lead to a morality and explicit morality of altruism Well, the first thing to say I think is that once you get clear on how altruism is not primarily About Just doing nice things for people which you can have self-interested reasons to do It it gets It's a little easier to understand and there's a second point to make on top of that which is that It's not even really about helping people even though It it professes to be about helping people. It's much more about Sacrifice as an end in itself. It's much more about the Importance of giving up and then of course, you know other people are just kind of an excuse to give things up I mean the importance of denying to yourself right and When you when you understand that that's what's really at the core Uh of the idea it gets a lot easier to see how this is coming out of religion because I mean one of the key concepts in religious morality is the Is the virtue the alleged virtue of humility and the idea that there's a sin in pride and humility is You know, that's a concept. I think you see in religious morality well before they Start talking about altruism Some you often see it even before they start to start talking about sacrifice But what humility is in fact is the idea you are Nothing you should think of yourself as low as worthless and that you Only gain any kind of moral meaning by recognizing your worthlessness and your dependency on some higher power That you need to bow before that you need to submit yourself to and that submission Is I think the form then that sacrifice to others ends up taking It's uh, yes, it's it's uh You're paying your suffering whether somebody else benefits from it is irrelevant It's it's just it's kind of anti-self. Is it the core of the kind of religious the religious perspective on altruism Why do you think altruism requires religion? I mean you mentioned that earlier that really to justify you have to go back to religion Well, I mean first of all it requires some worldview that's going to Give the altruist a reason to think that he's worthless religion Serves that up ready made in all kinds of ways because of original sin because of the idea that There's this higher power. That's you know by comparison to which you are worthless And there is I think secular versions of that you see it for instance in I think modern wokeism where there's a version of original sin. We're all racists and The the higher power that we submit ourselves to is to the the the victims of oppression in effect But you also need a And this is I think very important and something I've only really started to appreciate Uh sufficiently in the last few years The reliance on religious faith is essential because On top of the point that what altruism is really all about is it's not about helping. It's about giving up The most important thing Uh that altruists want you to give up is your reliance on your own independent judgment And that's what religious faith encourages and It's what any number of forms of secular faith secular reliance on emotions secular shaming people for wanting to know for themselves They do the same thing and so in fact if you if you look at some of the if you look at any of the Various secular forms of altruism they all rest their case for altruism on Some kind of irrationalism some kind of reliance on emotions Which amount to their secular version of a faith? So is this the point it ran makes the point of you know to really demolish altruism all you have to do is ask why Yeah, and and and they have no answer right they have no answer other than To point an ancient book or to or to say is reveal truth and If no earthly reason and no earthly reason has ever been given yeah, and So how does this sustain itself like I mean we've gone through an enlightenment People can be incredibly rational incredibly reasonable You know in the secular world when it comes to a lot of different issues But it seems like when it comes to altruism Almost nobody is willing to accept an alternative nobody is willing to challenge it nobody's willing to question it it really is You know the one thing that you cannot that everybody agrees on in one form or another And and you said earlier they equate it with morality. It's exactly that you can't even get through them Because every time you say morality they hear altruism So you can't actually put self-interest and morality in the same place because they have them in two complete different compartments in their File system. They can't unite them. So what do you think it is that that has made it so sticky so prevalent that there's just nothing else Well, there's a easier answer and a harder answer to that question. I think the easier answer is to say all the different altruistic and religious philosophers who've been pushing this for Centuries if not millennia who give it intellectual credibility who influence each other who create an intellectual establishment in favor of it and there's there's There's plenty to say about that but So I actually gave a talk last summer at okan called iron rand's genealogy of altruism where the the major focus of the talk was Well take for granted that altruism is not Rational it doesn't have a rational basis. So it doesn't come from rational reasons It's got to come from irrational reasons and so you can explain that by pointing to what the philosophers have said but at a certain point you have to Stop the the regress back in history and say well, you know, some of these philosophers just came up with the idea for bad reasons and it's ultimately a Psychological explanation. There are a lot of psychological explanations that you can point to that explain what Incentivizes people to believe in altruism. It's not a good incentive. It's not a any kind of self-interested incentive It's a it's a defense value. It's a Source of it's it's something that they've embraced out of fear out of hatred Of other people for one reason or another and there's a range of different kinds of motivations some of them More understandable some of them much less innocent everything from you know simple just Fear of disagreement with other people and other people tell me that this is what morality is all about so I better go along with the herd on to A desire to appease other people because you are maybe a young intellectual and you want to be able to claim The the you want to be able to use your mind somewhat independently But if you do that too much you'll be seen as selfish and so you need to Explain well, I'm really doing this for the sake of the greater good That's the kind of altruism as appeasement motivation all the way to simple envy and power lust where You know you can control people through guilt And you know and you and you also really hate and are afraid of The people who exercise their own independent judgment They do something that you decided not to do and it reminds you of your own guilt For not having decided to choose for yourself to think for yourself And so you go to war with people like that on the premise of I can prove that You know if I can convince them to believe this Altruistic faith that'll I'll have put one over on them and and and shown them that you don't have to think for yourself to live Yeah, I mean it it's amazing to me how successful altruism has been and and The people who really rebel against it tend to be either pragmatists or kind of nihilists It's and of course they're they're rebelling it against it by in some way embracing it. So But it other than ran nobody has ever really Thought through an alternative Um, and it's it's that makes our achievement so much greater I mean we've gone through well over 2,000 years when nobody is Considered an alternative to to altruism and she has I mean there's a place where someone asked I can't remember who it was why she was able to Come up with her ideas when no one else Was you know, is it some special intelligence that you had and She was insistent that it that it wasn't any special intelligence. Although. I think we agree. She was pretty smart She was insistent that it was honesty that she was more honest than other philosophers and you have to be to you have to be You know supremely intellectually honest to be willing to break with So many intellectual authorities On a topic like the morality of altruism Thank you for listening or watching the iran book show If you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. 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