Monday 2 October 2017

"Let's leave my despicability to one side..." Jacob Rees-Mogg meets a moron

One of the outstanding features of modern politics...

...is the major role played by what Jung called the "Shadow". Our shadow consists of that in ourselves which we loathe and try to deny (to others and to ourselves). Because we deny these aspects of ourselves, we can't come to terms with them, and therefore (to lapse into jargon) we are unable to "integrate" them: instead, we project them onto others - often loudly, hysterically and without any evidence for doing so.

I suspect that's what's fuelling the fury of Jacob Rees-Mogg's interlocutor in the above exchange - and what fuels so much of the irrational, hate-filled rhetoric of political and religious extremists. It's no accident that so many home-grown Islamic terrorists turn out to have led rackety lives full of booze, drugs, petty crime and pornography (and, in many cases, go on doing so even after thumbing through their recently-purchased copy of Islam for Dummies). It's much easier to blame the temptations resulting from the personal freedom offered by Western liberal democracies for one's own moral failings - Western societies and the vast mass of Westerners who are able to resist the myriad self-destructive temptations on offer (well, most of the time) are wicked, not the terrorist. 

Similarly, I suspect that many of the slogan-screaming, placard-waving SJWs who spend their every waking hour accusing the majority of their fellow-citizens of being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, uncaring, greedy and selfish are desperately trying to bury aspects of their own psyches by projecting them onto those around them. How else to account for political extremists' tendency to demonstrate precisely those sins of which they accuse others? Nobody is quite as full of hate as SJWs accusing conservatives - in fact, anyone who doesn't agree with everything they say - of being full of hate; the anti-white racism of Black Lives Matter supporters is jaw-dropping, anti-Semitism seems to be de rigueur amongst anti-racism protesters, and the liberal left's attitude to blacks strikes me as grotesquely patronising; and, from everything one has seen and read, the Antifa "movement" seems to be full of fascists determined to impose their world-view on others by banning free speech, seeking to destroy the lives of those they call fascists, and seeking to overturn the results of democratic votes with intimidation, disruption and violence. All seems a bit fascist to me. 

Let's face it, there's nothing quite as lazy as blaming your own unhappiness on someone else. Sometimes, of course, it's justified - there are many people suffering because of genuine oppression and prejudice, governments often introduce derangedly stupid policies which destroy the lives of entirely innocent people (usually in the name of compassion, equality and justice), and, of course, in this life we sometimes find ourselves dealing complete bastards. But, on the whole, I reckon it would be much better for all of us if emotionally troubled people stopped trying to compensate for their own feelings of meaninglessness, worthlessness and inadequacy by angrily projecting their psychological demons onto the rest of us - especially as most of us have been adult enough to face up to our own demons, and to have reached some sort of accommodation with them - and instead sought the answer to their misery inside themselves. As a writer once said (I forget who - probably Will Self): "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/ But in ourselves..."

I try to keep Bible quotations to a minimum on this blog, but I really can't resist ending with this one:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Here endeth the lesson.

1 comment:

  1. While South Korea was undergoing its US - supported economic miracle of industrialisation there was, inevitably , vast environmental pollution.

    The beautifully - mannered and elegantly - tailored dictator in charge was , of course, blamed for the Victorian - style pea - soupers experienced by Seoul residents.

    Unfortunately, only elderly Koreans might remember the paleoconservative , Syngman Rhee's Smog.

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