Dear Mister Mohler:
It should come as no surprise that
none of your comics are open to criticism on the platform that you operate for
their publication. In many ways, probably too many to enumerate without penning
a Hegelian critique, they operate in the same naiive, self-flattering manner as
any "liberal" echo chamber, and it comes as no surprise to learn that
you write code in Portland, Oregon, enjoying all the fruits of modern economic
luxury (or so I would suppose) while living off the applecores of social media,
whose toxic influence upon the intellectual environment has turned Philosophy
into a mere repositiory for elitist gags pretending towards egalitarian
intentions.
None of this surprises me; I've
been a hipster and a bleeding heart in my own day, of course. What DOES alarm
me is that somehow you had managed to affront our Lord and Saviour Elon Musk
and roused within him such a fury that he thought you worth a tweet. I'm only
thankful I'm not nearly of such influence as he is; I read Hegel, and if ever I
do leave my mark upon the March of Progress it will probably result from that
same poverty from which he wrote. I have to say that, while the irony is lost
on all the "Pseuds" who use philosophy for mere amusement, I still
stand by Hegel in his stark elitism. To come so close to poverty and NOT call
for Rebellion, except within the Classroom, is no Classist move, but simply
classy. To condemn him by the standards he himself had put in place is
classless by default.
Considering that the Daily Stoic
(as opposed to the Nightly Stoic and the Weekend Wittgenstein?) has defined you
as a "popularizer" of philosophy, it should suffice to assume that
Hegel was right to reserve Philosophy for the Elite. Your "roast" of
his work barrages the poor old man with modern self-entitlement: what about
THESE people? How about THOSE? It's easy enough to mock Hegel's ego, though it
hardly comes across as sensitive to do so; fans of hip-hop who defend the
egocentric tendencies of rappers ought to recognize a man who's
overcompensating in his economic dire straits and daemons. What is far more
disturbing is that a "popularizer" of philosophy would reinforce the
stereotype that it is a "privileged" discipline reserved for an
intellectual elite. It would be well and good if you came out with that as your
intention. Yet you continue to "popularize" it and thereby to
"educate" the Masses on Philosophy, teaching them surely to hate it
and to believe themselves to be Right outside the bounds that it defines.
They are NOT right. The petty
plaints you make for what the modern man calls "human rights" are
nothing more than Hegel Lite: the Cult of Marxist Thought developed Hegel's
hottest concepts into forms of self-entitlement that, taken out of context,
would be simply "evil" or "subversive" and TRANSPARENTLY
self-interested, factional, and biased. Thanks so much for pointing out that
Hegel got this boulder rolling well into the present day of our confusion. Yet
why do you mock him? If the man invented Human Rights in any sense, do we not
OWE it to him to regard his legacy with PUZZLEMENT, not mere derision? Why DID
he insist the poor were merely rabble, knowing he himself was dodging poverty
by pennies? Why NOT extend his principles to Women and THEIR untapped gifts for
Reason? How could someone so averse to fantasy and intuition fan the flames of
Fascism, enough that Carl Jung would share a cell with him within the prisons
of Collective Thought?
An intellectual, if he is to be
more than merely "pseudophilosophical", must surely have a bit more
curiosity than that. What bothers me is that you blatantly DISMISS the same
philosopher to whom you owe far MORE than just your online comic strip.
The matter goes beyond mere Hegel.
Out of that same curiosity, I flipped the page to find your comic on the Prison
System. I'll suspend emotional appeals for now. The Rich have every reason now
to fear the Poor; the puzzling success of Parasite, that dreadful South Korean
film, elucidates the willingness within the Global Zeitgeist to use Poverty to
cover up for Envy, Cruelty, Depravity, Duplicity, and Violence the likes of
which the heroes of Don Giovanni never could imagine. Yet logic will suffice.
Your comic claims that solving crime must naturally involve some form of
rehabilitation. You insist that solving "poverty" and
"inequality" will solve the problem.
You presume that people break the
Law out of necessity. And what necessity is THAT, exactly? Certainly a man will
sooner die than live a villain if his heart's in the Right Place; to sympathize
for those who wouldn't do so is corrosive to Society and demonstrates a
fundamental cowardice that no philosophy of justice tolerates. How is, then,
rehabilitation "punitive"? Does feeding people PUNISH them? Does it
imply that they were "right", that it's "okay"? Your ethos
is so dated that it takes only one sitting watching Breaking Bad to utterly
disprove it. Given opportunities, most people operating out of envy sooner kill
their would-be benefactors than cooperate. Excuses such as "poverty",
while they are flattering subjectively, have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT in organizing
either radical reform or "liberal" reform.
Yet the REAL question of the utmost
primacy is this: WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
If the function of politics is NOT
punitive, nor is its function to reward good behaviour, and if the function of
sympathy is not to recognize a friend in a common struggle, and if the function
of empathy is NOT one of using emotional information towards the Betterment of
Society, and if the function of compassion and charity is NOT to make life
easier for those who WOULD do the Right Thing when presented with a Moral
Dilemma, then WHO CARES? There is simply no ground one can conceive of to
accomodate the "less fortunate", and in the absence of a Transcendental
Appeal we must CONCLUDE that more people of colour are incarcerated NOT through
a fault in the Institution, which has now become our only Source of Immanent
Authority, but RATHER THROUGH THEIR OWN ACTIONS, and the TREND may simply be
ascribed to the BLATANT AND DEPRAVED DISREGARD for Law and Order that
"underprivileged" people(s) feel and express, a disease far MORE
depraving to the Psyche than mere poverty of the body, and this you feed
directly by providing more excuses for it.
A man dies innocent, yet people riot;
WHY? Is that not the goal of every human being, to die innocent? If one is
killed in the Line of Duty, made a casualty of Civil War, then how is that not
just as justifiable as the casualties of the American Civil War or the American
Revolution? How can the citizen whose rights are provided by Law rebel against
the Agent of Enforcement who preserves that Law? If the Criminal belongs among
the Innocent, why bother to defend the Innocence of ANY one? Clearly, if you've
spent time with those who were incarcerated, ESPECIALLY those who ascribe their
incarceration to "racism", that laughably logocentric joke, then you
must confess that these men and women are often practically incapable of
collective moral reasoning the likes of which consolidates society. They are
not WORTH our empathy, for their own empathy is confined to their
proto-Fascistic cause.
Say what you will in jest, but at
least Hegel was too smart for all of THAT. He EARNED his right to live. Others
merely pretend towards it.
[({R.G.)}]
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