THE TRUTH ADDICTION | 2006-07-12
There are simple, basic principles that, if one sticks to them, lead to profound truths. Today the best known of these is supply and demand. But there are many, many others. After Marx Rousseau built whole systems on the idea that the natural state was equality, only Adam Smith is left standing.
Adam Smith is left standing because he would consider the world view that libertarians built on supply and demand silly.
All he wanted was to tell the truth, that people were better off making money than being regulated by the state. But libertarians make a religion of this.
Libertarians depend on supply and demand to supply them with a God.
A lot of religious people live and die by the idea that evolution is untrue. It makes no difference to me. To the extent that it is true, I will simply factor it in. It fallacies are merely a matter of interest. Theyr eally worry about this. I have no dog in that fight.
So the truth is a very comfortable place to be. If you simply tell the truth, it becomes addictive.
What do I mean by the word "addictive?" I mean it makes me feel good.
I spent years in alcohol and drug recovery. I read the Bible of recovery, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I kept finding things in there that no one who made religion of it had noticed. I began recovery with the required conviction that one had to begin by admitting that one was an alcoholic or an addict. That means that anyone who drinks or drugs too much is chemically dependent on alcohol and/or drugs.
But I discovered that that was NOT what the Big Book SAID. What the Big Book actually said was the opposite. If you actually READ the thing,it makes it clear that for every true alcoholic or addict, there are several drunks and users. These people USE alcohol and drugs, not because they are chemically dependent, but because only drugs and alcohol make them FEEL good.
The Big Book also points out an indisputable fact: It doesn't really matter whether you drink too much because it makes you feel decent or because you are a true alcoholic. If you drink yourself to death, your corpse is indistinguishable from the corpse of a chemically dependent alcoholic. From this those who sell the program conclude that there is no difference between a drunk and an alcoholic. So the program says that if you do not admit you are an alcoholic, you are in denial. That sells recovery programs.
But I am in the comfortable position of not trying to sell recovery programs. Everyone who shouts "Denial" would call himself a Realist.
Meanwile I keep looking for the truth.
I would substitute another idea for the "Denial" nonsense. I would say that the problem is not just the use of alcohol and drugs. The problem is that only drugs and alcohol make people feel better. "Addiction" means an insistence on feeling better.
Let's get down to supply and demand basics: Any moron can HURT you, but it takes talent to make you feel better. Pleasure is costly, pain is cheap. According to Calvinists and the Pope the Gospel had a meaning different from "Good News." Their idea of the Good News was that almost evrybody would spend eternity in an agony they had never before imagined. This is not good news, but it certainly fits in with the world as we know it. God gives out plenty of agony and very, very little joy.
In the recovery program, anything that makes you feel better is a sin. It so happens that this idea of truth is what we mean by Reality. A Realist believed in PAIN. A Realist believes everything is getting worse. Have you ever heard any definition of the word "realist" that did not take this for granted?
Meanwhile out in the real world, Western Civilization and particulary American civilization has driven everybody else's deeply held belief systems out of the way without a bump. In the REAL world, nobody wants the ancient customs of Japan or China or Africa or Traditional Christianity. People want what they LIKE. America keeps pouring out Coca-Cola that they like, movies that they like, music that they like.
This is reality. This is the oppoisite of Realism, but it is reality. One thing that drives people up the wall on both sides is that I keep saying what everybody knows, that a random racial mix is UGLY. People don't want to be ugly.
Silly, isn't it?
But the fact is that this statement is a fundamental reality. The reality is that if a black guy wants a blond, he is evil.
So what is addiction? Addiction is wanting to feel better. Addiction is not a chemical addiction to something that makes you feel better. Addiction is wanting that which relieves you. I am addicted to truth. Let me repeat that Truth is the opposite of Truth. If Truth were the same thing as truth, you would not need the capital letter.
By the same tone, mercy is the oppsite of Mercy. In the Middle Ages, no one would have burned someone slowly to death while holding a cross in their face if they believed in mercy. This was Mercy with a capital M. It was True Mercy, it was the Ultimate Mercy. If you burned a person alive slowly while holding a cross in their face, there was the slightest chance that the victim might confess his sins and be spared Eternal Damnation.
Every civilization that has been negated by the West was based on some kind of Wisdom, some kind of Truth, some kind of Mercy. Nobody wants any of them back. The Indian who makes a living condemning the West does so with an air conditioner and a computer.
So why is it that I am so dedicated to the truth with a small t?
It makes me feel better. It makes me feel superior. It is the reason I have a frontal lobe in the first place. Simple truth violates the first rule of Realism: It makes me feel good. While others try to dig some sort of agony out of the Old Testament, I simply state what is obviously factual.
Jews control what is called American civilization. But they don't understand it. They are destroying theemselves by making Europe a Mosle continent. Eastern Europe hates them. There is nothing complex about this.
I can see what is simply true. Everybody else lives in a world of Realism or Traditional Values or wherever else they may be. I see what is here, what is real. I see the truth.
And if you have a sense of humor, seeing the truth is very entertaining.