Cults of Do-goodery, the Denial of Death, and Embracing Despair

I’m currently on a vacation that includes 3 out of the 5 people patient enough to ever read these writings. I’ve had this rough outline together prior to leaving, but just never got around to finishing it because LIFE. But the benefit of traveling with an 18 month old is your days consistent of 2 hour nap breaks — which either involve me reading, staring at the ceiling, justifying a mid-day alcoholic beverage because I’m in a different time zone, scrolling the internet (which generally turns out to be a horrible idea), or, in a small burst of inspiration, pulling out my laptop trying to wrap up an outdated outline. So, this will be a shorter one. And tonally, very off from vacation-mode.

I’m a man of few convictions. But one of them is that I’d make a fantastic cult member. Putting aside the obvious abuse, exploitation, and occasional murder, there’s actually something rather relaxing about a simplified world view: submit to the calling, follow the leader, and life’s complexities fade away. Now, I don’t like robes (or murder, for the record), so I’d likely not make it past initiation. But every now and then, wouldn’t it feel nice to turn off the doubting (a.k.a thinking) mind and cozy up inside in a belief system that organizes the world into neat little boxes? We’d all like a blueprint now and then, no? While I’ve never read it, I often find myself being amused by the title of Maria Bamford’s recent book: “Sure, I’ll joint your cult” (Side note: her series Lady Dynamite is fantastic if ever looking for a show that addresses mental illness in an incredibly honest and therapeutically hilarious manner).

Cults of do-goodery

In a recent bout of mindless scrolling I came across a clip of Rutger Bergman on John Stewart promoting his new book Moral Ambition (and its associated movement), which is summarized in The Guardian as “a bracingly hopeful call for high-flyers to ditch corporate drudgery in favour of something far more ambitious”. I’ve not watched the full interview or read the book (I’m becoming an expert at judging books without reading them) but I generally think it’s a valuable and provocative call-to-action. It’s hard to argue with asking people to direct their talents towards helping solve society’s greatest challenges, rather than towards high-paying, but seemingly rather meaningless pursuits (e.g. trading obscure financial derivatives or defending abstract corporate law). Now, of course, meaning is in the eye of the beholder, so I don’t judge options traders per se, but on the inevitable death bed I doubt one is thinking about puts and calls.

The “Moral Ambition” ideology has a direct through-line to other belief systems with a shared attempt at maximizing one’s positive impact in the world: there’s effective altruism, which was notably tarnished due to its connection to Sam Bankman-Friend, that takes a rather utilitarian approach with varying degrees of extremity, and has career guidance which includes an argument to work in high paying professions like a hedge fund so that you can then donate all your money to the most cost-effective charity (often something addressing malaria in Africa); there’s the rationalist community which is described in this interesting article (if you want to go down the rabbit hole) as having a "technocratic focus on ameliorating the human condition through hyper-utilitarian goals with the distinctly liberal optimism… that defines so much of Silicon Valley ideology — that intelligent people, using the right epistemic tools, can think better, and save the world by doing so”.

And I’m sure there are many other similar schools of thought.

You can break your brain trying to unpack these belief systems and their nuanced connections. But to simplify, I’d label them as the “cults of do-goodery”. And the cult label is appropriate because, well, there are some unfortunate associations with murder and eugenics.

The premise of these philosophies often rests upon two assumptions: 1) that moral impact is measurable and 2) that you’re able to optimize your efforts to increase that moral metric.

My problem with #1 is that I find something icky, even dehumanizing, about the attempt to fully quantify morality. While I think it’s important to try measure things so that we can make improvements, when taken to the extreme it forces you to compare the value of one life over another — and can even lead to overlooking the well-being of those in your vicinity (including yourself) because your time could better spent optimizing for “greater impact” elsewhere.

Where I often struggle with #2 — and maybe this is just me making excuses — is reconciling this type of do-good idealism with the more pragmatic obligations of our society. People are often just attempting to pay the proverbial bills and the reality seems to be that the less "sexy" the career the more likely it provides health insurance and the economic security to pay for childcare (which lord knows in the US isn’t cheap). Now, I’m all for trying to change this reality — I hate that we live in an economic system that values investment bankers exponentially more than teachers — but I’m definitely not clear on the levers of autonomy any of us have to completely change this system. If you know, tell me, I’ll pull as many as I can. I should probably just actually read it Rutger’s book, maybe it has some answers.

Last thing to say here: it’s particularly a bummer when quantification of positive impact is used as a measure of moral superiority. Righteousness is the emotional equivalent of farting in someone’s face and claiming that it smells good. Judgement is judgement, a fart is a fart, ego is ego.

The Denial of Death

In my days of obsessively listening to Marc Maron (mid-to-late twenties), I noticed he would regularly reference the book The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. I of course bought the book and intensely read half of it, ferociously, underlining and dog-earing every other page, which felt like enough to get the point: most human action, and a lot of our culture, stems from our attempts to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.

(Side note: I once brought this book on a vacation, which looking back is just a completely ridiculous cover to be seen with pool-side and was likely some weird attempt at appearing interesting).

Becker explains how we instinctually grasp for belief systems in an effort to transcend the fact that we will die. While a heavy topic no doubt, I can’t help but project a subtle sense of humor in his writing. Also, excuse the male-only pronouns.

When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.

An immortality formula. That’s really got a kick to it. And it’s got me thinking about the cults of do-goodery again, because if you follow those threads long enough you’ll inevitably stumble on the ideology of Transhumanism%20existence%20in%20this%20life.), which given the name is about as blatant a denial of death one could image. Summarized below:

Transhumanism is a philosophical and scientific movement that advocates the use of current and emerging technologies—such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology—to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition. Transhumanists envision a future in which the responsible application of such technologies enables humans to slow, reverse, or eliminate the aging process, to achieve corresponding increases in human life spans, and to enhance human cognitive and sensory capacities. The movement proposes that humans with augmented capabilities will evolve into an enhanced species that transcends humanity—the “posthuman.”

This is an unnerving (pathological?) ideology that has a legitimate foothold with people in power. While we’re all horrible at accepting our finitude, it appears Silicon Valley billionaires are the most in denial.

Embracing despair

In relation to death, I guess you could say, we have despair — another aspect of reality in which we often find ourselves perpetually denying. Hanif Abduraqib’s recent essay in the New Yorker, In Defense of Despair, is a moving, honest, and often overlooked perspective on the innate meaningfulness of despair. It’s not to glorify or romanticize difficult feelings, but rather, I think, about honoring them for their own merits, not simply flattening them as some means to more palatable ends (like hope or progress). It’s sort of in the spirit of that Buddhist philosophy about suffering being a part of life that connects all beings. The essay is worth a read in full, but I wanted to pull out a few bits below:

What I love about the heart is that it’s capable of breaking in infinite ways; may we never live long enough to experience all of them, but may we live long enough to experience the ways the heart can repair itself for subsequent breakings. The cycle of rupture and repair is a requirement of living, a cost of surviving, something that goes hand in hand with another reality of survival: that, throughout your life, you may not only lose people but also gain them.

After three weeks, I was pulled aside by the elder (in this support group) who had brought me into the fold in the first place, and he told me something that has defined a not-insignificant part of my living ever since. He said, “Your pain is unique, because it’s yours. And you get to have that. But, when pressed up against all of the pain in the whole wide world, it isn’t special. It can be unique, but it can’t always be special.”

A closing quote

George Saunders on creativity, referencing others:

I love that Gerald Stern quote: ‘If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking – then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.’ Or, as Einstein said it, in his slightly more snooty manner: ‘No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.’ So the trick is to keep the conscious, conceptual mind at bay and thus stay open to mystery, revelation etc.

A parting song

I recently went to see youbet in San Francisco thanks to an invite from my cousin Asher. I’d never heard of them prior, but it was one of the better live shows I’ve seen recently (keeping in mind that parent life doesn’t afford tons of late night concerts). The band is fronted by Nick Llobet, who’s an incredible guitarist — it was mesmerizing to watch them play live. Really been liking their song Nurture.