Hippie Paul
The “Do your own thing” catch phrase of the 1960s identified the supposed leftist radicalism of the time as actually a primarily libertarian, not a communitarian, movement. The beating the commons has taken can be laid at the feet of these supposed leftists.
The establishment of a culture of personal identity, and the insistence that this identity had claims on political action, did two things: it undid the eternal belief that what was good for the group was good for the individual, and it undid any lingering belief in any value in social democratic authority; if the good of the group no longer mattered, an overseer of the commons was no longer needed or desirable.
Conservatism still contains a kernel of the old idea of authority, but achieves it through a problematic means,-religion. Man cannot work for mankind, in this view. Old writings taken entirely on faith as the word of God are read like tea leaves to tell us what to do in every aspect of our lives. Those readings have strayed from the pre-monotheistic Golden Rule of communal social good, to what seeks a ranked society of increasingly atomized individuals under strong, off-Earth and unaccountable authoritarian control, as revealed to us by elites.
Individualism was supposed to bring autonomy, but instead only atomizes society, rendering these isolated individuals more dependent on the authority for guidance, for opportunity, for crony contacts.
Morality ceases to be a general societal guide and becomes a score-keeping competition for personal advancement. More categories of activity are added to the personal advancement game: “hard” work (usually involving a $4,000 leather chair, soft manicured hands, a suit and tie, and ruthless sociopathy); “convictions” (often unworthy biases elevated to the same kind of absolute faith that religion requires); and “standards”, or an insistence on anything that was given up long ago as unworkable or inappropriate. Whatever the activity that becomes a rationale for personal, unshared benefit over others, it achieves this status through this tea-leaf reading of untouchable authority, translations done by the high priests of Wall Street and K Street for the benefit of said high priests and favored acolytes.
Leftist authority is damned and ineffective, and rightist authority is purely hierarchical cronyism, but is still given a pass because it’s supposedly (but isn’t) based on eternal verities.
No wonder government is disrespected.
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