Imaginary Benevolence

Ace notices a particular trend:

Liberals love to talk up their abstract obligations to the greater good -- a greater good of undefined, unknown "society at large."



And what happens? Because the are pursuing in their minds some greater good involving the abstract, in the tangible ethical decisions of everyday life, they cheat and behave more selfishly than conservatives -- because they feel they're already doing some moral thing like only buying local produce so that gives them some wiggle room to behave unethically in their personal lives. Papal indulgences again, in other words.


Conservatives believe the opposite. We think we have a high duty to perform ethically in our personal real lives and less of a duty to just generally give money or other support to people we don't know and never could know. We're sort of against alienation of the moral sense from its ultimate object.

Which, as a commenter points out, is pure Screwtape:

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malic to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real, and the benevolence largely imaginary

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chp. 6

Now, a great many people suffer from hypocrisy. We all, to a degree more or less fail to keep the moral code we espouse (which is a point Lewis makes in Mere Christianity). But one of the peculiar aspects of revolutionary creeds is the way in which sacrificing the good of people around you for an imagined Golden Age becomes almost a moral duty. Progressivism overlows with this. One need not look long to find those on the left who think it absolutely essential to tax gasoline with the deliberate purpose of increasing the suffering of those who use it. This is needed, so that we can "save the Earth."

One of the questions I'd love to ask the greenies who want to rescue us all from the Industrial Revolution is "Who has to die?" Given that the current population of the Earth is 6 billion or so, and given that the pre-industrial earth had a population of about 1 billion or so, we're going to find ourselves in a Malthusian nightmare to get anywhere near a level that Greenpeace would be happy with. I don't suppose any sustainability advocates are going to be volunteering for euthanasia to Save the Earth.

Nah, they'll probably be Chinese.