No Means Nothing:

Consider, for a moment, that as the result of some oversight, either on my own part or that of another, I had suffered a debilitating accident that left me devoid of any cognitive capacity save for that of Justice. Cleverness, charm, wit, mercy, amiability, and compassion were all lost to me as virtues, and all that remained was my ability to fathom debt, most obviously those debts which involved my person, for without that realm I would have far less ground to judge by experience. What follows would have been what I had said to Alanna when she first returned to me, after having slept with my best friend, in the hopes of restoring my former band with him, so that she might serve as its leader. Be not ashamed for me, for I never uttered these words as written, and they only came to me this morning, yet I cannot pretend that I feel no regret in having withheld the facts they represent, nor that I would feel no pride if I should recover evidence that those same debts I had illustrated by more decorated, though less pointed, means:

 

I shall begin with what you had presumed upon rightfully. It was true, as it remains, that power is best enjoyed if it is shared. It was in this spirit that I elected to share my own power with both you and my associate of five years. This power was mine to bestow upon either and both of you as I saw fit, yet as we all know power comes with responsibility, and no use of power is without a moral dimension of implication as to the proper use of that power.

Even in surrendering my power I used my power to surrender it, for had I not had the power necessary to surrender it, I would not have had the power to surrender. What appears to be merely semantic is nothing more nor less than the most obvious fact: that the proverbial “power to surrender” is a power that is thus to be surrendered by an exercise of itself. In this case: it was power over you and him, for your association would only have been probable, as well as possible, at that point in time, by avenue of my influence. This is no megalomaniacal conceit, for I do not pretend to a power which I did not have to exercise in order for that meeting between the two of you to even be possible. Nor is it an injustice to either of you, much less a desire to oppress anyone, for this peculiar power over the both of you amounted to just that: power over both of you. It was merely power over the future of your relationship to him, which in any other set of circumstances would have been “not my business”.

In bestowing this power upon the both of you, by no means a “rightful redistribution” but rather a “generous privilege”, my generosity lay in trust. While Sartre would have called it “bad faith”, for neither of you had ever proven trustworthy, I maintain that it was “good faith” in that my trusting you was sincere; it would have warranted the qualifier “bad” only if I had not trusted you at all but had simply, cynically expected you to behave in a selfish manner which I might then turn towards my own, equally selfish but surpassingly clever purposes. While such cynical devices might very well appear familiar to you, rest assured that I have no worldly use for them, for you simply project your own cynicism.

In using my power to grant you power, I do not deny, as you have suggested, my own involvement. It is true that I had a “part to play” in this, yet insofar as I had power I was dignified in its use, and the part I played was purely incidental; I am not morally culpable for that which I did not approve. Dignity lies not only in dignity towards others but also in dignity towards one’s self, and if I have not up until this point made this clearer it is only a testament to my temperamental humility. To be humble is not to deny one’s own humility, for humility itself cannot be cause for boastfulness. So long as one has dignity, however, one can be humble and remain openly knowledgeable of this virtue, for dignity allows one’s self to become aware of one’s humility once it boils over. My humility alone might have permitted the injustice I suffered; my dignity serves to remedy this injustice at this moment.

It follows from dignity that I should have allowed the both of you to meet, but hardly more than that. For me to lose you to a man whom I knew to be lecherous, prone to delusion, deceptive even to those closest to him, to the point of pathology, would have been unbearable. Even for me to lose you to a man who was chaste, clear of mind, honest even to impersonal forces and strangers, almost to a fault, would have been unbearable, for no man should lose a woman to his best friend, and if it pains you to think of yourself as either a “prize to be won” or a “bounty to be lost”, you have only begun to imagine how much the banality of this pains me.

Even a man who was as wayward as I have described him could not have imagined that a rational agent would have willfully permitted such a loss when that same agent had all the power, initially, to prevent it. That he can fathom my indignation is no testament to our “equality of character”. Here you have begun to err: to treat as us equals, yet only insofar as saying he is no less and I am by no means greater. That both the rational egoist and the dignified altruist can comprehend the same injustice as a loss does not render them level with one another; it is simply a testament to that all-too-human sympathy which has, up until this point, allowed them to coexist, for the altruist was never too dignified to part with it and the egoist was never so rational as to descend into that rung of hell that is the absence of this most basic human decency.

So it would follow logically, even if he had not already proven his guilt by unsolicited defences, that he knew what he was doing when he betrayed my trust, as did you. The both of you employed the power I had graciously bestowed upon you in a manner that I had self-evidently, if not explicitly (for I would not even have accused you of the moral capacity for it) prohibited. This was my prohibition to make, for it was that value which I had to assign to the proper use of this power when I used power to grant power. Since the prohibition was only binding upon the both of you, it was not in itself an arbitrary abuse of my power, for my power was simply to give you that power which could only thereafter be abused by you. There were only two errors I might have committed in granting you this power: either prescribing a use for it which was undignified or bestowing it upon undignified people. The latter I confess to, though I maintain that this was a practical mistake instead of a cynical sin. The former I need not confess to, for the aftermath of that latter mistake serves to reinforce my dignity in the prohibition.

As a Romantic, I sympathize with the temptation to vulgarize gentlemen and to sentimentalize savages. Yet as a scholar I must not become forgetful of the distinction between the two. That I was betrayed not even the most savage man contests. That this was unjust remains mysterious to that savagery. In salvaging my dignity, I agree with you that in trusting savages I erred and thereby contributed to the conception of this situation. My error was in granting the both of you that power which only the both of you could receive and which only the both of you could abuse. Yet how could I have known that the both of you were equally savage, and to such an extent? I did not even bother to prevent it, for to doubt your honour felt dishonourable.

Yet note this: that while I cast the first stone upon which this was built, I was not the one to crown it nor to fortify it. My error was but one third of the practical error, and it was not even a fraction of the sin. Since we all made choices that contributed to this, we might all be considered conspirators in power. Yet because I never consented to the abuse of this power, though you both availed yourselves of it abusively, the sin belongs only to the both of you. I granted you the physical capacity not knowing your moral capacity; it was your choice to use this blissful ignorance against me. That I regret it now shows only that I’ve learned from my mistake. If I ought not to have trusted you, then that World which we ought to inhabit is the one wherein I benefit. If I cannot benefit now by its reversal, for it cannot be undone, then Justice owes me neither more nor less than whatsoever he enjoyed by your consent.

 

The vulgar feministic interpretation of “No” amounts to a tautology of identity: “No means no.” This in itself contains no information, except in that it seeks to combat the paradox that “No” could mean “Yes”, as well as the banal denial of the distinction by avenue of the inane blanket assertion “No means Yes”. (A claim that is ironically seldom coupled with its natural corollary: “Yes means No”.) The truest and most informative definition I can provide for “No” is thus: “No means Nothing.” To deny a man his due is to deny duty as a whole. To treat “entitlement” cynically, as though it “could amount to nothing more than” the will of the ego is to enthrone one’s own ego at the expense of the entitled person. Such a depravity would drive one’s self so deeply into nihilism that it would become a threat to one’s very person, and no measure of Stoic self-denial would retrieve from this pit the “will to live”. You have called this pit an “emotional black hole”, a metaphor I was immediately quite fond of, especially since you first used it to describe him. He is the nihilism and the nihilation; if Nothingness can be incarnated, he is its avatar in our circle of influence.

Can you deny that you have chosen nothing more? In denying me yourself, do you not deny yourself that same “point” to living which you first sought in me? Before you met him, you struggled to see “the point” to life. The quotation marks about the words “the point” are, if memory serves, your own, for it appears that you doubted the very existence of a “point”, and yet now I have simply appropriated those same marks to satirize your doubt, for it was so obviously self-inflicted. I was moved to deliver you from it because I perceived you to be a victim of nihilism; now I see that you are a source of it, especially within my own life, and I can see why you would thus seek your own nihilation, though I cannot say I am pleased by your attempts to implode, even if it is motivated by heroic self-sacrifice. If this is your attempt to salvage dignity by sparing me the burden of your ongoing existence, know that the burden only ever grows heavier in your absence. It was not just for me to lose you once; it is not merciful for me to lose you twice. To lose you forever is intolerable to even consider. I would much rather have you live for me than die for me; I wish to be that aforementioned “point”.

Should I never enjoy you as I am entitled to, and if the power I have given you should fade from you entirely, then I’ll be more than merely “disappointed”. I would be condemned to spend the remainder of my life seeking someone to repay your debts to me, for you remain the only woman I have ever had the right to love entirely, even if only because of the extreme extent to which you allowed my traitor to avail himself of you. Imagine what a Hell you’d make of my innocent life if the entire class of women followed your example!! Yet would even the most dignified of them not sooner doubt your debt than to shoulder it for a complete stranger? Would they not also lapse into nihilism? So long as you do not pay it, you shall make a black hole of ME, and how can a black hole escape its own event horizon?? It is powerlessness incarnate, and it is always the product, as in the cosmos, of an explosion followed by an implosion: in other words, an overabundance of power that, unrestricted by moral meaning, grows to an extent that it cannot sustain and dies.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

A Tale of Two Morals:

Two Moral Paradigms:

1.    The Classic (Heroic) Paradigm: the Hero reaches a fork in the road.

a.         This divergence represents a contradiction between conflicting Goods or Evils.

                     i.   If he can, the Hero selects the Greater Good (G.G.) or the Lesser of Two Evils. (L.O.T.E.)

                  ii.   If neither the G.G. nor the L.O.T.E. is available to the Hero, he simply chooses a path arbitrarily.

b.         He must make a choice in order to:

                     i.   Escape an impending evil which PURSUES him, and

                  ii.   Pursue a Teleological Purpose which lies at the end of a path or beyond its conclusion.

c.         All such roads, except for the Lesser Good or the Greater Evil, (though perhaps even those, but to an inhibited extent) lead to one Righteous/Spiritual Goal which serves as the Ultimate Teleological Destination for the Heroic Quest. This may be represented as “Heaven”.

d.         Once a path has been chosen, the Hero’s character is tested by his ability to remain CONSISTENT in STAYING THE COURSE. This is referred to as the Virtue of Resilience.

2.    The Modern (Corporate) Paradigm: the Employee takes one, predestined road prescribed by an Organization of his early choosing.

a.         All Goods attained along this road are seized immediately, although long-term goals are observed.

b.         The long-term goal is aimed at the perpetuation of the Organization, which enables the Employee to attain short-term, immediate goals on behalf of the Organization.

c.         There is no Ultimate Teleological Purpose, but there is the constant threat of Tragedy/Failure (Hell).

d.         “Morality” is no longer that gold with which all roads are paved, but rather that gold with which passage is bought.

                     i.   Whereas the Heroic Paradigm regards the “goal” and “morality” inextricably and synonymously, the Corporate Paradigm conceives of “ambition” and “morality” as two conflicting forces, between an “intrinsically egocentric individual” and the “beneficence of the Organization”.

                  ii.   The Organization is established as “beneficent” by a Consuming Public which equates the Organization’s moral identity with its “reputation”.

               iii.   In order to preserve its “reputation”, the Organization institutes various Rules and Guidelines for “moral/ethical behaviour” in its constituent Employees. Employees who violate these principles:

1.         Are excluded from the Organization, and

2.         Their own, “individual reputation” suffers as a result, precluding various opportunities for affiliation with other Organizations which enjoy “success” owing to their “reputation”.

e.         Individual Conscience, Rationality, Tradition, and Teleology cease to act as sources of moral guidance.

f.         In adhering to the “long-term mindset”,

                     i.   Employees and Managers are compelled, by various manipulative means, to exercise the Virtue of Patience, censoring short-term goals in favour of Ethical Guidelines.

                  ii.   This rigidity manifests in a sort of learned sociopathy wherein any situation or person who does not serve the “long-term” project is treated either as means or as demoralizing obstacle.

               iii.   Thus the manipulated become manipulators in turn.

 

3.   The former approach offers a Path to Heaven. The latter approach only serves to preclude expulsion to Hell, whilst at the same time ensuring that scapegoats will be damned. Where the both coexist must thereby regarded logically as “Purgatory”.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

 

It’s believed that in the Olden Days, especially within the Great Civilizations, there was not yet a line drawn betwixt the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Similarly, I might suppose that to be Good, to be Intelligent, and to be Right were one and the same; one could not be one without presupposing the other two.

Such is not the case in the Present Day. By and large, questions of Intelligence, Morality, and Righthood are consigned to the Psychoanalytic Arts. The question of how an individual will behave is determined by temperamental predispositions, just as is the case with introversion, sexual preference and drive, etc. Individuals possessing more “intelligence” will tend to value intelligence, no more egocentrically than those who possess more “conscientiousness” value morality and forthrightness. Those who are the most diligent may or may not prefer morality to intelligence, depending upon the nature of their diligence, often regulated by “disgust”; one may be diligent in the pursuit of a “reprehensible” enterprise which is disgusting and therefore immoral, or one may be diligent in the pursuit of a more “noble” cause if one is more easily “disgusted” by “evil”. At any rate, those who are neither conscientious nor intelligent to the same extent as they are “diligent” and “persistent” will value being “right” above being “good” or “smart”. Righthood is thus distinguished both from “meaning well” and from “being wise” or “being practical”. These people “work harder, not smarter”, and their “work ethic” is an ethic of principled efficiency.

Theoretically, the various types, in effect all fragments of one fully integrated human being, (fractions of an Ancient Greek, if you will) could coexist in harmony, just as these “drives” would coexist in the fully actualized person. Yet in the absence of a binding social order, certain obstacles preclude the harmonious union of conflicting types, and foremost among these obstacles is the “con artist”.

Con artists come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are extremely high-brow and academic. The professor of postmodern philosophy has found the ideal target audience in a legion of grad students who are open to the ideas of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault; it’s easier to lie to people who pride themselves in their own uncertainty about the Nature of Truth. Yet more often than not con artists employ an evil so banal it is disappointing. In the absence of a binding social order, human beings tend to retain in common only the basest of instincts, and as we fall deeper and deeper into the egalitarian paradigm we tend to be reduced to these embarrassing functions. The most damning insult that I have ever received was in the reminder that my body’s most repulsive functions were nothing to be ashamed of, since I shared them in common with all of humanity; all of a sudden, I could only imagine solidarity with my fellow human beings, quite literally, by avenue of a line to use the toilet.

Con artists occupy this domain predominantly. Sex, survival, and power are those drives which, like any student of Freud, manipulators primarily appeal to, and more often than not they regard the remainder of the individuated personality as no more than a mask for these urges.

Yet some people are much too proud to be won over with a cheap thrill, and if they are to satisfy these urges they will only do so by avenue of a specific set of principles. Those who value honesty will only allow themselves the pleasures of sexuality within the context of an established relationship; those who value sincerity will regard sexual consent as legitimate only if both parties care about each other without pretense, but nonetheless to such an extent that meets an established social standard entirely independent of individual desire and preference. Some come to power by their own will; others assume it as a social responsibility. Some people would sooner die as innocent victims than to live as oppressors; others rationalize their survivor’s guilt by priding themselves in their strength. Pride is most often shame in disguise.

The advanced manipulator thus must go beyond the banal drives and to appeal to ego. By identifying what an individual values, based upon that individual’s temperament, the manipulator is able to avail his or herself of an arsenal of subtle tricks in order to appear as an ally to the prospective victim. “Leveling” is easiest in an “egalitarian” society of “liberal individualists”. If I claim to value independence, this value reflects upon me personally. It would appear gauche indeed were I to criticize the sexual libertine or the drug pusher (often one and the same) for giving consenting adults “what they want”, though it would NOT be out of character for an upright police officer. By professing a value, I say, “this is my role; this is me. I shall always come onstage in this guise, and none other.” Thus the individualist must REMAIN individualistic so as not to appear inconsistent, and should he or she take sides with a Collectivistic Social Order, this is damning to both parties; ergo, never the twain shall meet. Coexistence between Individualists and Loyalists becomes not only problematic and fruitless but downright dangerous.

A con artist can easily drive a wedge between individuals of comparable but distinct character, simply by appearing to each as an ally against the rest. Who would one be to resist one’s own reflection? It makes far more sense to antagonize one’s “natural opponents”.

With regards to the trichotomy of Intelligence, Good Will, and Righthood, (the latter an addendum to Aldous Huxley’s veneration of the former two as indispensable corollaries) driving a wedge between “excellent” people is a walk in the park.

Consider the father of Chuck and Jimmy McGill from Better Call Saul. There is no evidence that this man is “unintelligent”, yet he is constantly being abused by grifters with a sob story. Once confronted by a young Jimmy who recognizes a cheap conman for what he is, the father’s retort is one of my favourite clichés of modern television, for it summarizes both philosophy and heroism: “What if you’re wrong?” This same line is employed by Jack Shepard and John Locke from the earlier series Lost, with regards to the torture of a prisoner; unfortunately, since Jack fears one fate and John fears another, even so universal a question fails to solve their particular problem. Liberal individualism wins yet again over Justice. Much like the late McGill patriarch, both Jack and John are men of extremely above-average intelligence, expressed in different ways. They also have this much in common: both have been conned, over and over again.

Certain rudimentary forms of con artistry work on stupid, unconscientious and inattentive people: zombies lacking in intelligence, morality, and diligence. Yet if this appears too severe a description, rest assured that it refers to a minority of people that is hardly “oppressed”. Most people excel in at least one of these three qualities, and it is precisely their excellence which is used against them. If one wishes to anger a person, one appeals to his or her weaknesses; loyalty is won by appeal to strength. When Jimmy’s Dad gives grifters money and “a gallon of milk”, that milk is the milk of human kindness, and though the unassuming shopkeep can’t afford it forever, it is nonetheless a testament to his strengths of character that he surrenders so much for free to the “wolves” of the “world”; one must suppose that, every once in a blue moon, the “grifter” is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, as tends to be the bulk of the innocent victims in the Better Call Saul universe, often victims whom Jimmy abuses, though his cynicism somehow endures in the face of innocence.

Consider this scenario: a conscientious young woman is about to surrender a hundred dollars to pay for a con artist’s “cancer treatment”. Nearby, an intelligent young man watches the scene unfold, with amusement. The intelligent young man knows, for a fact, that this hustler is a grifter; he was tipped off just last week by the bartender, who is a very diligent fellow who did his research but didn’t have the heart to stop the grifter from spending other people’s money on the tavern’s tap. (This particular grifter, unlike Joe Pesci’s characters in Martin Scorsese films, pays his bar tab.)

After the transaction has been made, the grifter leaves, as does the young Good Samaritan. The bartender, having witnessed the outcome, asks the intelligentsia: “Why didn’t you stop her giving him that money?” To this, the clever young man asks, “Why didn’t you stop him asking for it?”

In truth: one question does not answer the other, but simply “levels the playing field”. Yet allow me to be the first impartial witness to answer both questions:

Leveling, though inconclusive, nonetheless begins to answer the question, since both men are cut from the same cloth in this instance, just bleached differently. For egocentric purposes, the intelligent man needs people to get ripped off, so as to feel smarter than the victims. By the same token, the diligent man needs people who are wishy-washy and easily swayed to be disadvantaged, so as to legitimize his diligence. Neither man regards the con man as a threat to that man’s own person and ego. The intelligent man sees through the con, or so he hopes to; the diligent man maintains a respectable business, and it’s not his problem if the business benefits from this inferior enterprise, any more than the benefits it gleans from dishwashing and other “lowly” occupations which are paid less because they are “inferior”. Ironically, the very egalitarianism of individualist society transforms people into the most depraved elitists; were we to live under the rule of a more binding moral law, answering to established moral authority, it would fall to the bartender in this scenario to stop the grifter, but liberal individualism allows him to say, “that’s his business, not mine. I’m just collecting his money by my own, honest means.” Under such a paradigm, suppressing secrets is not tantamount to lying, since no one is entitled to the Truth. In both instances, both conspirators have rationalized their conspiracy with the con man, hoping, (perhaps naïvely) that they are not getting conned just by so doing. By a similar device, the victim hopes that she is not simply losing money that could be spent on a Higher and More Pressing Cause. Yet were she to act on this hope in an aggressive way, she would act out of character, for “good people” are not supposed to demand refunds for charitable acts. Even the naturally selfless person is transformed into an egoist under the paradigm of individualism, her egolessness used against her nonetheless.

Not only has such a con succeeded in parting a woman with her money; it has also driven a wedge between three people who would otherwise have made a fine team if compelled to work towards a Common Good. By being so basic, so stupid, so immoral and so easygoing, the grifter manages to turn all of his or her vices into strengths. The virtues of the intelligent, the noble, and the thorough turn to weaknesses, and any peaceful coexistence between them is torn asunder, so that even were one of them to realize this, the rest would resist.

So: this is my question…

Ought we to con them?

To some considerable extent, the prevalence of trickery in modern life is the fault of the victims. The pride and vainglory of each stock character are comedic because they are so myopic and ironic. Of course the wise guy lets the good girl get conned; morality is not his strong suit, so he’ll think less of her for falling for a trick that only good people fall for!! Of course she falls for it. It does not matter if she’s smarter than the others put together; her bleeding heart is all too predictable!! Of course the bartender does nothing; why risk a source of income? He works hard enough as it is!! The least that he can do is benefit from a stupidity tax, and who is better to attest to her stupidity than the wise guy? Grifters will be grifters; at least by collecting a cut of the profits the bartender ensures that it returns to the Beneficent Establishment to which he has pledged his life.

How could the con man resist? OUGHT he to??

 

Some people are subtler. Some will excel in at least two of the three virtues. Their act becomes a juggling act. In one hand, the Stoic holds her moral convictions; in the other: her practical intelligence. When it behooves her to be practical, she throws morality up into the air. When she can afford to be kind, she captures kindness and tosses up discretion. In this manner, she never owes anyone anything, for no one owes her anything. When she needs something, she acquires it by being practical; when she wants to feel good about herself, she acts good, and this behooves her reputation amidst good people. Should she offend another good person by disappointing his expectations, what could she possibly owe to him, and how would she repay him? If he sought his own interests by avenue of goodness, then he was not truly good, for the ethic of Stoicism renounces all rewards outside of pure virtue; if he sought his own interests by avenue of intelligence, then his failure is a testament to his folly, and if he sought his own interests by avenue of diligence, he clearly lacked diligence, as evidenced by his presumptuous oversight. Thus the Stoic wears her virtues like a revolving door of party masks, and dignity lies in knowing which mask to employ at which opportune moment and momentous opportunity.

In confronting such a prospect, the con man’s best bet would be to turn the conflicting personalities against one another, either by involving her in an enterprise that eventually will require her to use both techniques at once, to extremes that their inherent opposition can’t withstand, or by getting her invested in an enterprise that, up until a certain point, requires excellence in one suit, only to shift gears very suddenly midway.

 

Yet OUGHT he to do this? Does she “deserve” it, if she ostensibly “deserves” nothing?

 

Ultimately, those who pride themselves in their immunity to con artistry would benefit morally from being taken down a peg, even (and perhaps especially) if they pride themselves in being “moral” people? In employing our strengths, we all too often vainly ignore our weaknesses, to the detriment not only of ourselves but of our fellows. By practicing “counterconning”, a Deprogrammer may manage to finally bypass the psychic defences of his or her fellows. All of them have conspired in the victim’s victimhood, and even if the victim was himself misled by egoism, their collective evil is great enough to warrant its exposure, and this can only be done by forcing them to get over themselves.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

After After Virtue: an Unflinching Critique of MacIntyre.

After After Virtue: an Unflinching Critique of MacIntyre. 

(Written upon Completing my Second Reading of After Virtue, though not the Nineteenth Chapter, for Obvious Reasons.)

MacIntyre’s crystallized perfection cracks under the hammers and sickles of those Marxist apologists and Nietzschean dreamers whom MacIntyre so translucently despises, but the bulk of the crumbling deconstruction of After Virtue is performed by MacIntyre himself, once his devotion to his dreams of public accountability and his eager resistance to any sort of Nietzschean or Sartrean detachment from Public Life compel him to “defend” his work with a far duller instrument than he employed for its construction: a useful tool repurposed into a weak weapon.

Hardly, if even, three years following the publication of the First Edition in the United States MacIntyre caved into publishing an ominous Nineteenth Chapter wherein, for the first time over the course of his comedic history of moral thought, the playwright himself appears onstage as a caricature, breaking the fourth wall of historicity in order to address the hecklers in his audience. He hardly breaches the top of the third page of this addendum without reducing himself to a stock character at the turn of the leaf: “Morality which is no particular society’s morality is to be found nowhere,” quoth the Learned Scot of Notre Dame, continuing to cite some of his most iconic examples as one-liners: “There was the-morality-of-fourth-century-Athens, there were the-moralities-of-thirteenth-century-Western-Europe, there are numerous such moralities, but where ever was or is morality as such?”

Yet even in writing that previous sentence I am forced to confront the fact that MacIntyre is no longer a Scot, nor has he been one for about half a century, and while the shelter of American Academia might allow this “something of an intellectual nomad” (quite probably his own words) to escape the evils of ethnic profiling, his own ethical aims do not, though they DO allow him the privilege of “doing as the Romans do” within the safe confines of an Institution that is every bit as much a product of liberal Individualism as is Nietzsche, if not far more so.

MacIntyre’s central sin is a contradiction which Aristotle would most probably have laughed at. On the one hand, MacIntyre claims that morality is entirely topical, particular to groups and times, devoid of that universality which thinkers as diverse as Kant and Kierkegaard equated it with, and to be recognized within the context of a plurality. On the other hand, (perhaps not the shaking hand) MacIntyre rejects pluralism, especially with regards to Individuals as Rational Beings.

Yet how does a “nomad” manage to avoid becoming an Ubermensch? Clearly, the chief advantage to leading a nomadic lifestyle within the “fallen” modern world is in that one needs NOT simply to adapt to whatever culture one finds one’s self within, thereby sacrificing that romanticized “continuity of narrative” which comprises After Virtue’s most beautifully crafted chapter, but rather one can avail one’s self of a variety of perspectives and use Reason to decide among them which path to take. Constancy is not lost but gained in such a postmodern wilderness, though the temptation towards inconstancy remains, more tempting than ever before, though more threatening and fearful to the wary and experienced. In offering us the long-lost boon of moral objectivity, how does MacIntyre justify his own subjective biases, biases which by his own definitions MUST be intrinsic to his lifestyle as a transatlantic immigrant? (Perhaps I should note that, in this respect, I feel for him, but only as a character foil.) How does a seasoned nomad “settle down” into the mandala-shaped enclosure of the modern Academic city-state?

Apparently, it is by seeking to subvert the cornucopia of admittedly irreconcilable cultures (“admittedly” by the author’s own admission) and subcultures of the Present Age to the authoritarian rule of one Greek alpha male, severing all ties with competing intellectual traditions, (Camus is mentioned only once in After Virtue, as an unflattering example, and he does NOT appear within the Index of the Third Edition, twenty-six years later; Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault do not appear at all.) and casually commenting, with boyish naiveté, that it is not virtue but bureaucracy which inspires despotism.

Yet who is better suited to contend with bureaucracy: Nietzsche or MacIntyre? One defines himself entirely by his role as does a chivalrous knight; the other uses medieval writs for wastepaper. Camus achieves more by “charm”, Jung more by “intuition”, and Kierkegaard more by sweeping generalizations than does the bookish, cozy Alasdair MacIntyre, at least with respect to not only appealing to the moral conscience but empowering it in persons. Deleuze, even in rejecting personhood as more than a product of multiplicities, is far more thorough in his investigation of cultures, mythology, and the effects of both upon the internal psyche (thanks in large part, we might presume, to his co-author Felix Guattari) than the Scottish-American historian who idealizes most the Greek and Scandinavian myths, (pity that he and Nietzsche never met to drink to that; intellectual history might have turned out differently) so sequestering himself to those cultures which were directly touched by Aristotelian meddling (at times: an Alexandrian Conquest tantamount at least to Manifest Destiny, though MacIntyre seems to prefer the former to the latter, having tried the fruits of both) that his prologue still lists “Chinese and Japanese” as though it were “also” an alien category to be distinguished from “English, Danish, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and Turkish”.

Is such myopia not OBVIOUSLY the consequence of a pluralism which rejects all universal claims? Is the infantile idolatry of Aristotle via Jesus not TRANSPARENTLY a reaction to one’s own temperamental insecurities? When the natural conformist, sworn enemy of the Nietzschean Superman, can no longer feel safe leading a nomadic lifestyle, for his home is devoid of patriotism and continuity, what better course of action for him remains but to take up refuge in an academic convent, ally himself with Catholicism out of utility, (especially to appear “consistent” to his students, thereby preserving status and security,) to preach Aristotle to a world tired of it, awaiting the return of the Saviour whom academia will recognize? If Nietzsche cannot be credited for anything else, is it not for arming Jung with the language with which to expose such neuroses?

Who among us has not sinned in this way? Men look to powerful figures like Aristotle or privileged princes like Christ to save them when they find themselves in new and hostile territory. Failing to adapt, we seek to adapt our environment to ourselves; failing to adapt our environment, we seek someone else to adapt it FOR us. One needn’t even consider Nietzsche’s primary project: the rejection of Socrates, without whom Aristotle would have amounted to little. The last line of After Virtue even seeks to place the author in the position of a cleric working towards the recognition of this Saviour; tired of waiting for Godot, the embodiment of hope whose “absence says more than his presence” (as does the wandering Taoist sage whom Watts loved and who surely inspired Nietzsche’s Ubermensch) MacIntyre resolves himself to waiting for St. Benedict. Yet apparently St. Benedict is already among us, and it is MacIntyre himself!! Yet this is just humble enough to stop short of Nietzschean narcissism, for MacIntyre is not herein analogous to Christ; that is Aristotle.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

After After Virtue:

For a scholar who professes a belief in that an innovative society is the most effective one, Alasdair MacIntyre seems extremely resistant to innovation in the defence of his own work, standing by his breakthrough publication After Virtue for nearly forty years. While he contends that any credible counterargument would have already been presented to him by now, there is nothing within his ethic which precludes the possibility of being sheltered from the Truth.

The simplest means by which to prove him wrong is to describe Life in three parts: fitting in, standing up, and standing out. We start our metamorphosis by attempting to “fit into” an established social order, in spite of personal moral scruples, hoping that by doing so successfully we might appropriate an appreciation for its norms, thereby bridging the gap between the inner and the outer.

Yet what we find is that social life is intrinsically Absurd, so all such ventures are Sisyphean. In the process, we learn one of Life’s few known constants: that we must “Stand Up for Ourselves”. It is by acquiring this virtue, upon which all other virtues are contingent, that we are able to retain our dignity when we inevitably fail.

The Third Stage is a reintegration, but not, as in the case of a bildungsroman, into a Society, but rather into Ourselves. Recognizing that we shall never “fit in”, yet that we cannot escape, we learn to exist within a Society which contradicts us while retaining our dignity in the contradiction. It is because the only constancy available to us is in this act of standing up on behalf of ourselves and our own views that the Individual comes to take precedence over all illusions of status and social value. Because courage is always necessary, the conscience becomes a Universal.

The examples corroborating this narrative are so multifarious that I might fill an entire book of my own with them. Suffice it to say that, of the few men whom MacIntyre references who articulated this intuition, his scholarship misrepresents them. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, in spite of doctrinal differences, arrive at one and the same conclusion. Yet in spite of citing many of Nietzsche’s own favourite sources MacIntyre dismisses Nietzsche, and MacIntyre’s philosophy might be considered symptomatic of Nietzsche’s first stage with very brief intimations of the second. Regarding Kierkegaard, conversely, the kinship MacIntyre seems to feel with his fellow Christian is overshadowed by a dubious negligence of the finer points of Kierkegaard’s work, especially regarding the Knight of Pure Faith and the inevitable disparity between internal and external life.

Ultimately, MacIntyre’s philosophy is a doctrine of conformism. While he is effective in disarming certain forms of conformism, exposing them for what they are, such as political “protest”, (which is, after all, no more than an attempt to adapt the external to the internal) he also propagates and reinforces various modes of conformity which are even more disastrous, simply because adapting the internal to the external is even more barbaric and demoralizing. (Even George Lucas, another great modern student of mythology, intuits the authoritarian consequences of forcing people to agree in spite of partisan reservations.) Both responses are failures to live with the inherent contradiction between the internal and the external worlds, which Albert Camus called the Absurd and which Carl Jung established as the imperative for psychological individuation.

MacIntyre’s scholarship is fundamentally typical; he forgets Camus in favour of Sartre, just as he forgets Jung in favour of Freud, shamelessly identifying each individual only as representative of his respective group, for that reduction lies at the heart of MacIntyre’s sociology. In demonstrating an unwavering allegiance to the Analytical School, professing its blessings openly, he does not avail himself of the blessings of its opposing school(s), and it comes as small surprise that no convincing antitheses to his admittedly partisan presumptions have yet reached his desk.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Reaffirmations for Summer 2020: Idealism and Distress.

You know: when you talk about Idealism, you’re talking about just how great and awesome Life would be if only everyone did just a little more. A little here, a little there. To be a little bit more open, or a little bit more kind. To work a little harder, so that those who have to pick up lots of slack enjoy a life that’s easier by far than what they would have had to do instead. Usually, the Idealists are the sorts of people who WOULD do all these things, and they often have to push themselves so much each day to make things work for those around them. Since the Idealists often excel in these qualities, it is predictable that those who fall behind might grow envious of them, and if those shortcomings might be rationalized and recast as virtues, the Idealist might even be portrayed as intrusive. Yet one conceit which is entirely beyond justification is the accusation of self-interest. It may be true that such a change as the Idealist envisions would be of inestimable relief to one’s Self, which stands to benefit by a far greater margin than those who disadvantage themselves ever so slightly. Yet the simple fact that their disadvantage is so minor and the Idealist’s advantage is so great is precisely what renders the transformation Just, for such a set of affairs may only come to pass when, up until this time, the Idealist has had to shoulder an unreasonable burden on behalf of the average person.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Damsel in Distress is one of the oldest archetypes for a reason, since she represents the birth of the boy’s moral development. She presents him with a challenge: given power over a helpless embodiment of femininity, one doubling as sex object and mother figure, he has the choice whether to inflict harm or healing. While boys who grow up on hero myths might easily inherit a feeling of entitlement to those whom they rescue, the deal works, since the rescue is executed and the greater evil assuaged by the Hero, however self-interested the intent.

The simple act of choosing heroism over exploitation is an exercise in self-restraint, courage, and conviction, all invariably heroic qualities, not because they cannot be corrupted towards ill ends, but rather because higher goals cannot be attained without them, and these higher goals are not mere pretensions but rather expressions of the longings of the most piteous and helpless victims.

The Damsel in Distress is not disgraced by her powerlessness, since most often it is the fate of those possessing a more mysterious power: that of vulnerability and innocence. The Damsel in Distress redeems the Hero’s cumbersome and heavy-handed masculinity, but only by being totally vulnerable to him, grotesque though this predicament might appear, and rightfully so, for it was produced by the exploitative means of her villainous captor. The very distinction between the role of captor and liberator, by one’s own choice, establishes the boy as a man, superior in dignity.

At that point, though, the challenge falls to the maiden, for she undergoes the same sort of transformation. If she feels no debt of gratitude towards him, or, feeling it, she acts against it, she has remained a girl, a child of the Universe, entitled to her own innocence but not much else. Her rescuer is like a Father Figure to her, whose love must be unconditional by default, so that she owes him nothing in return, and if he should argue otherwise, he becomes a tyrannical abuser, no better than her ogrish captors.

In this context, it is no surprise if she should seek the company of her fellow girls, who coddle her and assure her that, since she was innocent to begin with, she owes her savior nothing, for he was simply preserving the Natural Order of Things, and, if his intent were self-interested, then she ought to be commended for deceiving him towards beneficent means, and the test of his character will ultimately lie in his absence of personal passion, regardless of whether such a feeling of entitlement would precede or follow the Heroic Act. 

Yet clearly such a matriarchal conceit does not live up to the ideals of any Goddess of Justice, for it forces all men to renounce their own bodies completely in service to weak women, feeble and restrained not only of body but of Heart and Mind, the latter by their own Nature and Volition, disincentivizing many men and producing not only more villains but, among women, a greater tolerance for villainous, barbaric “men” without “creepy” ulterior agendas.

It should be obvious, however, that such agendas represent not so much a hidden evil but a biological longing for moral order, one which redeems the human body as a Source of Moral Authority. The woman who rewards her Saviour with Love becomes akin to a Goddess in her own right, whereas the other remains a temptress and a child. Just as the boy who takes advantage of the Damsel fails a test of Manhood, the girl who does not honour his sacrifice fails to mature into a Woman. Their reciprocity is dependent upon the trust the boy places in the girl by setting her free, as well as the respect she shows for his hopes for the two of them.

In Actual Life, these sorts of relationships govern all good business, for while we all must fend for ourselves we are tasked with doing so by noble means, noble means which, since they are essential, cannot be separated from practical life by being sublimated as ascetic martyrdom. In business, we all want something, but we must be willing to risk loss in order to empower our associates, that they might reciprocate. 

This risk is no more an invitation to say “No” than the bondage of the Damsel in Distress is a form of consent. Disappointments in business are not the results of lofty expectations but of treacheries; the lofty expectation is, in fact, the End in and of Itself, the Goal without the pursuit of which nothing good gets done. 

When I throw the ball to you, you do not call me arrogant for expecting you to catch it, and though I part with it willingly, it is not with the expectation that you might do with it whatever you will, but rather that you will serve the team as I intended for you to. So it is in Love, and this is but one function of the Hero’s encounter with the Damsel in Distress. These stories are not merely the sublimation of perverse heterosexual fantasies; they are tests in refinement for deep-seated and inextricable biological impulses. Maturity for the Man lies in the boy’s ability to set the girl free; maturity for the Woman lies in her ability to reward him. All else is simply conjecture; the moment that we begin to deconstruct the intent of the Hero,

“… the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.”

The Good Life always comes at a price.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

LAW:

It is no mystery when an act of police brutality is documented that the People experience a collective sense of righteous indignation. Objectively, three Ideals are subverted in such an instance: Life, Peace, and Order. While the valuation of each of these Ideals is restricted to the domain of philosophers, there can be no doubt that when a man dies at the hands of Law Enforcement, without Due Process, by inherently violent means, his Life has been cut short, and the violent miscarriage of justice upsets both Peace and Order. The question of his RIGHT to Life, Peace, and Order remains nebulous, in the sense that philosophers often joke about the meme of Inherent Rights, but this theoretical problem does not present a SOCIAL problem, since human beings are known for fabricating that which Nature does not provide; in the absence of any Natural Law that protects Individuals, human beings invent Laws of their own. These Laws remain, in our contemporary Day and Age, the only convention which is at once ubiquitous and readily understood.

While, clinically, most people tend to score low in terms of Moral Reasoning, most people, if asked to define the Law, would probably express considerable faith in the Institution, at least in terms of Spirit. What is or is not “legal”, while it is not always synonymous with what is or is not Right, remains a matter of common principle and understanding, often regarded as the best FORMAL approximation we have for such abstract concepts such as Justice and Freedom. It is because legislators, litigators, enforcers, and civilians agree to the social contract that at least the PURSUIT of an objective, transcendent Morality is possible. In the absence of any unifying Church, Political Party, or Syndicate that holds itself accountable to the Public in the manner that Law does, striving for the absence of bias, secular, contemporary Society relies upon Law for all questions of Authority which would otherwise be impossible to answer without appearing pretentious and partisan.

Presupposing that the simplest explanation is the most credible, so long as it is confined to the objective, we may dismiss the ominous factor of “race” from the equation. If one asks why more “white Americans” are not interviewed regarding their experiences with “racism”, it is not uncommon to suggest that they do not “go through it”, implying a subjective phenomenon without scientific basis, devoid of value. Having established this as a projection, it becomes imperative to regard acts of violence reported by the Mass Media as isolated incidents. One reason for this lies in the fact that Law not only empowers individuals by preserving their Rights, (which might not exist outside of Law, except as fantasies,) but that it holds individuals accountable for their own actions. As such, we do not require conjecture about the MOTIVATIONS driving any act of police brutality, which can be classified as street violence far more credibly than it may be classified as “Law Enforcement”. People die from violence every day; what sets police brutality apart lies in that we hold agents of enforcement to a Higher Standard. This remains, of course, an INDIVIDUAL Standard. To suggest that any one act of brutality is NOT the product of a [wo]man’s moral shortcomings but rather of some sort of conspiracy is not only absurd but demoralizing, since such a conspiracy would thereby become indistinguishable from Law Itself.

Since folkways, mores, and social conventions are often inane and ridiculous, peer pressure is a force reserved for perpetual adolescents. Civilians are just as likely to judge moral behaviour by hairstyle as by ideological conviction. Only the Legal System enables members of opposing groups to mediate conflicts. Hence any isolated incident of police brutality can never be symptomatic of an illicit conspiracy, since that conspiracy would have, by its very nature, to be the only truly objective standard by which we judge things to be either illicit or legitimate. “That’s messed up” doesn’t cut it, for it is nothing more than the expression of emotion. It is also absurd, since we know that Law is so ubiquitous that its agencies of enforcement are divided into autonomous precincts that only partially answer to any Federal Authority.

It is therefore important not ONLY to see the irony in acts of protest which in themselves become Violent, Disorderly, and Deadly, subverting the same Ideals which the initial tragedy threatened. It is just as important to regard these acts, too, as isolated incidents, for we must have Hope in that the average person, outside of the heat of the moment, would admit that such acts of protest are ALSO, equally and unequivocally, failures of enforcement and Miscarriages of Justice.

[({R.G.)}]

The IRONY of ANARCHY:

It’s always ironic when, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, some people find license to publicize their own gripes about law enforcement. Not only does this trivialize the tragedy, but it also engenders an even more dangerous prejudice than whatever it was that produced the brutality, unless of course we presume that all forms of brutality sprout from the same primeval Source.

There is of course a peculiar place that a lynching holds in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. All forms of street violence are disturbing, not only because they are threatening, but because they are insulting to Humanity. French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze described something known as the “shame in being human” we experience when we see people behaving with excessive harshness, as though we internalized their own guilt for them, by association within the species. In instances such as these, we witness a side of Human Nature which we do not customarily expect. What we see often incites rage within us, but only to the same extent that we are ourselves prone to it; Jungian Psychology refers to this as “Shadow Projection”; outside of this irrational rage we are confined to shock and indignation.

One sees a young man getting beaten up outside a Cleveland hotel in broad daylight as bystanders cheer his assailant on. Do they know what he did to deserve this? Or do they presume that he “had it coming”, much as women often presume that men who are single are single “for a reason”, thereby perpetuating those men’s condition? When one witnesses behaviour such as this, though it is not always tantamount to a child getting murdered by gangs, it reveals what could be called the “Natural” state of Humanity, as opposed to its purportedly Civilized State.

Lynchings are especially disturbing not because they are acts of murder, but because they are carried out by a mob, operating outside of Legal Due Process. Even if the victim is condemned by Law to Death, we expect Law to do more for him. What is offended is not only the Pride in Being Human; it is the expectation that Law will redeem us. When one witnesses an abuse of police power, the tragedy is only secondarily the loss of Human Life; people die on the streets every day, and their deaths are celebrated, often publically, by their assailants. This is Reality.

What sets acts of Police Brutality apart is in that they are errors of Enforcement. Intuitively, perhaps instinctively, we recognize the Law as one of our forms of Saving Grace. We EXPECT for Law to protect us from not only one another but ourselves, for we know that, without it, the State of Nature would prevail, and those who retained the luxury of civilized thought would swiftly fall prey to unimaginable acts of predation by the planet’s Leading Carnivore: Man. It is for this reason that we hold Agents of Enforcement to a Higher Standard; they represent all civilized interests.

When we witness an act of Police Brutality, it says nothing about the Police. What we are witnessing is thoroughly typical HUMAN Behaviour, carried out without the bounds of Due Process, but using the full force of Law Enforcement in its service. In the wake of such a tragedy, the only sensible recourse is to unify in SUPPORT of the Law and those who continue to enforce it with conscientiousness and dexterity. It is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Rights, which are, after all, social constructs, and it is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Accountability, thereby resisting the primal temptation to so identify with a group that these prejudicial reactions are likely to recur. It is therefore ironic that, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, and in the wake of a tragedy which is most properly called a Miscarriage of Justice, there are some of those among us who would think to supplant the Law Itself, as though the failure of People to live up to our own Civilized Standards were the product of Civilization and NOT intrinsic to Nature. No serious anarchist is without a gun and a vendetta.

[({R.G.)}]