Miranda Devine
The Sunday Telegraph
September 13, 2015
IT is in the egalitarian nature of Australia that we have neglected to cultivate a class of genuine elites. Unfortunately, this vacuum at the top means that a bunch of chattering mediocrities have appointed themselves to the role of our moral and intellectual betters.
Some even have acquired posh accents and a haughty tone to give the impression of superiority.
They share a stunning lack of humility. What unites them is their opinion that other Australians, “out there” in the suburbs, are selfish, parochial, gullible, redneck morons, easily led by evil Right Wing NutJobs (RWNJ).
Our faux elites claim they are driven by altruism, at least when it comes to issues that don’t adversely affect them, like refugee, drug and climate policies.
They don’t live in suburbs affected by drug crime, and can afford to pay for rehab for their wayward offspring.
They don’t have to fish dead bodies out of the ocean or face the consequences of their demand for open borders.
They don’t compete for welfare resources or family reunion quotas with asylum seekers or live near areas of social friction.
They barely notice the soaring energy costs that arise from climate policies they push for reasons of guilt, moral vanity, and in-crowd identity.
Their compassion is employed only in those circumstances where it showcases their status and their membership of a virtuous elite.
Thus, the tragedy of Syria’s civil war only merited their tears after that photograph of a drowned Syrian toddler became a media focal point.
What followed was an unseemly contest to trumpet their sad feelings.
To any reasonable observer, these people are irrational and ridiculous, bordering on downright dangerous.
Their self regard is so extreme that it verges into mass delusion.
Or, to apply a more precise diagnosis, they suffer from an affliction know as “pathological altruism”.
This is the inspired coinage of American systems engineer Barbara Oakley.
In a 2013 paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she defined it as “behaviour in which attempts to promote the welfare of … others results, instead, in harm that … was reasonably foreseeable.”
So, for instance, if you accidentally break a vase while helping a friend move house, that is not pathological altruism because the bad outcome was not foreseeable.
But if your brother is going through drug withdrawal and you get him more drugs to make him feel better, you are just “enabling his addiction. In this case, your well-meaning altruism is pathological.
Oakley cites examples such as “the overly attentive ‘helicopter’ father who threatens to sue instructors who give well-deserved bad grades, or the mother who attempts to protect her son by refusing to vaccinate him and who consequently fuels a loss of herd immunity underpinning a local whooping cough epidemic in which an infant dies”.
Closer to home, examples abound: drug liberalisers, who wants ice decriminalised might be motivated by a desire to help drug addicts.
But their remedies only exacerbate the harms and increase the numbers of addicts.
Similarly, well-meaning lefties, who talked Kevin Rudd into dismantling Howard-era border protections caused harm to those people they lured across the ocean, to those refugees whose places were taken, and damaged public confidence in our high level of migration. In other words, what might feel altruistic can end up making the situation worse.
“Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others … is not intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own self-serving interests,” Oakley says.
Elevating rational analysis over emotion is what the Prime Minister did last week when considering Australia’s response to the Syrian crisis: “It’s important that we act with our head as well as with our heart here.
“While I think we are all in the grip of grief, really, as we saw the tragedy unfolding on our television screens, the responsibility of government ... is to act in a measured and considered way.”
But for taking time to consider, he was criticised.
In our emotionally incontinent culture, driven by the sentimental narcissism of social media, true altruism can seem cruel.
Oakley cites examples of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit.
“The social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced ‘helpful’ behaviour and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.”
Thus our faux elites damned the Abbott government as cruel when it went about rescuing our immigration system from criminal people smugglers.
They refuse to acknowledge that only because we “stopped the boats” is it possible to offer 12,000 Syrians a new home.
Similarly, they slam the government for skewing the intake towards persecuted minorities, particularly Christians against whom a religious genocide is being waged in the Middle East.
In order to showcase their tolerance they falsely claim helping the most needy is Islamophobic.
No, the altruism flaunted by our phony elites isn’t really about helping refugees or drug addicts or saving the planet.
It’s all about burnishing their reputations.
The road to hell is paved with their good intentions.
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