Amerika

Liberalization as a process refers to the relaxing of rules, mores, and standards so that the individual is more important than social order. It is the individualism adopted by contented and oblivious populations.

Liberal values, on the other hand, reflect a social outlook that rewards openness to ideas both “new” (which very rarely are) and old. The core of liberal values is the idea of human thriving, or the best, most pleasurable life for each of us.

The Right embodies liberal values but only by rejecting liberalization. We recognize that good results come out through realism, or paying attention to how the world works, instead of trying to defy it.

Your ancient Kings, the ones who brought us out of the dark ages before Muslims, Mongols, religious wars, plagues, and egalitarianism (spit) dragged us down, also believed in this liberal value of human thriving.

That is, they wanted the best for everyone, as much as is possible given what we know of reality. They wanted the human species as a whole to achieve its greatest heights and pleasures. They wanted to improve the quality of living.

To do so, however, they had to stop believing in exceptions. They had to stop worrying about the few people who might fall through the cracks. They designed society to lift up the good, and let nature worry about everyone else.

They focused on the normal and healthy and pushed aside concerns for the ailing, failing, flailing, and wailing. Was this moral and just? The Left would say no, but realists say you must focus on the healthy in order to survive.

In the same way, for our species to achieve human thriving we have to avoid certain emotional traps. You can waste your life trying to lift up the poor; in reality, they either find a way to survive or not, and all you can do is muddle things.

A realist sees that diversity is a terrible thing. A Leftist, thinking with social emotions and peer pressure, knows that everyone wants to hear that everyone is accepted, therefore endorses diversity as a symbol even though it fails in reality.

It seems cruel to tell the poor that some are born to sweet delight and some are born to the endless night, but natural selection is cruel like that. So is morality: some are born good, and some are born bad, with most in the middle.

Our social emotions — the pretense through which we view ourselves as we believe we are seen by others, and therefore, how we sell ourselves to others and raise our status — reject the idea of sealing off the rest of the world.

After all, cries out the lonely ego, can you not see that these people are starving? They live in poverty, violence, corruption, filth, and dysfunction. We should help them!

The realist says that if they cannot help themselves, they are content with their state, or are building up the will to change it. We cannot do it for them. In fact, to do so is cruel because it robs them of agency and triumph.

In the same way, what makes people poor? A combination of low value labor, no productivity outside of a job, alcoholism and drugs, lack of family units, and personal behaviors which suggest mental health problems.

No one can fix those but the afflicted. Not all of them can fix those. There will be some casualties. Life includes sadness, and natural selection means that not every bunny comes home at the end of the night.

The ego shrieks out, “But what if I were the person suffering?” If you were, you would find a way to fix it like you have fixed every other problem in your life. If not, you would perish from lack of being useful.

It seems horrible, racist, bigoted, classist, chauvinistic, and sexist to say that we need social hierarchy and specialized roles for women and men. Yet, if this works better than adversarial relations, does it not improve human thriving?

It seems sadistic to say that our nations should consist of one ethnic group only and be self-sufficient so they can isolate from the rest of the world. However, no one is happy in diversity as it is, and isolation lets each group rule itself.

Some things do not have monetary value. Autonomy, efficacy, pride in one’s own ability, control of the future of your people, and ability to have a culture continuous to your own roots that gradually improves in quality have value of their own.

Our society now works under the assumption that its goal is to protect humans from conflict and doubt, so that people can live in a state of warm fuzzy feelings. This also protects them from having control over their own lives, and makes them weaker and sadder.

Those who like human thriving are able to separate method and goal just as they are able to split cause and effect. Our methods may not look kind, but if they make saner, more spirited, healthier, and more contented people, they are far kinder than the kinder-seeming plans that lead to a negative, disspirited existence.

Tags: human thriving, liberal values, methods versus goals