Monday, July 9, 2012

"Bottom-Up" or "grassroots" Social Darwinism (warning: the cynical content may break your balls, or your wimpy little heart, or something. Reader discretion is advised.)

(Or, "Natural Selection, thou art a heartless bitch, why the hell won't anyone leave you alone?!?")

I realize what I am about to say is probably going to make me sound sociopathic, but, guess what? I don't give two fucks. :D

"Social Darwinism" is usually defined in terms of law, or in terms of public policy that intends to resemble the "laws" of natural selection, in its original, biological conception. The problem I personally have with this, essentially a moral one, is that this is basically the creation and self-imposition of a megalomaniacal God Complex onto all involved policymakers. All it is really, is a replacement for the archaic beliefs of oppressive, persecutory monarchies and their belief of divine right of kings. Except we're replacing religion as justification for such an abuse of power and a totalitarian regime (yes, that is all this is) with a "scientific" one.

I do think that the best way to strive for "perfection" in society is through what can essentially be described as Social Darwinism; however, I am a total hard-ass about it, that is really the only difference here.

At first glance people seem to have this idea that if authority is doing it, it must be good. Or more specifically, that if authority is actively striving for a greater cause, i.e. improving the "human condition", it is morally justifiable, morally right... humane. I don't think I need to get into all the problems we as a species have encountered historically under the rule of authority figures who became a little too passionate about "betterment of the human race."

I firmly believe that yes, the "weaker" members of society should be essentially "weeded out", just not using any sort of force or coercion of authority! Tell me -- what is worse, as far as immorality goes? Action, or inaction?

Most people I'm sure, if asked that question independent of any context, would answer that of course action that is immoral is far worse than no action at all. So were we to just "leave" people to "fail" (i.e. die?), it seems impossible that this is immoral, at least in comparison with using coercive force of government who are already sticking their megalomania way too far up society's uninformatively consenting asses....

People seem to think they have a moral obligation to help others in need, even if it's some anonymous, faceless "other" halfway around the world they've never even met, or spoken to (or probably is unable to speak to due to something called language barriers.)

They most certainly do not. Your moral obligations begin and end with the consequences of your own actions on others. Please enlighten me and tell me how I am responsible in any way for, say, starving children in an underdeveloped region of the world?

I SIMPLY AM NOT.

So what the fuck are you gonna do about it?? Well, it seems like what has been done is to force people --  after deceptively convincing them that they are morally obligated to feed starving children whose source of nourishment they personally never took away from them -- to burden themselves with the rest of the world's problems. Well, you know what? Third-world starvation is not MY fucking problem. I've got my own damn problems to fix. Everyone does. Get your head out your ass and stop trying to be the Good Samaritan all the time, at every damn turn you take in life. There's a point where it becomes masochistic, not to mention turns people into sadists who get off on watching others in pain, with the exception of those they've been morally guilt-tripped by political indoctrination into dedicating all of their souls to....

People seem to be shocked by my lack of "empathy", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean, so I will repeat: Human pain and suffering, poverty, starvation, and on and on.. are not my personal moral obligation to fix, so long as I am not personally responsible for such pain and suffering. If I WANT to be altruistic, I can be, anyone can be, but not without INFORMED CONSENT.

We are so damned obsessed with the idea of "informed consent" as far as things like consenting to sex, or medical treatment (sometimes..), so why the hell do we give authority the right to rape us all of human dignity and mental clarity, of our ability to make our own judgments and moral decisions?

If our ancient human and "pre"-human ancestors ever had exploitative, manipulative, and deceptive rulers usingn thought control to fulfill their own corrupted self-righteous indignations... it would never have been the strongest that survived. It would've been whoever the fuck these damn sick, twisted motherfuckers that cavemen were taking it up the ass for whilst simultaneously putting them on a pedestal.. it would've been whoever THEY deemed "fittest" to survive, whether that be only one of the two biological sexes (along the vein of "kill all female babies" type of mentality, but in prehistoric context), only those of certain skin colours, only couples who were as tall as one another were "fit" to cohabitate in a cave and fuck each other lest we end up with inferior babies whose heights are inappropriate... you name it, who the hell knows what they could've come up with, and perfectly brainwashed everyone into believing to be just and moral at the time for the "betterment" of everyone. And ultimately, that really could've have fucked us all up in some very disturbing ways, as we stand (in all senses of the word) as a species today, if that's how it'd gone down.

Tell me that viscerally, you do not feel that type of thinking is fucked up.

There is nothing morally wrong with letting the "unfit" fail. There's nothing wrong with wanting to help them, either. But using coercive force, deception, social manipulation, and the like, to manipulate people into truly, wholeheartedly believing they are entirely, personally, morally responsible for all the wrongdoing that goes on in the world? That is absolutely fucking morally abhorrent.

Update (11/24/2012): I was not suggesting that it's okay to "leave people to die", or "..in the dust", or what have you, because they just are somehow disadvantaged severely. Everyone is somehow "disadvantaged"; the problem with our collective mentality ("consciousness"; at least in America, at least this century...) is the idea that we can preemptively cover ours and everyone else's asses, if we have not done so preventatively. 

Preemptive action suggests we know exactly what's happened, to an extent that is sufficient to universally implement it. Slippery slope and I'm not saying this to be all "DARE TO FEAR THE REAPER AND DIE!", but isn't this the same premise, conceptually, that underlies eugenics? ("Social Darwinian Extremism"?) Nobody to this day, in the course of human history, knew enough about an extensive issue to such a degree (i.e., all that is human) that justifies "covering" it in execution.
Otherwise, Jesus would've been a dictator.*

In other words, what is ethically questionable, is implementing (executing) something, some sort of prescriptive/mandate (e.g., a "law"), that applies equally to "everyone", because we supposedly know enough about it that we can say it will exclude no one. This is so profoundly dangerous, as is anything so perfunctory: it tends to follow, practically speaking, that if even an individual case arises in which someone expresses (or attempts to do so) a countering position that "this rule doesn't seem to apply to me-- and here is why..." the case (and the person who dared to raise it) is dismissed, marginalized, ridiculed, condemned, ostracized, socially disposed of, and/or belittled to such an extent that any resulting negative consequences in said individual's own life/lifetime become (mis)attributed as a personal weakness (needless to say, this is counterproductive, and ultimately, socially destructive), or other negative quality ascribed to said individual. To the extent that whatever we implemented and declared "universal", was not universal, this is a self-perpetuated, downward spiral. The preventive action comes in, in our ability to recognize when we are wrong; identify our own margin of error before it actualizes and leads us (usually) to self-righteous delusions.

What stands out about human evolution is our brains look like those of gorillas, but on steroids. If we need to preempt anything, it's that we don't lose our high reasoning ability (and likely, with it, anything else that is exclusive to this species.) For example:

I. Knowledge is power.
II. Power is evil.
Conclusion: Knowledge is the root of all evil.

Only humans know how to do that... for now...at least in theory...

;-)

*Not a religious statement; theoretically, when we think of a "Christ-figure", all personal faith(s) aside.... that's all I was getting at.

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