Monday, August 02, 2010

The Egocentrism Of The Naive Left

SEARCH BLOG: POLITICS

A popular argument for nearly every liberal political cause is "social justice."  It doesn't really matter what the cause is, it only matters that it falls within the liberal's perspective of social justice.  It doesn't matter if the cause is viable or sustainable, it only matters that it seems to be right.  It is because liberals have strong egocentrism:

According to Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, egocentrism is the tendency of children to cognize their environment only in terms of their own point of view. Piaget theorized that the degree of egocentrism is directly related to the child's level of cognitive development. In the infant stage (birth to age two) children are just learning to recognize and interact with the environment and are thus completely egocentric. In the toddler and preschool stages (ages two to six) children are able to represent the world to themselves in symbols and images but are unable to distinguish their point of view from that of others. [source]
Liberals, however, do not view their arguments as egocentric; they view their arguments as intelligent, enlightened, compassionate, fair, and reasonable.  It works something like this:


  • I am intelligent, therefore everyone has, given the chance, the ability to be intelligent.
  • I am enlightened, therefore everyone has, given the chance, the ability to be enlightened.
  • I am compassionate, therefore everyone has, given the chance, the ability to be compassionate.
  • I am fair, therefore everyone has, given the chance, the ability to be fair.
  • I am reasonable, therefore everyone has, given the chance, the ability to be reasonable.
It is, therefore, the duty of the liberal to be sure that everyone has the chance to be exactly like the liberal.  That may mean taking from someone else who has a perceived advantage to give to someone else who has a perceived disadvantage.  That may mean applying the rule of law differently so that those who have not yet reached the liberal state of being have greater support during their transition to that exalted state.  That may mean stating "truths" that have no foundation in reality in order to ensure that those who would surely be like them have the chance to appreciate what it means to be like them... even if they could not possibly be like them.
If you have a problem with that, remember that it is, after all, a child's view of the world that drives such thinking.





..