The Road To Hell

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to heaven is paved with bad ones."

People’s obsession with “intent” and complete disregard for “result” is retarded.

I mean this common belief amongst “moralists” that if someone does something “bad” but didn’t mean to, then they are good and should be rewarded or at least ignored; but that if someone caused a good result but were actually motivated by selfishness or some other ill intent, that they are bad and should be punished. This obsession with grouping people—including those you associate with—based more on what motivates them or what they profess to believe rather than how they actually act and what results they actually get.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to heaven is paved with bad ones.

If some dude gets his life together because he wants to sleep with sluts, so what?

Once he can sleep with sluts he will realize it is stupid and disgusting and unfulfilling and look for something better.

If some dude gets his life together because he wants to feel high status and buy a BMW, so what?

Once he gets the BMW and realizes that only pathetic losers like he was envy him, he will realize it is stupid and crude and vacuous and look for something better.

At least he is now twice as competent and functional at effecting the world around him. And more importantly, wiser. Now, with some competence and knowledge of at least one strategy that does not work, he becomes not only easier but also more valuable to convert to a truly “good” path. And this “experiential wisdom” is the only way he will ever get on the “good” path anyway.

Literally everyone tries to take the easy way out first. You did too. And you found out for yourself the only way to truly see why goodness is good is because you experienced first hand the destruction that cheap easy hedonistic superficial trash (or worse) ultimately causes.

To some degree you already agree with me. This is why you are so obsessed with goodness in the first place! You learned how much damage and destruction a lack of goodness causes because you witnessed it in your own life, often at yourownhand!

The error you make is to think this wisdom can be transferred to others through words alone. Or—even more foolishly—through shaming, criticism, and attack.

When your parents said “don’t touch the stove, it will burn you” did it make you go “oh yeah, you’re right” and never do it? Or did it only make you even more eager to find out?

When your parents said “appreciate your childhood. It’s much nicer than having to work. The freedom of being able to go to bed whenever you want is not all it’s cracked up to be” did it make you go “oh yeah, makes sense. Must be true”? Or “whatever, that’s exactly what you would say if you wanted me to be a good little boy who goes to bed on time! I can’t wait to grow up and be on my own, free from your rules!”?

Or when your dad beat the shit out of you for not following his rules, did that make you truly internalize his rules as good? Or simply to believe him a hypocrite and a sophist, one who you obey when around to avoid a beating, but who you ultimately not only despise but actively defy when you can get away with it?

Even people who are generally followers—a description that you almost certainly do not fall into—still don’t follow all the rules all the time. And you hate that they follow the rules anyway. You shout “Why are you following these evil and vial rules!? Can’t you think for yourself!?” And yet, here you are, trying to use the exact same enforcement strategies (verbal attack, shame, guilting, making feel inferior or stupid with your “well akshuallys”, etc) to try and get them to follow your rules instead.

Your own behavior suggests you don’t truly want them to think for themselves. Instead to just follow what you think are the right rules. You don’t have a problem with authority. You have a problem with the fact that you aren’t the one in charge.

And perhaps you even acknowledge this and it’s something you try to temper. And you humbly reply “but wouldn’t it be better if people were more good? If they must follow, shouldn’t they follow what is right”?

But you are missing the key point. Of why goodness is good. Goodness is good because it leads to good outcomes. Evil is evil because it leads to bad ones. If you can get away with gaining something without any negative consequence, why wouldn’t you do it? If it causes no measurable harm now or ever to anyone is it truly evil? Is causing maximal harm not the definition of evil?

And before you say “Utilitarianism is fake and gay!”: I agree. But you must understand that the error in utilitarian thinking is mainly in it’s time preference and hubris. There are lots of things which are “good” in the short term but “evil” in the long term (drugs, money printing, promiscuous sex, etc). Utilitarianism gets this balance wrong. It’s time preference is years or decades, rather than centuries or millennia. And then it also assumes that stupid, weak, and flawed sinners are able to engineer and measure goodness better than God. Utilitarianism is actually “true”. We are just too stupid and flawed and corruptible to ever end up doing it well.

That which is truly good, is that which is ultimatelygood; that which leads to good outcomes on the lowest (or at least most optimal) possible time preference; that which is the most sustainable and prosocial over eternity. Regardless of whether God is “truly” real or not makes no difference here. Either God is real and he is the root of all being and thus what is good is inherent to the structure of reality. Or God is not real and he is simply a proxy for this truth, the word we use to summarize the concept of “the root nature of being and goodness and the core metaphysical laws of reality that we must obey if we wish to not end up eternally suffering”.

Perhaps God and goodness are “discovered” metaphysical truths of the universe in the way that physics are “discovered” physical truths of it. And, perhaps further, our understanding of it requires slight refinements over time as we become more capable of utilizing it. In the way that Newtonian Physics were refined with Einsteinian Physics which were refined with Quantum Field Theory (or whatever it ends up being), Paganism was refined by Christianity which will be refined by whatever comes next. If QFT is true, it was always true, we just couldn’t quite comprehend it until recently. The same would be true of God and goodness and religious truth.

Regardless: If goodness is truly good, if good behavior as resulting in the best possible outcomes (heaven) and bad behavior in the worst (hell) is a fundamental law of being (it is, by definition) then “sinners” will get what is coming to them. “God” will “judge” them. God will punish them. At best, you are wasting your time, puny human. And even if God will not punish them, you are still wasting your time! Stop trying to revive the dead. You do not have that power. You are not God. And your failure to even once successfully truly revive anyone ever in your whole life is proof of this.

“But, but they were alive at one point before it all fell apart!”. No. You were just moving their arms around for them, naively hoping they would become animate. But they never stopped being a corpse. You just wanted it so bad to be true that you deluded yourself it was.

Meanwhile, there are millions who are still alive, in need of your help, who you are ignoring because you are too busy getting high at the mortuary. Like any good healer you must learn to triage. And then you must master the art of healing. Not the art of attacking those who are sick!

As you know perfectly well in your own experience, but for some reason fail to universalize: Goodness cannot be enforced nor even taught, only learned through experience.

This is “why” “God gave us freewill”. Are you smarter than God? No? Then stop acting like a determinist.

If there is no choice there is no morality. A weak man is not moral he is just weak. If you don’t kill someone because you literally are too physically weak to do it, you are not a good person you are just a loser. You can only be a good person if you not only can kill this man—and perhaps even want to, and perhaps can even rationalize a pretty good reason to—and you choose not to.

You know this. Which is why you focus so much on motivation (intent). But what you are missing is that motivation comes after action. Motivation is a past oriented process. It is looking to recreate a past experience that went well, to repeat mapped territory. And thus, regardless of the realm, developing the right motivations can only come from experience, not teaching (or at least not shaming). If you personally were able to deduce the right morals without acting first to see why they were right, you are a freak and an exception (and I don’t believe this is true anyway, you simply were able to deduce it with less action than most). Most people do not function this way. Most people either A. will do whatever power tells them or B. must personally and viscerally experience the suffering immoral behavior causes, and the joy and fulfillment of it’s antithesis, to get on a “good” path.

You berating people for being immoral actually only slows this process. By overly fixating on forcing others to have the right motivations or actions you actually decrease the rate at which people discover them.

The issue of group A people is not that they don’t know what is good, rather that they are simply responding to incentives and compromising their moral framework because more and more good behavior is punished and poor behavior is rewarded. The issue is that they are too weak to do the right thing not that they don’t know what it is.

Shaming and attack only works on the weak. On the people who already agree with you deep down, but who compromise themselves out of fear, ultimately letting power and social pressure override their beliefs. No human can truly be made to feel ashamed. We can only increase the volume of the part in us that already knows our behavior is wrong. If I do not believe being racist is wrong, if you call me racist it will mean nothing to me. But if I believe lying is wrong, and you call me a liar, and I know I lied that is when shame comes in. It is only when we both already agree on what the morals are and I was simply too weak to have integrity that your shaming works even a little bit.

And the issue of group B people is that they are mentally strong. they have integrity. They act out what they believe. Perhaps they see the immoral as moral or at least amoral. But without that inner part of them that agrees with you which is only ignored because they are weak, they will only laugh at your moral attacks. If they are to ever become good, it will only be through personal experience of its consequences. And what some anon or loser who they perceive as lesser than them in every possible way is of no such consequence.

Meaning that saying “you are bad” (with a whole lot more words) doesn’t work anymore. Because “the good” is no longer dominant. Social shame only works when your values are dominant, because group A’ers will follow power and group B’ers will have been able to gain power through your values. When your values are a minority position however, social shame is just how you lose. And in the 21st century, there are no “dominant” values anymore. Sure, “progressive” values have the most power, but their power is nothing close to “stable” nor overwhelming majority. Probably not even half of people believe in them. And the reaction against them is mounting. The defections are numerous; the “believe the exact opposite of progressives because fuck them”ing is off the charts.

And this coupled with the infinite availability of hedonism and “sin” at our finger tips—porn, social media envy, drugs, TV, gluttonous foods, and all the rest—makes shaming an only degenerative strategy.

In the 21st century feeling ashamed leads only to sin.

Because we, like the beaten child, behave well only when our punisher is looking, only to avoid his attack. But when he is not there, which he now almost never is, all bets are off. And, to make it worse—depending on how much we despise him—we may double down just to spite him!

And even if our punisher is always there, watching, judging, or if he manages to get inside our heads and live rent free, this only prevents us from ever truly hitting “rock bottom”—ever truly experiencing hell—to see why he is right!

Which is better: to crash, to have that traumatic experience, that “coming to Jesus” moment, that hits you so hard that it reorients your relationship to goodness forever?

Or to just limp along, never being truly good, nor truly evil, instead a scared little animal perpetually obedient only to power, occasionally doing “good” things only when you can’t escape judgement or punishment, but then living in “sin” the rest of the time when no one is looking?

It is obviously the former. And the former only comes from rock bottom. And this obsessive toxic paternalism most moralists have only prevents others from ever escaping this fate!

At best the current schema causes all those with the “right” morals to waste their time nitpicking and purity spiraling, meanwhile giving all the bad people complete free reign to go out and acquire power which they then use to leverage all the “slaves” to obey them. And meanwhile, this supposed “really important work” all these moralists are doing of berating all the “undecideds” only actually wounds the undecideds pride which, as outlined above, only makes the temptations of “sin” even more appealing. “All the moral people are mean to me! I hate them! Big billionaire globocorp make me feel good I will consume product!”

We all have pride. We all have ego. We all hate to admit we were wrong. And the more ashamed we are made to feel if we ever come back with our tails between our legs—and the easier it is to hide and distract and hit that easy dopamine feel good lever instead—the more difficult it becomes to ever do it.

Today it is almost impossible to be a truly moral person. And the rare few that get close—those of us who are supposed to be fixing this—are actually only making it worse!

Because the truth is that we too are corrupt. We moralists ourselves are suffering at the same hand of our own pride and ego. We do not “morally crusade” out of true goodness, but out of our own addiction to upholding this delusion that we are categorically different “than those spineless sinful slaves”. Our own desire to feel important. Our own desire to feel powerful. Our own desire to hide from our shame and failings and insecurities and past. It is so easy to forget how much of a flawed pile of trash we ourselves are, how frequently and repeatedly we fail to meet our own standards, if we spend every waking moment pointing out how others are even worse!

But all this does is destroy our credibility. When we shout “do not seek power, only justice!” we are not compelling. Because our hypocrisy is blatant. We are simply trying to achieve feelings of power by creating a new status hierarchy of morals (one which we only pretend we even meet). It is no different. And in fact worse. Because we remain losers.

The truth is that the desire for power never goes away. It, like all other “sinful” impulses, cannot be deleted, only suppressed. And suppression is a ticking time bomb. This envy and lust to rule must always be battled—or at least dutifully monitored. At least until one actually achieves power and realizes it is not all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it will take them more than once. Maybe it will take us more than once. Maybe some portion will never realize it. And those of “us” who fall in that camp will stay useless losers, and those of “them” who do will rule the world, at least for a while.

But “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” is almost correct.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to believe they are doing something when they are actually doing nothing.

And by all examination, “good” men and women of today are universally doing exactly this. We are neutered. We are morally masturbating. We denounce power, wealth, and competence of all kinds. We claim that simply knowing what is morally good is the ultimate good. It doesn’t matter to us that we ourselves never attain even close to our ideals. It doesn’t matter to us that we are losers with no competence nor influence nor money nor power to actually spread goodness. It doesn’t matter to us that there are plenty of people with “bad” morals who are actually doing more for “good” by complete accident than we are simply because we have rendered ourselves so useless and incompetent through our toxic addiction to our perception of our own purity. We have this deluded view that if we simply hold the right morals all else will come. Or that if we simply sit around and wait and jack off at how good we are the apocalypse will come and we will be saved.

And at least the former is definitely true. If you sit around and do nothing and let evil reign, if you simply shout on the internet or elsewhere about what is good or bad and publicly masturbate at your own righteousness, and produce nothing else, build nothing else, the apocalypse will come. But you will not be saved. Because you were not following goodness. You were following the false idol that was your own ego and intellect and cherry picked moral greatness.

True agents of goodness are not tearing down others, nor trying to control them, nor trying to make them behave through shame and suffering, nor orgasming every time they “defeat evil” by yelling at people on Twitter.

True agents of goodness are building and creating, or at least supporting those who are, “being the change they wish to see”, leading, not critiquing; having grace for the broken sinners that they themselves and everyone else is.

There are lots of bad systems. But there are almost no bad people. And you’re unlikely to have ever interacted with a single one of the few there are. I can assure you, the eighty nine people who have blocked you on Twitter account for zero of them!

Most everyone is simply undecided, wrestling constantly with the forces of good and evil in their very own hearts. Just like you. Just like me. And until you can see this, until you can lead, until you can build, until you can create beautiful works, until you can manifest goodness in your own life and bear it’s fruit—not by being a perfect princess hiding in a tower of purity but by going out and making mistakes and screwing up and learning how to manifest goodness in the real world that actually exists then you are not only not helping but actually in the way.

The only way to truly spread goodness is to become a master of navigating evil. To constantly test and learn the boundaries that separate them through action. Sitting around memorizing the map but never actually going out and using it helps no one. It’s just you hiding out of fear and insecurity that you aren’t as good as you tell yourself you are. And this insecurity will haunt you and prevent you from spreading goodness until you learn how to take action and build in the real world.

If goodness is truly good, and you follow it—viscerally and in your real life not just your head—it will reward you with that which is truly fulfilling and righteous. And those capable of redemption will eventually see what you have and seek to emulate you. But only after you take the risk first, of taking imperfect action—of exposing yourself to criticism and failure—despite that it is hard, despite that it is not cozy, despite that it does not slam you with dopamine of moral purity and righteousness from day one.

Until you can let go of your addiction to these ego obsessed meta games that shield you from confronting how much you suck at winning the real ones—which you mostly suck at only because you have abdicated your responsibility to develop competence in them, favoring pursuit of your addiction—no one will care a single iota about what you think is right or wrong.

If you wish to reduce evil in the world, you must allow evil to follow it’s course. Because when you obsessively interfere with every imperfect act, you only delay it’s consequences from ever manifesting. You only convince people that perhaps it has no consequences after all. Which not only makes evil more powerful in the process but, worse, also infects you with its lies. Because attention is the substrate on which ideas feed.And the wolf who wins is the wolf you feed.

Stop screaming at the darkness. It is everywhere. You cannot defeat it. The more you try to fight it directly, the more it will simply use you to grow its strength.

Leave it be. If you are truly aligned with the good, it is of no threat to you. Focus on increasing the luminance of your light. If you are truly aligned with the good, the light will find you.

Focus on what is good. Ignore what is evil. Build. Create. Connect. Grow. Repair. Lead. In what ever way your are most optimally designed.

Beauty will save the world. But not without your help.