In his new book The Great Divide, William D. Gairdner posits that the left/right ideological fissure parts upstream of politics and even culture. Rather, our irreconcilable differences originate in the acceptance of philosophical truths whereby for one to be “true” the other must be “false”. One of these mutually exclusive axioms is whether human nature is fixed or whether it is malleable. Original Sin versus Tabula Rasa (blank slate).
Utopian regimes have been propelled by the popular belief that maladies are caused by an imperfect externality and therefore with the correct reconfiguration of the world (i.e. theirs), that theoretically “the human condition can be perfected”. At its core, tabula rasa is incompatible with the traditional Western view of fixed Human Nature. Simply put, The Fall means whether our technology looks like The Flintstones or The Jetsons or our perverts look like Tiberius or Gacy… Human Nature is fixed.
Jacobins, Stalinists, Nazi Socialists, Maoists, etc. were all conscious transformers of society with the purported benevolent intentions… marches toward perfection. It is this dream that is rekindled with each wide-eyed generation. Indeed, what is Obamacare other than American’s having been coerced into participating in and subsidizing someone’s utopian scheme? …so good, it’s mandatory. Indeed, ObamaCare may one day become the impetus to bring every facet of life into line… what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung. Utopianism is compatible and inevitably employs any level of depravity because it is insatiable. After so much misery, surely only a supreme narcissist still believes that he could condition perfection? In a rare candid moment, while accepting his farcical “Peace Prize”, a freshman president Obama provided a fleeting glimpse into his heart:
“But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.”
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