Not concise, but in the right zip code, I feel.
Logically, then, indifference is NOT having the ability to see people as they are, but not caring.
If we define hate in advance as the opposite of love–which is an artificial, but not necessarily inaccurate or useless operation–then it would be “the insistence that individual people conform to specific cultural and behavioral patterns, regardless of their instinctive or affectual inclinations, capability, or intentions.”
What, in this definitional world, would be the proper relation of hatred and evil? Evil I have defined, in a definition I am comfortable with, as “A volitional character disposition in which one is unable to live happily on ones own, and takes pleasure in the suffering of others.”
If we consider confinement of others to be the chosen activity of those who are evil, as most conducive to the creation of suffering, then properly hatred is the affective method of evil. From a dark place–a relatively if certainly not absolutely unchanging place–a stuck place, devoid of growth or even the thought of growth–comes a means by which to achieve relative liberation through the vicarious experience of pain.
These are sketches I have done many times, but every time a small bit becomes more clear to me.
Let us consider global culture. Read and consider this article: http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/SamsG5.php
He reminds me of Ayn Rand without the organic dogmatism.
We can and should believe that human cultural evolution is possible, and that our task, at this moment, at this stage–indeed at every stage–is to figure out what’s next.
Human history is of course filled with governments growing larger and larger. When Europeans first arrived in North America, there were many hundreds of Indian languages and thousands–likely tens or even hundreds of thousands–of local governments, among peoples smaller in number across the continent than exist today in a large American city.
Now, in the continental United States and Canada, we speak one language in–say– 98% of the land mass, and 3 (add French and Spanish) in statistically 100%. We have one national government in America, 50 State governments, and perhaps several thousand county and municipal governments.
There are those who see in larger and larger government the evolution of humanity. There are many who see the imposition of a global government the next logical step. It will lead, they think, to the “rationalization” of resource utilization, the globalization of what they call “science” (which is to say the conflation of truth and the dominant narrative within the professional ranks of those we might call “the keepers of the truth”), and of course the eradication of wars between nations.
But no government can be more moral or more honest than the people who compose it, and if these people are morally and emotionally undeveloped–and in my view the atheism of most of them makes this inevitable–then the task becomes one of imposing conformity, and not liberating humanities creative instincts.
As defined, the task becomes one of evil expressed through hatred, and not goodness as expressed through love.
Consider this: between World War 1 and World War 2, there were approximately 40 million military deaths, which is to say soldiers killed in battle. If we add all the other wars together we might get 60-70 million dead.
There were approximately 169 million killed by various governments: https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF
This would include, as examples, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the famines caused by Mao and Stalin, and the widespread horrors perpetrated by the Japanese wherever they went, but most notably China.
THE definitional war in the 20th century was not the war between nation and nation, but between those running the country, and the populations under their control.
A global government would, self evidently, not prevent this sort of abuse. It would ENABLE it.
Consider Robert Redford’s character in the most recent Captain America. His logic is simple: kill the 20 million or so people capable of independent thought, likely to be leaders against a planned totalitarian regime, and unlikely to be bought off or scared into silence. Everybody else will follow like the sheep they are.
But if this is an acceptable means, by what criteria is war, itself, objectionable? What is the difference between right and wrong? What possible morality could justify such means, for such ends?
And if one looks at the history of central planning, it is at a minimum one which constricts individual freedom and choice, and practically always one which results in shortages and failures. People do not like to work in cages. They do not like being slaves. This is an instinctive and healthy response.
And if the response to this is brain washing, mass conformity, unity: of what value is human existence at all? Why make it more “efficient”, if it means nothing anyway? If growth is a chimera, and we have no more value than chipmunks?
No leftist can answer this question properly. Any intelligent person can use words and phrases for obfuscation, but the reality is that these people are sick at their cores. They are evil. They teach and express the hate implied by the universal cage, the same cage they live in. If they can’t be free, then neither can anyone else.
Again, if we return to my simple definitions, it is a morality of evil expressed through the violence of hate. Sade, as I say over and over, is who connects the abstractions of morally unhinged, emotionally sick, psychologically deranged people who embrace Leftism with the logical consequences of their obsession with conformity, which is to say the expression of evil through hate, which is to say the opposite of the goodness which instinctively seeks diversity, alterity, difference: love.
Let me propose this: the same possibility of a global government also creates the possibility of global CULTURE. In some respects this was the dream of the English. They did not just want to dominate the world, but also to Christianize and liberalize the world. In a great many places they went, they left behind the idea of democracy, of parliaments, of votes, of human rights. India is a (relatively: we will ignore for the moment the mass violence that attended partition) unified nation, and has a Prime Minister. We can argue the merits of this, but this is something the Indians are doing for themselves, and not something that Britain is requiring.
Global media creates the possibility for an organic spread of ideas like Goodness. This is my hope for the future. This is what motivates my work.
As I say in one of my essays, my hope is a world which values both diversity and empathy. My vision is a genuinely Liberal world which NEGOTIATES diversity, using certain universal principles including the idea of human rights, the notion that all humans are created equal before the law, and RESPECT.
Leftism rejects all of this. If you doubt me, simply try and have a civil conversation with a leftist on virtually any topic.
Everything has to start somewhere. Part of our problem is we are lost in reflective mirrors. How can I respect you if I don’t know who I am? How can you respect a ghost?
Who you are is what is left over time after you allow the free operation of three principles: 1) rejection of self pity; 2) perseverance; 3) perceptual breathing/motion.
These three principles will allow both motion and confinement. You have to have rules, a code, or you are nothing. At the same time, if you can only tolerate one way of behaving–which is the case for leftists and many Muslims–then you cannot grow as a person or a culture.
As I say, these principles create an interesting chaotic system, a sort of self-evolving etch-a-sketch.
And they WILL lead to growth if you set as a defining goal, a parameter, that of increasing the capacity to give and receive love. I would argue that learning to love (which will always include both giving and receiving) is an ontologically grounded principle reason for our existence, but this is not a necessary premise. I can say simply that you will be HAPPIER if you pursue this, and happiness is as good as any other reason in the room to exist.
As I have said in previous posts, you can pursue misery that is YOURS. I understand this. I do not reject it as a goal. But true love obviates the reasons a person would do this, and this can be particularly true if it is only your own love directed–“improbably, impossibly”, you say–at yourself.
Now, these are of course my own specific cultural forms. I am arguing for their UTILITY, which in my world more or less conflates with psychological truth, because as a map, they lead to the places you want to go, in my experience.
But the ESSSENCE of what I am trying to do is encourage other people to generate their own codes, their own principles. And even if you embrace mine, they are so wide reaching, that nearly anything is possible. But all of it will be good, or such is my hope, my dream.
That is enough rambling for now.
Be well.