The unbearability of mainstream public discourse

I hesitate to call it unbearable - because it can be can be borne - but it is so harmful, so horrible to feel one's mind slipping into that world view.

It is everywhere and all the time - and requires active avoidance - it is of course in the mass media, and in government speeches, and in the workings of bureaucracies, and in mainstream charities and churches. Sit down in a meeting it is there; somebody giving a speech somewhere and it is there; at awards ceremonies (any kind of award, for anything - indeed awards are among the very worst situations: and modern zombies are extraordinarily fond of giving each other awards!) and one is certain to be confronted by it.

It is the metaphysics of the thing that gets me: we hear somebody in public life give a speech - and it is the world view that the speech comes-from that is most horrifying, rather than the specific elements. It is not so much the individual lies as the root dishonesty which hits home. And this dishonesty is composed of linked elements - such that the lies cannot be tackled one at a time - and the whole basis needs to be attacked; yet of course that is never permitted, is pooh-poohed as fine spun abstraction in contrast with Real Life.

There is also detectable a kind of demonic laughter behind it - somebody, somewhere is cackling with glee at the millions of people being subjected to pernicious, mind-eroding lies from official propaganda and corporate communications and woven into the best and most popular movies and TV shows and novels; soaking it it up, having their deep metaphysics restructured in the direction of hope-less despair enlivened by active destruction of the good (usually the destruction of a greater good by a lesser, as when some 'freedom' or 'rights' are used to rationalise and institutionalize resentment, hatred, and schadenfreude - in other words normal and dominant and universal Left/ Liberal/ Conservative/ Republican/ Libertarian socio-politics).

And how to cope with the fact that so many people seem to seek-out these occasions of horror - and wish to enforce them on others and structure their lives by them; and regard this as the main thing in life, the justification of life, the basis of a proper existence?

And the reluctance to snap-out-of-it; the truly superstitious terror of (even, especially, mentally) stepping out of line... I think of those hordes of middle-aged nice women who are doing the work of demons with a vaguely kindly motivation - pathetically manipulated and praised into assisting their own destruction; those narcissistic young men who live for the mirror - preening their bodies with weights and drugs, self-mutilating, turned-in upon their own self-image; those young women who seek, and get, attention-attention-attention - always and above all things; those older men who want nothing more than to be young, or appear to be young, or to behave asif young.

It is sad to reflect on the worthlessness of the usual, admired human existence in The West, because it is a chosen worthlessness - built-upon the active and impatient rejection of Goodness; a deliberate worthlessness, a worthlessness embraced and made into a philosophy of leaden-featured, dead-eyed, screeching triviality and waste.  

Sadness and anger are the reaction - sadness at the stupidity and self-deception; anger at the lack of resistance to stupidity on the one hand, and on the other hand anger at the sheer viciousness and excitement with which detectable-Goodness is mocked, infiltrated, subverted and macerated.