Amerika

We have plenty of people in this society who will treat Leftism as an ideology, but few who will view it as a pathology, or a compensatory behavior which becomes a crutch for those who need it to distract, deflect, and obscure a problem elsewhere.

For those who are new to all this, Leftism is the political form of egalitarianism, or the belief that all humans are equal or should be made equal. Equity is equality; you can only prove equality of opportunity by equality of outcome, so the two are one and the same.

Most modern philosophies are variations on egalitarianism. Marxism like other forms of socialism wants economic equality; diversity demands ethnic and genetic equality; feminism desires equality of the sexes. These naturally flow from demanding equality under the law.

Egalitarianism has been with us for the six thousand years of recorded history and has failed every time, yet remains enduringly popular because it eliminates social conflict. That is, when you tell everyone they are equal, they tend to leave you alone unless you are rich or powerful.

All of the ills of the modern era can be traced back to egalitarianism, but it is rarely found where the problem appears. Instead one must backtrack through a few levels of cause and effect to find the root issue, most of which relate to the basic mechanism of egalitarianism.

If you want equality between weak and strong, only one method presents itself. The weak cannot be made stronger, only subsidized until they have the same money and power for less performance, and this must be taken from the strong. Over time those are replaced, and soon the society grows weak.

Who wants to raise up the weak? If we assume that cause and effect are the same, we then assume that raising up the weak is not a device toward some other end. If there is one conspiracy theory about humans it is this: what they say they want is usually a justification for something else.

The weak do not need raising up; they will cheer for free money but forget an hour later. The strong are too busy doing things that make their lives meaningful. The people in the middle — somewhat weak, somewhat strong — are the ones who fear for their position.

To them, risk of losing social status is more important than the ability to achieve higher status since they do not fundamentally believe that they are going to rise to the level of great intellects, powerful warriors, or dynamic leaders. They simply want to hang on to what they already have.

At some level, your society either has transcendent unity or it falls into careerism. Transcendent unity is what you have when a few friends form a company to make the best widget ever. They like widgets, are excited about the idea of having a better one, and everyone shares this goal.

As time goes on, the same branching tendency that provides the variation that natural selection requires works to break up the group. Some adopt new goals, errors are made that reward the wrong people, and in response to many small crises the group adopts rules and procedures.

This means that at some point, the marginal costs — avoiding past errors, following procedures, addressing special interests — outweigh the dedication to that transcendent unity and the intangible goal behind it of making a better widget.

People get melancholy and self-pitying and settle for what they think can be easily achieved, instead of where they want to be. Everyone becomes a careerist, fulfilling the requirements of the job and the bosses instead of the necessary steps to reach a goal. Each time they do this, they feel worse.

Their psychology is one of narcissism, but it arises from a defensive sense of victimhood. Things do not seem right, therefore discontent spreads, and the merely anxiety-ridden join with the naturally malcontent to form a resistance movement whose goal is destruction of society.

These anarchists — let us call them what they are — come in all stripes of political views and social class. They are motivated by a desire to destroy social order so that it cannot judge them or, by rewarding competence, show them to be incompetent when they fail to achieve.

The motivating factor behind all this, individualism, means the individual first before all else, which means that everything else is a means to the end of the individual. We are using the philosophical definition here, not the vernacular, for greater precision.

Individualists see themselves as victims and the world is bad, so they treat the world as a whole that is separate from the self, taking the natural solipsism of intelligence into a phase of self-worship known as narcissism because it views the individual as the end and all else as a means to that end.

They are fatalistic because they do not believe the world is good or can be good, and this justifies their treatment of it as an enemy to be exploited and not an environment to which one adapts. They moralize rather than become realistic and see the opportunities present in life.

In this way, the core of Leftism is a pathology of a need to control: they desire safety from the possibility of being wrong, therefore choose the nice solid absolutes of socializing and moralism, and use that to exclude the world in order to keep what exists already in order to avoid striving toward what is not yet extant.

This returns us to the core of the Leftist psychology, namely confusing self with world. Instead of thinking that they are part of the world, they see the world as part of themselves, something that must be subjugated in order to feel good.

That explains the sadomasochistic nature of Control: those who control must enjoy the sensation of crushing others and become addicted to it because it is the only pulse of positivity they experience, like a quick injection of heroin and meth to make it through the day.

In the end calculus, those who are negative about the world fear it, and they enjoy crushing it and anyone who supports it because that act makes them feel better about their own defensive fatalism. A narcissist seeks to smash down everyone and everything else so only his will matters.

In this way the pathology of Leftism is like any other indulgence such as gambling, overeating, drug use, or wife beating. They have no hope for actual joy, so they are motivated by the momentary uplift that comes with a sensation of power, which requires harming others.

This pathology is not unique to Leftists, but Leftists legitimize it with egalitarianism, which while it seems to be collective is in fact union/insurance-style social subsidy for individualism, enforced by the crowd with dissenters removed for being heretics.

At its heart is the idea that “life adapts to me, not me to it.” This rejects the human condition of being subject to nature and God/gods, being not so much an absence of God/gods as a hatred of the reality which by existing makes faith seem possible and useful.

Leftism may arise from the older mental crutch in humanity. When we see the world is larger than us, we decide that it is bad for doing so, and therefore we should treat it badly so that we feel like we are winning against our oppressor.

In the end, by choosing a rejection of reality, all we do is move further from the state of mind that allows transcendent thinking. That line of thought enables both realism and an appreciation for intangible future-tense ideals like faith and culture.

Tags: collectivism, egalitarianism, fatalism, individualism, leftism, narcissism, pathology