Against Universal Love

Under 400 words

The starting point of the deliberations below is that human beings are enormously varied. Putting animal needs and instincts aside, it is not the case that we all share so very much and can unite on common ground.

On the contrary, it is better to think in terms of archetypes which are not all compatible with each other. We can rejoice in many people being different to ourselves because they bring talents and behaviour which create a prosperity that would be impossible if we depended only on kindred spirits. Such appreciation should not be distorted as happens in social media when love, or agape, or merely solidarity, are preached as universal remedies to our ills. Talk instead of ad-hoc alliances.

Just as, at another level, our prosperity is based on the division of labour, so too there must be a distribution of moral tasks such that each is responsible for something, but none is responsible for everything.

Hence even taking truth as a guiding principle, the person drawn passionately to the rule of law has a different truthfulness to an investigative journalist, who may have to deceive, and this archetype again will be different in kind to the novelist telling truth by creating fiction. These three archetypes are compatible because they take charge of different spheres. Which does not mean that there cannot be overlaps and conflicts even here.

For many, tho, truth is at best a default, not to be much pursued ahead of self-interest, local loyalty or convenience.

Then there are those who see deception itself as a universal tactic, to be deployed as the occasion arises. Accommodation need not be made for the gullible or for those whose thinking stops short of compelling conclusions.

What is needed, from the perspective of truth, is for the adherents of deception to be restricted to those spheres where the damage is small or the deception even a corrective in the manner of a trace element. Outside those spheres they must be combatted as enemies, which indeed they are.

The goal of combat is not elimination, which is as impossible and undesirable as eliminating weeds. It is the overgrowth which must be curtailed alongside any incursion into spheres which need enhanced protection.