Making enemies

 Who wants enemies? I don’t. Do you? What enmity (or to use a delightful term from Wikipedia “foeship”) has made your life better? When has the world been improved by such a personal rivalry? It always seems that in the worlds of politics and of social media people are always pushing for their ideas, but always fighting against other people. This has always struck me as unhealthy and unfair.

Now I’m all for people pushing their ideas in the public square. After all, it’s been ideas that have been responsible for the scientific and moral progress of society since, well, as long as there’s been technological and moral progress in society. But inevitably while people seem to push their ideas forward, their attacks are rarely against the ideas who oppose them, but rather those people who hold some other view. No matter what side of the political spectrum I look to, there always seems to be some person or some group of people who are stopping the implementation of the ideas that will lead to the further advancement of our civilisation. To some it is the poor looking sucking up all the precious resources of the industrious. To others it is the wealthy seeking to hoard their resources away from the rest of us. For the religious it is the secularists trying the fabric of society by tearing away its religious underpinnings. For the secular, it is the religious attempting to hold society back by clinging on to their ancient superstitions. We cannot allow these people to rule our society if we want to advance. Then maybe we can find a way to work around them. Maybe not. Perhaps we must overpower them.

But just think of those poor other people, for today we attack not with arrows and spears aimed at men’s bodies, but with slights aimed at reputations and egos. No shield can stop a pointed attack at someone’s reputation. And who can parry an adept blow aimed at the ego? Can you be safe if there’s a bunch of peopled out there who’ve declared you the enemy and that your existence is a barrier to human progress? Of course you can, you just find the nearest like minded group who’ll protect you. A group who will fight for you. A group who will launch their word bombs into that other group who’s come after you. But now you’ve got enemies. And who wants enemies?