Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Stay informed about free updates
Just register to go Public affairs myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
“In the moral life,” the late English novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote, “the enemy is unceasing arrogance.”
One can take out the words “morality” there and the sentence – from the philosophical work of Murdoch. Good Kingdom (1970) – it would work just fine. It is not only in our inner moral lives that commitment can be so destructive, but also in social and political life. And when selfishness is corrupted, it can be very dangerous.
I have thought about this a lot since I heard the episode excellent discussion and the late foreign correspondent Dame Ann Leslie at the BBC HARDtalk program. He was talking about what “turns powerful people bad”. (The entire episode, originally recorded in 2008 and re-released after Leslie’s death in 2023, is well worth 23 minutes of your time.)
“We never quite understand the role humiliation plays in the making of a monster,” Leslie told interviewer Stephen Sackur, arguing that the Arab world (where many oppressors when they were ruling at the time) you were humiliated by the idea that you were there. it is no longer the world’s greatest “intellectual and military power”. He also quoted Adolf Hitler, who suffered the humiliation of being rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna because his paintings were “unsatisfactory”.
“I know it sounds like a lot of cheap psychobabble but you look at the monsters in modern history,” Leslie continued. “They always have an element of humiliation that (makes them feel): ‘I’m going to get them.’
Personally, I don’t mind the old psychobabble, and furthermore, I don’t find what Leslie was getting at there to be “cheap” at all but serious. Humiliation – contrary to his naive opinion, shame – is an unpleasant feeling that comes from the feeling that your social status or your self-image has been damaged. But in contrast to shame, an offender of some kind is often involved, often leading the humiliated person to seek some form of revenge (even if this is not directed at the offender directly).
I would not go so far as to call him a monster – in general I think it is not wise to classifying people as heroes or villains – but I noticed that, in a roundabout way, the once “politically moderate” Elon Musk seems to be more independent. very accurate site as he continues to be burned (and that drives people even more leave on his social media platform). He may be the richest man in the world, he may be best friends with the next president of the United States, but I get a clear sense that Musk is a man with a problem: a little pride.
He’s not the only one. Most of us – especially in this case “added” internet age. – spend too much time worrying about ourselves and how we come across to other people, and wondering how those people feel. However, the funny thing is that if we were able to shed our eternal pride and focus on what is happening in the world around us, we would end up feeling a lot better about ourselves. .
For Murdoch, the best way to achieve this sense of pride was to spend time admiring nature and works of art (the emerging concept of “neuroaesthetics” will confirm). He wrote about looking out his window “in a state of anxiety and sadness, oblivious to my surroundings” and seeing a kestrel, which completely changed his mind.
Murdoch wrote: “Appreciating the beauty of art or nature is not just an accessible spiritual exercise. “It is also an adequate way to enter (not just a metaphor for) health, since it is self-examination with the aim of seeing the real thing.”
“Realistic” may not be what comes to mind when one thinks of living the good life in these troubling times, but Murdoch really defines what we call these days “mind”: to be present in the moment. And indeed it is this – the act of “selflessness”, as Murdoch described it – that can move us out of our pride-driven fears and into something different and wonderful: love . Murdoch wrote: “It is in the power of love, that is, of seeing, that the spirit is released from dreams.
Musk’s isn’t the only permanent conceit to emerge in the next 12 months. But that doesn’t mean we have to follow suit. It is no longer common to talk about love outside of romantic feelings, just as it is necessary to talk about it excellence and honor. But ego is about fear. And, at the risk of again straying into the realm of psychobabble, the one thing that can conquer fear is love.
