7. ABOUT POLITICS
WTM FAQ 7.2 What is the danger of the left-wing, pseudo idealist attitude in politics?
[Note: this answer is repeated in WTM FAQ 6.6]
The biological explanation of the human condition that is presented in Video/Freedom Essay 3 and chapter 1 of biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition reveals that humans’ search for knowledge, ultimately for understanding of the human condition, caused humans to become upset angry, egocentric and alienated. Eventually many people became so upset that the temptation to give up the upsetting search became irresistible. As a result, many people have become advocates of abandoning the search, dogmatically insisting instead that everyone behave in a cooperative, loving, idealistic, ‘politically correct’ way.
But doing that was fundamentally irresponsible, because it meant abandoning the search for knowledge that we needed to pursue until we found self-knowledge, understanding for why we had become upset sufferers of the angry, egocentric and alienated human condition. In fact, giving up the upsetting search for knowledge—and then dishonestly and deludedly trying to justify that abandonment by saying it was the right thing to do because we were ‘stopping’ all the anger, egocentricity and alienation in the world—meant we had, in effect, ‘changed sides’ and were now opposing humanity’s efforts to actually bring an end to all the anger, egocentricity and alienation. We weren’t just abandoning the heroic battle to find knowledge, we were actively campaigning against it! We were behaving in an extremely destructive way, even though we were deluding ourselves that what we were doing was constructive, progressive and good.
We can now see that the left-wing was actually being pseudo idealistic because true idealism required that we continue the upsetting search for knowledge until humanity found the understanding of the human condition that would genuinely bring an end to all the upset anger, egocentricity and alienation in the world. The left-wing was leading humanity to oblivion, not to peace and happiness.
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The threat posed by pseudo idealism is so serious it is explained in four Freedom Essays: Video/Freedom Essay 14 explains the danger of the pseudo-idealistic left-wing’s adoption of the dishonest ‘savage instincts’ excuse to dismiss our human condition; Freedom Essay 34 explains how the left-wing threatened humanity’s search for knowledge; Freedom Essay 35 outlines the progression toward ever greater levels of delusion in pseudo idealistic movements during the last 200 years; while in Freedom Essay 36, Jeremy presents a significant discussion on just how serious the threat posed by pseudo idealism has become, and how the legitimate transformation that understanding of the human condition makes possible is the only way to save human civilisation. We also recommend FAQ 7.3: How does the Left explain human nature?
For the definitive presentation on pseudo idealism, see chapters 8:16H—Q of FREEDOM.