Quote of the Day
American physicist Steven Weinberg famously remarked that ‘with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion’. It makes sense, then, to think of the social-justice movement as a kind of cult. Its members are generally decent people with good intentions. They have an unshakeable certainty that their worldview is correct. They feel the need to proselytise and convert as many of the fallen as possible. And even though they are capable of the most horrendous dehumanising behaviour, they think they are the good guys.
We are in this position because identity politics in its current form is a collectivist ideology. It does not value an individual for the content of his or her character, but instead makes prejudicial assessments on the basis of race, gender and sexuality. In the name of anti-racism, identity politics has rehabilitated racial thinking. This explains why an affluent and privileged person like Munroe Bergdorf can be invited on to national television to proclaim that ‘the white race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth’. How is well-intentioned racism even a thing?
A similar regression has occurred within the feminist movement. Fourth-wave feminism is predominantly victim-centred, and is based on the conviction that women are invariably oppressed and require the protection of authority figures. When the BBC promoted a smartphone app to help women speak up in meetings, it was merely toeing the standard feminist line on the intrinsic fragility of women. So we are left with the curious phenomenon of good people who are opposed to misogyny subscribing to an essentially misogynistic perspective.
Titania was an attempt to highlight the inescapable hypocrisies of such a mindset.
Andrew Doyle
March 12, 2019
Why I invented Titania McGrath – spiked
This has someremarkable similarities to what Lyle said just yesterday.
I would like to think that, at least for a generation, the death of Charlie Kirk put the last nail in the coffin of the illusion of “the most horrendous dehumanising behaviour” are the acts of the good guys. But I’m seeing strong indicators that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction. I know people thinking they are “the good guys” and claim, “karmic justice” and/or “righteous violence” and even the necessity of evil acts. They too will demonstrate “they are capable of the most horrendous dehumanising behaviour” and “think they are the good guys.”
“When someone has said they want to kill you, believe them. Prepare accordingly.”
– Joe H (paraphrased)
They are parasites who are compelled to chase the host, because they can burn and loot, kill and destroy, but not create. Eventually there will be no more bunkers to run away too. What then? How do you plan to deal with that? Most boomers say of problems they’ve kicked down the road “I’ll be dead by then, so it’s not my problem.”
How do you stop evil in a spiritual war? Exposing it is good and necessary, but not enough on its own.
Perhaps you do not see the same value as I do in a location far from the front capable of suppling food, ammo (LOTS of ammo), and small arms training.
As for your last question, I got some help from Copilot to get the wording right:
If you don’t believe in spirits or divine forces, what do you base your concept of good and evil on? If there is no overall arbitrator of morality, then anything goes and evil is simply those who oppose me. That being the case, if my foes are evil, am I justified in what I do to oppose and stop them?
There are many acceptable solutions to that problem. Philosophy has worked on that for over 2,000 years.
Try reading up on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.
“There are many acceptable solutions to that problem.”
And every single one I’ve seen either fails, HARD, once you start asking actual, real-world questions or is cribbing from religion in some foundational way.
Joe has had the wishes of Alison Airies pinned to the top of his blog for seven years. She wants death squads hunting down gun owners, and I’m sure she sleeps the undeserved sleep of the Good and the Just every night.
Good people are only good to the extent that they are truly humble.
We are all flawed, foolish, ignorant, often stupid and always sinful.
Hubris always leads to evil. Those who think they are good and moral while committing evil acts because their cult approves are especially evil.
That’s right. And that’s why what we need are principles, not causes.
“I know people thinking they are “the good guys” and claim, “karmic justice” and/or “righteous violence” and even the necessity of evil acts. They too will demonstrate “they are capable of the most horrendous dehumanising behaviour” and “think they are the good guys.””
In WWII, the Allies were definitely “the good guys”, but to defeat “the bad guys” (who were definitely the bad guys) required dehumanizing them sufficiently to kill them in large numbers, to do things that would, definitely and even sometimes on purpose, result in the deaths of civilians (and since it was a war of civilization against civilization, in many ways, every adult was a valid target).
That’s how fighting goes. Things that are, under normal circumstances, definitely “evil acts” (like shooting people by the hundreds with machine guns) are not in a war.
Pointing out how we judge things at either end of the extremes is easy. Finding the exact line between the extremes when that judgement should change is HARD, and just pointing out that killing people by the hundreds is something we generally consider bad does not deal with the complexities of it nor help us find the line between them.
I’m not trying to justify anything of the recent events, but at some point, when enough people are killed by one political side for not agreeing with them, *there is a line*. Deciding where that line is is really, really hard, but simply being nice and kind all the time, doing everything decently and in line with “normal” morality *will not end this*.
I hate typing that. I hate living this. I don’t claim to know exactly where the line is. But I won’t just pretend things are easy, either.
I mostly agree with you. I think bringing self-defense into the decision-making helps. There are still one or ambiguous lines between defending against an individual at a particular time and preemptive defense against a group at a time of your choosing.