Wednesday, April 17, 2019

WESTERN MORAL VERTIGO AND WHITE GUILT




It is common to hear people say that we can’t judge other religions or belief systems. Why not? One thoughtful young lady had responded to my listing teachings from the Quran in favor of world conquest. “Linda” dismissed all of the quotations I had provided:

·       With all due respect Daniel, I don't think it does much to quote the Koran out of context…The most recent mass shooting was against Muslim people. We need to fight extremism and hatred, not bicker between religions. If Christianity has the upper hand on moral values, demonstrate that in your actions and words. Love thy neighbor instead of trying to inspire hatred.

She didn’t seem to think that “Christianity has the upper hand on moral values,” since she quoted several verses she thought proved that the NT was equally violent. Nor did she seem ready to examine the grand perspective by comparing the status of previously Christian nations against Islamic nations. Linda also argued that since the Muslims are also victims, they should be given immunity against any charges. However, she charged me with “inspiring hatred.” Hmmm? Perhaps I should have prefaced my remarks with, “I had been mugged by Muslims on three occasions, and they also raped my daughter.” Perhaps this would have given me the right to speak to her.

I responded that it would have been the loving thing to blow the whistle against Hitler and Stalin before they had each killed their many millions. However, Linda objected to my equating Hitler with Islam:

·       But like Christianity, there are many interpretations of Islam! Hitler and Stalin weren't Muslims - I don't see an equivalence here and I challenge you to demonstrate one. In fact, if you want to talk about Hitler, look at the hatred of Jews leading up to WWII, the language used against Jewish people was scarily similar to that we now use against Muslims.

·       There is hatred and there are reductive arguments on both sides and so many innocent people getting blamed for the actions of a few violent extremists - who come from a variety of ideological persuasions. There are bad people and good people on all sides - continually categorising like this is harmful and does nothing to move things forward - it only divides us further.

Why was Linda unable to see my point that, sometimes, love requires us to warn against certain groups and people? I think that her stance has been nurtured by the ideology of religious pluralism and multiculturalism - We cannot judge others because we lack any absolute moral standard to do the judging. It would be like a math teacher grading a math exam if there are no correct answers.

This, of course, puts the kibosh on all serious efforts to transform this into a just society, since there is no absolute standard of justice. Instead, justice is merely a concept we have dreamed up, and yet Linda was judging me as if she did have objective standards. She illustrates the great extent to which this world is floundering with cognitive vertigo.

However, it might be more fruitful to approach Linda’s position from a more personal or psychological framework. Why is this moral malaise so acceptable? What do our youth derive from it? Moral vertigo seems to be widespread and highly acceptable. While the West takes a strong stance against racism, as it should, it also endorses racism in many forms. Shaming “White Privilege” seminars have become mandatory on many college campuses for those who have a skin color associated with crimes of the past.

Surprisingly, the participants are not objecting to the seminars’ implication of guilt-by-color but seem to be basking in it and its implicit message that America is evil. Why are they not protesting this new racism?

Besides, “white guilt” that is now promoted doesn’t seem to be of any help to people of color. In his recent book, “Shame: How America’s Past Sins have Polarized Our Country,” Shelby Steele argues that white guilt, the terror that whites experience of being labeled a “racist,” has harmed the Black community:

  • It has spawned a new white paternalism toward minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did.

Steele claims that this paternalism was worse than anything that he had experienced under segregation. How did this serve to undermine the black family? Steele argues that white-instituted entitlement programs, along with their narrative of victimhood, have served to disempower:

  • Post-1960s welfare policies, the proliferation of “identity politics” and group preferences, and all the grandiose social interventions of the War on Poverty and the Great Society—all this was meant to redeem the nation from its bigoted past, but paradoxically, it also invited minorities to make an identity and a politics out of grievance and inferiority. Its seductive whisper to them was that their collective grievance was their entitlement and that protest politics was the best way to cash in on that entitlement—this at the precise moment when America was at last beginning to free up minorities as individual citizens who could pursue their own happiness to the limits of their abilities. Thus, white guilt was a smothering and distracting kindness that enmeshed minorities more in the struggle for white redemption than in their own struggle to develop as individuals capable of competing with all others.

According to Steele, “white redemption” was the Leftist/progressive attempt to occupy the moral high-ground by demonstrating that they aren’t racist. Rather, it is those who oppose them that are the racists. It also served as a strategy to manipulate the “oppressed” by reminding them of their victimization long after it was an issue.

This reminds me of an article in which white young ladies are bowing and kissing the shoes of the “Black Israelites” (a photograph pictured this), a hateful and intimidating group. Why would they abase themselves in this manner? Were they guilty of racism or were they simply led to believe that they had profited from racism, and that this had made them guilty? In any case, their behavior was justifying the hate-dripping stance of the “Black Israelites.”

Steele argues that the victimization identity along with the Welfare State has undermined black initiative:

  • We should not be smothered, as we have been, by the new paternalistic liberalism that emerged in the mid-1960s—a guilt-driven liberalism that has imposed itself through a series of ineffective and even destructive government programs and policies. We should be left to find our own way as free men and women in this fast-paced and highly competitive society.

Linda wrote back and dismissed the many sources that I had presented to validate the fact that Islam is a real menace as “biased.” She seemed to be immune to any of the evidences, which I had presented. (I also suspect that she dismisses Steele as an “Uncle Tom.”)

What does Linda derive from such paternalistic attitudes towards Muslims? I can only guess. However, knowing my own tendencies towards self-righteousness, I would think that this kind of paternalism is not only a way to prove that we are not racist but also to prove that we are more righteous than those who do not offer obeisance to the “oppressed.” This makes us feel that we are a “somebody,” a person of value.

Self-righteousness is a life-controlling despot, who hides his controlling influences until they become invisible. However, I am thankful that I no longer need this uncompromising despot. In the eyes of my Lord Jesus, I am already righteous and beloved and no longer need to prove myself. However, those who do not have Jesus are driven to prove their worthiness as I had, even when it is to the detriment of others. The late poet and thinker T.S. Elliot had been understandably suspicious of idealists:

·       Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. 

I can identify!

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