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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Reading about the FTX dèbacle and what the founder and his friends thought (especially about their EA space) made me understand how much utterly alien is to me the entire EA movement.

Watching the videos, the blogposts, all the infos that are getting out, made me reflect on "how" they think money should be used by rich people in order to maximise happiness and saving people and in particular the entire world.

Maybe it is because of my particular illiberal upbringing (Euro-mediterranean Catholic family), but I cannot fathom how this ideology is, for my eyes, "Utterly Evil".

How can you, a rich person, focusing yourself on improving astract things as the entire world, financing no-profits and calculating metaphysical moral earning based on how much money you are investing in EA?

Why not helping your community, focusing on art, infrastructure and knowledge, instead of giving money to global moral enterprises? It utterly repulse me on a philosophical and moral level, and this is probably the reason I never bought in EA.

If this is the alternative to the woke/progressive view, I have no idea of how the Western World can remotely fix its problems. Am I the only one who feels like this?

Do you have absolutely no empathy for someone in west Africa dying of malaria? If it cost you a mere penny to save their life, would you do it? EA is trying to save lives in the most cost effective way possible, and last I checked the most effective way to save lives was buying bed nets to prevent malaria.

If there was already an abundance of bed nets and it'd cost millions to save a single more life even in the most efficient way possible, where as they could open a local art museum that served thousands for just $10k, they'd probably start donating to local art. But right now art is already pretty well funded, and people dying of malaria are relatively underfunded. Although EA has certainly done a lot to change that and I think they have more money than they know how to spend. You could probably post an essay to their website about why donating to local art is the most moral thing to do if you can write out a clear argument for it.

Do you have absolutely no empathy for someone in west Africa dying of malaria?

I do have empathy for them. But empathy enough isn't a good enough reason to do something, not when I'm already groaning under the unmet weight of already-extant duty:

  • I have a duty to my ancestors who made my life possible, and to carry on that line into the future.

  • I have a duty to my family who worked and sweated and sacrificed to raise me, and must pay that forward by working and sweating and sacrificing for my future children.

  • I have a duty to the people who I work with, who have invested in and rely upon me.

  • I have a duty to the people who live near me, who I share streets and parks and utilities and schools and commerce with, and who have to share those things with me.

  • I have a duty to my countrymen, who in times of danger are sworn to lay down their lives for me, and for whom I may be called to lay down my life in turn.

Out and out in concentric, relational circles. That's a LOT of duty in the modern world, and I'm not at all certain even all my effort and resources and will is doing a good enough job. Thought and resources I devote to things outside those concentric rings of responsibility is, in a real sense, a defection against those important things. Moreover, because those outside things are far from me and I'm not enmeshed in iterated responsibility with them, I'm not likely to understand what any intervention would do, outside of the most superficially-obvious results.

Better to focus positive efforts on the things close by, to which I am already bound. As for those things far away, the most effective thing I can contribute is a general promise to treat fairly and virtuously with strangers when they come into my life.

Coming from a place of curiosity: How are these duties managed? By which I mean: who defines them, where are they defined, and who is the judge/enforcer? How do decide to make tradeoffs, like for example in a situation where you would have to renege against your duty to your ancestors in order to fulfill your duty to your family?

In other words, what makes these duties concrete to you?

Christians and others of the Abrahamic faiths have their books that codify their duties, and they have their priests, that act as judge/enforcer and guide. I'm sure other religion provide similar frameworks. Humanism, especially of the EA kind, has their own version of this. So where does yours come from?

I find the substance in the great thinkers and teachers of many cultures, and take my definitions from them (though, of course, with the right to interpret or add as may be honestly needed in the spirit of the original).

The idea that my concern and efforts must start with myself, then move slowly outwards from the center to kin, friends, neighbors, city, state, country, and only then beyond that, is also extremely common in historical moral teachings, from Hierocles:

". . . For, in short, each of us is, as it were, circumscribed by many circles; some of which are less, but others larger, and some comprehend, but others are comprehended, according to the different and unequal habitudes with respect to each other. For the first, indeed, and most proximate circle is that which every one describes about his own mind as a centre, in which circle the body, and whatever is assumed for the sake of the body, are comprehended. For this is nearly the smallest circle, and almost touches the centre itself. The second from this, and which is at a greater distance from the centre, but comprehends the first circle, is that in which parents, brothers, wife, and children are arranged. The third circle from the centre is that which contains uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers, and the children of brothers and sisters. After this is the circle which comprehends the remaining relatives. Next to this is that which contains the common people, then that which comprehends those of the same tribe, afterwards that which contains the citizens; and then two other circles follow, one being the circle of those that dwell in the vicinity of the city, and the other, of those of the same province. But the outermost and greatest circle, and which comprehends all the other circles, is that of the whole human race."

to Confucius:

6:28 "Zigong said, 'What would you say of someone who broadly benefited the people and was able to help everyone? Could he be called humane?' The Master said, 'How would this be a matter of humaneness? Surely he would have to be a sage? Even Yao and Shun were concerned about such things. As for humaneness — you want to establish yourself; then help others to establish themselves. You want to develop yourself; then help others to develop themselves. Being able to recognize oneself in others [the ability to take what is near and grasp the analogy], one is on the way to being humane.'”

7:29 "The Master said, 'Is humaneness far away? If I want to be humane, then humaneness is here.'”

It even shows up in poetry, like Pope's "Essay on Man":

"Self love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, / As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake, / The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads, / Friend, parent, neighbour first it will embrace, / His country next, and next all human race; / Wide and more wide the' o'erflowings of the mind, / Take every creature in of every kind."

So yes, the goal ultimately is to embrace the whole world, but you can't skip steps! You have to adequately care for yourself before you can care for close kin. You have to be able to adequately care for self and kin before you can extend responsibility and purview to friends and local community. You have to provide for yourself, your kin, your friends, and your community before you can move on to the city or nation...and so on and so forth.

The idea that this isn't just true for those alive today, but also extends to a duty to carry on faithfully the work of those who came before, and leave it in a better place than I found it for those yet to come, I draw most pithily from Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France:

"[Society] is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

And as to how it's enforced...I'll turn to Confucius again:

2:3 "The Master said, 'Lead them by means of regulations and keep order among them through punishments, and the people will evade them and will lack any sense of shame [self-respect]. Lead them through moral force (de) and keep order among them through rites (li), and they will have a sense of shame [self-respect] and will also correct themselves.'”

Thanks for sharing that. I understand a little bit more about where you're coming from.

It seems we're more or less aligned on the ends. I'm not sure about the means--for one, divvying people up into cities/states/nations doesn't appeal to me, since I'd rather do the categorization based on culture or at least "big ideas" such as "should the citizen be the property of the state?" But I guess it'll shake out in future discussions, which I'm looking forward to.

Cheers to that!

I would say that "culture" in the specific sense is highly relevant to categorization! You and the people you spend most of your time with are a tiny culture to yourselves, with your own idiosyncratic habits, inside jokes and references, and tendencies. And because you spend most of your time there, you have the most invested in keeping it healthy and productive and pleasant, etc.

Then there's looser subculture's you're part of - all the people who live on the same block, and so care about, e.g., potholes, loaning lawnmowers, watching out for each other's kids, 4th of July block parties, etc., so you collaborate on those things. Or maybe it's based on activity or affinity - a church congregation, softball league, wargaming group, knitting circle, book club, local political party, etc., each of which you spend your time, effort, and resources on.

And then it goes out further and further, through groups you share less and less time and contact with, but still have interests (whether pecuniary, cultural, or social) in common with. That's basically what Hierocles means by tribes, citizens, "those who dwell in the vicinity of the city," etc.

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