Monday 4 February 2013

The extreme depravity of modern Western leaders

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I was suddenly struck by an awareness of the unprecedented extremity of evil among Western leaders - at all levels, but the higher the level the greater average depravity; the fewer exceptions.

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When King Henry II of England had Thomas Becket (Archbishop of Canterbury) killed for reasons of expediency; he was stricken by overwhelming remorse, and performed extravagant penances which served as a public demonstration of his error. It is inconceivable that anything of that sort could happen among today's leadership.

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We are ruled by the Men Without Chests of Lewis or the Hollow Men of Eliot - or the Voldemort types who have deliberately fragmented their souls, or Mouths of Sauron who simply channel evil.

They plot and scheme to subvert, invert and destroy all virtue; they prosecute truth as oppression; and propagandize deliberate, sickening ugliness as the highest aesthetic.

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Yet they are utterly without awareness of their own depravity; regard themselves as the cutting edge of goodness.

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They have constructed a world in which their own planned and systematic promotion of evil counts for nothing against them; and where their restraint from following-through their evil ethic to its extreme conclusions in absolute selfish short-termism seems to them to imply an almost super-human innate virtue+.

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They have all this reflected-back at them in the media world that is their headquarters and which dominates and permeates their lives; a world in which traditional evaluations of truth, beauty and virtue have been abolished except to be inverted: the venom in excluding from this world, suppressing, misrepresenting, punishing the expression of Goodness is by now something extraordinary.

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This is, indeed, the most depraved ruling elite that there ever has been in the history of the world - precisely because it seems so impossible that they could ever come to awareness of their own depravity.

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For such people to repent would, of course, be a truly cataclysmic event in their lives; to perceive the sheer mass of their own efforts on behalf of depravity would be of soul-crushing force; it would be so agonizing that only Christian forgiveness could rescue them from utter despair - yet that was the very first possibility they eliminated, several generations since.

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The absence of nobility from public life; the shallowness of the people; the cowardice both individually and collectively - all these are aspects of this situation: the extreme depravity of our leadership, so extreme that their evil is almost unrecognizable.

These are such pathetic remnants of humans that we barely recognize the possibility of responsible choice - yet we know it is there.

In the vastly inflated balloons of conceit and artifice which are modern leaders; in some corner, hidden away, there is a pathetic whimpering child still capable of agency; and still choosing - day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment - to sustain the monstrous falsity of their empty lives.

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+ There are many examples in the realm of sexual ethics - when multiple serial monogamy is regarded as virtue compared with multiple simultaneous promiscuity; or among the multiply simultaneously promiscuous when being open and 'honest' about infidelity is regarded as virtue compared with concealment; or when multiply simultaneously concealed promiscuity is disciplined by some restraint as regards classes of acceptable partners (age limits, no orgies etc)... Every depraved individual draws a circle around, makes an ethical imperative of, their own limits to depravity - then feels spontaneously self-disciplined, relatively virtuous, superior to (some) others. Mutatis mutandis wrt dishonesty etc. - for instance, there is little to compare with the incredulous moral indignation of the systematically dishonest administrator, manager or journalist whose entire professional life is spent misleading by selection and distortion of the truth - when they are accused of actual lying

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18 comments:

dearieme said...

One reason I retained some slight regard for Gordon Brown is that I suspected that he knew he was being a bad lot and regretted it. Whereas Blair was just a psychopath. Cameron, I suspect, is rather like Blair but with a distinctly higher IQ.

dearieme said...

As for the USA, what can you say? In Romney they had a chance to elect someone who was sane, intelligent, and brought a wealth of experience in life. So naturally they didn't.

Bruce Charlton said...

@d - I agree with your interpretations. I loathed the evasive and planned dishonesty of Gordon Brown (for instance the egregious Laura Spence Affair of 2000); but he did 'at least' (in this respect much like Richard Nixon) have enough remaining decency to look guilty and unconvincing when he was lying.

George Goerlich said...

Romney received more popular votes than Bush, yet still lost. The Democrats have purposefully worked to alter the demographic makeup of America in order to guarantee future election wins. They also take from the people who vote for Romney using the power of taxation and give freely to those who vote Democratic. The media suppresses and lies on behalf of the Democrats.

I think blaming Americans for Romney's loss is similar to blaming a man thoroughly infected with intestinal parasites and cancer for dying.

Bruce Charlton said...

@GG - I agree that the election was fixed at many levels and in many ways and indeed very obviously. However, it was only fixable because the margin was small.

Yet, there has seldom been a US election when the candidates were so divergent in terms of their basic decency - so I think dearieme's point stands: if the US can't make such a clear choice that ought to be a no-brainer (multiply-proven psychopathic liar and dedicated explicit destroyer of Good versus a broadly decent person), then that is conclusive evidence of extreme corruption among the mass of people...

who have, of course, been led into this by the elites; but now we know that this corruption - this vice, endemic dishonesty, embrace of chaos; addiction to short-term comfort, diversions, intoxications and illusions - that this nexus of evil has been substantially embraced by the masses.

JP said...

Romney was "Obama lite". Just like the Republicans are "Democrats lite". They share the same premises and reach the same conclusions, but one party wants to do it more slowly than the other. This is not a genuine choice. Doom later is better than doom now, from a short-term perspective, but eventually you arrive at doom just the same.

Bruce Charlton said...

@JP - Notice that neither dearieme nor I were talking about policies - we were talking about character.

George Goerlich said...

You are right, perhaps the (vast?) majority of Americans are addicted to comfort, lazy. We have a problem with obesity, which may serve as an indicator. We could say then, the majority of Americans live sinfully materialistic lives.

"Reality" though is controlled via public outlets. It is framed, altered, manipulated. So we could say most people, these sinful people, are truly disconnected from reality and remain in the though prison. How much can we blame the people instead of the leaders, who control the people's frame of reference?

I do not hold people blameless for making bad decisions, but perhaps the "sheep" metaphor is accurate, and few people have the ability to fully and freely make independent choices. Having the correct information replaced and the meaning of good inverted, how can we hold them responsible? Especially if we hold that the meaning of "equality" is abused to misrepresent equality of intelligence and decision making, and that in this Democracy can't work.

I think really, the elite believe the same thing. I don't think they fully believe in Democracy, but understand they need to manipulate people's opinions to help them reach the "correct" and "progressive" decision.

I sort of like the Mormon doctrine in this, that it accepts some people may be unable to make the right decision in this life, but will be exposed to and truly have a chance to understand good in the afterlife. I don't know who we can truly believe will go to Hell except those who fully and knowingly reject the good, not just through being misled or a misunderstanding. Though it is only an opinion, and perhaps a very large percentage of modern people will spend eternity in Hell.

George Goerlich said...

JP -

I have heard this argument before, especially from the right. I think at one time I agreed. A mentality of "just tear it down."

However, after gaining some spiritual understanding and especially after reading Seraphim Rose, the larger trend became more clear.

The left wont simply undermine itself, but they are simply a temporal manifestation of the underlying trend towards a destruction and harm of all people. Even when the leftist society fails, evil will keep pushing things lower. It will not simply create a vacuum that good will automatically fill. Therefore we must always defend and promote the good at all times and places.

Additionally, it would be personally harmful for us to promote evil (e.g. voting for the vile candidate in spite). It is for us to live good as best as we can and to oppose evil wherever we can. It is personally/spiritually harmful to be associated with or promote evil hoping it will somehow lead to good.

Bruce Charlton said...

@GG - " I don't know who we can truly believe will go to Hell except those who fully and knowingly reject the good, not just through being misled or a misunderstanding."

This anticipates a posting I am preparing for the next day or two...

"The left wont simply undermine itself, but they are simply a temporal manifestation of the underlying trend towards a destruction and harm of all people. Even when the leftist society fails, evil will keep pushing things lower. It will not simply create a vacuum that good will automatically fill. Therefore we must always defend and promote the good at all times and places."

Very true.

But I do not think JP would disagree with us - I think he was making a different point - that policy-wise Republicans are liberal/ Leftists - which is correct.

JP said...

I don't believe it shows good character to advocate and enact insane and destructive policies. If you are the "lesser evil" candidate, you are still evil.

"It is personally/spiritually harmful to be associated with or promote evil hoping it will somehow lead to good."

I agree, and this is exactly what is wrong with the view that Romney was a man of good character. A man of good character cannot associate with and promote evil, as Romney did as governor and intended to do as president, without harming himself personally and spiritually. This is like Boromir putting on the Ring "in order to use it for good."

I will certainly grant you that the problem of getting elected in a democracy as an advocate of good and an opponent of evil is a profound and possibly insoluble one.

Bruce Charlton said...

@JP - you are misinterpreting the point. It is not that Romney was an especially good man as such (although by the standards of national politicians he was a saint); but that the moral *difference* between him and Obama amounted to a gulf. And that does make a difference.

The Crow said...

It used to torture me that I was so unlike 'everybody else'. All I ever wanted, was to be like them.
Now, continuing to be nothing like them, is my salvation.
I have more in common with raccoons than I do with most humans.

JP said...

No, I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with it, though. I am not convinced there is a vast gulf between the personal morality of Obama and Romney. The difference is one of degree, not kind, and not a large degree at that. In some ways, Romney was more dangerous than Obama, because he would cause American conservatives to go back to sleep (as they had been asleep under Bush) rather than fighting the Leftist program tooth and nail.

"More evil, but strenuously opposed" versus "less evil, but hardly opposed at all" is even less of a real choice than "more evil" versus "less evil".

Bruce Charlton said...

@JP - OK. We disagree, then.

The Crow said...

Yay! Sanity rules.
I can hardly remember the last time I saw people actually agreeing to disagree.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Daybreaker - sorry I can't post your extensive comments. They are too far off-topic (off the topic I want to focus on), I disagree with the perspective - and we have discussed this disagreement already and recently.


BTW - is your pseudonym from Nietzche's book Daybreak (aka The Dawn - Morgenrote)?

Bruce Charlton said...

BTW - wrt the US election - as may be seen from other postings, I do not vote and I regard democracy as evil. So I am not discussing how people 'should have voted'.

I'd also point out that explaining *why* the masses are corrupt (i.e. becuase of propaganda and coercion from the elites) is accepting that the masses *are* corrupt: which is exactly my point.