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Tag: ethics

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    warning: limit outdoor activity

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    1–2 minutes

    This public service announcement flashing on the highway may be helpful, but for whom?

    Many people rely on outdoor jobs. Hardcore hobbyists, such as joggers, will keep their training regimen. State mandates may force schoolchildren to remain inside, while white-collar employees are already trapped indoors.

    To announce “limit outdoor activity” as a public health notice is perversely insulting and myopically idiotic. It suggests we have been provided with a way of life that includes options: a liberated self-directed agency (autonomy) that the vast majority of people do not possess.

    Most of us are already in cycles of stress management, joggers with exercise, and the rest of us with chemical addictions, now multiplied by the further exasperated teachers and frustrated parents harassed by pent-up students.

    Obviously, seeing the government’s well-wishing and valid information as a provocation is a sign of my own cynical cognitive distortion. I could take up jogging.

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    Confusing morality and law

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    The blurred boundary between spirituality, religion, and morals has been appended to the more secular concepts of ethics and law.

    Though distinct terms, we blend and link values, swapping and confounding terms until we have woven a shaky, contradictory moral framework: to be ethical (legal) is to be moral (personal), which is to follow a transcendent higher-good (religious/spiritual).

    Moreover, being legally traitorous is also morally sound given the law’s unethical nature (unjust, unequal convictions at differing rates for different people).

    Heck, to be moral requires rebellion, which is spiritual; ask Satan or the early Christians.

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    Ironies of Virtue Shifts

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    1–2 minutes

    Certain traits, such as pride and defiance, are seen as toxic, yet they established our nation.

    So… toxic, yet useful.

    In Christian morality, these virtues were always wrong, yet ignoring their role in establishing a nation that can be both religiously free and, paradoxically, demonize defiance and coerce submission from the prideful is a lesson in the drift of power into irony.

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    Technocrats Reshaping Sovereignty

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    We are witnessing a shift in political power. Sovereignty is moving away from traditional democratic systems and into the hands of a new elite, what might be called a "Humanitarian Party." This entity consists of "technical experts" and "moral authorities" from corporations, universities, media, and NGOs, who use their influence to reshape governance. (aka the "managerial elite.")

    Their legitimacy is based on the idea that they protect vulnerable groups—racial and sexual minorities, the immunocompromised, and others—whom they elevate as mascots of social programs driven by compassion. While these programs claim moral high ground, they centralize power in the hands of technocrats and bureaucrats, eroding common sense and traditional practices.

    As a result, the majority’s voice is increasingly sidelined in favor of the expert-driven rule, which expands managerial control and concentrates authority in a sprawling parastatal network.

    Like any infestation that becomes destructively parasitic, this transformation risks undermining democratic accountability while advancing a biased vision of moral superiority, which disguises self-serving motivation, all confounded with technical and linguistic arcana.

    from Matthew Crawford
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    How Technical and Moral Elites Reshape Sovereignty

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    Our political regime is transforming, with decision-making authority shifting from a constitutionally based majority (democracy) to a coalition of technical and moral elites (managerial and clerical overseers.) These elites support a state-like entity that expands through the “woke” revolution and the encroachment of technical expertise into daily life.

    Both movements (though seemingly unrelated) undermine traditional practices (meritocratic learning) and promote an anthropology of vulnerability (victimization mining). Thus, the oppressors and oppressed need help, justifying expanded managerial control and discrediting classic common sense. (i.e. You can’t manage yourself, what you know is wrong.)

    Power in both movements is centralized in the Humanitarian Party, encompassing corporations, media, universities, and NGOs. This coalition champions protected classes, but is using them to advance social control and empower a new class of social managers and political opportunists. (The compassion may be authentic, but converting the clients of recognition into mascots repositions marginalized people as shields and prybars for unscrupulous both machinators and the well-intentioned.)

    paraphrased from Matthew Crawford’s “Minoritarian Moralism“

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    Your democratic role: participant to witness

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    1–2 minutes

    As democracy wanes into managerial technocracy, with some celebrity cameos and oligarchic influence, we are offered the gift of becoming witnesses instead of full participants. We are not in "Survivor;" we are watching "The Bachelor."
    We are necessary as the voting audience, but we no longer need to involve ourselves in the messy moralizing, risky responsibility, or carry the burden of concern. Sit back, enjoy, or wring your hands, but please don’t disturb the show.

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    Character vs competence

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    1–2 minutes

    Confusion arises when actions (competence) are mistaken for ethical correctness (character).

    Excelling in tasks doesn’t inherently mean one is doing the "right" thing morally. High competence can accomplish great tasks, while solid character can be ineffectual, even detrimental.

    The confusion we encounter is twofold: those with skill rise to manufacture and undermine ethics, and those who fail repeatedly fall back on moral righteousness to claim a character that never existed.

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    moral panic: luxury morals

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    1–2 minutes

    Today’s discourse is typically moral panic, with a pinch of cherry-picked reality to support our side.

    The right perceives certain groups and individuals as destabilizing and prioritizes protection, whereas the left criticizes a lack of empathy and emphasizes ethical progress. Both claim righteousness while selectively aggrandizing, an option only available on the back of established, robust infrastructures built by earlier sacrifices. (Morality over reality, luxury morals).

    This mirrors historical cycles of societal introspection vs. external threats and should challenge us to reconsider the historically failed first-world perspective as gluttonously myopic. But we won’t until it serves us.

    (a nod to Rob Henderson’s “Luxury Beliefs”)

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    winning at losing

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    The problem with winning by identifying with the underdog is the position reversal: once you win, you have moved from identification as the oppressed into a position of oppressor. To maintain your revolt against power you must set yourself up for defeat so that you once again have a bully to fight: put yourself back into the role of oppressed.

    You maintain the moral high ground by deferring the actual responsibility (realpolitik) of retaining the high ground.

    That is to say, the confusion through identification fails in its role to support, focussed more on the optics of maintaining morality and revolution.

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    The authoritarian commands enjoyment

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    To reacquaint ourselves with Freudian constructs: the ego mediates between the id’s desires (lower) and the super-ego’s moral imperatives (higher).

    Authoritarian figures, paradoxically, do not embody the id’s forbidden desires; instead, they act as the super-ego, compelling us to indulge in these desires under their command.

    "Enjoy!"

    This dynamic is what renders authoritarians obscene—they sanction the liberation of our primal urges. Campaign slogans like "Make America great again" or "stop the steal" suggest that our capacity for enjoyment has been usurped, positioning figures like Donald Trump as the super-ego who facilitates our return to a gratifying, albeit potentially deviant, state.

    From Russell Sbriglia