Ad Hominem and Illusion
A quote from Victor Davis Hanson well worth regarding, but which, among civilized men, would be understood, without needing to be said.
It is not “un-American” to point out that prior American appeasement under the Obama and the Biden Administrations explains not why Putin wished to go into Ukraine, but why he felt he could. It is not “treasonous” to say Ukraine and the United States previously should have stayed out of each other’s domestic affairs and politics—but still do not excuse Putin’s savage aggression. It is not “traitorous” to admit that Russia for centuries relied on buffer states between Europe—lost when its Warsaw Pact satellite members joined NATO after its defeat in the Cold War. But that reality also does not justify Putin’s savage attack.
My comment: What interests me here is not the discussion on Ukraine, a matter where I have no strong opinions, but the quality of the discussion being held in our public sphere. It is a sign of a sick and decayed culture to hear such grave issues debated so flippantly, with so little intellectual weight.
Ad Hominem has become not only the prime argument of the scalawag, but, in the current intellectual climate, the only argument. It is the only arrow in the quiver and the only dart they have.
Hence, I myself have developed a particular enmity and impatience with the art of merely labeling opposing viewpoints as anathema, and dismissing them, sight unseen, with no further investigation.
These are not cases where a particular person known to have an ulterior motive or suffering a well earned reputation for dishonesty finds his remarks being regarded with judicious skepticism. These are cases where to disagree with the party line or popular gossip provokes the accusation of being such a person.
While not all scalawags are Morlocks, all Morlocks are scalawags. Scalawaggery is the core of their philosophy.
The term “Morlock” borrowed from the generous genius of HG Wells, as fitting for anyone who imagines himself to be evolved beyond human norms and into the realm of moral inversion, so that all rules of right and wrong, only for oneself, are flipped downside up.
In Wells, the Morlock is a cannibal troglodyte who treats other human descendants as cattle. In my wry jest, a Morlock is an intellectual trapped in a structure of reasoning he erected, at first, to justify his inhumanity toward his fellow human beings.
That structure has since become for his his thought-prison. The bars and chains are mental and spiritual. Impalpable, they are unbreakable.
Their inhumanity includes treating the children of other men as lab experiments and a mass attempt at sexual social engineering, namely, the elimination of the two sexes.
Inhumanity also includes treating individuals as fungible and interchangeable nonentities in the great game of identity politics, so that simplistic and bigoted generalizations about minorities or majorities become not merely permitted, but mandatory.
Inhumanity includes treating the prosperity and freedom of other men as optional, or even as hindrances, in the headlong panics and stampedes inspired by orchestrated ecological scaremongering and virtue-signaling.
Inhumanity includes regarding other men as meat-robots, or hairless apes, or helpless cells of blind historical forces, and hence as nothing more than the raw materials to be bred like livestock or organized like chain gangs or stacked like cordwood or slaughtered like scapegoats to create the foundations of the towers of Utopia.
The inhumanity, sadly, also and finally includes an inhumanity toward themselves, whenever a godless and soulless mind turns inward, and develops terminal narcissism. All men beyond the narrow orbit of self-absorbed self-regard are reduced to flitting shadows, and seem to Narcissus to be merely echoes, not real.
Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements, dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but most particularly in our mass media and social media. Not all Morlocks are technoplutocratic elites, but all the elitists of the current day are Morlocks.
The center of this philosophy is an desperate and hysterical sense of indefatigable guilt, guilt without cause or forgiveness, a crushing, biting, acidic, soul-destroying guilt, a guilt for the sin of being created, for breathing air, for walking in the light of the sun.
To escape this causeless a neurotic sense of guilt, a causeless and neurotic sense of entitlement, a sense of moral and mental superiority, must be manufactured by those with not even a specious claim to it.
To manufacture the claim, a gnostic view of the universe is adopted, what might be called a metaphysical conspiracy theory, where everything the common man holds to be unquestionable, one must hold as an illusion.
Note that a YouTube search, at least at the time of this writing, on the word “illusion” brings a list of optical illusions, but searching “is an illusion” a list of gnostic propositions: the self is an illusion; reality is an illusion; the passage of time is an illusion; free will is an illusion; the universe is an illusion; love is an illusion; consciousness is an illusion.
Now, all these are self-refuting statements, not merely illogical but obviously and blatantly so. Their purpose is not to be believed and acted upon — what action is recommended in a universe where both you and the universe are illusions, not to mention time, free will, and reality? What action is possible? — their purpose is to create a false sense of mental superiority above dullards who believe reality is real and truth is true.
This false sense of mental superiority is prompted and sustained by believing in paradoxes and absurdities. No one can challenge a paradox, because a paradox denies what it asserts. No one can call wrong a statement that is both wrong and right — there is no place to start.
This false sense of mental superiority segues into a sense of moral superiority on the same basis: merely by substituting bad for good, foul for fair, vice for virtue. Saying jihadists are victims, or that police are criminals, or that property is theft, or that theft is reparations, or that men are women, is not enough. One must accuse any who fail to repeat these paradoxes of being uneducated, distraught, gauche, heartless, misogynist or racist, or of suffering from new mental illnesses, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, or of being running dogs and supporters of one evil world-conspiracy or another.
Naturally, these ad hominem accusations have no basis in fact, nor are they meant to. They are meant to signal one’s nonexistent virtue, to shout down opposition, to kick over the chessboard, and change the subject.
For intellects otherwise bankrupt, ad hominem is the only threadbare remnant of a once-vibrant mental life. Standing silent when one has no counterargument is not an option, for it signals no virtue and props up no sense of false self-regard.
Recall that for these sad souls, the monster of neurotic and causeless guilt, a guilt for being alive, lurks in their shadow and waits at the door, claws and fangs gleaming, lusting to rend and rip. If only empty words can hold the devilish beast at bay, then empty words will be said and shouted and spewed like vomit.
These days, sadly, even honest men otherwise careful of their reputation for integrity, will applaud, or even repeat, such empty words.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
