Who needs to be wise
informed, even
if they can be VIRTUOUS
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
But this is more insidious than that
You fuck up despite your good intention — you still at least learn that you fucked up
hopefully, anyway
In this case — you are not like to receive the gift of truth
Because you are not like to be capable of accepting it
You’re incapable of receiving it because in this case, you don’t merely have “good intentions”
You’re VIRTUOUS to begin with!
And you’re not merely concerned with the good ends
You believe your very virtuous means are the ends
I think it’s more common today,
Now that we made ideologies mainstream
And now that we don’t believe in god, to order us to be humble in our humble attempts at virtue
Now your entry to big politics is not even suffering through a pretentious NYT article
It’s a fucking tweet
And ideologies are, of course, the perfect vehicle for false virtue
Real goodness is simple
Real virtue is simple
It’s simple but not easy, but it is simple
It’s what you do every day
It’s how you treat every person you meet
It’s that you keep your word
But ideologies demand none of that from you
They only demand that you run your fucking mouth
You only need to “have opinions”
You only need to “take a side”
All you have to do is “show solidarity”!!
But it’s far more than that,
Ideologies, philosophies, don’t demand from you too much contact with reality, do they?
If anything — you’re even more cool if you’re so “based” so as to hold an even more fringe, more sceptical, more CONTRARIAN opinion
But of course it doesn’t matter what ideology you espouse — because you will never be asked to demonstrate how it works,
Because you’re “not a politician”
You’re “not an economist”,
You’re “not a billionaire”,
And even if you were — “it’s a complex system”
…and you would actually be correct to say so
Only HISTORY VERIFIES IDEOLOGIES… if we’re lucky
But even then — all you have to do is say — “this time it’s different”
And no one can ask you to prove it
Because no one can prove it
And thus the perfect marriage of good intentions, “virtue” and IDEOLOGY,
is of course: VIRTUOUS IDEOLOGY
ABSOLUTELY EFFORTLESS
Quite unfalsifiable
And the VIRTUE ITSELF SHIELDS it from challenges,
Because you know, YOUR ideology is NOT as VIRTUOUS as MY IDEOLOGY
INDEED,
WHO CARES about IGNORANCE, or lack thereof, anyway?
Since WHEN are NERDS virtuous?
Since when are scholars and scientists virtuous?
You’ll never hear about any virtuous engineer
They are, at best, principled
But it’s the HEROES that are virtuous
People who BUCK the INDIGNITIES of the world
Not the people who just flip through the pages, and only stroke a pen
And yet, of course, this is completely backwards
You can’t be ignorant and virtuous
Ignorance, stupidity — is how we fumble things
Is how we suffer disastrous opportunity cost,
And how we destroy things
You can’t be a smiling puppy and break the keyboard of the operating console with your cute dirty paws
Wisdom, prudence, judgement, discernment — all those alone are not yet virtue
Virtue requires that one last step — of courage
But it’s no courage to be blind and stupid and then jump into fire, VAINLY
Instead, have courage to educate yourself
To abandon your ignorance
Have courage to admit how ignorant you are
And have courage to admit that your GOOD INTENTIONS are NOT NEARLY GOOD ENOUGH,
it’s better to show some humility
and have courage to admit that VIRTUE is not so cheap,
so that you can fetch it on demand, second hand
And then finally,
have courage to admit that VIRTUE does not excuse your ignorance
It doesn’t make you less fucking stupid
And if stupidity and ignorance and ineptitude made you so useless and loathsome — VIRTUE is not going to change it
You’re still just a smiling monkey with no use to anyone,
A useful idiot indeed, aka useless, to all but those that want to take advantage of you, of others