Monday, November 19, 2012

Nietzsche and Marx

It is terrible to admit it, but these are the two most important thinkers of modern times.

Nietzsche correctly diagnosed the disease of envy. It is widespread and the condition of the patient is dire. It has given us a common sense which deems it appropriate for the poor to bomb their neighbors but not for the wealthy neighbors to use deadly force to defend themselves against the bombing. It has given us a common sense which feels that the government should take as much capital from the employers in a society as is necessary to provide the non-wealthy a comfortable standard of living. It forces the mind to ignore the catastrophic results of this policy.

Marx packaged the purified essence of envy in a delivery system which enabled the disease to destroy the Western world's political and economic systems in about one hundred and fifty years. 100 million died in the process, and untold millions were impoverished. He gave us to believe that any argument against the justice or prudence of enforcing equality of economic outcomes may be dismissed as nothing more than an epiphenomenon of the greed of the wealthy desiring to protect their wealth from redistribution. This stops the mind from using its own defenses to remove the virus. When reason is prevented from attempting to persuade, the patient is terminally ill and there is no hope of saving him.