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Feeling Important
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. — T. S. Eliot
When I came across this quotation from T.S. Eliot, it spoke so much to me of what is happening in our world. I think the elites in our society are driven to be just that—elites—where they can subdue the rest of us underlings and increase their power daily by taking away our own. Their actions defy the tenets of our democracy, elevating their narcissistic desires by claiming they are acting on behalf of the country; instead, they are acting for their own benefit. The restrictions they have put on our freedoms, the damage to our abilities to maintain a reasonable lifestyle, continue to build an abyss between their expectations and our needs. And they don’t care.
Eliot was correct when he said that they don’t mean to do us harm. Since they work from an idealistic viewpoint that helps them realize their cause, inconveniences must be tolerated. They don’t mean to hurt us when they insist on rights for the LGBTQ+ community; when little girls become upset if boys walk into their restrooms that’s an unintended consequence. When children “know” that they are transgender, but they know their parents would resist this conclusion, those children must be protected from the phobias of their mothers and fathers. When people have to make a choice between putting fuel in their cars and food on the table, it simply can’t be helped; we must strive for a cleaner, sustainable planet.
Whatever damage they do as they pursue their unrealistic and foolish goals is irrelevant. There are greater causes than people’s personal needs, preferences, or the freedom to speak without censorship. Since the elites can’t control every outcome, there’s no point in considering the peons in their decision-making.
We must progress. We must move forward.
Whatever the costs.
Published in Group Writing
This is why I describe myself as a “bleeding-heart conservative”.
Because leftism is heartless. It’s not mean, necessarily. It’s just heartless.
Well said! But they will brag, at the same time, about how compassionate they are!
That always mystifies me. Just remarkable…
Reminds me of an old joke that is probably not considered PC, but the punchline is: “When you is impotent, you got’s to look impo’tant!”
There is satisfaction in being compassionate but it takes effort, but there is power in being thought compassionate and all it costs is words.
That’s the part that gets me: they think if they say the words, it’s the same as actions. No way!
I don’t think that Leftists are heartless. They are evil, because their view of the world is evil.
As I understand Leftists, they generally divide the world into victims and oppressors. This is true of the libertarian type of Leftist, also.
Some people do better than others, which Leftists attribute to oppression. They sympathize with the victims of such oppression, real or imagined. They do not sympathize with the oppressors. The oppressors are their enemies, and the Leftists wish to destroy them.
They tend to have a tenuous grip on reality, particularly on the importance of innate individual differences. They all tend to be blank-slaters, and are impervious to empirical evidence demonstrating strong genetic or other innate causes of a variety of characteristics and behaviors. Of course, even if they were to acknowledge the existence of such differences, they would be inclined to view them as injustices that need to be corrected, rather than as gifts of God.
I suppose I should point out that I disagree with Eliot’s claim. I very much doubt that half of the harm in this world is the result of someone’s misguided desire to feel important.
Much of the harm in this world is due to human sin — pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. There are a number of sins in each of these categories.
Let’s take just one example of harm in the world. Abortion. Do you think that half of this is due to someone’s desire to feel important? I doubt it. More like lust, and evasion of responsibility.
These are also the reasons that Progressives seem to lie so easily and readily. If meeting their goals is of paramount importance, then casualties along the way are irrelevant. So when the FBI lies, or when the CDC lies, or when the Attorney General lies, or when Senators lie, or when the media lies (and I’m including intentionally misrepresenting a situation), the casualties don’t matter. The agenda is all that counts. This also applies to transgenderism, the vaccines, medications–it’s all the same agenda. Increase Power. Maintain Control. Achieve Importance.
And more, that it’s the same as good results.
I never saw this quote from Eliot, but it is very insightful but your connection, Susan, to today is so spot on. We are led by knaves who are only looking for their self-aggrandizement, and that goes for leaders of all political and cultural flavors.
Thanks, Manny. It is sad and tragic for this country and is difficult for all of us to go through.
Whenever I think of what has happened to this country going back to at least 2008 can be summed up from another quote: “Because it is bitter and because it is my heart.”
I should volunteer for a quote of the day to explain why I came to that quote.
You should! It sounds like it would be a thoughtful one to discuss.
I will. Can you provide a link to the June Sign up sheet? I can’t find it.
I see that you found it! Great!
“The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.” —- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1955
Y’all are so far ahead of me on checking in to Ricochet today!
For anyone else who may want to sign up: here’s the link for the June 2023 Quote of the Day Signup Sheet
GPentelie, thanks! Exactly right!
I think the evil makes them heartless.
I just finished the Babylon Bee’s book about wokeness. The book is written from the perspective that the reader wants to become woke, and the book tells them how. The oppressor/victim theme is key to a lot of wokeism . . .
“people who want to feel important”…there is some of this in Goethe’s character Faust. In his review of the play, critic Marshall Berman referred to it as ‘a tragedy of development’, using the words developer/development in two related ways…
a)Self-development, as that phrase might be used in a modern self-help book:
What this Faust wants for himself is a dynamic process that will include every mode of human experience, joy and misery alike, and that will assimilate them all into his self’s unending growth; even the self’s destruction will be an integral part of its development.
b)Economic, industrial, and political development
As people would put it nowadays, Faust wants to “make a difference.” He wants to “change the world.”
Feeling important is pride.
And the people who eerily adamant that abortion be legal are, in part, doing so to feel important. Not to mention to get elected.
We speak of ‘soft-hearted’ and ‘hard-hearted’. And of course ‘bleeding-hearted’, but this is just more of the same – accent on feeling over doing in order to believe you are good.
I don’t remember quite where I read it, (probably here, that’s where I get a lot of my best stuff) but people who are incapable of hurting others aren’t really peaceful, they are harmless.
Similarly, if you can’t give but think of yourself as generous…you aren’t. Though I suppose you can make a living
makingforcing other people to be generous.That may be the first line written by TS Eliot that I’ve ever actually understood.
I would have actually read the post but I was tweeting condemnations of transphobes, climate deniers, and other haters and doing my usual vegan breakfast with a kale smoothie. How does the post affect me?
Not one teeny tiny bit, OB. Just go back to your kale smoothie and bran.
But my wife tells me everyday that I’m impotent…Wait a minute.
But are you wearing a Tuxedo?