Be What You Are

There is a paradox that becomes a logical fallacy, when people try to live together as people, that is, in a political system. Disputes inevitably arise between free agents, in practice. But in theory, a moral paradigm, which models all agents as free, does not admit of inequalities. Whose will deserves to win? A political system forms when people agree to build laws. The enfranchised negotiate, and come to some kind of compromise...

The new missionaries of the secular religion preach kindness and mutual respect, but in so doing, they are (of course) dictating to the would-be liberated, the terms of their own liberation. This is how you should want liberation to feel. Kindness is supreme, and would certainly be the moral code in Zion or the New Jerusalem. But that is a fanatic's morality. We do not live in Zion, or any other kind of Eden. It is a fallen world, which the secular desperately need a concept for. Sin isn't a fantasy that self-hating people dreamed up. Legally, in terms of litigation, you do not need any concept of sin. Legally, in terms of political philosophy, sin is the gravitational center of Justice.

If power rules everything around me, what is the point of moral philosophizing? Because power becomes stupid by its very nature. Power deprives agents of disputes, and therefore, by the central paradox aforementioned, deprives agents of the ability to discover the contours of their own selves. What morality do I propose then?? Here, not Kant but a critique (God help me) of Kant. You never get to mutual respect without first engaging in a dispute. You never get to kindness without some beef.

Intersectionality was never about essences, though that becomes the secular accusation. Merely uttering differences, becomes yet another shadow offense. Any philosophy that is not based upon Zion-level equality, a priori is "racist" or "sexist." Again, the irony here is thick. The object that social theorists describe in the word "intersectionality," is of course the diametric opposite of essenses. Nobody is making claims about the true nature of any group in isolation. We don't even know what a man or a woman would be, were it not for the power structure that girds us.

Enlightened people are speaking always and already from within the foul soup. And yet the pedants never cease to accuse them. The cascading set of hierarchies, whose coefficients change depending on their permutation (and thus inscrutable like a black box model), is a stroke of brilliance in terms of adding flesh to the bones of structural morality. The only proposition I make is to recognize their reality. Things are not equal. Kindness is much easier for people who have not been kicked in the teeth. Patience, grace, decorum, any whiff of these things among the disenfranchised is laudable. Most importantly, we need to make room for radical inclusion.

Black people should feel free to mock white people. Lesbians should feel free to mock straight women. Women for sure should mock men. Disabled people should mock the aloof ingrate among the abled. Poor people should mock the spiritual dimness of the pathologically wealthy. Finally, those on top, when they find themselves there, need to laugh at their own damn selves for once. I mean, seriously. Take a joke. The turtles down here near the bottom of the stack know how to laugh at themselves with a boot on their neck. You can't take a little joke at your expense, from the comfort of your own throne? But the answer to that is no. Precisely because power makes stupid. Power makes stupid and small.

The burden of self-definition is higher, the better your democracy is fairing. The fact that I am here, typing this essay into the void, unafraid of censure or imprisonment, is a good sign for our democracy. The extent to which you might feel contempt for my words here is the extent to which you should fear for the future of your democracy. Recognize that in a free system, people who you consider beneath you, may well return the feeling. And they may well pursue enjoying their lives without your permission.

The cracks are showing. The walls of the castle may soon prove weak enough to penetrate.