The Follies of Moralism and Moral Objectivism in the East
Tags: Confucius, Asia, Elitism, Liberalism, Morality

“Let us conjecture that the formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance. The same can apply to civil rights.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game, 2017

In perpetually conservative Eastern societies comes forth a cult of self-proclaimed “morally superior” members of an Americanized clique who boast of their human rights convictions, their usually-blind dissidence, and their liberal education — or better yet, their liberal indoctrination. The megalomanic and virtue-signaling adherents that constitute this clique go far in their zealotry as to incorporate a missionary approach in pressing their democratic extremism and liberal moral dogma down the throats of the more modest and simple majority.

In Eastern societies, the masses are by default impervious to liberal morality, granted the un-Eastern elements inherent in the liberal moral paradigm, namely; the glamorization of human rights and individualism, the denial of the cardinal driving forces which animate man, excessive personal freedoms, and the ridiculously little merit given to social homogeneity and communitarianism. Instead, the masses tend to derive their sense of morality from prevailing mores or religious dogma, otherwise, circumstances touching upon morality are dealt with pragmatically or on a case-to-case basis.

The heedless adoption of foreign constructs like liberalism — having been hinged on human pleasure, appeals to emotion, and sophistry — eventually spelled disaster for developing Eastern societies like the Philippines, which had to deal not only with a byzantine-like bureaucracy to sustain its liberal political system, but also with a brutish and unrestrained citizenry of whom would commit the most heinous of crimes while easily gaining the sympathy of credulous human rights activists and other virtue-signaling adherents of “social justice”.

Despite being dictated to repeatedly by moralists, the masses, who tend to experience the effects of the leniency shown criminals firsthand — still aren’t having any of the empty human rights rhetoric.

From the emergence of an überpolitician who boasts a spectacular track record for “getting things done” (a trait virtually absent amongst the intelligentsia) comes a mass sphere who will ardently champion his no-nonsense, realpolitik, and usually-illiberal approach to statecraft. That the masses will unflinchingly expend their supposedly “sacred” liberties in exchange for having a disciplinarian society transpire before them immediately make them ideal targets for scorn and derision by dogmatic liberals.

It also comes as a great folly how liberal moralists thoughtlessly place notable exemplars of pragmatism, guided utilitarianism, and realpolitik under the same category as history’s most wicked tyrants. Policy-wise, the likes of Lee, Duterte, Widodo, Deng, Putin, and Erdoğan scarcely compare to glaring autocrats like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, and Sukarno. Those on the latter weren’t even pragmatists, but self-obsessed idealists and reckless utilitarianists who failed dismally to set boundaries at the expense of social order and political stability.

What ‘Objective’ Morality?

“I am the first immoralist: and by this I am the destroyer par excellence.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1908

The absolutist attitude that liberal moralists take toward non-liberals may well be attributed to the naive belief that the liberal moral paradigm, with the allure of novelty, defiance, and protagonism with which it presents itself, is the only moral paradigm lying outside the humdrum of conservative mores and religious orthodoxy.

On a corresponding note, I find nothing liberating nor celebratory in the idea of extricating oneself from religious or conservative dogma only to fall victim to a larger dogma.

Along with this persuasion comes an equally preposterous belief that objective morality manifests itself exclusively through liberal values, thus whatever repudiates from these values ought rightfully to be perceived as “immoral”, or so the supremacist logic dictates.

Conversely, to mistake liberal morality for objective morality is as absurd a conviction as to believe that Psychology is the only field of study capable of elucidating the maladies of the human psyche.