Proximal Hedonistic Self-Interest and The End of Human Liberty
You may not be the sort to read something titled “That Moment When You Realize You’re Part of God’s Project; He’s Not Part of Yours” (even if not paywalled), but perhaps that is why you should. Whether you believe yourself religious, spiritual, or even humanist, lessons can be found everywhere we are willing to look.
And you should always look.
Reality
Faced as we are with cultural decline, moral depravity, and the self-indulgent internet society that dominates the lives of so many (and of which, arguably, we are all a small part), truths (revealed or otherwise) seem in short supply. And while you might not want to wade through the author’s personal journey that leads up to the following pull quote, it is worth the effort.
Much of the modern societal upheaval regularly on display amounts to a tantrum in response to the imposition of reality itself. Trans-humanism, in all its forms, is very much a petulant rejection of the way the circumstances of our existence have been arranged. Moderns feel imposed upon by reality. Were you created as a man? Well, surgical and hormonal interventions can remedy that; no need to live with the constraints reality has imposed. Does the healthy human body operate in the direction of fertility and reproduction? That can be remedied too.
The idea that reality might intrude and dictate our understanding of ourselves, thereby constraining our actions, is something many moderns simply cannot tolerate. We are living at a time of peak “follow your heart.” The easiest thing in the world right now is to find entire communities of people who are eager to believe that self-absorption is actually a virtue. The fact that unrestrained self-absorption is indistinguishable from madness is something that we have decided to simply … forget.
Perception
Another thing we have to consider is the relationship between this new normal of liberty and human freedom. Tulsi Gabbard recently spoke about the elite’s war on God and Faith.
If there is no God, there can be no God-given rights, natural rights, right to life, liberty, happiness, free speech, free press, right to travel, or right to defend yourself when attacked.
To whom you must have fidelity (the State) and before whom there shall be no graven image. And more recently (at least in America), the State has been deciding what truth is even when that is a lie.
That sounds a lot like a religion, and perhaps it is. The godless vacuum is another reality of human existence, or humanity itself, that “moderns” like to deny. Still, it exists, and you will fill it with something—most likely, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but an obsession with a hobby, sports, or some group or activity, and increasingly, the public personae carousel of your sexuality as if this is the source of all meaning.
It never was.
Some of us will elevate public or political figures, defined as celebrities, often labeled as America’s aristocracy, as objects of praise or adoration. Many of them ‘empty vessels’ themselves searching for meaning in everyday modern life that often mistake their own popularity or the pursuit of it as meaningful.
It is all part and parcel of the war on reality, seeding generations with a preference for petulant fantasies. The invention, through modern illusion, of a new way that leads us to one as old as the human experiment itself. That we are weak individuals ill-fitted to this reality, and we should defer to those fit to rule like god-kings, omniscient, and unmerciful—which inevitably leads to a government whose self-absorption is beyond restraint.
In such a system, everyone is a subject and inevitably a peasant. Every reality is subsidiary to the will of the powerful, resulting in a reality that is more difficult to escape than the one you had. A world turned upside down, deprived of meaning to create a vacuum the State will then fill with more misery.
But it is not too late to find meaning and, through it, identity, purpose, individual liberty, and cultural freedom. There is a way to escape this prison.
Meaning
Jordan Peterson explains the journey of identity and meaning as only he can in a roughly 30-minute speech that you should take time or make time to watch. He examines the steps and value of self-enrichment through the series of daily personal sacrifices and how and why young people today find themselves so miserable and susceptible (I would add) to whatever sleight of hand the political class might deploy to trap them in what Peterson calls the proximal hedonistic self-interest.
That “and the next thing.” That next series of false prophets, each empty of meaning, but it is a “something,” an “anything,” that might fill the intolerable emptiness that plagues them.
The speech is profound and gratifying, and I hope you watch it more than once. Not simply to grasp another piece of the bizarre puzzle before us but to concretize your journey so far – or to help you put one foot in front of the next in each moment after to better enrich your life and that of others.
I know it’s a bit deep, but then, so is the hole in which we find ourselves (culturally, economically, politically, and spiritually), and the only way out is up.
Dave Rubin has a one-minute introduction before Peterson begins his remarks.
Modified from a piece originally published in Dec 2023
Broken Tulsi link.