I saw this over at Gay Patriot.
The Lottery is 1948 story about a rural town the has an annual lottery to choose a victim to be stoned to death to guarantee a good harvest.
According to The Washington Times, a college professor from Pasadena City College has been teaching The Lottery for 30 years. The professor says that in the past students were horrified by the story. Now they aren’t.
“The story always impressed the class with the insight that I felt the author had intended: the danger of just ‘going along’ with something habitually, without examining its rationale and value. In spite of the changes that I had witnessed over the years in anthologies and in students’ writing, Jackson’s message about blind conformity always spoke to my students’ sense of right and wrong.”
Then in the 1990s, something started to change dramatically in how her students responded to the sobering tale. Rather than being horrified by it, some claimed they were bored by it, while others thought the ending was “neat.”
When Ms. Haugaard pressed them for more of their thoughts, she was appalled to discover that not one student in the class was willing to say the practice of human sacrifice was morally wrong! She describes one interaction with a student, whom she calls Beth:
‘Are you asking me if I believe in human sacrifice?’ Beth responded thoughtfully, as though seriously considering all aspects of the question. ‘Well, yes,’ I managed to say. ‘Do you think that the author approved or disapproved of this ritual?’
“I was stunned: This was the [young] woman who wrote so passionately of saving the whales, of concern for the rain forests, of her rescue and tender care of a stray dog. ‘I really don’t know,’ said Beth; ‘If it was a religion of long standing, [who are we to judge]?’”
I don’t think the lack of moral judgement is the problem. I think it is worse than that. Totalitarian Progressivism is Utopian at heart. If they kill enough of the right people to get total conformity, peace on earth and pleanty for all will happen.
This is the core of Nazism, Communism, Maoism, etc. Just put the wrong thinkers to death and then magically everything gets better.
How many times have we seen from radical environmentalists that humans are a virus or cancer.
It sold not be a shock Beth is willing to sacrifice people but wants to save the whales. She’s been told all her life that to save the whales all the people that drive SUVs and eat meat need to die.
Collectivists killed over 100 Million people to try for Utopia. Now that a generation has passed that has not witnessed those horrors first hand (be it WWII or the Cold War) more believers are willing to kill millions to try it again.
What is stoning one innocent person for a good harvest when your heroes starved 10 million Ukrainians or 2 Million Cambodians to death for the same goal.
Utopia is always just one more murder away. People who believe they can make the world better by killing all the bad people don’t realize their ideology would reduce the human population to 0.
This is what public schools are designed to do: create more sheeple.
And it’s been happening for a while too. First time I noticed it from a keen but often overlooked line/scene from The Last Starfighter movie from (ironically) 1984:
“Oh, save the whales, but not the universe, huh?”
People don’t think for themselves anymore. They just follow the herd.
Any society throughout history in which anthropomorphism has come to dominance has always fallen into the practice of human sacrifice; when you endow inanimate objects with human traits it is just that much easier to see fellow humans as inanimate and therefore valueless. Don’t look at or blame the children, look at and blame the parents, for children are only a reflection of their parents. This is what comes of not making value judgments, of the soul sucking emptiness of moral relativism. This is why Islam can not be criticized for the barbaric belief system that it is without being called a racist or an islamaphobe; it is why no one thinks that not honoring your duties or responsibilities should not be punished and held to account [Peterson & MaCabe to name the latest], it is why we need contracts with teams of lawyers instead of a handshake and someone’s word.
“Totalitarian Progressivism is Utopian at heart. If they kill enough of the right people to get total conformity, peace on earth and plenty for all will happen. ”
See also:
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelos
Examination Day ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V12tRrJ3Is )
And of course Harrison Bergeron ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron )
Harrison Bergeron is one of my favorites. I have referred to the Handicaper General a few times in my posts.
I’ve never seen or read “Examination Day” before. That’s equally chilling.
Every time I see progressives go on and on about “privilege” I think of Harrison Bergeron. The urge to cut others down to your level rather than built yourself up is something I just don’t understand.
One quibble about Harrison Bergeron- consolidate your hold on power first, THEN dance.
I believe you are correct, J.Kb. It’s not a “moral problem”; the students are responding as their morals — passed on most often via the attendance-mandated indoctrination centers we know as “public schools” — dictate.
The curriculum is designed to create “good little statists”, so it’s no surprise that “good little statists” is what it produces.
And good little statists will ALWAYS believe it’s acceptable to cleanse society of dissidents in an attempt to create Utopia. It’s what they’ve been raised and trained to do.
Every one of my classes that read The Lottery was horrified. (I don’t remember it being a sacrifice “to guarantee a good harvest”; I remember it being a population control, to prevent the town outgrowing its resources. Then again, it’s been a while, and the two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive, so….) Almost universally, everyone asked why the town is murdering its own citizens instead of expanding their land/resources/farming to support them, and to mitigate the effects of any “bad harvests”. Everybody questioned the barbaric “tradition”, when there were “better” options. But that was some time ago, before the “Progressives” removed their masks.
Collectivists never see the option of innovating, expanding, or creating more (and heaven forbid they follow Scriptural advice, and store away in the good years as preparation for the bad years). Such things show individualism, which is anathema to “group-think”. Collectivists see life as a zero-sum game: the resources are what they are and cannot be increased; if they are not enough, the population must be reduced. A “good harvest” is one that meets or exceeds the needs of the people who rely on it, and since expansion is not an option, reducing the number of consumers increases the chances of a “good harvest”.
Building Utopia on the bones of “inconvenients” and “deplorables”. It’s the collectivists’ way.
“Almost universally, everyone asked why the town is murdering its own citizens instead of expanding their land/resources/farming to support them, and to mitigate the effects of any “bad harvests”….Collectivists see life as a zero-sum game: the resources are what they are and cannot be increased…”
Funny you should use that term: Zero Sum Game.
Kurzgesagt posted this just two days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ
If memory serves, the people in the Lottery really don’t know why they are doing it. It’s an empty and meaningless ritual, done mostly from old habit.
I bet these kids could give lectures on the evils of slavery and how horrible the US is because it was once legal. But then COULDN’T put together a coherent thought on WHY slavery is wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, if you cannot comprehend why human sacrifice is wrong, you have no place making moral judgements on anyone.