Truth vs Falsehood (36 page)

If nature is the basis of earthly life, then by what aspect does all this ‘injustice’ arise? Life itself is the ultimate context and power whereby evolution unfolds ‘unfairly’, for like a cork in the sea, excellence automatically rises to the top. The strongest lion dominates; the cleverest sea urchin survives. The smartest octopus gets to be the biggest, and the fastest runner wins the race. Political ranting about the real laws of life is emotional, childish and hardly constitutes justification for attempts to overthrow reality (which is immune anyway). Creation is heterogeneous and all of life is expressed in endless variation in which every quality is articulated along a continuum.

The ego is dualistic and prone to falling into the illusion of an external ‘cause’ to explain events instead of realizing that all comes into manifestation by the actualization of potential as a consequence of the overall field, plus intention (via choice). To avoid responsibility, the ego projects a dualistic split onto the world and thereby believes it sees the perpetrator/victim as ‘out there’. This justifies hatred and paranoia, which then spew forth as vilification, slander, and demonization. Hate needs a target and therefore sets up the straw man as the “enemy.”

Although the culture of hatred hides under the sheep’s clothing of the lure of simplistic idealizations, its real nature is exposed as it gathers momentum and becomes the new oppressor. It can readily be seen that an organized attempt to discredit morality, ethics, and spiritual reality then itself merely becomes a new system of “ethics,” “moral demand,” and oppression (Bruce, 2003), with actual
censorship
of school books and libraries based on political ideology but, simultaneously, bizarrely teaching six-year-olds the details of sexual deviations, ala Krafft-Ebing’s
Psychopathia Sexualis
(1886, 1999).

Distortions of verifiable integrous truth eventuate into social absurdities that stand out like cultural displays of moral imbecility enforced by coercion and litigious threat. In the “name of the free,” the word “God” is illegal (so much for the First Amendment’s “Freedom of Speech”). School principals forbid teaching the Declaration of Independence because it refers to the Creator (which is not even the word “God”). Other schools do not allow teaching why or to whom the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving (even as historical fact). Another school has “cross-dressing” day, and the annual Christmas tree in the nation’s Capitol cannot be called a “Christmas” tree (free speech?).

Public displays of symbols of all religions are permitted in other areas so long as they are not Christian. In other social areas, organizations devoted to adult male solicitation of boys for pedophilia are legal but Boy Scouts are not. Even incest is now seeking approval via the movies, and criminality and drug-dependent personalities are media icons. Sedition has also become just “free expression,” as have slander and bearing false witness.

While all the above is tragi-comical, more serious is the vilification of the police and enforcement of law and order, e.g., a suspicious truck is stopped and found to be hauling three tons of marijuana. The arrest is later deemed illegal because the drivers were black (therefore arbitrarily “racial profiling,” which does not arise if the police officers are black and the criminals are white). On television, the news from this ‘free society’ is that a soldier in the heat of battle who shoots an enemy combatant that is playing possum is held up for criticism and possible court martial. At the same time, the military is inviting young men to enlist to serve their country.

From the viewpoints of theology, religion, spirituality, ethics, reason, morality, philosophy, tradition, history, and the common sense of maturity, the above-described social attitudes exemplify what has classically become termed the “Luciferic inversion,” in which good and evil are transposed. Historically, this has been the sheep’s clothing for the emergence and dominance of the “satanic,” meaning violence, the subversion of Divinity, and sovereign permission for mass slaughter by terrorism and/or war. Such progression was displayed by the fall of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, the Holy Roman Empire. The same process befell both prior and succeeding empires, both Byzantine and Arabic, such as the Ottoman and that of Attila the Hun.

While the upside of liberalism is the elimination of religious theocratic oppression, the downside is to overshoot the mark and merely substitute secular oppression, which is equally destructive to true freedom, as discussed in
Chapter 13
.

In a free society, a citizen should be free to discuss
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
as well as God or the subject of Thanksgiving Day and the impact of Christ, Moses, or Muhammad on history and civilization. An inversion of truth and its decline are indicated by a culture that legalizes child pornography but forbids the mention of God or religion as an academic study. It is dishonest to distort truthful history and its importance as an attempt to proselytize. The next move could be the elimination of all paper money that says “In God We Trust” because it makes some neurotic ‘uncomfortable’ It is important to question whether pathological mental states such as personality disorders should be legislated as the norm. Is psychopathology an adequate model for legislation?

One can sympathize with attempts to destigmatize human defect or misfortune by linguistic and semantic manipulation, but the downside of fallacy is distortion. In the 1960s, the sophistry of “deconstructionism” was exemplified by such efforts as psychiatrist Thomas Szaz’s writings, which sought to discredit the medical condition termed “mental illness” by calling it a “myth.” Semantically, a term means just what it is defined to be (i.e.,
res interna
), but what was overlooked in the redefinition of deconstructionism is that a term also refers to verifiable facts
(res externa).
To pretend that mental illness is solely a semantic ‘myth’ (cal. 160) has been disastrous.

Clinically, the supposed ‘myths’ of schizophrenia, depression, ADD, ADHD, mania, epilepsy, or bipolar cycling disappear promptly with psychopharmacology. The symptoms recur if medications are stopped. Obviously, if clinical conditions that have existed in all cultures throughout history were just ‘myths’, they would not be turned on and off by medications. (ADHD is related to the amount of time a child watches television prior to age three. Watching television interferes with the neuronal process of circuits, plus genetics.)

Deconstructionism is intrinsically nihilistic in that it negates both experiential reality (i.e., history, the holocaust, etc.) as well as confirmable
res externa
and thereby circuitously negates its own premises (dialectic, i.e., the error of mixing levels). Meaning is derived from structure and definition, without which society degenerates, becomes amorphous, and life becomes meaningless sensation-seeking. A society without intellectual, moral, or ethical structure and discipline becomes not free, as implied by the promises of deconstructive relativism, but instead collapses by degeneration into chaos, civil disorder, and behavioral infantilism. The whole deconstructive theory is the child’s game of pretend. Its absurdity is exemplified by sophomoric attempts to apply it to a staid publication, such as
The Economist
, which satirizes such attempts in an article, “Capitalistic Sexist Pigs” (December 18, 2004).

Certain human conditions are stigmatized by the ignorant. The cure is to educate the ignorant rather than pretend the condition does not exist or is just a linguistic construct. To “pretend” means it is naïve to believe a condition will just disappear if it is no longer discerned or nominalized. The mentally ill were put out of the hospitals to wander the streets and end up in jail or commit suicide with drugs and crime. It did not ‘go away’ when it was relabeled “alternative lifestyle.” Thus, current politicized euphemisms deny reality because they arise from the distorted perceptions of projected narcissism (i.e., ‘sensitive’). Limitations or impairments need to be the focus of education and upliftment, which is not accomplished by fairy tales that simple neurological disorders indicate that a child is an “advanced being from the future,” etc.

A Summary and Explanation of “Relativism” (Cal. 185)

Because it is critical to understand this subject, which is likely to be unfamiliar to many people, it deserves special attention. “Relativism” is a rather general philosophical term that can be applied to the intellectual (epistemological), moral, social, ethical, and political realms, or to semantics and linguistics. Its applications, as well as misapplications, have had a widespread impact on law, the judiciary, government agendas, the media, and public opinion.

The intellectual thrust of the relativistic school of philosophy primarily stems from a group of French intellectuals, none of whom calibrates over 200. From nonlinear dynamics, we know that there is a “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” Thus, even a slight error when multiplied many times over (“iteration”) can have a massive negative impact. The error of relativism, repeated ideologically throughout all areas of society (politics, government, the media, literature, and sociology), can become magnified in its destructive capacity to even a whole society. Relativistic “memes” contaminate academia, with serious consequences. Unchecked, the error of “relativism by iteration” has the potential to bring down American society. This statement calibrates at 490—very true.

The potential for a disastrous downside to relativism is apparent, first, by its consciousness calibration level of 185, which is below the critical level of truth (at 200), and, second, by the basic principles of relativism itself. These are:

  1. There is no independent, universal, verifiable truth as such, and therefore all supposed truths are merely arbitrary consequences of definition that are only linguistic constructs with no necessary objective, inherent reality.

  2. Language is structuralized social myth, the product of repressive forces, such as logic, politics, law, science, medicine, psychiatry, religion, etc.

  3. Definition is therefore only social labeling, a semantic myth, because it is not a product of nature but only of political-social bias.

  4. Meaning is a consequence of conceptual framework and linguistic/semantic/cultural structure and therefore reflects prejudicial empowerment of repressive elements.

  5. Because structure is seen to be the basis of the perceived repression, it can be eliminated by the process of “deconstruction.”

  6. Progress requires destruction and attack on the prior norm rather than creation of a new paradigm. This requires revolution, anarchy, and vilification of integrity.

  7. Morality and ethics have no reality basis and are therefore invalid.

  8. Because there are no universal or verifiable truths, there should be no social parameters, restrictions, or guidelines such as mores that are repressive (e.g., “the man”).

  9. To conform to all the above, the meanings and definitions of language and history should be changed accordingly.

10. Because there is no absolute truth, God/Divinity is nonexistent and society should therefore be secular/atheistic/populist/libertarian and basically anarchistic.

11. Social problems are due to victimization by perpetrators. Therefore, there is no personal responsibility.

12. To reconstruct society, it is necessary to demonize integrity, morality, truth, logic, success, and excellence and replace it with the sophistry of narcissistic rhetoric and propaganda. Therefore, history itself has to be revised, as do language, meaning, and values. This is accomplished by “reconstruction” so that the reconstructed interpretations are in accord with and support the tenets of relativism.

The appeal of relativism, therefore, is to imbalance and excess rather than to truth, wisdom, or caution. The young are also romantically idealistic and impressionable as well as gullible and easily propagandized by the media and cultural icons. They are like sheep that follow the herd in idolization of pop media figures. Immaturity is also status seeking and therefore vulnerable to memes such as “politically correct,” “elite,” etc.

To the prideful, narcissistic (‘sensitive’) ego, responsibility is ‘uncomfortable’, as are certain facts of reality that impinge on social image. Thus, to protect itself, the ego welcomes the concept of “labeling” (cal. 150) to dispense with unwanted realities. The illusion is that by declaring a reality to be a ‘myth’ and just a ‘label’, it will disappear. The problem that evolves is that the result is obfuscation of the real issues, i.e., the military becomes more obsessed with its television image than with handling the problem at hand. Relativism appeals to ego-mind (see
Chapter 14
), which ‘thinks’ but fails the criterion of reason required by higher mind.

Although the collective calibration level of America overall is very high and integrous at 421, approximately 49 percent of the population is still below the level of integrity and truth at 200. This represents a vulnerability that historically has been the source of mankind’s great disasters. Although intellectual, philosophic, academic, and spiritual error can be excused as a lack of erudition or intelligence, its danger cannot be ignored for the consequences of fallacy and rhetoric continue to be severe. A society at 421 cannot allow itself to be injured by a vociferous element that collectively calibrates at 180-190, or even lower. Elitism is regressive, not progressive, and runs counter to the overall progression of the evolution of consciousness.

It is unlikely that a naïve or unsophisticated mind would intuitively detect the inherent fallacies of the distorted hermeneutics of problematic relativistic epistemology that underlie the rhetoric of pop sociopolitical trends. Proponents are attracted to the puffery of attention-getting public utterances that pose as “oh so brave and gallant.”