It is interesting that we are all most sensitive to the flaws in others we can readily recognize in ourselves. A person incapable of sin, would be incapable of grasping on a human level how most people think. All of us are in constant flux, and what order we contain relates to the decisions we make, which themselves are invariably based on principles. If you act on impulse, the principle is that that is acceptable. If you act based on greed, it is based on the idea that having things is far better than not having things, and that the pleasures to be had from having things outweigh the pains of avariciousness, such as the objectification of experiences and people.
As I have often argued, morality is simply a technology for optimal fulfillment in life, when it is understood properly. There is no need to reject in advance and in principle ANY human emotion: greed, hate, anger all have their places. To not feel them is to so curtail your possibility of emotional movement that you likewise curtail your innate capacity for fulfillment and joy. The grim sobriety of the stereotypical Puritan (who may in fact not have been so grim, but that’s another discussion) is not Goodness at all, in my view.
Where negative emotions become malignant is when they become permanent parts of your personality. If you are always angry, or always jealous, that is a manifest sign of a character flaw, something in you which holds on to things, and which in so doing lessens your ability to generate emotional satisfaction. This is the grasping–tanha, if I’m not mistaken–of the Buddhists.
In my own view, evil begins with self pity, and self pity cannot be understood except in a social context. Animals do not feel self pity. They feel pain, which something completely different.
It is for this reason that I view the moral basis of Socialism as evil. It is a doctrine of envy. It is a doctrine of resentment.
There was a time when large numbers of people were going hungry, and lived in cold, leaky homes, where they often died before their time of preventable illnesses. The claim made by Marx was that this would get worse and worse, until such time as they rebelled. The claim made by the followers of Adam Smith was that increasing quantities of wealth would be generated, such that over time all such suffering would be alleviated.
Self evidently, the Capitalist school of thought was right. Our poor live better than most kings did 200 years ago. They have heated homes, shelter from the elements, more than enough food, access to medical care (Medicaid goes back to the 60’s), and quite frequently cell phones, TV’s, and even cars.
Thus, the Socialists are not critiquing a system which is causing unnecessary suffering. They are invoking ENVY–the idea that we should be angry that results are not spread evenly–to criticize the system. Socialism is a solution, then, to an emotional dysfunction. It is rotten in its core claim to relevance.
It is not an economic doctrine. Marxism was an economic doctrine, and it was wrong. Marx failed to account for the unlimited human capacity for creativity. Every year, we do more with less. Garbage, nuclear waste, pollution: these are technical problems, not philosophical problems.
As I have said a number of times now, it was the MERCANTILISTS who invented the idea that wealth was limited, and that one man’s gain was NECESSARILY another man’s loss. This idea was WRONG. I don’t know how else to put it. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
Adam Smith, a radical liberal in his day, offered up the only theory proven to make EVERYONE richer. The only alternative is theft, and that is the solution of empire, and Socialism, which do diminish others in the process of enriching the few.