For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct - Aristotle
Wednesday, 18 September 2024
Luxury Malice
As an obvious follow-on from the Luxury Mendacity post, we also have luxury malice. It is not easy to explain Net Zero by technical ignorance, money and fashionable mendacity. Social malice is in there too. If ruling elites attract our contempt, it would be foolish to think it isn’t reciprocated.
We have a governing elite which defines itself by absurd luxury beliefs, but an important factor within those beliefs is fashionable malice one social class exhibits towards another. The word ‘exhibits’ is not chosen lightly, the glinting threads of malice within our UK ruling elites are not hidden.
As in the earlier post, it is worth remembering those well-educated, ambitious people streaming through a university education. There is social ambition in there, and for the amoral among them, the advantages of quietly fashionable, unobtrusive social malice may have its attractions. People do raise themselves from a bed of envy and ambition towards the vastly more nourishing culture of superior social malice. Always have.
The drab street was everywhere; and at the street-corners mean-faced men preached lies, envy and malice.
Arthur Morrison – Fiddle O’Dreams (1913)
Until the glittering possibility of social promotion beckons and –
I am filled by the holy malice of chastisement.
Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs (1869)
Now we have career paths for well educated, ambitious but untalented and remarkably unpleasant people. People with the social skills to join a governing elite under the shelter of a fat thumb on the scales of justice plus that little extra - luxury malice.
Labels:
behaviour,
incompetence
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8 comments:
Malice in Blunderland.
On the theme of drafts for PM's Questions in the Commons:-
Does the Right Honourable member, the PM, support a transport policy review - for instance, does he plan to have someone else pay for his shoes?
dearieme - "Malice in Blunderland" I ought to pinch that for another post.
Does the PM use elevator shoes? Worth asking.
Well, Toni Blair did. I remember the allegations at the time.
Perhaps the elite should remember that things did not end too well for them in France in 1793 or Russia in 1917.
John - they are inviting trouble of some kind and much of that is arrogance plus incompetence.
We remember that "bigoted woman" . And now the "far right thugs"
From the Party of the common people. Aye, right.
Their aim is not to improve our nation, but to accumulate enough wealth stashed safely in tax havens, and enough Brownie Points , ensuring endless "funding" with sinecures with the international multi-billionaires, and unelected supra national TLA and FLAs that steer the "Free World"
Doonhamer - I agree, the days when the Party of the common people was just that are long gone. Although it was never convincing, it seemed to matter to some degree. All they want now is to accumulate enough to be above it all.
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