The Human Condition: Effective Altruism

By Daniel Schnee on November 9, 2022.

Sovereignty and COVID-19 mandates… they are certainly hot topics around southern Alberta these days. And thanks to the ability for many people to do what they imagine is ‘research’ on the internet these days, it is hard to keep any and all voices of reason at the forefront.

If all this leaves you feeling depressed and worried for our province (and indeed nation) you are not alone. Both current events and our inner world of emotions and thoughts can act in unison to leave us feeling unhealthy, impotent rage, and thus we get increasingly sick both mentally and physically. I truly understand the cycle. I suffer from Bipolar disorder, and constantly deal with that type of internal struggle no matter what is happening in the news.

But I have very good news. We do not have to struggle as hard as we might think… for the very reason we are sick and tired (wanting hope and peace) can be fulfilled by “merely” giving it to others more effectively. Thus, in the last decade or so a philosophical movement called Effective Altruism has arisen. Broadly defined, it is planning your charitable works in the most sagacious, i.e. strategic way possible.

For example, having a bake sale for a local cause is a fantastic thing. What Effective Altruism suggests is that a person can consider choosing a career that has that kind of event (pardon the pun) baked right into it. This means opening a bakery and featuring items on the menu whose sales are exclusively donated to specific charities. Thus, one can turn their one-time bake sale into a decades-long initiative. To that end corporate coffee shops do great work with their routine specialty cookies and drinks that raise millions of dollars for charity without harming their bottom line.

This also solves one of the great challenges of ongoing charity work: how one understands or defines the notion of sacrifice. Making personal sacrifices to be charitable seems to be part and parcel of charity itself; we ‘give up’ time and resources to help others. But a feeling of ‘obligation to be benevolent’ does not sit well with many, as it is a state of being that others can manipulate to make us feel we are not a good person if we don’t donate the specific amounts of time or money that they demand of us.

What Effective Altruism does is encourage wisely ‘investing’ your soul into charity as one would put money into their investment portfolio… which is to say take your love and find ways to wisely ‘invest’ that love wherein it grows to unimagined heights. No guilt, no confusion, only love and compassion in increasing amounts.

Therein lies the golden opportunity. There is nothing in the world that reduces (and often completely eliminates) stress and depression like seeing the burdens of life lifted from the shoulders of others. We become a living antidote to what we see going wrong in the world, and we mend the souls of ourselves and others, despite of what we see as stupid and evil.

Thus, if charity is a healing act then Effective Altruism is a cure; what we can do to recreate civil society.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer.

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