boston progress radio

In today’s mail, I received the following notice about the Altruism Engine:

Due to numerous and repeated abuses, operation of the Altruism Engine has been suspended until further notice. We thank you for your past support of Altruism Engine endeavors and hope you will participate in and benefit from our services in the future, should they resume. We advise that you carefully consider how to apply your altruism now that you may have a sizable excess of it in the indefinite duration of this suspension and refer you to the sources below for responsible management.

Sincerely,
The Altruism Engine Authority

While disheartening, this didn’t come as a complete surprise. For some time now there have been problems with the system we’ve long had to enact altruism. Much controversy and discontent.

I don’t know how much you know about the engine and its implementation. As children, we weren’t really told much about it outside of the few, oversimplified explanations adults sometimes gave us. Do you remember any of those scant, rudimentary descriptions of the Altruism Engine you might have received before you moved to Asian America? I recall them being just informative enough to give us some awareness and appreciation that there was such a system for pooling our altruism to achieve important things. So as you might recall, the Altruism Engine is basically just that, a large-scale system for combining our altruism and directing its power towards problems and initiatives that need it, those that would otherwise be too large for us to handle with individual or loosely consolidated altruism. There are specific guidelines and details about this system one learns as one participates in the process of giving altruism and choosing its outcomes.

Maybe you have a similar system in Asian America. Embarrassingly, I have to admit I don’t know how altruism is enacted in your community (I guess this lack of knowledge is indicative of a rather culturally myopic worldview — I should have asked you about it years ago!); maybe you have a more individually centered altruism enactment process?

Anyways, there’s nothing wrong with the engine itself. It’s been working just fine, only requiring routine maintenance and proper regulation. Just input collected, raw altruism and chose the form, size and strength of power appropriate for the desired social or environmental change (like the broad, gentle and firm power to nurture the growth of minds, the focused, unwavering power to resolve conflict, the versatile power to engender smiles where they are needed, the careful and persistent power to revitalize debilitated ecosystems). All the trouble comes from the second half of the process. Allocation of the Altruism Engine output, a matter of moral judgment and moral priorities, has always been ripe for debate.

The strife resulted in many abortive attempts at compromise. While perpetually frustrating for many of us, the dispute did not threaten the operation of the engine. It kept running, fueled by our altruism, generating the power to achieve greater goods, even if not in the proportions we each wanted. That is democracy, after all. Then, the manipulation and exploitation began, and the simple idea that organized, collective altruism could achieve greater progress was twisted towards a deranged notion of progress that a group of subversive elitists managed to convince much of the populace embodied the best, greatest actualization of their altruism. But really, it was just a form of oppression brightly packaged with the appealing language of deep frames and deep narratives, shaded unobtrusively with misinformation. Let me not dwell on the details here. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard something about this in the news lately. I just thought I’d mention a little about it in case you hadn’t.

Here’s what I really wanted to tell you. After I read the notice, I put it on the kitchen table and looked at the box I’ve packed full of altruism over the past weeks, sitting in the corner on the white tile floor. I’d been meaning to call the Altruism Engine Authority to have it picked up, but now I need to figure out what to do with it. And for the first time in a long while, I felt the incredible heaviness of its contents. What would you do with it?

[ Altruism Engine graphic by Illa Stratic ]

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