House of Eratosthenes

Commenter Severian posts some thoughtful remarks that inspire more thought. And I’m thinking…I still don’t have liberals figured out, and Sev’s comment does not get them figured out for me, nor do they go too far in that direction. But, they inspire what might be the correct question to ask.

Let’s see if I can jot this down.

A Socreatean syllogism, posed from their point of view…let us say, I am a liberal and you are not.

1. I’m a better person than you are, in all kinds of ways.
2. (Underpants gnome missing step)
3. Therefore, we need a purely-collectivist system of exchange which, among other things, conceals the disparity among individuals in terms of their virtue and worthiness of their habits & efforts.

Item #3 summarizes the “Elizabeth Warren” ethos: President Obama put it very well, I thought, if you’ve done something good then you didn’t really do it. Somehow, there’s a lot of enthusiasm around for the idea that no individual does anything for which there should be any enthusiasm. My observation is that #3 seems to be in conflict with #1…problematic, since both #1 and #3 seem to be ever-present in all this liberal monologuing. I don’t see any liberals discarding one of those for the other. In fact, #1 and #3 appear to be engaged in some kind of symbiotic relationship with one another.

The thing I cannot quite grasp is, of course, #2. It can be:

2a. I love you with the love of a soldier who lays himself down on a grenade for the other members of his platoon, and only want the best for you…or…
2b. ???????

And, for reasons that will be obvious to all others who’ve similarly “discussed” things with their liberal friends and neighbors — into which I shall not go, here — I’m ready to discard 2a as a possibility. Think it’s pretty safe to eliminate it.

So, I think, “What t’heck is going on in 2b?” is the appropriate question to ask. Liberals think they’re better, evidently just because they’re liberals…be that the case or be it not, they definitely think they’re better. And so, because of [blank], they have all this passion for a new, better society in which it doesn’t matter who’s better than who, a future in which relative individual merit becomes pointless.

It seems, once that future comes about, they’re still better than everybody else, that part of it will not change. And since they have so much identity invested in that truism, that they’re better because they’re liberals — in this envisioned future, that remains their purpose in life. Or, at the very least, it matters to them, is fulfilling to them, that they’re still better than you, and you are not as good as they.

Which remains true. But has become entirely irrelevant. Or not?

Side note: On envisioned futures. A couple weeks ago I came up with a definition for people with a certain problem here, whom I described thusly:

These are the people who take:

1. What they perceive to be likely to happen
2. What they perceive is merely a remote possibility
3. What they would like to see happen

and
4. What is certain to happen

and, like a toddler clutching milk duds and jelly beans too tightly for too long on a hot summer day, smoosh them all up together.

My son and I were talking about this yesterday, about his antipathy for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). Aside from being anti-human, VHEMT’s mission statement pegs the organization as being deeply mired in this “future fondue” problem; in fact, it ranks among many other left-wing anarchist organizations, sharing this attribute that its members are “activists” who are active first and foremost in the action of envisioning something. Hmmm…nice gig if you can get it. Wonder what the hourly calorie expenditure is on that.

I also recall the twenty-dollar chocolate bar, imported in all its carbon-neutral glory, by means of sail-powered cargo ships. The spokesman of the company operating said cargo ships, making this jaw-dropping remark, revealing his company’s mission statement to have much to do with this future-fondue thinking:

“This is only a beginning. The next step is to build a much larger sail-powered cargo ship, a 3,000 tonne EcoLiner equipped for container traffic and fully competitive with the oil guzzling competitors”, says Fairtransport director Jorne Langelaan. “We want to re-establish sailing ships as a natural alternative to an anti-ecological culture. We want to see a revival of the great age of sail, as a means of Fair transport for cargo around the Atlantic”.

Nevermind the idea itself — there is something going on with how it is envisioned. The future-fondue people have a most peculiar understanding, one that belongs solely to them and is all their own, of this simple human-thinking concept of doubt.

As I’ve written many times in many places, since our most educational exercise about the matter: They speak of future events, as if they have occurred in the past. The very word “envision,” applied to future situations and future events, seems to have a very special, and peculiar, meaning.

You and I envision future events with hope, or dread, depending on whether our vision is inspiring or dark. But they don’t dread. Even when they’re warning about bad things, like the Earth ceasing to support life as we know it due to our pollution, or terrorist attacks due to our bad behavior or failure to provide foreign aid, they’re still full of hope. Or, their words have dread, the lilt in their voices is full of what could not be described as anything but real hope. That’s when it gets creepy.

Only they would say something like “There’s a serious problem, the world might not be ending,” or “not to worry, we’re still doomed.”

Update: A further thought. Perhaps we can achieve much illumination of thought with very few words of prose — not historically my forte, but let’s give this a try nevertheless, shall we? — to sum it up this way:

This lately-popular “Elizabeth Warren economics” brand of modern liberalism simply seeks to make definition and personal excellence mutually exclusive things.

What the President is saying is, when you have a successful business, you have this definition. Therefore personal excellence is simply not to be allowed, hence the “you didn’t build that, somebody else made it happen.” His fabulous remarkable campaign from four years ago, on the other hand, is the opposite. Personal excellence without definition. “He’s the real deal, I’m telling you! There’s just something about Him! I can’t explain it!” Barry’s personal wonderfulness is to be permitted…even obligatory, in classic affirmative-action style…because the definition has been reduced to nonexistence. Berry is elected President, Barry wins the Nobel Peace Prize — for nothing in particular. If there was definition, the individual exceptionalism would be prohibited. But there is no definition, therefore acknowledgement of this undefined excellence is required. It is demanded. Just like the praise for the Emperor’s new clothes.

Just a thought.

I think 2b is: “they’re the Vanguard of the Proletariat.”

They’re Better Than You now because they’re in the forefront of the Revolution, and they’ll be Better Than You then because even the ideal socialist collective has a group of Deciders who make the work schedules and hand out the ration cards. And since we’ll never actually reach the ideal socialist collective in which they’d be merely work-schedulers and ration-card dispensers, they get to be Better Than You while enjoying all the filthy lucre of decadent post-industrial capitalism. And since The Revolution is entirely for the benefit of the poor and downtrodden, the fact that you want it is all the proof you need of your superior virtue; effort is strictly optional.

I don’t have any hard evidence for this claim — after all, I’ve never met a liberal who has actually read Marx or Lenin — but indirect and anecdotal evidence is strong. For instance, you never hear genuinely poor people espousing liberalism. Sure, a lot of poor folks and minorities vote Democrat (as I’m sure I would if I felt dependent on government largesse), but you never hear them reciting NPR talking points. Witness the overwhelming African-American opposition to California’s Prop. 8, for example. Straight liberalism is almost entirely the pastime of the idle, overeducated middle class, just as Revolution was the hobby of the late 19th / early 20th century bourgeoisie (Marx himself never worked a day in his life; Engels’ family actually owned a factory; Che Guevara was a med student; Lenin was a grad student (and Stalin a seminarian), etc. etc.).
- Severian | 07/18/2012 @ 14:06
Vanguard of the proletariat…okay, so that’s a little like the locomotive on the train. All the boxcars are connected together so the train moves as a single vehicle, where the locomotive goes all the rest of it goes — and yet, there is some deep, almost spiritual meaning in this difference between the locomotive and all the rest of the cars lacking an engine.

Yet, as a practical matter, the train goes where the train goes. They insist on it, we’re all in this together. And this “let’s go over here” thing is moral/spiritual/ethical in every single sense. Example: Abolishing the death penalty. We are all immoral people when we live in a country that allows such a thing — but they remain better than the rest of us, since they want to get rid of it, and after they get rid of it and the rest of us are forced to live in a place where murderers roam wild & free, they will still be better than the rest of us.

In fact — hey, here’s a thought: In the here-and-now, in which we have a death penalty, and they are forced against their will to subsidize the death penalty with their tax dollars…they, as individuals living in a moment of time, are still better than the rest of us, in their future, preferring to keep the death penalty, but forced against our will to live in a society which abolishes it. So there’s a paradox if ever there was one: We are made better people, or worse people, by the laws under which we live, but they’re better people, living under laws unfavorable to them, than the rest of us are, living under the laws they would prefer.

Or maybe I’m extruding their thoughts inaccurately & therefore unfairly. But I doubt it…
- mkfreeberg | 07/18/2012 @ 14:40
Yeah, I doubt it too….. 🙂

That’s the other thing about being the Vanguard of the Proletariat… or the engine on the train…. or the only Good People in America… or [pick your metaphor] — they and their opponents are the only ones who have agency. Old-school Marxists believed that the Iron Laws of History dictated that the Revolution would happen, regardless of how anyone felt about it…. but somehow one could hasten it by being a Marxist revolutionary (or, alternately, retard it by buying into “false consciousness”). They don’t talk that way anymore, but the idea is still very much alive. If a group that liberals like does something that liberals don’t like — underclass criminality, say, or differentials in HIV infection rates — then that’s invariably the fault of “The System.” Or Republicans. Or Jesus-thumpers. Or “haters.” Or institutional racism. Or imperialism. Or homophobia. &c (admittedly these are all kind of the same thing in their eyes, but you get the point).

No criminal, in other words, has ever chosen to commit a crime. It’s always forced; he’s always an automaton, mindlessly carrying out the programming of The System. He’s not responsible, because he literally can’t tell the difference between right and wrong — he’s just responding like a machine, input/output.

When a group that liberals don’t like does something, though, it’s always bad and it’s always intentional. The Koch Brothers are presumably as much a part of “The System” as the lowliest crack dealer (“The System” is total, or it’s nothing), but somehow they have complete freedom of action, as well as full moral agency — they know that their choices are evil, but they pick them anyway.

I don’t know how they square this circle, just like I don’t know how they manage to know that We are made better people, or worse people, by the laws under which we live, but they’re better people, living under laws unfavorable to them, than the rest of us are, living under the laws they would prefer. This is the peculiar frustrating pointlessness of “arguing” with liberals –not only can’t you win, but their default position assumes you are literally, constitutionally, metaphysically incapable of even losing the argument! You either a) know the good but deliberately choose evil (the Koch Brothers), or you’re too dumb to understand the good (the Tea Party), because if you were smart enough you’d pick it, and then you’d be a liberal…..

But that’s because you and I are thinking with our forebrains. For them, there is no contradiction, because it’s all out in the open — you can’t understand it unless you agree with it, and once you agree with it, understanding becomes a moot point. It’s brilliantly summed up in the notion of “false consciousness” — if you saw the way the world really is, says the Marxist, you’d be a socialist revolutionary; if you’re not, it’s because The System works so well that it has altered the very way in which you perceive the world.

I know I keep thumping on Marx here in these comments (probably to everyone’s great annoyance; I’ll knock it off on request), but every single thing the modern left thinks, says, and does dates back to 1960 at the latest. The great advantage of reading these old guys is that they spoke their minds plainly — Karl Marx himself, for example, was nicknamed “Destroy” in high school because of how often he used that word. Kinda says it all.
- Severian | 07/18/2012 @ 16:09
Due to too much caffeine…

I am guessing that the liberal mind has looked around and noticed the obvious: life isn’t fair. Then, when considering this, made the further observations that:
1) Birth locations matter,
2) Family status/genetics matters,
3) Timing matters.
That is, that if you won the lottery and were born in the west, or better yet, the USA, and were born to a prestigious family, better yet, a wealthy, beautiful white family and then you were born in the mid to late 20th century, well, you are very far ahead of the rest of the world right out of the gate! And, you did nothing to earn that lucky start.

They then come to believe that they are special not only for noticing that choice of birth parents is not fair, but that only they notice that. And that starts them on the path to believing they are better than others. The next step is concluding that they are going to do something about it. They are going to make all those unfair accident of birth disadvantages go away, or be leveled out.

And so they become “levelers.” All of their crusades are about trimming the unfair advantages of birth down and redistributing the benefits to those unfortunate in their accidental choice of parents. Because they are doing the hard work of noticing the unfairness, and making the social constraints that will boost the unfortunate they allow themselves special privileges. It is only fair as they are working for the common good.

In the world view of the leveler everything that happens after the birth lottery is a culmination of the initial unfair advantage. Whether that is wealth, position, looks, race, nationality or gender, every perceived advantage in growing up and adulthood is unjustifiable without their intervention.

The obvious effort expended by individuals to achieve is irrelevant. The obvious conservatism of families and organizations is selfish hoarding of ill-gotten advantage. The occasional exception of an individual that rises from their unfortunate birth situation is proof not of individual effort mattering, but rather that their conclusion that without the oppression of the advantaged everyone would flourish.

No counter evidence is admissible, as it is always offered by the advantaged who simply won’t admit the obvious injustice of their place. All the social programs and solutions flow from this endless effort to level out the injustice of the birth lottery. There is no point in showing that none of the programs or solutions yield the professed result in raising the condition of the disadvantaged. The other end of the leveling is equally vital: that the advantaged are harried and brought lower.

It doesn’t matter that the actual work and deeds of the class that builds and maintains a family, society and culture creates wealth and raises the condition of the entire population. Not at all, for those creators still rise even higher and that creates more unfairness. To the leveler only uniform outcome is just.

That such a condition is nowhere found in nature is irrelevant. That such a condition, if artificially imposed, will not sustain is irrelevant. They will fix this natural and eternal condition or else. Physics and entropy be damned. Pi will equal three so anyone can understand it, see.
- seattle | 07/18/2012 @ 17:04
[…] natural conservative reaction here is to try to reason the lights back on. As Morgan has so amply demonstrated, this is a mistake — they will continue to scream “there’s just […]
- Hitting Below the Belt | Rotten Chestnuts | 01/14/2013 @ 10:14
Seattle:

I am guessing that the liberal mind has looked around and noticed the obvious: life isn’t fair. Then, when considering this, made the further observations that:
1) Birth locations matter,
2) Family status/genetics matters,
3) Timing matters.

Mmm-hmmm. Segues beautifully into this:
- philmon | 01/14/2013 @ 20:39
I was going to toss in my vote for what 2) would be, but Severian bet me to it.

And did a better job.

Again.

Dammit 😉
- philmon | 01/14/2013 @ 20:40

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Memo For File CLXIIWednesday, July 18th, 2012

Memo For File CLXII
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012