gjm comments on Beeminding Sin - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (16)
From C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, the character who embodies Pride has this dialogue with an angel on the threshhold of Heaven:
You can be altruistic to others and still be prideful. One way I fall into it is preferring World A (where my suffering is greater, but I know that I have some responsibility for any respite I get) to World B (where I'm doing much better, but I'm not at all the cause of my good fortune). It's not bad to delight in using the talents you have and sharing them with others, but it is a problem for Christians to be possessive of those gifts or to need others to be dependent on you.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that the total absence of pride-in-this-sense is exactly the same thing as perfect altruism, only that the latter would be a consequence of the former.