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autobiography, Bertrand Russell, conservatism, George W. Bush, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Rod Dreher, United States, William Vallicella
In grad school it often struck me that most of my intellectual partnerships were with self-professed conservative grad students, despite my own left-wing politics. Similarly, some of the most interesting blogs I’ve found have been conservative or right-wing.
It took me a while to figure out the reason for this, but I came to see it quite clearly: for most left-wingers, the good is fundamentally political. The place to focus our efforts, in changing the way that things and people are, is on the inequalities, oppressions and pollutions of the state and the corporations and wealth it regulates. Conservatives, at least social conservatives, often do not think this way. Our big problems are with ourselves. It matters that people become better, more virtuous; even when they do obsess about politics, it is as an attempt to make people better in some sense. An interesting example is Rod Dreher, one of the conservative bloggers I linked to in the earlier post: while his blog was originally called “Crunchy Con” (as in “conservative”), it later just took on his name, and now is called Macroculture – the emphasis has been steadily less on politics and more on culture, and the blog has gotten steadily more interesting (though less popular) as it went. This is an attitude I tend to be largely in agreement with. My deepest debt to Buddhism is that it saved me from politics, made me focus on problems with myself and not with the world.
The question I’ve then come to ask myself is: why haven’t I become conservative myself? I don’t mean a movement Republican, for that question is easily answered: George W. Bush, and his ideological successor Sarah Palin, represent an abhorrent combination of procedural, symbolic and substantive wrongs, many of which would count as wrong from any ideological standpoint. ̇When his writings were primarily political, Dreher was a fierce critic of Bush on conservative grounds – the enormous expansion of government and the deficit, the wars of choice, the incompetence in the face of Hurricane Katrina.
But why not become a more skeptical right-winger like Dreher? This is where the question gets more philosophically interesting. I’ve sometimes found it perplexing that in the contemporary right wing, social and cultural conservatism is often joined with economic libertarianism, extreme liberalism in the classical sense (and the inverse is true on the left). The justification for this connection is often articulated by right-wing bloggers like Dreher and William Vallicella: government social intervention on behalf of the disadvantaged, the centrepiece of a left-wing political problem, makes people worse. It discourages people from working hard and being thrifty, makes them lazy, less virtuous. Under a left-wing social-democratic government, the good people who work hard and save to get rich are punished, while the lazy are rewarded. Right-wingers typically maintain some modified version of the Protestant ethic chronicled by Max Weber, according to which wealth is, if not a sign of God’s favour, at least a deserved reward for a virtuous life spent working hard and saving.
And where I depart most from such a viewpoint is not in the idea that the government should avoid the promotion of virtue, nor in the belief that social programs may discourage work or thrift. Rather, it is in the idea that hard work and thrift are themselves virtues. It is this conceit – typically American but hardly unique to the US – that I disdain.
Hard work and thrift are often associated with real virtues, such as temperance and patient endurance. To put in long hours earning money, one must have the ability to put aside the desires of the moment and endure present hardship for future benefit; this ability is an excellent character trait. But it is not a virtue in itself; indeed, especially in the US, it often becomes a characteristic vice. As I argued last week, this is the real problem with “convenience”: spending money to save time is a futile and unworthy pursuit if all we do with that time is make more money.
Marx was wise to emphasize alienation – our work lives are lives lived for someone else, they take us away from the things that are most important, in the name of money. Most of us need to work, but if that becomes our priority in life, we have bad priorities. The iconic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who works 90-hour weeks in order to make millions – this seems like a right-winger’s model of a good human being. In my view, however, such a person is seriously deficient. I’m hardly the first to make this point – Bertrand Russell put it far more eloquently – but it is all too absent from contemporary political conversation, especially those of self-professed conservatives. The thrift and saving that makes many millionaires, too, can easily degenerate into miserliness, and a capitalist economy often rewards the latter even more than the former. The self-made rich, even if they have come by their money entirely honestly, are not necessarily any better than the rest of us, and may well be worse.
Beyond all this, of course, there is the basic point that hard work and thrift are often not related to economic success; one can easily compare Paris Hilton to Mexican immigrant families who struggle tirelessly and still can’t make ends meet, or any number of similar examples. This is of course an important point in deciding where on the political spectrum one will fall; but it interests me less here than the wider point about virtue. Even if wealth were awarded entirely in accordance with effort and labour, it seems to me that it would still be worth offering some government support to the needy, and doing so would not necessarily affect the people’s character for the worse.
skholiast said:
Amod~~
I hope this post becomes one of the next batch of “greatest hits”.
Reading this I had one of those Emersonian, recognizing-my-own-thoughts moments. I have a strong resonance with a certain kind of cultural conservativism (after all, the blog is called Speculum Criticum Traditionis), but all of my political instincts tend to the left. Not all my final, reasoned positions (though in fact I have no “final” ones), but all my instincts. I never liked the chestnut about being a liberal at 20 and a conservative at 40, lest one be proven not to have a heart or a head. Call me idiosyncratic, but I always aspired to have both a heart and a head, at any age. This piece of political pseudo-anatomy has always been down there, in my estimation, with Churchill’s witticism about democracy being “the worst form of government,” “except–” –wait for it–…
But the thing about having both heart and head, being thus in a sense both liberal and conservative (I actually think these labels are not very helpful, but I’ll use them for simplicity’s sake), is that one winds up being neither of these primarily. And thus, as you put it, “saved from politics.”
Amod Lele said:
I actually really like Churchill’s democracy quip. I think it’s quite profound. It’s very easy to get frustrated with the many evils of the democratic process (especially when living in the USA); the quote acknowledges that they are indeed evils and that shouldn’t be sugar-coated, while reminding us that the alternatives are significantly worse.
On the heart and head quote, I tend to agree with you more. I’ve often wondered whether I reflect it, as I was much further to the left at age 20 than I am now. On the other hand, in most respects I’m still pretty left-wing even by Canadian standards (which, by American standards, puts me somewhere around “bomb-throwing Trotskyite”). Yet I think I have much more sympathy for conservative positions than most of my friends do. While I’m a staunch supporter of gay marriage, for example, I’m frightened by the ability of courts to usurp majority rule in a way that none of my circle of friends seems to be. And certainly in general any “move to the right” in my life has been much less pronounced than a simple “move away from politics.” It would be nice to think this means I have both a heart and a head. :)
skholiast said:
“in general any “move to the right” in my life has been much less pronounced than a simple “move away from politics.””
Of course, a move towards apoliticism or quietism– to use words with connotations you might reject– can be critiqued as being a tool of those in power: “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing,” and all that. I see this point, and have come to hold that my own drift “away from politics,” no matter how grounded in something legitimate about me, is also a sort of alienation (by which I mean, in part, a creeping sense that it doesn’t matter what the “good people” do), and I’ve lately tried to correct course. But this hasn’t altered my basic sense that as legitimate as politics is, it isn’t where the most important things are happening.
As to Churchill, I was being surly. I think highly of him and his quip is one of those semi-paradoxes that can provoke one into deeper reflection–it can, for instance, spark an appreciation of democracy precisely by virtue of its limits. What I object to is the self-congratulatory spirit that comes when you already know the punchline, and are mouthing the phrase just to get to the put-down at the end.
But as to the heart/head quote (for which Churchill is also often blamed, though it seems to come from Francois Guizot), I am unrepentant.
Amod Lele said:
I don’t reject the terms apoliticism or quietism; early on the blog I even embraced the latter. I didn’t go as far as to declare myself a quietist, but I certainly appreciated Śāntideva’s making political quietism a live option. Whether I’m anti-political is a question I’ve struggled with and not quite resolved; I mused a bit about this on Grad Student’s blog and perhaps should say some more.
Grad Student said:
Very interesting post, I second skholiast’s “greatest hits” request.
I’ve been thinking about this issue quite a bit myself and I’m beginning to think my leftward tilt is not very principled, but merely a negative reaction towards the way the right (in the US) confronts science, foreign policy, and various social issues. To make matters worse, as a former evangelical fundamentalist, I have an unnaturally intense distaste for the rightwing-evangelical political alliance. This probably means I’m currently “lost” in politics, but at least I’ve taken that first step in recognizing the problem (I think) ;)
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JimWilton said:
Thanks for the reference to the Front Porch Republic blog. There is a lot of thoughtful writing there — some of it nostalgia for a past that never existed, mixed with Fox news style diatribes.
I feel a little like I’ve been slumming.
However, I take your point about politics as a solution versus individual honor and virtue. I think there is something to it.
It occurs to me that it is almost impossible to tease out what is Conservative and what is Liberal these days based on the substance of political positions. Why is the right to gun ownership a Conservative cause celebre and abortion rights a Liberal one? Could it be as simple as that Liberals are driven by hope and Conservatives by fear? That Liberals favor government intervention in the hope of improving lives and Conservatives favor use of government only for police and the military — the only areas where fears of others are greater than the fear of government itself?
And what does it mean when we consider this from a Buddhist perspective — where neither hope nor fear are virtues?
Grad Student said:
JimWilton,
Your thesis that conservatives are more driven by fear than liberals is supported by this psychological study:
http://www.denverpost.com/politicswestnews/ci_10503487?source=bb
Thill said:
Fear can be and is rational in certain contexts. Wouldn’t you be afraid if someone told you to give up your home, family, and livelihood for the sake of the “Promised Land”?
Given the complexity and uncertainty inherent in contemporary social systems, proposals for radical change, offered with characteristically juvenile enthusiasm, ought to be treated with suspicion, skepticism, and rational fear of adverse consequences, rational fear given that the ways of getting things wrong with such attempted radical changes are much greater than getting things right.
skholiast said:
“the ways of getting things wrong …are much greater than getting things right.”
Which suggests that there are more ways to be irrational (in fear as in anything else) than rational.
But on second thought (thinking aloud, and dangerously veering off-topic), I wonder if this is really true. Irrationality was itself championed — still is sometimes — as a kind of liberation from the same-old-same-old of boring, boring status quo reason. But if there are very few ways to build the Eiffel Tower, and many many ways for a pile of steel girders to lie in the midst of Paris, still, the variations between all such piles are quite small compared to the difference between any or all of them and the Tower, balanced and rational looking over the metropolis.
Thill said:
Skholiast: “Which suggests that there are more ways to be irrational (in fear as in anything else) than rational.”
But it doesn’t follow from this that all fear is irrational or fear is irrational in itself. Further, it is patently false (although it may not be to those who labor under the delusion that fear is bad and that one can achieve a state in which there is no fear!) that fear is irrational. It is falsified by the way our bodies spontaneously respond to actual or perceived threats in the environment. Fear has a protective function. In fact, it is irrational not to fear a legitimate threat or danger. The consequences of absence of fear in the face of danger offer eloquent testimony to the wisdom of fear in many contexts. I was in the Grand Canyon last week. Guess what happens to those who have no fear of precipices there!
“Irrationality was itself championed — still is sometimes — as a kind of liberation from the same-old-same-old of boring, boring status quo reason.”
That sounds like “rational irrationality”, having reasons for behaving irrationally! Perhaps, it is the sort of rare specimen one finds only in “left wing territory”??? LOL
“But if there are very few ways to build the Eiffel Tower, and many many ways for a pile of steel girders to lie in the midst of Paris, still, the variations between all such piles are quite small compared to the difference between any or all of them and the Tower, balanced and rational looking over the metropolis.”
Yes, the fact that there were so many ways in which things could have gone wrong and did go wrong in the building of the Eiffel Tower is part of the reason we consider it a technological marvel for its time.
This implies that we ought to proceed with caution in the face of proposals, submitted with juvenile enthusiasm, for building any technological marvel. This is a commonplace of technology.
Only fools try to tamper or tinker with complex appliances, especially when they have a malfunction, based on rudimentary knowledge or cookbook instructions. There is a good reason why we call on experts to fix such problems.
Societies are incredibly complex. So, left-wing juvenile enthusiasm for radical change is more likely to produce mess and disorder and end up creating a state of affairs much worse than the status quo. Just take a look at the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, the Maoist revolution, and Pol Pot’s “revolution”.
It is sheer inanity to think that a proposal for change must be necessarily good. Change can make things much worse. Hence, all proposals for change must be considered carefully.
Amod Lele said:
One might be able to run with a distinction like this, but only if one adds your important Buddhist caveat that neither hope nor fear are virtues. Communism, it seems to me, was driven above all by hope – and that includes every single Stalinist perversion. It was not fear that drove Pol Pot to his massacres, it was the hope that the world could be a dramatically different place, a place where everyone was completely equal and nobody tried to buy and sell their way out of it.
Thill said:
“Buddhist caveat that neither hope nor fear are virtues.”
Well, I think Buddhism is dead wrong here or incoherent. Buddhist practice hinges on hope, hope that the practice of the eightfold path will lead to the end of suffering, hope that the performance of benevolent acts will lead at least to rebirth in higher realms. Prayers to Buddhist deities or Bodhisattvas involve hope or expectation that the prayers will be answered, and so on. Hence, it would be incoherent to have all this and yet deny that hope is a virtue.
The distinction between rational and irrational hope is important to consider here. Rational hope is rational expectation, expectation which has a high probability of fulfillment. Irrational hope is expectation whose fulfillment is improbable. Rational hope is certainly a virtue.
The same sort of distinction applies to fear. In other recent posts, I have pointed out that it is absurd to think fear in itself is bad or irrational. There are contexts in which fear is rational and protects us from danger.
One could argue that Buddhist “soteriology” rests on fear of rebirth and its attendant sufferings, fear of life itself.
If you aren’t afraid of delusion, suffering, rebirth, etc., what would motivate you to seek to escape from or overcome all that?
The classic episode in the Buddha’s life when he saw old age, death, etc., for the first time testifies to the fact that he was overcome not merely with fear, but mortal dread at the sight of those things. And this fear or dread of the ills of mortal life played a key role in his decision to seek a way to overcome those ills.
Therefore, fear is rational and good in certain contexts.
JimWilton said:
Thill, while your response is understandable, it confuses the relative and absolute in Buddhist thought.
In Buddhist thought, enlightenment is not a state that is achieved. It is a realization of what already exists by a process of seeing through delusion.
The traditional analogy is that an ordinary person sees a rope coiled in the corner of a dark room and experiences fear, thinking that it is a snake. That is samsara and suffering. On the path, there are many skillful and compassionate methods for dealing with suffering. Some of these do not get to the root of delusion but still relieve the suffering, at least temporarily. For example, if someone were afraid of a rope, thinking it is a snake, you could lead them out of the room and the fear would go away. This would be a skillful means on the relative level and it would be appropriate to say, in this context, that hope exists and is a virtue to the extent it relieves suffering. You might say, “I hope that I can help you escape the snake.”
On the absolute level, there is no hope and fear because delusion is seen through. To use the analogy, if we were to turn on the light in the room the rope would be seen as a rope. In that brightly lit room, it would be ridiculous to say “I am afraid of the snake” or “I hope I can escape the snake”. Having seen clearly that there is no snake and that there never was a snake, not only is there no fear and hope at that moment — but one understands that even in the dark room there was nothing to hope or fear. So neither hope nor fear are virtues from the point of view of enlightened mind (the bright room) or samsaric mind (the dark room). Hope and fear are simply errors — a case of not seeing clearly.
Thill said:
Ah, Jim, you wave that Buddhist magic wand of “relative vs. absolute” to eliminate all quandaries facing Buddhist claims. But that wand is itself a product of confusion!
Pl. explain what you mean by “relative level” and “absolute level”! Further, assuming that this notion of “absolute level” is intelligible, pl. explain how anyone can have access to it and how to know whether someone is “fibbing” or “BS-ing” about what holds true at this “absolute level” or whether they are making true statements.
I would be really grateful if you were to do this. Thanks in advance.
JimWilton said:
Thill, your question is a very good one. essentially your question is “Does enlightenment exist?” or the related question “Even assuming that enlightenment exists, how can we trust that a teacher is speaking from experience and not bullshitting us?”
The first response has to be that we don’t take someone else’s word for it. We each are alone and it is essential for each person to test the teachings based on our experience. Someone else’s enlightenment doesn’t do us any good — we have to experience for ourselves.
Shakyamuni Buddha’s first teaching was actually a failure. He met someone on the road and engaged them and essentially told them “I am enlightened”. The person didn’t believe him, said he was crazy and left. After that, he traveled to Deer Park and taught the truth of suffering and the rest of the four noble truths. These are the teachings that provided an entrance onto the path for ordinary people living in the world.
The path from that point is a path of gradually developing experience and confidence. Each stage of the path unwinds assumptions and concepts that were useful at a previous stage but that become a hindrance going forward. So, for example, at the beginning of the path thoughts seem very solid and the mind is speedy — the practitioner may be suffering as a result of thoughts: “I am unsuccessful in my career”, “My mother loves my brother more than me”, “I am too fat” — whatever. The nine stages of resting the mind in shamatha practice allows thoughts to settle and the practitioner begins to see thoughts as mental events that are not solid or permanent. This allows some relaxation. The next insight may be that valuing peaceful or thought-free states of mind is itself a thought. So gradually the meditator becomes more accommodating of whatever occurs in the mind — neither indulging habits of mind like aggression or desire nor rejecting them.
After a lot of hard work, the meditator becomes more comfortable in his or her own skin. He/she begins to realize that the concept of progress on the path is itself a concept that doesn’t have intrinsic existence. At this point, there can be a giving up that yields a glimpse of emptiness. Then, after that, the path goes forward — still working with lack of awareness and problematic habits of mind. The path here begins to open up as well and becomes less about personal progress and achievement. There may be more of a curiosity about what others are experiencing — even a sense that one can be helpful sometimes.
Your second question — how do I trust the teacher? — is also very important. The experiences of others either through books or through oral teachings can be very helpful on what is necessarily an individual path. Books are helpful, but they can’t address individual circumstances. Relative teachings are very situation specific. You have teachings that seem contradictory — but that make sense in context. Even in folk wisdom, you can have sayings such as “Look before you leap” and “He who hesitates is lost” that can only be understood and put into practice in context. Books tend to be less helpful in understanding these types of contextual teachings. And sometimes it is good just to get some practical advice or encouragement — if there is a teacher that you have come to trust.
However, selection of a teacher has to be done with care. Books like “Words of My Perfect Teacher” advise on the approach. It is best to take your time and listen without accepting or rejecting — testing what the teachers says against your experience.
Part of the problem is that it takes some trust to begin the path — because you can’t see the end from the beginning. Most often the trust is something that develops over time. At first, the student may see qualities of the teacher — confidence or relaxation — and may have some trust that these qualities can be developed through meditation practice. It is not necessary and, in fact, can be a problem to blindly accept broad theoretical concepts as truth. But it can also be a problem (at least as far as the Buddhist path is concerned) to reject Buddhist teachings that you don’t understand as bullshit. Because then the path never gets started. Of course, this is not a problem if you reject Buddhist teachings and then find another path that is helpful to you.
Thill said:
Jim, thanks for your response.
My first question was: What do you mean by “relative level” and “absolute level”?
My second question was: How do we know that there is an absolute level?
Neither of these questions is identical to “Does Enlightenment exist?”.
I look forward to your straightforward responses to my first and second questions.
JimWilton said:
This is my understanding. I am not the best source.
Relative truth is any statement that is comparative — where one concept or set of qualities is seen or understood only relative to another concept. This is easy to see, for example, with a quality such as “large”. “Large” exists and can be understood as “true” only in a relative sense — a mouse is large compared with a flea — but small compared with an elephant.
Relative concepts include concepts of relative morality (good v. bad), time (the concept of “present” is a relative concept), and many others (hot/cold, light/dark, ugly/beautiful, success/failure, existence/non-existence). Ideas of “self” and “other” are also relative concepts — because when you conceptualize “self” you must simultaneously conceptualize a concept of “other”. Relative truths are true — as far as they go. But the truth is situational; something that is relatively true has no intrinsic nature and is subject to change.
“Absolute truth”, when we speak about it, is a relative concept — we inevitably understand it as something different from and contrasted to “relative truth”. So it is helpful to remember that the concept is not “absolute truth” and that absolute truth is “beyond speech or thought.”
Your question “how do we understand if absolute truth exists?” is a very good question — but it is a question that comes from a relative reference point –because “existence” is a relative concept. So the best way to answer it (as frustrating as the answer may be) is that you have to experience it for yourself through meditation. The teachings that deal with absolute truth (such as Tibetan teachings on Dzogchen or Great Perfection) are all meditation oriented teachings.
Thill said:
JW: “Hope and fear are simply errors — a case of not seeing clearly.”
Very interesting claim, Jim, but nonsensical. Hope and fear are not in themselves beliefs or claims or perceptions. So, there is no possibility that they can be “errors”.
You could claim that hope and fear are always based on beliefs or perceptions and that these beliefs or perceptions are “errors”. But then you overlook, miss, or ignore my distinction between rational and irrational hope or fear. I have already given examples of rational hope and fear, hope and fear based on correct beliefs and perceptions.
Thill said:
Wait a minute! A perception can’t be an error either. Only beliefs or conclusions drawn from or based on perceptions can be errors depending on whether one perceived facts or illusions.
Thill said:
I no longer consider myself a “left-winger”. I am not a “winger” of any kind.
The right-wingers in America have produced a grotesque caricature and a Calibanesque mutant of classical conservatism, e.g., the conservatism of Hume, Burke, etc.
The left-wingers, the “secular priesthood”, are the descendants and inheritors of the Judeo-Christian religious prophets and their absurd, self-righteous, hypocritical, and pathological obsession with “remaking the world all over”!
In just the way, the religious believers and reformers prated on endlessly about “love” “compassion” and so on while continuing to lead narrow, ignorant, oppressive, and miserable lives, these left-wingers continue to prate about “equality”, “freedom” and so on while remaining trapped in their secular version of the “holier than thou” attitude and their rabid intolerance and rancor a la odium theologicum toward those who question or dissent from their quasi-religious beliefs and values.
You only have to say something critically thoughtful about racism or feminism or egalitarianism to rouse a “secular form” of odium theologicum and intolerance in them. One only need look at the politics of departments filled with such jokers to understand the gulf between what they profess and what they practice and the all forms of “intellectual and moral toxicity” which originate in that gulf.
A conservative stance, on certain aspects of human existence and society, may be eminently reasonable if only for one central reason: there are many more ways of getting things wrong than right!
Thill said:
“A conservative stance, on certain aspects of human existence and society, may be eminently reasonable if only for one central reason: there are many more ways of getting things wrong than right!”
I would add that if a social institution or practice has worked well, for the most part, over a significant length of time, then any proposal for radically changing it or abolishing it merits a skeptical approach. Juvenile enthusiasts for radical change like to harp on the imperfections of such institutions or practices, but unless one has succumbed to a religious or quasi-religious quest for an earthly version of “The Kingdom of Heaven”, the existence of imperfections does not justify the call for radical change or abolition of such institutions and practices.
What these proposals for radical change or abolition of existing social institutions and practices are likely to create or leave in their wake makes those imperfections pale into insignificance. Again, witness the aftermath of the French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution,the Maoist revolution, and Pol Pot’s “revolution”!
Count Sneaky said:
Your best blog yet from my point of view. It represents your growth and insight, not only of your own views and those given to you by the culture, but of those who do not approach such matters philosophically or technically. After all, they will affect your and my future more than you or I.
There is an enormous amount of fear now in the lives of ordinary people and the educated as well. It will not be allayed by appeaing to reason or philosophical positions. Fear is fear. The rich fear losing their positions and wealth, probably in that order. The poor fear losing whatever support systems they have managed to grasp. Those in the middle are probably the most fearful of all.
They are the most susceptible to the extremists on the right who promise a return to the “good old days.” As simplistic as it sounds, these are the people who vote and determine our future course. You have brilliantly set out the problem…To consider it from a Buddhist perspective requires thought not dismissal. It is valid in this discussion. I see no Fox-style diatribes here or nostalgia.
But, that is in the eye of the beholder. Very thoughtful post. My best.
Thill said:
We have a record number of raids and deportations in this “minority friendly” Obama administration. I dare say that those at the receiving end of the stick here have much to fear and legitimately so.
Amod Lele said:
Thanks, Count Sneaky. Fear is a tricky thing; while not a good thing in itself, some forms of it can be justified. Even good Buddhists are afraid that they won’t get far enough on the path in this lifetime, and waste this human birth. And if we grant that external goods are worth having (as political action usually implies), then it’s reasonable to be concerned that some of those goods will be lost. Indeed, the idea of the hedonic treadmill suggests that we are hurt more by losses than we benefit from gains, a point which can help underlie the literal conservatism I discuss in the next post.
Thill said:
Amod: “The iconic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who works 90-hour weeks in order to make millions – this seems like a right-winger’s model of a good human being. In my view, however, such a person is seriously deficient.”
The right-winger in America would respond that you are attacking a straw man. She would say that family relations and values, leading a Christian life, community service, etc., are also essential aspects of a “good human being”.
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Thill said:
Amod: “The self-made rich, even if they have come by their money entirely honestly, are not necessarily any better than the rest of us, and may well be worse.”
So, “the self-made rich” are not necessarily better than the self-made poor by way of gambling or drug addiction, or the drug lords, or American mercenaries in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the religious fanatics? That doesn’t sound plausible!
I find it curious that wealth, and not political or military power and domination, is typically the target of the left-winger. It tends to confirm my suspicion that the left-winger, or at least her rhetoric, is an offspring of a religious form of ressentiment against money and the wealthy. After all, it was a strange religious man from Nazareth who proclaimed that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man (rather than a politician or soldier!) to enter the kingdom of heaven!
Amod Lele said:
“The rest of us” here is a rhetorical flourish: referring not literally to all the rest of us (which, as you note, would be highly implausible), but to averages, the (perhaps mythical?) “regular guy.” Ceteris paribus, being self-made rich does not make you better. Plumb the depths of the worst of the rest of us, and you will certainly find those far worse than the average self-made rich person; likewise, find the worst self-made rich person and you’ll find someone far worse than the average Joe. (At the risk of going Godwin here, Hitler came from humble upbringings, to a position of wealth as well as power.)
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