A friend called me brave the other day. Why? "You don't look away." This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
We were talking about moral obligations. About the fact that millions of people out there are starving, or unvaccinated, or being abused or oppressed, or sick with infectious diseases, or dying of old age. And perhaps, you know, as smart educated citizens of a wealthy country, we are obligated to actually attempt to do something about that. Donate to charity, or become politicians and make sure money is spent on vaccines and not wars, or do medical research, or heck if you don't feel ambitious enough (or just Enough) for any of that then you can always volunteer at a soup kitchen. Just. Don't just sit there. Don't just become an accountant and watch TV in your spare time and never give a shit.
I think you are obligated to substantially devote your life to helping others.
And my friend can't cope with that, or claims not to be able to cope with that. My friend says that if he even thought about that, then he wouldn't be able to handle the obligations, so for his sanity he needs to pretend that none of it is happening. He needs to just become a programmer and not give a shit, because if he gave a shit then what if that obligates him to give away all his possessions and starve? My friend thinks his life should be principally devoted to enjoying himself, with maybe a little side of helping others.
This is bullshit! Of course it doesn't obligate you to give away all your possessions and starve! In what universe does that help anyone? When has any sane normal person ever advocated for "the best way to help the world is to kill yourself"? Never. Literally that is so obviously not what I am saying that if your interpretation of "you are obligated to help others" is "I am obligated to hurt myself" then you are wilfully misinterpreting me so that you have an excuse not to care. You want to look away. You want to not see.
I look away all the time. We all do. I am not spending my entire life constantly aware of the suffering of the world, staring unflinchingly at the darkness. When I decide to play one more League of Legends game before I asleep, when I decide to buy twenty bottles of Pepsi Max because it's tastier than the supermarket lemonade, when I save money because I'm more scared of running out than I am of the guilt of not donating it.... I am not thinking of my moral obligations in those moments. I am just being a human being who is fallible.
When I make my major career choices, when I sit down to plan out my budget for the year, when I encounter a difficult moral conflict - then I think, okay, I need to take into account ETHICS here. When I light a candle at a vigil or sing a meaningful song, I think for a moment of ETHICS. When I read books where the protagonists are morally obligated to defeat an evil dragon because they're the Chosen One, I muse briefly upon ETHICS.
Does it hurt? These people seem to assume it would hurt. Because, you know, I think about how millions of people are suffering, and about how I'm failing to save them all, and then I feel guilty about playing video games. Surely it must hurt! If it didn't hurt, why doesn't everyone do it?
Of course it doesn't fucking hurt.
There is something so exquisitely beautiful inside me. This vision of a world where everyone is safe and happy and kind, where we all work together to pursue knowledge and truth, where the world is covered in beauty and artwork and humanity stretches our arms out to the stars... it's astonishingly lovely. The light! There is a drive inside me to build that world. I was born with it. It glows a little within me whenever I help someone, whenever someone thanks me, whenever I learn something new, whenever I build something that will last, whenever I teach, whenever I heal, whenever I hold someone's hand. It is the opposite of guilt and the opposite of fear and the opposite of hate. THE LIGHT! When I am tempted to stand by and do nothing but instead I speak up and act, the light warms me. I would rather have the light than anything else in the world.
The light is pure. It dims a little if I lie to anyone, but especially if I lie to myself. It dims if I know something is wrong but tolerate it anyway. It dims if I treat myself as more important than another human being. It dims if I stop hoping. It dims if I start making exceptions to the rules.
Am I good enough for the light? FUCK NO. But it is holding on in there, dim, flickering, somewhere in the depths of my soul, underneath all the gunk I buried it in. Yesterday I decided to order takeout instead of giving the money to charity, and the light is still there. I cannot emphasise enough: THAT IS A MIRACLE. I think perhaps this is the miracle that the Christians were trying to describe, in their own broken and false way, when they spoke about how we all sin but Jesus loves us anyway. I can lie about the dog eating my homework, and next time I am kind to someone... the light will still fill me with the same warmth. How astonishingly beautiful! How incredible! The best feeling in the world, and I never build up a tolerance, I never lose it permanently, I can only ever temporarily dim it a little?
The place where the falling angel meets the rising ape, indeed.
You are a HUMAN BEING. That means you were born with the exact same light, I'm pretty sure - I mean, it seems like a pretty complicated thing and it would be very weird if I had the genes for it but it somehow didn't evolve in the rest of the species. You were born blessed with the exact same MIRACLE. If you are kind to others, it will feel good. If you see all the suffering in the world and decide to devote your life to trying to improve the world, it will feel good. If you learn true knowledge and teach it to others and they thank you, it will feel good. Miraculous! Amazing! Beautiful! How wonderful is it, that we were born with the capacity to take joy in doing the right thing? How astonishingly lucky are we, that it doesn't feel like a chore?
Perhaps your experience varies. But if I pretended, even for one singular moment, that I was not driven to put an END to all human suffering, to devote my life to my ethics, to help everyone in the world who needs it, to build that vision... then I'm pretty sure I would not feel the light anymore. The light is too pure and delicate and naïve to survive that kind of self-delusion. That vision of a better world does not include one single suffering innocent, and how could it possibly inspire you or warm you if it did?!
If you are suppressing your light, then YOU are the one who is looking away. I think perhaps you are the one who is brave, to be able to confront the world without the light at your side.
You are not obligated to live up to the standard of a person who always makes the right decision, always prioritises helping others, always chooses goodness. God knows I don't; but the guilt that I don't isn't crippling. The joy that the light is still inside me, even though I fail, is overwhelming.
You are not obligated to meet the standard, but if you refuse to even see the standard, if you refuse to say "I want to live up to that standard" because you think it sounds unreasonable and overly demanding, if you say things like "I couldn't possibly believe that because I don't want to feel guilty for not giving up my guilty pleasures", if you say "I don't want to try to be a good person because it doesn't sound fun" - there is something deeply wrong with you. There is something deeply offensive against humanity in that.
I want to be perfect. I'm not. That is not, and will never be, a reason to pretend that perfection isn't the goal. To say rubbish like "it's unreasonable to aim for perfection" or "utilitarianism is overly demanding" or "it's cruel and mean to say that people aren't good, so you can't possibly require people to devote their lives to goodness to be considered good" or "it's overly stressful to think about ethics all the time so you should basically just try not to hurt anyone". Just live with the fact that you're not good enough! It doesn't hurt that badly! It really does not! How have you lived long enough to be an adult and still not come to terms with the fact that sometimes you will apologise for erring? How haven't you learned to forgive without forgetting?
And people will go online and talk shit about "moral purity" or suggest that having overly high standards is bad? What is wrong with them? The light is pure. Doing something wrong and not feeling guilty about it, lying to yourself that it was right, does suffocate the light. I've seen it, I've felt it. Spending too much time around people who unapologetically hurt others, that'll strangle the light. Knowing what the right thing to do is and being too afraid to do it, that fucks up the light. I've felt the damage from doing that and I never ever ever want to feel it again.
I'm not a firebrand. I am just a guy with a very small candle and I am trying to shield it against the wind. Yes, I am obligated to devote my entire life to helping others. No, that does not make me brave. How sad to think that. I would be brave if I succeeded. I'm going to go and play video games now, fully aware that it is the wrong thing to do, acknowledging that it is the wrong thing to do, apologetic for doing it - and yet later today when I work on projects intended to improve the world, that light will still be with me, because I refuse to pretend to myself that there's nothing wrong with me wasting time.
Can we not.... talk about this? Do people feel odd talking about the light? I rarely see anyone talk about it, and yet it is one of the clearest, most driving, most defining experiences that I have. Even the synaesthetic part of feeling a very small candle, a glow, it's the clearest image. This is a universal human experience, right....?