Sunday, 5 October 2025

Is it a contradiction that modern people are so aggressively moralistic; while rejecting purpose, meaning and personal significance in reality?

Is it a contradiction that modern people are so aggressively moralistic; while rejecting purpose, meaning and personal significance in reality? 

We live in a social world of continual, inescapable, aggressive moralizing; despite that almost everybody professes to reject and disbelieve in any basis for morality in reality (reality is regarded as the neutral product of causality, as described by "science").

Indeed, this foundation-less ideology is the basis of the System of global totalitarianism - so its aggressive and compulsory arbitrary-ness is (albeit incoherently!) propagandized-to and enforced-upon billions of people!  


I think there is something very modern about this mind-set. 

In the historical past; I strongly suspect that such a total lack of moral foundations as is now normal, would have led to a situation of "amorality" - in which people had few, feeble and diffidently expressed moral convictions - and would not (as modern do) lead to such amoral individuals spending most their lives advertising their own moral superiority, and opining on the "evils" of various hate-groups...

And engaging in "activism" aggressively to impose "this morning's" pseudo-imperative on everybody else - but especially directed against those are said to who adhere to "yesterday afternoon's" moral principles. 


Much can - and should! - be said about this profoundly strange and destructive state of affairs. 

First, and I think neglected; is that aggressive moralizing is not an index of moral conviction.

I mean that the fact so many people are engaged in seek-and-destroy activities against those who disagree with them is Not evidence of such a person's own state of moral conviction - it is Not evidence of his possessing a strong and sure belief in the morality being implemented.


Indeed; the opposite is usually the case! 

In the modern world, among modern people; the more loudly and aggressively somebody enforces his morality upon others - the less likely it is that he is himself convinced by that morality. 

I have very-often observed this for myself. 

When an aggressive modern moralizer himself begins to become aware of the insecurity of his own publicly affirmed convictions - aware of the fact that they are incoherent and self-contradictory - the more aggressive he becomes!...

He will rant and rage at the absolute importance of imposing his current moral whims; and this aggression has almost no limit of extremity. 


Alternatively, such extremity of emotion may cause a decomposition and breakdown - with (again very public) weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth - apparently presented as "evidence" of the rightness and solidity of his own currently-dominating moral imperatives.  


What is going on here is that the personal element of morality is accepted by mainstream modern people; but this erodes, indeed eliminates, the rationale for making this into a public morality. Therefore the public morality is un-founded, therefore the rationale for its imposition is in fact psychological. 

This creates a reversal. The individual believes that his morality is objectively-true, right and necessary because he feels aggressively that it must be imposed...

And/or the morality is objectively-true, right and necessary because anyone who contradicts it, makes him terribly, terribly upset and miserable. 


In sum: the here-and-now extremity of "my" emotion, is being regarded as the main "evidence" of objective reality. 


Of course, all this kind of stuff is primarily an attribute of the mainstream atheist-materialist "Leftists" who dominate the leadership and management classes of the Western totalitarian pseudo-nations. 

But it is also an attribute of the majority of those who profess to be anti-modern, and pro-tradition; because no matter how religious a modern person may be in his social niche choices - he is still a modern person living in the contemporary world. 

Modern traditionalists of religion have necessarily made a choice to adhere to whatever morality and value-system to which they adhere; and the grounds for that choice always therefore constitute a personal commitment.  


When a modern person aggressively imposes his personal commitment on other people - there arises (whether unconsciously or consciously) the uncomfortable sense of contradiction. 

The ideological or religious system has been chosen, and the grounds for choice cannot help but be rooted in some personal factors - because in the modern world there is no single and inevitable coherent moral system that will be absorbed from "society" - but instead many, many such value-systems; all contested and changeable, usually asserted by different "authorities" - the authoritative status of which is also contested. 

Personal choice of values including morals is therefore inescapable - because it is evidently the way that modern people are made, and the way modern society actually-is. 


It's a fact of life, like it or not... And modern religious traditionalists do Not like it!

This is the psychological basis of the extreme moralistic aggression with which traditionalists approach those who disagree with them. 

The hair-trigger escalation of aggressive statement into aggressive rant, and even into aggressive (including passive-aggressive) threats - which is so common a behaviour among religious traditionalists of all stripes - is therefore evidence of the same kind of insecurity as seen in mainstream left-ideologists. 

I mean that the one is an ideological insecurity; whereas the other is a religious insecurity - in fact a metaphysical - insecurity; and both are rooted in the inevitably personal choice of morality and values in the modern mind in the modern world - a personal choice that "must" be denied in order to make that choice into objective necessity. 


What I'm saying is that while both secular-atheists and religious traditionalists claim that their anger and intransigence are a consequence of the objective validity and necessity of their moral assertions...

I am instead stating that their anger and intransigence are consequences of the - psychologically unacceptable - actuality that their moral assertions are rooted in personal choosing. 

In other words, their aggressive behaviour is not rooted in objective necessity; but is a consequence of the denied knowledge that the aggressively-asserted moral objectivity is rooted in their own subjective emotions and choices.  


The personal anger or upset is being used to underpin pseudo-objective assertion. 

Without their extremity of emotion, they might be compelled to recognize the subjective necessity that roots their publicly-affirmed ideological or religious impositions. 

In order to sustain their public stance; they need their own aggression! 

That's why they cannot and will-not give it up!

  

11 comments:

Francis Berger said...

Incisive.

It certainly sheds light on why being berated by a trad-Christian feels the same as being berated by a foaming at the mouth secular leftist, to the point that in the end the trad Christian, like his leftist counterpart, always asserts that you are essentially harmful to the greater good and, as such, *must* be challenged, ridiculed, and, ultimately, silenced.

Anything to avoid acknowledging that their "the aggressively-asserted moral objectivity is rooted in their own subjective emotions and choices."

Hagel said...

Many people believe that that which is personal, subjective, chosen, is inferior to that which is universal, objective, imposed.

I disagree, because love is one of the most profound things that mortals can come to know, and for love to have any value, for it to exist at all, it must be freely given, chosen, and accepted. Love can not be forced.

Virtue must also be freely chosen. A vile man who is forced into virtuous behaviour is not virtuous.

That morality is an innate part of our nature, and that we ultimately have no objective reason to be moral except for wanting it, choosing it, makes it more valuable, not less. "It's just your preference", they say, but to come to know one's own divine nature and to freely choose to cultivate it, is not only profound, but actually the only option.

If you ask one of those objective morality people why they should choose heaven instead of hell, they ultimately can't answer anything that doesn't come down to "because I want to".
Why should you choose salvation instead of eternal torment? You are, after all, given the choice. Isn't it "merely preference"?

It's not so mere

Bruce Charlton said...

@Frank - What I have noticed in common, is that the conversation *very suddenly spirals* up and out of control...

One minute there is a some kind of exchange of ideas; the next moment there are either wild and almost random accusations and inferences, name-calling, insinuations of motivation and guilt by association... the intent seems to be to ambush, overwhelm, and impose silence from fear of more - to cheat-win an argument by sudden deployment of extreme vitriol and volume - while permanently withdrawing from substantive discussion.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Hagel - At the bottom of Christian morality is (something like) the free and positive personal choice to affiliate with God's creative will, a choice to regard divine creation as Good - to desire to think, live and work in harmony with creation.

All else is underpinned by such a choice.

Laeth said...

a related phenomenon i've seen, from both leftists and conventional christians, is that they will pretend to not understand what you are saying if you challenge one of their premises or conclusions. they will ask questions or say something tangential, but they aren't really seeking clarification or adding to the conversation. they just want to derail it so it goes nowhere. (not to single him out, but it's an example, every time i've seen Kristor comment on your posts or Frank's, it's this and rarely anything but this). and i think this happens precisely when the fake morality, or its incoherent foundation, is challenged.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Laeth - I first noticed this about 30 years ago when discussing the fact that "evidence based medicine" (based on the results of randomized controlled trials) is not of itself any use as a guide to the treatment of individual patients.

The argument was very simple indeed, state-able in a couple of sentences - and conclusive - by, my word, the convolutions and misinterpretations and evasions of those who would not accept it (because their agenda was managerial-political, not medical). They simply refused to engage on this crucial point - *ever*.

On the other hand, they were happy to give long lectures, and papers, and books - arguing against selective half-truths they attributed as my argument.

At the time, I could hardly believe it; but now I have realized that this is normal and almost universal - and is why simple error can be (and is) perpetuated indefinitely.

Essentially the same thing happened a decade later with the "Medical Hypotheses" affair. Those whose agenda was socio-political could not/ would not grasp a very simple argument - and Never mentioned or confronted it.

Well, after such experiences, I eventually learned my lesson - pretty much. Which is why I am not interested in trying to "convert" (i.e. win an argument, and be acknowledged to have won) people whose behaviour makes it clear that they are Not interested by the truth or reality of the matter - but whose bottom-line agenda is a socio-political affiliation.

Laeth said...

i was going to say that one would at least expect christians of all people to be interested in honest discussion and the truth, but then again, one would expect the same of scientists, and really of anyone who advances any kind of idea. it is supposed to be a prerequisite of speech itself. but of course, this is far from the case now, and i too have become uninterested in debates, except where i know there is some common ground already, which is becoming quite rare, unfortunately.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Laeth "one would at least expect christians of all people to be interested in honest discussion and the truth"

I think it all depends - in religion as well as everywhere else - what is a person's bottom-line.

To me, it has become evident (especially since 2020, which was a revelatory year) that for most Christians, the bottom-line agenda is socio-political - i.e. their bottom-line is some aspect of that actually-existing, totalitarian-assimilated, human institution that is their church.

Yet you notice I said "some aspect of" their church. This is what makes bottom-line church-affiliated Christianity necessarily incoherent - and dishonest.

Because, every church-affiliated Christian in 2025 has formed their external affiliation on the basis of multiple (including absolutely fundamental) personal discernments; yet they deny this *primacy* in their own faith, and the faith they advocate for others.

(The churches attitude to personal discernment is to say that it is very important indeed and absolutely necessary... Except when an issue currently is regarded as important by the particular church - in which case absolute obedience to their external guidance is required. In practice - discernment is theoretically great wrt what the church regards as trivial and superficial (or covertly approved - i.e. leftward disobedience) or where "church order" is not threatened; but bureaucratic obedience is mandatory (and sometimes brutally enforced) when it comes to (church-defined) vital matters. )

Laeth said...

this is maybe a surface psychological analysis of the issue, but i have become convinced that this outward incoherence regarding social issues, motivations, etc, really has its roots in the metaphysical incoherence of the trinity. because it is a form of having their monotheist cake and eating Jesus too. and if such double-think is at the very heart of the religion, it obviously is allowed at lower levels of thinking, such as organization, policy, etc. for a long time this was not a problem because the congregants really didn't entangle themselves in the theology. it was only words, but no meaning. now that people actually can process these things, they force themselves to accept them, and thus create a sort of split personality that then can and is applied downstream to almost everything. at the same time, since i see this with mormons too, this may not be the explanation at all, but from what i observe it seems rather that mormons have all but abandoned their own distinctive theology, so that in the end and in practice they share the same incoherent core, even if denying it in theory (which is a funny and interesting reversal).

Bruce Charlton said...

@Laeth - The example of Mormons probably demonstrates that there is more than one thing going-on here - i.e. it is metaphysical incoherence plus...

I suspect that something akin to what William Wildblood said yesterday is at work - http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-pantomime-church.html - in that we find ourselves in a situation where we must choose where our primary commitment lies. It is no longer possible to conflate "the church" (any church) with a spiritual commitment to God and Jesus Christ. One or the other must come first.

Hagel said...

Ideas that are internally incoherent, or rhat contradict observed reality, are damaging to believe in (or maybe only a damaged mind can believe them, but men are quite capable of lying to themselves, so I think not).
Maybe this is why their adherents tend to be so neurotic. It's not just Christians, but some types of atheist, too