Human Sacrifice

I really don't give a rat's ass about the starving children of Haiti. There, I said it.

Oh, I feel for them; I empathize with their suffering. I'd have to be a sociopath not to. And that, in part, is why I resent the way their suffering is used as a tool to try and extort money from me. Let me tell you what I'm talking about.

The other day, I used the Facebook Causes app to suggest to a number of my friends that, should they wish to give me a birthday present, I would appreciate the donation in my name of some money to NORML to fight for the legalization of marijuana. It's just one of the social issues I'm strongly invested in, and it is on this front that I feel the greatest changes can be affected with the least amount of effort. I understand that some of my friends don't use marijuana; that some have a poor opinion of those who do; and even that some of them might not subscribe to the basic belief that my body is owned by me and not the government. I had hoped that they might choose to engage in some constructive debate with me over the issue, and give me a chance to educate them about the lies and propaganda behind drug prohibition and the many positive social effects that might come about with its repeal. Barring that, I would have hoped they would have the courtesy simply to ignore it and go about their business. What I got was an abusive and disrespectful screed posted on my wall by someone I would have thought, if they did not support basic civil rights, would at least know better than to fuck with me. I am continually startled by the way people seem to imagine I'm interested in their bullshit moralizing. It says right there on my profile page, 'Religious Views: Satanist'. One imagines people would take that as a signal that trying to beat me over the head with their supposed values would be taken amiss.

What really struck me though, was not that she said I was stupid or immature or that people like me give Goths a bad name, but that she chose to castigate me for daring to ask her to donate to an organization working to reform drug laws when there are thousands of starving children in Haiti that really need help.

And I don't deny that those poor unfortunate people do need help. But what with the barrage of charity come-ons we've been subjected to in the past weeks, anyone who can and will send aid to Haiti probably already has or is planning to. And I'm not going to say that sending food and water to people whose home has been destroyed by earthquakes is a bad thing to do. If you feel it's something that you want to do, feel free. I will hardly stop you.

But I'm probably never going to personally meet a starving Haitian, and I have close personal friends who have been arrested and imprisoned due to our ridiculous drug laws (which the Harper Nazicon government has been planning to give even more teeth to recently). So I beg your pardon, Ms. High and Mighty, for thinking that our marijuana laws are bit of a more pressing problem for me personally than the destruction of Port au Prince. This is my birthday, my highest of holy days, and I feel no compunction at using it to get things that are to my direct advantage. If you're so fucking concerned about the poor starving Haitians that you consider everyone in the world to be obligated to sacrifice their own self-interest to help them, are you planning to fly over there tomorrow and start handing out bottled water? No? Didn't think so, you fucking self-righteous hypocrite.

That's why the supposed moral obligation of altruism is, in the end, a kind of human sacrifice. There are plenty of good reasons to give up some of your own material comfort to help another person who is not as well off; you get their immediate gratitude, you help make society more stable and less dangerous, you contribute to a rise in general productivity and thus general living standards, and of course there is that warm fuzzy feeling inside that evolution gave us because tribes where people take care of the unfortunate are on average stronger than tribes where the temporarily disadvantaged are just left to die. And yet, for some people, all of those perfectly good reasons are just not enough; to these people's minds, if there isn't an intrinsic moral obligation to give up what we have to ease the suffering of others, there's no reason for it at all. And I'm not just talking about Randites here, though the Randites are the opposite side of this particular coin. Self-interest is not the same thing as selfishness. It is, in many circumstances, entirely true to one's self-interest to feed the starving, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, protect the defenceless, and heal the sick. But the obligation to altruism leaves no room for self-interest. As long as I have a morsel of food in my mouth while another is hungry, by this metric, I am evil and must be forced to give it up.

And yes, there are plenty of so-called altruists who at least make a sincere effort to be true to their own moral standards, and plenty more who make their token gifts and rationalize away how much they 'need' the rest of their time and money for themselves (pretty pathetic, placing your 'need' to have an apartment and health insurance above the needs of a Haitian child forced into prostitution to feed her family, and still having the temerity to call your self an altruist!) And then there are those who manipulate this ingrained Pavlovian response our society has conditioned into its populace to their own advantage, and those who use the chaos of disaster to advance their own agendas. And when you consider the degree to which the current suffering in Haiti (as in many other places in the world) is our fault to begin with, the saccharine appeals to our moral obligation to help the poor starving Haitians start to sound more than a little hollow and self-serving. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the obligation to self-sacrifice that we call 'altruism' is just one part of a larger memeplex lovingly designed over the centuries as a means of manipulating the lesser folk into systematically denying their own best interests for the benefit of the ruling elite.

So I don't resent the nice fellow from PLAN Canada who came around to ask us to give some emergency relief for Haiti. It's a good cause, and if we weren't poor as dirt I might consider it. But as it is, I have a hard enough time keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads, and there are many, many more pressing issues that my money would go to even if I did have some to spare, and I am sick and tired of being told that helping the starving children of Haiti is so very important that it takes precedence over my own well-being. I am not about to let myself be made into a human sacrifice.