>> Just don’t think about all the suffering you or I could ease with the money we spend on a “good time.”
Look man. I am not responsible for any random person or creature that suffers in this world.
Lamentations like this ("ease all the suffering") originate in a primate brain that hasn't yet processed that we're no longer a tribe of 100 but there's 10 billion people in this world.
Objectively you don't have resources to help more than a few people. And morally, you aren't obligated either.
And btw, I actually do help a person in need, every month with a substantial amount of money. Unlike the occasional act of kindness, helping a complete stranger on a recurring basis is a much harder nut to swallow. Makes you progress really quickly from superficial platitudes like the one you said to the hard, cold reality of the fact that you're losing resources and resources are finite. And that on top of half my income that the state grabs and mostly hands out as welfare anyway. So don't tell me I'm not paying to ease suffering, want or not, I pay through my teeth.
Some of the proceeds spent on having a good time will go towards reducing misery and suffering elsewhere.
I see no malice in the decision to make peace with the fact that no mere mortal is capable of putting a dent into the level of suffering around the world as a whole.
Living one’s life reasonably and not being a burden is remarkably beneficial to society. At the very least, it’s one less unhappy and broke individual.
We’re not the good guys. We rationalize the inescapable selfishness placed there by ages of evolution.