We Can’t Be Nice About Any Of This Anymore

So the privileged are scared again because their privilege is threatened and they imagine that’s a threat to their comfort.  That’s where all this comes from, right, is this stupid zero-sum thinking where in order for me to have, you have to do without.  Some people, most of them simply mislead and others deliberately misleading, push that way of thinking to rationalize their own greed or self-interest above and beyond others. It’s uncomfortable for people who have defined themselves around a core creed to realize that it’s cruel and harmful, not only to those against whom it is directed but also against those who create it and perpetuate it.  They don’t want to change because it’s not comfortable and they think it means they’ll lose something.

That, my friends, is just too bad.  Those privileged folks are just gonna have to handle themselves, because if they continue behaving that way and treating the problem that way, they may just end up right.  Problem is, so will we all, again, and that crap has to end or we’re going to end.  So the traditionally privileged can just go find find those bootstraps they’re always telling the oppressed to pull themselves up by. Because the world is moving on, with them or without them.

The truly stupid thing is, it’s not even really “taking away” anything; it’s just making sure other people have access to the same opportunities and “rights” even if they’re *not* born into privilege &c.

Those people who are afraid they can’t compete on a level playing field rely on the power of their privilege to continuing to sabotage the game.

The problem is – and this is why I’ve been saying for years that “kumbaya liberalism is dead” – those same people have learned that they can manipulate the good nature of people who are decent.  They can claim injury where there is none, or ignorance that is really saccharine stupidity, and rely on The Good Guys™ to continue being gentle.

It’s time we faced the difficult reality that the long term result of that has been a lot of good, dead people and a lot of live crappy ones, and it’s quickly becoming an existential threat to the species.

As I’ve paraphrased Heinlein so many times: survival and propagation of the species is the only universal morality.  Ultimately, as a totality of human consciousness and existence, anything threatening that single universal morality will be eliminated, one way or another, just as happens with Darwinian selection for any other species, to the greatest extent that can possibly be exerted by that totality.

What makes that humane and ethically acceptable – or what defines the point at which it becomes so – is the effect of individual human will.  At some level, all else being equal, we can each choose to act in ways that benefit or detract from the universal morality.  “Lower” life forms don’t always have a choice about that.

In the US and other nations we’ve built entire systems that detract from the sole universal human morality, and we’ve insisted on treating the very things about those systems which detract from that fundamental drive to survive as though they are themselves required for our survival.

We have, rather than elevating and empowering human life, chosen to subjugate and restrict it for our own material benefit.

That has to stop, and we can either choose to stop it or the greater will of the collective species will absolutely act to stop it one way or another.