Friday 18 July 2008

NOBILITY OR DECLINE...?



“I want to adopt a disabled child...”



Thus Jordan, or Katie Price as the best-selling authoress is nowadays
known, on Richard & Judy - 17. July.

Now, a couple of things strike you about this, because they so
vividly expose the sensibilities of human charity. To begin with, there is the ruthless pursuit of publicity for image and self-promotion by people of celebrity status, such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit or Madonna etc. For on the reverse of such philanthropy is usually an astute media operator whose self-sacrifice is a form of reverse exhibitionism that draws attention to itself. In Western society altruism is accorded the highest value. Celebrities
no longer exist as human beings, but as politically correct personas whose behaviour is motivated by comprehensive popular expectations. Public demand and a sense of personal insecurity creates in them an almost insatiable craving for unlimited approbation. The interest of humanity, as determined by their altruistic conception of the life of others, is defined solely in terms of
preserving their own. So, is Jordan driven purely by rational, cynical
self-interest? Or does she have some of Mother Theresa’s saintly Christian
abnormalities? One way to look at this is to call it psycho-pathetic morality.
It is a potent, if altruistic, condition and bound to magnetize the tabloids
that have long been feeding on the intermittent complications of the once
harmonious union between Jordan and Andre.

Many people think this is something that applies to celebrities, but
more usually ordinary people are its purveyors. One measure of the increase in
such philanthropic activities can be seen at the most extreme end of the
psycho-pathetic disorder known as political correctness. This to me is the worst
legacy of the Judeo-Christian enlightenment. And I am here thinking of a
four-year old who’s expressed wished for a Christmas present was “peace in the
Middle East”. How are we to explain this abject little parrot? The world of the
toddler is, after all, a world where moral values and democratic humanism play
no role.

Or do they?

I adore much about the Judeo-Christian morality of the West, confirmed
apostate though I am. And the calculation of how much political correctness a
society can endure and how many acts of self-immolation it can sustain before
its framework buckles and we all turn into sentimental limpets is a fine one,
and a peculiar combination of callousness and compassion is needed to judge it
accurately. Its significance in other words, lies in the enormous psychological
transformation post-modern morality wrought upon a society which is congenitally
senescent and as deeply demoralized as the people it accommodates. And nowhere
is this lesson better taught than in our own imperial history. First of all, it
is as well to remember that our philosophy of post-modernism is static rather
than evolutionary. In actual fact, if the politically correct revolution can
absorb the central power of the state, the problem of decline is coming close to
the attrition of something that ultimately exists in the inner constitution of
unconditional moral submission. And in this respect the post-modern West is
clearly unrepresentative of the spirit of evolutionary vitality and masculine
virility such as the rise of the British Empire exhibited in the course of its
irresistible progression.


There is, moreover, an instructive contrast here,
with the Third World as an developing, forthcoming entity that has not yet found
a stable social form and, hence, is still in a process towards an enormous
historical evolution. As a matter of fact, nothing is more characteristic of the
fundamental difference between the great senescent nations of the West, and the
nations of untapped virility which the decline of the Occident has thrown up,
than that the latter is a succession of quintessentially virile, and in many
ways almost objectionable, nations, who populate and ravage the world on a truly
expansive scale. Whereas the momentous issue foremost among the former is the
struggle for democratic authority in a stagnant and monolithic framework
characterised chiefly by its maudlin, apologetic and self-pitying
bigotry.


Still, it’s nice to know there are instants of psychopathology that
do have a happy ending....

Dreamy

10 comments:

percy stilton said...

Wow...

Uncle Dick Madeley said...

The West suffers from a weakening of its intellectual force. A decadence of sentimentally has crept in where once we led the world with our pioneering spirit and a rush to embrace empiricism and discovery. We have instead begun to look inward, second-guessing ourselves in terms of both our science and our society. A day doesn’t go by when the media questions the old moral order. Jordan is the embodiment of this. Spiritually she is vacant; a product of a society that has abandoned the structures that gave us order. She moves effortlessly from soft-porn queen to children’s author and to question this is seen as risible, old-school thinking in a modern world.

It’s a popular cliché so say that it’s freedom that makes us strong. Although I think is true except when said by politicians usually us it to justify a war, I do wonder if there aren’t different types of freedom. Society without structure is anarchy and it can be achieved either through we basic failure of government or simply by being too clever. Perhaps have evolved so far in the West that we are now unravelling everything that brought us this far.

Selena Dreamy said...

And until one can provide an acceptable theory, a plausible explanation for how such unravelling may occur, it is not even judged proper to begin acknowledging it.

Thank you, Richard, for a considered reply.

Selena Dreamy said...

...and Percy! - brace yourself, my next post will be delivered in Latin :)

Uncle Dick Madeley said...

Argh! I see a few of my characteristic typos in that. Damn these stubby fingers...

Anonymous said...

In Jordans' case it's obviously a new routine to keep herself in the media spotlight for a few more months. She's already done childbirth, marriage to a pop has been, bringing up children so this is the logical next step.
Within a year I predict her and Peter will be converting to Islam and launching a new muslim clothing range.

Jonathan said...

I dont know if anyone here has actually heard in private from Madonna , or Pitt or Jolie (aren't surnames unfashionable) that their philanthropic endeavours are mere sham, the conscious posturing of the media ego? How do you know, Selena, with respect, that you are not insulting these people, somewhat?

Personally, I dont care what ones motivations are (for oneself) in doing good in the world, as long as one does good.

And I totally reject the idea that service to others must involve self-abnegation in order to be genuine. On the contrary it is by loving others that we shed our false selves, our egos, and find our true selves; and in that discover the real joys of authenticity. Love of others and love of our true selves enhance and futher one another.

Isnt it the media that makes such cindy dolls out of clebrities, as much as, and surely more than, the celebrities themselves?

Would you prfer that these celebrities did nothing for the disadvantaged of the world?

Alas, apart from politicans (yawn), in the 'official public world' as opposed to the developing subcultures of the blogosphere, celebrities are all that we have to act as foci and nodes of shared human reference around which to organise public discource between strangers (especially if people are ignorant of the refences of high culture). This gives celebrities enormous responsibilities, I grant, that they would do well to wake up to. Many dont, but some do.

Celebrities are the Olympian Gods of our post (or is it dormant?:)) Judeo-Christian age, whether they like it or not. They are objects of idolatry. This is the price they pay for not being a nobody like me. Presumably it must be gratifying for the ego to be adored by strangers etc but at the end of the day life is real, and celebrities will need to ask themselves whether their lives are meaningful -beyond the mere achievement they made of attracting all the attention. In other words, are they shining a light, setting an example, using the influence that has been imposed upon them by their idolaters to set good examples?

I think celebrities could do alot worse than jolie, and Pitt and Bono and Madonna, so why should we decry their efforts -even though, of course we can criticise them for not contributing more than they do to to the necessary redress that we must now make to the spiritual myopia of the modern age that has imprisoned us in the consequences of rampant narcissism.

Political correctness is evil in certain ways in its effects but it is well intentioned evil nonetheless, most of the time, I think. I think we should not lose sight of that.

Jonathan said...

And Richard, I dont think it is a weakening of intellectual force but of spiritual force, and emotional sympathy, that is understanding (of the right kind), that is lacking. In the realms of science and technology our intellects are as powerful as ever. What needs attention are the Humanities - and these involve emotion and the spirit. Mawkish sentimentality is the cry, the cry of a culture starving from the effects of an unfed soul, an uncultivetd heart. It is an emotional enlightenment, stripped of all wallowing sentimentality - a hard nosed look at our duties of compassion and love towards one another that is called for.

We have much to learn from the Buddhists, I believe, about getting our own subjective houses in order before attacking each other. As far as I can see, attacking and judging each other defines about 90% of what goes on in our public discourse. This is decadence pure and simple. The flailing of limbs as the waters conspire to drown.

Selena Dreamy said...

How do you know, Selena, with respect, that you are not insulting these people, somewhat?


This is not about the nature of good and evil, Jonathan. I’m sure their motives are above suspicion. This is about the decline of the most able-bodied instincts, about the sensitivities and moral compunctions of a major biological species at the apex of their humanity, their existence, their selves. Value judgements are no part of this. The survival of the fittest is a profoundly immoral challenge. Indeed, if there is no period in the entire history of civilization that is as close as ours seems to be to either death or immortality, it is with the narrowness of the margin that tragedy lies.

Thank you, as ever, your intellectual engagement is remarkable and, indeed, eminently welcome. You’re a child of this age!

Dreamy

Jonathan said...

'Thank you, as ever, your intellectual engagement is remarkable and, indeed, eminently welcome. You’re a child of this age!'

Are u being ironic? Not sure what you mean? Is the current zeitgeist one in which people are typically intellectual in eminently welcome ways.

Elberry will explain to you that Im not the expert I could be in detecting irony. I was also gullible at school. In my loftier moments I'd want to put this down to 'purity of heart' and the 'child in my eyes', though it might more likely be the consequnce of mere space cadethood.

Oddly enough Im very optimistic about our culture. But this is because I see that things have to die in ways before transfigurations can be born.

Or as a mother might say about her Blighty 'he's just going through a bad phase'

There's much more going on I think in the spiritual and developmental realms in Britain than the media and many may be aware of.

(Surprisingly, the media is not the world!)

Things of a regenerative-focused positive hue. But harvest cannot be rushed and arrives when its ready. Could be wrong, Hope not.