Little did they know, British naturalist Charles Darwin, German philosopher Karl Marx or Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud, what intellectual and moral revolution, and even a social one, their theories were going to trigger. And even nowadays, are we really aware of what these three men have done to us?
Taking Darwin's ideas to their logical conclusions, people started to think that the most cherished Victorian achievement, the empire, was not the result of the civilizing mission of the chosen people, but the cruel manifestations of international and political natural selection or survival of the fittest. Marx added to this the very appealing principle of social justice, underlining that international injustice, the same as social injustice, can be done away wi
th only through revolution and the establishment of democratic socialism.
Poor old Victorian respectability was to suffer most from these theories.
We are what we are because we are the fittest who have destroyed the weakest. We are no better than murderers. On the other hand, are we really the fittest, the best? All you have to do id look around.
We are what we are because we exploit others, says Marx. Moreover we are not what we want to seem to be because our real life is in the dark subconscious, where the suppressed emotions lie. In fact, most of us are neurotic, says Freud, and we need psychoanalysts to help us out. A brave new world, indeed.
In these terms, progress is less a lofty ideal than the result of cruel exploitation, of the class struggle for ownership of means of production and for political power. Another jungle where the survival of the fittest is the law.
Charity is ultimately questionable as it runs counter to the general law of the survival of the fittest; if we help the helpless we do not encourage he strongest individuals to survive, and consequently our world, as we know it, will degenerate.
Duty can't be seen as a high-flown moral imperative either. It might be more accurately defined as the observance, by those who are intent on survival, of the very rigid principle of division of labor, based on exploitation.
If all this is true, one cannot help asking: What values are left? Is reality as grim as all that?
What Values are Left? written by Herminne Tonita for FamousWhy.com
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by Herminne Tonita -