Brave New World . . .

If I want to write a book that can be read equally by people with IQs of, say, 50 and 150—and before anyone gets pedantic about it, the figures are notional and just being used by way of illustration. . . . As I was saying: If I want to write a book that can be read equally by people with IQs of 50 and 150, then, if it is to achieve its purpose, I cannot write it at the median line of 100, but must do so at the lower level of 50.

Years ago—back in the nineties—in the place that I was working, an advertisement for a promotional position at head office was pinned up on the noticeboard. The advertisement stated that applications from staff members with a disability would be (and I am working from memory here) specially welcome, even if (and this I remember more clearly) they ‘could not fulfill the full range of duties’ associated with the position.

Now however laudable the intention, the fact was that ability to do the job seemed suddenly to have become a non-essential, or at least a less-essential, in terms of advancing one’s career path.

Nothing new here, I’m sure many would say . . .

The difference is that the conspiracy against ability involved here is radically different from the old furtive nepotism and who-you-know way of doing things. Here it is all out in the open and operates as a matter of principle.

And if I write in the context of physical ability/disability, it is simply because it arises from the experience related above—but it also serves handily to exemplify what is a much broader cause for concern. The fact is that under the liberal agenda there is any number of pet categories, a potentially infinite number, demanding of special consideration at any particular time.

The liberal philosopher, Mary Midgley, whom I mentioned in an earlier posting, describes (writing in 1983) how ‘the original term [of liberal concern] racism, has proved so fertile, spawning in turn sexism, ageism, speciesism, and uglyism to date, no doubt with more to come.’

Now there is a case to be made for essential interventions in situations where justice demands it. Historically, the advent of free third-level education was just such a necessary intervention, allowing young people of ability from ordinary families to compete on more or less level terms with the sons and daughters of those more privileged. The point here, of course, is that it represented a levelling upwards—it represented the unchaining of ability, not a restriction of it.

By contrast, so many of the pet liberal causes seem to involve a levelling down. The buzz-word, or buzz-phrase, is positive discrimination. This means setting the bar at a level low enough that members of certain pet categories qualify—and more than qualify, are positively advantaged—not on the basis of ability, but purely on the basis that they happen to belong to those categories. It is seen as a counterbalancing discrimination to that discrimination believed to have been practiced as a matter of course over centuries by entrenched, and generally male, elites.

The victim culture that has come into being over the past decades is another aspect of this same race to the bottom. Nowadays it is the victim, or, as is often the case, the alleged or self-proclaimed victim, who is hero, and weakness has become the new strength.

Some twenty or so years ago, a case was reported in the papers concerning a young Irish couple in England—they were settled travelers—whose house had been set on fire and their child killed. Petrol and lighted papers had been put through their letterbox. Except that it transpired that it had not been done by any third party, but by themselves. The fire had got unintentionally out of control and tragedy had ensued.

The reason they had done it, it turned out, was that they wanted their neighbours to accept them—which meant setting themselves up as victims so that people would feel sorry for them.

When I was young any connection between heroism and fire, and any fantasy that one might have regarding the same, would have involved rescuing someone trapped in just such a situation. Nowadays, as in the case above, the road to social approval and acclaim seems to involve instead casting oneself in the role of victim.

Now it was a foolish strategy on the young couple’s part—but they didn’t pick it out of the air. Or rather, perhaps, they did.

The strongest instinct in the general human population is the instinct to belong. This involves shaping one’s face in accord with the prevailing social climate, so as not to seem out of step. In general, people’s social antennae are always on and twitching (even if they don’t consciously realize it), forever checking out the exact climatic balance, and seeking automatically to adjust themselves to it. And anyone testing the temperature of the water of this current age—especially if they feel marginalised or unsure of their place in the scale of things or are just merely neurotic—must surely come to the conclusion that victimhood is the way to go. It’s the new cool.

In the third mailing of this series of blogs, I spoke about how liberalism and the liberal agenda was eating away at the entrails of western society, like the larvae of ichneumon wasps cannibalizing still-living caterpillars. The things I have been talking about here are part of that process. They represent the destruction and dismantling of all the internal support structures of the society, until all that is left is a hollow shell, ready to collapse in on itself at the first blow.

Now as I also said in that earlier blog, the fundamental weakness of western society isn’t ultimately a product of liberalism. Liberalism—left-liberalism—is merely something that battens on this weakness, rather like flies on a carcass. It thinks it is building a new, more enlightened and more equal world—but its delusions don’t count for anything.

At best it is unconsciously fulfilling a natural function—‘like microphages programmed to cleanse a wound / before fibroblasts come to knit it.’ Its purpose is essentially destructive: it is engaged in pulling down a society—admittedly, a sick society, a moribund society—with really no idea at all of what it is opening the door for.

We face a world filled with renewed threats. All the old evils that liberalism has sought to talk away—war, famine, the mass movement of populations—are arguably beating at the door once again. And what have we got with which to face them? A generation of whiners, turned neurotic and self-pitying under the blandishments of the victim agenda. A social structure whose institutions—public and private—are filled to the top with incompetents, whose only asset seems to be an uncanny ability to keep onside of the demands of political correctness.

No wonder we’re fucked.