This is not an easy subject, but a necessary one. Please accept my apologies for being unable to present it more comfortably. And I’ll be brief.
We in the West, and Americans in particular, have fallen into a very serious trap: a trap we’ve known so long and so well that we accept it as a fact of life.
To make this as clear as I can, I’ll state this problem in several ways. I’m quite sure you’ll recognize at least one of them:
-
- We require continual doses of bad news.
-
- We require outrages to react to.
-
- Too long without some new evil to oppose and we become deeply uncomfortable.
-
- Condemning bad things makes us feel righteous.
The bottom line is that we’ve become unable to feel righteous, except in contrast to evil. That is simply the model nearly all of us have matured within.
This is not a Biblical model, by the way, even if we mix it with Biblical terminology. According to St. Paul, our righteousness is from God, which we have by virtue of being “in Christ.” Jesus wanted us to “do the things I say,” like loving one another, practicing the golden rule and bearing fruit. Moses gave Israel ten commandments to keep personally, and stopped there.
The golden rule, of course, is the best model of morality in practice anywhere, among religious people or otherwise, and it has absolutely no slot for an enemy. Rather, it rests entirely upon self-reference.
The enemy addiction, on the other hand, exists only in relation to external points of reference.
So, a fixation upon enemies isn’t essential or optimal; it’s simply a trick that generates good feelings, fast and cheap. And however used to it we may be, it is not helping us.
For one thing, this addiction breaks our long-term relationships with better things. When good things come along (as they do in even the worst conditions), we welcome them at first, but rather quickly become bored with them. Soon enough we crave more bad news and let the good news be pushed aside.
In other words, our bad news addiction won’t let us hold good news; we’re unable to maintain our focus upon it.
Perhaps even worse, the bad news addiction won’t allow us to build and hold visions of a better future, which we require to move forward with any consistency. “The good place we’re going” can’t maintain a prominent position in our minds, since our model of righteousness requires an enemy to condemn.
I have no intention of continuing on this subject, by the way, but I think it’s worth keeping in mind rather than tossing away. So, here’s a final restatement:
Without an enemy firmly in view, our righteousness deflates. Thus unmoored, we are compelled to find yet more bad news.
And so we are addicted to our enemies. We need to get out of this cycle, and we are quite able to do so.
**
Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com
Perhaps I am entirely missing your point, but since reading this post I have been struck by several things that just won’t let go. Since time is short, one must say what one needs to, when one has the opportunity…
I have spent my adult life largely watching for, and responding to, bad news. As a child of the 70s, I noticed very early on the terrible things being done, and most importantly where those things would lead, while those most able to prevent or affect them, ignored them. As long as there are distractions, reality needn’t be addressed.
Recall the Monty Python sketch, just filler really, between segments; announcements of upcoming programs on the BBC–“And at 9:30, there will be a discussion of international affairs hosted by Sir Michael Palley. For those uninterested in international affairs, there is sport”– or to that effect.
In short, a major part of my life has been spent trying to understand why the world around me looks the way it does, and how it got to be that way, and how the various processes that led to those outcomes operate, and who owns them, and on and on. At first, it was nuclear war. Turns out it is still nuclear war, but there are many other things with which we are beset, and most people are content to do anything else rather than face how dreadful our predicaments are. And they are many, and coming closer.
I would suggest that watchfulness and vigilance are of utmost importance, and those things do not necessarily bespeak an addiction to bad news. However unpleasant, they are necessary. This seems a facet of the old Lovecraftian dilemma: Do you prefer knowledge or sanity? Choose!
As the troubles have mounted, a greater degree of attention has been demanded, if one is to remain abreast of events and subsequent developments. We have, through our vigilant stance, been able to evade certain outcomes that caught the inattentive, especially during the covid nonsense. This was possible because we noticed the bad news, leaving the good news for those who needed to hear it.
I am not saying I disagree with you, it is only that there are these other considerations that must be accounted for. Again, I fully expect to be told I have missed your point, but thought perhaps a chance at clarity would be worth this display of my ignorance.
I understand, Mike, but the details of the present mayhem are not worth our all. We are much more than that.
If our self-image is maintained only in relation to negatives, we are trapped forever in a fixation on negatives. What we need rather is a positive sense of righteousness: one that is self-supporting, open and durable.
Peace.
I suspect we are talking about two different things, then. There are a lot of very angry people around these days, and their distress seems to be mostly driven by a lack of understanding. Without clear knowledge, well, you will default to your training, and your training says to lash out if nothing else makes sense…
This is distinct from a quiet watchfulness, a vigil that necessarily must, to be effective, rely on a more impartial assessment of what is sometimes dire news.
Perhaps the difference is the degree of personal control being exercised, and the reduced emotional investment needed to dispassionately assess current events.
You’ve given me a great deal to consider. My thanks are genuine.
My pleasure, Mike. 🙂
Excellent point! The best life is lived, not in opposition to others, but in working and trading with others when possible, and disconnecting more than fighting when not possible. Anger and self-righteousness are addictive drugs, and everyone has experience their thrill, but they lead to nothing good for either the angry person or the objects of anger. Self-defense is moral, but conflict should never be sought.
Thanks, JdL.
Right on. Hate is poison, but we have been fed poison for so long we’ve come to like the taste, whether in food or ideology. Just try to take away someone’s high fructose corn syrup, or their cell phone, and see how they react.