The opiate of the Massless
October 25, 2016 § 23 Comments
Voting is like heroin for the secularized masses: each dose makes them feel good about themselves momentarily while deepening addiction to and dependence upon our ruling class and their political philosophy, liberalism. As time goes on the angst merely deepens, though, and the payoff becomes more a matter of staving off the agony of withdrawal rather than fleeting and illusory good feelings.
Social media and voting combined is like fentanyl-laced heroin. Social media amplifies the personal effects of participating in liberalism’s liturgy – which are the only effects of any appreciable note – while at the same time destroying personal, Church, and family relationships; that is, while destroying the very things which anchor human beings in some lived reality other than the liberal singularity.
Zippy Catholic 
Relevant.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/03/if-religion-is-opium-of-masses-mass.html
best post title of the year for you.
First line: You mean heroin, no “e”.
[Fixed, thx].
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
Yes, this all really is our secular liturgy. And Liberalism is a jealous god, so it is no surprise it strives to strip all else of value and meaning.
Kidd Cudi,
My vote (hah!) – and apropos to the recent posts – goes to “Democracy is the snot running down the nose of an AIDS patient.”
@Zippy – very pleased to see your recent stuff on voting. I haven’t voted about anything at all since 2010 (when I was sacked from editing Medical Hypotheses – partly – because the publishers wanted me to introduce peer review = evaluation by voting).
People seem to equate voting with being politically active, and not-voting with ineffectual quietism. It would therefore he hepful to have a ‘model’, or way of understanding modern national politics, that made clearer how things are influenced by non-voting (non-party, non-committee, non-mainstream) mechanisms.
However, I don’t really have any such understanding to offer – except that it seems clear to me that there *are* powerful but invisible and currently-undetectable means by which people – individually and en masse – have a *massive* influence on politics; probably by an accumulation of multi-millions of small effects, or by the large effects of certain specific small choices by individual – that are unpredictably situated so the individual does not know at the time that so much hinges upon that particular choice.
Our big problem now is that we have a mostly ‘bad’ population, and the good people aren’t very good.
If people were better on average, and if the best people were better (ie if there was a real Christian awakening in The West and among Westerners – and I personally don’t mind which denomination was to lead it, so long as they are serious and Mere Christians) then national/ international politics would certainly improve in the ways that most matter – and this would be unstoppable.
Bruce Charlton:
It is remarkable how little most folks who design social choice systems actually grasp about the mathematics – and other basic aspects – of social choice. And how good people are at rationalizing away the implications they do not want to accept: how relentlessly many resist coming to an understanding. And how equivocal many are in rationalizing elections as just an amoral formality (though at the same time they don’t understand how they work qua formalism), all while defending participation in these mere amoral formalisms with religious fervor.
I haven’t voted in a political election since 1992.
On small boards and the like voting is indeed a mere formality. Actual power distribution is often radically different than formal voting power proposes. Decisions are always already predetermined before a vote, and other than in pathologically rare cases the results of any vote can be undone and re-oriented by real power.
I am sure we could both tell stories, from our different domains of experience.
I took my granddaughter to early voting today but she was denied a ballot.
Mick:
The secular magisterium, at least, is serious about who is and is not admitted to the sacrament.
Hell, if Grandma Abortion Witch has her way dead liberals shall approach the altar and living deplorables, who are not in a state of grace, shall not.
Zippy. I was reading some thread in which it was averred (I think by you, maybe not) that the Church has never valued one form of govt over another and, then, later in the day, I was re-reading Plinio’s, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution” in which (P. 19) he cited Pope Pius Vi identifying Monarchy as the best form of govt;
So, I chased down the quote:
In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, it had transferred all the public power to the people — the people which, guided neither by reason nor by counsels, forms just ideas on no point whatsoever; assesses few things in accordance with the truth and evaluates a great many according to mere opinion, which is ever fickle, and ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess, ungrateful, arrogant, and cruel…
Pope Pius VI, Pourquoi Notre Voix, 17 July 1793
Of course, subsequent Popes (Think Leo XIII) have different ideas about firs of govt owing to changing secular circumstances but there does seem to be a growing clique of Christian monarchists now that the failures of the democracy of the exceptional nation is so stark.
That is a fine citation Mick.
I’m pretty sure that Immortale Dei is the encyclical where I first encountered the notion that, while saying what precise formal structure of government is or is not best for a particular people exceeds the Church’s competence, there is less to that formal disclaimer than meets the eye.
Mick: I like that more people are becoming monarchists though I think some of them have an overly romantic view of monarchy. Another problem is that some identify monarchy solely with the absolute monarchs of the modern era. I don’t want Hillary to be in charge but I don’t want Louis XIV either. Though I would prefer the latter of course.
PB:
Agreed.
Under monarchy we are frequently ruled by an awful monarch with a built in term limit called Death.
Under liberalism we are ruled by an awful ideology which can, in theory, continue to rule us indefinitely.
Indeed. And in an extraordinary scenario in which tyrannicide becomes justifiable, one can hasten that term limit. Unfortunately you can’t shoot liberalism.
I see a strong corollary: trying to rationally convince committed liberals to stop voting is like trying to rationally convince opium addicts to stop smoking. It might work on occasion, and rarely.
And this only taking into account the personal pleasure dimension, when there is the sacramental dimension, peer pressure from the group, indoctrination since young, and likely other significant factors.
GJ:
Most addicts will not even admit that they have a problem.
The opiate is hitting home. I have to admit that I’m glad Grandma Abortion Witch lost, but I wonder if this “victory” will in the long run delay repentance.
The Church will often disclaim competence outside its charisma, but it is still often clear what the Church would recommend.
but I wonder if this “victory” will in the long run delay repentance.
It will. People on both sides of the partisan divide are fully committed to the postmodern project, happily abandoning facts and arguments that do not conform to their worldview.
When intoxicated by deep draughts of the tears of your enemies, it is difficult to resist tipping the bartender.
It is foolish to pretend that the known dangers were the same. Grandma Abortion Witch, apart from being devoutly in favor of the culture of death, is also vehemently opposed to any policy that would keep the American nation a majority in its own polity. It would be a tragic irony to defeat her on abortion only to see our nation become a minority in its own borders and sectarian violence like Yugoslavia or the partition of India happen here.
Mike T:
You have a habit of rebutting arguments which nobody has made.
On why democracy is great (‘great’):
“We get to pick who’s going to ruin our country.” – Conan O’Brien