Tuesday 14 March 2023
From illusion to illusion
Joy is passion, passion is suffering; we cannot desire what we possess, therefore desire is rebellion prolonged indefinitely against the realities of existence; when we attain the object of our desire, we must perforce neglect it in favour of something still unknown, and so we progress from illusion to illusion.
George Moore - Celibates (1895)
This is the rabbit hole the political classes persuade us to enter - rebellion prolonged indefinitely against the realities of existence. Political parties define themselves by the realities they persuade us to rebel against.
Now they are reduced to scraping the barrel with rebellions against carbon dioxide, human reproductive biology, practical personal transport, central heating that works and people who disagree with you.
Yet it does help us to home in on that strangely distorted word “progressive”. It means a person who advocates progress from illusion to illusion.
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3 comments:
Talking of the Illusioned, have a gander at the directors of Soon Very Bankrupt.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/14/obama-aide-hillary-donors-improv-actor-meet-svbs-board/
Purely by chance I was reading about the Iron Law of Oligarchy and the Iron Law of Bureaucracy on Wikipedia.
There are many worthy quotes such as "For the organization to function effectively, centralization has to occur and power will end up in the hands of a few. Those few—the oligarchy—will use all means necessary to preserve and further increase their power."
...and once you have centralised power you must keep the ideological hamster wheel turning (from one illusion to the next, ahem) to keep the centralisation hanging together through centripetal force.
dearieme - once upon a time there were some shreds of comfort to be gained from the idea that people who matter in the real world aren't taken in by political parties or politically correct nonsense. So much for shreds of comfort.
DJ - yes, we can promote the ideal of democracy, but we always come up against the brick wall of a necessary hierarchy. Decisions have to be made and enacted, but hierarchies always seem to attract deplorable people. That was the irony of Hillary Clinton's remark about a "basket of deplorables." She is one of them.
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