Aldous Huxley on the Right
17/05/07 13:22
"There are
many people for whom hate and rage pay a larger
dividend of immediate satisfaction than love.
Congenitally aggressive, they soon become adrenalin
addicts, deliberately indulging their ugliest
passions for the sake of the 'kick' they derive
from their psychically stimulated endocrines.
Knowing that one self-assertion always ends by
evoking other and hostile self-assertions, they
sedulously cultivate their truculence. And, sure
enough, very soon they find themselves in the thick
of a fight. But a fight is what they most enjoy;
for it is while they are fighting that their blood
chemistry makes them feel most intensely
themselves. 'Feeling good,' they naturally assume
that they are
good.
Adrenalin addiction is rationalized as Righteous
Indignation and finally, like the prophet Jonah,
they are convinced, unshakably, that they do well
to be angry. "
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"
This soon after Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, one can't help but think of the religious right when reading Huxley's words. Their obsession with a visceral, inflamed and all-consuming religious experience blends well with the adrenalin addiction Huxley describes. Their expressions of hatred for and superiority to all who are unlike them and do not believe as they believe also fits. Their perpetual rage is the clincher.
"Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding--more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it hard to feel very proud of their activities. But partisanship is a complex passion which permits those who indulge in it to make the best of both worlds. Because they do these things for the sake of a group which is, by definition, good and even sacred, they can admire themselves and loathe their neighbors, they can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with a positive glow of conscious virtue. Loyalty to their group transforms these pleasant vices into acts of heroism. Partisans are aware of themselves, not as sinners or criminals, but as altruists and idealists. And with certain qualifications, this is in fact what they are. The only trouble is that their altruism is merely egotism at one remove, and that the ideal, for which they are ready in many cases to lay down their lives, is nothing but the rationalization of corporate interests and party passions."
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"
Huxley, in 1952, might well have been watching the modern Republican conservative movement. "They can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with a positive glow of conscious virtue. Loyalty to their group transforms these pleasant vices into acts of heroism." They sing hosannas to torture; they promote a war that lacks a rational justification or foreseeable end. They ignore the tens of thousands of lives lost to that war. They leave victims of a hurricane to slowly sink under the weight of governmental incompetence and disinterest. They enrich their friends and corporate sponsors with lucrative contracting deals. They sing hosannas to torture and illegally spying on American citizens in order to enhance their party's power and protect their precious selves from boogie men they've conjured from an American tragedy. And through it all, they insist on their fitness to serve as the voice of "real Americans" and function as the peoples' representatives--utterly oblivious to the glaring irony.
Yes, they live in a bubble; but it's a bubble lined with mirrors. Anything outside the bubble--anything that isn't them in thought and deed--must therefore be attacked, for it's a threat to their solipsistic world. It's as if today's conservatism is not a political philosophy at all. It's more like a disorder, a mental condition. Today's conservatism is a disease.
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"
This soon after Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, one can't help but think of the religious right when reading Huxley's words. Their obsession with a visceral, inflamed and all-consuming religious experience blends well with the adrenalin addiction Huxley describes. Their expressions of hatred for and superiority to all who are unlike them and do not believe as they believe also fits. Their perpetual rage is the clincher.
"Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding--more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it hard to feel very proud of their activities. But partisanship is a complex passion which permits those who indulge in it to make the best of both worlds. Because they do these things for the sake of a group which is, by definition, good and even sacred, they can admire themselves and loathe their neighbors, they can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with a positive glow of conscious virtue. Loyalty to their group transforms these pleasant vices into acts of heroism. Partisans are aware of themselves, not as sinners or criminals, but as altruists and idealists. And with certain qualifications, this is in fact what they are. The only trouble is that their altruism is merely egotism at one remove, and that the ideal, for which they are ready in many cases to lay down their lives, is nothing but the rationalization of corporate interests and party passions."
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"
Huxley, in 1952, might well have been watching the modern Republican conservative movement. "They can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with a positive glow of conscious virtue. Loyalty to their group transforms these pleasant vices into acts of heroism." They sing hosannas to torture; they promote a war that lacks a rational justification or foreseeable end. They ignore the tens of thousands of lives lost to that war. They leave victims of a hurricane to slowly sink under the weight of governmental incompetence and disinterest. They enrich their friends and corporate sponsors with lucrative contracting deals. They sing hosannas to torture and illegally spying on American citizens in order to enhance their party's power and protect their precious selves from boogie men they've conjured from an American tragedy. And through it all, they insist on their fitness to serve as the voice of "real Americans" and function as the peoples' representatives--utterly oblivious to the glaring irony.
Yes, they live in a bubble; but it's a bubble lined with mirrors. Anything outside the bubble--anything that isn't them in thought and deed--must therefore be attacked, for it's a threat to their solipsistic world. It's as if today's conservatism is not a political philosophy at all. It's more like a disorder, a mental condition. Today's conservatism is a disease.