Translate

Saturday 3 March 2007

The Deadliest Sin

To adequately explain virtually all individual and collective miseries, we need look no further than to the indulgence of the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Envy, Gluttony and Lust. But where would humanity be if we did not have these temptations to impel us into reckless behaviour and earnest endeavour with occasional successes and mistakes to learn from? Pride could prevent us from committing dishonest acts, anger unthinking submission to tyranny, sloth futile and wasteful activity. Greed is the antidote to poverty and envy that to lack of ambition. Gluttony prevents waste and from lust springs forth the next generation.

Towards pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is all human activity dedicated. All societies have moralities designed to influence the behaviour of individuals to behave in a desired way, with desirable or undesirable outcomes, depending on the wisdom of that morality.

Religious ideologies are now deeply unfashionable while Christianity declines. Yet political ideologies of equal oppressiveness have now filled the vacuum: communism, socialism, liberalism, political correctness, to name a few. Environmentalism is now the latest morality being used to extract more taxes, but are these ideologies but a modern but equally misguided list of prohibitions promoted by puritanical fanatics, telling us that we must be compelled to be better, more generous and kinder than we really are?

Being forbidden by the state from giving offence to protected groups infringes our freedoms of expression, contract and association. If employers are compelled to pretend not to discriminate on grounds of age, sex, race and disability in order to avoid a lawsuit, if gentlemen’s and working men’s clubs are compelled to accept as members anyone whom the majority of their members do not wish to have, be they women or other races, then our traditional freedoms have been significantly curtailed. As for the most important ingredient of freedom, the right to property, it is now increasingly compromised by the state’s ever-stronger compulsion to tax us while we live and earn, when we retire and are pensioned, and yet again when we die.

Before the term “nanny state” was coined, the term paternalism was used, meaning the same thing – of looking after those weaker than ourselves and paying taxes to see that this was done. But surely no self-respecting male Tory Paternalist would have considered forbidding smoking in public places?

Women now have more opportunity than formerly to impose upon the rest of society the preferences of their gender. What could be more nanny-ish than invading a country, plunging it into chaos and then informing its populace that it was done “for your own good”?

Small children on tricycles wearing safety helmets riding on pavements seems unnecessary to someone who remembers a time when seatbelts in cars were not compulsory. Increasingly older first-time mothers vulnerable to divorce and infertility who cannot just have more children may however think differently. Apparently unrelated decisions by a woman to have a career can result in the unintended consequences of wrapping up a countryful of over-protected children in cotton wool, with predictable consequences on their character and the nation’s attitude to risk.

A balance between the masculine and feminine virtues therefore needs to be struck, and some sensible idea of what is or is not in the national interest should now be adopted, rather than to continue muddling along, thinking we know what the words mean without bothering to define them. What makes us feel good about ourselves now will not necessarily secure the future, and those who prefer safety to liberty will ultimately deserve and receive neither.

6 comments:

goosefat101 said...

I prefer liberty to safety.

However if you think that liberty will be possible in the world that is devastatingly damaged by our environmental ignorance then you are sadly mistaken. I'm not saying environmentalists are being realistic, ultimately it appears that it is far too late to do anything significant about things.

As for the suggestion that the war in Iraq is a female thing to do, well that is stupid. It's a human thing to do to attack people and to be greedy.

The war is due to oil, we are running out and our society requires that our leaders find as many ways of maintaining our present oil consumption rate for as long as possible.

It is also about power, about trying to demonstrate who is top dog. This is a male trait. The US and britain are trying to show they are the alpha males, it is a cock competition that is resulting is mass slaughter.

You place far to much significance on the linguistic meanings of nanny state and paternalism. This is exactly what people who misuse political correctness do with other words. Just because we call it nanny state doesn't make the state actually run by women or by female concerns.

Your opposition to alternative ways of thinking such as communism and socialism, suggests you are not pro liberty for all, in terms of having a myriad of different ways of thinking. I have no love for those ideologies or for tory ways of thinking but it always makes me cringe when people suggest that different ways of thinking from there own are dangerous.

Your attitude towards women seems to be pretty inaccurate. I am not saying you hate them, just that you do not understand them or how much power/influence they have.

as for the smoking thing, check this link for my take on it

goosefat101 said...

I agree that the seven deadly sins are what makes life fun though, and I agree that people should be allowed to say whatever they want about any groups


and the more small children who bash there heads in on pavements the better, we have far too many of the little bastards.

Claire Khaw said...

I did not mean the attack on Iraq was a feminine thing to do, but the justification and excuse for it was a nannyish one, ie "it was for your own good".

All this wringing of hands about obesity and unhealthy eating etc reminds me of nanny and nurse.

In case you had not noticed, communism and socialism have been tried and found wanting. That is why formerly communist and socialist countries such as China and the Soviet Union have abandoned it for capitalism red in tooth and claw.

I do NOT hate women although I do sometimes get quite impatient with them, but then I get impatient with PEOPLE, men included. The membership of my politics website www.1party4all.co.uk is predominantly male and however hard I try, women are just not interested. It is not just that they are too busy looking after their families though I suspect that is a major reason) but there is an intellectual disinclination to involve themselves in something that has a tendency to upset them emotionally and hurt their feelings. You do a straw poll amongst your friends and see, if you don't believe me.

I KNEW I would be accused of misogyny, so it is just as well that I am myself female, isn't it? Actually, I also blame men for allowing all this to happen. It is the imbalance of Yin and Yang, if you really want to look at it from a different cultural perspective. Of course I do not underestimate the importance of women: men are no doubt influenced by women (because they want love and sex and other services from them) who are now increasingly influential. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, don't you know. Too bad mothers are mostly at work, and our world is going to pot, eh?

goosefat101 said...

Okay some little pointers for you:

1. I am not a communist or a socialist, I have little time for any totalizing notions. I was simply commenting on your seeming attack on political differences. I subscribe to neither of those belief systems and yet I can respect people who do.

2. your talk of nurse and nanny show more about your class (and age?) than mysogeny. The thing is that these words are meaningless in terms of approaching society. The state is indeed a terrible oppressor, but it oppresses hand in hand with business. You may think that capitalisms triumph is universally approved of, but it is its success that creates every infringement on peoples liberty in the modern world, from 1st to 3rd world.

4. You can be misogynistic and be a women. I have met quite a few women like that. Thatcher is a good example of such a woman.

5. Perhaps the reason that you have so few women involved with your website is because you don't understand the things that make them political. Your straw poll amongst my friends unfortunately for you doesn't prove your theory. All my close friends are intensely political in some way, whether they are men or women.

6. The personal is the political and the irrelevant is irrelevant. Men are more attracted to pointless theoretical debate than women, they are often more numb in the way that they approach information. Women are often enraged by this numbness.

You firstly fail to understand the range of things that are political and you second treat politics like a mix between trainspotting and lecturing. I enjoy this because I like reading such things. I suspect many women are not into this way of thinking.

It is stupid to dismiss women as putting family responsibility before politics. It is exactly those responsibilities that make women more politically responsible than men. They are more likely to recycle, to vote, etc...

Anyway, I have spent far to much time on this so I will, bid you farewell.

Claire Khaw said...

Goosefat:

”The state is indeed a terrible oppressor, but it oppresses hand in hand with business. You may think that capitalisms triumph is universally approved of, but it is its success that creates every infringement on peoples liberty in the modern world, from 1st to 3rd world.”

Please do not patronise me by suggesting that I am unaware of the existence of socialists, communists and anti-capitalists. You commented that my references to nurse and nanny betray my age. I suggest that your pre-occupation with capitalism red in tooth and claw itself betrays a youthful naivete betraying all of your 25 years.

In the Darwinian world that we live in, politics is only an expression of the truth, however unpalatable, that in our cruel world the fittest tend to survive better than the unfit. By extension, only the fittest ideas and the fittest political systems will survive in the long term. Sentimentality and hand-wringing do-gooding is for dodos.

“Perhaps the reason that you have so few women involved with your website is because you don't understand the things that make them political. Your straw poll amongst my friends unfortunately for you doesn't prove your theory. All my close friends are intensely political in some way, whether they are men or women. “

Actually, most people I know are intensely political. What I find so infuriating is their apathy. All that the word “political” means is “deciding which compromise to make for the best possible outcome”. I am suggesting to everyone, male and female, that they should be standing up and being counted, particularly as I have gone through the trouble of creating a website that is the politics equivalent of myspace, for them to do exactly that without too much expenditure of their time and energy!

”The personal is the political and the irrelevant is irrelevant. Men are more attracted to pointless theoretical debate than women, they are often more numb in the way that they approach information. Women are often enraged by this numbness.”

What do you mean men “are often more numb in the way that they approach information”?

”You firstly fail to understand the range of things that are political and you second treat politics like a mix between trainspotting and lecturing. I enjoy this because I like reading such things. I suspect many women are not into this way of thinking.”

So you are saying that EVERYTHING is political? Why, I AGREE with you, don’t you know! I know many women AND men prefer not to read or think too much, because it upsets them probably.

”It is stupid to dismiss women as putting family responsibility before politics. It is exactly those responsibilities that make women more politically responsible than men. They are more likely to recycle, to vote, etc...”

As I said in a previous exchange with you, “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”! All I am saying is that I wish people (men and women) would take some time off from football, food, fucking and fussing over their home and garden and visit www.1party4all.co.uk particularly after I have gone through the trouble of making the subject so much more accessible, for the likes of them.

Have you joined www.1party4all.co.uk ? If not, may I invite you to do so. It has a discussion group through which your writings would have a wider readership.

Check it out to see if it is for you.

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/1Party4All/

I LOVE your songs about 21st century angst – protest songs par excellence! Wouldn’t mind them being put on www.1party4all.co.uk. It will of course be categorised as bloke music and such birds that are browsing probably won’t go for it, but I don’t care … Write to me at info@1party4all.co.uk if you are thinking of taking this further.

guywarrior said...

liberty yes, safety is a diversionary tatic to make the destruction of liberty look good, even pure goodness can be achieved in an evil way, by focing people by dire threats to be good, true goodness comes from freedom of choice, learning by way of freindly persuation.

Vincent Bruno is dismayed to be told that theocracy is necessary to make white people marry again

https://t.co/k5DOSS5dv4 — Real Vincent Bruno (@RealVinBruno) March 27, 2024 10:00  Gender relations 12:00  Anthony Trollope 14:00  Being bot...