The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the
standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics
replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of
a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for
society.” This meant, in logic—and, today, in worldwide practice—that
“society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source,
standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills,
whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant
that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it
chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And—since there is no such entity
as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men—this meant that
some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are
ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to
pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the
service of that gang’s desires.