Stupid people, dishonest people, mean people and tedious people are so commonly encountered now that one needn't wonder about the difficulty of finding good company. Especially since obnoxious people tend to be louder, drowning out the presence of the decent, polite and thoughtful.
It would help a lot if people would stop believing that they have to have an opinion on absolutely everything, especially things they know little about, and that their unsupported and unthoughtful speculation, which they now expect to be treated with the deference due holy writ, has value well beyond the careful study and experimental knowledge of experts in the field simply because they believe it fiercely.
They believe everything fiercely. To question any of their conclusions is not short of a slap in the face to them. The less thought and study has gone into their certainties, the more vehemently they insist on them.
Never mind that the intensity of their belief means nothing at all. You can be, in fact are likely to be, very sincere, and very sincerely wrong. As the man who thought he had invented the parachute could tell you, if he hadn't made a mess of himself at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. The more sure you are, the more wrong you can be.
Dishonesty and stupidity are, of course, frequently found in the same person, as stupid people will lie to justify their stupidity, and dishonest people often behave stupidly because they have come to the point where they believe their own lies.
The World has more than its quota of dishonest people who will disregard facts entirely whenever it is to their temporary advantage to do so. We have created a culture where telling the truth is almost unthinkable – everyone is expected to be “selling their brand” at all times. Entire industries exist for no purpose other than “spin,” the use of lies and dishonest representation to advantage. Useful lies, and liars can be bought, and the more money you spend, the better the lies and the liars, and the more completely the lies are promulgated.
This isn't seen as nefarious. The intentional misleading of the consumer or the voter isn't considered blameworthy, or morally perfidious, it is considered “good business.” People are admired for their talent in falsehood. People well known to be professional liars are constantly put before the public, and asked to lie in an entertaining way. They do so, in such a way as to advantage those who hire them to lie. And they are made wealthy and famous thereby.
The result of this is that almost no one knows what's really going on. The lack of candor, and the relentless “spin” has discredited the idea of truth itself. We are doing a massive experiment, with ourselves as the experimental subjects, in whether one can have a democracy, in a republican form of government, where the voters, and most of the decision makers, have no reference to the actual facts or the realities of the situation. Can you do democracy wearing a blindfold?
The answer is that you probably can. For awhile. You might successfully walk across a highway wearing a blindfold and noise canceling headphones. Maybe you could do it twice. But eventually, reality is going to impose itself. Telling yourself that the truck that scatters your guts across the street is “fake news” isn't going to change the situation.
Meanness is born of fear and arrogance. Cruelty is never a sign of strength; it is invariably a sign that the cruel person or institution has a deep and abiding fear that motivates them to ruthlessly oppress and punish. It is an imitation of strength – a desperate attempt to intimidate those who, you suspect, are capable of bringing you down, exposing your lies, forcing you to confront your errors.
But, as often happens in decadent societies, meanness and cruelty are lauded and considered “clever” Popular comedy consists, in large part, in mockery without wit, sarcasm without intelligence, and vulgarity without art.
Late capitalist management leverages fear of economic displacement, and squeezes the most vulnerable workers the hardest, demanding more and more productivity for less and less recompense and security. This is considered “good business,” and justified by “shareholder value,” as if getting the maximum return for simply owning things was a moral principle – in fact the only moral principle relevant to the decision making class. They have said, publicly, that they have no duty to society or the common good whatsoever, that their only “duty” is to make as much money for their shareholders (and those making these decisions are almost always major shareholders) as quickly as possible, and damn anyone, including their own employees, or the communities they operate in, that gets in the way.
There's a word for this “all for me, and I don't care who gets hurt, or how much damage it does” mindset. It's called “avarice,” and it was once numbered among the seven deadly sins. In the “Divine Comedy,” Dante finds the avaricious in the fourth circle of Hell, punished by constantly striving against each other in a ditch, so mangled by this constant combat that they are unrecognizable. Perhaps this is why the avaricious spend so much time and money on their public image, since their constant striving renders their real faces into something no longer recognizable as human. Anyone who can maximize profits by denying hungry people food, or sick people medical care, perhaps no longer has a real, recognizably human face to show.
There's a reason you don't hear the word “avarice” very often. We have redefined it as “success.” We laud it. Hold those who practice it up as moral exemplars. We publish public rankings of the most avaricious, and they strive to rise in those rankings. We produce entertainments that consist of admiring the richest, most extravagantly wasteful, and the most ruthless.
Billionaires, of course, will always have their fanbois and simps. A group of people who are not, nor are they ever likely to be rich will rush to defend people who would impoverish and immiserate them for a nickle on their stock price. They will not cease screeching that “liberty” requires their beloved billionaires to behave however they wish regardless of social harm. But this is predictable behavior when a society measures success, and even moral worth by how tall your hoard becomes, and how much you have forced those less fortunate to carry for you.
Again, the experiment is underway as to whether a society can long endure that holds up the most anti-social of vices as a virtue, as the virtue, as success itself.
In the face of all this, many people have retreated into shallowness, unreflectiveness and predictability. They have no thoughts of their own, only a vague aversion to novelty of thought, or complexity. They actively avoid anything, be it thought, or art, or other challenge, and seek the familiar, the cliché, the utterly approved and uncontroversial.
The thought-terminating cliché, is the lingua franca of these people “Well, that's just the way it is...” or some similar familiar glurge, often given a religious tinge, “God is on His throne,” or “Karma will level things out.” This is simply a declaration of unwillingness to engage in serious thought, or to address a problem. It is the hymn of learned helplessness, the parable of the privileged who believe that the world's problems can't hurt them so long as they refuse to acknowledge the danger.
This is the palliative care of society as a whole. It is each person building their own hospice, in which they hope to be kept comfortable until they are safely dead.
As a consequence of all this – of the rot that infests society and the combination of vice and tedium that saturates public life, many people of worth have gone underground - avoiding public engagement or society. They stay at home, read, think, and hope that somehow this age of selfish decadence will exhaust itself. They avoid engaging with corrupt and corrupting institutions, shallow entertainments, and self-serving argument. It all feels worthless – because it is.
Unfortunately, this leaves public life bereft of those who might make engaging with it worthwhile. It impoverishes conversation, worsens art and politics, and deprives us of the social antibodies that would allow the social body to resist corruption and decadence.
To my mind, there is not much to be provided that has a chance to cure this metastasized social malady. It will have to run its course, until the game of illusion and manipulation shatters on some undeniable reality. A million dead from COVID didn't do it, so one can posit that some far worse disaster will be required to shake the survivors from their most beloved hallucinations.
I think, in the end, we've forgotten that all the good we've lived with didn't come to us by accident. The social capital we are relentlessly squandering was bought with effort, with devotion to duty, with a willingness to create and contribute to a greater good. It was not an accident brought about by an “invisible hand” with an ethos of “every man for himself.” The market never brought anyone the vote, or protected their civil rights. The market didn't free the slaves (it was quite happy to profit from human misery, as it always has been) nor did it allow women the right to vote, or allow people to marry whom their hearts chose.
None of these things were accidents. They were carefully considered by serious people who thought deeply and acted rationally to make the world better. And it is that facility – thinking clearly, understanding deeply, and proceeding rationally, that we have neglected and degraded. We worship lies that make us feel good, we laud wealth unfairly gained, and hoarded to our detriment.
The problem that faces us is that we refuse to face our problems.
Decadence is the elevation of vices to virtues. When it becomes widely held that selfishness, stupidity and dishonesty are good things – that they are to be admired, that society is decadent, and no civic virtue, no duty, no social cohesion can exist within its corrosive influence. Chaos and dysfunction increase, and the society falls into the hands of those who promise it strength, security and order, no matter the cost.
It bears repeating: Republics have survived defeat in war, disease, disaster and calamity. Not one has survived decadence.
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Another piece of thoughtful, articulate, objective observation, expressed with conviction and absent vitriol. An all too rare combination these days. Kudos to Kit for sharing!
Bob Shaw
Calgary, Canada
Another excellent piece, sir. You have the ability to convey and share my own thoughts and beliefs in a way that I cannot, and this I sincerely appreciate. It gives me hope in these awful times we live in. Bravo!