Self righteousness

[John]

I don’t think I can say anything that hasn’t already been said yet, but I do want to say that this thread was really inspiring and put a lot of things relating to self-righteousness in perspective for me. I never once in an argument with a civvie thought to mention that abstraction from reality of the very idea of right and wrong being applied to how we treat the land base. There is no right or wrong, there is life and death. We live with the land, or die without it, it really is that simple. I am so happy that this has been discussed here and feel like I’ve got another weapon against the civvies when I find myself knee deep in another debate over primitivism vs civilization.
I would also like to quote the Dao as I think it applies to this topic:

When beauty is abstracted
Then ugliness has been implied;
When good is abstracted
Then evil has been implied.

So alive and dead are abstracted from nature,
Difficult and easy abstracted from progress,
Long and short abstracted from contrast,
High and low abstracted from depth,
Song and speech abstracted from melody,
After and before abstracted from sequence.

The sage experiences without abstraction,
And accomplishes without action;
He accepts the ebb and flow of things,
Nurtures them, but does not own them,
And lives, but does not dwell.

[konjurarkavalo]

quote: What do you think about one group believing that they have the “right” way and others are wrong and don’t deserve to continue.

I think that’s sheer idiocy. What does every lifeform deserve? A quality plentiful life.

The fact that such a life has become a rarity sickens me to no end.

Another question - does anything end? The flesh, perhaps, but what of the animating essence? Maybe next time around, if the game is played well, all those who do not currently receive what they deserve will. I don’t think the collective deserves to continue in this way, I think they deserve something much better.

[talkingjay]

To me, self-righteousness doesn’t have anything do do with thinking that one lives the “right” way or “wrong” way, righteousness, or even self, but with an overinflated ego. A person acting self-righteously when ze thinks that they “are better than you” because of something ze does. A person acts self-righteously when they begin to look down on people who don’t live like them, and take the opportunity to tell those people about it.

[heyzach]

In my rewilding journey I’ve come across a paradox that relates to this. Understanding and transcending that paradox is liberating. The paradox goes as thus:

A lot of rewilders seem to possess an aura about them similar to Christianity. By that I mean they feel a lot of guilt, and place their faith in a salvation ideology which promises to liberate them from their feelings of unworthiness and shame. But this plays up to our sentiments of right and wrong in a moral sense. The paradox is that such an ideology as this is actually enslaving and separates us from our own wild natures. Simply holding to a salvation ideology in the first place speaks volumes about one’s feeling of being enslaved.

Overcoming this irony is in the realization that ideology creates civilization (sensu lato). Letting go of everything in your mind… all your ideology, all your hopes of a different world, all your illusions… will ground you fully in yourself as just you and the world as it actually is in the present moment. And this, I know, is what it means to be wild and free.

Freedom is being free of the need to be free. Said another way, “Being wild is being free of the need to rewild.”