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Marianne Williamson’s Slogan: Your Soul Is Fixable
After reading Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions, I recommend watching Dave Rubin’s interview with Marianne Williamson. It is a wonderfully informative video and, if you possess a dark sense of humor, very funny.
Williamson is the perfect distillation of the unlimited vision of humanity. In the limited vision of what humanity is, people get sick and die, poverty is the natural condition of humanity for tens of thousands of years, the universe is hard, resources are limited, and people aren’t as nice and sensible as they should be. In the unlimited vision, every problem is fixable if we just have the right people dictating the right policies. Human nature is fixable as long as people have the right inputs.
According to Williamson, the reason we have poverty is that corporations are taking all the money. By government taking money from corporations, it can redistribute money to people who are suffering so that they don’t suffer anymore. In a similar fashion, it is presumed that people are naturally healthy. Apparently, we are filled with chemicals given to us by corporations, so if we got rid of those things via government, we would all be healthier.
Williamson’s designs for foreign policy are also of a piece. Apparently, the Iran deal under Obama was great and it was all Trump’s fault for scrapping it. Also, nuclear weapons are bad for some reason. I’m still not sure of her beef with nuclear weapons.
Near the end of her interview, Williamson said that people aren’t dumb. I pointed my finger at the screen with an overly dramatic flourish and said, “Objection!” Phoenix Wright style.
“People are very dumb when it comes to science and economics.” Neither are intuitive and both require a good deal of research that most people find boring and hard to understand.
Now, I doubt your average Ricochet member agrees with Williamson on much of anything but both would say there is a lot of suffering and unfairness in the world. In Williamson’s view, this suffering and unfairness aren’t caused by the tragic nature of the world or the innate flaws of human beings. If you believe that the world is fixable through government policies led by the right kind of people, it logically follows that the source of suffering and unfairness is caused by the wrong kind of people. Since before I was born, conservatives have lamented that we consider leftists wrong while leftists consider us evil. But if one assumes that the barrier to all goodness is the other side, it makes sense to hate that other side.
For the longest time, the LGBT-left has confused the heck out of me after Obergefell and especially after the election of Donald J. Trump. Homosexuals now have the right to get married in all 50 states, and the Republican President of the United States has a long history of supporting homosexual rights. The GOP has become much more accepting of homosexuals and homosexual couples as long as they don’t force anybody to bake them a cake. They have won their rights but still describe America like it’s run by Taliban warlords. While not being gay myself, I am very happy that gay rights have become the norm in my lifetime. Yet, I notice that there is no happiness on the gay left for the quick progress made in just a few decades.
Thanks to the Williamson interview, I now understand why. Bigotry and cruelty to the left are fixable parts of the human equation. All anti-gay sentiment can be gotten rid of. In the limited view of human nature, there will always be some silly, wormy nobodies who hate this or that group because some folks are just jerks. But society can go from being unfair to homosexual people to being pretty good and decent to homosexual people. We can’t achieve heaven on Earth, but we can make a pretty good society for people that does a mostly good job of treating different people fairly. I’m quite happy with the improvements in society, but the left is always unhappy because the left believes that people can be perfect.
That is partly why race relations did not improve under Barack Obama. A visible sign of America’s racial progress didn’t mean anything because some white guy somewhere was racist, therefore, everything is bad because society needs to fix all racism.
Also, by taking money from corporations, we can spiritually address racism and the history of slavery in our country through government reparations according to Ms. Williamson. By taking money from corporations (which she assures us have enough money for everything) we can give a check to the descendants of slaves and, through a process of collective asking for forgiveness and forgiving, we can move beyond this whole racial divide that all Americans of goodwill hate.
This is the most interesting part of Williamson for me because while I think she is wrong about everything, she is a spiritual person who can recognize that things aren’t as they should be between black and white America. It’s fascinating that she believes that government can address that divide without acerbating people.
Apparently, everything can be fixed if the government has enough power.
Update: Bethany Mandel has a relevant post about Marianne Williamson that focuses on her more positive features. It’s well worth a look.
Published in General
The biggest problem I have with people like Marianne Williamson is that she doesn’t realize that the people who want to fix everyone else are the most flawed of all. They don’t see their own arrogance and narcissism; that they believe they can perfect people with their idealistic and foolish efforts is mind-boggling. Instead of trying to perfect the rest of us, maybe they should self-reflect on their own flaws and limitations. Yes, I could live with those efforts.
That’s taking a lot for granted.
I dunno – Mao fixed the human nature of milions.
What if my soul doesn’t need fixing?
Your attitude can be fixed with the right therapy, and if that doesn’t work, with mandatory pharmaceuticals.
Humans got brokenness born into them. Some Buddhists think you can get out of it but very few Buddhists achieve Nirvana in this lifetime. There are legends of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Anne and the Buddha being born perfect but that’s it as far as I know. Brokenness is the default setting of man.
I’ll pass on Ms. Williamson’s fixing.
Well, maybe a makeover?
Well, Henry, according to current day lib thought, any “beef” with anything is wrong. (Beef comes from cows, who emit methane.)
So if you have a beef with any type of weapons, you’ re probably producing methane, which makes the weaponry wrong.
I have come to believe, that the Left, much like Ms. Williamson, believe that we puny humans are really gods. We are simply damaged and imperfect due to inputs and circumstances, but once these are fixed, we are all perfect little gods and utopia is achievable. Now, even if this were true, the left seems to ignore that you will never achieve a perfect system of inputs or fixes to achieve utopia so it will never happen, even under their own belief system. I think people on the left are angry that their “natural” god-like state is messed up and, dang it, some voters won’t get on board to elect or give the tools to the enlightened among us to create the proper/better inputs and rectify the damage and bad circumstances. This must be a very frustrating way to go through life. Frustration = anger = act by any means necessary to achieve UTOPIA!
I go to church and am reminded of what an imperfect creature I am, and that I can never be perfect, but the grace of my Savior covers me, and I, with an understanding of the love and gift of grace I have received, am bound to share that love and grace with others. This reminder helps me accept my failings (and the failings of others), but compels me to strive to do better. (I have a lot of failings!) Also, thinking about bigger things than the next election reminds me that this world is not my home and the government isn’t my savior. I think there is something to this lack of perspective with the hippy-dippy left/humanist vs. more religious-minded folk which adds such an urgency to the left’s desire to empower the government to “fix” everything…by any means necessary and as soon as possible.
That was a concise and cogent summation of my whole shebang. You must have written great book reports as a kid.
“I’m from the government. I’m here to fix you.”
That would be horrifying.
What do you mean, “would be?”