Goal-oriented versus rights-oriented mentalities

Over at Chateau Heartiste, a person named Arbiter makes an interesting comment on the two different moralities possible for a civilization to have:

This is once again the difference between the two basic moralities: the goal-oriented and the rights-oriented.

Societies throughout history have had a goal-oriented morality. For example, punishment for crime was about protecting society, and whether the criminal had become criminal because of “oppression” was irrelevant. He was a criminal, period, so he must go. And families are a good arrangement because they are efficient – they help society move forward.

Marxism, being a way to bribe your way to power, promises people freedom from duty. The Enlightenment Era paved the way for this by ignoring a morality resting on nationalism, instead inventing “God-given rights”. Once you have denied the idea that it is your duty to strengthen society with your work, your family etc, the question arises why you should care for other people at all, why you shouldn’t just take what you want if there is no goal to achieve, so “rights” were invented to have an argument against total nihilism. It isn’t really explained why you should care about those rights though – you must just honor them without question. As if they were as real and ever-present as the laws of physics.

William Pierce explained morality well. In the past we just instinctively did what was good for the people, but in a time where we can see the whole universe, not just our own village, we must explain why we should do so. He took the goal-oriented morality all the way, explaining that ultimately it is about promoting Life as a whole – a task for which the White race is the best suited. If there is no life, then no other values, and nothing we have built, matters. Ensure that there is life forever, then you can worry about whatever else there is you want to worry about. No longer is the goal-oriented morality based on instinct alone.

This is the answer to the Left’s rights-based morality, a far better answer than “just because”.

“It is wrong to eat meat”, the Left says, taking the rights-based morality to its logical conclusion. If people have “rights”, why not animals? Because they have less intelligence and can’t build, can’t invent? If there are no goals to achieve that doesn’t matter. African Stone Age peoples, cases of mental retardation, pigs and cows – logically all should have the extolled “rights”. People still eat meat but are made to feel guilty for it, and this guilt can be used against them. But with a goal-oriented morality you can meet the Left’s arguments. Eating meat is good because it is not only healthy for us but highly pleasant, a renewable source of both nourishment and pleasure, and this helps us work harder, which we should do in order to promote the people, the nation, Life as a whole. Which no pig or cow can do. Other than in the role of food for humans – so in that way they too can contribute.

When a society heads in a rights-oriented direction, it pleases the group but also guarantees social failure.