Janet Daley is on splendid form today, in the Daily Telegraph (£). Some choice paragraphs:
The establishment of social democracy as the prevailing governing system in the advanced nations of the West, bringing with it powers to distribute wealth and prevent gross inequalities, seems to imply that the state is now morally responsible for the welfare of everyone. From this principle of total responsibility it follows that every instance of ill health or death is the direct fault of the Government – even if those who are dying have reached the age at which it is statistically normal for them to die. The state must promise not just the best healthcare it can provide, but a kind of immortality: every death should be preventable. Every death (at whatever age) is a political failing. Those who govern must not only be infinitely caring, they must be omnipotent.
The secularism of modern democracy adds more weight to this. To accept any death (at any age) seems like a medieval fatalism which modern progressive thinking should reject. Along with the passive acceptance of mortality, the notion of acceptable risk – and the individual’s right to choose it – has to go out the window too. We must all look after one another – and we must all be responsible for the fate of everyone.
But this collectivist ethic is strangely contrary to the other strand of popular consciousness which is playing a major role in today’s events. This is the legitimising of chronic hypochondria. I cannot remember a time when there was such a neurotic obsession with health as a positive condition rather than a simple absence of illness or disability.
Ironically this more or less permanent state of anxiety about one’s individual well-being (which is really a form of narcissism) sits side-by-side with the unselfish commitment to the well-being of society at large. Maybe we have managed to create, with our conflicting compulsions – on the one hand, unrealistic expectations of comprehensive, government-enforced social responsibility, and on the other an equally unrealistic idea of an individual right to be free from pain or suffering – the perfect climate for the mess we are in.
The reasoning seems generally sound, but I don’t believe Government has actually been so consistent as to assume an obligation to cure all ills — rather, it has taken the stance of the proprietor of an all-you-can-eat buffet, where Government decides how much “all-you-can-eat” is. Witnessing the Alfie Evans case, and various moves in the West to promote “assisted suicide” (and, of course, abortion), I suspect that the powers-that-be actually have some grasp of the price tag and inherent limitations of an absolute obligation to insure well-being. Fortunately for them, the collectivist mindset always accepts an individual obligation to nobly limit individual freedoms – including that to live – for the collective good.
Et in Arcadia ego.
There is no secret as to what is “driving current policy” in so many Western countries – although not quite all of them.
Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, “Build Back Better”, “Sustainable Development” (“Green” totalitarianism), the “Great Reset”, “Stakeholder Capitalism” – i.e. Fascism, the coming together of Big Government and Vast Corporations to utterly exterminate free competition and the freedom of the choice of ordinary people. To build a Saint-Simon world – a weird sort of socialism where Big Business types would not be shot, but would actually be IN CHARGE (with Credit Bubble bankers at the very top) and all in the name of SCIENCE – SCIENCE, SCIENCE, SCIENCE. Not real science of course, free enquiry and debate is exactly what these people do NOT want, but “science” as a form of mystical justification (with its own academic and bureaucratic “priesthood”) for totalitarianism.
Again nothing about this is secret – it has been discussed in the World Economic Forum and the United Nations (and in national and LOCAL bureaucracies – even down to local council level in Britain, oh yes we have heard of “Agenda 21” even in this ordinary town in the East Midlands) for many years. All those politicians, officials, “experts” and top Corporate Managers were not just getting together (in conference after conference – for DECADES) just to get drunk, they were WORKING. The planning was done – in plain sight.
The “educated” people of the international establishment elite, including the major Corporations, are in agreement – ordinary people are to be controlled “for our own good”.
The EXCUSE of “the environment” was not working perfectly – there was push back (especially in the United States) so the new excuse is Covid 19 (a real disease – but made much worse by the POLICY of many governments). The idea being to inspire panic (indeed terror) to make the “Build Back Better” agenda easier to impose – Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development, Stakeholder Capitalism (i.e. Fascism – the coming together of Big Government and Vast Corporations to exterminate free competition and the freedom of choice of ordinary people).
All in the name of SCIENCE – the “scientific planning of society” for-our-own-good.
As for Covid 19.
Keep up your Vitamin D levels (most British people are deficit – especially at this time of year) and if you get sick – then EARLY treatment with hydroxychloroquine, ZINC sulphate and (for non Covid problems that may hit the body its weakened state) either azithromycin or doxycycline.
This has been known since at least March – yet international governments, and the Corporations, have not been shouting it from the roof tops. On the contrary they have been covering up or smearing EARLY treatment – and they still are.
Think about that when these totalitarians claim they want to “save lives”.
I’ve long said that much of modern Western behaviour is driven by its abandonment of religion, and thus loss of a belief in eternal life. The obsession with health, and diet and exercise is directly linked to a fear of death, as is the obsession with safety and the regulation of everything. The underlying thought process seems to be that if we can only eat the perfect diet, have the perfect exercise regime and eliminate every risk from every human activity we can all live forever, and anyone who opposes any of that is akin to a murderer, as they are preventing eternal life happening.
Then there are the rise of political ideas that invoke morality, such as environmentalism and the woke elements of the Left, where any opponent is not just seen as wrong but also morally defective. These seem to me to be direct religion substitutes. They demonise the non-believer, they create a priestly cast who determine what is and what is not right-think, and they offer the chance of redemption by some sort of abasement ritual before the true believers. It appears in the absence of a formal organised religion within society, people will slowly create one to fill a psychological void in their own lives .
It would seem to me that this is why we are seeing such a political divide nowadays – the Left and the Right really are totally different types of people, who are not talking the same language, or living the same human experience. The Left are the people who in the old days would have immersed themselves in the formal religion of the day, and the Right are those who feel no such void in their life that religion can fill. They are two tribes that used to be kept apart but now are meeting head to head in the political sphere.
“These seem to me to be direct religion substitutes. They demonise the non-believer, they create a priestly cast who determine what is and what is not right-think, and they offer the chance of redemption by some sort of abasement ritual before the true believers. It appears in the absence of a formal organised religion within society, people will slowly create one to fill a psychological void in their own lives.”
Yes, exactly. That’s what religion is.
It’s the right-think beliefs enforced by society on its members. Humans have tribal instincts wired in to enable them to live together in dense social groups and cooperate. Society collectively agrees rules and boundaries, and who defers to who, and how you do things, to avoid conflict. And it enforces conformity to that common set of rules by inducing anger and aggression among the tribe against any who break them. Most people follow the rules without thinking, because “that’s just how things are”. Those who are naturally inclined to break them follow them (publicly, at least) out of fear of what the mob will do to them if they are discovered. The world is divided into “us” and “them”, and there are potentially no moral limits protecting anyone who is a “them”. That’s just how humans are built.
The rules change slowly, but human nature remains the same. We in the West have only relatively recently progressed to the point where someone can reject the traditional religions and survive. And that was only because we went through so many wars for dominance of one set of rules over another in quick succession until everyone was sick of the seemingly endless waves of fear and oppression. We have come up with new rules of peace and tolerance for diversity, but human nature being what it is, some people now want to enforce peace and tolerance for diversity with an iron boot.
People may be liberal or authoritarian in the social and economic spheres, and it is possible for somebody to be liberal/individualist about social rules and authoritarian/collectivist about economic ones, or vice versa. Some people say there should be no rules on personal behaviour – sexuality, marriage, religion, dress, abstinence, indulgence, piety, blasphemy, obscenity – but strictly enforced rules on work, job security, wages, rent, etc. They believe in a cultural free market, but economic protectionism and regulation. Others think that social behaviours like sexuality and religion should be strictly controlled, but support a free market in the economic sphere, with no restrictions on what you can pay people or how much you can charge them.
Hence people can be classified in two dimensions on the Nolan chart by how much they support personal freedom versus regulation, and how much they support economic freedom versus regulation.
When you talk about “Left” and “Right”, I suspect what you are really thinking about is the “Libertarian” versus “Authoritarian” axis. Authoritarians are the ones who feel the need to enforce their rules on society, for their own good and for the good of society. They’re the ones who invented and enforced the traditional orthodox religions, the moral policemen. And they’re the same type of person who enforce the new fads and fashions, the social justice warriors. They have the same belief in the need for enforcing rules, they just apply different rules.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered a month-long lockdown from Thursday after being told the NHS was on course to become overwhelmed within five weeks amid a national resurgence of Covid-19…”.
Can we expect another outbreak of the twerking NHS tik-tokkers who gave the appearance of being anything but overwhelmed earlier this year?
‘The establishment of social democracy as the prevailing governing system in the advanced nations of the West, bringing with it powers to distribute wealth and prevent gross inequalities…’
AKA Socialism, but with voting as a fig-leaf.
AKA Socialism, but with voting as a fig-leaf.
Yes you have a choice of two statist parties.
Just as people create gods in their own image, they also create religions in their own image. Buddhist monks around here do nothing more that recommend niceness. Hinduism is very similar.
If you are a member of a “kill the unbelievers” religion, take a hard look in the mirror.