THE CASE AGAINST ALTRUISM
Summary Summary Summary
There is altruism, doing good without wanting anything for yourself. This is sometimes called unselfishness.
There is egoism which is helping others and looking for benefits for yourself such as feeling good. It is helping others not to help them but because you enjoy it. It is one kind of selfishness.
There is egotism which will not do good. It is the other kind of selfishness.
Three options.
There are three only. Only one of
them is right.
There is good selfishness which is egoism and bad which is egotism. Love according to the altruist is sacrificing yourself to suffer for others and avoiding taking any
pleasure in it. Altruists do this so
that others can have pleasure instead but if pleasure is so bad then how can
it be right to give it to others? So
you love others and not yourself. Love according to the egoist is not sacrificing yourself but
making yourself happy through making others happy. You can’t make others happy unless you are
happy yourself so it starts with putting yourself first. You want them to share in your happiness
which makes you happier. So when the
egoist seems to sacrifice she is doing it because it makes or keeps her happy
and the egoist recognises that you cannot love others unless you love
yourself. This is not real sacrifice. By loving others the egoist means helping them because you love yourself and put yourself first. The egoist loves herself by doing good for them. She wants to see her reflection of herself and her happiness in them so she helps them.
The egoist only values herself alone
because she can’t do other than that for the good is done for her pleasure
and not for the other people. When you like something
that is finding your own fulfilment in it. Just doing it is reward enough. Its not the act
that matters to you but the gratification doing it gives you. Its not the results of the act that matter but the
gratification of performing the act. Liking means finding personal satisfaction
so when you like a person you are not valuing that person but how they make
you feel. There is nothing wrong with
that for that necessarily makes you more useful to others than an altruist
would be. And no matter what you do it
is because you like to do it to some extent so you do it because you like it
and therefore for yourself. It is
easier to help others if you want to and like doing it which means you are
helping them to fulfil yourself. The
egoist never sacrifices though he or she may give up things for others but he
or she wants to do it and gets the benefit of at least some fulfilment from
it. So it is the result of the act that is for
others not the intention. This is not sacrifice for it is
done for self-fulfilment. Real
sacrifice is giving things up to hurt yourself for
others. People will not like the good you do for them if you don’t
do it solely for your own growth in your own happiness. We want people to enjoy helping us. Egoism is
loving others in the sense of helping them and benefiting them. The rule of egoism is to love yourself in your
neighbour. So you love yourself in the
sense that you value yourself alone but you love your neighbour in the sense
that you like (take selfish delight in) your neighbour. Love is liking. But you
do not value your neighbour as yourself for you cannot and you do not like
your neighbour as yourself either. Belief in God demands that you start not with self-love but
with loving God for God is infinitely perfect and deserving of all love so
belief in God is harmful and there is no point in worrying about God if you
cannot do that. Jesus said we must
start with loving God with all our powers.
This error proved he was not the infallible prophet he said he was and
it plainly sanctions altruism and opposes egoism and egotism. |
INDEX
SECTION THREE, BACKDOOR ALTRUISM
SECTION FOUR, ALTRUISM IS
DEPRAVITY!
SECTION SIX, IS EGOISM DEPRAVED?
SECTION ONE, MOTIVES
What is motive?
Your motive is the reason you do or say or think what you do. Philosophy says your motive is either good bad or neutral (neither good or bad or both which is the same thing). To do something with the intention of hurting another person unduly is to have a bad motive. To do something with the opposite intention is to have a good motive.
Is motive really good, bad or
neither?
No for we do not think of good or bad or neither the very second when we exercise it. It is only good or bad or neither depending on the product and the thoughts and feelings that produced it. It is only indirectly good, bad or neither.
What do motives imply about 1, altruism, caring about others and not yourself, 2, the faked altruism in which you love others as yourself or 3, egoism, in which you care for others to please yourself, or 4, egotism in which you do not care for others but please yourself by walking all over them?
Each one of these four philosophies stands or falls not on its consequences but on the nature of the motive that is behind it. When it is the motive that matters, it follows that you cannot pick what you like out of them but have to follow one and one only because there is only one motive associated with each system.
What is the Euthyphro Dilemma?
Should I do good to a person because it is good or because it helps that person? If I do it because it is good then I don’t care about the person but just about rules or what I perceive as good. If I do it because of the person I don’t care about the person for how could I genuinely care when I don’t care about good? So either way I do wrong which is the Euthyphro Dilemma.
What is the
solution?
I can compromise and do
both. But some would say that still
means I don’t care about the person fully but only half care. I do care for it is the nearest I can get to
caring and I am doing my best. And so I
also care about goodness. That is the
solution to the dilemma for you can’t do more than your best.
Is there another
solution for the Dilemma?
Others say the solution is that helping others is goodness and that the dilemma is confused for it thinks goodness is separate from helping so to love goodness is to love helping people and vice versa. To love helping people is loving people and thinking of that rather than goodness which is about rules. This solution is incorrect for it confuses the results with the motives. The good results of helping people are thought to mean that you meant to do good which doesn’t follow. The dilemma is about the motives not the results. We know it is possible to be interested in good only because rules say it is good. In that case, it is the rules we are really interested in - not real good.
Does the Dilemma point to egoism as being the correct philosophy?
Egoism is a form of selfishness. To care about rules not good is selfish. To care about good not rules is also selfish for good is associated by us with promoting happiness and wellbeing and because we know that just because something is good doesn't make it moral. You need the rules for determining morality. We hate rules - we only like them when they suit us in which case we only like the fun we find in them not them. Both caring about rules and caring about good is selfish so we can't compromise either. We are selfish in all that we do.
When you do something kind for somebody should you do it because you want money or something off them or do it simply to fulfil yourself?
Do it to fulfil yourself and you will be happy because if you want something else you might not get it! This is as much selfishness as being kind to them for what you can get off them say money or whatever. Why? Because you don't want the money in itself, you only want the fulfilment you think you will get from the money. You go after the same fulfilment if you do it to fulfil yourself or to get future fulfilment. There is no difference in that way. Do it to fulfil yourself and that is selfishness. Do it to get money etc and that is still selfishness. But the first is the strongest and best selfishness for it is more effective. The more selfish you are then the better! If you do not do it to fulfil yourself then you are being a pushover and urging the person to abuse you. That is actually a warped form of selfishness too. Everything we do is selfish. Altruism is nonsense.
SECTION TWO, ALTRUISM
What is altruism?
Altruism is doing things for others without any thought for yourself or concern for any of your needs and is the doctrine that this alone is true love and morality. The altruist only looks after himself when it is strictly necessary. And then only to be of use to other people. The altruist who takes no flu treatment cannot help others. The altruist never does good because he enjoys it or sees benefit in it for himself for that is not altruism. Altruism does not say you cannot do good when you enjoy it but only if you are detached from the pleasure and would do the good without it and only if you are not motivated by the enjoyment. Without the conditions, it teaches that you did not intend it to be real good. The motive and the intent was bad even though the result brought good to others. Selfless love is not a feeling – it is a choice. You can love a person altruistically without liking them in the slightest. Altruism opposes selfishness or self-gratification. It says that other people matter more than you. The consistent altruist will donate his organs and die purposely so that five others can use his organs and live.
Is selfishness just doing things for yourself at the expense of the rights of other people?
No for you can be selfish in a way that harms nobody else and which benefits them which is the kind of selfishness many Humanists advocate. The only way to tell the difference between a selfish act and a non-selfish one is to look at the motive. But all our actions including our so-called altruistic ones have the same motive, to fulfil some need in the person committing the actions.
Altruism is selfish for it smears the selfish.
To set out to stop selfishness in others is futile for nobody knows if they really make any headway at all and only the person who acts and makes the decision can judge themselves to be selfish.
Those who condemn selfishness don’t care about the self anyway so one wonders how they can say that selfishness is wrong.
What is sacrifice?
It is giving up something and seeking no recompense for giving it up.
Do unselfishness and sacrifice go together?
Parting with money to have an alcoholic drink cannot be described as a true sacrifice. Parting with money you need to help somebody else who also needs it would be sacrifice. Sacrifice and unselfish don't necessarily go together. The person who eats all the sweets and doesn't share them is regarded as selfish. But he is sacrificing in the sense that refuses friendship with others and knows he needs it more than he needs sweets. It follows then that the sacrifice of the egoist and the altruist is the same.
Why does altruism say that
love is sacrifice?
If others are put first that is a sacrifice. A sacrifice that does not hurt you is no sacrifice at all. A sacrifice you want to commit is no sacrifice at all.
It would not be altruistic love to help someone just so that you will feel better or because you enjoy it or because you feel you might as well do it. That is really preferring your pleasure to that person and that is immoral in altruism. So altruism asks you to deprive yourself for others.
Is love always sacrifice?
Always, if you believe you should be always other-centred. If you wish you could be altruistic and cannot be – say when you are behind bars and cannot get out to give your money to a woman begging in the street - then that is the nearest you can get to sacrifice so it is love. As far as motive is concerned, it is sacrifice for you are sacrificing your desire for yourself. Altruists say it would be evil to forcibly prevent yourself from doing loving actions so that you could love in your heart.
Can you do good while
motivated by altruism and self-interest both at the one time?
No for you can drop the selfish motive. Adherence to evil makes the good you do to be hypocrisy for your good should be done in an attitude of repentance. Besides, while you can have an altruistic motive one instant and a selfish one the next you cannot have both at the same time so the idea of being motivated by both is incoherent. The motive you had the instant you decided what to do is the one that determined what you would choose.
I am surer I exist than that anybody else does so altruism implies that degradation of the self is good and it is love. So to mix it with any concern for myself would not be altruism on any level at all for they can’t be mixed and it would be evil and inconsistent to accept any happiness that altruism brings. An act either degrades me or it does not.
Is it true that altruism is supposed to think of
making other people good first before helping them with food and clothing and
companionship and other things?
Yes - good as in nurturing altruism in them. The altruist would give a hungry child bread in the hope of seeing the child give the bread away to another child. You are not supposed to help a person who becomes selfish because of your altruism. Though altruists do help such people it is only because of their belief that we cannot see what is happening in the heart of another and so have no right to judge. It is not because they doubt the principle that helping a person who becomes selfish through your altruistic deeds for them is wrong.
When you put altruistic love before yourself you have to put its propagation in others before anything else. The person who would rather work to you for nothing instead of trying to give you lessons in altruism and its spirituality is not an altruist but a fake. Anybody who teaches a hypocritical version of altruism is not a real altruist.
Can you accept a reward for your altruism?
No for that is like reversing it to take advantage of it. It is like saying I refuse to be altruistic any more now. I did the act not to get a reward and refusing to have a reward so now I am insulting that noble act. Rewards, if they should be granted, have to be forced on the altruist against their will if the altruists are to remain moral. Rewards are really a punishment when they are forced on you like that. To enjoy them would be to denigrate your dignity and freedom. It would be to say that you are no value as a person and the person or god who rewards you would be really doing evil disguised as good.
Think of it this way. If love is right and everything else is wrong then you should keep the attitude of love inside you all the time even if there is nobody about. It is the same with altruism which is supposed to be love. If you take a reward you have to be grateful and enjoy the reward for it is not a reward otherwise. Thus to take a reward is to cease having an altruistic attitude. Rewards are wrong if altruism is right. The reward for the altruist is a non-reward – more opportunities to be altruistic. The true altruist thinks only of others not the reward or the honour of it. We are not saying the altruist should be churlish and ungrateful. We are saying the altruist can’t and won’t make time and energy to make rewards mean anything. A reward is not a reward if you refuse to let it mean anything. If you cannot respect X because Y needs your love then it does not mean that you are doing wrong to X. You cannot do what you cannot do.
We see the religions of rewards such as Christianity and Islam tormenting people with altruistic demands while those who make the demands seek rewards. It is unfair.
Everything we do we think is right. Even when we do evil it is because we have come to temporarily believe that we ought to do it. If doing good just because it is good is the law then it is immoral to seek to reward a person by praise for doing good for they do not want it and should not want it. Their attitude is that virtue is its own reward. They are satisfied just by doing good and consider that to be the only real reward. So the reward then is insulting the person. It is not a reward at all. It invites people to do what they see as wrong. All it is, is a display of hypocrisy.
Christianity wants God to have all the credit for human goodness but still it praises people because it is false. Jesus started that in his parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. You have to believe we are naturally selfish creatures to gain anything from giving or receiving rewards which means they are not really rewards for you need free will to get them but the truth is we don’t care.
What does altruism say about
happiness?
It says that we should not work for happiness but if we are self-sacrificing we will be happy as a side effect. The happiness comes from nature and the way we are made and by itself. We didn’t evoke it or create it. We will be happy because there is goodness in us to give. We will not be happy that we are good for that is self-satisfaction for it would not be loving in altruist terms to enjoy the fact that you are good to others. It is like the difference in a person being glad to get a miraculous gift of brains and a person who is glad that he has become a brain-box by his own effort. The altruist who does altruistic good so that the side effect will come is working for happiness and is a hypocrite not an altruist. Altruism says that working directly for and indirectly for happiness is immoral. Happiness must be immoral or a necessary evil. With necessary evils, you endure them and tolerate them but you don’t want them and would like them to be unnecessary and vanish.
Does this imply that happiness is evil?
Altruism says that working directly for and indirectly for happiness is immoral. Happiness must be immoral or a necessary evil. With necessary evils, you endure them and tolerate them but you don’t want them and would like them to be unnecessary and vanish.
If happiness should not be sought even indirectly, then happiness must be evil. It is no answer to say that the altruist will be happier with altruism than if he works for his own happiness. In other words, we are being told that altruism does not condemn happiness but gives it like nothing else can. The true altruist will not enjoy it for love is sacrifice. Happiness is given to be sacrificed if altruism is true. Also, if you work for your own happiness you can manage to be very happy and be happier than an altruist who represses it would be.
If the altruist who has just gone out of his way to do some great deed dropped dead and there was no life after death altruism would still say that he did right to be an altruist even if he did not believe in an afterlife or in a reward and even if he knew he was about to die. This person did good for its own sake and it did him no good so it is clear that his good did not matter to him or to those who bless him for what he did either. Altruism is uncaring. When you have to be altruistic even if you know you are going to die tonight and deny yourself the most precious time you have left why shouldn’t you starve yourself into hospital in order to feed somebody else who does not need any help from you? Altruism requires that you have no thought for your own happiness.
The person who believes there is no life after death or who is not sure at all or not very sure if he does believe is still expected to do selfless things that bring him no benefit. His life is the most important thing he has and he could be dead in five minutes and he still has to do that. This shows that it is still wrong for him to be selfish and enjoy himself meaning it must be always wrong. When he is old and has not many days left he is still expected to do it so then how much more will he be expected to do it when he is young and healthy and has no fear of dying? How much more will you and I be expected to do it when we are young. Death implies that egoism is totally and always immoral once it is accepted that altruism is a good thing.
Is it true that altruism has
the side effect of happiness?
Suppose it does. Then it only results in happiness if it is not practiced properly. The true altruist would work so hard that he would have no time to feel it. Happiness is meant to be a potential side effect and not an actual one. When believe in altruism and do a small thing for another person like giving away your last Rolo you are saying that you are not worth that Rolo but somebody else is. If you do not believe in altruism, its different. You are giving it away because you honour yourself as good.
Altruists sometimes claim that they feel happy because of their goodness. If you can be altruistic, then you can be altruistic and still end up with depression. You can do something great for somebody and feel nothing. If happiness comes it does not follow that the altruism is the cause.
What does altruism say about greedy selfish businessmen who just care
about making more money?
That they cannot be really happy. But some of them are. The appeal of gaining more riches would soon lose its shine if the altruists were being truthful.
Why else does altruism forbid
one to be happy?
We have seen that if altruism or selfless is good then we should not will or allow anything that is done for our own sake. To find yourself happy and to accept that happiness is the same as doing something to make yourself happy for it is an act of will or acceptance so it is forbidden.
Have you any other proof that
altruism opposes happiness?
If my employer refuses to pay me for a month’s work I am forcing him to do wrong if I insist I should be paid. But if I tell him it is okay if he does not want to pay I am making him do right. If I am a real altruist, I will not make him do wrong. So it is my duty to let other people walk over me.
What if I have a
child to support? Since virtue comes
first and I would rather help my child than my employer it follows that I
should neglect the child for it is better to hurt myself by hurting the child
in this way than to cause immoral intent. I have
taken the responsibility for this state of affairs from my boss and put it on
myself. I could argue that if I
developed myself right I would not be hurt so if I feel hurt it is my
fault. I could say my child will not starve and
needs to learn through hardship.
I cannot say I should sometimes put the welfare of others before my own. I have to do this all the time. If it is right to watch my maths when I am accounting I cannot turn around and say I can be right some of the time. I have to be right all the time.
If I should risk getting kneecapped to save a person terrorists are planning to beat up to a pulp the moral systems tell me I should even if I am sure I will be kneecapped sooner or later because of it.
When I was a Christian I used to be devastated and very hurt when I saw people sinning because I believed that sin results in eternal damnation. This was far more damaging than what a person familiar with violence in the home would have to put up with. If harming others is wrong then it is wrong to upset their feelings. If it is wrong to hit me then it is wrong to upset me by putting yourself in danger of Hell. But what if I am upset just as much by altruists? What if I find their altruism unnatural and offensive and want them to be egoists instead? Altruists claim they have to go on with their work no matter how much it upsets others. I find altruism very upsetting and soul-destroying and don’t like to see it practiced. Altruism just cares about rules not happiness. It also leaves you wide open to manipulation by people who say they will be very hurt if you do x, y or z.
Can an altruist really believe in the commandment, love your neighbour as yourself?
Altruism denies that love is making other people happy but says that love is making other people unselfish and having them doing things without them being motivated by the desire for happiness. If altruism were making other people happy then it would mean that you should enjoy helping others and do it because you enjoy it. You can’t say you do it partly because you enjoy it and partly because it is sacrifice for you will immediately see how bizarre that sounds. An enjoyable sacrifice is a contradiction. The more you enjoy the sacrifice the better on this altruist logic so how could it be a sacrifice anymore when you enjoy making it so much? A person who likes pain cannot sacrifice even though he or she appears to suffer for others. You are not so sure that you would make the sacrifice without the enjoyment so this “sacrifice” would really be a subtle manifestation of selfism. If altruism is enjoying sacrifice then it is a sin or an act of wrongdoing to make a sacrifice you do not enjoy at all. But then this wouldn't be altruism any more. Altruism says selflessness is in doing good regardless of how much you abhor doing it. This consideration shows that altruism is totally anti-happiness.
Altruists do not love themselves very much. The commandment tells us to love one another as much as we love ourselves. Altruism is therefore dangerous. All it cares about is motives and not consequences. It cares about people’s motives and not them.
Is it possible to love others as yourself?
All agree these days with the foundational premise of psychology and psychiatry that you can only love others in so far as you love yourself. You know how you make others unhappy if you are unhappy for unhappiness is contagious. This is not what love your neighbour as yourself infers or is about. If I love others to the amount I love myself, then it follows I love myself the most because it is x amount of love I am giving myself and the same amount is broken up among others. Each individual gets a piece. I don't love each individual as myself. So I am not equalising myself and my neighbour but contradicting the commandment.
Another break with the commandment is that I decide for myself what I think and feel love to be. So if I love another, it is my own creation I am doing it with. I am honouring myself more than them for it is my creation.
The commandment opposes our experience that the premise of psychology and psychiatry is true so it is an evil commandment and a trick that is meant to pull you down to the gutter as you gibber about love and think you are full of love. The commandment seeks to break your mental health under the authority of God. Without the commandment, God would seem less attractive so it is vital for atheists to pull down the commandment and make its shame visible before the world.
If you only love others as far as you love yourself then it is good to love yourself. To agree with this is to say that it is because you make yourself happy that you are able to make others happy so by making others happy you are just being happy yourself and it is not really about them but about you. So with this you are being selfish but in a nice way. In bad selfishness you still love yourself but others suffer for it. Altruism does not exist and anybody that says it does is saying what they know is not true.
How does forgiveness relate to
altruism?
Forgiveness is a duty in altruism for doing good to others would mean nothing without it.
To do good to somebody you believe should be punished would be immoral and not altruism and it would be selfish of the person to accept. Forgiveness is saying that you will not want to punish what ought to be punished because you want a fresh start made. But this means you are trusting a person you cannot trust and so degrades you. If you should be degraded then happiness is a sin. If you deny free will or the power to be altruistic, you don’t believe in forgiveness for there is nothing to forgive but you will have all the benefits of forgiving and the good feelings and will not trust until you see the evidence. It is better not to believe in altruism at all. The one who says it is despite this, is degrading the self again.
To tell anybody it is their duty to forgive is worst form of emotional bullying. It is up to them. Jesus and his malignant religion said that anybody who doesn’t forgive will not be forgiven by God themselves and so will go to Hell to burn forever.
Anybody that does wrong does not deserve to be forgiven. They cannot deserve to be forgiven either for to forgive a person who has earned it is not forgiveness. Forgiveness is a free gift. But altruism, religion and absolutism say that it is a duty to forgive. This is incoherent. Perhaps it is a duty to yourself to forgive for you have faults and are better off forgiving? But that would not be real forgiveness for you have to forgive for the other person’s sake. It is refusing to love that person. Forgiveness says then that it is a sin to pay any attention to justice. If justice is wrong then people do not matter. Altruism just cares about altruism as law.
Superogation is the notion that there are good acts that are your duty and there are other ones that are not. For example, it is your duty to feed your child but it is not your duty to give a little of your money to feed a beggar's child on the street. The idea of forgiveness then not being a duty implies that the evil doctrine of supererogation is true so altruism implies the same if it accepts that kind of forgiveness. Supererogation denies that what is moral is what is best so it implies that there is no morality. It says you can do better than your duty and the better is not part of your duty. Altruism cannot accept supererogation for altruism insists on doing the best for others which eliminates the concept. In altruism, it is always your duty to be selfless and the more selfless you are the better. Altruism is incoherent for forgiveness cannot be both a duty and not a duty at the one time. Altruism is incoherent for it demands superogation to be true while implying that superogation is wrong!
The altruist forgives the
person who raped and murdered his daughter.
It is easier for him to forgive when it was not him that this happened
to which makes it hard to see anything selfless in it. Forgiveness is the bedrock of altruism in the
sense that it is better to do good to a person you have nothing against than
one you do for then the good is more genuine and complete. But forgiveness is a mask for selfishness
which is easily seen when the Christian Church calls for pardon for clerical
child molesters.
Does altruism push fear on those who believe in it?
That is exactly what it does for it is scary to believe you should spend the rest of your life denying yourself to lift up your cross for God or others or both. Fear is the root of all evil and stupidity is behind fear so altruism sanctifies all three and calls them good. You know that it is fear of your own unhappiness that motivates you whenever you do evil. If you want to make a pact with the Devil become an altruist or a Christian! It is because people forget themselves and switch to egoism now and again that we have any happiness on this planet. If altruism is good then evil and despair are good.
SECTION THREE, BACKDOOR ALTRUISM
What is backdoor altruism?
Backdoor altruism is the philosophy that you must love or value your neighbour as yourself. I call it this because it is really altruism in a more sinister guise. It condemns altruism for it sees a system that tells you to let others walk all over you as evil for what you should be doing is thinking of yourself together with others. You treat yourself as you treat another. It is a compromise between altruism and egoism. The altruism it despises is smuggled back in the backdoor.
How is the doctrine of love neighbour as yourself
manipulative?
It is no help in guiding you. Say you have to decide for example if you should give a kidney to save your brother. When it is not your duty to give the kidney, you are loving your neighbour as yourself if you don’t. When you do give you are still loving your neighbour. Jesus made a law of the rule. That is like making a law of the rule, “Morals are hard to figure out”. It's stupid.
The doctrine is empty sweetness to get you into the Christian rattrap and to get you slammed as evil if you refuse.
Is it really a
compromise?
Not in practice and not a bit. For example, if I need my medicine and have only have enough for myself left and my neighbour needs it, it tells me only to give it to my neighbour if he needs it more. But if he and I have the same need I may use it myself or give it to him – it is up to me. But if my neighbour is a better person than I am or if his health is more important than mine for he has a family I should give him the medicine and do without. The Bible God commands that I must think of everybody else as better than me (Philippians 2:3, Matthew 15:21-28) and myself as the worst of sinners (Ephesians 3:8/1 Timothy 1:15). In other words, you must abandon your rights. You must wish you could endure the worst fate possible if it could save others (Romans 9:1-4).
If my family needs me more than his needs him and I need the medicine more than him, I am still hailed by the hypocrites as a hero if I give him the medicine.
Even if I think I am better, I am supposed to think that others are better than me to avoid judging others for I can only judge myself adequately. So I still have to part with the medicine. From this it follows that I should still let others walk all over me and sacrifice myself for them. When a girl plans to marry a man everybody around her says is no good for he does not have a fortune in the bank she will upset a lot of people if she goes ahead. Should she worry about what others think and cancel the wedding for their sakes? She cannot argue that she should go ahead on the grounds that they are wrong for what if they sincerely think they are right? She would be giving them bad example by doing what they consider immoral. Most of the ethical systems would say she should go ahead with the wedding. This is egoism. So instead of compromising backdoor altruism just switches from altruism to egoism and pretends that egoism is altruism. That is not a compromise or meeting half-way. It is just double-standards.
How does the love others as
yourself teaching qualify
to be called altruism too?
Because it does not work in practice which makes all its supporters to be hypocrites. Because I know I exist and I only believe that others exist so to put others on the same level as myself is to practice altruism or self-sacrifice or doing away with my dignity for myself. The teaching infers that altruism is the true philosophy though the teaching condemns it. This makes the teaching particularly vicious and devious. All the benefits it offers can be gained through egoism alone. Yet it condemns it which means that it teaches that egoism is evil and that it is evil to do anything for your own happiness. This automatically declares that altruism is the right philosophy.
Moreover, by renouncing egoism, it is saying that we should not be made as hedonistic creatures who only do good for pleasure which is saying that there is something vulgar and unclean about pleasure and it is desirable to avoid it.
Does the love neighbour as
oneself theory say that we should enjoy helping others?
No – it forbids this enjoyment.
If you love your neighbour as yourself you must enjoy it. Why? Because you bring joy to your neighbour and you have to treat yourself as you treat your neighbour. This seems to say nothing more than what egoists say. It just comes close. If it says you must help the neighbour for the sake of helping him and not for the sake of his pleasure then it is altruism. If it says you must help your neighbour for your own happiness then this is egoism. If it says you must help your neighbour for your own happiness and for the sake of the neighbour’s then it is saying you should not help your neighbour if you don’t want to which is egotism. Also both caring for your own happiness and that of others cannot be both right. They are very different and one of them has to be best and therefore right and the other wrong so you cannot mix altruism and egoism. It is silly then to say that your feelings matter for if altruism is ever right it is always right. So the love neighbour as yourself theory implies that hardcore altruism is the law. Believers in the theory agree with altruism that doing good you hate doing but force yourself to do for a good reason is more loving and sacrificial than goodness you enjoy. They have no choice but to support altruism.
Most moral systems including the love your neighbour as yourself one say you deserve a bigger reward for helping somebody when it is against your instincts to do it – that is when you hate doing it but want to do the right thing. Obviously then though they sometimes pretend they are not they are claiming that doing good when you hate it is best which is putting your neighbour before yourself. They are hopelessly inconsistent.
If you want to help the person more because you will enjoy it than for the sake of helping him then that is putting your feelings before his welfare. So you have to want to help him more for his sake than the feelings for his problem is more important. The more important the help he needs, the less you should be motivated by the need for your satisfaction. The more important the need he has for help is, the less you should be motivated by the need for your personal satisfaction too. When the doctrine seeks to make us more miserable at our worst moments and make others a burden to us what else can it be but altruism? If altruism is ever right then it is always right. Suppose altruism is true. How then can it be wrong to keep the need for satisfaction down when the person needs a little help or when I need a little help?
When a little girl broke her finger and was in agony and the little sister tells their father, “Daddy, I wish it was my finger”, everybody in the love myself and others brigade commends this. But this is loving another more than yourself not as yourself and yet it is not love for if the sister really loves you she would be offended by you saying that.
The doctrine of loving your neighbour as yourself implies that if you are interacting with another person you must love him with half the love in you for that time keeping the other half for yourself. That is what loving your neighbour as yourself has to mean. But what do you do if you are interacting with several people? Do you keep half the love for yourself and give everybody an equal portion from the half that is left? That is loving yourself more than each individual neighbour so it breaks the rule. For example, you keep 50 per cent of the love for yourself and you divide the other 50 per cent among the people you meet. That means you don't think much of every individual! You have to give yourself the same portion or fraction of love as you give every other individual. So the more people you have to work with the less you have to love yourself and the less happy you have to be. If you work with ten people you have to divide your love among them and yourself equally so that each gets 1/11th of the love. If it is twenty people then each gets 1/20th of the love. You would have to change your feelings all the time depending on how many people you are dealing with so the philosophy implies hardcore altruism for it will only be a matter of time before this behaviour results in depression.
Those who say you should love your neighbour as yourself contradict themselves by commanding you to help ingrates who will give you nothing but abuse and who will slander and backstab you in return. That is really loving the other person and not yourself. It’s altruism.
Many of the love others as yourself theorists say the more you love somebody emotionally and in the will the better. But this strong love is a tremendous source of suffering and fear and pain. Love is pain for love is desire and Buddha was right to see desire as pain. Even when you are laughing it brings you the pain of knowing you cannot change reality and make yourself laugh happily forever. If love is pain, then the more love and pain the better. Thus love can only be altruism. To love yourself emotionally is to hurt yourself and if you should hurt yourself you should practice altruism with all its blood and tears. If you treat yourself right without feeling anything you avoid this.
Jesus claimed that he would give his life for us. It didn’t have to be so terrible for him for he could have done this without the extreme agony of the cross. He could have saved us by dying in his bed or by being decapitated. He claimed that he loved others more than himself. (By the way that would prove that he was not God – for God owes himself all his love being the infinitely perfect being. If Jesus loved others for the sake of God then he did not really love others more than himself.) He went against God and apostatised from the Jewish and Christian faith that said the neighbour was to be loved as yourself.
Now God does not need our love. He is God and so he must have all he needs for he is all-perfect and all-powerful. Yet religion says that God expects to be put first and get most if not all our love. If this is not hardcore altruism then what is? God implies that altruism as in degradation of the self for the pleasing of another, especially God, is the divine law. It tells us to be altruists where God is concerned. If we are to be like that with God then we are to be like that with other people too if possible. Religion says we are to behave altruistically towards others for God’s sake. It doesn’t mean this at all for it teaches that the love of God should be our sole motive for helping others. To love others for God’s benefit is not loving them at all though they may benefit.
If altruism is ever right it is always right. You can’t say you should help an ingrate and then say you should not give away your last bar of chocolate. When there is no rational proof that one is right and the other wrong it is because the two are both right. Altruism is a principle as is egoism and that means that it is something that should always be done when it is right.
What insight do we get from all this?
That the choice is between altruism and egoism. Egotism, being bad, isn't an option.
SECTION FOUR, ALTRUISM IS
DEPRAVITY!
What is the justification for
altruism?
Altruism claims to be real love.
Altruism claims that I am not here to be happy but I am here to deserve happiness or become worthy of it by doing good. In other words, its not unimportant if you never get the happiness. All that counts is deserving it. And altruism says that to love others for myself is not to love them at all so love is sacrifice. To love others instead of myself is to love lots of people instead of loving one. The more love the better. And also, if I am not selfless then I do not love others. If love is good and altruism really is love then altruism has to be the law for there is no love of others without it. Altruism says that loving others and not myself is loving myself in the sense that I am doing what should be done with myself. Altruism also says that if I don’t make helping others my chief aim then I will inevitably become cruel and uncaring.
Is this correct?
No. Being worthy of happiness does not mean I should receive it or will receive it. There might be a reason why I shouldn’t receive it. The happiness will prevent me being altruistic. Why? Anybody who does good when they are happy finds it easiest. They do good less because it is good but more because they feel like doing it. Altruism says you are more genuine and value good more if you renounce happiness for the good of others.
And also I am more sure I exist than that others do, so if I am an altruist I hate or disrespect myself and how can I love others when I give them myself as helper when I think I am hateful or shouldn’t be respected? It would not be love to spread altruism by teaching or example when it is so vicious. The only reason altruism is popular and looks good is because it is not practiced properly. Its its misuse that so frequently makes it look good enough to gain social acceptance.
One could say that hate is good and it is loving yourself to hate yourself using the definition of loving yourself that altruism uses. The altruists saying that self-renunciation is good begs the question. Is self-renunciation good? They say it is good because it is good which isn’t obvious and is the very thing that needs to be proven.
Most who espouse altruism admit that there is no evidence for its validity (page 58, Runaway World). It rests entirely on prejudice or religious authority so it is basically people patronising others. It is not so altruistic after all when it is like that for there is nothing praiseworthy in what is not justified. They are asking for trouble.
What about the argument that
altruism is a precaution against becoming uncaring and ruthless?
Most thinking altruists know and use this argument but the truth is that altruism seeks to stop us caring for ourselves and to get us to destroy one another by making them as bad as us. It is rules altruism cares about not people.
If the argument for altruism is saying that we should be uncaring and ruthless to ourselves for the sake of others and serve them though we hate it then it is incoherent.
It is saying that we should abuse ourselves for others even when they don’t need it which is hardly a recipe for a moral theory. If altruism is needed to stop us becoming ruthless then clearly it needs to be practiced all the time and we need to practice constant self-denial.
Ethics would make no sense with the reasoning that it is okay to be ruthless and nasty to ourselves but not others.
There are do-gooder liars who say that altruism is the idea that we should like helping others. (This view is doubtful for altruism implies helping others not to please yourself at all). If they are right then we might as well be rational egoists and be there for others for we love being of service to them.
Anyway, the argument says that we are biased towards being antisocial. This is wrong for even the worst of us does not take every possible chance to do harm to others and double-dealing when they will get away with it. If we are as bad as altruism says then perhaps altruism was invented because we are evil and want to have an evil morality?
The person who feels terrible at the thought of stealing would be advised to steal until he stops to feel terrible about it and starts to enjoy it which means he refrains from stealing not because he feels he should - which is indulging himself but because it is his altruistic duty. Motive is more important than anything in altruism. A doctrine like altruism with its disinterest in what is good for individual practitioners, conditions people to undertake a life of crime for the attitude it has is at the root of crime. The sensibly selfish person will respect himself or herself too much to have a life of felony.
Does it make sense to say, "Altruism is rational
and justifiable when I could change my desire to enjoy helping others to the
desire to serve them without taking any enjoyment. Then I
will altruistically serve others for them without any fulfilment for me. I
am doing as much good with one as the other so I should be altruistic"?
This view says it is rational to be altruistic for it does as much good as not being altruistic but doing good works. The answer to the question is a loud no. When the good can be had without altruism, altruism is no use. We will soon see that you can be good and still be totally selfish and be better than any altruist. It is like saying that instead of milk it is more rational and justifiable to use artificial milk. How could it be good to do good and make it less good by denying yourself for the sake of denying yourself?
But don’t you have to be an
altruist to deserve to be called caring?
We mean that a person likes helping when we call them caring. Altruism is not caring. And even if it were, we would not be evil for rejecting it for there is nothing else we can do about it. It is a bad philosophy devoid of credibility,
What will altruists do without rational evidence for even they admit that they cannot give a reason for why we should be altruistic?
They will say that God commands altruism and gave us free will to practice it and that is evidence enough. But even God has no right to order something so basic and give no proof for it. But still altruism will lead to the worrying and degrading idea that he has.
What happens if altruism is
irrational or cannot be defended?
Then it is exposed as an evil selfish lie that slanders those who disapprove of it or don’t practice it. It is slander to accuse people of doing wrong with a measuring rod that has not been proved. Altruism would imply that reason is evil. If reason is evil and wrong then why care if somebody tortures us all to death?
Do you see that if I have to
put myself first, because I cannot deny my own existence and can deny that of
other people and if altruism is good, then I should put my own progress in
altruism before anybody else’s?
Yes! If that is the case then the altruist has to indulge in reckless self-sacrifice.
Altruists will earn money to give it all away regardless of whether or not the recipient abuses it or uses them. They have to get others to do the same so they give money to beggars so that the beggars will break their hearts with it and give it away. They will hurt their families in order to go among the poor in foreign lands though it costs the family their lives. The altruist will look after himself only to prepare for undergoing worse suffering for others. Everybody will walk all over him. Even if this is unfair, it is still good for no morality says that we must be strictly fair but, on the contrary, must love our enemies. If I degrade and curse myself to love others as much as or worse, more, than myself then how can I say I love other people for I am like asking them to approve and degrade themselves by degrading me? If I put myself first as in healthy egoism, I come as close to loving others as I can get.
What about altruism and
justice?
Some say that you should be altruistic only towards those who have done good for you first and then to others next. But that is not altruism for it is giving them a benefit for the good they have done and so they should not accept it. It is putting value on their function more than on their personhood. It values yourself more than them for you are rewarding and blessing them for being good to you.
What about feeling sorry for
those who do not deserve it?
Altruism would agree with this provided you help the person not because of the feeling but because of selflessness. The feeling is allowed because it is not pleasant. This permitting the feeling proves that altruism encourages unreasonable sacrifices. It degrades the person who it is for because they do not deserve it and justice is better than love for love can’t exist if it despises justice. Egoism avoids these problems. Egoism requires compassion for all because compassion leads to the pleasure of doing good for them and makes the world a better place. It says the bad deserve help too for goodness melts hard hearts.
Does altruism tell me my
happiness does not matter?
It does for it tells me not to think of it or work for it. It is wrong to deeply care about what does not matter. If my happiness does not matter then I do not matter and if I do not matter then others do not matter and only practicing the principle of altruism matters. If I am to believe that I do not matter but other people do matter then this is ridiculous and is masochistic and I would have other people believing the same thing about themselves while I say they matter!
If I do a good act to gain enjoyment from performing it and think I have plenty of time in the future to be altruistic altruism condemns me. It says it was not a loving act and therefore wrong so when happiness is forbidden then it is always forbidden.
When I can’t suffer in serving others and serve them I should wish I could. Altruism is about motives so altruism requires that you have the habit of altruism.
What about altruism and
anger?
Altruists do allow anger funnily enough though anger makes you want the self-indulgence of hurting another person. Presumably, it is allowed because it is harmful to the angry person. Anger against a person for doing wrong loses sight of the fact that the person has harmed themselves in doing so. So anger blocks the compassion as an emotion that should exist. When compassion, as emotion, is made wrong in this it has to be always wrong.
Is it not true then that if altruism is not love and
helping others out of self-interest is not love then there is no love?
Egoism is the best you can do so to do your best for others is love. Altruism is anti-love.
You could wish you could love and do what is nearest to it and that would be love for it is doing your best that counts.
Doing your best would have to be egoism or helping others to help and please yourself. This egoism is the best for you can prove it as we have seen and it does not condemn happiness but sanctions it.
Suppose egoism isn’t love and altruism is. Altruism is impossible and contradictory. It would not be wrong to wish you could love others as long as you wish for the impossibility that altruism could be good and harmless and rational.
It would be wrong to be an egoist and wish that altruism as we see it was true for that would be wishing for an evil thing.
We will see later that altruism does not exist but is a delusion at best and a pretence at worst.
Does altruism forbid doing good that makes others non-altruistic and selfish?
It does for it would not be love to corrupt another person. We are to do good to make others altruistic and for no other reason. The real altruist will not work to make you happy. It is impossible to imagine how altruistic love could be good when it endeavours to make you selfless instead of happy. That is really advocating suffering for its own sake. Altruism is really saying that the more wilful suffering there is the better. Though Altruism forbids making others selfish by your good works in principle, in practice it is different for you never know exactly how a person is inwardly reacting what you do for them. A philosophy that teaches even if only in principle that you shouldn’t be kind to people if it makes them non-altruistic is pure evil. It means the altruist would do nothing for the egoist or egotist if he or she could help it. It means we can’t think much of what the altruists do in practice. It is the same poison as Christianity spouts. This faith teaches that it is better to abandon a child to death in principle if the child living means it will sin and go to Hell forever. Altruism has far more in common with egotism than egoism and is totally fake.
Everybody knows people they can judge. If people are using your altruism to choose to be selfish over, you are giving them love to be abused. It is not your fault that they choose to abuse it. But you took the risk so you are partly to blame.
The altruist will say that by behaving altruistically you are doing the only thing that can be done to make them change, reminding them of what they should do so that justifies the risk. Sometimes people will pretend to change and become less self-serving. You have to believe them for it is altruistic to forgive and believe.
Altruism is very depressing for it thrives on cynicism and encourages you to be altruistic no matter how much it is abused and that will destroy you and your self esteem.
If altruism is the true
philosophy, should I do what somebody who wants me to carry him for miles for a
loaf asks?
As long as he does it to discipline me and make me altruistically love for I can’t encourage him to be lazy. Nobody can say that I should refrain from doing this if my suffering will not be worth the result for it is worth the result to be trained to make such a great sacrifice. Equally difficult sacrifices are allowed for stamina in sports. It is worth the result morally but not worth the result regarding pleasure and pleasure is a sin.
What do you think of the idea that altruism requires us to suffer to a certain extent and not too much?
Not much. Altruists claim that altruism is love. The idea is arguing that we need love but not too much of it for it would not be love to cause too much suffering. If love is treating a person correctly and honouring them there can't be too much of it. Altruism logically puts a stigma on happiness and says it is love to urge people to suffer for others without doing anything for themselves. Clearly then the more suffering the better in this view.
How can you say altruism is
evil when it forbids unreasonable sacrifices?
No altruistic sacrifice is a reasonable sacrifice. Giving away your last Rolo to a friend, is putting a being whose existence you are less sure of than your own before yourself. It is doing it just for the sake of being altruistic and not for happiness or people. That is unreasonable. (If you do it for your own happiness and that of the person it is a different situation altogether.) It would be replied that you know you have to give pleasure to others to receive help from them so that you can live only to sacrifice even if you are less sure of others than your own existence. But the real altruist will help others and seek no help for himself from them to save them the trouble and/or that they can give their help to somebody else. He will help himself to help others. He will not let others know of his problems so that they will not be able to help. This in itself would be an altruistic act. The altruist will be independent.
Altruists say things like that it is wrong to give the family savings away to save babies from death in the Third World for that is an unreasonable sacrifice. This shows their non-altruism for the family could live safely in a shed.
According to altruism, you have to walk forty miles in hail and snow to get a packet of sweets for your friend.
What other proof is there that
all sacrifices are unreasonable?
If I want to eat my last Rolo and give it to a friend instead then I am saying that that the small pleasure of the being I am most sure of, myself, must be sacrificed for that of a being that might not exist at all. When I say that such a small pleasure is more important than me I am saying I am worth nothing and it would be meaningless to say that there are forbidden or unreasonable sacrifices. I will lose the friend if I do not share things but altruism says that I should be giving the sweet to sacrifice and not to keep a friend to make me happy and that I should love others as persons and not as people to make me happy. I must love without motives.
How does when the people I know disapprove strongly of me being kind to some evil person prove that altruism demands extreme sacrifice?
When it is okay to hurt them by doing the kindness it would be the same if the pain were all my own. It is okay to hurt myself too. Jesus said his followers are blessed or holy in God’s eyes if they are persecuted for his sake. He said they are doing a lot of things wrong if they are not persecuted and are liked instead.
The issue in the question shows that altruism has a tendency to develop into legalism, the idea that some things, like homosexuality, are everywhere and always wrong with no concern for different situations and circumstances.
Only the egoist could justify hurting the others for he wants them to be kind for his own sake and pleasure.
But the altruist could only justify it by claiming that happiness or the doing least evil has nothing to do with morality at all and is evil. That’s legalism. If altruism is good and you are most sure you exist which you are it follows you should let others treat you like a doormat.
Surely you agree that altruism does not permit one to die for others without need?
If you live on as religion says and you should believe that you should die for your faith then why not die for others without need?
Don’t you see that unreasonable sacrifices would guarantee that others will be made selfish by them?
Any level of altruism could be used by another person to make themselves selfish. Besides altruists say it is the recipient of the kindness’ problem.
The altruist admires the person who gives up work, entertainment and the prospects of a happy marriage to look after a sick relative for life. So we should train to be able to make such sacrifices and we need to deny ourselves all day long. If we don’t, we are putting a restriction on how good we can and should be. We must train.
Should a person who can’t swim risk their life by swimming out into a lake just to retrieve a ball for a child if altruism is right?
Altruists tend to say no. But Altruism denies your own worth and right to be happy and by implication that others are worth serving or helping. All that matters is being Altruistic. So, the more Altruism or sacrifice the better and the person should try to swim.
Can’t you see it is madness to say that an altruist should do that instead of preserving his life to help others in better ways?
By reasonable sacrifice, an Altruist means the act that will enable you to sacrifice to the maximum for others later. You sacrifice your time to go to the doctor to see about your flu. You should only do it in a spirit of sacrifice and because you hope it will enable you to sacrifice far more later and only for others.
Risking one’s life amounts up to all the sacrifices that will be made if one does not risk and does not lose one’s life. If altruists say this risk and sacrifice is evil for it prevents the person working to make others altruistic and happy they are contradicting themselves. For altruism, it is the sacrifice and the bigness of the sacrifice that matter. The altruist looks more favourably on the person who is bipolar and really in the pit of depression who parts with a medal they are attached to with great devotion than on a normal person without these disorders doing this kindness.
But is it not the case that some sacrifices are more unreasonable than others and these are forbidden?
But if the more goodness the better and altruism is goodness then the more unreasonableness the better for altruism is unreasonable. The only alternative is to deny that altruism or love in the altruistic sense is really good.
Is enjoying yourself or caring
for your health a necessary evil?
Altruism implies that it is for it is only done to be able to be altruistic towards others. And when there isn’t time you should help others even to the degree that it will cause your own destruction. Evil in altruism is not suffering but refusing to be selfless. A philosophy that sees you as great if you refuse to enjoy your last moments on earth and serve others instead though it makes you very unhappy is clearly putting law before you. And by implication law is put before everybody else too for you are as much of a person as anybody else. A philosophy like that cannot see suffering as a real concern.
You are not supposed to enjoy necessary evil for it is still evil and repulsive so you are to regret and hate looking after your health. Altruism is about laws and not about doing the best for people but what is best for love so if you get sick and die over altruism and become incapable of helping others that is morally good according to it. Altruism is concerned with sacrifice and not with anybody’s real good. Altruism would deny that it advocates suffering for the sake of suffering but it advocates suffering for the sake of selflessness. But if selflessness is so great then it must be because suffering is good!
Will altruism lead to
cynicism?
Suppose that altruism is possible and is identical with genuine goodness, then goodness is so difficult and unpleasant it follows that there can be few real altruists about and the altruists themselves will only be altruists occasionally. This will make it impossible for an altruist or believer in it to genuinely praise others.
One sin defiles all your good works for you do good and if you refuse to cast out the polluting sin. Your good works would be like water with a little poison in it that is only fit for throwing down the drain. Compassion will be impossible for it declares that a person should not suffer which is not true if we deserve it. It would be evil to ask us to feel sorry which is hurtful to ourselves for sympathy is painful for a person who did not deserve it. It would be the same as letting that person hit us across the face. Even one who has never done serious harm has done lots of little things that mount up to serious harm.
Religion or philosophy that accuses us of being rarely sinless is saying that one should assume that all people are bad no matter what they do. They deny this and claim that it is better not to injure the good by thinking they are bad for there is no, or not much of an injury in assuming that all are good even if you are wrong most of the time. There is injury in it. Bad people do more harm when they do not fear condemnation. If it is wrong to say a good person is bad then it is wrong to say a bad person is good. If you love the sinner you will not say, you will not pretend, that the sinner did not sin for sin demeans and harms the person who commits it. If most people are bad then it is anti-truth to make it out that most should be assumed to be good. It is not fair. If truth and justice do not matter then it is silly to say that people or yourself matter. This God that revealed religion wants us to lie to ourselves and then believe that he never deceives.
But many altruists believe
that it wrong to judge others!
You can be cynical and still refuse to judge others in individual things. For example, an apparently malicious act might have been a mistake or weakness but that does not mean that the person is thought to be good for you are just saying you know he is bad to the core but you don’t know which or how many of his acts are bad. You are saying you cannot prove his act was intentionally bad.
Not judging, at all or too little or too mildly, is a dangerous thing to do. It abdicates moral responsibility and causes others to do what they wish without fear. Criminals fear more about what their community will think of them than about what punishment they will get.
When altruism encourages extreme sacrifices it is hard to judge individually and it is impossible in many cases. For example, if a man abandons his family against their will to go where he will do the most good, we can’t condemn him if he says the family hurt him and he will punish them by doing good. They owe him the freedom to do that. The altruist will say they are blocking him from being altruistic so he can ignore their wishes and go and serve others despite them. They will say if the family cannot altruistically let him go that is the family's problem. Clearly altruism will take away the stigma attached to anti-social acts and result in chaos for the world.
Does altruism encourage
trust?
Though altruism leads to cynicism, if it allowed trust then the following would be the result. Altruism works only for what is best, in its opinion, for others whether they are good or bad and especially if they are bad. When you have to treat them as if they have done nothing wrong then why not forgive them? It would be a sin not to for why be unforgiving when you can’t act it? Altruism bids us believe every liar who says they are sorry.
If altruism is right then is
self esteem allowed?
Self-esteem is enjoying the fact that you are good or liking yourself. Altruism has to forbid it. You have to look after yourself for the sake of helping others but you are not to enjoy this care for it is a necessary evil.
Is it not correct that if you have nobody to be altruistic towards, you can indulge yourself in any enjoyment you wish?
Happiness when it is caused by your being self-indulgent makes you reluctant to hurt yourself for others so it is a sin or wrong - if altruism is correct. You are harbouring a bad attitude. It would be like hating a person which is not justified even when it cannot do any harm. To indulge yourself would be to refuse to love. You would have to do penance instead or practice training yourself for greater altruistic heroism if the chance to be altruistic will come again.
Is it not silly to say that we should want to suffer if altruism is true for that would tell us to hate doing our good works so much that doing them is a torment?
The more you hurt for others the more altruistic you are. Anything less than the fully agony is an insult. Goodness is in the will and not in the emotions so having bad feelings does not make you bad. You have to will the good despite the revulsion. Some say bad feelings are a sign of a bad character. That is not true morally speaking. If I forget the hate in me heroically to assist an enemy in trouble, I am regarded as deserving a better reward than one who helps the person easily. Practically speaking bad feelings are a sign of a bad or dangerous character for the person could be forced to harm by these feelings but altruism does not care about that. After all it says that if you could cure a tramps’ ulcer by sucking out the puss with your mouth you would be extremely repelled and if you did it, it would mean you are good not bad.
What is your answer to Copleston who argued against Kant’s view that the more you do not want to do good the more good it is if you do it?
The Jesuit, Copelston, wrote in his volume on Kant which was a part of his History of Philosophy that Kant believed that “the moral value of an action performed for the sake of duty is increased in proportion to a decrease in inclination to perform the action” (page 109). He rejects Kant’s view because, “This point of view is contrary to the common conviction that the integrated personality, in whom inclination and duty coincide, has achieved a higher level of moral development than the man in whom inclination and desire are at war with his sense of duty” (page 109). This is not really an answer when you look at it. Copleston does not believe in it himself for the Church believes that temptation is not a sin and God lets Satan tempt us to make us stronger and better people.
Copelston is claiming that his rejection of the notion that the more you hate good the more good you are if you do it is true nevertheless. But the rejection is merely lip-service. He is talking as if the rejection is right because most people think so. That is most unprofessional, it is bad philosophy for a philosopher to put what people think before reason. The inclination against doing good does not mean that you are on a low level of morality because it is not caused by your will. Copelston knows fine well that the person who overcomes weakness to do good is better than the one who finds it easy if the religious view that suffering is for growing in goodness of your free will is true. The first person is most likely to be doing the thing because it is right while the latter is doing it because it is easy and not just because it is right. Copelston was a Catholic priest and needed to say something to justify priests having the comforts they are accustomed to.
Copelston knew that feelings change rapidly and come and go so much that it is nonsense to say that the person who is good feels like doing good out of a sense of duty. Anyway the person who does that is interested in the feeling and not the duty!
It is significant and not surprising that Copleston said that Kant’s attitude “may be incorrect” not is “incorrect” (page 109).
Copleston believed that Jesus was right to give his life for the world though he could barely stomach the thought of doing it. The New Testament sees this death as the climax of Jesus’ love. If Jesus liked doing it, it would not have been as good. Jesus implied by his teaching on the cross that the more you like something the more displeasing to God it is for it is more self-centred then.
Copleston would say a man who almost got drowned trying to save a child is better than one who never had this life or death crisis. He commends the man who holds his tongue under provocation though he is so angry that he would like to get his own back though he knows he will relieve his rage and the other person will not be very hurt. We find Copleston to be very inconsistent.
It is mad to say that a man who endures great pain and persecution for he cherishes God is good and that a man who hates doing the will of God but chooses to do it regardless is not as good. The two have pain in different ways but it is still pain and to run down one man is to run down the other.
It is true that a bad person will develop a revulsion for God and be jealous of good people and that is wrong according to Altruism. Altruism will only see the revulsion as wrong if the person only wants it to avoid doing altruistic deeds. Bad actions lead to bad thoughts and bad thoughts lead to bad feelings. Bad feelings are good if used to generate and maximise sacrifice if altruism is true.
Some would think the following: “Sin leads to revulsion for good. It makes one hate doing good. You may repent and do good despite the revulsion and that seems to be a great worthy sacrifice. But though the sacrifice is commendable, it is not worthwhile for it depended on sin and the revulsion for good it created to be a sacrifice to the degree that it is.”
The reply is that the revulsion though caused by sin is now a good thing for the sin is repented and it allows you to do deeply altruistic acts. The revulsion doesn’t depend on sin anymore.
Catholics believe that Adam and Eve sinned on our behalf in the Garden of Eden and this has put a revulsion towards God’s ways in us which is part of something religion calls original sin so that we are inclined to sin. Copleston being a Catholic, would have blamed Adam for the revulsion and passing it on to us hereditarily. So, that would be all the more reason for him to say that our bad feelings make us good and not bad for it is harder to be good. And also, we know instinctively that the individual should put themselves first for they are most sure of their own existence.
If sins give me a revulsion for good I should let them for I will sin anyway. I should make sure it will be the sins that will result in revulsion that I commit when I do sin so that the possibility of horrible sacrifice for good will exist for the future. So it is better to commit a sin like hypocrisy that makes you hate good than to commit a once-off bank robbery that you will regret emotionally.
Copleston is wrong for it is only the denier of free will who affirms egoism can dare to say that caring feelings make a person good and he rejects both egoism and acting to gratify desire your own desire to help others.
As a Christian, Copleston would agree with Kant that to do good because you want to gratify your own feelings is not as good as doing good because it is the right thing to do. Christians run down good done by a person who seeks praise for example. To do good because it is your duty feels cold and boring and we conclude that Christianity means altruism when it speaks of love.
Does self-love stop you loving another and distract you from it?
No. It means you think of yourself as a gift you give to others to further their happiness. When one does not think and is not taught the principles of true healthy rational egoism the feelings that result in warped egoism that harms others are not our fault. The feelings of revulsion are not our fault and if we can sacrifice the more we have of them the better for altruism cares about motives and not results. Original sin implies that revulsion is going to be always with us so we should avail of it to make ourselves more altruistic.
Could altruism lead to the person who abandons it going off the rails if it is able to keep a person on them?
Yes for it deadens feeling for people so if belief in it is abandoned which is common today the person will have no restraint and will be a danger to others. You will end up murdering fifty people and go to jail and not care if you become a real altruist.
Some would say that there is good altruism and bad altruism and nothing else. The person who sacrifices money to help others is a good altruist. The person who sacrifices time and life to kill disease spreading prostitutes to save lives is a bad altruist or a person who is altruistic but who is just going the wrong way about it. If so, altruism is intrinsically uncontrollable. It is not altruism that stops a person from say stealing, it is the conditioned belief that stealing is wrong. If altruism is true, you will - if you are honest - see that it is impossible to prove that the murderer was doing wrong or was a bad person. At worst he would be a saint that meant well and got it wrong.
Can you think of another
reason why altruism deadens feelings?
Altruism stresses peacemaking. The easygoing person who has few feelings is the person who has the biggest reputation for being a success at peacemaking. Altruism demands that we deaden all the feelings we can for that results in the greater good for feelings can be constrictive. However, unpleasant feelings are held to be for the greater good so you have to appear to be easygoing while the truth is that underneath the placid exterior you are hurting like mad and curse altruism though you won’t let yourself curse it wilfully. It is not altruistic to like privacy for it is better to forgo privacy to look out for others. Egoism denies this stance completely.
If selfless love is good then should we love as in help our enemies more than our friends?
To help your friends is selfishly helping them because they were good to you – it is saying, I am glad you helped me so I will help you - and selfishly insulting their sacrifice by giving them an advantage because of it.
The enemies need our attention and example to convert them to altruism. Altruism demands not that we do good to others but that we make others good by doing good to them so it is the worst people we should devote our attention to.
Also, it is more altruistic to help those you despise or who snarl in derision at you.
Egoism says that you cannot help everybody so if you are going to help anybody then help the best people first and the wicked only if there is nobody else to help. The egoist who goes out of their way to help the wicked while the good are left standing is really practicing egotism and condoning the wickedness of the wicked.
Would altruism rather see a person having a selfless motive being useful to others than a person without one but who has the motive of acquiring the fun of helping others for herself or himself?
Yes. It would rather you would be selfless even if you couldn’t act on it. For example, if you decided to give all your money away and couldn’t for it was tied up in litigation, it decrees that you must wish you could. Altruism would prefer that than having you doing the good thing without being motivated by selflessness. It would rather you did that than do good for the fun of it and for how it makes you feel. So it is how others feel that matter not you. Altruism does not care about people but about sacrifice. It evidently forbids selfishness across the board under all circumstances and says only others should be on your mind. Taking water when you want a coffee would be a duty if altruism is true for altruism requires lots of practice and needs to be ingrained into habit so sacrifice is needed 24/7,
If altruism would prefer to make people suffer so that they may love than to give them happiness then should we rob them of the chance to help others?
No. The altruist should step over the dying body in the street for a greater good – the offering of others the opportunity to practice agonising love but only if it will mean that two or more will have to help instead of him for the more altruists the better.
Does altruistic love really
satisfy other people?
It is cold or not motivated by warm feeling. The feeling might be there but it is not the reason for the "love". This is clinical and unsatisfactory and will result in us becoming and making other people dysfunctional. And when altruism requires that we help others to make them altruistic and does not care for their happiness which is only served as a means to the end of making them altruistic what joy can it bring? None.
What does this tell you about
the side effect of happiness?
That it is immoral if morality exists. It would be a sin to let happiness manifest in your heart when you take it from others or try to. That would hardly be selflessness.
Is it a mistake to surmise that altruists should not be turned to our way of thinking for they won’t drift into the full-blown depravity of their doctrine?
But they are depraved as it is when they advocate their philosophy and hurt people who despise it.
Does altruism like
progress?
Certainly not. Altruism is evil because it says that being sacrificing is more important than pleasure and happiness and knowledge so you have to desire that evil and suffering and will always exist and indeed worsen for there can be no altruism without them. Altruism is about being on a meaningless treadmill.
What is the relation between
altruism and animal rights?
Because we can make animals happy, altruism seems to allow us to be kind to animals. In consistent Altruistic thinking, animals are allowed to be happy for they are not free agents and can’t be altruistic. If there is a choice between making a higher animal happy and making a person happy making the animal happy would be preferred because you know the happiness cannot do the animal any ethical harm for it probably has no free will or ability to be altruistic itself. But you are not so sure of the human person and inducing altruism in the person is more important than their happiness. Happiness could corrupt the person so giving it to an animal instead of a person would be approved. Also, the animal has a shorter life than a human being and so would deserve more happiness than a human would for a human lives long enough to take care of themselves.
Altruists, of course, deny what logic says. Even they don't want animal welfare preferred to that of people. That is a testimony to their hypocrisy. They would have to deny that animals should ever be considered at all to salvage their altruistic philosophy. Vets would be carrying out an immoral career. But vets make people happy by looking after their livestock and pets. Altruists would have a problem with that for it teaches that self-sacrifice for people is a duty which implies that self-sacrifice for animals is a perversion and shouldn't be honoured.
Some altruists believe that animals are naturally happy so they need no help from us.
What does altruism say about
truth?
Altruism puts principles before persons. So altruism will put truth first for there can be no valid principles unless they are true so truth must come first all the time for altruism comes first. This means that not the slightest risk must be taken of anybody erring or being deceived. The wife has to be told if her husband has cheated on her even if he will never do it again. The egoists also believe that truth comes first but since the egoists put the truth that they know they exist first the ones that are not as provable can be left alone for the sake of a peaceful life. Altruism is worse when it is coupled with the doctrine of a truthful God who hates all error and lies for he will be the person that will have to come first.
Can the altruist be kind to a
convinced egoist?
No. The altruist believes promoting altruism is the best good work of all so the knowledgeable egoist is unlikely to become altruistic where as the stumbling altruist who believes in altruism is in a different situation. It is better for the altruist to work with those who are open to the altruistic philosophy. The reason is that the goal of altruism is to propagate altruism.
The altruist will say that if it is good to help an old woman who wants no help across the road it is more good to convert others to altruism. The altruists will say it is their business if a person is not an altruist. They say altruistic good must be done to inspire others to be altruists. God makes altruism more obligatory than it would be so God is the enemy of egoists. If altruistic is man-made philosophy then it can be questioned but if it is divine in origin it is sacred and must never be doubted.
What effect has altruism on the idea that if anybody insults me it is not them that hurts me but my letting my feelings be hurt?
It suggests that it is our duty not to be offended and the more we are reviled the better to get us used to that treatment. It suggests that you are making the person hurting you feel they are doing it successfully which is hardly altruistic but cruel so you are hurting them and not them you. You are encouraging them. If anybody is depressed or sad it is their own fault and so they should get no sympathy. Even enemies will be put before them and will be admitted into the hospitals if they need it and they will be further down the list. Consistent egoists reject free will so we will not blame the person.
Why can’t we believe that altruism is okay as long as the altruist values himself and his needs too?
A man taking the risk of reprisal to report a crime is praised by altruists. An altruistic woman is commended for refusing to have sex with a man whose happiness would be increased considerably for a long time if she did have sex. How inconsistent. The doctrine of altruism, with typical inconsistency, argues that there are certain actions that degrade the person and are wrong. It is mistaken to say that it is dignified to report the crime and not dignified to have the sex if it is safe and harmless. All altruistic actions degrade. This modified brand of altruism is degrading for it is illogical and inconsistent. It still says the woman’s happiness is not important if she wants to have the illicit sex. You have to be either a full altruist or not an altruist at all.
What about altruism and moral
neutrality?
Moral neutrality is when something is as good as it is evil. It is not immoral or moral but neutral.
Altruism admits that I should put being altruistic before anybody else. I should put it before my future. If I am altruistic now, I am surer of being altruistic now than I am of anything to do with the future. I might not even be around in five minutes time . Altruistic action comes before everything else.
If altruism is that important then then I can do something evil and harmful to others as long as I am sure the interests of altruism will be served later. I can inject babies with AIDS and worry about how to make this a neutral thing later or if I am sure that others will gain the chance to be altruistic by it making it neutral from the viewpoint of altruism.
To avoid the evil what must altruism do? Either altruism has to commit the crime of abolishing the concept of neutrality or it has to allow people to live like extreme unbalanced egoists. If neutrality is adopted then if it is accepted that it is as good for me to eat my pie as it is to do without and give it to a mate then it follows that I am not to be condemned for eating it myself. From this, it would follow that the harder it is to help somebody the less obligation I have to help or I should do nothing. But altruism denies this. Altruism rejects neutrality. All the traditional religions of the world see things in terms of holiness or sin with no neutrality because they feed off judgmentalism though it is sometimes well hidden.
Can altruism be used to create
a valid moral theory?
No. For example, if A commits murder A deserves to be murdered. If B murders A it would not be altruistic to punish B for even if it was wrong it was only slightly wrong when A deserved it. If you deny free will, which implies altruism, you are saved from this problem that forces Altruism to manifest logically as anarchy.
Altruism believes that the most important thing you can do for justice is to be fair to yourself by sacrificing yourself for if sacrificing is good then you should be sacrificing all the time. It is unjust to deprive yourself of sacrifice. That is how it is able to justify letting your enemies walk all over you. They may do so out of a bad motive but their motive is their problem and not yours and you can do nothing about it and it would be good of them to trample on you if they were doing it for disciplining you. You have the most hope of changing their motive by taking it as discipline for then they are getting nothing from their bad motive.
When you do wrong to a person there is a sense in which you ask for anything they do to you in return. You deserve it. You know that when you insult A that A could put you in hospital for the rest of your life. Altruism would incoherently say that any good A then does for you is over and beyond the call of duty. This is incoherent for we have all done wrong and so there would be no such thing as a duty to anybody.
Altruism implies that it is a duty to be altruistic which is ridiculous. The concept of deserving therefore makes it perfectly okay never to do anything for anybody. It and altruism are in conflict. So altruism is incoherent. It is ridiculous to say that A is right to suffer for the greater good of others even if it is not his duty to. When it is not his duty they can do without it so he is inflicting unnecessary suffering on himself. Altruism implies that unnecessary suffering is good and therefore that extreme suffering that is not needed is good. It is wrong to say that X evil is allowed for it is not too bad and Y evil is banned for it is worse.
When you believe that doing the best is not always a duty you are forced to make an arbitrary list of what acts are duties and what are not. For example, saving your father’s life would be seen as a duty but doing the same for a stranger in the street might not be.
Are the altruists inconsistent
about suicide?
They say that suicide is sinful for it is selfish. To say that deliberately and freely ending your own existence is selfish is totally absurd for you lose everything in death. They are the selfish ones for saying something so vicious and untrue. Egoists believe that suicide is an egoistic act but it is not deliberate and free for there is something seriously wrong mentally or emotionally. Suicides want to kill the pain not the themselves which appears to support this view.
Can you prove that altruism
turns people into hypocrites?
If it is good to put others before yourself and to hurt your feelings to spare theirs then the altruists do not live up to that standard at all. The sacrifice should be its own reward. Doctors and clergy and nurses and teachers and other vocations should get only a minimum of wage and not as a payment for what they have done but so that they will live to do more.
Altruism has to force doctors, carers and nurses, not to take much money so that altruism will be developed in others better through their example for people who look up to them.
Altruists do things like loving the pope despite all the harm through the propagation of AIDS his ban on condoms has effected in the more naïve regions of the globe. It is selfish of them to forgive him when they never suffered or knew what it was like for his victims though they knew about them. It is easy for them to forgive. We don’t see many of the high and mighty altruists doing voluntary work where the biggest problems are. And if they believe in God who looks after them in all situations their badness is compounded. They should be able to make any sacrifice if they believe in a Heaven they can go to. They cannot prove that free will exists or that altruism is good and they dare to say that teaching and developing altruism in others is the paramount duty meaning that teaching is. They don’t use people power to enforce altruism on the world and so they are just hypocrites and their good works are defiled by their hypocrisy and are just masochistic deceptions.
Top of the Document
SECTION FIVE, EGOISM IS TRUE
What is egoism?
Egoism is doing good for yourself and others for some selfish reason. Basically, it means doing good because you enjoy helping others.
Egotism is helping others just because you want praise or money or a good reputation or to feel important or to patronise. It is wrong and mercenary.
Egoism is kinder and the best. We like people to help us because they enjoy doing so.
Is egoism true?
Philosophy says there are only two options. One: selfless which is altruism. Two: egoism which is selfishness that benefits you and automatically benefits those who encounter you. Three: egotism selfishness that spills over into sociopath actions. So basically, it is selflessness or selfishness. There are no in-betweens so it has to be one or the other. We have attained full certainty that altruism is wrong and fictitious and evil so either egoism or egotism which are both interpretations of the principle, Look out only for number one, is right. We have seen that the egotistic form of selfism is wrong and irrational so egoism must be true.
Animals are egoistic and very often they are egotistic. We evolved from animals and many of them behave like they have free will, the power to be altruistic or egoistic, though they do not so why should we have it? We couldn’t have it.
What is the proof from
consciousness that egoism is true?
Egoism not altruism is natural and we are egoists by nature so we cannot become altruists any more that we can go back to being apes.
You only have one thought and one desire at a time and it causes you to act. You are not aware of anything else the moment you choose so you really don’t choose at all. Choice is an illusion. You do something because you want to and not because you see it as good or altruistic and that is selfish. Nobody denies we want things but some deny that we have choice. Animals have wants but don’t make choices. Self-sacrifice is masochism and hypocrisy. Some say that when you do good for others you are not thinking of your own pleasure ie. your desire to see others happy which is the same as wanting to fulfil the desire. But this not thinking has to be done to attain to the goal of the pleasure. It is part of getting the pleasure. You would not be doing the action except for the pleasure. It’s at the back of your mind, in your subconscious if you like, but its still there and it is motivating and driving you. Moreover, this subconscious driving force makes it pleasurable to go along with it even when the future pleasure is in your distant future. Every moment you will experience pleasure of some degree that is accompanied by a thought that determines what you will do the next moment. The argument is complete trash. It is true that we are egoistic creatures even when we do good for others. We do the good no matter what it is because we want to and not because it is good so we are egoists.
Altruism is impossible and unnatural for we only do what fulfils the strongest desire we are conscious of at any given moment. Moreover, it is the desire not what is desired that is important to us so if we desire to be holy it is the desire not the holiness that matters to us and which we cherish and like so we are really evil and satanic or unholy. We are all egoists. This insight came from Nietzsche. “Ultimately one loves one’s desires and not that which is desired” (Beyond Good and Evil, page 106, Maxim 175).
Some say that to desire the desire you have to desire the desire that makes you desire and have a desire for the desire that makes you desire the desire the desire and so on to infinity which is ridiculous. But this is wrong. The foundation desire is the desire for happiness. Happiness is not just pleasure it is sensible pleasure for we reject happiness often when it will mean less happiness in the future and happiness that we snatch knowing it is a mistake is not full happiness or contentment for it is accompanied by at least a little pain and worry. This basic desire manifests in different forms. All Nietzsche meant was that anything we want it is not it we want but the happiness we think we are going to get from it.
If you desire something that means you want the pleasure of the desire to be fulfilled. You can desire to leave a party early to help a depressed friend though it will diminish your pleasure. But though you are turning your back on fun, it does not follow that you are renouncing pleasure. It just means you are taking the pleasure of doing what you want and not the pleasure of hedonism. Even hedonistic pleasure ceases to be pleasure if you feel addicted to it. To do what you desire is the greatest and most important pleasure of all in the long run.
What is the proof from
conditional and unconditional love that egoism is true?
Conditional love is not love at all. Its like, “I love you if you keep making my tea in the morning”. It’s really the tea-making you care about and not the person.
Unconditional love denotes love that does not care what you do for it will still be there for you. It values the person and not their qualities. When a mother says she loves her son unconditionally she loves him because he was born from her body. She does not love him for being a person because there are loads of persons she does not love that way. Unconditional love is an impossibility. Everything we do is for something selfish’s sake.
Unconditional love is either for her sake or the son’s. Why can't it be both? If you love your son for your own sake then that is conditional love. So the love has to be for the other person's sake only.
To love is to value a person for being a person and for that person’s sake – if it is for your own then you are not loving that person unconditionally but loving yourself - and to value their happiness next. If persons should be happy then it follows that a person is an absolute value and is more important than happiness itself. The problem is we would rather our happiness was valued than us so this love cannot satisfy and is really useless. Useless or unwanted love is not love at all. Who wants to hear when they are in extremes of terminal agony that they cannot be put to sleep or even want to die because they are valuable?
All these considerations tell us that only conditional love is possible and therefore that we have no free will to choose between conditional love and unconditional love. Free will is no good to a God when it cannot make either of these possible.
Nobody values the person absolutely because if a person could live forever provided that person took on permanent and extreme mental and physical torture nobody would urge the one’s they love to go for it and put life first. This tells us that unconditional love is as much a delusion as the grace of God. The terrifying thing about it is that if God loves us unconditionally we are in trouble for he is boss and his love cannot warm our hearts but scare us to death. He has made us for suffering because we cannot love unconditionally though religion claims that free will was granted to us to be able to love that way. It is impossible to love another person unconditionally for their own sake for you are not as sure that they exist as you are that you exist so you must be doing it for your own sake. This may be the reason we are naturally produced as egoists for we can’t be anything else.
Do we love others unconditionally when we are firemen who save people knowing we will die doing so? The feeling of panic takes over so that we can forget about ourselves and what we lose by death so that we can die for them. In other words, we only give our lives for others when something happens to remove our rationality. Am I saying that it is not rational to give your life to save three people? It is rational to do that but our reason has to be silenced and warped by emotion and panic for us to do it. We have to be insane to do it. It is just like a person who wants to live and who forgets this through drink and risks their life. You surely don't consider such to be altruists?
What other proofs are there
that there is no such thing as an altruist?
If we are so unselfish or capable of selflessness then why do we find it so hard to forgive even when what is done wrong is not the worst? We know we have faults ourselves that all add up to serious harm. We know that we have often willed terrible things to happen and would have carried them out if we had the power to do them psychically or just by willing. Why do we find it so hard to forgive somebody who has hurt and degraded themselves by doing wrong? That shows us how little compassion we have. Why are we so reluctant to take our punishment when we do wrong? We don’t mind as much when somebody else is punished.
Why are we so anxious to condemn people when there is no proof that we would be any better if we were in their shoes and in their precise situation?
We like to pretend to be good. Altruists pretend to be self-sacrificing and they have no right to expect us to believe them and their performances.
Why are we so keen to superciliously tell other people what to do? Even when we don’t, we would if we thought we could manipulate them while not making many sacrifices ourselves? An obvious example is the pope. It is okay for him to make trouble for people needing birth-control for he is celibate. The only preaching should be in action. It is also selfish for people who don’t do much for others praise others for doing what they wouldn’t do.
At funerals, you have to listen to the minister extolling the sacrifices made by the dead person. You know the minister is glad he never had to make them and he is approving of the pain that the dead person underwent while he wouldn’t take as much.
We know that it is bad for hurtful things to happen to other people but we never feel sorry for them unless we remember what it was like for us to have had similar experiences. It is not the person’s pain that causes my pain but my memory of my pain. In the short-term, I cannot help what I feel for the past causes it. If I feel depressed all the time as an adult because my mother beat me up as a child and I go to therapy and end up happier have I helped my feelings? It only looks as if I did. I could have been the kind of person therapy could do nothing for. It was the way I was made that cured me not the therapy. The way I was made needed that catalyst. When I feel sorry for another person I am merely only indirectly feeling sorry for myself. This being true, one wonders how religion can have the nerve to say that suffering has a good purpose.
There’s more. It is easy for religion to condone the calamities God sends when it doesn’t have much bother with him. If we are so good we would be strict but we are too worried about what other people think and not what is good for them. Those who demand sacrifice should make plenty themselves first. We are glad when somebody is tragically killed because it was them and not us. These things are at the back of our minds all the time though they are only shown when the conditions are conducive. They are still present and behind all our supposedly virtuous actions because they are present subconsciously. Any good we do it is only done because it suits us.
If we are so altruistic then why are we so changeable? Why are we such a peculiar mixture? A wife can hate her husband more than anybody else in the world and then stand up for him when somebody says something slighting about him though it is really nothing. She believes he deserves to be talked about so why does she stand up for him? One thing is for sure it is not for logic or because of reason so it must be for emotional gratification. If she were really altruistic she would be using her reason as she understands it and be behaving in a consistent way. Altruism hates reason but at the same time it would need it to exist. If we are so altruistic then why do we love people who are good to us no matter what harm they have done to other people? We are in effect saying, “I am glad it was them they hurt and not me. If it had been me I would not be their friend. I know that they would hurt me if I became the persons they have hurt. This relationship is false but I still love it.” This love of enemies as long as they belong to other people has no resemblance to altruism.
If
we are capable of being altruistic likes and dislikes would not influence us so
much. And these likes are arbitrary by
natural law. For example, some
Christians like people to be celibate and others do not and it is just the way
they are. If we are so altruistic then
why is it the end of the world when a love affair ends and why are we just not
grateful to be alive so long and to be living where we are for we could be dead
or living in a hell-hole in the
If we are so altruistic or able to be then why do we smuggle a prejudiced guess into nearly every judgment as if we know it all? If Jake hits Billy we will side with Billy even if Billy was always a worse bastard. We certainly cannot use reason to defend this but only prejudice if we believe in free will.
Selfishness is going to emerge and altruism is egotistical hypocrisy. The Humanist refuses to succumb to religious and altruistic propaganda and pretend that this problem of altruistic hypocrisy doesn’t exist for it has to be admitted and dealt with. Dealing with it ensures that the selfishness emerges not as egotism but as egoism and is properly balanced. The altruists and religionists have only their own agenda at heart as long as they turn their blind eyes to it and they can only succeed in increasing vice.
What is the proof from the arbitrary nature of society’s morals that
altruism is a hoax?
Altruists have no reason for differentiating between a selfish person and an altruistic one when they see their actions. For example, the person who jumps into the ocean to save a child from drowning might want to die and is using the child’s plight to cover this up which is selfish or he might want to save the child or it might be both or he might have gone insane with emotion. Altruists approve of someone saying somebody is good because they did something nice for her or him even though that somebody is not good to you. They are not thinking of the victim then.
The altruist will agree with the Handbook of Christian Apologetics that happiness is not just a feeling of wellbeing but is the state of being well also – in other words, objective happiness the condition of being well and safe forever is what matters not subjective happiness which is just a feeling (page 141). This book says happiness is our choice so depressed and upset people then must be to blame for their unhappiness! What compassion Christians and altruists really have!
The book says happiness is a permanent state which evidently blames everybody for their problems such as bereavement and anger and so on. The altruist will like the idea of feeling nothing but being counted happy. Objective happiness is a sheer nonsense. Nobody is perfectly well. We can lose health and inner peace and our lives any time. It seems then that the only place one can have real objective happiness in is in Heaven. In Heaven there is just joy and love and nobody sins there. It follows then that you can’t be really happy until you are there! It follows that our earthly life is a burden and we should all be hoping to die in a plane crash or whatever. The idea that a person is well and happy while not feeling anything or while feeling no happiness is absurd. You are not well if you don’t feel happy. Our feelings and inability to feel happy all the time are at the root of our fears about the future. For example, we would not fear the flu so much if it didn’t take away our power to feel happy.
Altruism is really egotism in disguise – it is vicious and unnatural and deceitful.
Can you refute the examples
that show that we do not just go after pleasure?
Yes.
They say knowledge is something we go after though it will not bring us a lot of pleasure.
But without knowledge you cannot be happy for the brighter you are the better you can think of a way to be happy and to cope.
They say that after you die you still want people to think well of you.
It gives you pleasure now to want people to miss you after you have gone. If you don’t want them to then you don’t think much of yourself now.
They say you want your children to have good successful lives.
Because you made them and worked for them and want the thrill of being considered a good parent and because nature forces you to have feelings for their welfare. You see children as extensions of your body and your personality so you love yourself in them.
They say a man can die horribly to save others.
The man does not want to die but to live. But he feels his life will be worthless with the burden of guilt if he does not die for them so he feels forced by this fear to give up his life. Another possibility is that we do nothing unless we feel like it and the man is taken over by raw emotion. It is the emotion that kills him not the goodness that is in him that wishes to save a life. If he didn't have the emotion that strongly he wouldn't bother.
Are you not mad for saying
that nearly everybody is wrong for saying altruism is possible?
Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism all command people to check why they do the things they do. The thoughts and feelings associated with the act have to be identified and their role in the act has to be discerned. The devotees must start to admit the truth that altruism is deception.
SECTION SIX, IS EGOISM DEPRAVED?
Should we reject egoism if it
has faults?
No because at least it is better than the approval of self-sacrifice which is the only alternative. We have to pick the best doctrine of good and evil. And it is the only candidate.
Are egoists widely hated and accused of threatening all that is good?
Yes and religion and altruists have done a lot to bring this about. It is themselves who are threatening good.
If egoism is true then does
that mean we should do all the evil we like?
The true egoist will never harm anyone for people alone provide permanent pleasure and you only need to have as few needs as possible to be content and if you are happy you will automatically enjoy helping others so detach yourself. The true egoist is detached from transient things and is devoted to helping others. Experience proves that liking such a life is the supreme and immovable source of happiness.
Why does egoism tell me not to
need God?
Because that is increasing fear by giving yourself a need you don’t really need.
If egoism is true then why
can’t I treat some people and not all badly?
When you harm a person you automatically insult everybody else for you would do the same to each and every one of them if they filled the shoes of your victim. You are willing evil to them no matter how much you pretend that you are not. You are giving up the right to have friends and to have your word taken. Until you reinstate that right, true peace and the greatest happiness will not be possible. If you are a true egoist you will never hurt anyone without grave need. By your evil example you are telling people to degrade you.
How can an egoist preach egoism when that is making other people enter into competition against him?
That is only if egoism is about grabbing the best women or the best job or the most money. Egoism is not about these things but about sensible good works. A certain amount of competition is not a bad thing. Without competition or the threat of competition life would be less exciting. And winners wouldn’t be possible.
How can an egoist want to die
to save others from death?
Some would argue: “There is proof for life after death. The egoist knows that it is better to take the risk of dying to save lives, even though he or she is more certain of his or her own existence, when she or he knows that death is not the end. It is simply murderous fanaticism to ask a person to die for others without that proof like the world does. Without the conviction that there is an afterlife, the egoist has to become mad to save lives. So the belief is necessary. But in what way has the egoist to become mad when he doesn't believe. He knows that fear of the guilt he will have to live with, will force him to look away from his desire to live. He blanks that desire out to die to save others. He has to become delusional to do it. He is not committing any sin against egoism for he is forced by his fear and the reality to forgo his life. The circumstances give him a kind of madness that is good for others and to their benefit.”
The Humanist answer is that belief in life after death is bad and there is no reason to hold that the afterlife is possible and that there are better grounds for egoists saving lives. If egoists see children drowning in stormy waters they should jump in and try to save then. The egoists are not doing wrong in this for they intend to survive. There would be no point in jumping in to save the child if they were sure they would drown themselves for that would mean the children would drown too. So when an egoist dies a martyr’s death it is an accident. Also, no egoist will save lives thinking of the afterlife. He goes mad with emotion and it takes over.
But what if an egoist has to save lives say in war and knows that he will die for it? He is satisfying his egoism by doing this because though he is egoistic he can still feel he wants to die for others. The fact that you have to put yourself first for you are most sure of your existence condemns this but there are other considerations that make a difference. Nobody could enjoy their closeness to their loved ones or their lives unless there are people prepared to die for them when there is no other way. The egoist gives his life for this principle because it is an egoistic one and he cannot be an egoist without it.
People should be more careful so the people who are in danger but have not caused the accident should come first. If a man drives into a lake through pure recklessness and you will probably die if you try and save him you should not save him. He had no right to force this risk on you. If this disturbs people they ought to remember that there will be far more to disturb if they adopt altruism.
Why do egoists talk about love
when they do not believe in it?
Egoists simply do not mean the same thing by love as altruists do. By love the egoist means just willing and liking to see the best happen to others not non-emotional arid selfless love. Cold selfless love is the altruists unsatisfying ideal not ours.
Is egoism harmless?
It is indeed. It recognises that you can only love others to the extent that you can love yourself. Altruism tells you not to love yourself for you cannot love yourself when you pretend that you are non-existent in order to focus on doing so-called good for others the way it requires? Altruists are often really egoists which is good news for us for it means we can live up to the best in Altruism and avoid the dangers and the lies that are required to defend Altruism.
How can egoism be good when
altruism makes one really happy?
To those who would deceive you into believing that there is no happiness unless you forget yourself and be selfless, say that if they are able to able to be happy while merely pretending to be unselfish for genuine Altruism is impossible, then what is called Altruism is no proof against egoism. The so-called Altruist does good because it feels right now and not directly for future happiness. This makes them happy. Why? For if you are too future-centred you can’t be happy for you long for what you don’t have yet and that is pain. They fulfil themselves in the present and that is the key. But people can do lots of things that will improve their future and the thought of how good it is going to be makes them happy. It will only do that if their work is not motivated by too much of a desire for a good future.
What about egoism and falling
in love?
Though in the past the religions frowned upon falling in love they turn a blind eye to it today for nobody would have anything to do with them if they still opposed it. Falling in love is a very selfish act. You do not fall in love with nice kindly caring people who would make you happy if they are old or ugly but people who are likable for you and who are sexually appealing to you. The sexual urge is behind falling in love. And you cannot control the feeling at all. For it to be love you would have to freely fall in love and it would be based not on a person suiting you but on a person being good and kind. Falling in love can be mistaken for selfless love but it is nothing like it. It is proof that apparent sacrifices for another does not prove you are unselfish.
Why will egoism do more good
than Altruism?
Altruism orders you to do this and that or make this sacrifice and that which is sanctimonious because there is to be nothing in it for yourself. It just cares about rules and “goodness” not you. That is a complete turn-off.
With egoism, you are being encouraged not ordered to develop your own happiness and dignity by behaving in a good way and doing it to be happy and to spread happiness to others. We find anybody preaching at us a turn-off and will resent it if we have to obey and the reason is why our inclination towards self-indulgence is being denigrated and frustrated. Egoism is a better incentive to good behaviour than altruism for it is warm and sensible and realistic. And it is more than just better – it’s a hundred times better. It is more natural.
Commonsense says that if we are naturally self-centred as everybody who is honest agrees, then we should build on that to create people who are self-centred the right way instead of trying to foist altruism on them. The altruists cannot consistently reason that they should make the person who practices unstable or unbalanced irrational egoism which we call egotism turn to rational egoism. If you are an egotist and extremely arrogant it is easier to come down to the egoist level and become decent than it is for you to come down to the altruist level. The step from egotism to altruism is so big that it is only going to encourage those people to do evil. And when people realise the step is impossible, it gets worse. Altruists may have to hold that egoism is worse than egotism for it looks good while virtue is to be identified only with altruism. It cannot encourage egoism at all.
If egotists change then why should they become altruists and turn their backs on happiness? Altruists will just have to say they should do it for happiness is a sin. The egotists will be less likely to feel and see that happiness is evil when they practice egoism so altruists have to either leave egotists as they are or they have to convert them to altruism. Egoism has to be left out of the equation. Altruism just cares about being selfless that is all and it cannot even tell us why we should not be selfless and kill ourselves for no reason for that is as much selflessness as the kind it demands. At least egoism can give a reason for being egoistic. Altruists cannot say we should sacrifice for the sake of indirect happiness for that would be adopting the egoism of working and doing good for the happiness. It says we should sacrifice just because we should sacrifice. Even God should not be obeyed if he requests altruism for he offers no proof that we should obey and this shows why obedience to God is and can only be slavery despite the promises of Christ that we would be the sons and daughters of God. If that kind of slavery is allowed so is the other kind.
Should the egoists be proud of
their faults when they are the fault of nature?
It is thought that the egoists have to have strong self-esteem and have to like their own faults. That is incorrect for the egoists like their good side and see the dark side as the fault of the programming they received. They must wish to correct the dark side but they must not let it make them feel bad.
What about the argument that if egoism is true and we are all egoists then we don’t need to serve the interests of others for they will be happy enough?
They can’t make themselves happier or stay happy on their own.
What about the argument that the theory of psychological egoism destroys morality for it says that we do what we want and what ought to be done does not come into it?
This egoism says we are naturally egoists and can’t be anything else. It is true that it destroys morality but it does not destroy what is right and wrong. We know that even if there is no free will there are things that ought not to be done or happen. Psychological egoism can be triggered to make a person behave well. It is not good things like fancy food and houses that do this but things like kindness and friendliness. Good, real good, breeds good and leaves a legacy of love that will go on forever and contribute to the world forever. Its value is infinite both in what it can do and what it does do. Good is more powerful than evil and good will destroy religion and the work it has done to advance evil. But evil is just a perversion, a thing that is thought to be good but is not and is a kind of good in that sense, so it cannot survive.
What about the theory: “Egoism is bad news for it is nonsense to say that only my self-interest matters for others exist and morality is about how I should regard myself and others. Morality means that what applies to me applies to everybody else as well meaning that it is universalizable? “
So it is saying that I cannot encourage others to be egoistic because that means I am telling them to get the better of me if they can. I cannot say then that the whole universe should follow egoism.
The theory confuses the fact that egoism can be non-universalizable in the sense that I put me first but I can’t expect others to do that and that egoism is universalizable in the sense that I can put me first and others can put themselves first. That is why the theory is wrong.
Morality is based on what is supposed to be true and what can be believed. When I experience myself as the being I should put first how could it be morality to put others on the same level? The theory assumes that I should not come first in my own life. I am not saying that I matter and that others do not. If I am, I would be denying the universalizability of morality which the theory seeks to avoid and which it condemns. I am saying that others matter as much as me if they exist but unfortunately I cannot help the fact that I have to put myself first so I cannot be condemned for not having others on the same level for I have no choice. Morality does not condemn the man who commits adultery because of uncontrollable psychological forces that have appeared suddenly. It is not relevant to him. Egoism is universalizable and practical because it says each person who experiences himself or herself as the one who must come first must do the same as I do and do it rationally and advocates as much simplicity in tastes and in life as possible.
What about the argument that since egoistic people have different needs and desires that we cannot have rules meaning that egoism is a recipe for anarchy?
The altruists have many different ideas about what altruism is. For example, Jesus said that if somebody steals your coat give him your cloak as well. Altruists in their inability to be consistent, would disagree. Clearly altruism is a greater threat to order than egoism could ever be.
Some egoists don’t mind being slandered. But some altruists are the same. But this does not mean that laws against slander should be revoked. The egoist can sue the slanderer though he or she was not upset by them because the slanderer is practising unbalanced or irrational egoism or egotism and the egoist finds joy in helping others. Thus the egoist can uphold the law better than the altruist.
What about moral neutrality
and egoism?
Is it as good for the egoist to eat his pie as it is for him to give it to his mate and do without it? If it is not then egoism is incompatible with neutrality. It depends on whether or not the mate is a real mate so it would be worth doing without. The egoist only gives for pleasure or for future pleasure. We are afraid of being controlled by feelings which is why we often renounce great fun for something duller. Yet even then it is done for the pleasure of being and feeling in control. So it is not really duller after all. We are hedonists and nothing else in this sense.
What about the complaint that egoism says that rationality will always make us happy when it doesn’t?
Rationality could spoil your happiness for not all truths are pleasant. But it will only do that if YOU let it. We develop our responses to things. But egoism is about dignity and rationality and dignity are inseparable so you have to learn to make yourself happy through truth. If irrationality were allowed even if it was just for making you happy it would be right then to believe that you should abuse others if it makes you happy. This conclusion is unacceptable and undermines true egoism.
Should we love all persons
without exception as ourselves?
It would be great if we could feel love for all but we cannot. We can still will good to them and that is love even if we dislike them. Feelings may make us bad judges of character at times but we are only in this world a while and it is better to have them. I should love myself most of all and love others as much as I am able and love myself in loving them. I should not love my neighbour as myself but if I practice egoism there will be no harm done anyway so do not worry about that. In fact I should love my neighbour through loving myself. Because I love myself I am good for others.
Should the law discourage
altruism?
Yes for it is destructive to social order and illegally offers what it cannot give. Criminals who blame it for their behaviour are laughed at and that is unfair. Altruism with its hatred of feelings and emotional love leads to psychopathic disorders.
CONCLUSION
Altruism
is harmful and illusionary. Egoism is
everything we ever wanted in a philosophy for life. Altruism wants to turn goodness into a
chore. How much better it is to love
yourself and appreciate yourself and see yourself and your deeds as a gift you
give to others instead of neurotically looking for ways to deny yourself
happiness in helping others.
BOOKS CONSULTED
PSYCHOLOGY, George A Miller,
Penguin,
AWARENESS, Anthony de Mello,
Fount,
ETHICS, AC Ewing, English
Universities Press Ltd,
AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL
ANALYSIS, John Hospers, Routledge,
RUNAWAY WORLD, Michael Green, IVP,
THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey,
THE WWW
EGOISM, PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM (A DESCRIPTIVE CLAIM)
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~ghh/319/Lecture02.html
18/08/2008