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Fictional Accounts

I’m an eclectic reader, reading and writing in a wide variety of genres, but sometimes I feel quite alone and it leaves me wondering, of the 100s of people who get this newsletter, what do you like to read? Here’s your chance to be heard. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment as well.

Staying Sane in an Insane World

Reading and writing books is one of the things that keeps me grounded in the flood of insanity that comes roaring at us through the internet and social media. When some idea weighs heavy on me, I like to write about it. It’s a form of therapy for me. Below, you’ll find one of those entries. What keeps you sane?

Omnipotent Moral Busybodies

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

Photo by Matthew Fassnacht on Unsplash

The first things that comes to mind when I think of omnipotent moral busybodies is government overreach. The government meddling in our affairs in ways we have no or limited control over.

Omnipotent is a bit of an exaggeration. Only God is omnipotent, but people in authority, especially government authority, like to pretend they are. The problem of governments is what to do with those who do not comply. In most governments, the path towards compliance is laws. A government passes laws and then seeks a way to enforce those laws.

Like any moral system, this is usually with rewards and punishment. Whether you’re a parent, a teacher or an administrator, you have to solve this problem. A mom and dad will often attempt to force compliance on their children. They may do this by bribery, a reward system or by threat. If you’re a parent and you find yourself having to lay hands on the child in order to physically make them comply, the battle is lost for real. Even a parent has limited omnipotence over their children.

In a representative democracy, we elect officials who pass and enforce the laws we want to see. If a politician refuses to honor the will of the people, they will usually be voted out by the majority. In 2022, we saw a successful recall of a district attorney in San Francisco who refused to enforce the laws. In this example, you might say one individual was acting as a kind of omnipotent moral busybody. He looked at the laws and decided he knew better than those who enacted those laws and the citizens who supported them. For a time, he overruled the rule of law because of his own personal convictions. Because we still have some functioning democratic forms, the people voted 55/45% to recall him.

In our society, people are often praised for acting on their convictions. Hypocrites are despised and an honest person who holds a flawed or even dangerous position is held up above a corrupt official. Some of the “heroes” of the modern age are elevated because of their passion and convictions. Some of the most popular politicians have mastered the art of speaking in a way that captures this and channels it, even if their words are empty.

When you think of the picture of an omnipotent moral busybody, is there anyone in particular who comes to mind? In recent years, I can think of many examples. From 2020, our lives were not ruled by laws, but by rules and edicts. Rather than pass new legislation, experts in areas of authority leveraged almost unlimited power to force new rules on society. Some of these rules seemed arbitrary at the time and later would prove to be worthless, but those in power pursued a very clever path towards compliance with their rules. Instead of bringing out the police, in most cases they recruited a voluntary army of moral busybodies into their ranks and granted this army the authority of shame. All of the rules were enforced, sometimes brutally, by a society of tattletales. The moral high ground was that we were to comply, not for ourselves, but for the good of others.

When people put themselves in a place of moral authority, they become the good guys, acting for the good of those who are too ignorant or deceived to know the truth. If a person becomes so convinced, they will act as Lewis suggests, “tormenting us without end because they do it with the approval of their own conscience.”

Powerful people have learned how easy it is to manipulate the masses. A lie can be repeated enough in enough different formats coming from such a variety of people that it becomes easier to believe the lie than to discover the truth. This is what we face in society today.

The next manipulation is just around the bend. Think back over the last few years. Think about the stances you had that you were so sure of. You knew that you held the moral high ground. You acted “for the good of others” based on the information you had. Is it possible you were used in some way? Are there some of those opinions that don’t seem so solid now? I would hope all of us would recognize that this may be true in one way or another. None of us are perfect. The controligarchy is powerful. Don’t waste this experience.

Now is the time for us all to take a step back and take stock of our own behavior. Have you been a moral busybody? At least with someone? I bet the vast majority of us are guilty, at least in some way of being an instrument of compliance for the ruling powers. In that commonality, we should realize there is no shame. As the saying goes, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

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