There were several places within Is Art a Waste of Time that made controversial statements. This was without a doubt intentional on the part of the speaker, because it was the lines that I disagreed with that I truly noticed. One such line came from the narrator Rhys Southan, who was trying to paraphrase Peter Singer’s 1971 essay ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ for the reader. “Any break we take from working to reduce suffering throughout the world is like having a leisurely nap beside a lake where thousands of children are screaming for our help.”
To interject my analysis of the Effective Altruism movement, I think they are intentionally trying to be hyperbolic. This is clear when Sam Hilton asks Rhys Southan, the author, if Rhys’ movie script was “the best movie script ever made”. Clearly, that must be a rhetorical question, based on both the hyperbole, and the context of the sentence in the paragraph. However, it has the desired effect on the author, who begrudgingly concedes Hilton’s point. With that in mind, it is easy to see that much of what Hilton claims around the author is exaggeration to argue his personal beliefs. as an extended guilt trip.
In fact, the entire movement appears to be a never-ending, gaslighting, trap of a guilt trip. Members are all but ordered to work to the bone, because lost productivity equates to suffering that could have been eased, but wasn’t. EAs are told to donate a substantial portion of their income, and they are even scolded to feel guilt about if their gift really made a difference. Regardless of what they have donated it is never enough “…Everybody can be doing more than they currently are.”. Even in old age, Effective Altruists are hounded with their “Actual Good Achieved”. Using a classic psychological trick, EA members are assigned a score, which almost instinctively causes humans to compete. Unfortunately, the members never stop to think about who they are competing against; an idealized version of themselves invented by another person.
Effective Altruism viewed with the above in mind appears less like a judgemental saint, and more like a cold, calculating cult. Effective Altruism has a very admirable end goal, in the end of suffering, but it may be they have become the very monsters they hunt.
