Will_Davison's Quick takes

In that case, I apologize. I don't know you and I don't know your background or intentions, and apparently I was wrong about both.

I think the experience you're describing — of feeling a sense of guilt or grief or sadness or obligation that's so big you don't know how to handle it — is something that probably the majority of people who have participated in the effective altruist movement have felt at one time or another. I've seen many people describe feeling this way, both online and in real life.

When I was an organizer at my university's effective altruist group, several of the friends I made through that group expressed these kinds of feelings. This stuff weighed on us heavily.

I haven't read the book Strangers Drowning, but I've heard it described, and I know it's about people who go to extreme lengths to answer the call of moral obligation. Maybe that book would interest you. I don't know.

This topic goes beyond the domain of ethical theory into a territory that is different parts existential, spiritual, and psychotherapeutic. It can be dangerous not to handle this topic with care because it can get out of control. It can contribute to clinical depression and anxiety, it can motivate people to inflict pain on others, or people can become overzealous, overconfident, and adopt an unfair sense of superiority to other people.

I find it useful to draw on examples from fantasy and sci-fi to think about this sort of thing. In the Marvel universe, the Infinity Stones can only be wielded safely by god-like beings and normal humans or mortals die when they try to use them. The Stones even pose a danger to some superhuman beings, like Thanos and the Hulk. In Star Trek: Picard, there is an ancient message left by an unknown, advanced civilization. When people try to watch/listen to the message, it drives most of them to madness. There are other examples of this sort of thing — something so powerful that coming into contact with it, even coming near it, is incredibly dangerous.

To try to reckon with the suffering of the whole world is like that. Not impossible, not something to be avoided forever, but something dangerous to be approached with caution. People who approach it recklessly can destroy themselves, destroy others, or succumb to madness.

There is a connection between reckoning with the world's suffering and one's own personal suffering. In two different ways. First, how we think and feel about one influences how we think and feel about the other. Second, I think a lot of the wisdom about how people should reckon with their own suffering probably applies well to reckoning with the world's suffering. With someone's personal trauma or grief, we know (or at least people who go to therapy know) that it's important for that person to find a safe container to express their thoughts and feelings about it. Talking about it just anywhere or to just anyone, without regard for whether that's a safe container, is unsafe and unwise.

We know that — after the initial shock of a loss or a traumatic event — it isn't healthy for a person to focus on their trauma or grief all the time, to the exclusion of other things. But trying to completely avoid forever it isn't a good strategy either.

We know that the path is never simple, clean, or easy. Connection to other people who have been through or who are going through similar things is often helpful, as is the counsel of a helping professional like a therapist or social worker (or in some cases a spiritual or religious leader), but the help doesn't come in the form of outlining a straightforward step-by-step process. What helps someone reckon with or make sense of their own emotional suffering is often personal to that individual and not generally applicable. 

For example, in the beautiful — and unfairly maligned — memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about a point in her life when she feels completely crushed, and when she's seriously, clinically unwell. She describes how when nothing else feels enjoyable or interesting, she discovers desperately needed pleasure in learning Italian. 

I don't think in the lowest times of my life I would find any pleasure in learning Italian. I don't think in the best or most mediocre times of my life I would find any pleasure in learning Italian. The specific thing that helps is usually not generalizable to everyone who's suffering (which, ultimately, is everyone) and is usually not predictable in advance, including by the person who it ends up helping.

So, the question of how to face the world's darkness or the world's suffering, or how to recover from a breakdown when the world's darkness or suffering seems too much, is an answerable question, but it's not answerable in a universal, simple, or direct way. It's about your relationship with the universe, which is something for you and the universe to figure out.

As I indicated above, I like to take things from fantasy and sci-fi to make sense of the world. In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell laments that society lacks modern myths. He names Star Wars as the rare exception. (Return of the Jedi came out a few years before The Power of Myth was recorded.) Nowadays, there are lots of modern myths, if you count things like Star Trek, Marvel, X-Men, and Dungeons & Dragons. 

I also rely a lot on spiritual and religious teachings. This episode of the RobCast with Rob Bell is relevant to this topic and a great episode. Another great episode, also relevant, is "Light Heavy Light". 

In the more psychotherapeutic realm, I love everything Brené Brown has done — her books, her TV show, her audio programs, her TED Talks. I've never heard her directly talk about global poverty, but she talks about so much that is relevant to the questions you asked in one way or another. In her book Rising Strong, she talks about her emotional difficulty facing (literally and figuratively) the people in her city who are homeless. Initially, she decided what she needed to do to resolve this emotional difficulty was to do more to help. She did, but she didn't feel any differently. This led to a deeper exploration.

In her book Braving the Wilderness, she talks about how she processed collective tragedies like the Challenger disaster and the killings of the kids and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School. This is what you're asking about — how to process grief over tragedies that are collective and shared by the world, not personal just to you.

Finally, a warning. In my opinion, a lot of people in effective altruism, including on the Effective Altruism Forum, have not found healthy ways of reckoning with the suffering of the world. There are a few who are so broken by the suffering of the world that they believe life was a mistake and we would be better off returning to non-existence. (In the Dungeons & Dragons lore, these people would be like the worshippers of Shar.) Many are swept up in another kind of madness: eschatological prophecies around artificial general intelligence. Many numb, detach, or intellectualize rather than feel. A lot of energy goes into fighting.

So, the wisdom you are seeking you will probably not find here. You will find good debates on charity effectiveness. Maybe some okay discussions of ethical theory. Not wisdom on how to deal with the human condition.