the victim card on Christmas Eve
for what would so soon destroy all the order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every one to judge his own cause...
On Christmas Eve of 1751, Dr. Johnson published essay 185 of The Rambler. His diagnosis of a societal problem and its terrible consequences makes us wonder of time travel or the paranormal. Did he visit almost 300 years into to the future, then back to the eighteenth century to pen this?
"For what would so soon destroy all the order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every one to judge his own cause, and to apportion his own recompense for imagined injuries?"
(The Rambler, No. 185, Dec 24, 1751)
The entire essay is worth a second read, as is The Rambler's entire collection of 208 entries.
Johnson's pen is sharp, and always on the spot. To every question its just answer. Not more and not less.
There are essays that could have been written about our present day ailments, petty feuds, accomplishments, content marketing, overconsumption, and the perils of addiction to the inconsequential including twitter/x and the rest of social media.
