Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

The internet is full of schemes and plans by which specific evils (you know what I mean...) might more-or-less-easily be resisted - individually or en masse. Yet this very seldom actually happens - either individually or en masse. And if they do happen-to-happen, it is never sufficiently intense or sustained enough. 
Rather than continually coming-up with new tactics - we need to understand why checklists are irrelevant if nobody want to follow them. It is not a matter of people desperately wanting to resist evil, but not knowing where to start, and seeking guidance...It seems as if the problem must lie deeper than merely 'not knowing how' to resist evil.
The main problems are related to motivation - to the reasons (or rather the lack of reasons) people have for resisting evil; and this indeed cuts very deep. (Or would if motivation were not a problem - it is the very lack of depth that is the root of it.) 
In order to address the widest possible audience; those who describe how to resist evil usually present the problem in that double-negative form: Resisting Evil. That is: Evil is a negative, so resisting evil makes it a double-negative. The planners and schemers who seek to make something happen are compelled to focus on evil because there is no general social consensus about what is Good. For instance; the most general dissenting 'affirmation' is usually to campaign for more Freedom - yet Freedom is actually itself a negative: Freedom-from... some bad restriction. 
The 'fighting evil' discourse assumes a lot. It first assumes that people can indeed recognize evil - at least, when it is helpfully pointed-out. But why didn't the people already notice the evil - why did that have to have it explained to them? That does not bode well... It seems, indeed, to be the case that even gross and in-your-face evils - like kidnapping, poisoning and mutilating innocent children, or sexually grooming and abusing them - cannot be recognized as such by the mass of people; not they are called something 'good' by officials and the mass media, or 'protected' by the inverted values of Leftism. Surely if people need such extreme evil to be pointed-out and explained; then there cannot be any consensus that objective evil exists at all? So why would people be motivated to resist evil? 
But even when evil is recognized; people lack courage to think, say or do anything to oppose it - because evils are nearly-always backed up by Power, Status and Money. People are (quite reasonably!) afraid of opposing power, status and money; therefore they need courage to fight evil. And courage is just what most modern people lack: producing a fatally inhibiting combination of moral blindness with will-sapping cowardice.
Before evil will (not 'can theoretically') be resisted; Men must know good - and trust in something beyond this world of Power, Status, Money and lies. When Men both know and want good: that will be the time for plans and schemes and tactics...But if then; plans/ schemes/ tactics would not be needed.