This blog endorses a kind of primal realism that many people call conservatism, although it has nothing to do with the conservatism of today. It’s more like conservationism. One of its basic ideas is that our problems are not external (type of government, economics, politics) but internal, in that most people are unable to discipline their inner monkey and so end up as forces of chaotic destruction.
“As people age, they often realize that many of their youthful decisions, which seemed so correct at the time, were not such great ideas afterall.”
I haven’t noticed this. I have noticed that people tend to rationalize their behavior. Unfortunately people (personality-wise) change very little with age. So an impulsive ten year old will likely grow into an impulsive forty year old. And depressive people will remain depressive and honest people will remain deviant.
People will make excuses for their behavior if they get caught, and they will make excuses for their hypocrisy either way. There isn’t much altruism in people. People only find religion after they’ve been condemned to death. If they manage to break out of jail they tend to lose that religion.
I liked the statement this brave fellow made, even if he made it so quietly he stands little chance of the lynch mob figuring out how hard he’s got their number.
People act through justifications. Justification means you do something, and then invent another reason why you should have done it. It wasn’t the reason why you did it. But it’s the reason you offer to others.
Justification is inherent to knowing how to manipulate others. You can use it before you act, even. “I’m going to take this cocaine and look at this child porn to keep them out of the hands of our children…think of the children!”
We use justification because as individuals, we assume we deserve everything we can get our little hands on. We haven’t progressed from an anarchist hunter-gatherer stage to having some conception of civilization, in which anarchy is destructive.
Because we assume we are right, we assume the world should adapt to us, so we pedantically explain in its tokens of moral righteousness why we should be doing what we’re doing. And if others criticize us, we take it personally and attack them personally, because they attacked our assumption of being right, justified, and entitled.
Until humanity gets over this bad psychology, everything we doom will be tinged in ruin.
Self-justification seems like an inescapable part of human nature. It reoccurs so often, and must have a biological, evolutionary origin. It is possible that every human “sin,” or undesirable behaviour, is rooted in biology. I don’t know how humanity can overcome this. An individual could, perhaps. He could notice that he was justifying his actions to himself, and try to stop it. I guess that we would want to progress from that to society’s elites, and then to the direction of society as a whole.
It seems to me to be a consequence of morality. People don’t want to be the ‘bad guys’, so they lie to themselves when they violate the morality they’ve been raised with. If people were raised amorally, they would likely be more honest with themselves, though i would imagine morality is self-generating. Certain unusual and inconvenient actions become associated with negative emotions, then eventually it’s a mortal sin. It’s quite a reasonable process from a biological point of view, as it would help keep the tribe/kin group from splitting up or becoming disorganised. The trouble starts when impractical and individualist morals form, and are spread by mass media and the education system…