The Art and Science of Saying No
As Albert Camus said, just because everything is permitted doesn't mean nothing is forbidden.
I don't think this is limited to women - Glenn Reynolds opines on why women (I think he means radical feminists, not all "women") are still not happy after decades of men receding into the woodwork and becoming more feminine. He says:
"My hypothesis: What we’ve been told that “women” want is in fact what a relatively small percentage of women — 20% at most — who tend to be neurotic and anxious, and largely incapable of sustained happiness anyway, say they want. But even to the extent that’s true, their needs aren’t really those of most women whose interests fall closer to the norms."
I think this can be applied to pretty much all the radical groups across society, small, unimportant and insignificant, they are often the loudest who demand them most "change". "Just give us this, and we will be happy," they say - but somehow no matter how much is ceded to accommodate them, no matter how much they are indulged, they are never happy.
A few years ago I proposed that there are people who aren't happy unless they are unhappy.
In some sort of weird nexus of sadomasochism and progressive asceticism, these folks claim to dislike pain but try seeking happiness in making others unhappy by establishing an expectation of strict adherence to a progressive ideology based on postmodernism. I know that is a complex concept to contemplate due to the massive contradictions in that one sentence.
Think of it in these terms:
They revel in pain yet are perpetually aggrieved and offended by, and afraid of, everything.
They claim to want to end problems but do so by inflicting pain on others.
They demand strict compliance to the rules of engagement of their progressive religion, a functional impossibility when those rules are based on an ideology that claims all existence is merely perception and there are no rules.
That is enough to permanently damage the calm of any young skull full of mush.
At Psychology Today, I ran across an article titled “Are You Addicted to Unhappiness?” This article listed characteristics of the chronically unhappy (I just picked a few, there were more):
Find reasons to be miserable when life gets “too good.”
Prefer to play the victim role and blame others rather than take personal responsibility for their choices.
Compete with friends and colleagues to see who has it the hardest.
Have difficulty setting and achieving goals, or conversely achieve goals only to find that they can’t enjoy their success.
Struggle to bounce back when things don’t go their way.
Feel enslaved to their emotions and powerless to change.
Feel dissatisfied even when life is going well.
Have dramatic, unfulfilling relationships.
The perpetually aggrieved are essentially consumers of unhappiness – it is as essential to them as food, clothing and shelter are to the rest of us. I was taught that the world was filled with beauty and it is natural to seek good feeling and pleasure – not necessarily to be hedonistic, but to be happy. Even the Declaration of Independence lists the “Pursuit of Happiness” right up there with life and liberty and yet these snowflakes pursue unhappiness.
They have created this Hobbesian universe where pain, oppression and discord rule the day – but isn’t this what progressivism teaches? That there is only envy, rich people are only rich because they are stealing from the poor, earth’s climate is doomed due to capitalists willing allow factories to belch smoke into the air and deadly chemicals into the rivers for nothing other than naked profit and everybody hates everybody else?
The pattern is just like what those of us have witnessed when rearing children. Children push limits to see where they are and how far they can push them - and they never stop until they are stopped. If parents never stop them, the parents become a 100% wholly owned subsidiary of Little Terror, Inc. and soon their lives and behaviors are altered to fit the child.
And the child always wants more.
When more than one child is involved, mutual exclusivity is involved - when one child wants something different than the other child, often neither can be satisfied.
There comes a point in the lifecycle of a parent/child relationship - and that of a society - when it is time to say "no" and mean it.
I am reminded of something the French philosopher Albert Camus said:
“The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. “Everything is permitted” does not mean that nothing is forbidden…"
Something we need to consider is that these radical groups will never be happy no matter what they achieve because their purpose is not to be happy themselves, it is simply to make others unhappy.
It is a fact of life that many of these radical groups have mutually exclusive goals, ensuring that neither will ever be satisfied.
A society can only remain free if it stops allowing the things that make it a prison for the majority.
Everything is permitted does definitely NOT mean nothing is forbidden.
Michael, sarcasm ... and to think I used to walk to school, uphill both ways in the snow with newspapers in my boots to keep warm. We all need to stop giving unhappy people permission to try to make us unhappy.
The drama addicts are often on the spectrum. Not autism. But sociopathy. Sociopaths don’t have a range of feelings. They feel tension. Negative tension or positive tension. All they feel is tension. NOT feeling tension is death to them. When not tense they feel empty and flat. So they keep drama going rather than ‘die’. This is not black and white. This like all things is on a spectrum. Some might feel some real emotions in some limited ways. But not much, and often not at all. The odd one is fully incapable of actually feeling. But thankfully they are rare. There are many who are on the spectrum though. Our society is growing them as we encourage narcissism and the two, sociopathy and narcissism, are closely related.