Why Be Altruistic? Even Altruists Have No Answer...
April 12th, 2015 at 12:00PM"Why be good? It's a question we seem unable to avoid, and unable to answer. At all times and in all places, philosophers and theologians have wrestled with it. In kindergarten, we were taught to be kind to our classmates; in Sunday school, to love our neighbors. But why?"
--Slate, Why Be Good?
Why be good? Who says being kind to our classmates and loving our neighbors is good? I don't love my neighbors and I never spoke to half of my classmates, but I don't think I'm bad.
This question is dishonest in this context. It's a package deal. It should be: Why be altruistic? That's what the question really means. If, like myself, you think altruism is an evil moral code, then you can't answer it, of course. But if, like most everyone else, you believe in altruism, then you can't answer it, either. Altruism is an evil moral code. There's simply no way to show that sacrificing your values is good for you. That's why we are "unable to answer" this question.
That's also why the question has to be posed dishonestly. If the question was openly about the morality of altruism, then the answers and dialogue it's seemingly intended to inspire would be about whether altruism actually works or not. Instead, it assumes altruism is good and hopes to find fools and cohorts to rationalize it. All to keep people believing in a morality no one can justify (and to subvert discussion of egoism, of course).
If the creators of this program really wanted to facilitate a dialogue on morality, the question they used to stimulate intelligent debate would have been: "What is good?" Unfortunately, they didn't really want that. They chose to sneak the answer into the question, instead -- and that's bad.
Why be altruistic? Even altruists have no answer...