There are people, online especially but also IRL, whose response to the evil nature of the ruling classes is avoidance.
It's the puritanical impulse (common to all religions, and found in all denominations); that ranks "sins" and makes a Big thing about publicly and socially avoiding those regarded as worst; on the assumption that this will make people and society overall better...
But given that all Men are sinners; the puritan impulse has its dark side.
Which is (to summarize) that of allowing or even encouraging the multitude of sins and evils Not singled-out for enforced surveillance and exclusion.
Thus a high status puritan (whether religious, or nowadays non- or anti-religious) may be mild-mannered and modest in dress, and strictly avoid alcohol and fornication...
And also be extremely spiteful, resentful and cruel.
In practice; the avoidance of one or a few special sins, allows space and oxygen for the non-special sins to grow unchecked.
This is a close analogy to the idea that it is an effective strategy for those who oppose (for instance) "leftism" to operate by avoidance and exclusion of (supposedly) exemplary wrongness.
Such is the call for "activism".
This stuff may have begun back in the 1950s, when such people often asserted "I don't have a television", which of itself is perfectly fine; but it was said in a way that implied those who do have a television are morally corrupted.
When I was a teen, another version of this was people who would "boycott" some particular organization, because it "had ties" to some particular nation, that was supposed to be particularly evil - South Africa was the favourite example...
And this, at a time, when China's "cultural revolution" was underway! But China wasn't what the right kind of people were talking about, while South Africa was.
Nowadays there are people whose response to any currently highlighted instance of the evil-strategy of Western institutions is to assert that people "just" need to stop consuming their output.
This amounts to picking one example (or ten, or a hundred) from among thousands or millions of equivalent evil institutions or persons; focusing on the supposedly special evil of that one...
And then assuming that if we stop consuming the product of that one we shall ourselves become better people and create a pressure for general improvement.
Such an attitude is evidence of a gross failure to understand that "things are much worse than that"; we are way, way beyond any state at which singling out persons or institutions or nations for special disdain can be anything other than a personal idiosyncrasy.
As such - as a personal idiosyncrasy - such disengagement and boycotting may well be significant and important.
I certainly have particular entities - people, places, institutions etc. - that I avoid like the plague; often because they make me viscerally disgusted.
It seems like obvious sense that we each should go-with such intuitive aversions; but let's not delude ourselves that this "makes a difference" in any systematic way
But the step from this to - for example - launching some kind of campaign to boycott or block some particular entity; is evidence of dangerously naïve ignorance concerning the actual state of our civilization - which is far more systemically and strategically evil than such people realize.
The vast volume of socio-political commentary that focuses on criticizing the absurdities and evils of the self-styled "left" political personalities and parties, is another such failure - because the leftism being critiqued pervades all major personalities and political parties.
Similarly; when commentators focus on the supposedly special value-corruptions of a particular nation (Canada, New Zealand, UK, France...) this is another instance of dangerous incomprehension; because the real problem is qualitative, not quantitative.
The problem lies with the entirety of Western civilization, and all its parties, and all its institutions, and all of its leadership class...
And their commonly assumed and shared and enforced atheism, materialism, hedonic-despair - and pervasive and long-term self-loathing and suicidality.
If you don't grasp this; then you are part of the problem, enmeshed in and supportive of the strategic evils of The System - and have no grounds for self-congratulation.
And if you do grasp the situation - that things are much worse than implied by assumptions of specific and encapsulated evil; then you will know that picking-out particular people or institutions, parties or nations for special and systemic exclusion - and assuming such "action" will "make a difference"; is not just futile, but dangerously delusional.
No comments:
Post a Comment