April 16, 2009

• This is nothing.

  When I write about politics and such, I might seem angry.  I used to be angry a lot.  Very angry, very much of the time.  Injustice infuriated me.  Abuse and discrimination made me want to take up armed resistance.

  I guess, “want to,” is the relevant part of that statement.  I didn’t go postal.  I went within.  I got mellow.  I let myself be taught to cycle from positive to neutral and back.  Then I largely quit thinking about “positive” versus the opposite, or “right”, or “good.”  I began focusing on details, on what was going on, and I quit trying to judge it.

  This has probably worked to everyone’s advantage.  I haven’t blown any people away or blown any cranial arteries.  I haven’t needed to retreat into a fantasy world to escape harsh reality.  Things are just as they are, and what is, IS.  And I am as interested as ever in observing what is, and more capable than ever of understanding it.

  Lately, I have been focused on Social Darwinism.  The topic has come up frequently in blogs and news media.  Several times when I encountered it, it has been associated with Ayn Rand, of all people.  Rand’s heirs and followers are quick to protest against that spurious connection.  Rand called her philosophy. “Objectivism,” and in both her wooden fiction and preachy non-fiction seems oblivious to the subjectivity of her own views.  In their application to social problems and cultural mores,  Social Darwinism and Objectivism might have similarities, but although she was probably influenced by it, Ayn Rand was not the mother of the former.  Social Darwinism was the brainchild of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903).

  

  Herbert Spencer, the father of Social Darwinism as an ethical theory, was thinking in terms of elitist, “might makes right” sorts of views long before Darwin published his theory. However, Spencer quickly adapted Darwinian ideas to his own ethical theories. The concept of adaptation allowed him to claim that the rich and powerful were better adapted to the social and economic climate of the time, and the concept of natural selection allowed him to argue that it was natural, normal, and proper for the strong to thrive at the expense of the weak. After all, he claimed, that is exactly what goes on in nature every day.

  However, Spencer did not just present his theories as placing humans on a parallel with nature. Not only was survival of the fittest natural, but it was also morally correct. Indeed, some extreme Social Darwinists argued that it was morally incorrect to assist those weaker than oneself, since that would be promoting the survival and possible reproduction of someone who was fundamentally unfit.

  source:  thinkquest

  

  I don’t know why, but that made me think of Puritanism, Cotton Mather (above), and Richard Baxter (below).

  

  “If God shows you a way in which you lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul, or to any other), if you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward.” [Baxter]

  Why were the Puritans so sure that money was a good thing? Chiefly because they believed that money and wealth were gifts from God…
  [and] they decisively dissociated it from the idea of human merit. If it is a gift, how can it be earned? Not only does human effort not guarantee success; even if God blesses work with prosperity, it is God’s grace and not human merit that produces the blessing.

  Cotton Mather asserted, “in our occupation we spread our nets; but it is God that brings unto our nets all that comes to them.” “If goods be gotten by industry, providence, and skill,” wrote John Robinson, “it is God’s blessing that both gives the faculty, and the use of it, and the success unto it.” The Puritan ethic is an ethic of grace, not of human merit.

  Puritans saw an inverse relationship between wealth and godliness. It did not have to turn out this way, but in their view it usually did. “Remember that riches do make it harder for a man to be saved,” warned Richard Baxter

  source:  Leland Ryken

  It is liberating to realize that I do not need to pass judgment on the beliefs of those long-dead men.  I am free to wonder just how much they actually believed that stuff themselves, and how much of it was hypocritical self-serving bullshit.  Their beliefs, whether stated or not, are no more my concern than anyone else’s beliefs.  I know that the external world in which I live is shaped by other people’s beliefs, but I take that as a challenge, not a problem.  If you don’t already know where I stand on the subject of “belief,” it’s just because you haven’t gotten to know me.

  Have you gotten to know this man yet?

  

  He is Rahm Emanuel, Pres. Obama’s Chief of Staff, author of a quotation you might have heard and probably will hear more than once:  “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”  I think I know what he meant, but I don’t think he really knew what he was saying, if you know what I mean.
  

  • 7:12 pm
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