Bruce Charlton's Notions

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[Message for those of you who have been following my recent ruminations on political correctness:  

this posting represents the first time where I feel I may have reached to the bottom of the mystery of PC 

(perhaps an exclamation mark is warranted here!):

this is the first time I feel that I understand the deep unity which lies behind the surface insanity that is political correctness.

I will try and explicate this (apparent) insight further over the next few days. ] 

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The argument in brief:

Political correctness is a logical extension of a this-worldly (secular) and materialist (not spiritual) perspective of pure abstract altruism - untainted by personal feelings.

In other words, PC aims at the attainment of altruism in this world.

And the altruism aimed at is abstract - not the altruism of individuals. 

PC aims at the submission of the (inevitably selfish) individual to abstract systems of pure altruism.

Submission, ideally, even unto the destruction and death of everything that is valued. The test of ultimate sincerity. 

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Altruism is to be attained via abstract systems (usually bureaucratic systems) which are concerned with the allocation of resources or 'goods': things like money, wealth, land, jobs, educational positions, any perceived status symbols.

Altruism is therefore concerned with allocation of goods. It is therefore a matter of altruistic outcomes, and the virtuous result depends on the attainment of altruistic outcomes.

Altruism is intrinsically outcome-orientated. 

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Since PC is primarily focused on altruistic outcomes, it is therefore relatively unconcerned by how these outcomes are attained: systematic lying, force, bribery, subsidy, intimidation all are (in principle) acceptable means to this ultimate end.

(This accounts for the sustained and intrinsic dishonesty of PC.)

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Because for PC the 'original sin' is selfishness, and all individual acts of altruism are vulnerable to corruption by selfishness - ideally the individual should be altruistically indifferent to his own condition, including his own feelings.

Selfishness is original sin, and all individuals are selfish - the explanation given for inevitable human selfishness is various, but one candidate cause is natural selection. 

Therefore, in order to avoid selfishness, policy must not originate from individuals nor must it depend on the decision of individuals - instead altruism should be person-proof: should be a product of objective and abstract procedures.

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Other features of PC are related to the necessity to generate operational definitions of altruism and the constraints of power politics.

To make an altruism-generating abstract system entails that a 'good' be operationally-defined (eg in terms of income, or wealth, or desirable jobs or other positions).

These goods must be this-worldly and material so that they may be measured, monitored and manipulated.

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And further, the operational realities of power politics entail that these abstract procedures be applied to groups not individuals - the individual being defined in terms of their group membership.

Group orientation is necessary in practice, albeit not in theory, because power results from group alliances: from 'interest groups' such as classes, sexes, ethnicities, job categories (unions) etc. 

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To clarify further: 

Political correctness is a secular ideology based on moral principle. 

From a secular perspective, the highest virtue, and perhaps the only virtue, is altruism: helping others at costs to oneself.

Other forms of human cooperation are disvalued -  altruistic cooperation is regarded as the primary virtue.

This is contrasted with the opposite vice of selfishness.

But, ideally, altruism must be pure - which means untainted by selfishness, which means untainted by any degree of personal advantage (untainted even by pleasure).  

Morality is seen as altruism; the highest morality as disinterested altruism.


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From an other-worldly religious perspective altruism is a subordinate virtue - there are other more important things than helping others in a material sense - but from a secular perspective altruism frames almost the whole of moral discourse.

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Most or all forms of naturally-occurring examples of altruism are, in fact, merely indirect forms of self-interest. For example: altruism towards genetic relatives; towards allies; or altruism as an accidental side effect of other forms of selfishness - such as when pets substitute for children.

Some instances of altruism are merely long-termism, while others are genetic self interest coming into conflict with the interests of a specific organism (when an individual risks their life to make more likely the survival of their extended family.).

Even the altruism of Christianity is conceptualized as being corrupted by the desire for other-worldly happiness: so (from a PC perspective) Christians are 'merely' sacrificing themselves to others in order to gain more happiness in the long-term.

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This marks an important cleavage point between leftist PC and right wing conservatism and reaction. For the secular right, the reality that altruism is tainted with selfishness is accepted - indeed it is embraced as a means to the end of greater functional effectiveness.

For the secular right, selfishness in not exactly good, but (as noted by Adam Smith) is regarded as potentially leading to good under a competitive system of natural selection such as market economics.

This strikes the PC as unacceptably cynical. 

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On the whole, the secular right has no conception of 'original sin' and accepts that human beings are intrinsically selfish, and evolved from selfish ancestors.

The secular right accepts that kin selection means that humans tend to favour their families; that people with common interests will make alliances for their own benefit; that individuals will be prone to corruption by selfishness and short-termism - and it simply tolerates these problems so long as things, on the whole, are working well - or if eradicating the problems cause more problems than they solve.

And this unprincipled, and perhaps self-serving, pragmatism on the political right - the tendency to accept and work with human sin - is why absolutist liberals feel morally-superior to conservatives. 

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This is why the idealistically politically correct feel so virtuous, feels indeed superior to all previous forms of human morality: because the ideal is to be aiming at the good of others without any personal reward whatsoever.   

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Naturally the PC fail to attain this ideal, naturally individuals always

But this merely emphasises that individual selfishness is original sin for the PC - and the implication is that as an ideal individuals ought to be, and need to be, subordinated to impersonal mechanisms for implementing altruism at the social level - regardless of the consequences.

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In fact, PC is a logical response to the ultimate problem of altruism; the psychological paradox: that if being altruistic makes you happy, then you are being rewarded, therefore you are not really being altruistic but merely self-indulgent.

(In PC) If you enjoy helping others then your altruism is not pure. The others ought to be treated altruistically whatever your feelings on the matter may be.

To be 'pure', altruism therefore should not make you happy, should leave you unmoved at least, and preferably make you miserable.

Only if altruism makes you suffer can you be sure that you are not merely doing it for your selfish motives. 

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But even then, perhaps you might 'enjoy suffering in a good cause' and this enjoyment would in turn contaminate your altruism.

The answer is that - as an individual - you should be made to be altruistic, and made miserable by your altruism, and that this is abstractly good because your own motivations have nothing to do with your behaviour.

Your job, in PC, is therefore to resign yourself to your suffering - not to enjoy it, but not to complain about it, simply to submit to it.

Submission is the key concept.

For the PC individual the ultimate ethical act is to submit to being forced to be altruistic - not because you enjoy it, but because you believe that submission to altruism is the highest value in an ultimate and abstract sense.

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(The best possible job for a PC individual is therefore to work for a bureaucracy that does altruistic good - and to hate your job - and to do it anyway.)

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Pure altruism, as such, is a logical consequence of the moral primacy of pure altruism: it is insane, and lacks any test in reality, because it is an abstraction: a human-created abstraction

What is more, PC is the creation of that minority of humans capable of abstract thought, and imposed on the other humans; what is more PC is possible only in a fundamentally secular and materialist society. 

Therefore PC stands or falls by the fact of an intellectual ruling elite, and can be imposed widely by this elite only by the technologies of modern mass media communication.

And PC is only possible in a fully materialist and secular society: where this worldly 'goods' and their just (i.e. altruistic) allocation can assume ultimate importance, ideally over-riding all other considerations. 

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Hence it is this idealistic quest for pure abstract altruism, in a secular context, which has caused the suicidal insanity of PC.

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[Note: I think my idea of pure abstract altruism is probably a more specific version of Thomas Sowell's concept of Cosmic Justice - which I read about several years ago.]

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It is my contention that political correctness is (more or less) communism plus 'original sin'.

The 'original sin' element for PC is humanity's innate selfishness.

PC responds by embracing abstract systematic bureaucracy to replace individual decision-making in all important areas.

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For the Pure Altruist, altruism is not a moral choice but an objective act of allocation.

The ultimate act of altruism is therefore for the altruistic individual to remove all elements of personal choice, credit and virtue out of altruism, so that altruism does not depend on contingent human factors.

PC strives to promote and embrace an abstract system of altruism which forces everybody to be altruistic including himself; which forces him to suffer and perhaps die for objective altruism.

For PC altruism ought not to be a choice; altruism ought to be explicitly and impartially imposed by rules, regulations and laws.

The only moral choice in PC is whether to submit willingly to abstract altruistic systems, or whether (selfishly) to resist them.

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The ideal for PC (as for most idealistic secular people) is 'pure altruism': that is, altruism untainted by an personal benefit whatsoever.

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A Christian martyr dies as a witness for his faith; he dies in order that others might attain salvation.

Yet the martyr also is rewarded richly for his witness, by a place in heaven.

(The reward for witnessing to heaven is a place in heaven).

(Indeed, many Saints are Saints precisely because they are martyrs - http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/stschurch.htm )

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To the politically correct, Christian martyrs are selfish (not altruistic) and they are deluded.

To the PC, Christian martyrs are selfish because they are acting for their own reward, and they are deluded because the reward does not exist.

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A PC martyrs dies as a witness to his faith; he dies in order that others may be happier or may suffer less.

The PC martyr has no reward, because death is oblivion.

(The reward for witnessing to PC is annihilation.)

And the oblivion is real and absolute, because PC is this-worldly, and because PC is engaged in national altruism up to and beyond the point of cultural annihilation.

So for the PC there will not even be a possibility that the martyr will be remembered and revered, because he has chosen not merely personal annihilation but embraced cultural annihilation - specifically the destruction of the culture that supports PC.

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This is what I mean my PC being motivated by Pure Altruism.

Pure Altruism is the altruism of an atheist who chooses death and embraces cultural destruction, rather than sell-out or abandon his PC principles.

PC idealism is altruism at any cost; and the greater the cost, the greater the evidence of sincerity.

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To its adherents political correctness therefore feels like a higher ideal than Christianity, because PC is Purely Altruistic, and altruism (helping others at cost to oneself) is the highest conceivable value in the secular world.

Christian martyr's are (assumed to be) rewarded with a place in heaven; while PC martyr's are consigned to oblivion.

PC martyr's therefore do not benefit at all from what they do, they suffer purely for the sake of others.

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More exactly, PC martyr's suffer purely for the sake of what they themselves conceive to be the happiness of others (although the others might not agree).

But what a futile act is PC martyrdom! To die for what you believe to be the happiness of others? - for the freedom to choose gratifying lifestyles!

So PC martyrdom really is Pure Altruism: pure to the point of utter absurdity.

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For political correctness, to be moral is to be absurd, to be self-sacrificing, to sacrifice anything and everything which has made you what you are.

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For PC, the ideal aspiration is to climb a ladder to a higher level of abstraction where one constructs and imposes a system of Pure Altruistic morality, then to kick away the ladder

(so that nobody else may ever ascend the ladder to tamper with the perfect system)

- and in kicking away the ladder, to fall to one's doom, to fall into a furnace of personal and cultural annihilation.

That's what I call martyrdom.

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While The West as a culture is clearly suicidal - and suicidal in a long-term, planned and strategic manner - it is interesting to analyse how this arises as an indirect consequence of altruism being the greatest Good, the highest-valued virtue in a secular Leftist society.

While pretty-much all of the other (one-sided and partial) virtues of The Left have by now been discarded, altruism - favouring others above oneself - remains as the ultimate.

And, in a secular context, where reality lacks any objective basis, altruism becomes necessarily subjective and relativistic - which means that altruism has become, in practice, defined in terms of the effect on 'me'.

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Since in secular modernity there is no objective concept of doing Good - Good has been reduced to pleasure, and pleasure cannot be measured or quantified in other people - so 'doing Good to others' has been redefined as 'doing harm to myself'.

In a modern, 'relativist' context, without God; instead of doing-good to others; secular Left altruism is redefined as doing-harm to myself.

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Modern political altruism is therefore a mass, cumulative consequence of the ethic of 'doing harm to myself' but refracted through human short-termism and cowardice.

That is, a modern secular Leftist sets-out to harm himself - but is thwarted by his own cowardly short-termism, and he ends-up doing harm to other people similar to himself.

He tries to help 'the other' by hurting himself, ultimately by killing himself - but lacks the moral resources to implement his plan on himself - and therefore (guiltily, but effectively) expends great effort and ingenuity personally to avoid the consequences of his own advocated policies.

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Because secular modernity has rejected religion, specifically Christianity, then it has no basis for educating, supporting or enforcing the full range of Christian virtues including courage and prudence - and modern culture is notably cowardly and impulsive (short-termist).

So the most moral modern secular people want to be good by being altruistic, and can only understand altruism to be what harms themselves - but they lack the courage, self-discipline and long-termism actually to implement this morality upon themselves personally.

Therefore, modern secular Leftist morality advocates an abstract form of self-harm - in which the advocate can (in a cowardly and short-termist fashion) work towards self-harm and suicide (which he regards as 'altruism') yet in practice to do his utmost to avoid these bad consequences falling upon himself, now.

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The typical moralistic Leftist therefore advocates policies which harm other people like himself now - and finds excuses (or just feels guilty - 'liberal guilt') for the fact that his own position remains insulated from these bad consequences, in the short term.

The typical moralistic Leftist therefore has policies against his own interests - his sex, class, race, social situation - but in practice exempts himself as much as possible from these bad consequences, because he is a short-termist coward who lacks the real Christian basis to be anything else.

So we see strategic, abstract 'class warriors' who in practice accept knighthoods and peerages; strategic abstract egalitarians who are the ultra-rich; those who in principle argue in favour of high taxes, yet avoid paying them; white family men who occupy high status jobs but who argue that blacks, women and those of unconventional sexuality should ideally occupy such jobs; those who favour population replacement by mass immigration in the West elaborately cocooning themselves from the social destruction and suffering this brings; those who strategically and abstractly crusade against 'private' schools and health care (i.e. against the possibility of going outside state-controlled provision) yet avail themselves of its advantages; those who advocate a 'small carbon footprint' yet who travel everywhere by private jets and dwell in vast and wasteful mansions - and so on and on and on through all the other gross hypocrisies of the Left.

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It is indeed absolutely normal and inevitable for the powerful Left elites to invent ever-more new pseudo-moral policies which are imposed by ever-more laws, taxes, subsidies, regulations and mass media propaganda at an international, national, local and institutional level - yet themselves, personally to evade the ethics they themselves have invented as much as they possibly can.

What seems like hypocrisy is simply moral weakness operating in a context of a self-destroying ethic; secular Leftist altruists believe-in suicide - that is, they believe in the self-destruction of people-like-themselves, but - precisely because they are secular, hence relativists/nihilists - they have no basis for all-round virtue, so they do their utmost to squirm-out-of the consequences of their own policies.

They have enough moral strength for only one virtue, thus any Good which may come from the pursuit of that single virtue is undone and more, by the failure to pursue other virtues and by the unrecognised, denied and unrestrained evils out-with the one-eyed pursuit of altruism.

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'The personal is political' means, in practice, that politics is for 'other people', for the general good, for abstract altruism; but not for me.

For such reasons, pursuit of any single virtue always leads to great sin: monomania is always net-destructive of Good.

In secular modernity, the monomania is for altruism - altruism redefined in the only way that secular modernity can recognize. 

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There is a very funny novel by Michael Frayn called The Tin Men (1965) - set in a computer establishment where one of the characters is attempting to construct a 'Samaritan' robot that is 'altruistic'; such that it will willingly sacrifice its own existence for others. 

The background assumption is that self-sacrificing altruism is the highest form of ethical behaviour - and this is indeed probably the mainstream assumption in all modern atheistic leftist societies (which, nowadays, means everywhere). 

Considerable humour comes from the problems of programming this robot - in particular the difficulty that when the robot is made to want to sacrifice itself, and seems to get 'satisfaction' from doing so - then this no longer counts as self-sacrifice because it is merely selfishly doing what makes it happy. 

The ideal seems to be a robot that will willingly sacrifice itself for others, or at least others who are also moral agents - if that can be detected - but will be made more miserable by doing so...

This is one of many paradoxes and incoherences that come from the common idea that altruism is the highest moral value and the proper guide to living. 

One frequent idea is that the greatest public moral exemplars are those who - supposedly - live for the benefit of others despite cost to themselves. 

(Or, at least, donate time or money to organizations that claim to facilitate this... hence the structural role of 'charities' in objectively validating the moral-superiority claims of the ruling classes: charitable work 'proves' that these are truly altruistic people who deserve their fame, wealth, power and status.)

But altruism merely kicks the can further down the road; because altruism fails to provide any meaning to life. 

If my life is to be devoted to preserving and enhancing the satisfaction of other lives, and if this ethic is general (so that society aims at being composed of people all and always doing stuff for each other - but never for themselves) - then this fails to provide any understanding of what all these other lives are For. 

Why is it good for me to 'help others' - help others to do what, exactly? 

What ever 'that' is - which altruism is directed towards - must itself surely be the primary reason for living? 

(I felt this strongly when I worked as a doctor. The left-liberal altruistic ethic reduces to reducing-suffering in others - since this is regarded as a self-evident Good - so medicine ought to be a perfect exemplar. But it did not feel like that. As I then was I knew of no purpose or meaning in life and denied P & M in the universe; so I found it strange that I was supposed to get maximum life satisfaction from keeping people alive and functional to live lives that they themselves mostly regarded as meaningless, futile and miserable (especially in psychiatric practice). Yet everybody apparently assumed that this 'helping people' was one of the best things about being a doctor, and why I was a doctor.)

Altruism is vacuous as a guide for living. 

Yet the nonsensical altruistic ideal persists - especially as the very basis of leftism - which claims to be the ethic of altruism; with society organized on that basis. Leftist ethics nearly all assume that it is the highest duty to live our lives (and donate our taxes) for 'other people' (or, at least, those 'other people' currently defined as worthy by the leftist Establishment). 

Leftist governments (ie. all governments) assume total power to monitor and regulate all human lives on the basis that this is necessary to ensure that everybody lives and works primarily for everybody-else - and to do otherwise is selfish and evil. Anyone who fails actively to support the altruistic authorities is thus selfish and evil. 

This leftist ethic of altruism is also used to attack Christianity; on the basis that (supposedly) Christians pretend to be more altruistic than anyone else, but are really super-selfish in their desire to sacrifice happiness in this world (including to allow preventable suffering in this world) in return for a promise of a joyous resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

(...Which is, anyway, impossible nonsense - hence merely a feeble excuse for callous indifference to others.) 

Perhaps in response, a weird kind of Christianized-altruism (which is not really Christian) sometimes develops; which, if taken seriously, leads quickly to immiseration and death - as shown in the misguided and self-destructive life of George R Price which ended in suicide

Suicide is, indeed, a rational response to the ethic of altruism; since it may be understood as helping others by removing one's own baleful influence, or by ceasing to consume scarce resources... 

Indeed, altruism suggests that it may be better never to be born in the first place; so that selfishness is not even a possibility, and others are left with more. 

(This is another commonly expressed view - buttressed by the contemporary fake-environmentalism which sees all living Men as undesirable CO2-emitters.)

In sum - altruism amounts to an ethic of self-hatred and death; which is probably sufficient to explain why it is so vigorously propagated by the modern Global Establishment.  

It is therefore vital to realize that altruism is not an ultimate ethic, nor indeed a good thing at all if taken as an abstract, general or universal commandment. 

By contrast; the Christian morality is based upon love, and focused upon Heaven - which is a place of love: a place that is entered only via an eternal commitment to live by love. 

And the reality of Christian love is seen, primarily, in the family; secondarily in marriage; and only much more rarely in friendships with unrelated people. And not all people are capable of love; and some people refuse it. 

Which fact means that actual mortal Christian love is partial, i.e. involving particular persons. Mortal love is not universal, nor meant to be - and love may be strongly bound up with the greatest knowable joy, as well as voluntary misery. 

"Abstract, universal love" ('of fellow Men' or whatever) is something other and not Christian love; indeed it often (not always) functions as an anti-Christian or indeed Antichrist phenomenon.

A Christian is one who believes that to love and to be loved is the greatest and most important thing in this mortal life (and beyond) - whatever emotions it brings. 

But in this mortal life love is usually partial, may be infrequent, and is always temporary because of death.

Thus, the greatest desire of a Christian is that this love we have experienced partially may be made full and eternal...

Which is why Christians want to accept Jesus's offer of resurrected life everlasting in Heaven; where this ideal state of love is realized powerfully and forever. A Christian has decided that he wants this for himself; and hopes that many others will want it too - but especially those people (and other Beings) whom the Christian loves. 

(And therefore - in its essence - Christianity has, indeed, nothing to do with altruism.) 

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The correct answer is Communism. And this is a matter of fact.

But the chances are you may think that you disagree, or regard them as equally bad, or that it is too close to call.

However, if so, you are mistaken, and for one of two reasons:

1. Most likely, almost certainly, you do not know enough about Communism. Even I, who am no friend to Communism, continue to be surprised by what I did not know about the evils of the USSR. It has only been during the past year I have begun to appreciate this, and even in the past week some major new horrors have come to my attention. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself.

2. The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy

I described the TSF here: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/measuring-human-capability-moonshot.html

The way it work in this instance is that Nazism is defined as the ultimate evil - then other evils are measured according to how closely they resemble Nazism. Naturally, when this is done to Communism, it seems less evil than Nazism.

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The relationship between ideologies (over the past couple of thousand years in the West) is as follows:

1. First came Christianity: primary sin = pride; primary virtue = love (i.e. the type of love which is agape/ charity). These defined ultimately in terms of spirituality, transcendentals, other worldly factors.

2. With leftist/ progressive atheism (e.g. Communism) the primary sin became selfishness; the primary virtue = unselfishness (a.k.a. altruism). These being defined in this worldly and materialistic terms - as 'worldly goods' ('goods' including all valued materials factors such as money and also socially-defined factors such as status).

Unselfishness is operationalized as altruism on behalf of others - e.g. other classes, other races, other sex, animals, climate, the planet...

3. Rightist/ reactionary atheism (of which Nazism is a type) reacts against the self-hatred and suicidal effects of leftist altruism on behalf of others, by reversing the morality of unselfishness to regard this-worldly materialist selfishness (under some communitarian description) as a virtue rather than the primary sin.

(In this sense, Nietzsche was indeed the philosopher of Nazism.)

Selfishness is operationalized by right-wing atheism as distributing worldly goods to one's own class, nation, empire, race, sex or whatever.

To be paradoxical about it, Nazism is aggressive altruism on behalf of oneself!

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Both Communism and Nazism are relativistic/ nihilistic - they do not aim at a specific state of affairs, but a permanent revolution in a particular direction - secular leftists aim at continually increasing altruism to others, secular rightists aim at continually increasing selfishness.

Hence atheist ideologies of both right and left are capable of unrestrained evil, so their regimes are the worst in human history - but atheist leftism is capable of attracting vastly more widespread and sustained support and idealistic zeal by its pseudo-morality of un-selfishness.

Hence Communism has spread almost everywhere and accomplished (and is accomplishing) vastly more evil than Nazism - which was a narrow and unsustainable product of unique circumstances.

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So - Christianity promotes transcendental love, Communism promotes worldly unselfishness on behalf of others, Fascism promotes worldly selfishness.

Leftists and progressives therefore regard Communism as intrinsically superior to Nazism - in a way that takes no account of evidence, since they see Commuinism as having the highest possible human aspirations - albeit they are usually corrupted.

Leftists regard Nazism (and other forms of secular rightism) as intrinsically evil because its advocates openly  promote their own interests: its primary morality is selfishness. Since this is the exact opposite of leftism - indeed, an exact inversion of leftist morality - it is the ultimate evil.

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(Note: Leftists also regard supernaturalist Christianity as intrinsically evil because it promotes non-worldly goods, which do not exist; thereby ignoring or neglecting the moral centrality of enforcing the altruistic distribution of worldly goods.

But, for leftists, Christianity is not the ultimate evil, since it is not the exact opposite of leftism. Rather, orthodox Christianity is seen as a hypocritical mask for secular rightism - which is seen as primary. Christians are therefore seen as promoters of selfishness who cleverly disguise it under a cover of nonsensical transcendental aspirations.

Explicit, open, un-ashamed secular rightism is the primary enemy.

So, Communists fear Nazis - because they understand and respect them, but despise Christians - who are seen as fools and cowards.

Communists want to fight real Nazis (if they think they can win), but want to exterminate Christians (as mere vermin.)

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So, for leftists, the difference between the mainstream secular right and Nazis is merely that Nazism is more honest and brave: the secular right with the gloves-off. Mainstream rightists are seens as nothing more-than - or other-than - feeble Nazis.)

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There is an answer, and the correct answer is Communists.

But the chances are you may think that you disagree, or regard them as equally bad, or that it is too close to call.

However, if so, you are mistaken, and for one of two reasons:

1. Most likely, almost certainly, you do not know enough about Communism. Even I, who am no friend to Communism, continue to be surprised by what I did not know about the evils of the USSR. It has only been during the past year* I have begun to appreciate this, and even in the past week some major new horrors have come to my attention. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself.

2. The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy

I described the TSF here: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/measuring-human-capability-moonshot.html

The way it work in this instance is that Nazism is defined as the ultimate evil - then other evils are measured according to how closely they resemble Nazism. Naturally, when this is done to Communism, it seems less evil than Nazism.


The relationship between ideologies (over the past couple of thousand years in the West) is as follows:

1. First came Christianity: primary sin = pride; primary virtue = love (i.e. the type of love which is agape/ charity). These defined ultimately in terms of spirituality, transcendentals, other worldly factors.

2. With leftist/ progressive atheism (e.g. Communism) the primary sin became selfishness; the primary virtue = unselfishness (a.k.a. altruism). These being defined in this worldly and materialistic terms - as 'worldly goods' ('goods' including all valued materials factors such as money and also socially-defined factors such as status).

Unselfishness is operationalized as altruism on behalf of others - e.g. other classes, other races, other sex, animals, climate, the planet...

3. Rightist/ reactionary atheism (of which Nazism is a type) reacts against the self-hatred and suicidal effects of leftist altruism on behalf of others, by reversing the morality of unselfishness to regard this-worldly materialist selfishness (under some communitarian description) as a virtue rather than the primary sin.

(In this sense, Nietzsche was indeed the philosopher of Nazism.)

Selfishness is operationalized by right-wing atheism as distributing worldly goods to one's own class, nation, empire, race, sex or whatever.

To be paradoxical about it, Nazism is aggressive altruism on behalf of oneself!


Both Communism and Nazism are relativistic/ nihilistic - they do not aim at a specific state of affairs, but a permanent revolution in a particular direction - secular leftists aim at continually increasing altruism to others, secular rightists aim at continually increasing selfishness.

Hence atheist ideologies of both right and left are capable of unrestrained evil, so their regimes are the worst in human history - but atheist leftism is capable of attracting vastly more widespread and sustained support and idealistic zeal by its pseudo-morality of un-selfishness.

Hence Communism has spread almost everywhere and accomplished (and is accomplishing) vastly more evil than Nazism - which was a narrow and unsustainable product of unique circumstances.


So - Christianity promotes transcendental love, Communism promotes worldly unselfishness on behalf of others, Fascism promotes worldly selfishness.

Leftists and progressives therefore regard Communism as intrinsically superior to Nazism - in a way that takes no account of evidence, since they see Communism as having the highest possible human aspirations - albeit they are usually corrupted.

Leftists regard Nazism (and other forms of secular rightism) as intrinsically evil because its advocates openly promote their own interests: its primary morality is selfishness. Since this is the exact opposite of leftism - indeed, an exact inversion of leftist morality - it is the ultimate evil.

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Leftists also regard supernaturalist Christianity as intrinsically evil because it promotes non-worldly goods, which do not exist; thereby ignoring or neglecting the moral centrality of enforcing the altruistic distribution of worldly goods.

But, for leftists, Christianity is not the ultimate evil, since it is not the exact opposite of leftism. Rather, orthodox Christianity is seen as a hypocritical mask for secular rightism - which is seen as primary. Christians are therefore seen as promoters of selfishness who cleverly disguise it under a cover of nonsensical transcendental aspirations.

Explicit, open, un-ashamed secular rightism is the primary enemy.

So, Communists fear Nazis - because they understand and respect them, but despise Christians - who are seen as fools and cowards.

Communists want to fight real Nazis (if they think they can win), but want to exterminate Christians (as mere vermin.)


So, for leftists, the difference between the mainstream secular right and Nazis is merely that Nazism is more honest and brave: the secular right with the gloves-off. Mainstream rightists are seen as nothing more-than - or other-than - feeble Nazis.

**

Note added: The inferiority of Soviet Communism to German National Socialism can be seen in their military.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare any other nation with Germany in terms of military prowess - but the German army (and most of the people) apparently loved their leaders and fought for them with absolutely remarkable tenacity and effectiveness until utterly defeated. (The way in which the Allied invasion was held-up in Italy for a year and a half from autumn 1943 was evidence of the Germans' man-for-man supremacy.)

By contrast, from the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, the government waged permanent war upon its own nation. In WWII the Soviet officers *drove* their cowed troops into battle from behind - guns aimed at their own men. On the Eastern Front I have read that the Russians lost ten men for every German killed. 

*The above is reposted from this blog in 2011. I stumbled across it today, and thought it still interesting, and increasingly topical - as (superficially repackaged) communism is making a mainstream comeback.

Promiscuous abstract altruism is a phrase that captures a trait relentlessly encouraged by the mass media, and enforced by peer pressure.

I mean by it the unending parade of human interest stories that are collected from around the world, and which form a large part of the daily consumption of Modern man - the natural disasters, wars and famines, consequences of accident and terrorism, the effects of disorders and diseases and death... The sufferings of children, old people, the innocent, the 'vulnerable', approved-minorities etc.

Every day, in every 'news' source we will be told of something that has happened to someone, somewhere - and our empathy will be enlisted. The aim, apparently, is that we ought to have an altruism - a 'care' of the well-being of others - that is abstract in the sense that we know nothing of the persons and situations, beyond what we are told by the media; and promiscuous in that we are expected to respond sympathetically to no-matter-how many such stories are thrown at us.


Why would the mass media be so keen on everybody, everywhere, being in a continual state of fake involvement in the miseries of others?

Whether these human interest stories are really-real is another matter; and of course most of them are not - being either made-up and 'staged'; or so selective and distorted and misinterpreted as to bear near-zero relationship to actuality.

But my point here is that it is clearly Very Important to those who control the mass media that most people most of the time, ought to be fascinated-by, and involved-in, these empathy-inducing news items. And 'ought' is the correct word; because those who express uninterest, or who are not convincing in their heart-felt 'concern ' for the alleged griefs of alleged persons thousands of miles distant will be judged (especially by women) to be monsters of stony-hearted selfishness...

What's it all about?


Clearly - since we are dealing with the mass media, and the media are tools of the very worst of The Establishment - who are themselves the hosts, servants and dupes of the demonic powers; the motives are not good; are indeed evil.

My guess is that the purpose of promiscuous abstract altruism is to displace the proper concerns of mortal Men. Which are love of God and neighbour; where neighbour implies direct  knowledge and concern - in not proximity and personal involvement, then close personal ties, such as family and friends.

And secondly, that most neglected of vital matters for this mortal life; our-real-selves. The basic reason why we are and remain alive is that we have things we need to learn-from. Aside from Love (which about our salvation) we therefore have theosis (which is about our spiritual development towards higher divinity).

Promiscuous abstract altruism is opposed to theosis, displaces theosis.

Theosis requires that we attend to our actual, personal, lived experience - through-which God is trying to 'teach' us lessons that it is vitally important we learn. Actual, personal, lived... these are the opposites of that second-hand, abstracted, depersonalised, manipulated kind of forced-empathy that is imposed by the mass media.


The intent is that we will be - every day and always - more concerned about the media stories of remote people about whom we know nothing for sure than we are about what is happening to us and around us. 

And, I would say, the media has largely succeeded in their aim; and to a greater extent with every passing year.

Inhibition of theosis? Thwarting of spiritual development?

Job Done!

*

I have said that 'altruism' is the main goal of political correctness. I should be clearer about what I mean.

Fundamentally, PC does not have a specific blueprint for society - instead I believe that PC is essentially negative and reactive.

PC is negative towards existing states of affairs, wants to change them, and reacts by changing them in a particular direction but without a pre-specified goal or endpoint. 

So by 'altruism' I really mean not a positive explicit ideal of allocation, but instead something more like 'anti-selfishness'. 

*

The present (pre-PC) state of affairs/ distribution of 'goods' is assumed to the be bad because it is the result of interacting selfishnesses; what is instead desired is a non-personal system of allocating goods according to abstract considerations.

*

So, altruistic allocation refers to 'goods'.

By 'goods' I mean all of the this-worldly, material entities which are valued.

At one level these are economic goods (money, other tyes of wealth); at another level they are the status symbols (high prestige jobs, or places at high status schools and colleges, or prizes); at a further level 'goods' includes desirable states of mind such as happiness and self-esteem - albeit states of mind are only measurable with (more-or-less-plausible) proxy measures.

*

In sum, political correctness favour more altruism of 'goods'; in the sense of replacing personal (hence selfish) decisions and choices with abstract systems to implement 'anti-selfishness'.

*

The Arrakis conflict has led to the reintroduction of of 1960s style mass "protest" for the current generation of would-be radicals. 

This is something that delights the kind of self-righteous people who most value the 'pure altruism' of public concern about the reported-doings of remote and barely-understood strangers. 

And, just as happened in the 1960s; the new generation of radicals are being offered a range of low risk/ high visibility opportunities to advertise their pure-altruism and anger-on-behalf-of strangers. 

The Establishment have created just enough Establishment homogeneity and resistance to the radical agenda - including a modicum of 'oppression' - such that the new radicals can imagine themselves engaged in a fight for right against wealth and power. 

This is perhaps the first large scale leftist radicalism since the "Occupy" movement of 2011; but the Fremen cause is more effective, because it provides young Western leftists with a chance to imagine themselves in 'solidarity' with a satisfyingly 'alien' ethnic-religious group - and whose agenda is almost completely different from, and hostile to, that of the new radicals... 

All of which (if it comes to awareness) increases the feeling of pure altruism. 

In terms of the large-scale trends of the agenda of evil; this re-emergence of youth (and boomer!) radicalism is something of a step backwards for the Ahrimanic bureaucrats, but one by which they can still imagine themselves to be in control of the situation - because of their massive influence in the mainstream pseudo-radical media -- which are increasingly hard-line in their pro-Fremen stance with every passing day - and their close monitoring of the situation by means of surveillance and tracking media. 

But, by my understanding, the reality underlying these rationalizations is that the radicals are being neutralized by negative emotions and motivations (fear, resentment, pseudo-empathic compassion, guilt, despair) even as they are encouraged to emote publicly. 

Meanwhile the progression of the increasingly dominant Sorathic agenda of encouraging global and within-nation chaos proceeds under these masks. 

As was, indeed, the intention all along; and (presumably) the reason why the current Arrakis situation was collusively set-up in the first place. 

Christians do themselves, as well their cause, long-term harm by their habitual (addictive?) use of double-negative theology. Indeed there is a very influential branch of theology and Christian practice that has elaborated this into a vast systematic edifice (the negative path, or via negativa) - plus, this is the basis of much 'eastern' religious philosophy in Buddhism, Hinduism (and Sufism).  

I think we can see the collapse of double-negative thinking in the 21st century; because its lack of simplicity and clarity render it incapable of dealing with the protean and pervasive challenges to faith of this era, as emanating from globalist totalitarianism with its linked-bureaucracies of governance and mass media. 

Negative motivations are counter-productive, because when all is illusion then individuals are (in practice) rendered passively obedient to that which is dominant. And, anyway, the number and strength - and fluidity - of deceptions are now too great to be individually discerned, diagnosed and rejected. 

In a world where (for many or most people) it is a case of me-against-the-world: - my Christianity against a world of demonic- materialist ideology - it seems we must be clear in our own minds; if we are not to be confused and bamboozled, and simply worn-down to impotent exhaustion by the relentless and increasing weight of error and evil.

For us, it is a case of motivation, motivation, motivation! 

Thus, we cannot anymore be motivated by such double-negatives as the avoidance of sin - most Christians who imagine this is possible are simply denying their own vast scale of sinning in domains such as dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Avoidance of sin is now effective (hence valid) only when there is a primary positive impulse towards Good. 

But most people's idea of The Good is some notion of altruism/ unselfishness/ helping-others - which is another negative value. In a world based on utilitarian hedonism, where 'other people' live materialistically - 'altruism' reduces to me trying to 'make' people happy, which is impossible; so it ends-up with the negative goal of diminishing suffering. 

(In practice, altruism at the political level entails a small class of super-powerful/ super-privileged/ super-rich individuals pretending to administer the world on behalf of the 'oppressed' by monopolizing and confiscating all resources - supposedly because this globalist-establishment are the 'agents' of 'social justice.)   

We cannot (if ever Men could) be motivated by a desire for 'freedom' - because freedom is a negative value that only gains motivating-power for Good, when there is some existing positive motivation towards Good that is being thwarted. 

We cannot, if we intend to accomplish Good, be motivated primarily by obedience to any external authority or institution; because all such are so corrupted that in practice Goodness can only be discerned and practiced by the independent thinking of individual persons, and their autonomy of thinking. 

And that returns us to the primary of personal motivation. 

In other words; it is now imperative for Christian Good both that individuals are motivated to think for themselves and do-so, and that they operate from baseline assumptions that are positively-motivating - which means simple and clear enough to be effective. 

In practice; each must discover these for himself. They are not available off-the-peg and will not be the values that get-inculcated-into the passively obedient or non-conscious, routine-thinker. 

Since the problem is insufficient motivation, we need to begin from whatever positive and good motivations we already have; and follow these motivations through, with honesty and diligence to... wherever they will lead. 

The Big Problem is that so few people seem to have the motivation even to recognize a problem with The World Now. 

This could - in theory - be because the world is now so pervasively and persuasively evil that Modern men are helpless against its temptations... But that would be to assume God has failed to give Men a reasonable chance of salvation...

Alternatively, it may be that Modern men are of innately poorer quality than Men of the past; that a mass of Men (especially in The West) are innately more dominated by evil, more prone to evil - and feebler in their strength of Good motivations than before. 

I regard this 'worse Men' as the most probable explanation for a world full of Men who do not even want to be Good; but who instead legislate and enforce inverted-true values, such that great evil is now called great good - and praised, rewarded and accorded the highest status. 

In other words: I assume that God is as Good as ever, as powerful a creator as ever; but the 'quality' of pre-mortal souls available for incarnation into this mortal life is lower than in the past. A lot of incarnated souls nowadays are less naturally-good/ more heavily disposed-towards evil, compared with the past. 

And therefore (here-and-now) all the major (large/ powerful/ wealthy/ high-status) human institutions of The Hegemonic West (including churches) are net-corrupted; are overall affiliated to the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world. 

Quite likely - you and I are similarly misaligned and enfeebled compared with Men of the past - although I would not be writing, you would not be reading, this - unless there we had at least some motivation to be motivated for Good... 

However... What worked for our ancestors may not work for us: since we are worse, and so is The World. 

We need things to be simpler, clearer and easier than They did; if we are to be able to develop and strengthen our embryonic Good-motivations into something positive by-which we can navigate our path against the current of a hostile evil-world of apparently overwhelming strength and scope. 

 

Leftist psychology is simple and extremely effective: it has to be simple, because it is almost universal; it is almost universal because it is so effective.

(In The West, almost all supposedly Right wing people, and all in the mainstream, are merely variants of Leftist - just a small minority of religious people are Not Leftist.)

There are two aspects to Leftist motivation - one is self-interested, and the other is what provides a veneer of morality. Neither would work well alone.

If Leftism was wholly self-interested, it would not be a success - the key to Leftism is that it enables people to be self-interested while also feeling good about it - feeling, indeed, altruistically superior about it. But if Leftism was genuinely altruistic, self-sacrificing at an immediate and personal level, it would not be popular.

In the first place, Leftism creates, mobilises, amplifies resentment - class war, war of the sexes, race hatred, the resentments of the sexually non-normal. Since resentment is the commonest, and most insatiable, human sin - this formalisation is very powerful. Few are immune to the blandishments of victimising one's enemy.

Resentment is the self-interest that defines the acceptable enemy, the scapegoat - he or that who is (as an individual or group) to be stripped of status, power, resources. Leftism is based on identifying such victims, asset-stripping them, and using the assets to buy and pay supporters (keeping aside a share).

Leftism makes this act of coercive violence into an act of altruism, by its various (often elaborate) theories - at bottom, these all amount to the idea that it is always good to take from the evil, and give (some of) what is extracted to the virtuous.

Over time, Leftism has varied, sometimes reversed, the definitions of evil and virtue - but those who are, by one definition or another, virtuous; can expect rewards from this extraction, and have a direct self interest in one or another version of Leftism.   

Furthermore, Leftism has developed a powerful way of justifying, morally - and in daily practice - being short termist and selfish; while justifying this in terms of displaced, remote, theoretical long-term altruism. Again, this is the doing of theory, of abstraction - which is the job of Leftist intellectuals.

Leftism is about self-hatred - and this is very important; indeed vital to its long-term success. Self-hatred is the deep morality of Leftism.

This means that the Leftist leadership can convince themselves of their own altruism by the fact that they will often argue against their own long-term, group interests.

Upper class Leftists will designate their own class as evil (almost all Leftist leaders, past and present, come from from the upper classes). Men will be feminists. White Native-born people will denigrate the white native population. Married people with families will advocate sexual revolution... and so on.

It is this self-attack, this suicidal self-hatred, which acts to reassure the Leftist of his own high moral values - and proves (to himself, at least) that he is not merely self-interested.

Yet - and here is another vital aspect - the suicidal self-hatred is displaced. The Leftist attacks his own class, sex, race - and designates the group as an evil exploiter - but not him-self. He asks his class/ sex/ race to give-up their status, power and wealth - but not himself... at least not-here and not-now.

The Leftist leader displaces the sacrifice away from himself and into the future, and often other places. So the Leftist leader's mantra is Not me, Not here, Not now... Arguing that "People like me should give up their jobs to minorities - but not me". Or, the leader argues that a working-class person, woman, an immigrant should have jobs in preference - but this does not apply to my job, here and now.

Always the sacrifice is distal while benefits are proximate - Not me! Not yet!

(The usual excuse is that "I be allowed to keep my status, power, wealth for a bit longer - until I can finish this important work of Leftist redistribution". For a Leftist leader; when-utopia-arrives, when The System is just, is the best time to yield privilege; before then it would be futile or premature... Thus all Leftist leaders are hypocrites, all are Quislings, all are traitors and sell-outs - it goes with the job description.)

So this is the psychology that has led to Leftism taking-over the world. It is selfish - which is why it is so very popular; and it is moral - which makes it even more popular.

But, crucially to Leftism's success, the selfishness is proximate, direct, immediate; while the altruistic, sacrificial morality is abstract, impersonal and remote.    


Note: All the above is necessarily and intrinsically a feature of Leftism, because it is this-worldly, and denying of God and creation. If you think about it; in a world without meaning, when death is extinction, morality can only be some variant of the above. 

*

The relationship of political correctness to the egalitarian impulse, the desire for equality, is interesting. So much of PC rhetoric concerns equality that it superficially seems as if equality of distribution of goods is the goal of political correctness.

Yet this cannot be correct, since in practice PC is indifferent to group preferences and to reverse inequality.

So that in many high status educational institutions and professions (such as medicine), the majority of personnel used to be men, but are now women; and yet formal and aspirational preferences for women remain in place.

In other words, even when what were stated to be the primary goals of policy have been achieved and indeed overshot, the egalitarian rhetoric continues - and any continuing inequalities of outcome of a secondary nature (proportions of women in specific high status sub-specialities - such as surgery) are used as rationalizations for further or continued group preferences.

And in terms of ethnic minority 'representation' in the media, this has reached a level way beyond 'proportionality' and even beyond equality - approaching monopoly - without causing any apparent distress or discomfort among supposed egalitarians. Quite the opposite, indeed.

*

It seems that even a situation of monopoly representation, or monopoly allocation of 'goods' of any kind, by favoured groups (sexual, ethnic or whatever they might be) is perfectly compatible with a system of PC.

All the doctors might be women, all the leading politicians might be (or identify with) ethnic minorities, yet this is still perfectly compatible with a system of continued PC allocations.

Equality is not, therefore, the deepest impulse. What is deepest in political correctness is moral opposition to - and the desire therefore to subvert and invert - the existing state of affairs brought about by individual agency: by human desires, choices, beliefs.

Whatever state of affairs existed in the past or currently exists in the absence of an abstract system of allocation is intrinsically unjust, intrinsically wrong - on principle, and without need for evidence of wrongness (although it is easy to generate such evidence). 

*   

My impression is that actual, real world equality of outcome is a matter of near indifference to political correctness.

Inequalities of one kind operate to stoke-up indignation and as rhetorical devices to persuade acceptance of policies which are favoured anyway; but inequalities of an opposite kind are uninteresting - or perhaps used as a test of PC-sincerity among the elite.

What, then, is the principle behind this?

*

I believe that PC uses egalitarianism instrumentally as a way of generating policies.

But egalitarianism is not really necessary - because policies are primarily oppositional, or inversional, rather than egalitarian.

In other words, PC looks at the human social world as it is and has been, that is to say a world of multiple causal processes, and regards it as intrinsically - necessarily - unjust.

The natural world is unjust because of intrinsic human selfishness.

Egalitarianism is just one device used to demonstrate the injustice. And inequality has the advantage of being amenable to definitions, measurement, monitoring - and being made the basis of bureaucratic procedure.

But indeed any argument is suitable for PC to attack any existing state of affairs which relies on individual choice, individual freedom.

The dissatisfaction (actual, inferred or imputed) of just a single symbolic person is enough to trigger wholesale change - so long as this dissatisfaction can be linked to the introduction of a system of abstract altruistic allocation.

*

PC is - at root, at its deepest impulse - based on a conviction of the intrinsic sinfulness of humans.

Political correctness therefore embodies the impulse to replace individual choice with abstract principle - but with what goal?

Often the stated goal of PC is utilitarian: happiness - the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Or the alleviation of misery and suffering. But, again, this cannot be taken at face value, because PC displays a near-total indifference as to whether its interventions actually do have the effect of increasing happiness or reducing misery.

Indeed, there are many situations when it seems that PC policies reduce happiness and increase misery - but PC is indifferent to whether of not this is so. There is a clear tendency to implement certain kinds of policies regardless of the consequences to human happiness.

*

For political correctness, happiness is not an achieved real world consequence of PC policies. Rather happiness is the moral duty of individuals living under PC; happiness is the state of humans when PC allocative policies are operating.

At an individual level, in particular, the goal is not just to try to be happy about a PC situation, but actually to be happy.

The pure elite PC intellectual ruler really is happy under PC. Whatever happens to him.

This is what I mean by the idea that PC requires submission of the individual to the abstract principles of allocation.

*

In sum, many of the contradictions of PC derive from the attempt to impose abstract systems of altruistic allocation on existing states of affairs which involve human agency.

Political correctness is, in ideal form, therefore completely opposed to human agency in all its forms.

The tendency of PC is therefore to identify and overcome all possible human freedoms and choices in relation to the allocation of 'goods'. 

That is, to replace the intrinsically selfish choices of individual autonomous humans with abstract systems of altruism.

This may sound an extreme formulation, but it is literally true.

Political correctness instrumentally uses human impulses (such as aspirations for justice, or equality, or happiness) to attack any and every social situation which currently lacks a system of abstract altruistic allocation.

*

The big problem for PC - in a system where human agency is intrinsically wicked - is what distribution counts as altruistic? 

Clearly this question has no ultimate answer, since PC denies the possibility of divine revelation; instead there are a series of pragmatic answers to what counts as altruistic - but all of these answers bear the mark of human choice so none of these answers are truly eternal abstractions.

The principle of subversion and inversion of whatever is individual, spontaneous and natural therefore serves as a rule-of-thumb to identify problems and to generate aims for the solutions. However these aims are inexplicit.

*

If men naturally tend to become leaders, then in a system of allocating goods according to sexual identity women should replace men; if humans are naturally heterosexual, then anything except heterosexuality should be favoured by altruistic principles.

The positive policies of political correctness are therefore somewhat arbitrary, changeable over time.

The evaluation of PC policies in terms of human happiness, suffering, income or any other principle is again variable - and often PC policies will seem to make things worse from any practical and measurable perspective.

But the politically correct solution is always intrinsically superior at an abstract level in so far as it removes the scope or possibility of individual selfishness.

Always PC aims at the removal of individual freedom and choice, since individual selfishness is intrinsic and will shape all free choices - selfishness is the ultimate evil.

*

Selfish human individuals must be subjected to impersonal principles of altruism - they must submit to these rules, and the virtuous humans are those which submit willingly, happily and regardless of the consequences

But the actual specific nature of these altruistic principles to which humans must submit is much less certain than that they should submit, since to be purely virtuous the rules ought not to come from human individuals.

Much of modern bureaucracy - voting, committees, the use of social statistics - can be seen as steps in the direction of developing algorithmic, machine-like mechanisms for generating altruistic principles without the participation of (corrupt) human agency.

(Because whatever individuals do will be, or tend to become, selfish and cruel).

*

The perfect, ultra-pure and idealistic politically correct intellectual aspires (as his highest goal in life) to create a perfect and autonomous mechanism for devising altruistic principles and 'implementing' them on humans.

Having created this mechanism for the imposition of abstract altruism, his own fate is a matter of indifference - he might step-back and watch, be rewarded, or be destroyed - but the machine, once built, will just keep running: just keep-on compelling wicked individual humans to do that which is abstractly just.

*

This nightmare of living-death - in which human wickedness is impossible because every single human decision related to the allocation of the goods of life has been subordinated to a system of abstract altruism - is the covert Utopian dream of the politically correct.

*

*

While it is fun to point out the selfishness and hypocrisy of the PC elite, it would be an error to imagine that political correctness is explained by this: that PC is merely an indirect way in which the elite can pursue its own self interest, or that PC is merely a technology in a power struggle between sectors of the ruling class.

PC is indeed all of these, but there are an infinite number of such ideologies, and the interesting question is why PC has been adopted universally throughout the West and why it has spread through all the institutions of the West despite PC being very obviously self-destroying: despite PC being suicidal.

What is interesting is why and how a suicidal ideology can thrive and be so resilient in the face of... well, in the face of reality.

Or, more exactly, in the face of reality as spontaneously perceived by common sense.

*

What is interesting and novel about PC is its reality-denying aspects.

Or, more exactly - since all religions deny reality in the sense of positing a higher reality than the everyday - how PC is reality denying in the absence of  any concept of a higher reality.

Political correctness denies common sense reality, but lacks any method of perceiving another reality higher than common sense, and denies any such possibility.

So that it is not merely rhetorical to term PC nihilist: nihilist is simply a term describing of a belief system which denies reality.

*

There are, of course, degrees of nihilism.

A lot of people believe that there is a reality, but have reservations concerning how much individuals may know of reality.

But PC is a very extreme form of nihilism, in the sense that it denies knowledge of reality and also denies any possibility of knowing about reality.

Of course, at an operational and everyday level, PC pretends to care about and know about reality - but that is not what it does: implicitly PC believes that reality is socially-constructed; and that there are no constraints to the social construction.

Very radical, too, is the implicit belief of PC that reason is not valid; that reason is, indeed, socially constructed, hence contingent, hence without objective validity.

*

But I do not see nihilism as being linked to an active wish to destroy (maybe it is, but I cannot perceive this link) - and the deep nihilistic 'beliefs' of PC clearly do not prevent its having motivations.

*

The root of the problem is that as progressive, radical, atheistic, this-worldly, leftism evolved - it did so by challenging basic beliefs and convictions with which humans are born.

In all human societies until recently in the West, humans came-into the world with built-in assumptions - and human society used these inborn beliefs (or, most of them) to develop ideologies.

So, all ancient ideologies incorporated a kind of trust: trust in the reality of the world (various combinations of the visible and the higher world), validity of reason, reality of the soul etc.

*

But the radical tendency developed a method of wholesale but piecemeal doubt of these assumptions, one at a time.

(The ancient cynics and skeptics had tried out radical systematic doubt, but this was immediately and obviously self-refuting; whereas piecemeal doubt could masquerade as common sense.)

Some assumptions were accepted (for the moment) and were used to challenge other assumptions; in a kind of rotational process - until doubt had been cast upon each and every assumption with which humans were born.

*

So the culture of atheistic, leftism - which is now PC - stripped away the basic toolkit of assumptions with which humans were born into the world. So the culture of radicalism rapidly made humans helpless in the face of reality; took pre-designed people - created for this world - and made them into (psychologically) formless blobs.

The hope behind this was that formless blobs would be amenable to re-programming - and indeed they are (many of them). But, in an unreal world, what to reprogram them with?

The formless blob humans created by PC deprogramming are being filled with the highest thing known to PC; which is impersonal abstract altruism; they are being filled with the idea that the highest goal a human can aim-at is to impose upon human behaviours an abstractly virtuous system which does not depend on individual humans, does not require moral humans, does not need human choice - human agency.

*

At a deep level, PC has become a program to destroy humanity (destroy not the physical form of humans, but destroy their agency, freedom, choice etc) - and this is not seen as a bad thing to do, since humans are intrinsically selfish animals, and therefore the highest imaginable thing in the PC world is an abstract system which shares-out 'goods' despite what humans might feel about it.

Of course PC cannot justify that imposing a system of altruism is objectively a valid endeavor. Because no endeavors are valid. There is no valid positive goal for PC - it is negative and reactive against our spontaneous perception of selfishness/ injustice/ corruptibility.

PC is therefore always working-towards - and if it ever actually arrives and achieves its goal, then it will collapse from its internal contradictions.

That collapse might still leave humans enslaved to abstract systems of altruism, but the humans so enslaved would no longer be politically correct.

(Something of this sort seems to have happened in the USSR by 1989.)

*

My point here is that PC has evolved logically from a set of skeptical moves, from an attitude of radical doubt, which actually originated in the West around the time of Abelard in the medieval Catholic universities. 

Is it really plausible that something so abstract, so philosophical/ ideological, so hifalutin, so far removed from the everyday and the practical could be the cause of Western suicide?

Well, yes. Only something of that sort could have the capability of getting humans to behave so anti-biologically as does PC.

*

The problem of human cooperation only became 'a problem' through history; because (it seems) in early human societies Men regarded themselves as primarily part of the family and community within-which they were born.

But now, insofar as Men introspect, we experience ourselves as cut-off, alienated - and we presume others are the same. How to get individuals to cooperate is one problem, and another is that the group is understood (and, often, experienced) as intrinsically hostile to the individual. 

Me versus the world, and the world versus me...

Which means that groupishness is, must be, imposed upon individuals - even when this is for the long-term benefit of the individual, this still opens-up an ideal that 'everybody else' should work for the group while we our-selves (covertly...) selfishly exploit the situation. 

Thus we get the actuality of totalitarianism; whereby groupishness is imposed, top-down and by a mixture of coercion and propaganda - yet the rationale for such imposition is merely expedient (i.e. because the alternative as a chaos of each against all, in which civilization collapses instantly). 

The choice is between coerced order and chaos - and the choice is made on selfish grounds (i.e. an evaluation and choice of that circumstance in which I am most likely, personally, to do best)

In other words; the implication of modern experience and explanations at the individual level is that ideally each person should be a hypocritical psychopath - hypocritically expounding altruism and groupishness for other-people, while (covertly) selfishly exploiting this situation for oneself. 

...In other words; exactly the hypocritical behaviour of the typical modern leader - whether in politics, the mass media, corporations, or any institution such as a charity, a school/ hospital/ army/ or whatever. 

...A superficial ideology of altruism and public-good covering a core ruthless and exploitative careerism and hedonism. 

This is our situation: i.e. a cynical, arbitrary, purposeless and meaningless totalitarianism.. Top-down and coercive arbitrary order is imposed on individuals at every level and scale - because there is (believed to be) no other possible basis for groupishness. 

And the analysis is self-fulfilling over time; because all actual human groups become subverted by this understanding; such that all actual institutions are indeed assimilated to the totalitarian whole, and behave as such. 

Yet, while our consciousness - and all the modern explanatory schemes - regard humanity as a collection of individuals; there is also a suspicion of, or hope for, some kind of spontaneous (not imposed) groupishness - although its basis is typically unclear; and the available explanations tend to be unconvincing hence weakly motivating. 

We 'know' that there really is a groupishness among Men; but we cannot explain it - at least not in a way that convinces both ourselves, and others. 

Traditional Christian explanations - such as that all Men are children of God, and have a shared divinity - have lost their power to motivate. 

Indeed the churches use these groups explanations to justify totalitarian goals! As when the parable of The Good Shepherd is said to support mass immigration, "the feeding of the five thousand" to justify bureaucratic communism, and the interests of the people of God are said to mean obedience to "the church" and its current-actual leadership.

The answer is twofold: 

To understand groupishness from an individual perspective - intuitively from-within, where that understanding cannot be touched by worldly totalitarian imperatives. 

And to understand groupishness spiritually such that the material corruption of this world cannot corrupt or otherwise affect it. 

This is a very extreme stance, by world historical standards - but it is exactly the corruption of the world that leads to the need for it. 

It regards our cut-off individualism as a fact; but moves beyond the negative aspects that have led to totalitarianism in the public sphere. 

Since we really-are cut-off in the public sphere - this means we can and should disregard the public sphere in our explanations and understandings. 

On the one hand, totalitarian groupishness is merely external, because it cannot (exactly because we are cut-off in consciousness) penetrate to our inner self-experience. On the other hand; from this state of inner cut-offness, we can strive to discover an understanding of our groupishness that we find to be real and true. 

Even as we are inwardly cut-off from the old spontaneous groupishness; we are also cut-off from the new totalitarian groupishness. 

We can revel in our absolute independence from the imposed evils of physical control and psychological manipulation! 

That which makes us alone, also makes us free. 

Thus one individual person can stand, if he chooses, with-God and against The World: silently indomitable. 

*

Modern secular politics polarizes into two ultimate ideologies, which (each being intolerable) typically alternate:

Bureaucratic Altruism versus Selfish Subjectivism.

Political Correctness versus Nietzschian self-will.

Scientistic nihilism versus Vitalist nihilism.

Left versus Right.

Abstract principles versus gut feelings.

Culture versus biology.

Anti-human versus anti-the-rest-of-humanity.

Abstract human rights versus my concrete self as right.

The anti-spontaneous as good versus my personal gratification as good.

Sublime suicide versus earthly appetites.

In their mainstream, socially-acceptable compromises: Mushy Liberalism versus Mushy Libertarianism.


*

*

I started thinking-out a Watership Down type of fable, about a strain of mutant rabbit which limited its own  reproduction in favour of 'industrial' activities that raised the standard of living; and where this disposition was combined with a compulsive altruism; such that the surplus product was shared with any mutant rabbits who cared to come and ask - and how this led to an horrific collapse of the warren...

And so on...

*

It was (obviously!) meant as an allegory of modernity, and how the particular combination of reproductive suppression and altruism was even-more-rapidly self-destroying than either would be on their own.

And how the psychological factors which led to reproductive self suppression were themselves amplified by the consequence of that psychology; how modernity creates more of itself.

*

Then I got to thinking that this could either be explained in terms of natural selection - of the weeding-out of deleterious genes (i.e that moderns are essentially a lower fitness mutant strain); or in terms of divine providence - like those Old Testament stories of wicked societies which get worse and worse yet still refuse to repent, until they are overwhelmed by catastrophe and slaughtered or enslaved.

*

It is weird in the extreme to see this scenario unfolding relentlessly, step by step, and sustained not so much by ignorance as by self-blinding.

It is things like this which seem to require the operation of purposive evil in the world (if we did not already know this from divine revelation).

*

And the greatest triumph of purposive evil is surely that the self-destroying society finds the concept of purposive evil laughable, infantile, embarrassing or itself evil; and regards this attitude as evidence of their enlightenment and intelligence, their superiority over all previous ages.

*

The fires are lit, the fuel is being loaded on them, the conflagration builds, the defenders are bound and gagged, all exits are sealed.

*

*

1. Abstraction. People of high intelligence have a tendency to think abstractly rather than 'instinctively' - and perhaps this may be especially so in some human groups which have evolved extra-high intelligence over the past couple of thousand years - such as the populations in Europe and East Asia.

2. Secularization. Loss of belief in the ultimate nature of reality as transcendent and other-worldly - therefore a focus on this world.

- This probably relates to a strong abstracting tendency. For example, highly abstract people - when they are religious - tend to believe in a non-personal God, and in the ultimate reality of abstract forces or processes such as evolution.

- Abstraction is also productive of nihilism: i.e. to the belief that there is no ultimate reality. Since the power of abstraction depends on the vicissitudes of mental functioning, to the abstracting mind all is intangible, changeable, disconnected from spontaneity, from common sense, from emotional-underpinning. Life tends to be perceived as a solipsistic play of shadows, momentary distractions, meaningless sufferings and equally meaningless pleasures.   

- Abstraction is very useful in some situations in some societies - but it is like a mental pathology in other circumstances.

3. The combination of abstraction and secularization leads to an elite world view (including a morality) which is materialistic (this-worldly) and which explains things in terms of abstract forces and dispositions.

4. The purest, most idealistic morality from this perspective is therefore an abstract but non-transcendent spirituality of the material.

- A clear early example is Marxism, which is all about economics - about the production and distribution of material goods. Yet at the same time, material production and distribution is explained abstractly, and linked with a spirituality. The end result is that in Marxism the matter of the production and distribution of material goods becomes the highest level of human moral concern.

- Marxism was the first large scale morality of altruism - in which altruism was made abstract and involuntary (in replacement for the earlier personal and voluntary 'noblesse oblige', alms-giving and philanthropy).

- So, Marxism therefore removed virtue from the individual and from the realm of choice, and made morality a socially-imposed abstract process. Under pure Marxism there were no good individuals, only the good society.

5. Political correctness takes this process further than Marxism, by extending the concern with the production and distribution of material goods to include the production and allocation of psychological goods. So that PC is concerned by such matters as happiness, suffering, status, respect and self-respect.

- However, since PC is materialist, these intangible psychological factors require operational definition in terms of material proxy measures: so that happiness/ suffering may be equated with income and wealth, or with the results of surveys such as happiness ratings or crime levels, or with measures of health;  status is equated with occupancy of certain jobs, or attendance at specific educational establishments, or possession of educational certificates, and so on.

6. Therefore the abstract spirituality of materialism is underpinned by concrete measures of a material nature; such that the monitoring, prediction and manipulation of these material measures is equated with the (intangible) psychological states with which they are taken to be causally-correlated.

- Following the pattern of Marxism, in political correctness there are no good individuals, and no good individual choices or decision; only impersonal and mandatory procedures or mechanisms can be morally good.

- Immoral individuals are such for their necessarily-selfish defiance of impartial procedure, which is seen to open-up infinite possibilities of disaster, chaos, corruption.

- Such individuals are guilty not for what they actually do, nor for the actual consequences of their actions, but for their failure to submit to objective and involuntary process.

7. Meritocracy. All societies are meritocratic to a degree - although the nature of the merit varies. Throughout the twentieth century 'merit' became equated with intellectual ability and attainment - and a society developed in which the intellectual elite were the ruling class.

- Almost all the main social functions therefore became dominated by intellectually selected personnel; but especially public administration (and to a lesser extent democratic politics), education and the mass media.

- Intellectual meritocracy allowed the pathology of abstraction to operate un-checked at the highest levels of social organization, expanding and changeing without effective feedback from common sense and spontaneity.

- And also without reference to religious morality.

8. Also throughout the twentieth century, there was a massive expansion in the bureaucracy - and the linkage of all bureaucracies with public administration. So the modern society became interconnected by a bureaucratic web of laws, regulations, subsidies and coercive sanctions. And these bureaucracies became less personal - with all major decisions being taken by committee, and by vote.

9. The mass media also grew to occupy ever more of the time and attention of the population.

10. So by the late twentieth century the interconnected bureaucracy and the mass media meant that the intellectual meritocratic elite could impose their morality upon the rest of the population - and political correctness was established.

- A positive feedback loop was established, by which 'PC reality' - as defined by the interconnected administrative bureaucracies and the mass media - feeds back into the abstract secular psychology of the ruling intellectual elite to enhance the detachment of PC from instinct and spontaneity; and the intelligentsia amplified the abstracting and impersonal systematizing signal to the bureaucracy and media.

- Cut off from normal psychology and from inconvenient truths, the hermetically-sealed system of PC expanded exponentially. 

- And all unchecked exponential processes destroy themselves.

*

*

³⁶ Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

³⁷ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

³⁸ This is the first and great commandment.

³⁹ And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22: 36-40

*

First Love God - because without God you cannot Love your neighbour.

Without Love of God, then love of neighbour becomes just 'altruism' - policies, laws, regulations; taxes; doles, welfare, subsidies, allowances, benefits... statecraft and suppression of those who oppose it.

Which is anti-Love.

We see this all around us. The experiment has been done - look at the results.

*

Modern 'altruism' ('love thy neighbour') by those who do not first Love God is not just un-Loving but anti-Love: Hatred in the name of Love - which is much, much worse.

*

(It takes a while for the cut-off of Love of God to work through a person and a culture - childhood beliefs and experiences have a lasting effect - but there has now been enough time that we can observe the consequences.)

*

Philosophy and Science display the same dependence on Truth. 

First love Truth - because without it you cannot do philosophy or science or indeed any of the scholarly disciplines.

Without love of Truth, then all academic activity becomes careerism and expediency - dishonesty done in the name of Truth.

We see this all around us. The experiment has been done - look at the results.

*

Modern research and scholarship by careerists who do not first believe in Truth is not just un-Truthful but anti-Truthful: dishonesty in the name of Truth - which is much, much worse.

*

(It takes a while for the cut-off of Love of Truth to work through a person and a culture - childhood beliefs and experiences have a lasting effect - but there has now been enough time that we can observe the consequences.)

* 

Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. 

A knavish character will often say - 'Of what interest is it to me to do so-and-so?'

I answer - 'Of none at all, but on the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this: hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice - even to your destruction'.  

William Blake - from Descriptive Catalogue (re-punctuated and emphasis added)

So many people, so often, regard self-interest as the prime evil, and try to explain the evil in this world as due to persons and institutions motivated by self-interest...  

Everything gets explained that way; so people will seek-out why such and such an action benefits the person that did it. And when this isn't obvious, then remote and indirect self-interest will be wheeled-out.

Contrariwise; if self-interest is not obvious - or if the chain of explanation is disbelieved - then it is assumed that there was no evil but merely some inexplicable coincidence, or incompetence - bad things are confidently ascribed to the sheer 'randomness' and uncontrollability of things.

Those who do this are what Blake termed knaves - cunning, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, traitorous. In other words knaves are themselves those who are motivated by malice, by spite, by their taking of pleasure in the misery of others.

Northrop Frye (in Fearful Symmetry p56-7) amplifies Blake's passage thus:

By turning away from the world to be perceived we develop an imaginative idleness which spreads a sickness and lassitude over the whole soul, and all vices spring from this... Murder is obviously an expression of the same death-impulse that suicide is, and all evil acts are more or less murderous...

This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such; like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exacting unthinking obedience.

It is quite inadequate to call self-interest a motive of evil conduct, though the death-impulse may be disguised in that form. Self-interest implies a good deal of control: in all extreme vices there is a mania in which one is hagridden by a 'ruling passion'.

As so often, children understand perfectly that evil is spite and malice; it is only in a culture so sophomoric, so adolescent, so knavish as ours - that we claim to see-through the 'obvious (and true) explanation such as to regard evil as an expression of mere self-interest (most often specifically economic self-interest).

Yet self-interest is universal - and so is no explanation at all; especially in a world where 'goodness' is defined in 'utilitarian' terms of publicly-observable and quantifiable 'altruism' (e.g. raising money for 'charity') - such that altruism is itself the grossest form of self-interest. 

Furthermore, the focus on self-interest serves to disguise real evil; because the 'mania' that drives a 'hagridden' doer of malicious evil will often bring about his downfall - and in modern culture that makes him a 'victim', worthy of sympathy. Instead of seeing self-destruction as a hallmark of the murderous nature of true evil, it engages our sympathy - and thus we are corrupted.

This is vital to bear in mind when so much of modern evil is bureaucratic, such that responsibility for evil is eluded, and we seldom know even the identities of those whose malice drives the evil. But, whether we know them or not, we can be sure that they are there.