Your article is based on the premise that it is important for us to help complete strangers who don’t mean anything to us. That sacrifice is a constant of righteousness regardless of a person’s beliefs or lack thereof.
From an objective viewpoint, sacrifice is wrong. Why should we have to give value in return for lesser value, or no value at all? We should help people because they have value to us, not because they are unable to be valuable at all.
“The man with guilt is the man who will do whatever you tell him to.”
The reason religious people do this is because they are taught from a young age that it is moral to sacrifice and amoral to trade with the acquisition of a value in mind. Their guilt does the rest.
Maybe the reason most rationalists don’t devote as much self-sacrifice to the world around them is because they hold somewhat of an objective viewpoint, and a moral code that has no room for self-sacrifice. In short, most rationalists don’t feel guilty for not helping people they don’t know. Why should they feel guilty for that?
I feel I must reply to my own post to update a bit as what I believe has changed a little.
By the nature of humans, every individual human is potentially valuable to you unless they prove themselves otherwise. Humans are capable of reason, productivity, trade, etc.
Just don’t go sacrificing the actual (yourself) to the potential (the usefulness of a stranger). If you can aid someone in an emergency without risking yourself, there is a selfish justification for doing so.
Your article is based on the premise that it is important for us to help complete strangers who don’t mean anything to us. That sacrifice is a constant of righteousness regardless of a person’s beliefs or lack thereof.
From an objective viewpoint, sacrifice is wrong. Why should we have to give value in return for lesser value, or no value at all? We should help people because they have value to us, not because they are unable to be valuable at all.
“The man with guilt is the man who will do whatever you tell him to.” The reason religious people do this is because they are taught from a young age that it is moral to sacrifice and amoral to trade with the acquisition of a value in mind. Their guilt does the rest.
Maybe the reason most rationalists don’t devote as much self-sacrifice to the world around them is because they hold somewhat of an objective viewpoint, and a moral code that has no room for self-sacrifice. In short, most rationalists don’t feel guilty for not helping people they don’t know. Why should they feel guilty for that?
I feel I must reply to my own post to update a bit as what I believe has changed a little.
By the nature of humans, every individual human is potentially valuable to you unless they prove themselves otherwise. Humans are capable of reason, productivity, trade, etc.
Just don’t go sacrificing the actual (yourself) to the potential (the usefulness of a stranger). If you can aid someone in an emergency without risking yourself, there is a selfish justification for doing so.