Once “they” convince you that all the suffering in the world is caused by one easily identifiable group of people (Oppressors) with all the advantages and all the power… people who are victimizing everyone else (the Oppressed) both personally and through the institutions they crafted for this very purpose… they have you.
It’s a lie.
People are complex, thus societies which are made up of many complex people are even more complex. Thus, the outcomes of those complex people interacting in a complex of people in a big mysterious natural world are also complex. Yeah, I know… what a bore.
Then comes the second big easy lie… if needed… though Useful Idiots (their term not mine) don’t usually need it. The first lie’s provocation of frustration and rage usually does the trick all by itself.
So… the Second Lie:
If we can just destroy all connection to the past, disrupt and then dismantle every institution, make life miserable for those kinds of people, punish those kinds of people, get rid of those kinds of people (Oppressors), then everything will work out wonderfully for everyone else (Oppressed) without even having to think about it further.
Which is good, because the preachers of the prevailing humanist worldview are really good at tricking people into giving them power and aid, but not very good at producing beautiful world. But let’s not think about that right now… just listen to John Lennon and let your imagination take you away.[1]
(Cue violins) It will be like a phoenix… we burn it all down, and a wonderful society without rules or limits or expectations, (Bring in a harmonica light and airy) a world without selfishness where everyone, (low thrumming bass darkens the mood as violin and harmonica drop to match it) freed from the pain of that old terrible world of inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, gender norms, marriage and family, agism, ablism, body negativity, greed and power acquisition, (Bass cuts, light drums bring us home as harmonica and violins soar) receives without effort an equal share in the bounty of this brave new world. (Cue wiping tears from the corner of your eyes as you gaze up to heaven from whence comes no help, for it is religion with all its bother about morality and ethics that caused all this pain in the first place.)
Sorry, Charlie.[2] (Cue the screech of snapping instrument strings and choking harmonica player) Life is complex. All things being equal, nothing is equal. Equality is a concept of value in personhood, not in outcomes. Men and women are not equal. Men are not equal to each other. A man is not equal to himself day to day or even morning to evening.
And poverty and dysfunction are not “caused.” They are the natural state of existence. All you have to do is nothing, and both will come on like a storm.
Prosperity and security and orderly world demand that we exercise mental energy in learning and planning and emotional energy in cooperation and self-sacrifice. They demand effort and push back against the selfish and lazy natural inclinations that come not from without, as if taking us prisoner, but from within. Since our own corrupt hearts are the source of world evil, beautiful world demands discipline, wisdom, moral restraint. But, again, that’s a lot of effort… it has a measure of complexity to it… not too much… since it can all be governed with a handful of divine principles… but enough to frustrate our love of big easy lies and our desire to instantly gratify our lusts, pride, gluttony, anger, sloth, envy and greed.
Yes, complex demands something of us. Complex means uncertainty. And we love unthinking certainty.
If you are just going with your gut in life, doing what feels good in the moment, they’ve got you already and you are a danger to yourself and to others.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] For those of you who haven’t listened to a single song on purpose that is older than last month, I reference John Lennon’s smash hit, Imagine. It is his anthem to humanism. “Imagine” envisions a world with “no possessions,” “no religion,” and “no countries”—concepts that resonate with Marxist and socialist ideals. He denies being a Marxist (which is a lie… a word game to keep himself relevant in the public eye of the time) but was a radical left wing activist who was intimately involved with other Marxist activists like the Red Mole collective rooted in the International Marxist Group (IMG), a British Trotskyist organization affiliated with the Fourth International, a global network of Trotskyist parties promoting Trotskyist politics, anti-imperialism, and revolutionary socialism. Trotsky was the right hand man of the communist revolutionary Vladimer Lenin whose Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government to which the Russian Czars handed power upon abdicating the throne, caused the deaths of some 14 million people, and laid the groundwork for another of his revolutionaries, Joseph Stalin, who according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist, historian, and dissident caused the deaths of some 70 million. So, yeah, don’t be fooled by smooth uplifting melodies and wishful thinking.
[2] Charlie is a big blue tuna from a commercial who is always trying to trick StarKist tuna company into using him to feed their customers… but he ain’t good enough… sorry Charlie.