Benevolence Without Benefit: Why Benevolence Can Backfire
Kyle Smith reviews the late philosopher David Stove's book for The New York Post. Stove calls benevolence "the heroin of the enlightened":
Stove, an Australian whose posthumously published works have gained increasing notice in recent years, is the author of "Whats Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment." Released for the first time, this book-length essay is his final major work. "The whole of economic history since 1789," he writes, "testifies that, the more extravagantly you indulge your benevolence, the more extravagant still will your next indulgence of it need to be."Stove took his own life in 1994 while suffering from terminal cancer, so he never considered Barack Obama. But if he were alive today he would place Obama in the camp of those political thinkers driven by Enlightenment notions about benevolence -- John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, even Karl Marx. All of these men -- and even, Stove argues, Joseph Stalin -- thirsted to improve the lot of humanity. "Stalin had certain false beliefs, of course, about what would increase human happiness, especially the belief that community of property would bring about an immense increase of happiness," Stove writes, "but then, as we have seen, this belief had been shared for nearly two hundred years by very many of the most Enlightened and benevolent people of Europe. (It still is.)"
What's wrong with benevolence? Nothing, in most cases. Those who help their neighbor rightly take satisfaction in it. But Stove says that when three factors are present, benevolence starts to look scary. These factors are universality (I want to save the world), disinterestedness (I stand to gain nothing as I save the world) and externality (I make no demands that those I help change their attitude or behavior; I simply propose to change circumstances such as how much money or access to health care they have).
...Just as virtue is its own reward, Enlightenment benevolence is its own payoff; no successful result ever needs to be shown. And if benevolence does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, that evidence is simply ignored
This is the biggest stretch, by far, of linking President Obama to the most evil villains of History. It makes absolutely no sense.
I'm struggling to even get a handle on some thread of logic behind it so that I can refute the flawed logic. I can't manage it.
I'm just speechless.
This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read. Bar none.
whistleDick at August 21, 2011 8:40 AM
This is the biggest stretch, by far, of linking President Obama to the most evil villains of History. It makes absolutely no sense.
It makes sense if you see them all being on the same road, and it all ends in the same place: a Stalin-like Totalitarian regime were things are done to you for you own good.
Remember, there is no tyranny like one exercised for the good of its victims, for the tryants do so with the approval of their own conscience.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 21, 2011 9:03 AM
Another great book recommendation--thanks.
Two points:
1. This is one thing I don't like about my employer: the shakedowns for charitable contributions and the emphasis on volunteer work. I've seen what "stimulus" does in my own family and others': kids never really grow up and become independent and they have progeny they can't support. I give red and green to the local blood bank instead. And I didn't join my coworkers in fixing up a school that the parents, teachers and kids should have worked on themselves. I've got shit to do around my own place.
2. This is how a lot of women are their own worst enemies. How many women wreck their health on the vegan or vegetarian diets they take up to help save the world? How many stick with an incorrigible loser because he needs help? Or support their 30-year-old babies? An underemployed friend of mine applied for a volunteer position at a museum. Why is she just giving her time away--again? "Heroin of the enlightened," indeed.
Lori at August 21, 2011 9:51 AM
I find it a stretch to claim that Uncle Joe, in the depths of his heart, cared anything about the state of humanity. Maybe in the very, very abstract, but certainly not if you drill down any deeper; it was mostly just a cover story. And his policies were disastrous, not only for the people of the Soviet Union, but for the leadership too; if an incompetent like Brezhnev gotten control after Stalin rather than Khrushchev, the USSR might have collapsed by 1960. Khrushchev was an effective leader in part because he discarded the Leninist pretense of embodying the will of the masses. (We're all lucky that Khrushchev didn't live longer, and that Stalin left him such a huge mess to clean up.)
Dick, if you'll put aside the comparison to Obama for a moment, you have to admit that the article accurately describes the modus operandi of the Left. Another way of stating the author's point in the second-to-last paragraph that Amy quoted is that benevolence is suspect when the person doing it claims to have no motivation whatsoever. We all know the human mind doesn't work that way. You must have a motivation for everything you do, whether it's an instinctive sensation like hunger, or an upper-brain complex emotion like the altrustic feeling that comes from, say, writing a check to a worthwhile charity.
No one ever does anything with any motivation. Therefore, anyone who claims to be doing so is automatically suspect. And, in the case of 20th-century Leftism, history shows that it's entirely reasonable to assume that such people aren't revealing their motivations because they know that it would reflect badly on them if they were to do so. To state it bluntly, they seek power and control over the lives of others. That's why they don't want to reveal their motivation. If you're walking down the street, and someone you've never met comes up to you and offers to give you something valuable and expensive, for no reason and with absolutely no obligation on your part, what is your first reaction? Do you you just take it, or are you suspicious? If you're an adult, you've probably learned from experience that there's a 99% chance that there's an angle, so right away you're suspicious. And your suspicions will probably turn out to be correct.
Same deal in politics. Anyone who wants to give you something, with no stated motivation and no obligation on your part, you should be immediately suspicious of, because they are probably seeking a means to control you. And if you accept, they will probably get that means. Yet, for reasons I don't understand, that automatic suspicious reaction doesn't occur in a lot of people like it would in that guy-on-the-street situation. This is the genius of the Left. They figured out a way to short-circuit that logic. I don't know how to fight it, other than to keep reminding people that there is no free lunch.
Cousin Dave at August 21, 2011 10:04 AM
Interesting, Lori. If you are donating your time to a museum because it's what you really love doing, and because so many other people love doing it that none of you can actually get paid to do it, that's one thing. Normal people call it a hobby.
If you are doing it because it's a way you for you to feel like you are "doing good," is the need for that feeling a good thing or a bad thing? Are you really eating your vegetables and doing your civic duty, or are you just wasting your tiem?
Pirate Jo at August 21, 2011 8:03 PM
@Pirate Jo, in my friend's case, she gives, gives, gives, gets frustrated, and moves on to the next thing. Since this is a pattern for her, and she's underemployed, she might as well get frustrated at a paying job.
I liked the part in the book where Stove skewers the happiness-above-all idea.
Lori at August 21, 2011 10:28 PM
Leave a comment