Voluntaristic cosmopolitanism
Pollock contrasts the Sanskrit cosmopolis to the “European countercosmopolis” of Latin and the Roman Empire. The European countercosmopolis described itself culturally, linguistically, and politically in universalistic terms (latinitas, imperium romanum), but “Sanskrit never sought to conceptualize its own universality” and “there was no self-generated descriptor for either the political or cultural sphere that Sanskrit created and inhabited.” Whereas “Latin traveled where it did as the language of a conquest state … and obliterated the languages it found … those who participated in Sanskrit culture chose to do so, and could choose to do so.” This isn’t to say that political and economic forces didn’t reinforce the power of Sanskrit. Nevertheless, according to Pollock, the Sanskrit cosmopolis wasn’t a creation of conquest, colonization, or trade. A similar case has been made for classical Chinese, its diffusion throughout East Asia, and the “competing cosmopolitanisms” of Chinese Buddhism versus Confucianism in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 CE) and Six Dynasties period (222–589 CE). Thus, instead of thinking of cosmopolitanism in exclusively European terms—a way of thinking that historically puts into opposition “a European comprehensive universalism and a narrow Asian particularism”—we have two kinds of cosmopolitanism, Latin and Asian, “both capable of transcending the local and stimulating feelings of living in a larger world,” but “one coercive, the other voluntaristic.”
According to one version of cosmopolitanism, special devotion to people near and dear is legitimate, not because they have more worth than others, but rather because this is the best way for us to do good. For example, to be a good parent is to care especially for one’s own children, but this doesn’t mean that one’s children have more worth than the children of other people. Rather, all children have equal worth, but caring especially for one’s own children is the best way to do good as a parent. More generally, you should give what’s close to you more concern than what’s farther away, not because it’s better in itself, but because doing so is a more effective way to be good.
Evan Thompson. Why I Am Not a Buddhist (pp. 170-173).
This contrast - between a universalism that coerces1 and one that doesn’t - encompasses an entire attitude toward spiritual practice and how we should behave ethically. This is a theme I will keep returning to — not that we should, as a rule, avoid trying to scale our goodness — but rather, that we must recognize with humility the deep cluelessness regarding the effects of our actions on the broader world. Our positionality implies that we each have a unique understanding of our immediate social surroundings and therefore a unique opportunity to effectively do good. We must seize that opportunity. It would be a mistake to entirely eschew that for a much larger and uncertain possibility.
It seems pretty clear to me that utilitarianism and EA more broadly is deeply Christian in its attitude. This isn’t by itself a reason not to accept it — I greatly admire acts of moral entrepreneurship, giving kidneys to strangers, etc — but knowing where it comes from is important for understanding this perspective’s failure modes.