Shadow

I have a vague memory of a tweet from a long time ago. Something to the effect of ‘Effective altruism. Seems suspicious. Makes you wonder… what are they hiding?’

I was quite offended by this. Fuck you.

Now I find it quite funny (though I think the actual tweet was more antagonistic than the one I remember).

One must admire the brazenness of effective altruism. The yolo. The go hard or go home.

‘You know good? And you know how great it is? Well, what if we had as much of it as possible. Not even like just a lot, but like actually as much as possible. Across time and space.’

However, the brightest light casts the darkest shadow. As they say.

The ‘elephant in the brain’ model of psychology makes a lot of sense to me. Briefly, we’re often driven by unconscious, self-interested motivations - which we deceive both others and ourselves about. Verbal reasoning is less for rationality and more for rationalising.

This seems quite similar to me to the idea of ‘the shadow’.

And to a large extent I see circling as a process of integrating one’s shadow. Becoming aware of the unconscious motivations and beliefs, and then by some magic, one is more whole afterwards.

I’m less of a fan of thinking these days. Often words seem like a distraction to me, like something of a smokescreen. I guess this makes sense if one thinks of verbal reasoning as for rationalising.

Though to be fair to thinking, it did get us maths, which seems good.

My sense is that the way spiritual types use the word ‘conscious’ maps onto this. Someone is conscious if they are acting, or speaking, or existing from a place of consciousness, and not driven by unconscious motivations or beliefs.

How much consciousness is necessary?

I suspect there is no answer to this.

But it is a shame that we can’t put pause on the world for everyone to sort their shit. Instead, we must do our psychology on a deadline.

Another frame I have is that people always get their needs met, one way or another. I don’t think this is quite true (do people on hunger strikes not need food?).

The important point is, for things that people need - if they cannot achieve them directly, they will do so indirectly.

Just as communities can form around values, they can form around shadows. And just as communities can have collective values, they can have collective shadows.

What kind of needs are at play in effective altruism?

Well, at a quick pass, the need to be or be seen as smart, and the need to be or be seen as good.

There are a few tricky things. One is that the bar for meeting these can climb. Another is that the maximisation element can lead to things being pushed further into the shadow.

(Insofar as you feel guilty, you have a moral responsibility to replace it with something more like excitement, as this will be more effective)

Effective altruism is built for homo economicus, not for homo sapiens.