We Must Stop Trying To Be Unassailable

Guilt, as I’ve noted before, is the great vulnerability of the Western world. I’ll pass up an explanation of why for today, but the validity of this statement is made ever so clear by the fact that political types rise to power by championing one class or another of victims, portraying everyone else as somehow guilty. It works brilliantly, and by it bizarre and unbalanced people leap into power.

Guilt makes Westerners behave very stupidly. It has brought them low and could extinguish their civilization altogether. I don’t think it will go quite that far, but I’m an optimist.

We Don’t Have To Be Perfect

There’s a lot to say on the assumption that we have to be perfect (we don’t even know what perfect would look like), or that one error negates all the good we’ve ever done (neither Moses nor Jesus taught such a thing), but those aren’t our central points for today. A far more immediate concern is that we’ve played directly into the hands of guilt-slinging power addicts, simply because it seemed a little easier.

So, let’s get clear on something: The only way to be completely unassailable – where no one can slap blame upon you for anything – is to be dead, or very nearly so.

A great deal of our contemporary insanity rests upon a ridiculous fear that someone , somewhere, might say that we’re bad.

Please understand that being blameless is impossible. This line from Thomas Jefferson makes the point beautifully:

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

Even perfect actions can be spun in some way to make them sound bad. Understand, please, that for political types, this is their job. They work at it full time, just like you work at your job.

Cultural Confidence

Our Western civilization, alone in the annals of human history, defeated slavery on a civilizational scale. Rome left some fifteen million slaves behind, and the Europeans of the supposed dark age – and for moral reasons – eradicated the plague of slavery over the next few centuries. Western civilization was also the seat of the great scientific advances of the past few centuries. From where, after all, did airplanes, cars and antibiotics come?

And yet, Westerners very easily believe that they are the great disease upon the planet.

This happened for definable reasons, and our civilization, like every civilization, has included bad things, but this situation is borderline insane. Incompleteness and error are just the present human condition.

Now, since so very few living Westerners still have a gut sense of cultural confidence, I’ll pass along some lines I’ve heard from people who still remembered it: 

The future was ours. We mattered. We believed. We looked out for each other. We were proud of who we were.

Cultural confidence is not “we’re above those rotten others,” but simply “we’re pretty good.” That’s a healthy thing, and we need it back. 

Just Stop

Stop thinking that you have to be unblamable, because it’s impossible, and because it makes you easy prey to power-mongers.

If you make a mistake (and you will), fix it and move on. If your friend does, try to help him or her fix it. But stop responding to people throwing guilt at you. Be clear on this point, please: 

Someone who gains power from your guilt is someone you should ignore.

Such people have no moral standing, so stop imagining that they do. Take their blows and continue as you were.

Make yourself a better person and work to make the world better, but not out of guilt or a belief in some essential lack. Make the world better because you want a better world. Do this for yourself, your family and friends, and even for those who attack you; or at least for their children.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

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Source: https://freedombunker.com/2024/12/03/we-must-stop-trying-to-be-unassailable/