This was originally posted on my blog (please check out my window-dressing and subscribe!) on 7-30-16 as a follow-up to this post, So-called communal narcissists, which is also cross-posted on EA Forum. I'm in the processing of cross-posting all my old EA-revelant posts in chronological order.
In case it isn’t obvious from my last post, I get touchy about the accusation that someone is just doing good as validation of self. This is because doing good for others, especially strangers with whom I have no reciprocal relationship, validates the shit out of me.
I think about myself and my image quite a lot. I believe if I had better character, I wouldn’t be so obsessed with myself. But another part of me rebels against that thought. No, it says, It’s just a normal human need to feel special. But then yet another part of me pipes up and says that I don’t just want to feel special in the way normal humans deserve, as a beloved friend and family member– I want to feel objectively special. I want to feel like I’m actually, objectively good, not just in the eyes of friends and family. I want to do the most good possible. And I think that’s what puts people off about the alleged communal narcissist.
The legitimate accusation about communal narcissists is that they are cold and unloving in their personal relationships. The victims of their manipulation and coldness have been wronged. And I totally see how someone could take narcissistic pride in volunteering their time and money, and that pride can be an issue for the people around them even if their time and money are put to great uses.
The illegitimate part, and what I was trying to argue in the post, was the implication that narcissistic motives necessarily tainted the fruits of the narcissist’s labor. The implication is that goodness can only come from selfless feelings, that goodness itself is nothing more than externalized character traits. Many, many people hold this view. I grew up getting this message indirectly in church and school. It’s a common objection to effective altruism: we’re “cold and calculating,” we aren’t “giving from the heart.” And it makes me crazy, because I think viewing good acts merely as evidence of character is unbelievably narcissistic.
This is what makes giving about the giver and not the receiver.
Objections to people that get off on community service are not objections to egotism. They are demands for the right kind of egotism. They are demands that in grasping for goodness, we not exceed the reach of people we feel special feelings for. The objection sees only the speck in the communal narcissist’s eye and not the log in the eyes of the good, unselfish people who would never impeach their character by doing a good deed they might feel smug about. If you are engaging in effective charity, thinking that the validity of your motives even compares to the benefits delivered to others is so self-absorbed as to be nonsensical. And that’s okay, as long as your scrupulous motivations don’t stop you from doing the charity. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter to the beneficiaries if you’re self-absorbed.
I grant the possibility that narcissistically-motivated communal acts are less likely to do good, because they are optimized to satisfy the giver’s feelings rather than help the recipients. (Though I would argue that the more common and accepted warm-glow giving is also optimized for the giver’s feelings and not the good of the recipients.) That just seems like such a minor risk when compared with the risk that “being a good person” with pure motives would stop willing and able people from actually doing good things!
It was clear from the Psychology Today article that the author felt that doing charity while harboring narcissistic self-regard in your heart was hypocrisy. She might have just been assuming that it’s highly unlikley to do a lot of good with alloyed motives at your core. (Heaven help us if that is true, because we don’t have enough saints to meet the world’s need.) She might also be assuming that most community service doesn’t really accomplish that much for others. But if that was the case, I don’t see why having pure motives would turn make-work into something valuable. If the community service is actually way, way less important than the motives it reveals, then the real problem is not that some people have insincere motives, but that the community is awarding status for pointless bullshit. My point is that, somewhere along the line, the author was failing to connect the goodness of acts to the goodness they accomplished for others– acts were evaluated solely on the basis of pure or impure motives.
The idea that good has to come from a pure heart threatens me on a personal level, because I know I can’t deliver that, even though an idealistic part of me still holds on to the fantasy that I could. On a more rational level, I simply don’t accept that good should be beholden to my flaws. That comes as a huge relief. So many people and animals are suffering, and they don’t have to wait for me to be a better person to get my help. When they get my donations or benefit from my volunteering, they don’t know a thing about me. My inner goodness or badness can’t reach them. When I think of what they are feeling, I don’t matter at all. I can’t bear this truth in my heart at all times, or, indeed, at most times. But, fortunately for them, it doesn’t matter.
For me the most important first response to this post is that if its extremely common for people to view things in a certain way that you disagree with; and those people hold that view strongly your first assumption should be that you are almost certainly making a grave error. That is especially true if you are young and those people have more experience with the major elements of life. It is a mistake to think that if you can rationalise your view in a convincing or elegant way that has any bearing on whether it is a reasonable way to think. The task should be to focus on what you have experienced in your life that may be leading to you thinking differently in this way. And it is absolutely essential to rely on and actually take seriously the opinions of people you trust who are more experienced than you. It is a mistake to disregard what they say if they express it in an 'uneducated' way or if they seem less knowledgeable than you.
You pointed out one important reason why most people have this character-based intuition about goodness: the only way to have flourishing personal relationships is to have a good character. That is because personal relationships involve genuine sacrifice and a narcissistically motivated person is not capable of this. So although they may achieve 'good' for a bunch of other people they are not associated with they will likely sever the fabric of their families and those they associate with. In this case the goodness of the act being about character is completely about the receiver because the only way for relationships to flourish in a way that benefits others is to act out a virtuous character. In fact in this context the notion of a 'good act' becomes totally meaningless; everything is about intent. If I give my boyfriend a gift because I expect something in return without me actually caring about their joy; this knowledge renders the act totally worthless from his perspective and likely actually harmful. Kind words can become petty manipulations, acts of service empty transactions..and so on. In this context everything is about character and intent.
What would society look like if most people functioned as communal narcissists? There would be rife emotional neglect and abuse in private and a strange Orwellian competition for 'goodness points' in public. Then there is the problem of who ends up defining the terms of those goodness points. Unfortunately this will be the most psychopathic people around who will seize the opportunity to have such overwhelming control over people's lives. These kind of social dynamics have occurred before in maoist china and the soviet union. The level of suffering that occurred in those regimes is beyond imagination.
The essential problem with what you are saying is that communal narcissists will not instinctively act towards the 'good'- they will be completely driven by the social rewards they might obtain. And that leaves them open to manipulation; once social dynamics are driven by manipulation disastrous results are obtained because it encourages the most psychopathic elements to determine what happens. In Nazi Germany the same communal narcissists who in today's California may reduce suffering for others would almost certainly act out the execution of innocent people. If good deeds are driven by a person's genuine desire to sacrifice for others then they are not open to such manipulation. A person of good character will resist with all their might the temptation to carry out morally suspect acts no matter how much social credit they may receive for it.
Thus, the risk of communal narcissism is not minor as you say. I think you have underestimated this by discounting the propensity for communal narcissists to be open to manipulation by social conditions; and also perhaps not appreciating the uniqueness of a social environment that will drive communal narcissists to actually do good. The EA and related communities may be an exception to this; but that is a very isolated and unusual environment, especially in historical terms. For the most part the members of such communities are enormously privileged, highly educated and endowed with very secure lives.
The examples of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union brings another important point into focus: I think the building of individual character is much more powerful than you seem to think. If everyone in those societies truly focussed on that millions of lives likely would have been saved; in fact the only real bulwark against the development of such regimes is individuals deciding not to take part. This is a really very serious duty that all of us should be undertaking in small ways throughout our lives. Personally I would argue that this is actually a deeper form of 'good' than temporarily removing the suffering of people that we don't know through charity. This is because if it were universalised the positive impact of that for everyone would be far greater than any charity could ever hope to achieve. To act in the spirit of that is to play your role in achieving such a vision.
You also claim that there is a big risk that people of good character will not carry out as much good as they might because they will question their own motives. Again I think this point falls down due to a misestimation of what communal narcissists will actually do in broader contexts. The loss of extra 'social status driven' charity in isolated social contexts where that is encouraged is going to be far outweighed by the fact that questioning ones motives will prevent one being led into darker actions.