The Right Attitude

The ethicist, the self-proclaimed reformer, must adopt a sensible outlook. This idealist may have some good ideas that actually will make things better, but people must accept them of their own free will, or not, when they are ready to, not before.

The idealist must not take it personally if his suggestions are roundly renounced by everyone. He must cultivate endless patience, and just calmly, plainly speaking his truth, despite character assassinating and united efforts to intimidate him into silence, or worse, recanting what he knows to be true.

He must not expect too much of people. They group-live, and that lifestyle and its collective narrative are riddled with lies as a way of life, popular group fantasies, acceptance of low behavioral standards and obedience to group norms, low and easy, the lowest common denominator. Being habituated to live in accordance with the nonsense that their ruling elites have spoonfed them, they have lost their intellectual rigor, their curiosity their unnatural bent to question authority figures.

With time and repetition of suggestions for improvement, eventually, over the years, the reformer will gain ground and supporters. He must believe in the mental capacity, the learned decency and cultivated open-mindedness and sense of fairness that eventually grip the majority of middle class people. Once their see their way clear, and grasp what is their duty, most of them will rise to the occasion, and do the right thing.

The reformer  must accept that for who and what they are, and where they are coming from.  They will progress on their own timeline, or not at all. He must work with the audience as it is constituted, not as he fantasizes how they should act.