Victims and Survivors, Effective Altruism
Jun. 6th, 2020 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipI have had reason recently to consider what is usually expressed as the dichotomy of victims and survivors, especially in regard to those who have experienced trauma. Reading my friend Halina's book, The Testimony is educational in this regard. Halina is a survivor of the Shoah, and the four-hour interview of her experiences on Youtube make for some challenging listening, as she retells the story of being in the Lodz ghetto, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, then to finally to Stutthof; a fine way to spend your teenaged years! Moving to Melbourne post-war, Halina was instrumental in numerous activities, especially for the Humanist Society, youth homelessness issues, and, unsurprisingly, holocaust remembrance. Don't Remain a Victim was one of her catch-phrases. Of course, like most dichotomies, there is a continuum between victim and survivor. But there is also a dependency condition. In order for one to be a survivor, one must also have been a victim. As a result, it is perhaps inevitable that on occasion, there are triggers and there are bad days for our survivor friends, and we must always be there to support and care for them, as their experiences will not go away. To quote from the book: "Those who survive should testify until they die" - and quite recently, Halina did just that, helping to convict a Stutthof guard.
All of this turns my attention towards the issues of effective altruism, which continues to weigh heavily on my mind. I greatly admire those who have the opportunity and the inner strength to make such an approach to the dominant feature of their life. I am trying to do so myself, although the distractions of entertainments can quite strong (let's face it, once a fortnight I play the role of a sapient humanoid duck on a magical flat-earth, and that alternates with being a transhuman space octopus, or other such fantastical beings). I even find myself troubled by the time I spend watching television shows that I currently enjoy (e.g., Archer, The Man in the High Castle, Studio Ghibli films), even though that I spend probably around 90 minutes or so a day on such things, maximum. I cannot imagine that I would go down the path of self-mortification, and I know I am fortunate enough to have the sort of job whereby my daily activities do actually bring benefits the whole at a high level (the low, visceral level, is carried out by the baker and the candle-stick maker, not too sure about the butcher). As I get older, I find myself increasingly thinking, what is the most good I can do with the time that I have left? What generativity, to use Erik Erikson's term, can I provide?
All of this turns my attention towards the issues of effective altruism, which continues to weigh heavily on my mind. I greatly admire those who have the opportunity and the inner strength to make such an approach to the dominant feature of their life. I am trying to do so myself, although the distractions of entertainments can quite strong (let's face it, once a fortnight I play the role of a sapient humanoid duck on a magical flat-earth, and that alternates with being a transhuman space octopus, or other such fantastical beings). I even find myself troubled by the time I spend watching television shows that I currently enjoy (e.g., Archer, The Man in the High Castle, Studio Ghibli films), even though that I spend probably around 90 minutes or so a day on such things, maximum. I cannot imagine that I would go down the path of self-mortification, and I know I am fortunate enough to have the sort of job whereby my daily activities do actually bring benefits the whole at a high level (the low, visceral level, is carried out by the baker and the candle-stick maker, not too sure about the butcher). As I get older, I find myself increasingly thinking, what is the most good I can do with the time that I have left? What generativity, to use Erik Erikson's term, can I provide?
