"When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
Bruce Charlton has an excellent piece today about the fakeness of altruism which reminded me of this quote from G.K. Chesterton. Altruism is indeed fake because it is an artificial self-conscious imitation of virtue. It is the mind posing as the heart and the self congratulating itself on its goodness. This is not a cynical put down of philanthropic selflessness but points out that the attempt to do good, even the desire to do good, is not a spiritual quality because it does not come from the soul but the calculating mind which is to say, the earthly self. Jesus said in Matthew 6:1 that good works should be done in secret to have any real spiritual impact and altruism is never done in secret because even if it is not done in front of others it is done for and from the self. True goodness is always spontaneous, but the altruistic mind is always looking for ways to demonstrate its own perfection.
Chesterton points out that all goodness to be real must be rooted in the spiritual. When the desire to be and to do good has lost contact with the spiritual it becomes an imposter that adopts the outer appearance of goodness but has no connection to what is really good which is God, and therefore actually does spiritual harm. This is the case even when the would-be good person claims to be and even thinks himself to be motivated by religious faith. If this faith is only in the mind and if it is directed to worldly ends then it is not faith in God for "God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit" (John 4:24). Altruism, or doing good to others, is pulling God down to this world and worshipping him in matter.
Obviously, this does not mean we should not do good. As Bruce points out, two wrongs don't make a right. The argument (if argument is the right word) must be lifted to a higher plane, the plane of spirit and of truth rather than that of the thinking, calculating, time-centred mind. There apparent contradictions are reconciled and when we act from that plane we do so without thought or ambition or desire. Altruism is a secular imitation of true virtue and, as such, spiritually corrosive.
4 comments:
"Altruism is indeed fake because it is an artificial self-conscious imitation of virtue. It is the mind posing as the heart and the self congratulating itself on its goodness. "
Artificial self-conscious imitation of virtue... That's very well conceptualized. It tries to make virtue objective and measurable; and entirely a matter of what is done materially, without regard to motivation.
This is so dominant in our civilization that most people (including myself until after I became a Christian) can scarcely imagine any other meaningful concept of goodness.
All debate about goodness or virtue becomes a comparisons of means intended to attain various possible altruistic goals.
I had the Chesterton quote down as something I wanted to expand on and then your digging beneath the surface piece this morning provided just the incentive. Altruism only became a thing when religion was emptied of its spiritual content and the human ego mopped up the spillage, so to speak.
Chesterton writes of a religious scheme that "is" or "was" shattered, thereby implying that such shattering is caused by some violent blow from outside. This seems to be the standard Roman Catholic view of the Reformation. Everything was just fine until Martin Luther, perhaps modeling his nefarious strategy on that used by the Serpent in the Garden, wrecked everything. I think it is much more accurate to say that a religious scheme simply shatters (or disintegrates) when corruption has degraded its internal cohesion. I realize this is somewhat tangential to the point of your post, but think spiritual understanding is clouded when we exaggerate the importance of exogenous factors. The hurricane only brings down the old tree because the old tree was rotted at its core.
I wonder if we shouldn't call the disintegrated virtues "professional virtues," since to have them very largely comes down to professing them. "Taking a stand" is so often a matter of articulating one's values in words, and so seldom a matter of embodying one's values in conduct. This is, of course, the real spiritual disintegration because word and deed come apart when a soul, like that old tree, is rotted at its core.
I'm not a Roman Catholic so I would not regard the Reformation in the same entirely negative light as Chesterton appears to do. I do think it was in response to the corruption of the Church at the time but also a result of Western Man needing to stand on his own two spiritual feet, if such an image can be used without absurdity. But when you humanise religion, as the Reformation did, you also risk severing the spiritual from the religious and it did that too. I would say it is this that leads to what you are calling "professional virtues". It's not that people were any more virtuous before the shattering of Christianity but that this shattering opened the door for the materialisation of virtue and the cutting it loose from its spiritual source so that it becomes like a cut flower and soon shrivels and dies. When virtue becomes its own reason for being and is not grounded in God then it becomes fake and artificial.
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