Pathological altruism

Ed West writes at Lapidomedia,

...as Christianity has declined in Europe, its ideas have lived on and sort of mutated into the social justice religion which still derives much of its logic from the old faith.

The transgender cause, for instance, partly rests on the idea we each have a ‘soul’, rather than just biological mechanisms.

...Anti-racism has at its heart St Paul’s idea that we are all united in Christ, whatever our ethnic group, and the anti-racist story, epitomised by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, would not have been possible without Christianity.

This universalism is what makes European Christian countries so nice to live in, but the downside is what is called ‘pathological altruism’; that is, altruism that harms the interests of one’s own group and favours people who might not reciprocate. This did not matter while the simple fact of geography kept different parts of the world distant, and when newcomers were expected to conform, but in the jet age – and especially the smart phone age – it presents a serious weakness.

The downside of Christian universalism is that it invites settlement from people who are themselves clannish and divide the world into an in-group and out-group, often between the believers and non-believers.

And for all the sympathy one might feel for the migrants as individuals, there is no way such large-scale movement of clannish people into decadent societies will not cause social unrest.

Importing significant numbers of people from outside Europe is clearly not in our continent’s interests, yet it is hard to make the moral argument because of the logic that we should not discriminate against the outsider, something ingrained in us by Christianity.

In some ways this is a misreading of the faith, for Christianity is about voluntary altruism, whereas forcing one’s poorer countrymen to make the sacrifices (and it would inevitably fall on the poor, whose neighbourhoods would be home to the refugees), is not.

But that is a complex argument to make, and it is one that no bishop does.

In fact the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have long campaigned for more immigration to Britain, despite the evidence that it reduces social solidarity and harms the poor they are supposed to champion; the Catholic Church even campaigned for an immigration amnesty, even though similar schemes in Spain and the United States led to a huge increase in subsequent migration.

...It is sad and strange that the country that almost destroyed Europe with pathological nationalism now threatens it with pathological altruism; but one cannot ignore the role that Christianity and the churches have played in this debacle.

Read more here.