Thursday 26 May 2022

Evil is always incompetent (insofar as it is evil)

Misguided people get terribly concerned about whether the destructive activities of the leadership class are deliberately evil by motivation, or merely incompetent: "conspiracy or cock-up" as the saying goes.

It's a nonsensical dichotomy, since neither excludes the other. 

But more fundamentally, evil is incompetent to the degree it is evil. Because evil is corrupt, it is not interested in being effective or efficient. Evil cannot be competent, because evil is dishonest - and dishonesty sabotages competence. 

Now that the evil which rules this world is becoming more advanced in corruption (as evil feeds upon itself) then its incompetence has become so extreme as almost to serve as a cover for the evil! 

But the fact is, these are two sides of a coin. We are getting incompetence on a scale never seen in world history; cock-ups so extreme as to seem impossible.  

Yet the root of it is deliberately motivated evil: opposition to all that is Good, of Good, divinely-created...


11 comments:

Epimetheus said...

Nothing gives me so much hope as their hubris and pride. Apparently, they refer to themselves as the "masters of the universe" and so forth. The craving for absolute micromanagement over every member of the human race, the runaway megalomania - it reminds me of the thousand-year reich.

Jonathan said...

Bruce, you're asking me to deny the evidence of my own eyes here. The leftists have taken complete control of every major institution, yet...evil is incompetent? And demotivated?

My eyes and ears tell me, day after day after day, that evil is hypercompetent, winning every battle; and good people, or those few people who appear like they might be good, are weak and retiring. The contrast could not be greater. What stands out about Social Justice Warriors and Communists is how tireless they are, relentlessly working every day for a more evil world, with a degree of commitment and motivation I've never seen among anyone else. These are people who would crawl naked across broken glass just to deprive one more wrongthinker of his job.

The lessons I take from observing reality are the opposite of the lessons you take: I see with my own eyes that evil is immensely more powerful than good, precisely because it can lie, cheat, and break all the rules. It's just an observable fact that evil people persevere relentlessly, like the Terminator, and no amount of destruction suffices for them to rest. I don't expect that to change in the afterlife.

I still side with good over evil, but from a stoic point of view: I'd rather be good than win. The only territory we can defend from evil is our hearts.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Jonathan - The post more carefully! And ask yourself whether these 2022 leftists are competent at actually doing science, literature, teaching, medicine, police work... The answer is that not only are they incompetent, they are not even trying to be competent.

You are over-impressed by the power to destroy, which is easy. Any ignorant fool can wreck a computer machine by pouring water into it. Any leftist can - and will - wreck a successful corporation or institution.

Competence is needed to make and create - not to destroy.

" I see with my own eyes that evil is immensely more powerful than good" - I have said - probably hundreds of times in this blog - that evil literally rules the world, via the demon affiliated global establishment. But you write as if I disagree with the idea!

Bruce Charlton said...

@Epi "The craving for absolute micromanagement over every member of the human race" - well, hat's certainly what some of Them want - but this is increasingly being subverted by those who lust for chaotic suffering and misery; such as the antiracist agitators, climate change- and sanction-driven global economy-wreckers, and those trying to escalate Total WWIII (which certainly could Not be micro-managed).

As usual, we need to realize that leftism is negative and oppositional, hence logically self-contradictory.

Jonathan said...

Sorry, I did not mean to write as if you disagree with the notion that evil rules this world.

I am over-impressed, not exactly with the power to destroy, but certainly with the power to take over institutions. Perhaps because I have been blessed with the ability to create original things, but I completely lack the skills to take over institutions or even be a manager, I guess I tend to assume the latter is harder and implies greater competence.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Joanathan

I think it is clearer with a developmental perspective. Leftism has changed greatly over the past decades.

It *was* difficult for the left to take over institutions when socialism began to gather strength in the UK, late 1800s - it required, and there were many people of great ability, even genius, involved in that early process. Many (probably most) of the greatest authors, scientists, academics of that era were leftists.

But the more prevalent and advanced leftism became as more and more Men rejected God/ creation/ the primacy of the spiritual etc - and as the mental and social consequences of that rejection became evident; then leftist subversion/ destruction/ inversion became routine - the normal mainstream career-path.

As the thought-world descends further into incoherence, inversion and chaos, leftism *Now* requires minimal ability.

The thing about leftist 'power' is that the power to wreck and destroy oneself and one's society cannot genuinely be described as 'power' (by the older understanding of power); and it is only the high prevalence of leftist incoherence and inversion that conceals this obvious fact.

For example, feminism, antiracism, 'green' policies and technologies etc actually (IRL) achieve the *opposite* of what they say they want - but that makes no difference in our leftist world; because of the value-corruption, incompetence and incoherence of Men and institutions. That is not real power.



ben said...

is cancer powerful for spreading itself? it can't do anything, only spread. the body was far more 'powerful' before it was replaced by this tumour comprised of mutants. these tumours that resemble nations.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ben - Yes, that's it.

I have previously written that the 'cohesion' of society used to be provided by religion; but this was 'replaced' by the mass media. I would now add to this the bureaucracy. In other words - religion was replaced by totalitarianism (which is implicitly leftist and 'secular').

However, totalitarian cohesion is a kind of auto-digestion process; whereby society/ civilization/ the individual maintain a world-view and 'self-understanding at the price of continual self destruction.

Totalitarianism is a parasite; so the mechanism that holds-together derives its energy from the host.

(This applies as a whole, and in the parts of our society - so 'green technology' and 'sustainable energy' actually increase environmental degradation and usage of energy. An electric car is just a less-efficient, more wasteful way of using fossil fuels.)

Yet, subtract totalitarianism from an irreligious/ Godless person or society - and everything immediately falls-apart (until there is a conscious choice to 'return' to the cohesion of personally affiliating with God's creative motivation).

Lady Mermaid said...

"As usual, we need to realize that leftism is negative and oppositional, hence logically self-contradictory."

This is so true. Many on the right fail to understand this and think they can "own the libs" by pointing out the contradictions of leftism. They will accuse the left of hypocrisy and get nowhere as it is assumed that leftism is operating out of a sincere desire for good.

However, as you have repeated pointed out, leftism is a demonic inversion of good and evil. Once leftism is understood as being fundamentally opposed to God and creation, it becomes quite coherent in that it wishes for destruction. To list a few examples:

-Bodily integrity when it comes to abortion but insisting on forced shots to have a semblance of normal life including earning an income

-Denying any fundamental differences between the sexes to the point of insisting that military combatant units can absorb women just as easily as men but advocating injecting hormones and performing sterilizing surgery on young children who may slightly deviate from stereotypical sex roles such as young girls not wanting to wear dresses.

-Demolishing any standard of sexual propriety reveling in the fun of "free love" while implementing sexual harassment and sexual consent policies that criminalize any sexual activity if a woman ever has doubts or reservations about certain sexual encounters

-Pushing open borders and freedom of movement for mass migration while demanding healthy people be placed under indefinite house arrest in cases of infectious disease

Etc.

I used to believe that leftism would fall apart once people saw the contradictions. Now I realize that the contradictions of leftism are features, not bugs. Satan cannot build, only destroy.

Bruce Charlton said...

@LM - Yes, that's it indeed.

Why do people have such difficulty in perceiving that leftism is oppositional? Clearly the insight is rare - e.g. I had to work it out for myself, because I had never read it anywhere.

I think the likely answer is that most of us (including me) have a fair bit of 'residual unresolved leftism' - that remains operating and to confuses us.

Or, perhaps people automatically (without realizing they are making an assumption) think in terms of symmetrical opposites; so that they assume that leftism is 'the new religion' - on the basis that they presume one religion must be replaced by another; when leftism is actually an anti-religion.

Or, they regard leftism as a unitary phenomenon - (so that Soviet Communism is regarded as 'basically the same' as the current woke-transagenda ideology) rather than something that continually develops/ evolves/ becomes-more-evil.

Whereas early leftists were generally less evil than modern ones (eg. they had utopian goals for society, rather than pure oppositional-negation), and leftist evil in the early days was more 'normal' than our 2022 world of officially-inverted-values.

Lucinda said...

That's a really good comment Lady Mermaid. It's just how it's been for me too.