While I expect that Brexit will be sabotaged by the Establishment (unless it sparks a genuine spiritual awakening among ordinary people) - and even at best it would be just a microscopic first-step towards something wholesome; the prime significance of Brexit is what it reveals about those who so vehemently, so vitriolically and incredulously oppose it. Those who so-very-very-much want to be bound-and-subordinated-to the European Union...
Anti-Brexit has been a stripping away of masks from those who regard-themselves and present-themselves as motivated by progressive, radical, artistic, humanitarian impulses.
I can certainly understand that it is off-putting to the intelligentsia to reject their own kind and instead align with the great mass of English people who so viscerally-dislike the EU (what it has-been, where it wants-to-go) and want as little as possible to do with it (as opposed to now being utterly ruled by it) - but the lack of self-awareness, the degree of self-blinding involved in this I find genuinely astonishing!
My interpretation is that this is a kind of self-hatred - a hatred of England and the English: not for the modern corruption, godlessness, materialism, hedonism... but a hatred of what was Good about England; a rejection of our destiny, a rejection of responsibility.
To be so starkly and angrily pro-EU is a conclusive, undeniable rejection - albeit naturally enough - of meaning, purpose and spirit in life; an emphatic embrace of the slow death of totalitarianism.
"My interpretation is that this is a kind of self-hatred - a hatred of England and the English: not for the modern corruption, godlessness, materialism, hedonism... but a hatred of what was Good about England; a rejection of our destiny, a rejection of responsibility." Exactly that. In fact, much that we now call leftism can be explained like this. But what causes this self-hatred? Is it resentment of the noble, hatred of God, desire for extinction, a kind of perverted self-abasement? When you see people in its grip this does seem to be part of the explanation.
ReplyDeleteOne thing appears clear. Like any sin it must disguise itself as virtue and paint true virtue as sin.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The promise of Marxism is that those who produce the goods of life will serve forever at the whim of those who need them. To be a Marxist is to admit to not being an independent adult. Some are 'elite', artists, politicians, celebrities. Others are the under-class, envious of what they have not rather than jealous to guard ill-deserved status and privilege. But they all know that they cannot live as they desire by dint of their own abilities and efforts.
ReplyDeleteAnother key phrase is also important, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
At some point, the more intelligent Marxists realize that demanding abject subjugation of the productive in society punishes productivity of the goods on which all prosperous life depends, and yet they would rather have a worse life in material respect as long as they can enjoy the spiritual pride of lording it over others who are compelled to serve.
Life as a bureaucrat is hellish, but it affords many opportunities to exercise petty (and not so petty) tyranny over people who are in every moral, practical, and aesthetic sense the betters of bureaucrats.