Where Is the Truth?
Is it now criminal to seek it? Has it ever been legal?
More than ever, the eternal question is begging for an answer that would work towards a world in which life is worth living:
“What is considered ‘moral,’ ‘good,’ or ‘unethical’ or even a ‘crime’?”
Are such terms possible to define without assigning values to them or, preferably, assigning them to values?
After all, the current mode of mass manipulation is traveling on the wings of the idea that the individual must be willing to be sacrificed for the masses (often fraudulently referred to as some sort of “community”). The lie relies on the assumption that three human lives are worth more than two. In what sense can that be true? Who can determine it, and on what basis? Or humans amount to no more than mere numbers in an equation that uses only rule-of-the-thumb calculations? “Usefulness” and “functionality” have definitely become the slogans on the technocrats’ banners.
***
According to the last classic philosopher, Immanuel Kant, good and bad cannot exist without the Divine showing the way. Gnostics, philosophers or not, have always gone against that argument, but haven’t been able to convince the rest of the world that it is possible for the person to reach ultimate knowledge or at least, “wisdom.” They have also been persecuted for going against the principles of the actual world order currently in charge. This time, they seem to have the upper hand, and look at the results.
***
Freemasons were not the first, but definitely the most influential ones today, to spread the fallacy that “humans are born good.” The assumption is ingeniously evil, because it suggests that it is essential towards identifying “God-given rights” without acknowledging a Divine authority per se; in this ideology, “pure reason” replaces the infinite and inscrutable Divine with a faint rational projection. Freemasonry elevates the person’s “conscience” to the highest platform of moral authority, which of course, is nonsense for anyone who can still think more or less clearly. After all kinds of diverging theories, the one that I find the most convincing one (various “schools in Psychology” have adopted the stance) it the one that states that “conscience” evolves during the period of primary socialization, while the child is still not completely self-aware. As a result, the child assumes the “values” of his/her immediate environment (which translates to “family” most of the time) and judges good and bad based on that. For instance, a child who grows up among highwaymen, respects the “family,” but has no respect for outsiders’ lives and possessions.
So, if there is Divine Guidance regarding good and evil, it can be studied and its principles must be acquired and employed by the person after he/she reaches full consciousness, which traditionally happened around the age of five, but nobody knows if it ever happens to the latest breed of humans.
Most truth judgments based on early-childhood memories are not readily accessible for most people, which, around 2000 AD, even resulted in a new method in psychological “treatment” that wanted to install and ingrain, or even condition, new premises into the person’s “subconscious” (which is not much else but the automated functioning of the person’s psychology, amounting to probably no less than 98-99% of human existence) and called itself “Cognitive Therapy.” Of course, the problem with such a “therapy” is that ultimately, someone has to make the decision about good and evil for the “patient.” Considering the many religions around the world, chances are that even those “therapists” who accept the idea of Divine Counsel diverge in their conclusions, which leads to further internal conflicts in the patient’s self-image, not to mention the irreconcilable difference between the outcomes among such “patients.”
So, following Kant, only Divine Guidance can help out people to learn about the true nature of good and evil. Otherwise, people choke in their own muck and sometimes can even be proud of it… Maybe more often than sometimes…
***
Assuming or even acknowledging the existence of the Divine doesn’t require religion, only common sense, although common sense cannot replace the Divine. Yet what can come next?
Discussing ethics or moral standards in a secular world must be grounded on establishing a common denominator between the profane and the divine. With religion used for justifying and maintaining the established order, it used to be easier, although never easy. Breaking with the standards was usually criminalized, because social stability was valued higher than individual rights. The principle was enforced even when it represented obvious nonsense that even the judges knew was make-belief for the masses (e.g. in the case of Galileo).
Some things never change, eh?
***
Cultural standards that would validate truth, value, and moral judgments must be rooted in the prevalent ideology of a culture. Such ideologies have always been used in civilizations to justify the power of the rulers and the “well-deserved fate” of the disenfranchised. Successful ideologies usually managed to convince the masses that they deserve to be used and exploited, although it sometimes took a period of Stockholm syndrome for people to start defending and even protecting their oppressors.
In the US, the last widely-proclaimed ideology was the “American Dream,” but even according to George Carlin, it’s called a dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
When it comes to canonizing “moral” or “criminal” standards, the age-old question always sticks out of the baggage, at least for those who can think outside the box:
“Who is going to watch over the watchers?”
Once enforcers are given any type of power, the same power can be abused against anyone.
***
So, what can be the most functional basis for passing and enforcing laws in an ideal place, where both laws and their enforcement serve the well-being of the people without hurting some of them or violating the individual’s life?
In tribal cultures, evil, stupid, and ludicrous are sometimes denoted by the same word. In theocracies, bad, criminal, and evil, often overlap. Modern western cultures can’t even agree on how to write a book of law: they either rely on “Roman Law” that tries to collect all possible situations in its legal codes (which is impossible) or on “common law” that leaves the decision to tradition (which, of course, keeps changing, especially these days, when cultures are forced to mingle to the point of extinguishing each other). Laws at least have one thing in common: they support the maintenance of social equilibrium and, consequently, are always partial towards those in power. Religious Canon Law has also been used to the same end in several cultures, but its contents changed according to the way it served the powerful.
***
There are well-known “holy texts” all over the world, but above every single one of them, there are plenty of parties claiming authority. Where can someone, who is honestly interested, learn about Divine Guidance? That would be the most essential part in a person’s life, in case there is a life after life in which the Divine finally prevails.
Any solutions?
The solution is not simple as large numbers of people increase the number of psychopaths in a population. Marxist ideology is psychopathic and Gnostic. And Marxist ideology triumphed as a "secular" faith.
However the insights of psychology could be applied. https://www.systemsthinker.com/interests/ponerology/
The main thrust of Lobaczewski’s work, as I interpret it, is that the secret investigations that he and his colleagues conducted revealed the following:
Normals and The Pathological
The vast majority of human beings experience empathy and have a conscience rooted, to a significant degree, in values such as peace, cooperation and shared health and prosperity. Lobaczewski refers to these human beings as “normals.”
Some human beings, however, exhibit certain important psychopathologies – including psychopathy or other personality disorders (which Lobaczewski calls characteropathies) - that can affect them in a very holistic way, fundamentally shaping their perception and experience of the world so as to:
Reduce their ability to experience empathy
Reduce their ability to experience certain other emotional states in the same ways that normals do
Lead them - despite the assumption of many normals that all people value peace, cooperation and shared health and prosperity as they do - to actually hold very different values such as domination and excessive, if not endless, acquisition
These various relevant disorders can have different causes. Some inherit these psychopathological conditions. Others acquire them through various means, including:
Certain pre-natal or natal circumstances or incidents
Traumas
Brain lesions
Contact with other pathological people, who may include parents or other family members or caregivers or others in their society, especially at an early age, that distort the development of their worldview and conscience
Whether inherited or acquired, these conditions can have deep biological roots, often represented in noticeable genetic and/or brain or other anatomical differences, which Lobaczewski describes. And their effects can be quite severe. For example, Lobaczewski explains that, in the most extreme cases, the inability of those with these conditions to perceive the feelings that normals feel or comprehend the values of normals is analogous to the perceptual inabilities of those who are color blind. Indeed, he tells us, “Psychiatrists of the old school” often invoked Daltonism, a particular form of color blindness, in referring to individuals with an especially severe inherited type of psychopathy that Lobaczewski calls “essential psychopathy” as “Daltonists of human feelings and socio-moral values.”
Different disorders within this group are marked by different courses, including the points in life at which their various symptoms become evident and the types of events that trigger their symptomatology. Each brings with it certain shortcomings and enables particular traits, talents and skills in those who have it. Lobaczewski describes in detail these aspects of the different pathologies.
But despite these differences, the psychopathologies in question all have in common certain very important related effects on biology, emotions and values. Because of these similar effects, Lobaczewski groups people who have any combination of these particular psychopathological conditions under the rubric “the pathological.”
The differences between normals and the pathological represent a profound and fundamental division within humanity. This division is so profound and fundamental, in fact, that some knowledgeable theorists view certain types of pathological people as members of a subspecies of humanity or, as Lobaczewski has referred to them, “para-Homo Sapiens.”
If you take a view that is long-term enough, what is best for the self is inseparable from what is best for others. Ethics and self-interest are one and the same. To act unethically is to be stupid - just like it is stupid to ignore the self when sacrificing for the "greater good".