Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Some commenters on the recent post accused me of misunderstanding the Nietzschean objection to altruism.

We hate altruism, they said, not because we’re “bad and cruel”, but because we instead support vitalism. Vitalism is a moral system that maximizes life, glory and strength, instead of maximizing happiness. Altruism is bad because it throws resources into helping sick (maybe even dysgenic) people, thus sapping our life, glory, and strength.

In a blog post (linked in the original post, discussed at length in the comments), Walt Bismarck compares the ultimate fate of altruism to WALL-E: a world where morbidly obese humans are kept in a hedonistic haze by robot servitors (although the more typical example I hear is tiling the universe with rats on heroin, which maximizes a certain definition of pleasure). In contrast, vitalism imagines a universe alive with dynamism, heroism, and great accomplishments.

My response: in most normal cases, altruism and vitalism suggest the same solutions.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/altruism-and-vitalism-as-fellow-travelers