Self-Righteousness is the Road to Disaster

When I see the shell shocked reaction of traditional media to the rise of social media as the way to voice and influence opinions, it reminds me of these lines by Scott Alexander:
“People very reasonably ask – hey, I notice my side kind of controls all of this stuff, the situation is actually asymmetrical, they have no way of retaliating, maybe we should just grind our enemies beneath our boots this one time. And then when it turns out that the enemies can just leave and start their own institutions, with horrendous results for everybody, the cry goes up “Wait, that’s unfair! Nobody ever said you could do that!”

Another trend driving this transition is what Freddie deBoer cites:
“Conservatives have been arguing for years that liberals essentially want to write them out of shared cultural and intellectual spaces altogether.”
(Replace “conservatives” and “liberals” with the relevant words from your context).

And the reaction of traditional media that is being marginalized seems to the same world over, as Andrew Sullivan describes:
“Among many liberals, there is an understandable impulse to raise the drawbridge, to deny certain ideas access to respectable conversation, to prevent certain concepts from being “normalized.” But the normalization has already occurred.”

Alan Jacobs summarizes the advice to the left:
“We are all saying to the Angry Left that it’s unwise, impractical, and counterproductive to think that you can simply refuse to acknowledge and engage with people who don’t share your politics.”

The left-right difference can be seen in how each side views the army. The left views the army as a necessary evil, a monster that might go rogue at any time. The right, on the other hand, views the army as an entity meant to protect and defend one’s way of life. Is it really surprising then to see how differently the left and the right react to the recent award to Major Gogoi, the man who used a “human shield” in Kashmir?

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMay 31, 2017 at 9:57 AM

    Yes yes. Self righteousness is nothing other than bloated ego, which is full of prejudice while dealing with our real world and is also detrimental to inner progress towards Self-realization, which may or may not be imaginary.

    (After knowing fully well that rationality has no room for God ideas and it has no rational way at all to arrive at what can be looked upon the proper behavior or right thoughts towards the "other" whether animate or inanimate, I decided to firmly hold on to the Buddha. He forever gives me a tool to make my inner progress and feel peace. No Western science or intellectualism has helped me in that so far.)

    Now, thanks to the Buddha, I find this. Quoting the blog's own words, "The left-right difference can be seen in how each side views the army" I wish to first appreciate the wisdom of this. After that, I would say I still find that the blog wishes to take sides with the right, a swing which has good magnitude these days.

    Guided by the Buddha's wisdom, I tell myself, "Stay in the middle path forever. Neither identify with the left or the right. Some truth is there on both sides; Some justice is there on both sides. Equally, some falsehood and some injustice are also integral to both sides - the left and right. Let me not deviate from the middle path so that I will know the pros and cons without my personal bias.

    May left go more left and the right go more right! Like the brook of Tennyson, I (to be precise, we all) will go on forever.

    ReplyDelete

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