Let Flowers Bloom: Fighting the Mob Mentality in Favor of a Greater Love
Let me put shape to thought. I remember when Facebook started showing everyone what their friends liked as well as their friends’ friends. It was like the tech wizards went playing with matches in a late summer field. People who always got along started hating each other seemingly over night. Gone were the easy acquaintanceships, casual friendships, and generally peaceful networks of the 90s. This wasn’t the high school, get jumped, and smoke a joint three weeks later, illegal though it was, sort of tension, the kind people get over when the bruises heal. Nope. I sat and watched the entire social climate enter meltdown mode. Suddenly everything was serious, and if you pissed someone off and your politics weren’t “ right, ” then you might as well have been picked up by an old west lynch mob and hung out to die on the bough of an old tree, frontier justice style- no matter if you were really guilty of anything or not. You might as well start a whole new life because you weren’t getting invited to the party let alone the family reunion. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, the witch hunt mentality grew and expanded. Perfectly reasonable, good people have had their lives torn apart due to the vengeful whims of the crowd no matter how compelling and well-supported the reasoning of the accused were.
It was stupid, and it still is. People think of their loud statements and hasty judgments as a glamorous revitalization of the Civil Rights Movement except many of these people aren’t aware that their rage is often misplaced as laws to assure the equal treatment of the people were passed long ago. Still tragedies happen. The law, if upheld, deals harsh penalties to those who violate it, so it is understandable to be upset when such law is not observed. Nevertheless, sad as it is, the tragic turns into something almost like a dark comedy when the arguments being thrown don’t even take reality into account and frame it like the laws aren’t there or don’t work at all. The Zeitgeist seems more like an excuse to exercise anger than it is a movement that upholds the good that is already part of the law. It’s he who yells the loudest, might is right with blue hair, as if a “loving” heart justifies the error.
In a way, the rebellious tendency however blind, loud, and unyielding has transformed, the circularity of its reasoning yielding, in a ironic twist, an oppressive spirit. Oppression is not only about power, for it is also about dominating the avenues of communication and limiting liberty. It’s about tearing down rather than building up, and when civic life itself becomes a circus, it has historically signified, as Paglia explains in her discussion on transgenderism, the beginning of the end. Society, weakening from within, thus shows signs of apathy, not caring that those with the loudest feelings are the ones who are taking the places of yesterday’s tyrants. Their emotional complaints, though subject to whim and fluctuation, open the door to their own triumph, a triumph which would be built not on the justness of the British common law system, so essential to the fairness of Western justice, but rather built on the foundations of tyranny: censorship and coercion.
I’ve always tended to favor less government, adults making their own decisions, and people generally minding to their own rose gardens rather than fussing with the gardens of others; still, I can’t help but think that now is the time to stand up for Western culture. I’m not interested in telling people what to do or forcing people to live inauthentic lives but the dominance of poor logic, double standards, bad education, and hasty assumptions really is a shame. I think most people, if they knew they could disagree without being drawn and quartered in town square, would actually be open to pushing beyond propaganda and learning more. Opinions won’t change over night, but any good argument can change minds and actions with time. Covid gave people a lot of time to think, but our entire society would benefit from more thinking, more conversations, and surely more time engaging with quality books.
One thing I see on the left is that they want people who are different to feel safe; to translate, they want to reduce anxiety. However, an overbearing, pushy attitude only increases the anxiety of those who disagree and to act as if disagreement is not acceptable and to throw the most extreme of insults into the mix is a recipe for dogmatism. A relevant example is the transitioning of children. Some view it as a right while others are extremely concerned about the health effects. Those who want to protect their children from pro-trans influence are labeled as bigots and child abusers despite the well documented hazards of hormone therapy and surgery. In some states, parents can even lose custody of their children if they attempt to stop trans procedures. In effect, the left not only harshly insults opponents but robs them of their right to parent. One has to wonder what safeguard from anxiety anyone really gains from that kind of situation.
If an individual or business wants to coddle whatever group, they might as well exercise their liberty to do so, but they should at least know that shoving it down people’s throats and trespassing upon their psychic space isn’t necessarily the best way to go about it. Far too many lose their identity and distinctness to the loudest agenda. Comfortable in its sense of “moral superiority,” the far-left tries to spread its ideology. Some do it from heart and some do it for money, but the assumption that aggressive P.C. politics and rhetoric are the way to progress is a sure fire way to build a dead end road. It’s easy to preach to the choir, but what isn’t easy is truly respecting others' freedoms.
Freedom isn’t the only thing at stake. Justice, fairness, prudence, and strength are also on the line. To favor some over others for no reason other than an external affinity compromises fair judgment in general. To engage in knee jerk alliances compromises the prudence needed for good decision making. To coddle anyone, to label people as victims and use that as a mantra makes people doubt themselves and their fellow man. It sows discord and displays the violation of virtue as the norm rather than recognizing everything so hard worked for that allows the weakest to achieve their full potential.
That’s not to say that sorrow should be hidden. Human feeling needs expression. Catharsis traditionally has been provided by the arts. The censorship of today’s media limits that catharsis to some extent, but so too does the all too utilitarian style of modern progress. While returning to the days of small towns and self-reliance for mental health reasons is not practically feasible at the moment, society can create some space to grieve. The expanse of popular spirituality can help with that as it offers people opportunities to process and sublimate their emotions. It is good there are some conduits for the healthy expression and exploration of emotion, but one critical thing to keep in mind is that allowing grief to dominate one’s personality and thinking dims the light that they may find in the arduous process of triumphing over the unfortunate turns of life. This too is true of society. A society that dwells so much on hardship tends to to quickly disregard the fullness of potential in-dwelling in each man.
Life is hard. Each life has its highs and lows, and each person’s trajectory is formed by so much beyond anyone’s control. Life’s opportunities or lack of them aren’t all about color, gender, or sex. What people can achieve isn’t only shaped by region, class, and education. So many people completely disregard personality, motivation, maturity, and luck as essential elements that make for success. Being pushy and making one’s own pet alliance dominate the means of association limits broader chances for connection and increases the risk of disharmony not to mention semiotic overkill. The greater love is the love of wisdom. Let us seek it together. Let flowers bloom were once there was but smoke and ash.
