It's All About "Feelings"

This is a great essay posted as a comment at another website. I couldn't link directly to it, so I offer it in its entirety:

RickG Wrote:


Agreed that the mass media is both a symptom and a cause of our dizzying decline from within. The mass media gives the mass what it wants and in the process makes both mass and mass media worse. There seems to be an iron law at work. What sells is what makes people worse; the worse people become the more they buy what makes them worse still. Here is the dark side of capitalism and democracy. It is hard to see how this could be prevented or overcome much less reversed. When a critical mass(!) is attained the machine runs of itself: More people with low tastes means more items of low taste for sale etc.etc. etc. How could it be otherwise?

Another term for the depravity of modern mass culture is hedonism. It seems to me that at the very root of all these branches of folly and wickedness we complain about is nothing else than If it feels good, do it! and the reverse, i.e."If it feels bad, don't do it!"

Every aspect of contemporary "liberalism" is explicable by reference to the Pleasure Principle. Wherever choice exists the default is always to what is easier and feels better at once. Deferred gratification is out, immediate gratification is in. Difficulty and pain are definitely out.

Mr. Obama won the election because his talking made people feel good and it felt good for them to vote for him. It makes them FEEL GOOD for him to be President. I think that is all there is to it and that those who search for deeper ideological significance are complicating matters unnecessarily. Ideological hedonism means that you go for what makes you feel good and avoid what makes you feel bad.

Of course this is the path to collectivism and tyranny and herd societies watched over by masters and shepherds who know how to wield carrot and stick.

Education is corrupted at the outset because the principal thing now is that students feel good about themselves and learn to think and behave in ways that will cause others to feel good about themselves as well. The important thing is not to feel bad about oneself or to cause anyone else to feel bad about themselves.

Hard subjects are avoided because some people find them too difficult and feel bad about themselves if they do not succeed. Subjects are selected and taught in such a way as to avoid offense, i.e. making anybody feel bad, and whenever possible to assist them in feeling good about themselves. Language is prescribed and proscribed not according to clarity or simplicity but instead with an eye to its salutary or other effects on how people FEEL about themselves.

Liberal ideology is essentially hedonic and aims to produce good feelings and avoid bad feelings - except, of course, in the case of those who insist upon adhering to the Reality Principle, which causes others to feel BAD about themselves and their lives. It is OK to attack and demean enemies who cling to the Reality Principle and to make THEM feel bad - because their stubborn attachment to something that makes others FEEL bad is wrong, evil, callous and cruel.

The Reality Principle is oppressive, uncaring, even fascist. The Reality Principle and those who swear allegiance to it are the enemy. The enemy is anything and everything and everbody that causes people to FEEL bad. The friends and right thinkers are those who cause people to FEEL good.

The common denominator of corrupted morals, education, mass media and now politics is nothing but hedonism.

If it feels good, do it!