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.)}]

Musings: September 2, 2020.

I am not “pro” anything. Only crazy people define themselves (or others) PERSONALLY based upon their opinions about PUBLIC policy.

The film Parasite is not about “class”; it is about a man who stabs his benefactor in the heart with an axe over a question of smell. It is about psychosis, and if you sympathize with the protagonists by the end of the film, to the same extent as you pity them at the start of it, you are a danger to yourself and others. Simply put: no desperation excuses that level of depravity, and if you wish to help people, recognizing in your humility that you cannot save EVERYONE, then start with those you KNOW to be innocent, rather than those whose needs you deem arbitrarily to be greater.

It’s humiliating to admit, but that system which Karl Marx identified properly as the Devil in the nineteenth century has become at once our most deadly modern weapon and our last defence against utter savagery.

Dialectic Reasoning, especially in the Hegelian tradition, is not nearly as staunch and systematic as you might think; in many ways, it burnt our bridges with the archaic and inflated Aristotelian concept of logical “non-contradiction”. Hegel admits, in fact professes, that the more we analyze anything the more it is prone to internal contradictions and circular reasonings. He accepts this, and he urges us to take our thinking a step further in order to accommodate the fact.

Now contrast this with the contemporary attitude: once something no longer “makes sense”, people simply give up and act on what they already “know”. Who is the villain? Little Hegel is up in his study analyzing meticulously while the World burns. Is it his fault? No. He’s setting a fine example for us.

Now you might say: if “contradiction is good” (as per usual, boiling things down) and you are “pro-contradiction”, (while making things personal) then why are you calling US out on OUR contradictions? Simply put: it’s because contradiction isn’t the end. Hegel’s methods are supposed to resolve at least SOME contradictions which thought produces. In many instances, the simplest rational explanation for contradictions in human behaviour is “stupidity and moral feebleness”. It is BECAUSE most people do not practice Dialectical Reasoning that our society is so conflicted, as well as its constituents. Hegel helps us to understand ourselves. You are welcome.

How does one support immigration reform whilst challenging colonialism? The humanistic arguments are the same for both: that the simple fact of an established way of life does not preclude either the possibility nor the imperative for a new way of life, one intended to accommodate the needs of outsiders.

So: why should one group of immigrants restrict others? Simply put, needs are not enough. In order for a system to work, it must follow a code of ethics, usually one formalized in Law. The English colonists were not “illegal immigrants”, since no such formal, federal Law existed upon their arrival, except perhaps in England.

How ironic, therefore, that in appealing to their descendants, I found myself contending with the New Left!! To the liberals, you see, the matter of accommodating outsiders is a joke. There are no “others” to the new liberal; there are only white people, black people, and brown people, and we like white people least.

This is what the argument has degenerated into: fuck the buffalo. They were here first. Fuck science. They were here first. Fuck Law. They were here first. Fuck human rights, that all-too-recent European invention which silenced the archaic African invention we call slavery. They were here first.

May I append this? Fuck history, that means by which we can follow the development of ideas without subordinating ourselves to primitive myths and proto-Fascist ideologies. They were here first.

Don’t get me wrong: I love mythology as much as the next guy. I just hate people who take it literally, and there is no greater modern myth than the concept of Natural Human Rights. Everything which we take for granted as a Society is the product of that “White Man’s Burden” which seems so embarrassing in context. It is simply the nature of progress that one always looks back with shame, since it’s impossible to be constantly improving without always one-upping what came before.

[({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.)}]

PARAS!TE: FULL REV!EW.

THE ETHOS:

In the eighteenth century, during the European Enlightenment, morality plays took a turn in favour of revolutionary views, the likes of which Marx and his followers adopted to varying degrees of success and atrocious failure in the centuries that followed. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a prime example of this subversive trend; the librettist who wrote those ingenious lyrics which Mozart set to music later moved to the United States. Retelling the tale of Don Juan, the four-hour epic depicts an ignoble nobleman who terrorizes peasants who are extremely civilized. (Of course, our own Slavoj Zizek might take issue with the term “civilized”, but in so doing he represents part of the problem I describe.) Admittedly, most of what Don Giovanni does throughout those four hours might even pass for admirable achievement in our present day, but only because so many men are either self-absorbed or easily pushed over. His only sins that stand the scrutiny of time are rape and murder, though one must keep in mind that, according to the old morality, the former would be hardly worse than the remainder of his lechery, since personal consent was less important, even during the Enlightenment, than conformism to standards, and even the most radical Enlightenment thinker wouldn’t have dared to suggest that chastity, as a social imperative, was simply the product of envy.

By illustrating the poor in a noble light and the noble in a poor light, the greatest dramatists of the Enlightenment managed to draw a sharp distinction between social hierarchy and moral hierarchy. Nobility was not a quality either exclusive to nor guaranteed within the Nobles, even if it was in fact the Noble Class which had produced it as a standard. So long as you could romanticize peasants as behaving like chivalrous princes, contending with a lecherous rich man, you could not only expose the corruption which wealth is heir to but also you could begin to Universalize Nobility as a standard transcending social station. The Cardinal Virtues are not simply behaviours which the Priesthood adopts because the Church can afford to sponsor them; they are archetypes that live within the very Heart of Human Nature, planted there by God, available to any thinking man. Rafael, the Angel of Forgiveness, is no different in quintessence from Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, of whom the Dalai Lama is the avatar. Goodness and Evil transcend cultural boundaries, and they are untethered by the mortal norms of class.

This flame was not so easily extinguished by modernity as we might suspect. While Breaking Bad might have set the stage for shows like Ozark, wherein every character is deplorable, its artistic achievement was twofold: that it not only presented a sympathetic villain, but it established such a stark contrast between his villainous fate and his heroic beginnings that viewers could not help but to end up blaming the same man they were rooting for. This was precisely Vince Gilligan’s goal: to teach viewers that “actions have consequences”. His genius was in creating villains so engaging that there was no sympathy left by the end; we had already expended it.

Even more successful artistically to this end, if not commercially, is the prequel Better Call Saul. As Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman, his stoic counterpart Mike becomes a hitman. The central themes are usually conveyed by Mike himself, who doubles as a Wise Old Man and as a Gatekeeper, eventually becoming a tragic hero. One of Mike’s earliest monologues, addressed to an upstart criminal named Pryce, (an I.T. specialist who decides to sell stolen pharmaceuticals for a profit,) is upon the difference between a “criminal” and a “bad guy”. “You took something that wasn’t yours, and you sold it for a profit, which now makes you a criminal. Good one? Bad one? That’s up to you.” Mike recognizes that our moral standing in Life is independent of our legal standing. It follows logically that it is also independent of our economic standing, especially if economics can be reduced to social standing in an institution such as the Law. Mike repeatedly refuses money, even when his family’s in dire straits, when he believes that he has not earned it. This sets him apart from Ignacio Varga, who can sympathize with Mike’s robbery of a drug lord’s trucks, but not with the vendetta which motivated it. Nacho Varga doesn’t have the sorts of responsibilities which Mike has, since Mike acts also as a provider for his widowed daughter-in-law and his granddaughter, whereas Nacho’s father has always planned for Nacho to inherit a thoroughly decent family business. Mike simply retains his devotion to the Spirit of the Law, even after having quit his post as a cop in an extremely corrupt precinct. Ignacio, who has chosen to defy his father’s wishes by allying himself with the Cartel, ends up fending for life, enabling a string of murders and injuries in his wake. When he receives a blood transfusion from one of a pair of iconic Cartel twins, it represents both the duality of his nature and his transformation into a drug lord.

THE PATHOS:

By far, the evilest villain in the film Parasite turns out to have been the patriarch of the parasitic family. Not only does he do nothing to stop his family from committing the original con, acting as far less than the stoic source of moral fortitude and equanimity which his initial character foil, Mr. Park, exhibits, but his profound envy for this gentleman sparks a neurosis which, over a very short time, escalates into the most senseless act of murder. It is by no mistake that the two men wear the feathers of Native Americans at the climax of the film, for what they represent is that rage which, either robbed of civilizing grace or having never seen it, lashes out with infantile destruction at the alien world of wealth and sophistication. What the patriarch of the parasitic family represents is self-entitlement, expressed as the raw will to destroy that which it desires. Mr. Kim wants to live Mr. Park’s life; he even goes so far as to covet the wife. Yet it is his negligence, his heavy-handed arrogance, one alien to seasoned criminals, (the likes of which we see in Breaking Bad, for instance, or even Death Note,) that dooms his family, for when they have the perfect opportunity to plan their grand ascension to the plane of wealth instead they waste it, pilfering the secrets of their hosts, intoxicating themselves in a manner only native to the unaristocratic. They know neither the reserve to leave the door unanswered when the old housekeeper comes to knock, nor do they feel the shame and the disgust which would in such a matter warrant sympathy for her and her husband. It is because they fail to answer for their sins against the family, creeping about within the dark, that Kim bears witness to the act of love between Park and his blushing wife. Park and his wife are also envious, their act of love modeled after some fantasy of rundown life, but it’s a fantasy that has been planted by the daughter of the Kims, and they do nothing but to act it out in what they falsely think is privacy. The Parks are kind enough to hide their civilized disgust when they discover panties in the back of their own car, and it is nothing short of this that lands the parasitic patriarch his gig at the expense of someone younger and more qualified, if not yet “needy”, so to speak. Yet how can this Mr. Kim deplore them for what they should say in privacy? It is offense to which he only walks by his own secret path, rather than a directed insult. What he hates is not what his host DOES, but rather what the host PERCEIVES, and in that rests the seeds of a psychosis, for the narcissist, refusing to perceive his own foul stench, hates most the thought that others turn their noses up at it behind his back. It is for this reason that Mr. Kim winds up living down in the crawlspace, in the place of the same maniac who nearly killed his son and stabbed the hosts nearly to death. It seems that all is lost during the struggle between the recluse and the Kims’ son, but as it turns out it’s the early victim who will live to tell the tale. At that moment when the ritual of decency is interrupted by an act of madness, Mr. Park behaves the most responsibly, lifting the car keys from beneath the carcass of the man who nearly killed his wife and child. There is no question at this moment that Park is the Better Man, but as the stench of his assailant fills his nostrils Mr. Kim is so reminded of this stark superiority between them that he is possessed, as if by Cain, to kill the father right before the wife. Kim’s wife and son survive, but at that moment the Parks’ lives are over, where before there had been yet a feeble hope at dignity and even healing. Let us not forget that all of this went on without the Park’s say-so or knowledge; they had no idea, thinking themselves kind. Their one sin was living that one life which all the others wanted; their one error was permitting others even partial access to this life. A rational man would rejoice, knowing that at least someone kindly had been able to enjoy what he was yet to know. Yet madness works in other ways. Kim’s lust for “simple” Mrs. Park is clear when he first holds her hand, and hearing Mr. Park fondle her breast and all the while denounce his stink engenders jealousy the likes of which not even I can fathom. A True Man would sooner have confessed to all his sins in that one moment than to let the ruse go on. But the coward had no recourse but to crawl back into poverty, a circumstance that would arouse our pity but not our solidarity, for in that moment it was chosen by the victim. Kim had the capacity for murder then, but he had not the plan to do so, leaving it up to his son’s device. The women in the family, by this point, came to recognize the lodgers underground as equals, where before their senseless rivalry for ample resources had doomed them nearly to exposure. Yet the lies the daughter wove came back to haunt them, for just as the ladies of the family were ready to thus offer up their peace, the lady of the Parks came carrying a cake which had been baked not just to celebrate the birthday of her son but to help him to cope with trauma, a trauma fabricated by the Kims. It’s in this moment that their son tries to murder the lodgers, all for wanting what he had, just as his father kills their host for having only what they wanted. Hence the madman becomes the latter foil for Kim.

THE LOGOS:

One of the peculiar qualities of the Park family which is typical of underdeveloped characters (in developed countries) is just how little we truly know about them. This fact renders it impossible to blame them without making irrational inferences from outside the text, which would be a major faux pas in the Post-Derridean contemporary world. For instance, we cannot call them “capitalists” in the Marxist sense any more so than we might call Andy Bernard’s ancestors “slave owners”; though neoliberal Oscar Martinez would love to be able to prove Nellie’s inflated claims to be factual, Bernard is accurate in describing his ancestors as “moral middlemen”: conscientious, hardworking participants in a corrupt Social Order which, by a Kantian estimation, required them to conform in spite of personal reservations and subjective doubts. As far as we are aware, the Host Family in Parasite is most likely tantamount to this, only because most people in their estimated income bracket (presuming upon the quality of their luxuries) are in the same position: they are not business owners, so they are not capitalists in the Marxist sense. If they were brought up in a “bubble”, they surpass in dignity those nouveau riche who have had to “work to get there”. While it is charming and sadly endearing to hear people from the ghetto share their dreams of wealth and power (and one often does, as I have, having spent a lot of time in urban sectors and encountered many locals,) one recalls that, were they better educated, they would not speak so proudly of their entrepreneurial dreams and realities. By the most economically left-leaning, liberal definition available, the one supplied by the notorious Karl Marx, those who manage to move up the social ladder by their will and work alone are in fact MORE corrupt than those who are born into “privilege”, since such upward mobility requires them to make a PROFIT, which Marx systematically proves to be directly proportional to and, in fact, synonymous with, exploitation, selling out their fellows in the process. This process of “selling out” is precisely what the Kim family demonstrates. Conversely, the Park family exhibits behaviours which are far more emblematic of another archetype, that of the Child: Innocence. While their patriarch exhibits the stoic condescension of his station, his actual choices, though they always portend unrelenting cosmic retribution, are invariably advantageous to the Kims, whom he grows to trust as much as his childlike wife does. The Parks, though they retain internal feelings of disgust, never allow these personal biases to skew their public behaviour, extending an attitude of trusting compassion even to their hired help, except for when they are MISLED, calculatedly, to make cancellations. While this ideal is one to which we might feel rightfully entitled, it’s not a frequent fact, so we ought to be grateful to the Parks, for they exhibit all these graces willingly and willfully. To the same extent as it is “easy” for them to be good, it is just as easy for them to be evil, and their choices therefore act as the definitive arbiter in the revelation of their character. If the Kim family finds within the depths of that character a private contempt, it is only because the Kims have betrayed the trust of the Parks by creeping into their private, innermost lives. When government entities in countries purported to be Leftist behave in this manner, Snowden supporters worldwide profess that the government betrayed both the People and its own Ideals for them.

If Parasite is a metaphor, then who are we to read it just one way? Are the Kims not, in fact, more akin to the capitalists in the works of Marx than the Parks are? Foremost anti-capitalist Slavoj Zizek holds a similar interpretation of subtext in The Sound of Music, insisting that the more subtle viewer will notice extremely proto-Fascist tendencies in the villagers who serve as that film’s protagonists, whereas the Germans they defy are tantamount to a Nazi’s conception of the Jewish Elite. If we can systematically demonstrate that the Kims exhibit the violent, sociopathic, and exploitative tendencies of a nineteenth-century Industrialist, then how can we continue to sympathize with them, as liberals?

Hidden Leeches: So, Who Were the Parasites?

Of course, here the director himself offers a counterintuitive interpretation of his own work, by suggesting that the Parks were Parasites as WELL. Of course, such an observation could never absolve either party of its crimes, for crimes are often crimes not just against an “exploited party” but also against an Overlying Law; if anything, being equated with the Parks in dignity gives Mr. Kim far less excuse for envy, unless he cares nothing for dignity itself. Yet such a degree of sophistication in moral calculation is probably lost already upon any class of people that calls the Parks “parasites”.

The most narcissistic delusion is that of Godhood, and since a God can deny his own delusions from a position of Divine Authority, any man who believes himself to be a God is the most hopeless case in this regard. What is the significance of Divinity? A Deity is like a genie without the shackles; he or she can will anything into existence, at least enough so as to satisfy his or her own needs. It is only in Buddhism that the Gods are considered unhappy in direct proportion to their power, and that is only because Buddhism rejects power.

A self-made man is a God Incarnate: an entity who fashions, by his or her own volition alone, the entirety of his or her own conditions. It does not take a Freud or Jung to see this grandiosity for what it is. Yet, somehow, when we see people relying upon other people, we treat them as though they were less than human, as though human beings were Gods and Goddesses. While cooking and driving are hardly metaphysical powers, (I, myself, possess at least one of them) it’s not a mark of shame to hire a private cook or a driver. This is because human beings are communal creatures; as Alasdair MacIntyre said, (and as I quote, quite shamelessly, for I agree with him*:) we are “dependent, rational animals”. The Parks are not exploiting the Kims by providing them with a source of income in exchange for a service. While the most cursory reading of Marx would call this “exchange-value” into question, the seemingly generous NATURE of the Parks, already exposed by their willful and “easy” goodness, leaves it up to them to decide how MUCH to pay the Kims, and it leaves it up to us to infer that it’s probably a “fair amount”, hardly synonymous with exploitation.

*Not only do I quote him because I agree with him; I am also unashamed in doing so, because I agree with him that there is nothing to be ashamed of herein.

Post-Shamanic Human Beings form societies based upon the division of specialized labour, and while this division lends itself to hierarchical structures it also makes possible a state of interdependence wherein ethics and commerce, working hand in hand, ensure both the production and the distribution of resources which possess Marx’s “use-value”. Yet the lingering credibility of Marx, especially in the current Zeitgeist, is not in his depth of research into the statistics of the prior centuries, an academic rigour the likes of which we do not find in millennials. It’s rather in the shocking accounts of factory conditions that Marx sets his morality play, in terms so plain and detached that they prefigure the ominous stylings of Realism and Modernist Theatre. At first blush, the Kim family’s living circumstances seem most reminiscent of these stark conditions. Yet no tragedy is complete without a villain and a tragic hero. In the case of the Kims, they are both, because of their choices.

Since ethics remain ethics irrespective of personal conditions, and as we have demonstrated that the most liberally sound people are those who do not change social class, wherever they may be situated, it would be daft to agree with Mrs. Kim’s drunken assertion that the Park family’s kindness is inauthentic because it comes easily as a function of privileged wealth. Our only warrant would lie in an even baser presumption: that people only do good things to feel good, and only when it requires neither effort nor sacrifice. When you see how instinctive depravity is for the Kims, it’s unsurprising.

The Sins of Kim:

We know very little about the Parks, but we know almost all there is to know about the Kims. The son betrays his best friend in the first half hour of the film, if I am not mistaken, seducing a young girl whose death he eventually brings about, thinking only of his own alienation. This same son, an adolescent boy scarcely older than Yagami Light, takes it upon himself to murder a man far less fortunate than he, who in turn attempts to kill his “Gods” upstairs. The Kim family’s matriarch shows no recrimination in getting members of their fellow working class fired to make room for narcissistic dreams of upward mobility. Where is that sense of Marxist Solidarity in the Sub-basement, when for the first time the Kims have to confront the impact of their enterprise upon an even lower class? Are these the sorts of people to presume that wealth is heir to malice? If so, it’s clearly the poor characters who are living in a bubble, unaware of even themselves, for it would take just one look in the mirror (provided by the character foil of the Squatters) to see that, in this Universe, wealth is not inversely proportional to loyalty and kindness, but directly so. The poor people are the most murderous, the wealthy are the most generous, and if this were not so, we wouldn’t need to stoop to the childish claim that it’s “easy for them to be good”. Yes: it WOULD be easy, except that the Kims, simply by CONTENDING this, make no attempt to BE good, sealing by this excuse the fates of all involved. Their power is neither that of privilege nor labour, but of duplicity and ruthlessness. While it seems tautological at first to use their claims against them, since it was precisely that same claim about privileged morality that I sought to disprove, a simple accounting of willful immorality ought to expose that claim for what it is: a pragmatic LIE, one believed by the liar, as all narcissistic fantasies are. It’s iconic, therefore, that the one member of the Kim family who dies, rightfully, is the daughter, for of all of them this counterfeiter is the most blatant con artist, without whom none of the criminal enterprise would have worked. If you can be fooled into sympathizing with her family, you are among the naïve.

The Park Family is the only family which lives a Good Life, both morally and financially. Yet hundreds of years of progressive theater and Leftist economics prove that this is not always the case. Often, rich people suck, and poor people rock. Yet what you find in the Parks is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Critics who grow queasy at the sight of a Westerner interpreting Korean economics and reinterpreting Modern Korean Art would do well to recount the North Koreans who protest Modern Art; dissent can be manufactured under authoritarian regimes. While we DESERVE artistic license, Nature does not entitle us to it. By the same token, while Nature does not entitle everyone to the Good Life, financially, we all DESERVE it, insofar as we are willing to work towards it MORALLY. The Parks do not exploit anyone to get ahead, so they are not capitalists. Yet they use their wealth in a thoroughly moral fashion, suggesting, with dramatic irony, that it would be wasted upon their hired help, though they themselves never seem to believe this, even inviting their employees to their son’s birthday party. The Parks cannot be expected to give it all up to charity and to join a protest in the streets, and this is precisely BECAUSE they live in South Korea, whose closest neighbor to the North would gobble up a Leftist uprising in a jiffy. (Probably taking a full accounting of resistors to the fight, ensuring that their families would be cursed for future generations.) As a Moldovan citizen born in Moscow in 1991, believe me when I say that I am NOT just your typical white American in holding this position. The complacency of the Kims is only natural, and, in Asian fashion, they elevate Nature to an Art. If you still believe that they should be Marxists instead, consider how much sympathy the poorest of the poor characters – the Squatters – have for North Korean propaganda.

IN SUMMARY:

Bong Joon-ho’s submagnum opus Parasite is not a film about “class” any more so than the O.J. Simpson trial was about a red-handed glove. (Of course, that trial was hardly about “race” either, by the same token.) Parasite is a film about parasitism, envy, sociopathy, madness, and the murder of innocents for socioeconomic, ideological reasons. The truest tragedy is that the men who wrote and created the film don’t even seem to recognize what they have done. Mr. Kim bewails his own sin and resolves himself to his retribution. The lingering sympathy that conventional viewers apparently feel for him is symptomatic of a far more devious sociopathy.

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