Systemic Altruism

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss the pervasive influence of altruism on the culture and draw lessons from it about the systemic racism debate.

Among the topics covered:

● Systemic altruism, like systemic racism, as the claim that the ideology permeates the culture, even if is not always accepted explicitly;
● What altruism is and why it is evil;
● Examples of altruism’s influence on the culture, including environmentalism, egalitarianism, and the anti-abortion movement;
● Why most people find it hard to see this influence;
● The role of social and cultural institutions, such as churches, universities, and the media, in perpetuating altruism;
● The psychological mechanisms by which altruism spreads and sustains itself;
● How better people sometimes internalize altruism and how this is often used against them;
● How this analysis of systemic altruism can shed light on the controversy over whether systemic racism still exists.

This episode was recorded on March 3, 2023.

0:00:00 Introduction
0:00:50 Systemic altruism and systemic racism
0:09:13 Altruism as evil
0:12:50 Influence of altruism on the culture
0:17:19 Not seeing the influence
0:28:20 Social and cultural institutions
0:38:52 Psychological mechanisms
0:50:28 Better people internalizing altruism
0:57:54 Does systemic racism still exist

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[orchroark]

Translating "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to mean: "from each according to what he has produced, to each according to what he has NOT produced". Brilliant way of thinking about that well-known slogan. Thank you for that insight!

[benbayer]

The version of this podcast originally livestreamed was accidentally cut off at the end. This is the full version.

[WillfulThinker]

Philosophic altruism is insidious. It feeds evasion, rationalization, and leads to dishonesty, low/flat affect, low self-esteem, the death of the soul. What we need is "systemic" egoism, rampant individualism and unbridled capitalism!

[SlamminGraham]

Great discussion. Altruism is sadly even more systematically pervasive in our society than is racism (which admittedly, at least to a limited degree, exists under the conscious radar, too).

[nameprivate]

_Altruism_
"The path to Hell is paved with good intentions." It gets much worse from there.

[aeomaster]

The difficulty of exposing the evils of sacrifice, is dealing with the "nobility" of sacrifice. This "nobility' is claimed by God himself, with the sacrifice of Jesus for the sins he didn't commit. Who are we to challenge God? That is the core of the battle.

[ladymacbethofmtensk]

I do not believe that most people were actually racist even when segregation was the law. The problem was that everyone thought that everyone ELSE was racist, and that they would be ostracized if they did not follow suit. The civil rights laws of the Sixties basically gave the majority permission to ignore race, which they happily did. Then, in the Nineties, intellectuals thought, "Look at these remaining racial gaps, we need to fix them, " having forgotten that they were the people who created those gaps in the first place. They also forgot that they were the ones who preached the original racism. When you forget past orthodoxies, you tend to revive them under new names.

[robabiera]

Several decades ago, philosophers were openly hostile towards the idea of systems as such. Yet, here we are today talking about systemic this and systemic that. I think this bears examination. As a corollary, if philosophers have given up philosophy for dead, does that mean we are dealing with "zombie philosophy" today? And what role, if any, does Ayn Rand's contention that "reality will have its revenge" play in any of this? Perhaps a fit topic for a future episode of "New Ideal"?

[saw]

I love Yaron Brooks' systemic racisim video explaining how schools contribute to the vicious cycle of poverty

[artieduncanson]

Anti-abortion sentiments was cited as an example of altruism in action, but is opposition to abortion really founded on altruistic roots? The opponents of abortion claim to be stopping murder, rather than demanding the potential mother to have her child just for sacrificial purposes (like environmentalists who openly want you to sacrifice your life on behalf of mother nature). It seems to me that calling anti-abortion positions altruistic, when they just want to stop murder (even if they are mistaken), would be analogous to calling someone altruistic if he didn't kill a rich guy and take his money, even if he couldn't gotten away with it and ended up with more money in his pockets. I believe that anti-abortion positions are incorrect, but I don't see how they are altruistic if the opponent truly believes he's preventing murder.

[anitakathleenpierce]

AR sacrificed her entire life to write and teach Americans about the evil ways of communism and I thank her but she also sacrificed her ability to have children and make the sacrifices that come with motherhood. In her country and those times having both a career and a family wasn't exactly possible....

[gianniguy]

How do you identify a rationalization?

[daviddedick]

I once suggested to Ben Bayer that a New Ideal show might cover the phenomenon I call “Anti-Man” - The view that humans have a fundamentally evil nature. I think this show pretty much answered that request. When people are observed pursuing their own interests, they are regarded as selfish and condemned for not practising the altruist ethics which are accepted and predominant in our culture. They are condemned for that even though that kind of selfishness is absolutely necessary to human survival and flourishing. Altruism is at the root of the Anti-Man view.

[KRGruner]

If it's systemic it is not altruism. Altruism is an individual characteristic. Next...

[TeikonGom]

You should do a video about systemic Judaism.