[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds

[The Grand Nudger]

We harm people against their own self interests and, sometimes, against ours, and very often - for the benefit of others - theirs and ours ignored. We do this thinking some good end or aim will be achieved. I don't think that we're wrong all the time when we do that, or when we think that we're always being irrational.

It's not irrational to think, for example, that abortion is of moral import. It's not irrational to think abortion is bad or that it's good or anything in between. It's not irrational to think that we have moral responsibilities or that our moral responsibilities extend beyond the present and extend beyond self interest.

Nothing is gained by me for example, from holding the position on abortion or environmental responsibility that I hold. I gain more by occluding them. I will never need an abortion because I can't carry kids and my ideological allies would not look kindly on my view of the act. I'll be dead long before anything I do shows any benefit to anyone, if ever..and smart money is on never or just a scant few. I won't even be remembered for it. My name appears on a list with dozens (or more) of others on obsure papers about the commercial viability of a given alternative production method. So what. I honestly don't think that any of my kids are interested in it, even. Most of the time I have to both pretend not to hold the positions I do and also pretend that I hold some other position just to do my job - depending on who I'm talking to.

I have -always- made more money doing harm, I have always had a self interested motive to harm, and I'm good at it in a terrifying array of circumstances and intended aims - and yet here I am - calling that list of self interested things harmful, and bad. Even when I'd do them again, even when I prefer them. Do you have any similar experiences?