Or, as someone once said me thinking they were quoting what Shakespeare thought rather than what Hamlet said. "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." But there really was something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Half the population out there appear to actually get mad and angry if you question the official narrative. I think they're so terrified of the reality of the situation that YOU are the evil person for even bringing it up or making them think about it.
This is the true harm of inversion in modern art and movies. For centuries, plays and artwork was used in service to a higher purpose...communicating morality. The modern counterparts don't suddenly have less to do with morality, they are instead coopted to push an evil form of morality instead.
I used to believe that there was a legitimate place for explaining why things are good or bad -- that moral values were something like geometry, based on self-evident axioms from which non-obvious conclusions could be drawn, and that the latter often needed to be explained.
I'm not so sure I believe this any longer. Trying to think of an example of something that is bad, but the badness of which is not intuitively obvious and therefore needs to be explained, I can't actually come up with much. Democracy maybe, or socialism? Maybe "diversity" for some people?
@P - Absolutely. And often the best of current media are among the most anti-moral - such as the sitcom Friends. Top notch sit-com, and systemtically anti-moral (as the series went through, they covered nearly all of the bases).
@Wm - Abstractions are not really an exception. People don't *naturally* think or judge in terms of 'black box' abstract systems like 'democracy', they tend to judge by impact on themselves. When asked to judge abstractions, they believe what they are told - not what they personally judge - and (in practice) completely ignore outcomes.
But that means abstractions *are* an exception. People lack a natural moral sense with regard to them, and explanation therefore becomes helpful and necessary.
Only after decades of propaganda - if Men are natural and spontaneous, abstractions are meaningless, hence morally abhorrent.
Only in a world of pervasive abstraction, are abstractions regarded as morally good - and this is (in practice) a moral inversion.
(...Leaving aside a handful of philosophers, who have put abstractions first since Ancient Greek times; but their views are clouded by professional status!).
One of the most psychotic aspects of this insane world, is that people need to have everything explained to them. Modern people even need to be told why bad things are bad! Indeed, they often demand 'evidence' that bad things are bad. And by evidence they mean something 'official', probably 'statistical'... But mass rejection of God and 'the spiritual' means an implicit denial of
life-purpose; hence ultimate meaning in life; so 'why' questions can have
no real answer. The situation is that when people 'need' to ask why something bad is bad, they can never get a coherent answer - and the badness of the bad is dissolved-away (...along with the goodness of the good, and for the same reasons). Here and now; most people are unable to recognise even blazingly-obvious badness for themselves. Even their natural, spontaneous, evolved moral instincts have been (deliberately) suppressed. We have weaker morality than an animal. And once this situation is reached; people are helpless against even the crudest forms of socio-political manipulation. They are unable to recognise when they, personally, are being directly harmed. When it needs to be explained; people are unable to distinguish between good and evil. If explanation is required then which-is-good and what-is-evil depends on the explanation; and therefore good may become evil and vice versa, when re-explained. When bad needs explaining, the loop is complete; Men are sealed from life. Their world is virtual. As is surely very obvious... Or, it would be obvious, if Men were capable of seeing for themselves.
"There should be no need to explain Why bad things are bad..."
11 Comments -
I don't get it. What's wrong with being sealed in a virtual world?
16 October 2020 at 08:39
@Wm - Let me explain...
16 October 2020 at 09:46
Or, as someone once said me thinking they were quoting what Shakespeare thought rather than what Hamlet said. "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." But there really was something rotten in the state of Denmark.
16 October 2020 at 11:16
I am hugely frustrated with how entranced the masses are by the media portrayal of the WuFlu hoax to the exclusion of their lived experience.
There are no zombie hordes ravaging the city centers. Bodies aren't stacked up like cordwood outside the urgent care anyware.
Yet, the vast majority of people continue to behave as if my preceding paragraph were 100% true.
16 October 2020 at 13:27
@thethirdcoast "Trust the experts!"
Half the population out there appear to actually get mad and angry if you question the official narrative. I think they're so terrified of the reality of the situation that YOU are the evil person for even bringing it up or making them think about it.
16 October 2020 at 13:47
This is the true harm of inversion in modern art and movies. For centuries, plays and artwork was used in service to a higher purpose...communicating morality. The modern counterparts don't suddenly have less to do with morality, they are instead coopted to push an evil form of morality instead.
17 October 2020 at 01:12
I used to believe that there was a legitimate place for explaining why things are good or bad -- that moral values were something like geometry, based on self-evident axioms from which non-obvious conclusions could be drawn, and that the latter often needed to be explained.
I'm not so sure I believe this any longer. Trying to think of an example of something that is bad, but the badness of which is not intuitively obvious and therefore needs to be explained, I can't actually come up with much. Democracy maybe, or socialism? Maybe "diversity" for some people?
17 October 2020 at 01:29
@P - Absolutely. And often the best of current media are among the most anti-moral - such as the sitcom Friends. Top notch sit-com, and systemtically anti-moral (as the series went through, they covered nearly all of the bases).
@Wm - Abstractions are not really an exception. People don't *naturally* think or judge in terms of 'black box' abstract systems like 'democracy', they tend to judge by impact on themselves. When asked to judge abstractions, they believe what they are told - not what they personally judge - and (in practice) completely ignore outcomes.
17 October 2020 at 09:41
But that means abstractions *are* an exception. People lack a natural moral sense with regard to them, and explanation therefore becomes helpful and necessary.
17 October 2020 at 14:58
@Wm - "abstractions *are* an exception"
Only after decades of propaganda - if Men are natural and spontaneous, abstractions are meaningless, hence morally abhorrent.
Only in a world of pervasive abstraction, are abstractions regarded as morally good - and this is (in practice) a moral inversion.
(...Leaving aside a handful of philosophers, who have put abstractions first since Ancient Greek times; but their views are clouded by professional status!).
17 October 2020 at 17:03
"...such as the sitcom Friends."
And on your side of the Atlantic, Coupling.
19 October 2020 at 02:24