Eish! The Ascetic Priest

The main problem with Western philosophical Idealism -- which I take to be the most common cultural milieu in Australia, the US and Britain -- ought to be more self evident. The fact that it isn't even slightly recognised, for the most part, is a product of the logic of a mode of thinking that is divorced from material reality in the first place.

Let me spell out what that logic is, so as to make its limiting parameters more noticeable. I am referring here to the moral idealism of the Ascetic Priest -- for this is the most universal form of Idealism there is, and therefore the one most worth mentioning. The logic of the Ascetic Priest, which is the logic of Idealism, holds that there is no need for action, but only for faith; for trust in the system just the way it is. (Exxtreme Idealists who are also Ascetic Priests will deny that there even is a social or ideological "system" in any possible sense.)

So the person who acts, in terms of the logic of this ascetic ideology, is always the person in the wrong, the person without faith, the person who has descended from a 'higher' realm of spirituality into what I imagine must be posited from a priestly perspective as being a realm of 'materialist filth'. Moreover, somebody who visibly acts will come under intense scrutiny by "all who have theological blood in their veins":

It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins -- this is our whole philosophy. . . . One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly […]The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (-- and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself -- as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.

However, of course, there is a difference between those who act visibly and those whose actions are performed outside of the purview of the majority. I am referring to class differences. Whereas the oppressed deny themselves the power to act on their own behalves (because they wish to become/remain 'holy') they nonetheless succumb to the powers of those who are acting powerfully, but invisibly, several flights of steps up beyond the "ceiling" that so apparently divides them.

So, now the logic of Idealist morality becomes even more apparent: One is free to act BUT ONLY IF one's actions remain hidden, veiled from the majority. However, a member of the majority must feel that he is wrong to act in any way on his own behalf.

If one of the majority does act (out in the open, without the protection of institutionalised power, his or her actions will be much more visible, much less protected from discovery), then automatically they are the party in the wrong. The party who acts "invisibly" is always, by virtue of Idealist logic, the party who is in the right.

But, logically, the logic of Western Idealism skews the politics of society wildly towards the Right, since those who already have institutional power (and thus are in a position to hide their actions) now have an unfair advantage in being perceived as more 'moral' than those who are without power. Nonetheless, according to this ideological system, anybody at all who "acts" is wrong.