The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Reconciled to Servitude

Posted on | November 21, 2014 | 77 Comments

“Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”
— Aldous Huxley, 1946

That passage was quoted by a commenter in reaction to an earlier post about a typical specimen of 21st-century “education,” and I thought it deserved its own post. What Huxley was describing is how sexual promiscuity — a life lived in pursuit of meaningless thrills — is ultimately incompatible with liberty. Thrill-seekers claim to be liberated when they are in fact enslaved by their own passions.

Heedless of basic decency, lacking self-respect and sturdy discipline, the sexual slave requires a master — someone to tell him what to do, and to provide for him what the slave is incapable of providing for himself, including a sense of purpose in life. To be a good servant — “Life is good! Vote Democrat!” — gives the slave pleasure. And he pursues his own pleasure, having gained “the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio.”

Dopehead daydreamers are everywhere now. One sometimes encounters them online, ranting furiously about “social justice.”

It’s important to remember that, although these people exist in real life — that is to say, there are actual human beings running those batshit crazy troll accounts — they are as altogether artificial in their politics as they are in their online personas. They themselves have never done a goddamned thing for “social justice.” They simply enjoy mouthing these slogans about “oppression” and “patriarchy,” etc., because posing as Our Moral Superiors is an emotional compensation for their own obscurity and worthlessness.

They are the Nowhere People — rootless, without loyalty to family, community or religious tradition, and thus “free” to create for themselves imagined identities and idiosyncratic belief systems. Although they usually think of themselves as unique individuals, they are really sheep in a herd, predictable and therefore ultimately boring. Any politics, as long as it’s not conservative politics; any religion as long as it’s not Christian religion; any sexuality as long as it’s not normal sexuality. One notices that the Nowhere People are seldom husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Idle narcissism is incompatible with the dutiful commitments of marriage and motherhood.

This afternoon I encountered Nissa on Twitter as @cuntxmuffin_ — nice handle, Nissa — when she trolled into my timeline. Why was she trolling me? I don’t know, but her Twitter profile lists her interests as “feminism, cross stitching, true crime, horror & iced coffee,” and links to her Tumblr page entitled, “I Only Exist Because I Dream.” What does she dream of? Oh, the horrors of transphobic bigotry, the joys of tattoos and nose rings. And what kind of life has she led?

I’m originally from Massachusetts and lived a good portion of my life in Nebraska; but I’ve lived in south Texas for five shitty years now. I’m moving to San Antonio soon tho, so lets be friends if you live there.
I’m 19 but I like to think i’m an old lady at heart.
I like cross stitching, coffee, feminism, knitting, girls, sometimes boys, beards and booty, cats, baseball, laying in my bed, and true crime. I’m a second year college student studying criminal justice.
Tell me some cool secrets and lets be friends
Party on, dudes

OK, so the 19-year-old bisexual feminist college student decided, randomly, that we needed her to lecture us about U.S. history.

The Nowhere People, living in the Brave New World. There is no point in arguing with these creatures, who are evidently content to remain ignorant. They are reconciled to their own servitude.





 

Category: Culture

Comments

77 Responses to “Reconciled to Servitude”

  1. kilo6
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:23 pm

    ZOMG, Now I know how you felt after the Alyssa Milano tweet thingy
    Thank you

  2. Fail Burton
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:33 pm

    one last thing: "racist against white people" isn't a thing, @elissabeth is trash, and fuck your favs pic.twitter.com/rVuhA7g49o— Shanley (@shanley) November 21, 2014

  3. Taryn
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 1:08 pm

    If there’s one word that makes a woman feel like trash, I’d have to say that’s it.

  4. Matt_SE
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:03 pm

    Kind of the internet version of Bum Wars.

  5. RKae
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:17 pm

    I’d like to see a culture where something can be legal without being sanctioned and promoted.

    We seem incapable of doing that, however.

    Sodomy becomes legal and five minutes later, it MUST be presented to schoolchildren as “normal,” and “just the same as heteronormative sex.”

    The idea of saying, “Yeah, it’s now legal, but it’s still crazy” seems impossible for people to grasp.

  6. RKae
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:20 pm

    Now, be fair!

    Libertarians are anarchists who begrudgingly admit that, yes, there has to be a law against murder.

  7. WarEagle82
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:47 pm

    Ignorance is curable, but stupid is forever…

  8. WarEagle82
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:54 pm

    I don’t know of anyone advocating throwing homosexuals in jail but having government openly and aggressively advocating practices that are obviously dangerous is at odds with the long-term survival of civilization.

    The government wants to stop me from smoking or drinking and demands that I wear a seat belt or helmet.

    At the same time, they promote homosexuality and while demanding that I pay for the health insurance and treatment for people who commit “suicide by sex.”

    And when that is not enough, they insinuate that I am somehow to blame for their self-destructive behavior, and if I warn them out-loud about the dangers of their actions I am labeled a “homophobe!”

    Sweet deal if you can get it.

  9. Adobe_Walls
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 2:55 pm

    Perhaps, but I assume for Andria_XX to be living under a bridge isn’t an option for her parents, so she’s probably at home trying to figure out what that ”one more magic degree” she needs to succeed is.

  10. Fail Burton
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 3:07 pm

    You could pay-per-view that baby if she agreed not to block. But she would. After about 8 thousand f-words.

  11. Daniel Freeman
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

    Which implies a certain amount of self-loathing in her taking that as a handle.

  12. Daniel Freeman
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 4:18 pm

    That highlights one of the logical arguments for getting rid of bad laws: selective enforcement as a tool of arbitrary authority. Considering that the English navy, and by extension the British empire, infamously ran on “rum, buggery and the lash,” it seems that they did not actually enforce that law against everyone that they knew broke it — so if they did enforce it, it was probably just for political reasons.

  13. FMJRA 2.0: Sold Me Down The River : The Other McCain
    November 22nd, 2014 @ 8:16 pm

    […] Reconciled to Servitude Regular Right Guy Law Of Markets Ed Driscoll […]

  14. Fail Burton
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 2:00 am

    Mufftitten would look good behind a plow. Once you get re-educated to the point you understand water is wet and babies don’t come from gender studies the rest is a breeze.

  15. Adobe_Walls
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 2:38 am

    Yeah but she wouldn’t pull it even she could.

  16. Adobe_Walls
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 2:40 am

    So….leave’em in the middle of the Gobi?

  17. Fail Burton
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 5:06 am

    Well, then no bread and water for MuffinStupid at the 13 o’clock two minutes of lunch break.

  18. News of the Week (November 23rd, 2014) | The Political Hat
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 4:06 pm

    […] Reconciled to Servitude “Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.” – Aldous Huxley, 1946 […]

  19. NeoWayland
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 4:12 pm

    Pardon, but most libertarians aren’t anarchists.

  20. K-Bob
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

    Except it’s more like this when it’s not Alyssa Milano:

    http://img.izismile.com/img/img7/20140328/1000/friday_gifdump_585_31.gif

  21. K-Bob
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 5:39 pm

    Or as Bob Hope inferred, what becomes newly “legalized” frequently becomes compulsory.

  22. K-Bob
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 5:41 pm

    Anarchists don’t join the Libertarian party.

    Libertarians don’t run around painting that douche-y, hipster, A-in-a-circle thing.

  23. K-Bob
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 5:43 pm

    “Great! We defeated them! Now we’re ALL for Gay Marriage, right guys? Guys? Ahhhhhhhh!”

  24. Freddy At Night
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

    Since when?

  25. K-Bob
    November 23rd, 2014 @ 7:49 pm

    Since before you were born.

  26. LN_Smithee
    November 25th, 2014 @ 6:02 am

    I wish I could find the Twitter exchange I had a couple of months back with a guy who posted a quote from some 19th Century Indian chief bemoaning how the peaceful natives of this continent were ruined by the evil Europeans. I chimed in to say that it was a fantasy that the assorted tribes lived a kumbaya existence before paleface came and taught them all how to be greedy and warlike.

    As the sometimes contentious back-and-forth progressed, the guy, without provocation, said that he was only truly a sliver Native American, mostly having Russian heritage. He just adopted the principles of the American Indian as his own, and thinks of himself as being more authentically Indian than the full-blooded natives who sold out to the white man and operate casinos.

    #eyeroll.

  27. LN_Smithee
    November 25th, 2014 @ 6:05 am

    I’ve never known anyone who looks more attractive with facial piercings. I’ve never heard anyone say “She’s really pretty, but you know what would make her perfect? If she had a piece of metal protruding from her face.”