I’ve been reading Johnson’s profiles of Western “intellectuals” like Rousseau and Marx, and what comes away with is that most of these individuals are profoundly unhappy, supremely egotistical to the point of utter lack of empathy or regard and who hate actual people and compensate for this lack of love by CLAIMING to love all of humanity.
Rousseau is the father of totalitarianism and was an utterly wicked man who abandoned all of his children to early death, stole and lied about his life. Marx lied about his cites in his books, never stepped outside of his library to get a sense of what life was like for the ‘workers’ or anyone else and basically had a poetic eschatological vision that he then went out to support with his works of ‘philosophy’ that were nothing but an expression of his love of domination and violence and the hope that after the revolution HE would rule.
What you take away is that there is a ‘vision’ and all of their service and labor is dedicated to that vision (whatever it may be, not always the stereotypically Marxist) and all other human beings are worthy of contempt outside of the role they can play in enacting this drama upon all of human civilization.
It’s like Juan Williams on Fox saying in response to the assertion that tax breaks were simply about people keeping more of Their money: “it’s all our money!”
We will always have a difficult time with the will to power in which the human ego and self-crafted ideals and morals place each solipsistic soul at the heart of their own metaphysical drama. And make no mistake, they can call themselves libertarian socialists or anarchists, they power they assume over the lives and decisions of others always manifests in state power or murderous chaos.
You can never really rationally debate these folks. You can only hope to teach their followers who may or may not be well-intentioned but poorly informed or need a building up of humility and of a moral compass.
So what’s the response? This will to power and magical thinking will not just go away because of history and it hasn’t thus far. Millenarian tyrants and their religions will be with us for some time. They typically are not defeated at the ballot box but by terrible bloodshed or by a sapping of all belief in their bankrupt notions of “human unity and progress.” Sapping that belief is difficult when it is not practiced first. There goes the dilemma!
You can never really rationally debate these folks. You can only hope to teach their followers who may or may not be well-intentioned but poorly informed or need a building up of humility and of a moral compass.
So what’s the response? This will to power and magical thinking will not just go away because of history and it hasn’t thus far. Millenarian tyrants and their religions will be with us for some time. They typically are not defeated at the ballot box but by terrible bloodshed or by a sapping of all belief in their bankrupt notions of “human unity and progress.” Sapping that belief is difficult when it is not practiced first. There goes the dilemma!
BUMP-TO-THE-TOP!
Dito