The original purpose of this Blog was to engage in a game of philosophical detection, ferreting out the real motivation behind all the posturing by those in power or otherwise in the public eye. Often of course any given speaker doesn't even realize his or her "slip is showing," revealing the underlying principle that spawned a given statement.
So it is when watching NBC cover the Olympics that I cringe at the sheer love of China as a nation displayed even by commentators I admire, such as Bob Kostas, and the implied contempt they feel for America. Not that it is expressed as an overt, direct slamming of the US, as it is the overdone praise of the regime that recent estimates put the toll at around 900,000 innocent people murdered since the coming Mao and his Long March companions.
Oh, the wonderful discipline of the Chinese athletes, the sacrifices they bear in the name of their mother country, the long history in which the population is steeped and constantly reminded of its past glory. Never mind the last half century of slaving people living in poverty at the level of starving animals. Never mind that the rulers are hell-bent on subduing the US economically, and before too long militarily as well. China must be an object worthy of our expression of love and respect.
What is the conceptual common denominator between a China wanting to dominate the world by sacrificing anyone and anything in its way, and an America willing to bend to the threat by mouthing admiring platitudes about China's greatness, while giving away its own wealth to those "less fortunate" than us? That common denominator is ALTRUISM, the dedication to not just the collective self-sacrifice of America to the world, but by nations such as China willing to sacrifice anyone who stands in the way of its greatness, expressed through the power of its rulers.
For altruism is not just my sacrificing you to me, or you sacrificing me to you, or us sacrificing them to us. It is the acceptance of sacrifice just for the sake of sacrifice, in obeisance to religion or to the mystic ideal of the welfare, super egalitarian state, and there is no use our haggling over victims. It is the sacrifice of the strong to the weak, the rich to the poor, the good to the bad, the bright to the dull, the well to the sick, the worker to the drone, the love of life to the environment. Altruism is the key, for it becomes our road to collective virtue.
While America pours out its wealth to those who currently hold the key to the life-giving energy of which we ourselves are richly possessed, but of which we seem reluctant to partake, we allow altruism to proudly claim us as its greatest victim.
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