Why sacrifice?
It didn't use to be like that before Christianity. The Ancient Greeks did not believe in self-sacrifice.
The Hedonists, for example, thought you should avoid pain and maximise your pleasure - especially physical pleasures. They believed in the validity of senses but they questioned the validity of the rule of law and custom and thought you should obey rules simply to avoid pain.
It was a type of self-interest in which the individual was meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.
The early Sophists, on the other hand, thought power and wealth - rather than pleasure - were the goals of life, even if people liked to pretend otherwise. They thought knowledge should be practical and education should be private and they upheld the principles of free conscience and free speech.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Hedonists; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.
Aristotelians, on the other hand, believed in self-fulfillment rather than power and wealth. They were pro-reason, pro-logic, and pro-personal happiness. They believed in prudence and wisdom and thought virtue to stem from self-love which they considered the basis of friendship. They believed in honesty, integrity and justice and thought pride was "the crown of virtue" - not something that comes before a fall.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Sophists; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.
The Epicureans also thought personal happiness to be the greatest good. They thought it was to be found in modest pleasures the avoidance of pain and the study of natural causes - rejecting the possibility of miracles. They subscribed to a positive form of determinism in which the virtuous individual could effect a swerve from material hazards and disasters by his own ideas and hard work.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Aristotelians; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.
The Stoics thought all men were the products of nature, which was eternal and subject to casual processes. They rejected the notion of an all-powerful god-Creator. Being virtuous meant being true to reality - not the dictates of some supernatural being. You should be logical, courageous, self-reflective and self-disciplined and if you followed that advice you would be happy no matter what.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Epicureans; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.
Not all the Greeks believed in this-worldly self-interest but, like the poet Homer, most Ancient Greeks thought it "better be the slave of a poor man, in the light of the Sun, than a prince in the life hereafter."
This outlook formed the dominant world-view of most educated men of Western Civilisation until 529 AD when the Christian Roman dictator Justinian promptly ordered the closure of the pagan universities.
The era which immediately succeeding his edict is known as The Dark Ages.
So what values did this new Christian ideology promote: self-interest or self-sacrifice?
Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
This alleged phantom "father" was a genocidal maniac with a fondness for extermination. His devotion for sacrifice typified by the demand that Abraham slit the throat of own beloved son Isaac and cremate his body on a pyre in an act of - literally - pointless SACRIFICE.
This extraordinary Jewish Zombie declared that if someone steals your coat you should also give them your shirt. He considered sexual desire to be sinful, meekness to be good, and pride to be wicked. Savings - the life-blood of an economy - he regarded as evil and rich men he declared to be immoral, because God would care for you as he cares for little birds and flowers by means of miracles if you really believed in Him. If you didn't believe in Him you deserved to be turned into a zombie and tortured forever.
Predictably, Jesus came to a grisly end by being crucified thanks to a God who wanted him to die horrifically for the faults of others.
Again self-sacrifice is considered an ideal.
How did Jesus' followers act in regard to this cult of sacrifice? Their habits are recorded in the lives of the saints.
St Macarius, for example, in order to deny himself the temptations of the flesh, immersed himself in a fetid swamp where he was devoured by insects so severely that he was mistaken for a leper – his friends only recognising him by the sound of his voice.
Compelled by the same motive, Benedict of Nursia spent his nights on a bed of thorns, Evagrius Pontieus – a frozen fountain, St. Francis’ refuge from thoughts of "impurity?" – a pit of snow.
Christine of Troud in order to demonstrate her love of sacrifice had herself laid in a hot oven before being turned and racked on a wheel, hung from a gallows beside a corpse, and buried alive in a graveyard. Her life long enthusiasm – to be hanged by the neck from roofs, high walls and church steeples.
Hair-shirts and self-flagellation provided insufficient self-mortification for St. Ammonius – he had his entire body burned with hot irons.
Having vowed herself to chastity by the age of four St. Rose ate only sheep’s gall, bitter herbs and ashes. Margaret Marie Alacoque restricted her diet to rotten fruit and mouldy bread; her beverage of choice – laundry water. She carved the name of Jesus in her chest with a carving-knife and fastidiously heightened her agony by anointing her wounds with hot candle-wax.
These maniacs were not ostracised for their behaviour. On the contrary they were praised and admired for their virtue.
This is the true morality of Judeo-Christianity - this is the real nature of SACRIFICE. All the modern altruists have done is swap the beneficiary - a psychopathic god for psychopathic social-organism.
Unless this morally invidious premise is challenged people will continue to regard capitalism as bad - not for any of its alleged faults or shortcoming but for its very win-win nature.
See Yaron Brook 16 mins onward:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44E6ujRLchs
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