Remember Folks, Altruism Means Sacrifice

By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 30/04/2020

The collectivist mindset, whether it be communist, socialist or fascist, has an organising principle and that is self-sacrifice. The individual must sacrifice personal needs and desires for the greater good of the group, the community or the state.
 
This is demanded by force according to the ethics of altruism.

I’ve written before that altruism doesn’t mean voluntarily doing nice things for others, as we all like to do from time to time. Altruism means dutifully self-sacrificing to others as a moral good.

The term “altruism” was coined in the 19th Century by Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical theory known as positivism. To hold society together, Comte believed that people had to live for the sake of others by renouncing their own self-interest. Generosity and good-will had nothing to do with it.
 
We are now all living through exactly what the ethics of altruism require as our liberties and various livelihoods have been forcibly sacrificed on the altar of the COVID-19 “emergency.”

Every day when PM Jacinda Ardern stands on the podium to give an update on the numbers of cases, deaths or recoveries re the virus, she trots out phrases like, “those incredible numbers are down to the sacrifices of every Kiwi.”

Indeed. Sacrifice is the right word because the citizens of New Zealand (and also those of many other countries)  were never given a choice in how to respond to COVID-19 coming in through the borders via air and sea. With the government’s massive lockdown order, many small to medium businesses have already been decimated – even with the stop-gap measures of wage subsidies to retain staff during lockdown.
 
Bars, restaurants, beauty parlours, hairdressers, health practitioners, massage parlours, brothels, retail stores, theatres, cinemas, cleaning services and umpteen other enterprises still have to pay rent, Kiwi-saver, insurances, marketing fees, leases, vehicle payments, power, internet and phones. Many business owners know that even though they’ve managed to retain staff in the immediate short term, they’ll soon be laying them off as they come to terms with exactly how much money their businesses have haemorrhaged.
 
All these livelihoods – and the standard of living they once provided – have been sacrificed in an extreme attempt to stop the virus from spreading in our country.
 
​Yet, as more data is analysed on the actual facts and behaviour of the virus, many experts in the field of infectious diseases are showing us that the disease is far more widespread and contagious than originally thought and the fatality rate much lower – around 0.03% instead of the predicted 2.0 – 4.0%.  Studies coming out of Stanford University and Bakersfield California, along with separate studies from Sweden, Iceland and Germany are all saying the same thing: we have grossly overestimated the fatality rate of the virus and how far it had already spread into the general population with most people being asymptomatic.
 
Deaths from COVID-19 are nearly always associated with elderly people already compromised by one or more serious, underlying health conditions – and obesity is also a major factor. So quarantining our senior citizens and all people with compromised immune systems – and perhaps our fatties too, was the more sensible option, along with strict hygiene such as hand washing and social distancing. But instead, we were ordered into home imprisonment, with something resembling martial law out in our streets, and the destruction of our many small to medium businesses has been put down to collateral damage to bring about some so-called greater good. 
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This is altruistic sacrifice writ large and it has made experimental, guinea-pig comrades of us all.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"