My Moral System

 

Below I will contrast my current version or brand of ethical egoism versus a traditional and also modern altruistic system of morality, popular and common in both current religious circles and among today’s irreligious, often anti-religious, leftist, secular humanists.

 

Before embarking on laying out this rival moral theories, it would be useful to lay out, compare and contrast the presuppositions that I hold as underwriting my egoism versus the presuppositions, I generalize, are consciously or implicitly held by my opposition. I also realize that there may be more applicable, existent presuppositions, held by me and my opponents, that I am currently unaware, that would come to light at a future date.

 

Presupposition 1 for egoism: God is good and loving, and any ethical system is good--—if it promotes human goodness and wellness, and, it is not demonic, working to grow human evil and hurt—if emanating from God or any benevolent deity. I presuppose that God is the origin of spiritual goodness, and moral goodness is behaving or acting in the world in ways consonant with behaviors and choices that cohere with the essence of spiritual goodness.

 

Presupposition 1 for altruism: For Christian altruists, God is loving, and good, and moral goodness is caused or is derivative from spiritual goodness.

 

Secular humanists, agnostics and atheists would argue that the source of moral goodness is the naturally benevolent or sympathetic feeling and good will that humans feel towards others. The source of moral goodness is a biological trait and given to us by spontaneously occurring nature.

 

Presupposition 2 for egoism: I am an essentialist, believing in a fixed human nature. That essential nature is global in people, and historically and pre-historically unchanging across thousands of years into the past. Most of that essential nature is genetically fixed in stone, but from the beginning, when God made the world, each human also had an innate, ineradicable part of their will or soul that was good, open-ended, and free willing, and could be developed by each willing agent, through training and personal, conscious determination to self-improve.

 

As an essentialist about human nature, I believe that human natural is naturally, primarily but not totally bestial, sinful, or fallen, that we are say 55% wicked and 45% good at birth. As a yet to be defined compatibilist of some sort, I believe we have free will at all levels of personal conscious development, but that our wills become freer and better as we consciously and rationally work at self-improvement over the years of our lives, if that is a goal that we have set for our adult selves.

 

Presupposition 2 for altruism: Christian altruists, the traditional kind, did not believe we were born good, but we were free enough and good enough, that if we asked Jesus for forgiveness of our sins, we could be saved. Modern Christians and secularists likely believe we are naturally, morally neutral, or even good from birth.

 

There are secular exceptions: Atheist primatologist Robert Sapolsky thinks we are all self-interested even when we convince ourselves we are being noble and kind, and Bernard Mandeville believed the same. Atheist Thomas Hobbes was a psychological egoist.

 

It seems that biologists that study primates are realists based upon endless hours of observing psychological egoism motivating primates, including humans. This is a perfect segue into Presuppostion 3.

 

Presupposition 3 for egoism: I agree that people are naturally selfish or self-interested and this is psychological egoism. But I turn this upside down right away. People are naturally, mostly but not totally, selfish, because they are naturally selfless. They are not much naturally selfish or self-interested. People are altruist, groupist, running in packs, serving the interest of the group above their personal needs, and, this is how their social selfishness is manifested as short-term, dog-eat-dog, power-acquiring, narcissistic, in bouts of competitive, interpersonal misbehavior. It is based in selfless self-hating and self-abuse, and that ripples through the family, community and society. It is evil through and through.

 

Some of people’s altruism is generous and kind, but most of it is selfish and misbehaving.

 

Ethics are needed to give people good values. If we teach people to be and act as rational egoists that maverize, their self-esteem and self-love will make them will good, loving and godly, and that love will allow self-loving egoists to be kind to and cooperate with others.

 

I assume selfishness is good or loving, and selflessness is hate or evil; thus people are born as psychological altruists, but must be civilizes to live as if psychological egoism was their moral motive, where they have learned to do other-care through self-care and enlightened self-interest.

 

In sum selfishness is good and the selfish are generous, while selflessness is bad, and the selfless groupists, group-living and nonindividuating, are selfish, a bad and undesirable trait, neglecting uplifting self-care and other-care.

 

Presupposition 3 for altruism. Traditional Christians believed we were born psychological egoists and were naturally selfish or evil, and needed to be taught to be selfless, to serve others and sacrifice ourselves to the needs of the collective. Modern Christians and secular humanists likely assume we are psychologically neutral (part egoist and part altruist in nature), or even naturally altruistic or benevolent in impulse and motivation.

 

Proposition 4 for egoism: We need moral training so that we can be good and loving.

 

Proposition 4 for altruists, Christian and secular: We need moral training to be good and loving, or to stay good and loving.

 

Proposition 5 for egoism: In the middle is virtue: I urge that people do self-care more than other-care for the most part, but that other-care or altruism is a secondary but vital moral imperative for every egoist to commit to and fulfill. These egoists will be temperate and sensible, logical about laying out options, and how to proceed.

 

Proposition 5 for both sacred and secular altruists: Excess is virtue. I regard altruists as emotional more than rational, so this makes them splitters—those false-dilemma producing, black-and-white moralists or fanatics that insist that other-care is all that matters, that self-care should be minimal at best, or at worst, totally ignored as one is a hero and saint, going to superhuman lengths to deny the self in generous service to humanity.

 

Proposition 6 for egoism: Collectivists assume morally serving that which is objective is good and noble, and the ethical chasing after what is subjective, parochial, local, selfish, petty, and trivial is selfish and immoral.

 

They are correct is concluding that what is morally praiseworthy is linked to long-term benefits for the self but also for the community. This is the objective moral orientation.

 

The less desirable and more blameworthy moral orientation is linked to short-sighted, hedonic indulgence in immediate gratification of the self and the group-concerns, and this subjective over-concentration on the local leads to sin and lawlessness.

 

For both the altruists/collectivists and the egoists/individualists, to chase after objective ends is opting for self-discipline and delayed, immediate self-sacrifice and delayed gratification for the long run’s sake of improving the self or serving the needs of others.

 

The egoist knows that the egoist, as a rational egoist driven by considerations of enlightened self-interest, is the objective state of mind that connects the individual, the agent, to the eternal, necessary good, the beautiful, the truthful. It is the small, isolated, individual-living, individuators that is objective.

 

Proposition 6 for altruism: The collective is objective, and the single individual is solipsistic and short-sighted, unhealthily self-referential.

 

The joiner, the group-liver, the selfless altruist, group-oriented and nonindividuating, though running in packs from three or four in number, all the way to potentially billions of connected joiners on social media—the issues and tastes of the masses are to be met as the common good of paramount importance.

 

This herd of joiners, local and few in number, or global and in the thousands or millions of participants, is subjective, narcissistic, emotional more than logical, passionate more than serene, hating of self and others more than loving the self and others, more evil than good, energized by power struggles to gather power to the self, an endless social battle to grow the self and group at the expense of those next door and rival groups or tribes. That all could self-realize and yet coexist peacefully and lawfully with other self-actualized neighbors is alien to altruists and collectivist.

 

Here is my ethical system. We should be rational egoists, more driven by self-care than other care.

 

I am a psychological altruist: people are driven by other-interest more than self-interest, but they’re naturally egoistic enough to learn to be loving if taught positive values of rational self-interest, and if they voluntarily adopt such a program and apply it in their own lives, and in their relations with others.

 

Roughly, ethical altruism suggests that we should sacrifice ourselves in service to others and humankind; other-care has higher moral standing that chasing after self-care.

 

Altruists are likely classical psychological egoists (people pursue their own interests first and foremost.) Some may think we are driven innately by an equal measure of primally and instinctively by self-care and other care.

 

Moral optimists, assuming humans are naturally good and kind, would be psychological altruists of the kind that think unselfish devotion to humankind is the natural human impulse, consistent with human nature being good, and that ethical altruism would reinforce this generous, natural, and social impulse that society may suppress or distort rendering adults ruthless, selfish and competitive.