The Western weakness, in big and in small

The protean doctrine of egalitarianism is the main virus that creates the pathology of the Western weakness. I have reflected many times when participating in blog discussion about how this is in operation at a small scale even there. Egalitarianism is (and has to be) a game of play-pretend. In the context of discussions, in the West, the doctrine states that every opinion and utterance is of equal value. It's a game of play-pretend where pointing out, or otherwise illustrating, that so is not the case is considered being in breach of good manners.

This gives an advantage to the people who engage in a debate in bad faith, who deliberately deviate from the serious discourse, lower it to a personal level, etc. Because the others must pretend that it is not so, otherwise we are "impolite".

We find the same pattern in the society at large, where when the fair-minded person with good intentions, points out the fault of asocial or bad behaviour in our society, then it's the decent and honest guy, who is protesting, that becomes chastised or even ostracized for it. In effect the people behaving badly gets a special protection by this game of play-pretend. We see it, at the larger scale, in our society, how criminals are elevated at the expense of the victims of crime. And even how we have special interest groups who effectively have a license to behave badly. But the only real crime, under the yoke of post-modern egalitarianism, is for the good and decent person to point out that their behaviour is not "equally good".

This is a pattern deeply ingrained into all ways of thinking of the modern Westerner. He might see the fault of it in specific cases, but it is so built into the very grammar of his moral thinking that, even so, he's inclined to follow the pattern in many other cases.

I used to see myself as part of a movement. Then I saw it as my duty to expose people who engaged in forums in bad faith or otherwise not being constructive and derailing the serious discourse. I have found that people in general are slow to pick up on what was evidently there to see at an early point. But in every case, people within the movement have eventually seen too what I had already pointed out much earlier. The problem is that there is little credit given for pointing out these things beforehand, much more time is spent in describing such a person as someone behaving badly. Quite as the whistle-blowers about the wreckage of mass immigration will be shown to be right, but will still forever carry the reputation of being bad people.

So if you are a good and decent person who see as your duty to take upon a someone acting in bad faith, count on the surrounding Westerners not paying attention to the details, but looking at it through their egalitarian prism, i.e. i) it's seen as a personal quarrel between two people where both are equally guilty and equally bad, a position which is in harmony with and a logical consequence of ii) how the behaviour of person acting in bad faith is seen as "equally good", in the first place. The tolerance of truly bad behaviour is very high in today's society, while the judgment over bad behaviour is regularly met with intolerance, and ironically enough considered as bad behaviour. This is the consequence of this egalitarian game of play-pretend that is so deeply ingrained in the very grammar of the current Western life form.

It's like they say: Don't argue with a crazy person in the street, because the people passing by will see you as equally crazy too. A truly good and decent person with a strong sense of duty, that would often intervene against troublemakers in the street, would be thanked by gaining a reputation of being a troublemaker himself. There's no reward for being good and decent in this way in today's society. Goodness is defined in terms of non-judgmental egalitarianism. However, eventually the other people will be confronted by the troublemaker themselves, and of course at that point they'll get it. However, beforehand they are often unable to do so, unless it's too blatantly obvious. Otherwise they cannot see it (beforehand), they can only feel it (when it happens to them).

So this dynamics has broken down my sense of duty. But this is nothing I regret anymore, because I see the big picture of it all too clearly, with this wall of play-pretend egalitarianism. However, what makes me sad is when people who are supposed to be my friends take the side of people acting in bad faith, while stereotyping me as rude and insulting. People that I have given the best of my friendship, to whom I have gone very far in being generous and supportive, and given the best of my soul. I understand that it's based on routine behaviour and is thoughtless, but nevertheless it saddens me.

This post is a general background to what I want to say. I will continue this week to post a couple of examples of what I'm talking of.