So, of course, we are going to experience fear and nervousness. Faced with external circumstances that we judge to be bad, we can't help but to be frightened and apprehensive. 'Please God,' we say, 'relieve me of my anxiety.' Listen, stupid, you have hands, God gave them to you himself. You might as well get on your knees and pray that your nose won't run. A better idea would be to wipe your nose and forego the prayer. The point is, isn't there anything God gave you for your present problem? You have the gifts of courage, fortitude, and endurance. With 'hands' like these, do you still still need somebody to help wipe your nose?A certain eloquence has been lost. Today we'd say to "man up" or something similarly terse. Then again, brevity is the soul of wit, so maybe we have a leg up on ol' Epictetus. Whoever gives the superior delivery of the message, it is indeed the same message. Why cry out for aid for a manageable problem? It seems there are generally two types of philosophy, which either promote internal or external salvation. The stoics were clearly of the former type - to the extreme. Jesus taught personal salvation, and the early Church did as well. Later, the Church drifted toward external salvation. In the late medieval period redemption meant buying indulgences. We consider that period to be a corrupt era for the Church. Because they were profiteering? No, it has always been a profit venture. It's because they lost sight of Jesus's directions for internal salvation, in favor of more earthly pursuits. It was precisely that corruption which Luther protested. Doesn't he sound a lot like Epictetus? 'Listen, stupid, you possess a copy of the Good Book yourself, why do you pay the priest to spoon feed it to you?' (Luther was only made possible by Gutenberg.)
Our Founders shared a similar sentiment. 'We pretty much govern ourselves, why do we need a king?' The stoic mindset was not universally held by the colonists, many of whom lobbied the king incessantly for protection from the French. (The king would then try to levy a tea tax to pay off their war debts incurred by the French & Indian War, and we know how that went.) The great success of early America was that the stoics won out. Their philosophy would guide the new federal form of government. Why empower the central government to solve problems that can be handled at a lower level? Note that the term 'federal government' as used commonly today is a misnomer, and we should stop abusing the term. Like the Church of the middle ages, our guiding principles have morphed from internal to external salvation. Look at all the effort focused on
The great tyrannies and backwater nations through history have in common a focus on external salvation. It's an interesting paradox, but focus on internal salvation tends to create worldly success, and vice versa. The Aztecs were likely to brutally murder your children on a public altar in the hopes that gods would grant salvation for the sacrifice. The fascists promised glory if they could construct an all-powerful nation-state. The communists promised deliverance from life's woes by a powerful ideological state. The promise is always the same. We can solve all your problems, if you'll just grant us the power to do so. It's the temptation of the devil, and it occurs over and over throughout all of human history.
Epictetus describes the people of his era as crying to the gods - an external power - to save them from their inner turmoil. The people of today are no different; they merely cry out to a different religion. Today, salvation is sure to be had by the virtues of diversity, inclusivity, and equity, which only a powerful state can champion in the face of opposition by evil, right-wing bigots. Their anxiety is imposed on them by external circumstances, so they seek an external solution. They are quite certain their problems result from oppression by white straight men, so they seek to leverage the state to combat their alleged tormentors. Even more, they see their external circumstances as being the work of backwards rubes who oppose "progress." The mere existence of such rubes is a cause for anxiety, and they implore outside powers to grant them safe spaces. If the mass media cartel doesn't exclude conservatives from the public forums, then they are guilty of inflicting anxiety on the progressives. Inclusivity requires a high level exclusion.
Wouldn't their anxiety be cured by state-run healthcare? Surely, a bad health diagnosis is a valid concern for anxiety in any era, but particularly in our environment where personal bankruptcy is a likely outcome. We see that their response is the predictable one. Grant the central government even more power to solve the problem which it has only managed to make worse. Take the devil up on his offer. All other possible ailments - unemployment, homelessness, low intelligence, low pay - can all be remedied, if we just empower the state to take the resources it needs.
What the various entities of the leftist alliance all have in common is that they offer the devil's bargain. Bernie Sanders was the most obvious. Elect me to power and I will solve all your problems, which have been imposed on you by the 1%. Hillary Clinton isn't really a liberal but a power-hungry aristocrat who promised - to the extent she offered anything - elect me and I'll destroy the evil bigots. In general, they say pray to me and I'll relieve your anxiety. It's tempting to say that the conservatives offer the same promises, only differently. Perhaps that was true in the Bush/neocon era, when we were promised protection from "evil-doers" in exchange for some civil liberties and an expansion of the security state. But Trump did not make the same promises. He didn't promise to solve anyone's personal problems (and certainly not to cure their anxiety), but to fix a broken government that doesn't enforce its own immigration laws, makes terrible trade deals, and overtaxes & over-regulates the populace. Fix your feelings? Not even close. Those who protested his promises to reform the government were encouraged to "go home to their mommies." In Trump's America, there is no external salvation. He'll fix the government, but you have to deal with your own problems yourself.
The victimhood culture is nothing new. It is exactly what annoyed the stoics too. Epictetus was born into slavery, and banished - along with all other philosophers - from Rome by the emperor Domitian. More than any SJW alive today, he could have bemoaned his oppression by the privileged class. Instead, he adopted the mindset of self-reliance and made himself into one of the great philosophers of antiquity. It is interesting to note that the stoics arose during late Rome in response to the endemic softness and hysteria of the people. Their movement was not sufficient to prevent Rome's decay or the coming centuries of chaos and darkness. We find ourselves at what is probably late-stage America. I wonder if stoic philosophy is a typical reactionary response to the social decay of the late imperial stage. And more, I wonder if it has ever been successful in staving off collapse.
No comments:
Post a Comment