In the comments for the previous post (The King of Cattle), Clovis wrote: "The next one is always the enemy..." I started responding in a comment, but I decided to make this verbiage its own post because it was getting a bit far off topic. And hey, I haven't posted in a while, so two birds with one post and all that...
I think viewing others as enemies is an inherent part of the human condition. Anyone not part of our tribe(s) is a potential enemy and we (many of us) are continuously monitoring those outside our tribes for signs and symptoms that they are the enemy and the most trivial bit of evidence is taken as conclusive that they are indeed the enemy.
I believe that the period from the end of WWII until now (and hopefully at least a while longer) was one of a very unusual and probably unsustainable peace and a workable type of tolerance. By workable type of tolerance I mean this: sure, there was still plenty of suspicion, prejudice and hate between tribes/nations, but the world was so weary of war and violence that for those decades a substantial majority of people were willing to tolerate otherness and perceived slights, insults, injuries, etc. without a willingness to try to obliterate that otherness or right the wrongs of the slights, etc.
Sure, that's a tremendous simplification and yes, I'm aware of other factors like amazing prosperity on the one hand and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) on the other had a lot to do with the workable tolerance as well. For example, MAD allowed us to still have the "other" to hate, an enemy to blame the ills of the world on, but in this case we were able to do it without massive war (barely!). However, that fits into this paradigm I'm describing here fairly well.
From an evolutionary point of view, our capacity (and dare I say need?) to hate could very possibly have a purpose: to spur us to violence and war to take out competing strains of DNA. Hitler used DNA supremacy as a reason for genocide, but Hitler was neither the first nor the last leader to hate the Jews and the Jews themselves are not immune from hating.
Note that I'm not saying that hate and genocide are moral, right, excusable, or anything like that. Instead, I'm saying that to be moral we have to fight with everything we have against our own inherent human nature and if we let down our guard for even a brief instant, horrific evil can and often will follow. Even worse, it's almost certain that from time to time our vigilance will slip and violence, war, genocide and other massive atrocities will follow.
Some of us were alive and aware during WWII. I wasn't born until after WWII but my parents' generation was very, very much aware of the horrors of that war and the memories of WWI. It seemed to me that those wars had an extremely powerful antiwar effect on that generation and on their children (such as me). Now that period is ancient history and even the cold war is something most of the younger generation has only a dim awareness of.
Having very real and mortal enemies is long past, so our younger generation is looking for new ones. And sure enough, they find enemies everywhere they look. Some of the ones looking hardest for enemies are called Social Justice Warriors.
The "Social Justice" part of that label is interesting because it begs the question of whether or not there's a difference between "Justice" and "Social Justice." If they're the same thing, why waste the space by prepending the word "Social"? If they're different, another way of saying something that isn't "Justice" in "Injustice" which is both shorter and perhaps less misleading. [Note that this observation isn't original to me but I can't find a link at the moment in order to give proper attribution]
But the more important part of that phrase is "Warrior." What we have is a fairly large group of people who very much want to be warriors. In other words, to find enemies to hate and fight. They claim to hate and fight those who hate, yet they're obviously uninterested in hating their own hate.
I would say, like many who've come before them, they've let down their guard against their own human nature and I doubt that anything good will come of it and perhaps evil will arise instead.
6 comments:
The period after WW2 saw an outbreak of tolerance because the war sent soldiers hither and yon with people they would probably never have encountered in their lives had things remained peaceful.
A good friend, also a New Yorker, who was a couple of years older than we, said he was drafted and sent to Georgia where they had never seen a Jew. The people there couldn't believe he was a Jew because he looked very much like any other random white guy. That kind of thing happened very frequently changed a lot of minds. Same thing when blacks were integrated in the military services.
It was getting so common that lefties had to stir up things and the 60's and CRA happened and and it took a long time for that cataclysm to die down and now things have been stirred up again, so we're worse off than ever.
We have laws governing immigration which have been loosened to allow refugees during times of real need. Even then most waves had backers here in the U.S. to finance their adjustment to life here. When we lived in Vermont, the local churches and synagogues, sponsored Vietnamese refugees and even though the difference between life in a Vietnam village and a small college town in Vermont couldn't be more different, there were little if any problems with the arrival of families amounting to 500-600 people into a town of less than 10,000.
I can't believe any sentient being thinks those infiltrating our borders today for the freebies from Uncle Sap and to destabilize our society are in any way "refugees."
That position was totally discredited when Mexico's offer of asylum and assistance was summarily dismissed.
[OP:] Note that I'm not saying that hate and genocide are moral, right, excusable, or anything like that. Instead, I'm saying that to be moral we have to fight with everything we have against our own inherent human nature and if we let down our guard for even a brief instant, horrific evil can and often will follow.
Something those who participated in the Kavanaugh character assassination should take on board.
Well Bret, thank you for the reflection.
Since my original quote was directed to Erp, I guess you saw a need to balance things by pointing out the other side.
Indeed, both Erp and her nemesis, the Social Justice Warriors (SJW), and much of what she hates at the Left, suffer from the same symptom. And you are right that such feelings are our natural state. And you are doubly right that horrible things happen when we let down our guard against our own human nature.
But since the ones holding power today, both down here as well as up there, are not the SJW types, I worry far less about them.
From January on, I will live in a place ruled by people who want to give more power to corrupt militias all over the country, so they can "solve" our crime problem - which is a lot like giving ever more power to Al Capone, so he could make Chicago a quieter place.
So forgive me if I would be a lot less worried among people who want transgender bathrooms at every corner...
[OP:] I believe that the period from the end of WWII until now (and hopefully at least a while longer) was one of a very unusual and probably unsustainable peace and a workable type of tolerance.
I think you are ignoring a great deal of history, both recent and more distant.
Within our lifetimes, the realm of moral regard has expanded to include groups that had been previously excluded. Virtually no one disagrees that blacks are just as human as whites, and women as human as men. Except for the mentally ill, no one denies that Jews are entitled to the same moral consideration as Christians.
There are more examples, but those should suffice. I don't think any of them are remotely debatable, and are both workable, and sustainable.
This is where progressives are earning erp's hatred. Progressivism, by its very nature, requires the conviction that progressive ideas are correct, because they are progressive.
Inescapably, those who don't share progressive ideas are suffering from one or more of stupidity, ignorance, and malevolence; therefore, those who disagree are to be excluded from the realm of moral regard. They, therefore, deserve what is coming to them.
Harry is the perfect example: every post at his blog is dripping with hatred of those who disagree. Where ever progressives have captured the faculty, they demonize and ostracize those who won't genuflect to progressive shibboleths.
Which is exactly what happens when you dehumanize people.
I hope that the moral and intellectual absurdity of progressivism is sufficient to limit its metastasis.
Skipper,
I don't hate anybody except the subhumans who abuse children, animals and others who are helpless. I hate what progs have done and are continuing to do their pipe dreams of equality of outcome turning our people from can-do individualists into gimme-free-stuff imbeciles.
As for academe, there may some small institutions somewhere not in the thrall of progs, but after a lifetime observing academics steadily taking over higher ed, the entire public school system, the media and public sector unions taking over the government (remember Bush allowing unions to take over the Department of Homeland Security), it may take more than one or two generations to restore sanity to our country.
Hey Skipper wrote; "There are more examples, but those should suffice. I don't think any of them are remotely debatable, and are both workable, and sustainable."
A tremendous number of people still hate the jews Skipper. But that's immaterial to your point, I think. Most people may agree that blacks and whites are equally human but that doesn't stop them from hating each other. And, even if so, the tribal boundaries just move fluidly so that now (progressive) whites hate (conservative) whites and vice-versa. There's still potential enemies everywhere, we don't tolerate them well, many of us think nothing of inflicting violence on those enemies, and I think it'll all end in tears.
Which is what's different than the period between the end of WWII and the last couple of decades. People are itching for a violent fight instead of being weary of horrific war.
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