A blast from the past in honor of recent international news: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/09/26/double-edged-compassion/

Double Edged Compassion

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve been reading about Jack the Ripper again. Yes, there was a reason for it, at least at the beginning, until I realized my research was a bit stupid, and what I knew was already enough, unless I can find an interesting way to incorporate all the theories into the story, and that’s unlikely. (Rhodes to Hell. Which will get written one of these weekends.)

Anyway, the current book had an interesting theory I’d not seen before, so I started reading it, because given how our secret services and how corrupt they are I could well believe the British secret service might well have been behind the Whitechapel murders.

Except… two thirds in, before he gets to why the secret service would even do this, he gives us a panorama of the world at the time, relying exclusively on socialist sources.

Look, I’m not going to say there weren’t terrible things happening in Victorian England. For one, yes, they were much poorer than us, which means their poor were far poorer than anyone today. But most of them were recognized as terrible and dealt with by non socialists. And the socialist press was usually at good twenty years behind. Amid the terrible things adduced to the “capitalism” of Great Britain was the story of a single mother abusing her little boy. The only way this makes sense as being the fault of the system is if one swallows the Marxist bullshit that capitalism is the cause of insanity, and that only socialism can bring about its banishment. Which is, of course, poppycock. Also the reason the Soviet Union treated opponents as being mentally ill.

I’ll grant you that the British empire was not merciful. Though I’ll note it left places in much better shape than the soviet empire did. I’ll also mention that colonialism is just what we call “Mankind’s drive to survive” often expressed at the tribal level. And that you can’t have one without the other, as we’re learning daily.

Anyway, this made me think of how socialism was brought in int he name of “compassion.” In the same way our socialists talk of the difference between rich and poor as calling for some kind of redistribution and vengeance, the author of this book practically foams at the mouth that there were rich people, while the inhabitants of the East End were so poor. And then foams at the mouth some more at the idea that the poverty of the East End was largely self inflicted.

And yet– And yet, even though I note he white washed the biographies of the murdered women a lot, even he records the fact that they were all — everyone of them — addicted to the bottle, and often also to sex with strangers (not just for money.) He foams at the mouth about their not having “the price of a bed” but in at least two cases records that they had it and drank it before night time. In fact, one of them is dying of alcoholism as she’s killed.

All of this is, somehow, the fault of the rich of people, as though — somehow — they were responsible for making sure their brothers and sisters didn’t drink. Or perhaps, had life so good and perfect they had no wish to drink.

I’m not going to say that alcoholism and drug addiction isn’t a disease. I suspect it is a form of mental illness, as are a lot of other things we do to our own detriment. Mental illness, to be fair, is very poorly understood. And I suspect a lot of what we call mental illness are simply impulses that helped our ancestors survive, but which are now out of favor.

Whichever way it is, I have sympathy with those addicted to substances, or for that matter to behaviors. I have a ridiculously addictive personality — I once got addicted to fanfiction to the point of barely functioning — and just about all I can do is avoid things I could be addicted to (there’s a reason my husband won’t let me have mahjong on any computer) and channel it to productive addictions (You could say this blog.) In fact, those who know I’ve barely been on facebook or other social media, know it’s a matter of avoiding addiction.

So, of course, I have sympathy. But sympathy is not the same as wanting to somehow banish the effects of addiction and self-destruction. On the contrary, when you enable addiction and self destruction, what you get is more addiction and self-destruction.

It’s now been a hundred years, more or less, since the socialists got their way, to some extent, in every country of the world.

A social net, administered by the government, and not at the mercy of random charities, and also not requiring any change of behavior from those it “helps” was build under most Western societies, where the free market is more and more restricted every passing year.

And yet, in the year of our Lord 2022, we have “homeless” lying in their own feces in the biggest and brightest cities in the western hemisphere.

They are the same type of people who ended up in the East End. (Not all. There were married East Enders on the way up, like most of the Jewish immigrants from Russia, malgre the socialist illusions of a lot of them.) Addicted, mentally ill, dangerous to themselves and others, and prey to every vice known to men.

As the lives of the prostitutes who were killed by Jack the Ripper exemplify, even then they were not starving. And a lot of them received charity from various sources, including those who got them jobs for a while. It’s just that any additional money went to drink as it now goes to meth or pot or other drugs.

And the more money they are given the more money goes to this, in the end creating a spiraling cycle of self-destruction.

We’ve tried it. We’ve tried taking from the rich to give to the poor, deserving and undeserving alike. We’ve tried propping up the self-esteem of poor strayed lambs so that they don’t feel the need for drink or drugs.

Except that it doesn’t work that way. None of it works that way.

Under the best possible circumstances, human life is tragic. Things happen to every one of us that tear the heart out of us, and the the will to live. Those are of different magnitudes, and the less suffering one has experienced the more one feels the slightest blow. Until one gets to “micro aggressions.” Note this is not a wish for more suffering, merely an acknowledgement that reducing suffering doesn’t mean less addiction or neurotic anguish.

Escaping emotional pain is very human. Some personalities are more susceptible to it than others, but all humans try to escape pain. Which leads us to addiction and alcoholism.

And then there is the fact that normal, not-broken humans aren’t diligent and persevering. Look in the stone age, if you killed more mammoths after you had more than enough to eat, you didn’t end up better off. You just destroyed the eco system in your area.

There is in normal human beings the tendency to do enough to be “comfortable” and not one gesture more. We who work, and like working, and like saving and differing pleasure are honestly more than a bit wrong in the head. It’s just that our brokenness fits with technology and has allowed us to give the world prosperity unknown.

Which doesn’t banish poverty, because most humans are not broken in that way. They will do enough to survive, and not a bit more.

In many ways, except for dying alcoholism and similar diseases, the East End poor were very sane. They were doing the minimal required to survive, even back then. And they did largely survive.

And our homeless (trust me, I used to hear them talk when I walked in downtown Colorado Springs) consider themselves the smart ones. No saying they aren’t either. They don’t do a lick of work, and live lives that would be considered lavish anywhere in the past. And by the way, also lavish in the Socialist Republic of the USSR. The rumored ad that said “Will trade state apartment in Moscow for sleeping bag in the streets of Los Angeles” is only a joke if you look at it another way. Look at it another way, and it makes perfect sense.

Socialists use compassion to get hold of all the levers of the economy. I’m not even going to say some of them aren’t really compassionate, though that becomes hard to believe the more each “experiment” in socialism produces nothing but suffering. However, the only way to avoid people killing themselves on the streets, in their own excrement, is to have a totalitarian state in which everyone is controlled and given so much they can do and earn.

And that, obviously, due to problems of information (and human motivation) always ends in “They pretend to pay, we pretend to work.”

Someone with a state apartment in the old USSR might be (marginally. Trust me, I’ve heard stories) more comfortable than the homeless in LA. But he was also completely unable to change his situation or do anything to improve it.

Someone on a sleeping bag in the LA streets, if not addicted to anything, and if capable of working, would be out of there relatively quickly, and in a trajectory that might have limits in wealth and satisfaction, but probably not relevant ones. And what’s more, their work would ultimately create wealth for everyone else.

It is rumored that Asian illegal immigrants, as well as a certain number of African and Hispanic ones don’t linger long in the homeless camps, even if they head there first. They come possessed of behaviors, and a brokenness that makes them work and try to improve themselves.

The later-day-Socialists we live with have recognized this. They now preach that “privilege” includes any type of education and a willingness to work or interest in creating anything at all.

Which means only that they are now trying to eliminate that, in pursuit of their world where the state controls us each and every one and where even the least susceptible of us feel a need to escape by drugs and self-destruction. Because they’ve become insane enough that to them this is “compassion.” Or at least no one can feel guilty for having more.

One would think at some point they would re-examine their premises and wonder if all accumulation of wealth is theft, and if in fact wealth can be created as well as destroyed.

Of course they don’t, because they aren’t aware of the philosophy behind their feelings. They simply feel that no one should be allowed to have more than anyone else.

Which is all very well, except that if they take down the US, they take down the source of wealth that has been keeping the more socialism-infected countries from starving. Already this winter, we’re going to see the fruits of socialism worldwide. And it will get harder for the next two or three years at least.

The funny part is that the socialists can’t understand why people are revolting against their “compassionate” rule. Which figures, because they also can’t understand why some homeless guy isn’t entitled to take, say, everything I own.

Well, I came to this country with a suitcase weighing 20kg (It was the maximum.) What I have I’ve made, saved and built (And I’m by no means a paragon. Yes, I could have a lot more.) And what is mine I keep, partly out of compassion, because giving money to the self-destructive only makes them destroy more. And entices a lot more people to the same vices.

The false compassion of the socialists is based on erroneous premises, and is about to bring down the very engine of prosperity that lifted humanity out of dire need.

What can’t go on won’t go on, and the burned hand teaches.

There are a lot of burned hands in the world right now. And they’ll bring down socialism worldwide, from the “compassionate” states of Europe, to the repressive ones of Cuba and China.

It is more than time. 100 years is a long time for humanity to spend destroying everything in the name of compassion.