Solzhenitsyn on externalising evil

Actually, I see that we do ‘externalising evil’ a lot on MN

Or any time we think about criminals who do terrible things. No one wants to think of such people as similar to themselves of course, or their crimes in any way being similar to our own failings, but we very much like to dehumanise criminals. Some of the stuff people say about people in prison really gives me the shivers.

the general narrative is tories are evil, leftists liberals are good. yet

I couldn't put a specific number on it but I believe the vast majority of voters across the political spectrum have almost identical goals; they merely disagree, often vehemently, on the best way to achieve them.

Actually, I see that we do ‘externalising evil’ a lot on MN....the general narrative is tories are evil, leftists liberals are good. yet Some of these woke, reality denying, activists are the most nasty intolerant virtue signallers there are, and they clearly are high on the power and enjoying being able to claim the moral high ground whilst doing it. Words are cheap.

One of the things I admire about Nimco Ali is the way she points out that girls experience FGM because of their sex, not their gender

Absolutely! It can be easy to imagine women have achieved equality in the West - and in terms of legal & civil rights that may well be true.....but one need only look at numerous other countries and societies to see exactly what being a woman can mean and entail.....

That is why inter-sectionalist politics does my head in...because it seems itself to be the product of a privileged, western mind-set...which claims not to recognise oppression unless given a handy diagram or table within which to locate it.

Many liberal feminists seem to feel and act as if ( white) women have nothing left to protect, nurture or defend; and they endlessly accuse others of racism or over-looking the sufferings of other, 'less privileged', groups of women. Whereas the truth is, women are women wherever they live, whatever their race, their ethnicity, class background, religion....and if a woman anywhere if the world is sufferering on account of her sex, then we all are. We can only measure progress by reference to the least privileged amongst us.

If a girl in Somalia is suffering FGM, then a girl in Oxford is similarly at risk...and if a new born baby girl is buried in a clay pot in the earth in India...so potentially is a baby girl in Edinburgh......and if an African American woman is being called a 'h'o and 'a bitch' in some rap or drill video..then so am I, here in Liverpool.

Sex matters. Sex is real, and we are all in it together whether we acknowledge it or not.

I can't but wonder whether this attitude is the result of living in a safe, privileged, liberal society

One of the things I admire about Nimco Ali is the way she points out that girls experience FGM because of their sex, not their gender.

Indeed. If we were to do a new version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs the ostentatiously woke would put "fully expressing one's unique gender identity" on the bottom layer, and everyone who's ever been outside the "all basic needs taken care of navel in need of some gazing" bubble would put it right at the tip of the triangle at the top if they bothered at all.

I can't but wonder whether this attitude is the result of living in a safe, privileged, liberal society
I think it's a huge part of it. I come from a country with enormous poverty but also pockets of wealth and privilege. Only those with privilege and security can afford to bang on about gender identity being the next frontier in rights. Ask any of the millions who are struggling to support their families day to day whether they thought it was important and they'd have no idea what you were even talking about.

Jelly slice , I also agree that to an extent the sjw attitudes is a first world problem because we take our privileges ( usually hate that word when used in the oppressed vs privileged context of the sjw) so for granted. So for granted that these same people cannot see how they are undermining these very privileges ( freedom, civilised debate) by what they do.

I also think that being seen to be saying the right things, regardless of truth or integrity, are now valued over DOING the (invisible) right things.

However, words are cheap.

Apols for the rogue typos

Hi Op and others wanting to read it
Can totally recommend listening to the.audible version. Very accessible... you can listen on your daily walk.

It is an astonishing book, and I think I will have to listen to it again.

It's the abridged version on Audible btw. (Feel like I'm an advert for Audible, but its really very good. Since getting it, have 'read many books I have been trying to reading for years)

I can't but wonder whether this attitude is the result of living in a safe, privileged, liberal society. Which of us has lived through any true challenge to our lives? Covid is the first for most of us. And even Covid has only been a challenge to our physical freedom. Which of us has lived through an era or in a country where thought was repressed? Where the things that we here take for granted are the state's to grant or to confiscate, with no appeal?

It is no coincidence that the clearest writers on freedom are those who have lived under repressive regimes.

Yes Wild Swans was eye opening. Need to order (the abridged) Gulag from Amazon. Can't remember where I read it, but the line about 'resentment can be a murderous force' resonated, and rings true in Communism and Cultural Revolution as described in Wild Swans.
But in the present day, we seem to have resentment/victimhood wearing the mask of social justice targetting the so called evil people/privileged . There is no reasonable debate with these people who absolutely believe/pretend they are on the right side of history, and that their activitism is for the greater good.
This way of PC/woke/virtue signalling thinking pervades through academia, education, public sectors, where it's all about saying the right things, optics of virtue signalling, e.g. instances where police seem more interested in non-crimes than real crimes.
I can't see a way of how truth and integrity will prevail over the insanity.
Sorry for the ramble. Hope that made sense.

Also in terms of getting a grip on a lot of things going on at the moment both The Gulag Archipelago and Wild Swans are invaluable reading. Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it, etc.

even if we find ourselves in such a position of power we should favour a solution that favours the wider society as a whole rather than victory for the group

I think that this is a fundamental political divide that doesn't fall along party lines as obviously as you might assume. You'd expect Labour to end up on the needs of the collective over the needs of the individual side, right? But they quite manifestly do not, not any more. I'm very much on the left, but have encountered both the community comes first and individual comes first mindset at all points on the political spectrum. Like authoritarian versus libertarian, it's kind of its own political axis, different from left/right.

One thing that's come out of the current pandemic for me is a clear realization that people aren't always who you thought they were and that how you assumed they'd react isn't necessarily how they will. I think crisis makes people's inherent traits more obvious, both the good and the bad ones.

A very good (and not too immediate) example of two interest groups at odds with each other concerns the Tube.

For people with poor or no sight, having the doors beeping to let them know when it is safe to get on or off is a good thing. For people with poor hearing, it is sometimes agonisingly painful to have the doors beeping. And for regular commuters, having the doors beeping loudly at every stop every day is now found to damage their hearing.

So should the doors beep or not?

Anyway, Solzhenitsyn says it shouldn't be a matter of the needs / desires of one group / community prevailing over those of others and, instead, even if we find ourselves in such a position of power we should favour a solution that favours the wider society as a whole rather than victory for the group.

This is interesting I think, it suggests to me that any inteest group, be it for trans people, women, the disabled, workers, artists, whatever - they cannot simply advocate for the interests of their group. Not only do people need to accept that those interests will be balanced by society against those of others, they need to put their own interests within that larger context themselves and act on the larger context.

This puts all kinds of advocacy and activism in quite a different light. One of the problems many people have identified with activism is the tendency to want to place your group as disadvantaged and therefor able to make demands against other groups, to have amoral claim to simply think about the needs of one's own interest group. But if it's true that integration has to also happen at the individual level, in terms of the self, and it involves self-control and contextualisation at it's very heart, that whole approach is called into question. Even oppressed groups cannot make demands without consideration of others.

This jives with my own observations of what works and what causes problems, but it would be a big change to the way many activists and interest groups work.

I read The Gulag Archipelago a very long time ago.

Not so relevant to this thread, but my favourite part is when the two men talk about work, craftsmanship and ‘the last inch’.
He invented flow and mindfulness way before any of the YouTubers did.

But the question is, will we manage to hold ourselves back? In the future, some group / community we belong to will also find ourselves in the driver's seat due to the conditions at the time and the test will be whether the focus remains on 'moral justice' as opposed to pushing for as much as possible while the going's good - Indeed!

Thank you, @Freespeecher and @Goosefoot

Essentially, the core of Jung's work is about taking responsibility for oneself first, above everything, one of the prime tasks of which is to learn to understand the Shadow: everything we believe/swear/say that we are not.

In other words, our work is to own our darkness. It's a highly personal form of activism, because, as Jung says, much of what we call activism is actually just the Shadow playing out: we march and rally to avoid a confrontation with ourselves.

Usually, those who have spent a lot of time confronting themselves are different kinds of activists - or their activism looks different. Sometimes, when we start embracing the totality of who we are - dark and light/unknown and known - those things we took arms against don't seem as important any more. Sometimes they do, though. Moreso.

"I'd rather be whole than good." - Jung

Oh, that is a nice bit of writing, BertiesLanding,

Published in 1957.

@Freespeecher - Your quotes, and Solzhenitsyn's stance - is very similar to Jung's in "The Undiscovered Self". This is one my my favourite quotes from the book, which is along similar lines:

Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, ... a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side. The accumulation of individuals who have got into this critical state starts off a mass movement purporting to be the champion of the suppressed. In accordance with the prevailing tendency of consciousness to seek the source of all ills in the outside world, the cry goes up for political and social changes which, it is supposed, would automatically solve the much deeper problem of split personality. ... What then happens is a simple reversal: the underside comes to the top and the shadow takes the place of the light ... . All this is unavoidable, because the root of the evil is untouched and merely the counterposition has come to light.

Interesting quotes also in the context of today's situation ..freedoms vs responsibility for example

First remove the beam from your own eye, then you will be able to see to remove the speck from your brother’s eye...