EA - The Protester, Priest and Politician: Effective Altruists before their time by NickLaing

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Protester, Priest and Politician: Effective Altruists before their time, published by NickLaing on September 5, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Epistemic status: Motivated and biased as a Christian, gazing in awe through rose-tinted glasses at inspiring humans of days gone by. Written primarily for a Christian audience, with hopefully something of use for all.
Benjamin Lay - The Protester
Benjamin Lay, only 4½ feet tall, stood outside the Quaker meeting house in the heart of Pennsylvania winter, his right leg exposed and thrust deep into the snow. One shocked churchgoer after another urged him to protect his life and limb - but he only replied
"Ah, you pretend compassion for me but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad."[1]
Portrait of Benjamin Lay (1790) by William Williams.
In 1700 Lay's moral stances were more than radical.[2] He thought women equal to men, was anti-death penalty, pro animal rights and an early campaigner for the abolition of slavery. In the Caribbean he made friends with indentured people while he boycotted all slave produced products such as tea, sugar and coffee.
I thought Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute[3] was ahead of his time for going vegan in 1987 - well, how about Lay in the 1700s? Many of these moral stances might seem unimpressive now, but back then I would bet under 1% of people held any one of them. These were deeply neglected and important causes, and Lay fought against the odds to make them tractable.
His creative protests were perhaps as impressive as his morals. He smashed fine china teacups in the street saying people cared more about the cups than the slaves that produced tea. He yelled out "there's another Negro master" when slave owners spoke in Quaker meetings. He even temporarily kidnapped a slave owner's child, so his parents would experience a taste of the pain parents back in Africa felt while their children were permanently kidnapped.
These protests stemmed from a deep spiritual devotion to do and proclaim the right thing - people's feelings and cultural norms be darned.
Extreme actions like these have potential to backfire, but Lay chose wisely to perform most protests within his own Quaker church. Perhaps he knew that within the Quakers lay fertile ground to change hearts and minds - despite it taking 50 years to make serious inroads. When the Quakers officially denounced slavery In 1758 - perhaps the first large organization to do so - a then feeble Lay, aged 77, exclaimed:
"Thanksgiving and praise be rendered unto the Lord God… I can now die in peace."
John Wesley - The Priest
"Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all men!" - John Wesley
A key early insight of the "Effective Altruism" movement was the power of "earning to give" - that we can do great good not just through direct deeds, but by earning as much money as possible and then giving it away to effective causes.
Yet one man had the same insight with similar depth of understanding 230 years earlier, outlined in just one sermon derived almost entirely from biblical principles.[4]
John Wesley preached extreme generosity as a clear mandate from Jesus. His message was simple but radical. Earn all you can, live simply to save money, then give the rest to good causes. Sounds great but who actually does that?
He also had deep insight in the pitfalls of earning to give. We should keep ourselves healthy and not overwork. We should sleep well and preserve "the spirit of a healthful mind". We should eschew evil on the path to the big bucks. And don't get rich while you're earning the big bucks, as you risk falling away from your faith and mission. He also understood that earning to give wasn't a path for e...