In Defense of Voluntary Poverty and Slackerism/In Condemnation of Voluntary Poverty and Slackerism

What do you owe to others, and who are these others? Need the others be “Other,” or is that just mealy-mouthed sentiment that bleeding hearts spew in between trips to Neiman Marcus and the nearest available Hilton? Is it ok to pretty much do what you want so long as you don’t hurt anyone, or do you have some obligation to ameliorate some of the bad shit that happens to other people? Should “people” be the categorical threshold at which our acknowledgment of “bad shit” ends? What about the environment, or other sentient beings? Should you go make a lot of money, become financially secure, and shower worthwhile causes with the financial noblesse on which their do-gooder engines depend, or should you step into the veritable trenches and attack the problem (whatever it is) head on? Do you work in the homeless shelter now, or endow it with millions thirty years from now? How can money/private property/capitalist practices be the root of all evil if anyone and everything that fights against evil depends upon monetary donations? How can you be so smug, Sherlock?
What if the so-called sacrifice you make for the common good is really just a dodge, an out you’ve taken to avoid battening down the hatches and engaging in some serious competitive maneuvers against people for whom “no surrender, no retreat” is an animating ethos? Or, conversely, how can your “accomplishments,” your climb up the ladder of personal career goals and payscales, matter? How does your life amount to anything more than a solitary quest for a set of satisfactions so small and negligible that it (the quest) mine as well not even take place?
There’s that part in the Nietzchinator where he chides any and all do-gooders as essentially prideful dilettantes. He thinks they satiate their need to feel good about themselves by narrating autobiographies in terms of sacrifice, the common good, and so on, which autobiographies are essentially self-delusional pick-me-ups. Do gooders like to feel superior, just like Will-to-Power subscribers. The difference is not the end, but the means that lead to it.

I have to go eat lunch now.