|
In advocating rational
self-interest (see
Illiberal Belief #15),
I certainly do not mean to imply that helping others is a bad
thing. There are many good, rationally selfish reasons to help
others, from fostering good will to making the world a better
place. In addition, it actually feels good to help others. We
quite naturally feel connected to others, especially to our
close friends and family, but also to a lesser degree to all
human beings and even to all living things. Other people can be
of great value to us on many levels, and at least until they
prove otherwise—for instance by cheating, robbing, or aggressing
us or other innocents—it makes perfect sense to treat them with
respect, benevolence, and generosity.
Most religions and many
moralists go one step further, however, and promote
self-sacrifice as the ultimate good. They argue, in effect, that
while helping others is commendable, it is only really
good when the helper does not benefit, or when the overall cost
to the helper outweighs his overall benefit. Only then is the
moralist assured that the good deed is done for the sake of
the other person. This other-directedness is seen as the
very criterion of moral goodness.
In sharp contrast with
traditional morality, an ethics of rational self-interest
implies that helping others, while commendable in many cases,
actually becomes a bad thing when it becomes self-sacrificial.
Strictly speaking, to sacrifice is to give up a higher value for
a lower value. Giving up something I value less for
something I value more hardly qualifies as a sacrifice;
it is more properly called an investment if the benefit is
projected into the future, and otherwise it is simply a common
sense trade-off. However, when my
overall cost in helping someone, all things considered, is
greater than my overall benefit, then doing so will decrease my
overall happiness. It is in such cases that the right thing to
do, from a rationally selfish point of view, is to exercise
one's right to say no.
At first glance, this may
seem like a strange conclusion to those of us steeped in a
religious tradition. In fact, though, many of us act this way a
lot of the time; we just feel vaguely guilty about it when we
do, and we try not to think about it too much. From a rationally
self-interested point of view, it is clear that we should be
more consistent in pursuing our own happiness, and jettison
those feelings of guilt.
A simple thought
experiment should help ease the apparent strangeness of fully
embracing the moral rightness of rational self-interest. Imagine
a close, beloved friend faced with an important decision: Should
she pursue a career that would provide obvious service to others,
or pursue the career she really wants? Should he marry the girl
who will please his parents, or marry the one he truly loves?
Should she donate her limited funds to a charity for the
homeless, or travel the world as she has always longed to do?
How would you advise your
friend or loved one? Would you tell someone you care about to
sacrifice his or her own happiness in order to serve others? I
think many people would advise a loved one to act in a way that
furthers his or her long term happiness. Simply put, we want our
loved ones to be happy. That is a big part of what it means to
love them.
In light of this, why,
then, do we feel that we ourselves must serve others, and
that we are somehow morally deficient if we do not? Why
do we feel we must put others' needs before our own? Why do we
not accord ourselves the same consideration we accord our loved
ones? In short: why do we not love ourselves better?
The answer is that we
have been taught that such self-love is evil—the root of all
evil, even. But do we really believe this? It is easy to extend
the thought experiment and ask: do we not want our friends to
love themselves? Does their happiness not depend on a healthy
self-regard? Then why, again, are we not better friends to
ourselves? Only religious indoctrination can explain this
unhealthy state of affairs, which remains pervasive despite
growing secularism. Old habits die hard, but this is one habit
that really deserves to be broken, for all our sakes.
|
