How the great truth dawned: the Gulag as change agent
Gary Saul Morson has written an extraordinary aticle for New Criterion. It’s hard to capture its flavor. I suggest you read the whole thing, if you haven’t already.
I could excerpt almost any part of it, but I’ll choose this:
Solzhenitsyn often cites the memoirs of the revolutionary R. V. Ivanov-Razumnk, who compared his imprisonment under tsars and Soviets. Under the tsars, interrogation never involved torture, while under the Soviets it was routine. The tsars never thought of arresting relatives of criminals: Lenin remained free and was accepted to higher education although his brother had been hanged for his role in a conspiracy to murder Tsar Alexander III. The Soviets built camps for “the wives of the accused,” and “member of the family of a traitor to the motherland” became a criminal category. In some periods, the children of these traitors were put in orphanages, where most died, while in others they were simply executed. The tsars never conducted arrests at random, but Stalin issued quotas for each district, and Lenin explicitly called for the arbitrary execution of innocent people, since killing the innocent, he explained, would create a terrorized, therefore submissive, population…
Compared to Soviet interrogators, Solzhenitsyn observes, the villains of Shakespeare, Schiller, and Dickens seem “somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception.” The problem is, these villains recognize themselves as evil, and say to themselves, I cannot live unless I do evil. But that is not at all the way things are, Solzhenitsyn explains: “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. . . . it is in the nature of a human being to seek a justification for his actions.”
Why is it, Solzhenitsyn asks, that Macbeth, Iago, and other Shakespearean evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses, while Lenin and Stalin did in millions? The answer is that Macbeth and Iago “had no ideology.” Ideology makes the killer and torturer an agent of good, “so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.” Ideology never achieved such power and scale before the twentieth century.
I’m not sure about that last sentence, though. Yes, the evil perpetrated in the more distant past was often about plunder, the spoils of victory and power rather than ideology. But sometimes ideology entered into it. What about the religious wars of Europe and Asia, for example? (For the former see this and for the latter, the Muslim conquest of India comes to mind.)
What the 20th Century did to enlarge the “power and scale” of wars of ideology was to make killers more efficient and comprehensive by giving them modern tools for carnage. In addition, the ideologies of the 20th Century – which were not for the most part religious – were stand-ins and substitutes for the ideologies of religion minus the somewhat-restraining morality of those religions. Nazism and Communism were ideologies without any old-fashioned shackles related to good and evil, except that “it is good to kill your enemies as you define them.”
But I’ve wandered a bit far afield here. Morson’s essay is really about how the Gulag changed Solzhenitsyn utterly:
But wasn’t Solzhenitsyn himself once an atheist and a Communist? Indeed he was, and The Gulag Archipelago narrates how, bit by bit, he changed his view of life. The book is not only a history but also an autobiography, and because Solzhenitsyn’s experience was shared by so many others, Gulag offers itself as a collective autobiography. I was arrested this way; here are the ways others were arrested. I suffered this brutal interrogation; others underwent these other kinds of torture. As we examine the progress of souls in extreme conditions, a story—or rather a set of closely related stories—unfolds, and these suspenseful narratives command considerable dramatic interest.
I saw this referred to on Powerline blog on Saturday and thought Roy Nathanson should consider it’s implications for a wholly secular approach to the question of leftism and power, but the comment process wasn’t working. But you also noticed the significance of the article.
Yay Neo!
Neo makes the point, often previously made by many, that Islam is an ideology (disguised as a religion): convert, or die. There has been no ideology like it until modern times. Muhamed was 7th century, some 1400 years ago.
The unreferenced ‘evils’ of remote times to which Neo alludes were not evil, IMO. That was simply the style of combat in those times: hand to hand combat, victors take slaves, rape, and loot. How the warriors were paid, after all!
In my opinion the mass raping in India that occurred with Alexander the Great’s invasion introduced some Euro DNA into the victim population, so perhaps ’twas beneficial in the long run.
Just read this essay, it was well worth the time, and has given me much to think about.
Thanks
“The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia” by Orlando Figues is a must read.
Through various sources including actual interviews he describes what life was like during the Stalin’s reign.
The most shocking (and actually scary ) part of his book is his description of how family members would believe that their husband/wife/relative who was arrested by the NKVD (the Bolshevik version of the Gestapo) MUST have done something wrong because Stalin’s authorities would not arrest the innocent.
They believed this despite knowing that that midnight knock on the door was a common occurrence; everybody knew somebody that had been arrested.
The citizens were so brainwashed (due to the incessant propaganda + the brainwashing students at all grade levels received in school/university) they could not see the forest for the trees.
I literally found this book frightening because it shows how easily the citizenry can become brainwashed to believe anything at all.
And how do the lessons of Stalin’s Russia apply to us today, here in the USA.
The Bolsheviks and Stalin in particular demonstrated the power and affect of total propaganda and mind control. They were the first to utilize schools and youth programs to indoctrinate the young.
Some folks may wonder why here in the USA democrats, the media, etc., keep repeating their lies and disinformation. We need to be clear about this; it is no mistake, no error. It is totally intentional .
IMHO, they know full well that the more they disseminate the lies, the more people will believe it; and history shows that this is in fact is the case.
As the German National Socialist, Joseph Goebbels said, ” repeat a lie often enough and it become the truth.”
And as the leader of the National Socialists, Hitler, said, ” the bigger the lie, the more readily it will be believed. ”
The ease with which the the citizenry to be led off a cliff like lemmings is shocking.
George Orwell’s “1984” really is not a work of fiction.
A tremendous article. There’s also this:
Among Gulag memoirists, even the atheists acknowledge that the only people who did not succumb morally were the believers. Which religion they professed did not seem to matter. Ginzburg describes how a group of semi-literate believers refused to go out to work on Easter Sunday. In the Siberian cold, they were made to stand barefoot on an ice-covered pond, where they continued to chant their prayers. Later that night, the rest of us argued about the believers’ behavior. “Was this fanaticism, or fortitude in defense of the rights of conscience? Were we to admire or regard them as mad? And, most troubling of all, should we have had the courage to act as they did?” The recognition that they would not would often transform people into believers.
The most shocking (and actually scary ) part of his book is his description of how family members would believe that their husband/wife/relative who was arrested by the NKVD (the Bolshevik version of the Gestapo) MUST have done something wrong because Stalin’s authorities would not arrest the innocent.
I read an account of a family that was able to emigrate to the US. The parents would say to each other, “If only Comrade Stalin was aware of this…”
My hippie roommate bought a copy of the first volume of the “Gulag Archipelago” when it came out. It was a tough, long read and neither of us could finish. Not that Solzhenitsyn wrote obscurely — far from it — but it was just one terrible thing happening after another. I marveled that Solzhenitsyn could maintain his outrage. But I never forgot the clear evil he cataloged so exhaustively.
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The voice of honest indignation is the voice of God.
–William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
George Orwell’s “1984” really is not a work of fiction.
No, it is our future if an unreformed Democrat Party wins the presidency in the next decade. After that, I won’t care.
Ideology is a funky term indeed. Marx, I think, couldn’t possibly conceive his teaching as an ideology, and yet, isn’t it nice that Khrushchev could?
Neo makes the point, often previously made by many, that Islam is an ideology (disguised as a religion): convert, or die.
I don’t think that’s in black letters (though it might be. Muslim scriptures can be inconsistent and there are rules about how to read contradictory passages). Christian minorities lived in the Muslim world until fairly recently. There were special tax levies, but the abuse of that population wasn’t so lethal that they could not survive. The last century has not been kind to the Near East’s Christians. NB, just about the worst offender has been Turkey (prior to 2002, inveterately secular).
That period was not my concentration, but in all the casual histories I’ve read, I never came across that, in relation to India.
All I know is that there are always people who want to control other people. That want to strip them of their individual identity in the name of the utopian hive. My response is stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Art Deco: Islam’s ‘convert or die’ is how most of the mediterranean basin became islamified circa 800AD. Spain became al-Andalus (aka Andalusia). North Africa became muslim almost overnight. The so-called “Moors” (see Wm Shakespeare) were actually muslims.
Those original Islamists were fierce combatants; much like today’s. merciless.
DNW: read the history of Alexander the Great and his penetration into India. He did conquer the ‘known’ world, after all.
Well, I have Fox’s book, and probably a couple others.
That is without a doubt the most insightful article on the nature of evil that I have ever read. It all comes down to sociopathy, those who justify evil have sacrificed their conscience for the chimera of certainty.
“Christian minorities lived in the Muslim world until fairly recently.” Art Deco
That is true. I’ve long contended that the reemergence of fundamentalist Islam is a reaction to the inadvertent and unavoidable cultural intrusion of the modern world.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, fundamentalist Muslims sense that 7th century Islam cannot indefinitely survive exposure to the modern world. For them, it’s a life and death struggle. A case of either them or us.
That fearful reality is what Egypt’s El-Sisi refuses to face. https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2015/01/01/egypts-sisi-islamic-thinking-is-antagonizing-the-entire-world/
Art Deco: Islam’s ‘convert or die’ is how most of the mediterranean basin became islamified circa 800AD.
There was an ample Christian population in Spain throughout the Medieval period. There were double-digit Christian minorities in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt into the 20th century. The Christian population of the Balkans was under Ottoman rule for centuries. The only part of the Mediterranean world where Christianity evaporated was the Maghreb.
While we’re at it, what’s your citation?
Art Deco:
Where are your citations and what does “ample” mean to you? Selective memory in action. Christians were “free” if they paid the tax how has it been working out for the Copts and the Byzantine Christians? Peachy keen.
Where are your citations
He’s asserted repeatedly that Islamic tenets require you ‘Convert or Die’. Is that in the Koran, the Hadith, or the Sharia? Where is it therein? How do interpretive schools in Islam evaluate those passages?
and what does “ample” mean to you?
Do you fancy the Christian population in Spain disappeared during the Medieval period? I’m aware there are period scholars who contend the territory had a Muslim majority, but I’d take that with grain of salt.
Selective memory in action. Christians were “free” if they paid the tax how has it been working out for the Copts and the Byzantine Christians? Peachy keen.
You’re arguing with your own naval. If you want to argue with me, complain about what I actually said.
Art Deco:
Don’t complain about citations from others when you provide none. Who knew you were a scholar on Islam too? Again no citations. Funny that you didn’t say what “ample” means to you; any more grains of salt to share? Enjoy.
I once debated this subject with a Prof of History. Comparing Communists to Confederates, I took the position that the two represented very different incarnations of evil. The long / short was that the Communists were ideologues, and IMO represented a more profound or vexing evil. The Confederacy in contrast always had a strong streak of knowing they were wrong.
He agreed with that last point but disagreed that this distinguished them from Communists. I can’t do his argument justice here, but if you take a look at some of his papers, you see where he is going:
https://independentscholar.academia.edu/OttoPohl
While Islam is an ideology disguised as religion, so called “Progressivism”, just as all other forms of Marxism, is a religion disguised as an ideology.
Don’t complain about citations from others when you provide none.
You can consult Bat Ye’or on the population of Christians in the Near East during the 20th century and Teofilo Ruiz on the Christian population of Medieval Spain.
He made the original assertion
He made this assertion as if it was common knowledge about the Islamic world. It isn’t. Bat Ye’or’s work discussed the bog standard regime in regard to the status of religious minorities in Muslim states. You’d have gotten a precis of it in a high school world history class.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. . . . it is in the nature of a human being to seek a justification for his actions.” – Solzhenitsyn
Seems like he covers religious ideology (“dogma”) in the first phrase, and secular ideology (“rationality”) in the second.
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Cicero on September 16, 2019 at 4:22 pm said:
…
The unreferenced ‘evils’ of remote times to which Neo alludes were not evil, IMO. That was simply the style of combat in those times: …
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Cicero, I’m not so sure the two are mutually exclusive, but it will take awhile for me to dig up some citations.
Manju on September 17, 2019 at 5:29 am said:
I once debated this subject with a Prof of History. Comparing Communists to Confederates, I took the position that the two represented very different incarnations of evil. The long / short was that the Communists were ideologues, and IMO represented a more profound or vexing evil. The Confederacy in contrast always had a strong streak of knowing they were wrong.
He agreed with that last point but disagreed that this distinguished them from Communists.
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Manju, that’s an interesting discussion, although I don’t know that I agree with you on “the Confederacy” knowing they were wrong: I think many individuals, who fought in defense of their homeland after the war started, did not agree with the arguments of the slavers, which isn’t quite the same thing as “the Confederacy”. The leadership arguing for slavery never thought they were wrong, at least never said so AFAIK but I am not a Civil War expert.
The Communists as a whole (not individuals) certainly never entertained the idea that they could be wrong; since they purged any individuals who did, then the collective noun may be more appropriate in that case.
While Cicero is probably right that not all wartime atrocities are ideologically based — many conflicts were, as he said, primarily about plunder and power — the bloodiest conflicts seem to be those in which both sides believed themselves to be the ones doing good, and the other side necessarily being evil.
And so back to the Ahmari-French debate, this time on French’s side: we have to oppose actions we believe will lead to bad consequences (for ourselves, other people, our culture, our nation), without monopolizing “being good” for our cause, lest we become evil ourselves in what we do.
Art Deco:
That’s it? Two authors for 1200 years, Spain and the 20th century? LOL.
That’s it? Two authors for 1200 years, Spain and the 20th century? LOL.
Now you want a comprehensive bibliography? And you’re not the least bit curious about how he came to his conclusion? Twit.
Solzenitsyn’s comment “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good” states a condition that is necessary, but not sufficient, for doing evil.
An inherent condition of his definition of “evil” is that the perpetrator claims a justification for his actions that is, in fact, wrong, but I think there is a nuance of emphasis that separates those who are unwittingly causing harm and those who are doing evil.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good” describes someone who is mistaken about the nature of good, and thus causes harm, which may be horrendous, but he is not evil.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good” is something else altogether.
Cicero’s not-evil plunderers probably never debated whether what they were doing was either good (moral) or rational: they did not disguise their goal to themselves or others, but simply got on with the business of reaping the spoils of victory. (Cue Conan the Barbarian here.)
Ideologues, religious or secular, who knowingly commit atrocities may point to their outwardly benevolent justifications to cloak themselves in goodness, but events always reveal that their ultimate goals are the same as those of the honest barbarians: power, wealth, and revenge.
Hence, believing you are doing good and being mistaken is necessary to cause harm, but not sufficient to do evil.
Combined with Solzhenitsyn’s conversion to Christianity (not some random generic religion), his assertion brings up the usual discussion over whether or not that particular God “is good” in the first place.
An article with some interesting reflectons on what it means to do good in that case.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/12/being-on-gods-side-an-open-letter-to-the-religious-right
I’d guess, but can’t be certain of, that sociopathic killers know in some way that what they’re doing is wrong, but don’t feel that it makes them “evil”. Powerful, yes; significant, important, clever, better than others. More worthy of getting what they want.
For most ideologies, “a necessary evil” refers to actions one must take that advance the specific cause. A small wrong for a greater good. This “greater good” is very clear in the religious cases, where saving the souls themselves is at stake.
Why would an all powerful, loving God allow evil to exist?
Free will — seems, for many atheists & agnostics, not enough of a good answer.
Neither is, “God works in mysterious ways”. Too much mystery.
Like most, when they think about it, I certainly want to be on God’s side.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/14/getting-an-education-in-the-big-apple-george-packers-honesty-a-parents-dilemma/#comment-2455947
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An excellent instantiation of what I just said.
If the useful idiots in the Democratic Party were ever to acknowledge that what they were doing was NOT good, or even if they were willing to endure the same burdens they inflict on other people, they would not do evil (I would prefer to say “be evil”), although they might do harm.
Packer and his tribe unfailingly believe that whatever they do is good, and so not only inflict immeasurable harm, but are also evil.
Socialism was always promoted as a religion, they were going to create heaven on earth. However, it was a religion with no morality so anything was permitted to achieve the promised utopia. Just remember, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. I believe it was George Orwell that used to ask the communists, where’s the omelet?
I’d guess, but can’t be certain of, that sociopathic killers know in some way that what they’re doing is wrong, but don’t feel that it makes them “evil”.
Tom Grey: That was my stepfather, not a killer but surely a sociopath.
Here’s an excerpt of the suicide note he sent to my mother. My stepfather was an arch bullshitter always on the make, even before death. He cribbed half of the high-flown language straight from Nietzsche with poetic touches from e.e. cummings. The “Tropical Man” is Nietzsche’s idealization of the predatory human in “Beyond Good and Evil,” whom he upholds as superior to ordinary mortals who worry about ordinary morals.
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To love Eternity and oblivion is to know the joy of the discredited “Tropical man”… Oh, how painful to smell with the eye the timidity of morals, and in appreciation i must add that we must have these curiousities and complexities of the modern spirit, excite as much laughter as disgust. You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least tried to effect according to my conception, through the ascetic; You know the purpose for which we had to employ a Temporary Tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as “guilt”, “sin”, “corruption”, and “damnation”. We must be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with more tact and subtlety in moral discernment. There are Truths which are best recognised by mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for them. The cosmos is what we all seek either to oblivion or Joy.
________________________________
Well, he did do me one favor. When I was in sixth grade, he told me never to take heroin and I never did.
Ray: I’ve had omelets like that on camp-outs with youth cooks – they look more like scrambled eggs and are brown all the way through instead of light yellow with a nice crust, runny instead of fluffy, and the vegetables are limp and tasteless.
The kids have the excuse of being novices; the Communists have no excuse at all.
Wow, Huxley.
No wonder you became a Buddhist.
[Joke …. joke …joke …!!!]
You’ve been through a lot. Guess it was not all girls with midriff baring hip-hugger jeans, and tube tops, back on the commune.
In fact, although I can make no real sense of that passage in the sense of having a sympathetic understanding of it, strangely, I’d be interested in knowing more about such a person. The suicide note seems to project a kind of sly malevolence meant to linger on in the mind of the reader, made perpetually suspicious that it contains some obscure profundity, and not just nihilistic glee.
God help us if there is a Hell, and some do go there …
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/arizona-supreme-court-upholds-free-speech-religious-freedom/
“The court quoted the Supreme Court of the United State’s seminal opinion in West Virginia v. Barnette, and it’s worth quoting here as well:”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/neil-gorsuch-book-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it/
Each justice in the majority may have believed “that what he’s doing is good,” but more likely believed “that what he’s doing is good.”
DNW: My stepfather was an interesting and an accomplished fellow. He was a prodigy on the double bass and chosen by Leopold Stokowski (the conductor played by Bugs Bunny in some of the old Warner Bros. classical music cartoons) to be in a national youth symphony. After that he was employed, seemingly at will, in the New York, Dallas and San Francisco symphonies — in spite of being a junkie.
Like many sociopaths he had charm to burn. I couldn’t believe how he could con people into things and they would be happy to go along. I’ve never met anyone at that level since and thank God for that.
He pretty much took out my family — mother, uncle, sister, brother — with his actions and influence. He even came on sexually to my grandmother. Years later she told me, “I could have driven a stake through his heart.”
I know the feeling.
Huxley,
Do you have the feeling that you ever, even once, had a conversation with him wherein you got – actually were granted or given by him – a real insight into what drove him; even momentarily?
Ever feel you were really communicating rather than just the target of verbal emissions meant to shape your behavior or produce such and such an impression?
My sibs and I have been remarking how many people came up to us after my father’s recent death and said that he was one of the few men they had met who they felt they could actually talk to; about how honorable he was, how psychologically gracious or generous and patient he was and how they had known either no, or only one or two like him in their adult lives.
It occurred to me later, that he never spoke – or I never saw him speak – in order to manipulate or spin or shade.
And only later did I realize that they were right, in that I too had met almost no one else like that; but took it for granted all my life. His barber, for God’s sake wept when she learned of his death. A single mother, she was apparently confiding in him about her struggles to raise her child.
Did you ever feel you were on the same wavelength with your step father? Or was it manipulation and self-justification “all the way down”?
Jesus. How have some of you managed to survive?
I’ll look in again tomorrow.
This is quite true and interesting
And why make people confess to absurd crimes that the interrogators knew were fabrications? Apart from the few who confessed during show trials, none of these extracted confessions would ever be made public. Think of the manpower and the cost expended for no evident purpose. The question has puzzled many scholars.
DNW: Having good parents is one of the great blessings of life. You are indeed fortunate.
Aside from the heroin conversation, which happened one morning when my stepfather was bleary and likely in need of a fix (I was his errand boy for the codeine cough syrup he needed to tide him over when he was short), he was mostly conning me. He noticed I was resistant and told me I was afraid to trust people — because my father had left us, he said! I could never figure out what made him tick.
Based on what I’ve since read, my stepfather was a straight-up sociopath on the natch. He didn’t have a traumatic childhood. He wanted what he wanted and what happened to other people wasn’t his concern unless being too obvious about it got in the way. My family was already weak, but after he arrived, it was like a bomb had gone off.
I was the eldest and the strongest of the children, so my stepfather mostly left me alone and focused his cruelty on dominating my brother and sister. My brother began setting fires and doing B&E’s in the neighborhood — classic cries for help. He was in third grade. He didn’t make it. He became a junkie and was murdered at 19 after falling out with some dealers. My sister became a coke addict in the 70s, bottomed out and got through with a whole lot of therapy and 12-Step. She went to her first meeting, picked up her white chip and never used again. God bless her.
My mother kept breaking down — multiple suicide attempts — and her psychiatrist told her she had children and she had to leave the marriage for the sake of all. So she did, but it was hard. After she got my stepfather’s suicide letter, I heard her crying in her bedroom.
As to myself, I’m not sure. Much of my quest into the counter-culture, spirituality and self-help was about finding answers to my situation. I feel like I found a few. Other times I feel like Mr. Magoo, blundering through one treacherous situation after another, yet managing with absurd good luck.
As to Solzhenitsyn’s claim…
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.
I’d agree it applies to people who perform evil acts for ideological reasons — like Soviet officials putting people in the Gulag, but I’m not sure it applies to sociopaths.
They may come up with Nietzschean rationalizations after the fact as my stepfather did, but as far as I could tell, my stepfather didn’t think in terms of good and evil. There was just what he wanted and what he could get away with.
As to Solzhenitsyn’s claim…amended for sociopaths.
“To get away with doing evil, a human being must first of all con other people into believing that what he’s doing is good.”
Bless you for making it through.
M. Scott Peck addresses the connection of evil to pathological people in his book “People of the Lie.”
AesopFan: Thank you.
I must say I had trouble with Peck’s “People of the Lie.” It’s been a while, but as I recall his showpiece example involved a young woman whom Peck decided was evil, but to me she was a garden-variety borderline, whose real problem for Peck was she didn’t take his authority seriously. QED, she’s EVIL.
Worse yet, she had that borderline deviousness where she could sense Peck’s blind spots and exploit them beautifully. As far as I was concerned, Peck deserved everything he got.
If you believe what I’ve written here, I have seen evil up close. It’s not a mild personality disorder.
@Huxley.
Quite a history. I’m always amazed at how resilient so many people are; surviving transgressions and moving on productively, rather than retaliating.
I admire those who can do that. And the longer I live, the more examples, many of them shocking and surprising, I come across of those people who have done so.
I hate to admit that it’s probable that many of the people whose faces I’ve wanted to smash because of their annoying character traits or behavior, were actually wounded human beings with whom I should probably have sympathized. But I could just not feature how shitty their lives had been and how disproportionately important this or that issue had as a result become to them.
I recall an incident involving a guy who shall remain nameless, and who was stuck idling for an hour in a traffic jam on his way to go hunting; when some other guy in another pick-up truck was seen working his way up by cutting in and out traffic and using the shoulder to arrive up to the road barriers all the others had been waiting patiently to pass. The fellow in the first truck said to himself, “This son of a bitch isn’t going to do this to me”. But the other guy did, blatantly and aggressively wedging his way up past the more passive conflict avoidant drivers, and then wedging right in front of the good guy as if he didn’t care if there was a crash or the creeping stop and go trucks collided. The good guy lost it. The world went red, he grabbed his hunting bowie off the seat, got out of his truck, shaking the sheath off the blade as he did, and strode up toward the other pickup with his arm half behind his back and bowie palmed, blade up along the inside forearm … as other drivers behind and seeing what the offender could not see, went crazy honking and shouting. The offender who was also a pretty big guy in his mid thirties too, got out of his truck and immediately said “Thank you thank you all … My pregnant wife was just rushed to the hospital and I have to get there. Thank you all for letting me get in.” The angry guy, who as I mentioned held the bowie by the grip but with the blade up along the inside of his forearm, kept his arm back by his side, stopped short a few feet, stared half comprehending, nodded at the nearly crying man, and his head still buzzing like a swarm of bees were flying inside it, walked back to his truck.
Later he wondered just what the hell had just happened. I guess he learned something. Maybe.
This lesson does not apply with regard to leftists of course. They are pure evil just for welling up before me and appearing in my world. But that’s another issue entirely … ha
huxley: I eventually stopped reading Dr. Peck when his books seemed to be more about him than his patients. My enduring memory (30+ years old now, heh) from “People of the Lie” is his observation that the ones he calls “evil” seemed to have no comprehension that their “rational” or “natural” actions and behaviors appeared callous and indifferent to the people they affected (usually but not always family).
DNW: I’ve had a couple of those “things are not the way you think they are” moments myself, although none involving knives, to date. However, I suspect most of the traffic hogs we all know and love don’t have the excuse that man did.
My most memorable experience was when I had just eased onto the off-ramp of the freeway and a guy in a pick-up (not derogatory, I drive one myself!) came around me on the right side to get off first.
“Later he wondered just what the hell had just happened. I guess he learned something. Maybe.”
I am listening to a Jordan Peterson interview today in fits and starts between chores, and was impressed by his rationale for writing his first book, “Maps of Meaning.” IIRC He undertook an investigation of how and why people acquiesce in the atrocities of authoritarian regimes, most notably Nazis and Soviets, in order to understand the psychology of — my phrasing — why good people do bad things.
His goal was to learn to do just the opposite, so that, if the challenge came, he would not become one of those people. His opposition to the Canadian speech coercion law came out of that decision.
About 10 minutes in. The whole thing is worth watching, of course. He seems to pack more good sense into any given ten minutes of verbiage than anyone I know of. Lewis & Chesterton & and others certainly have as much good to impart, but they do it more liesurely, I think, even when speaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6H2HmKDbZA
From the Aspen Ideas Festival, recorded Tuesday, June 26, 2018. Jordan Peterson, author of the best-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, may be one of the most famous intellectuals in North America today. He also may be among the most misunderstood. His fans say that he’s saved their lives, and detractors say that he’s the gateway drug to the alt-right. Who is this psychologist-philosopher whom so many of us had never heard of two years ago, and what does he really believe?
Featuring Jordan Peterson in conversation with Bari Weiss. Hosted in the St. Regis Hotel Ballroom, Aspen, Colorado.
(Bari, to her credit, asked infrequent but interesting questions, and then just got out of his way.)
@AesopFan
I’ll take a look at the video.
I cannot recall whether Neo was one of the first to post on his campus confrontations over his use of traditionally gendered pronouns, or not.
He certainly has a body of work impacting hundreds of thousands if not [but probably so] many millions.
The road rage incident was stupid on many levels, apart from an unreflective misreading of the cause. One very primitive and pre-moral level being that of hauling a knife to what would have been a probable gunfight, if it had been the kind of personal assault it really was not. That’s why it’s called “mindless” rage, I suppose.
Quite a history. I’m always amazed at how resilient so many people are; surviving transgressions and moving on productively, rather than retaliating.
DNW: Thanks. Generally yes. But I don’t know what I might have done, if my stepfather had still been alive after I had come into my powers as an adult. I really hated him. What he had done to my sister and maybe my brother was unforgivable.
50+ years later I’m more philosophical. Maybe he was a human crippled genetically with an inability to empathize with other humans. That’s one theory I’ve read. Quite sad, if true.
My younger half-sister, his daughter, has had a tragic life as well, but she has fought hard through drug issues and cruel boyfriends to stability.
Her half-sisters by my stepfather’s first wife hired a private detective to find her. It happens they all live in Massachusetts, so they had a happy reunion. Her half-sisters are Armenian and apparently Armenians are very serious about family, so my sister has been accepted into the bosom of that extended family. It’s a beautiful thing.
But her sisters know little about their father and would like to know more. Their mother wouldn’t tell them anything. My sister is reluctant to tell them either since the news isn’t good. I kinda think the sisters suspect as much.
I eventually stopped reading Dr. Peck when his books seemed to be more about him than his patients. My enduring memory (30+ years old now, heh) from “People of the Lie” is his observation that the ones he calls “evil” seemed to have no comprehension that their “rational” or “natural” actions and behaviors appeared callous and indifferent to the people they affected (usually but not always family).
AesopFan: That’s a good one-liner for Peck IMO. And that’s a good precis of “People of the Lie.”
But evil is such a sledgehammer of a word for being oblivious. Who hasn’t been? Isn’t there a distinction to be made between selfish and stupid, and cold-bloodedly destroying people’s lives and worse?
“But evil is such a sledgehammer of a word for being oblivious. Who hasn’t been? Isn’t there a distinction to be made between selfish and stupid, and cold-bloodedly destroying people’s lives and worse?” – huxley
It’s probably a continuum, as so many things are, and there are good reasons for drawing the line in different places.
Although you can’t fix stupid, and so I don’t think that is on the “evil” side of the line, you CAN fix selfish.
All of us are self-centered and self-aggrandizing and all the other parts of “selfish” to some degree, but maturity (and most religions) should push us away from being totally devoted to ourselves, and more generous toward other people.
Abstract “humane feelings” probably don’t count as much as what you do with the people nearest to you. C. S. Lewis talks about that in the “Screwtape Letters,” and some of his examples make me squirm a bit myself, but I think Charles Schultz nailed it in one of his cartoons, where Linus declares, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”
I think you can be heavily selfish without being evil, though, so long as your selfishness doesn’t deliberately and actively harm someone else directly (depriving them of needed sustenance or emotional support or any number of things) or indirectly (that’s where social and political agendas muddy the grey area).
The hot button being pushed by Climatistas is that Climate Change Deniers are purposely and with malice aforethought going to destroy the planet any minute now, and thus are evil.
However, pursuing a scam for personal gain is also evil, because it also has harmful effects, so I think drawing that line comes down to how much you are pushing a narrative when you know the truth contradicts it.
When you don’t even bother to investigate which side has the better facts and arguments probably falls closer to lazy (selfish) than evil.
YMMV
FWIW, LDS theology puts most people who are below the threshhold of the truly saintly into different degrees of heavenly bliss, depending on what kind of lifestyle they have chosen to live in mortality (caveats for the genuinely unintelligent or those with no really functional options).
Hell (outer darkness) is reserved for those who are named the “sons of perdition” (and also presumably the daughters) who do either or both of two things: those who willfully deny the testimony of the Holy Ghost after it has been received and accepted (dissing the Godhead); and those who deliberately shed innocent blood (murderers, terrorists — or freedom fighters who commit terrorist acts, bloody tyrants, and probably some others).
Placing people on one side or the other of that line is a responsibility of God, however, and not for us to decide, although I’m pretty sure that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and others of that ilk qualify.
Somebody on this blog always comes through with an example on point, even when from a different thread!
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/18/the-future-of-climate-change-politics-part-i-the-children/#comment-2456277
CV on September 20, 2019 at 7:04 am said:
Related thoughts on how “climate panic will subvert democracy” here:
https://www.mercatornet.com/mobile/view/climate-panic-will-subvert-democracy
“Panic and democracy are incompatible. Democracies which panic commit atrocities to protect themselves.”
RTWT and then the comments.
Morson’s article is outstanding, Neo; thanks for sharing it.