Religion is a Mental Illness

Andrew Doyle: Has kindness become cruel and divisive? Well, that's a theory being advanced by Dr Peter Hughes, a philosopher and author who has written this week about how acting with extreme kindness to one group can lead to acts of cruelty towards another. And I'm delighted to say that Dr Peter Hughes joins me now. Welcome to the show.

Peter Hughes: Thank you very much for inviting me.

Doyle: So, Peter, where does this theory of yours come from?

Hughes: Well, it comes originally from the work of a Polish psychiatrist called Andrzej Łobaczewski. He wrote a book when Poland was in a communist occupation called, "Political ponerology." And that means the theory of the origin of evil. And what really fascinated him was how, what he called a pathological minority, a minority of people who were narcissistic, grandiose, but mediocre and believed in themselves way beyond what their competence would dictate, took it upon themselves…

Doyle: I know few people like that.

Hughes: … but they took it upon themselves to decide what people could think, what people could do, what people could say, and he was fascinated by this. And he wrote this book in collaboration with other psychiatrists. It originally, they threw one copy of it on the fire when the secret police came around, just in time, they smuggled another one out to the Vatican which got lost, and then eventually he recovered it from memory and rewrote it from memory, missing a lot of the statistical data, but the basic points he made were true. And what I'm fascinated in is how a pathological minority can come to power, can hold power, when the majority of the people do not believe in what they're saying. In our case, what we pathologize in our society is kindness.

Doyle: So, there's something very interesting about this idea. I've seen kindness and being a victim weaponized so that effectively, the assertion of victimhood becomes a means to bully others, and to cudel others. Which sounds counterintuitive of course, but we see it all the time. So, we see it among activists, we've seen it on the streets of London. We've seen people chanting for, effectively, genocide and death of Jewish people. And saying that they are victims and that's why they're doing it. What's going on there?

Hughes: Well, because what you do is you have a strong allegiance to your ingroup and that means you have a strong aversion to your outgroup, and the more depth and virulence you support your ingroup, the more likely you are to be violent to your outgroups. Let me give you some examples. We had a a case recently, obviously in the wake of the Hamas atrocities in Israel, we've had people tearing down posters of children who've been who've been taken hostage. We've had universities making statements condemning Israel with no mention of Hamas whatsoever. We had yesterday a student in, I think, a Canadian college called Durham College saying that she supports herass fully and believes they should do it in her words again and again and again and again. And it's all done in the name of kindness for the oppressed.

Hughes: So, once you divide the world into oppressor and oppressed, the righteous and the unrighteous, the sinful and the blameless, then you can unleash unlimited cruelty.

Doyle: But is it just because these things have become abstractions to these people? You know, they're not there on the ground seeing the children being burnt alive, seeing people being raped and tortured and murdered, and so therefore they can see this as something that's happening far away and they can sort of, I suppose, romanticize it and change it into something that it isn't?

Hughes: But it's slightly different from that. Because the psychology, and what makes it such a a catastrophe really, is that the psychology of it is very robust, because they're really talking only to themselves. And what they're doing is that one person who believes in this type of pathological kindness will connect very well with somebody else who doesn't. Whereas, for the mass of ordinary people, they have a very different understanding of kindness. We understand kindness as being giving to someone who has a need, who might be in trouble, who might be struggling, regardless of what their belief is.

One of the foundational stories for our own civilization is the Good Samaritan. And of course, the Good Samaritan is someone who comes along and helps someone who's been robbed and attacked, even though they come from different social groups and the Samaritan is the exile, the other, if you want. And these acts of kindness which ordinary people engaged in are being demonized because they're not using the correct language.

Doyle: But it is baffling to me. You know, we saw that activist at the Trans Pride rally calling on, basically, the crowd to punch women who disagreed with them and getting a big cheer, right. Now what's going there, because these are a group of people who are saying they are demonized and victimized. But they are the bullies, quite clearly in that situation.

Hughes: Well, Łobaczewski estimated about 5 to 6% of a population - he called it the pathological underbelly - will drive these ideas. But what they do is, they pathologize, then they pathologize normal people and everybody else gets pulled into this catastrophic world.

Doyle: Okay that's interesting, so it's a minority.

Hughes: It's a minority that drive this, it's not a majority.

Doyle: Well, I was going to say because with all the the death threats and rape threats that go towards JK Rowling simply for having an opinion that most people hold, and for for a very compassionate opinion as it happens. Now, it would never occur to me, I can't think of any scenario where I would behave like that and yet you see these thousands and thousands of people doing that. I can't think of any scenario where I would attempt to defend terrorists like people are doing. So, is it just, it's not that we've suddenly got sociopathy on a widespread level. It's not that.

Hughes: No, it's not. I think it spreads and people can ally themselves to this pathological minority, but a minority that drives it. So, if you look at the situation with Hamas for example, Hamas went into the -- I, we don't need to go into all the details about what they did -- but, we know how horrific and horrendous it was. And that is the pathological minority.These are people who are jihadists, who will stop at nothing to erase Jews from the face or the Earth.

Doyle: I don't believe their supporters could do that.

Hughes: But not only could they not do it, they couldn't even watch it. But yet, they will cheer. They will say yes, let's do it again and again. Okay then here's a cudgel, here's an axe, here's a knife, do it. "Well, I couldn't do that." So, the way to counter these people, if there is a way to counter them because they've got so deep in our society, into the bureaucracies that govern our institutions and our corporations, but you have to isolate the pathocrats. Because most people just want to get on. Most people understand empathy. Most people are capable of looking at other people and seeing them as a fellow human being, as a fellow sufferer.

Doyle: It's about reclaiming humanity, right?

Hughes: About reclaiming one's humanity, and one's collective humanity from the pathological minority.

Doyle: So, finally, because we don't have much time, but there is nothing new about this in so far as if you go back to the Inquisition. The people who are strapping those individuals to the rack and torturing them -- they did think they were doing it for God. They did think they were on the side of the Angels. It's perfectly possible throughout human history for for good people to do the most horrendous things.

Hughes: Horrendous things. But what makes a tyranny of kindness so dangerous is that people can punish other people, the outgroup endlessly, take great pleasure in it, and still remain virtuous. And that is truly terrifying. And is where we're at. And we have to understand, the tyranny of kindness is also a tyranny of virtue which, interestingly enough we remember the Republic of Virtue at the end of the French Revolution which is what Robespierre and his fellow revolutionaries saw as the endpoint of the French Revolution. And where did that end? It ended in bloodshed and the guillotine. And that is where we're headed unless we isolate these pathocrats, reclaim normal kindness from its pathological underbelly, and reclaim words like love, hate and kindness for the mass of people, of normal people.

One final point, and Łobaczewski makes this really well, he said the only crime that normal people commit which makes them punished so much for their views, is that they're not psychopaths. And normal people aren't. Ordinary people are decent.

I believe in the decency of humanity, I absolutely do, but then I see these marches and I see most of them are not chanting anti-semitic chants or engaging in that kind of thing. But they are turning a blind eye when other people are. That's what disturbs me. That makes me think that it's become so normalized in that movement. How do you reach those people? I couldn't walk past someone calling for genocide and ignore it. I don't know how you reach that point, and once you've reached that point, isn't it a question of deradicalization rather than persuasion?

Hughes: It is, it is a process of deradicalization. But deradicalization is simply one form of psychological realignment, when what you're doing is you're enabling people to see that they've got this virus in their heads which is driving their behavior, which is against their interest and it's against the interest of all their fellow human beings, including those closest to them. Nobody wins in this game. Nobody at all wins, because where it ends is in chaos and bloodshed. And who's going to gain from that? No one.

Doyle: Well, I think it's absolutely chilling stuff. Dr Peter Hughes thank you so much for joining us.

It’s Time To Stop Being Kind To People

Pathological kindness has become one of the greatest threats to civilization

wetheblacksheep.com

From top-to-bottom, society has conditioned us to think kindness is an unmitigated good. The golden rule to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is one of the most remembered lines of Jesus, but the lesson is near ubiquitous across both the world’s religions and secular moral philosophy. To be kind is one of the first lessons we teach our children. Our greatest works of fiction have focused on the heroism of kindness. Even our advertising frequently uses the morality of kindness to ingratiate us to brands.

But far from an unmitigated good, kindness has a dark side. The once virtuous cell of kindness has metastasized into a cancer. The evolution of kindness, manifested in the unparalleled cooperative ability of mankind, enabled the development of civilization.

In contemporary times, however, pathological kindness has become one of the greatest threats to bring about its destruction.

In the beginning, kindness was not a luxury, but a need. To escape the poverty and starvation inherent to the state of nature, humanity had no choice but to learn to be kind to each other in order to successfully cooperate and produce what they needed to survive. As the great economist Ludwig von Mises explained, “[w]e may call consciousness of kind, sense of community, or sense of belonging together the acknowledgment of the fact that all other human beings are potential collaborators in the struggle for survival because they are capable of recognizing the mutual benefits of cooperation, while the animals lack this faculty.”

“However,” Mises continues, kindness was not developed as a virtue purely in the abstract. “we must not forget that the primary facts that bring about such consciousness or such a sense are the two mentioned above. In a hypothetical world in which the division of labor would not increase productivity, there would not be any society. There would not be any sentiments of benevolence and good will.”

Kindness became a virtue precisely because it’s productive. But, in a world of abundance, kindness instead now often eats away at the resources of society. In a prosperous, advanced society where individuals have moved up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, expressions of kindness towards those who cannot or will not help themselves has been able to develop as a dominant virtue.

Kindness towards those who cannot help themselves is indeed a virtue; anyone of us could fall into this situation through no fault of our own. But kindness towards those who will not help themselves, who seek to leech off of us rather than contribute to society’s progress, is where virtue slips into vice. Most dangerously, those who are successful at taking advantage of society’s kindness rarely admit they will not help themselves, but wear the mask of those who cannot.

When a scammer takes advantage of your kindness to profit at your expense, we all know they’re the bad guy. But when someone claims victimhood and takes advantage of you by passing laws and regulations, we’re supposed to call that the justice of democracy.

This is the politics of Leftism, from the Jacobins through classical Marxism and now wearing its more fashionable woke regalia. A class group or cultural group (including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) flips morality on its head by claiming itself as oppressed—those who cannot help themselves—and appeals to the vice of kindness to gain legal advantages over other groups and redistribute resources towards itself.

To be clear, not everyone on the Left is a manipulative leech. Numerically most will be manipulated hosts. But their manipulators fit a personality type known as the dark tetrad: narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism, and sadism. Amongst other traits, dark tetrad types tend to present with a sense of entitlement and a victim mentality. Studies have demonstrated a strong link between the dark tetrad personality and politically correct authoritarian behavior, which includes a belief in censorship of words and ideas deemed offensive by the authoritarian, that those who utter these words and ideas should be punished for it, and a belief that alleged perpetrators of crimes against a victim group should be treated as guilty before proving their innocence.

Distinguished evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins brilliantly explains in the video below how evolution leads to the existence of such dark tetrad behavior. A world full of kind people is evolutionarily unstable as it creates an incentive to take advantage of the productive ability of the kind masses. But if those who live by leeching off of others become dominant in society then it’s just as evolutionarily unstable, as society collapses from its inability to produce. A society mostly full of kind people, but with a few leeches, can last for the long run.

In an era where victimhood culture is becoming dominant, we are moving into unstable space. It wouldn’t be the first time such an unstable arrangement had the opportunity to destroy a civilization—just look at the Soviet Union. While dark tetrad personalities only constitute about 7% of the international population, in the contemporary West the leech’s activism appears to have led to a far larger percentage of their hosts accepting their destructive ideas. These hosts are overrepresented amongst the world’s upper classes given that being higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy provides more of an opportunity to extend pathological kindness. Rob Henderson has famously labeled this phenomenon “luxury beliefs.”

So what do we do about this problem? You read it already: it’s time to stop being kind to people. Not everyone, obviously, kindness is usually a virtue and should be extended to everyone who wishes to cooperate to build our shared society in peace and productivity, and should also extend to the many well-intentioned hosts of bad ideas who know not what they do.

But when it comes to the leeches, it’s time to cease acting as if it’s a moral virtue to extend endless kindness to those who seek to gain at your expense. Feeding their victimhood and entitlement is what provides an incentive for them to continue; like training an animal, when the rewards cease the behavior will follow.

As the French economist Frédéric Bastiat put it, “[w]hen, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.”

Yes, many already express hostility and disgust towards the woke and mock them online (and sometimes in person), but how many speak of it with clarity as a moral virtue to do so? To make the leech’s hosts stop feeding them, they must understand that their overextended kindness is a moral evil.

At least one woman understood this: Ayn Rand. Rand spoke of the “virtue of selfishness,” pioneering clickbait tactics with an intentionally provocative phrase designed to grab people and force them to think, but that when explained becomes more agreeable than at first glance. “Selfishness” to Rand did not mean gaining at another’s expense, as the leeches (or “parasites," in her words) do, but acting in one’s long-term rational self-interest. That includes being kind to those who work cooperatively with us to make the world a better place, which is most people most of the time. But to be virtuously selfish, in Rand’s view, one must oppose altruism: self-sacrifice for another’s gain.

Unkindness towards those who deserve it needn’t and shouldn’t be a permanent attitude. Those willing to stop using victimhood as a weapon should be met with forgiveness. Perhaps they should even be treated with disproportionate kindness to encourage others to also give up their maladaptive beliefs. We want to reward people who stop their pathological behavior and join the cooperative harmony of human civilization. But until then, we must be brave. We must be willing to be seen as black sheep in order to fix society’s broken morality.

Don’t be kind to those who seek your destruction, and know and say loudly that you are right not to do it.

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you." -- Christopher Hitchens

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

-- Christopher Hitchens

“A word in the ear of the psychologists, assuming they are inclined to study ressentiment close up for once: this plant thrives best amongst anarchists and anti-Semites today, so it flowers like it always has done, in secret, like a violet but with a different scent. And just as like always gives rise to like, it will come as no surprise to find attempts coming once more from these circles, as so often before to sanctify revenge with the term justice—as though justice were fundamentally simply a further development of the feeling of having been wronged—and belatedly to legitimize with revenge emotional reactions in general, one and all.”

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Genealogy of Morality”

In 2022, being “woke,” has little relevance to its original 1930s racial context. The term has become broadly generalized to encompass so-called “protected groups.” These mostly arbitrary, and unrelated, groups are labeled beyond reproach by media and government.

Woke no longer means merely being aware of discrimination, unfairness, and oppression, nor does it connote simply being a good, compassionate, caring human being. Ironically, in practice, wokeness manifests in bullying, threats, identitarian essentialism, and devaluation of others. Many times it’s just narcissism masquerading as empathy. Acceptance and tolerance isn’t seen as good enough. Good people must actively celebrate and promote. Wokeness perverts empathy by elevating victimhood and weakness, literally incentivizing people to identify as members of perceived victimized groups, stumbling over themselves to claim trauma, even on behalf of others. In reality, compassion and empathy must be tempered by discernment, discretion, and healthy skepticism.

The Forced Morality Binary

Empathy and compassion have become weaponized through a crafted morality binary: if you don’t agree with us, on whatever “the thing” is, you are a monster, an enemy, and your opinion must be silenced. “Too dangerous to be heard,” is far too common.

“The thing,” seamlessly moves from one issue to another, demanding compliance with a preferred narrative: Gender Theory, Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, COVID vaccines, Wearing Masks, Ukraine, Climate Change, Abortion, Election Integrity, The Border Crisis, Monkeypox, Elon Musk, Censorship, Parental Rights in Education. It’s all seen to be black and white, right and wrong, a morality binary, despite all being nuanced topics that demand deeper discussion.

Progressing from a black square to the newest version of a pride flag, from COVID vaccination status to the Ukrainian flag, narcissistically worn as if a badge of honor, virtue-signaling is constantly on display. Any questions or deviation from the approved narrative is quickly ostracized and silenced.

Freedom of speech and association are cornerstones of America. We need more discussion, more transparency, and more dissent, not less. “De-platforming” and “de-banking” should have no place here. Perhaps we need to update our anti-discrimination laws to include protecting political opinions.

Education

Wokeness has no place in education. Collective guilt, incentivized grievance, racial essentialism, and rejection of merit & achievement aren’t healthy ingredients for prosperous successful students. In teaching our children, we should be honest about injustices in the US, but only in context with American ideals and the actual progress that has been made toward realizing them. Grievance-centered teaching through a Critical Theory lens is not teaching honest history, and ultimately sets children up for an unhappy and pessimistic life. Prioritizing “equity,” which, by definition, requires arbitrarily enforced discrimination, over equality, isn’t healthy nor equitable. Merit-based admissions, academic standards, and optimistic possibility should be the norm. Elimination of standardized testing, grading, and disciplinary standards will only produce mediocre students unprepared for adult life. The bar should be raised, not lowered. Raising our children to be successful productive citizens should be the priority.

Criminals, Addicts, and Homeless

Safe streets are the bare minimum obligation of a city government to its taxpayers. Woke progressive policies are destroying our cities. Unsafe streets result from bail reform, de-carceration, harm-reduction and homelessness. It’s common sense that decriminalizing crime causes more crime. More criminals on the street means more crime. So called “safe use,” sites aren’t an answer, merely enabling the problems with no significant addict redirection into treatment programs. The answers seem simple: mandatory compulsory in-patient treatment for the mentally ill and drug addicts, and jail time for criminals. The funding is there, but it’s being used incorrectly and funneled to the wrong non-government organizations. Prioritizing the safety and well-being of taxpayers and families should be the norm.

LGBTQQIAAP2+

While the list of “protected people” is constantly growing, in reality, most LGB don’t consider the others a legitimate part of their community. Their long-fought struggle to mainstream same-sex marriage is now overshadowed. Pride has been co-opted and weaponized in the name of “queering” and gender ideology. We must not only accept, but also actively celebrate every element, without question, in the name of inclusion.

Again, in reality, compassion and empathy should be tempered by discernment, discretion, and healthy skepticism. None of that requires celebration or promotion.

Control

Wokeness, from an activist standpoint, is ultimately about control, exploiting the kindness of people, policing language and narrative under the guise of empathy. “Fat-shaming, misgendering, and land acknowledgements” are some  examples of this. It is an objective fact that obesity is unhealthy, but stating that fact is now somehow a “perceived harm,” to an obese person. “Misgendering” someone is also now “harm.” In some places, a purely virtue-signaling “land acknowledgement” is required at the start of an event.

For a woke protector, taking on “grievances of oppressed people” on behalf of others delivers a narcissistic savior complex endorphin rush. It literally feels good to signal ones virtue, whether truly virtuous or not. Censoring any questioning or skepticism of their views is always within bounds because those on the opposite side of the issue are considered “the bad guys.” To them, the ends justify the means.

In attempting forced normalization of things that would be conventionally unpopular, woke narratives divide and control through manipulation of “grievance,” creating and then amplifying problems, rather than solving them.

Anti-woke isn’t anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, or anti-equality. It’s neither MAGA nor fascist, and it’s absolutely not discriminatory or extremist. Anti-woke rejects the artificially constructed forced morality binary. Elevating arbitrarily chosen “grievances” and protecting select groups above others can only end in disaster. Not all grievance rises to a level that requires or demands redress. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated.