Altruism in the Age of Austerity

Blaise Boulton reflects on the ToMax which she and Sophie Tunstall-Behrens organised in Edinburgh with

Professor Michael Northcott - Professor of Ethics at Edinburgh University

Simon Smith - Founder of Global Enduro and Adventure Ashram.

Benjamin Todd - MD of 80,000 Hours

Hard Times for the audienceMost of us felt, as we walked through the labyrinthine Edinburgh College of Arts  to the 'Wee Red Lounge',  that in the current economic climate and job market our altruistic goals cannot easily be prioritised, especially when making career choices and lifestyle decisions. The familiar ‘well, I might just earn some money first and then…’ sprang to mind. The title ‘Altruism in the Age of Austerity’ was supposed to capture these dilemmas, and while the talks revealed that austerity has an important economic aspect, they also showed that a stifled sense of empathy and love is the most significant contributor to our current 'age of austerity'. The ‘idea party’ that followed gave hope that much of what has been done can be undone, and that, of course, it is up to us to take action for change.

Simon Smith of Global Enduro showed us how important it is to step back from our worldview in order to take stock of what matters and what we need to take action to protect. He did this ten years ago when he quit advertising and an adventure across India led him to a new career of social enterprise.

Simon Smith

Simon spoke about the ‘lenses’ through which you see the world: tabloid newspapers, unethically-minded corporations and city companies which encourage the making of money for money’s sake cloud our lenses – our perception of value. We become cynical and begin to equate value with tangible material gain for ourselves. Simon also spoke about the 'mirrors' in which we see ourselves. When people see themselves as a tool in a ‘machine’, all they're left with is a ‘freekshow hall of mirrors’. By this I think he meant that when people see themselves as functions within organisations whose aims they do not share or believe in, they themselves have no anchor for their own value.

Simon now helps clear peoples’ lenses and mirrors 24/7. Through his company Global Enduro, he takes them on extreme and challenging adventures across the globe, hoping to imbue them with compassion and promote social cohesion. 'A level of struggle’, he says, ‘can lead you to a more humble, compassionate life’. The trips are not just to make you feel better – they are to start a cycle of altruism which continues. As Simon put it, doing good goes in loops: ‘give to get, get to give’.

Simon has faith is his method because he believes that people are softwired to be empathetic. This lies behind his anger at ‘the machine'; Simon rallied us to wage ‘altruterrorism’: activism for what is important, but with love as opposed to hatred at the forefront of our minds. 

Ben Todd, Michael Northcott, Simon Smith

Ben Todd, our second speaker, took the philanthropically-motivated person as his starting point. Rather than trying to make us care in the first place, Ben and his organisation 80,000 Hours set out to make us think about how to maximise the amount of good we can generate. Ben told us that just as a man sweeping the floor at NASA rightly claimed to be a part of ‘helping rockets take off’, what is important for us is not what we ourselves do, e.g. finding a cure for malaria, but what we are a part of: ‘It's not about doing good stuff, it's about making this good stuff happen’. ‘If campaigning will be the best route for you, then do that’ Ben argued. But maybe you could find a job that would provide you with enough money to be able to employ a whole team of people to campaign for a cause. A challenge was raised from the floor: would not taking a job at a bank in order to give away a percentage of your salary be propagating a corrupt system? Ben replied that this job would exist whether or not you took it. Wouldn’t it be better if more ethically minded people, such as a members of 80, 000 Hours who pledge a percentage of their income, filled these positions? Perhaps they would then be able to effect a real change within the ‘system’.

Professor Northcott shared Simon’s belief that we are defined as humans by our relations to others. He showed this etymologically, with the Italian root ‘altrui’ of altruism, which means ‘other’. He was sure that we are born with this sense of empathy and relatedness to others; the outcome of The Lord of the Flies, he argued, was 'plainly wrong’. ‘We are not born as autonomous beings, but are dependent on others in order to develop as individuals’. Just as a primate who is denied touch cannot develop a sense of identity, we are ‘born and raised as selves in relation’ and cannot even tell our mother’s breast apart from ourselves when we are babies. That we continue to be reared by our parents until we are 12 years old, shows, he argued, that we are not selfish individuals existing like ‘billiard balls’ colliding against each other. To assume that we are inherently self-centred or bad is a dangerous misconception - a misreading of Darwinian biology. We should not take up the Victorian view of 'altruism' as abnormal. The idea of 'the selfish gene' as dominant is a detriment to altruism because it promotes the idea that people must compete against one another in order to succeed. People have started to believe and sustain this conception of the individual, spurriously derrived from Darwin's survival of the fittest theory.

Professor Northcott reminded us of the power we have to exercise our brains and educate ourselves out of this distrust of others; and he demonstrated well how tools such as advertising can be used to undo some of the misconceptions which have become engrained. Indeed, ‘intrinsic values (love, altruism etc) manifest when people acknowledge commonality with other people’.

Northcott criticised today's widespread appeal to selfish interests. He cited crass slogans such as Tesco's ‘Turn lights into flights’, i.e. use energy-saving bulbs because you will accumulate aeroplane tokens (not because you will protect the environment). He contrasted Tesco's campaign with others which appeal directly to our concern for the vulnerability of the planet.

Professor Northcott left us with the inspirational message that humans ‘are born through love and for love’

Comment

Blaise Boulton, one of the organisersI was left unsure about whether simply pledging a percentage of my income to the right causes fully captured the empathy which society seems to need, and of which Simon and Michael were such advocates. After all, our last Edinburgh ToMax was all about the angry and disillusioned youth who no longer feel part of a society that cares. But maybe Ben is right that using our money to save the greatest number of lives makes the most sense… Indeed, Ben was convincing in showing how having more philanthropically-orientated people in jobs such as banking could make a significant impact within these corporations and society at large. Furthermore, people in overtly-ethical careers (such as Simon) were praised by Ben for their power to influence others. That is 80,000 Hours' mission too, they are just pursuing it differently.

Empathy is important because its first instance will infiltrate further through society. It became clear in the talks that we need both the campaigners and the bankers who donate: what is key is that we all play our part.

Ben also reminded us that we are relatively rich. However, I wondered whether giving significant proportions of our money to charity will even be a possibility for the many of us about to be landed in a pool of youth unemployment and high London living costs. Perhaps, at this time, rather than simply writing a cheque or pledging a percentage, we should instead make sure that we are tuning into our innate altruism and taking action to protect our planet and its population. Indeed, 80,000 Hours doesn’t dictate to whom you should be giving your money; instead, it says that if you have a lot of it, you have the power to do a lot of good. Ben is pledging 25% of his future income to his own organisation because he thinks that making more people aware about the ethical impact of their career is what matters most. I asked Ben whether they had researched human rights organisations, and the overall impact of investing into promoting human rights was still an area they needed to look into.

Austerity?

The overall impact of the three speakers’ endeavours may be hard to quantify simply in terms of lives saved, but what they all achieved at this ToMax was to inspire us not to be paralysed by the belief that we are living in so-called austerity, and instead embrace the fact that we are softwired to look out for one another.