The ANTI-INTELLECTUAL: a Menace and a Hypocrite. [Part II.]

When someone tries to mitigate the legacy of Kira by insisting that "Light Yagami was nothing but a murderer", it always reeks of coping mechanism. Any "nothing but", as Huxley, Watts, McKenna, and the large majority of psychedelic intellectuals have pointed out, remains a fallacy of most absurd reduction. There's a lurid envy in the tone of anyone who would condemn an act of social progress as an act of "nothing more than" egoism, (since it's clearly egoism which subsists in spite of social progress) and this envy is explained by the myopia of one who sits upon the sidelines in condemning what is done by greater men and women. From this narrow point of view, ten lives alone invalidate a project saving billions worldwide, implying that a life is worth more than the cause which drives it and that millions can die to serve the privilege of few, assuming that those few are ordinary, unimpressive no ones.

By the force of habit, valuing each life, regardless of its merit in a grander scheme, is liberal diplomacy and virtue, yet behind this smiling laziness there lies a darker secret than the most conniving schemes of Kira: apathy and self-perpetuation at all costs. The sluggard who attempts to justify his sloth by claiming that he values "every life" only condemns the lives of random strangers to the game of chance which takes so many victims in a world devoid of Order, killing off the few survivors by the force of nihilistic suicide. Such is the attitude of those "conservatives" who claim to hold a view of life which is "constrained"; they might as well say "cowardly" instead, since, like Sir John from Shakespeare's Henriad, they try to justify their private cowardice by calling it "discretion", really hoping that *they* are among the few who don't get caught up in the Battle.

Yet the irony is plain as day, translucent as the moon behind a narrow veil of clouds: that this is the *antithesis* of true discretion and morality, for always moral judgement was derived from the pursuit of Greater and Collective Goods over the course of human history. One can't subsist within a fallen world without the moral burden of improving it, and any such subsistence is made possible by institutions that are little more than the corruptions of the Good. The very words they use to vilify hold value only in an older context, and, according to that context, in their cowardly complacency *they* are the monsters, banal in their evil. So, the answer to the claim that "Light was nothing but a murderer" is yet another of two questions: "What would *you* have done?" If one should answer "Nothing", one has answered, in advance, the second question posed to any critic: "What have *you* done?"

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


**This Page has been Optimized for Discord.**

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Early Death of Any Future Peace:

  The biggest problem with the issue of abortion seems, at first, to be that no one wants to talk about it *as* a controversial issue. All the major arguments which either “side” reiterates have been around for roughly half a century at least, and we have made no progress in resolving them in the last forty years. This does not stop idealogues from acting like the matter’s settled and that *their* side won, however.   Yet beyond the moderate, “politically correct” and “civil” surface of the issue lies the deeper issue: Hardly anybody wants to talk about abortion *in itself*, and those who advocate for “choice” (and, by extension, for abortion, as it has to be a choice) are those least willing to discuss *the act itself* and whether it is good or evil to commit.   Instead, we hear from advocates for “choice” a slew of beautiful ideals, impassioned speeches, and redundant platitudes: -    the value of one’s bodily autonomy, -    the need for ...
Read more

First Response to Hazmat: Absolutist Ethics.

Image
Yes: I value the opinions of others, insofar as I can vouch for their integrity. Yet that requires that they fervently believe that what they say is true, that they can stand beside it, put it into practice, and uphold it as a sacred principle, as though it were a Higher Power which compelled them. It thus follows that, so long as an opinion is valid, one must validate it not by merely practicing that view within one’s own life, but by holding others to it. One cannot impose morality on anyone, because morality is binding on us all, in equal measure, and one’s only burden is to fathom it, to the extent one can, and to uphold it. That is not an imposition; it’s an obligation, and, without it, we have nothing. You once asked me: “At what point is it an evil to impose one’s views of righteousness on someone else?” I’ll answer with the obvious: at no point, whatsoever, since it is impossible. Where Righteousness is what’s at stake, one can’t “impose on someone else”, as though one posed a...
Read more

Justice for R. Kelly: a Reflection on the State of Eros. (Dedicated to the Lady Jerri.)

  I've been reading, recently, about the life of Robert Kelly, whom you'd recognize from *Space Jam*'s soundtrack, the "Ignition" remix, and his many other hits, such as "Trapped in the Closet". It just breaks my heart to see how he was treated, not just as a child who had to grow up much too fast, but also as an adult, even after having given us such heartfelt, soulful music. I could never reconcile those sweet and sentimental, loving, sometimes mystifying tones with the entire image of a sex offender; he was a Don Juan, but not Don Giovanni.   Clearly, that same mainstream media that made him famous had betrayed him, while the legal system, which was never there for him when he himself most needed and deserved it, in the tenderness of youth, went well beyond its obligations in defence of "children". The hypocrisy is not the part which angers me, as it is so ironic that it's laughable, and that alleviates some of the sadness of this gr...
Read more