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Part 82 Elitism and Rabble:
December 22, 2003:
In the last three essays I have outlined what I think we must do to take our government away from the hacks and thugs who now control it. My next step will be to take up the other issues I outlined for restoring the rule of law in America. Before I go on with that, to avoid misunderstanding, I must address another issue. In previous philosophy essays, I may have inadvertently given the impression that I am some kind of an elitist. Well, I will no longer just give an impression. I will state as a fact that I am an elitist.
I was not always this way. In fact elitism is a very recent development in my thinking. It came about by my gradually realizing that our current moral crisis is a result of people not doing what they ought to do. It is a result of people seeking short term gains rather than long term stability. It is a result of people being too lazy to think things through. It is a result of widespread individual selfishness. In short, our current crisis is a result of the rabble behaving like rabble. Without good leadership the rabble are hopeless. So, I am an elitist and proud of it. I intend to rise above this rabble and I want other elitists to join me in leading the rabble out of their bad behavior.
Lest I be misunderstood, I do not think it is necessary for the rabble to remain rabble. I fully believe that anyone can rise above their current condition whatever it is. All human beings have intelligence. We can learn to use it if we see the possibility and have the incentive. So, it is possible for people to be led to better behavior if they are provided outstanding examples of unrelenting ethical behavior. Recall that Gandhi did that and made the Indian rabble a force to be reckoned with. He made himself into a single outstanding example of a totally ethical man. He refused to compromise under any conditions.
Now, I would really like to see a coalition of elitists take over this country again and set a similar example for the American rabble. I would like to see a modern coalition of dominants like Adams, Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton. They were not perfect, but they knew how to lead and how to rule. They knew how to control the rabble without pandering to their basest instincts and behaviors.
That is what the our Groundswell organization really is, what it must be. It must be a coalition of superior people, elite people who can lead the rabble through example and appeal to their inherent sense of ethics. So it is really up to us. We cannot expect the rabble to behave well when their examples are people like our recent and current congressmen and executives. What will they learn from these people, how to lie under oath?
With no other direction, most people will choose to be rabble. They will give in to the unconscious drives to reproduce and whore mindlessly after short term gratification. They will not develop and use their intellect. That is the truth about people. There is no doubt that we need an elite community. We need a cadre of selfless caretakers. Representative democracy needs an elite community to work. Otherwise it will degenerate to what we have now.
A fatal flaw of representative democracy is that the rabble will choose poorly. That is what has happened in America. Our degeneration is the result of a series of poor choices in leadership by the rabble. This means the caretakers must be charismatic. They must appeal to the rabble's shallow perception of charismatic competence. This begs the question, if there was an elite group like that, why would they want to bother saving this rabble? I think the only answer must be to enhance their own chances of survival. The idea is to keep the rabble from destroying the world. In case you have not noticed, that is what will probably happen if we don't act.
The rabble already know what is in their own short term interest. That is hedonism. We cannot show them what is in their own long term interest because they do not have the patience. They usually do not care what may happen when they grow old. We must show them what is in their own midterm best interest and convince them that it is worth deferring hedonistic gratification to get there. We must adjust our long term philosophy to accommodate the rabble. We must plan out path to pass through midterm goals. We may have to make midterm and long term tradeoffs. Eventually we will get there.
Does this make me angry? You're dammed right. I'm mad at Clinton, Bush, Sharon, Arafat, The Saudist Prince, Putin, and all the rest of the swine like them. I'm mad at them for pandering to the rabble. I also mad at the rabble for being to lazy to lift themselves up. I'm mad at the Madison Avenue-industrial axis for selling hedonism to America as a way of life. Most of all, I'm mad at the closet intellects who sit on their asses and do nothing. They have less value to America than the teats on a boar hog.
The great weakness of democracy is it does put power into the hands of rabble. Rabble requires leadership. If no leaders present themselves, the rabble will elect rabble. This is, in fact, what they have done. The rabble are not perceptive at all. They will reject superior people who are not charismatic in favor of rabble who are. It should be obvious that our leaders are not superior people. In fact the are generally power dominants of the worst kind. The seek ever to enhance their own power at any cost to law and human rights. These people have no problem taking a nation into war to enhance their popularity and power. If we had truly superior people in those positions, the rule of law and human rights would not be issues.
Instead of superior people, we have demagogues. Demagogues can and usually do con the rabble to get into positions of power. These evil people quickly destroy the potential of a democratic government. The rabble have no defense against being conned because they are ignorant of facts and hedonistic in temperament. They buy into slightly delayed traps for short term gain like a racoon crawling into a cage trap after corn.
This degeneration need not have happened. All during the time that America was degenerating we were producing some really great people. People like Huxley, Rogers, Perls, and Maslow were born and wrote. Steinbeck thought and wrote. We produced great people, but we degenerated as a culture. The Madison Avenue behaviorists, political hacks, and industrialists won. The con men won and America lost. Why didn't the good people step up? Why didn't they take charge? They knew the truth. It did not set us free. Why can't we figure out how to make the truth relevant to the rabble?
We also produced thoughtful philosophers like Dewey and James. Dewey at least tried to act. Unfortunately he directed his activity into an educational dead end, but at least he tried. These fools that sit inactively in their closets and pontificate are not philosophers. By being passive, by sitting back, by being afraid, the intellectual community has forfeited the rule of mankind to comic opera buffoons. Every one has an excuse but there is no real excuse for forfeiture. The only true philosopher is the one who participates, the one who believes enough in what he is saying to act on it. Philosophy without participation is cowardice. It is nothing more than window dressing in front of cowardice. It is veneer over a rotting structure. All intellects are at fault. Our failure has yielded the stage to the buffoons. Through cowardice and inaction we have failed ourselves.
Most of us are too afraid to act. We fear failure and that
terror of all terrors, ridicule. To be effective, it is necessary
to go against what causes our terror. We cannot agree with our
fear. We cannot surrender to it. We cannot surrender power to
the buffoons because we are afraid. Throughout history, our biggest
error as intellects has been trying to get buffoons and demigods
to do what is right rather than stepping up, taking charge, and
doing it ourselves. So, call me and elitists. I think that's a
good word, not a bad one. I look about me and don't see where
I have any choice. Come join me if you like. It's not so bad being
called names.
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