Lovely Lies and the Forces of Spiritual & Material Poverty

We live in a world of forces; and not just physical forces, but mental forces, emotional forces, spiritual forces, and even economic forces.

For example, with regard to the latter, American Digest displayed a quote from the Adam Smith Institute to the effect that there are no causes of poverty, being that poverty is obviously our natural condition. There are no wealthy animals. Rather, poverty

"is the rest state, that which happens when you don't do anything. If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come. To ask what causes poverty is like asking what causes cold in the universe; it is the absence of energy. Similarly poverty is the absence of wealth. For most of humanity's existence on this planet, poverty has been the norm, the natural condition."

For example, if my father hadn't forced me to get a job when I was eighteen, I'd still be idly daydreaming in my childhood bedroom. Oh, wait. I am idly daydreaming in my childhood bedroom. Never mind. Still, I bought this house from my mother, fair and square.

Poverty just is. It doesn't become an actual force until the left takes over and begins to magically create poverty with bad ideas. There are no wealthy animals, and human wealth only began to exist on a widespread scale in the past couple of hundred years.

There are forces that result in wealth, such as human creativity, initiative, vision, risk, prudence, etc: "We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them. When you ask the wrong question, 'What causes poverty,' you end up with wrong answers.... Instead of trying to take wealth away from rich people and redistribute it, we should be seeking to implement the conditions in which as many people as possible can join in the wealth-creating process for themselves." Thus, the first law of wealth is "get off your ass." The second is "get the state off your ass."

Conversely, one of the greatest forces of poverty -- and the most potent force which the left pulls out of its arse 'n all -- is envy. Which is why the left has no interest in the forces that create wealth, only the forces that redistribute it under the auspices of envy.

In the mental realm, truth is a force. In fact, it is without question the most important force. Some people -- mostly aging hippies and addle-brained youths, who represent the two main constituencies of the left, wacktivists and hedonists -- will tell you that love (or compassion) is the most important force, but love is a derivative of Truth, not vice versa. I do not worship "the God of love" unless he is first the God of Truth, for who besides a leftist would worship the lovely and seductive lies of a Marx or Obama?

As our dear Mr. Gnosis All has written, "God is 'Light' before He is 'Heat,' if it may be so expressed; gnosis 'precedes' love, or rather, love 'follows' gnosis, since the latter includes love after its own fashion...."

Schuon goes on to explain that "one can love something false, without love ceasing to be what it is; but one cannot 'know' the false in a similar way, that is to say knowledge cannot be under illusion as to its object without ceasing to be what it is; error always implies a privation of knowledge, whereas sin does not imply a privation of will."

Although the lie -- being a privation -- has no "absolute" existence, it does represent a potent "counter-force" on the horizontal plane. In fact, if you think about it for even a moment, the Lie has possibly had an even greater impact and influence on the world than truth -- hence the parable of the Garden, which places the ontological lie at the center of the human dilemma.

Truth is always embattled on all sides, just as light is by definition surrounded by darkness. Only by positing a fundamental inclination in humans can you explain their constant attraction to the Lie. And the bigger the Lie, the harder they fall (cf. the fractured lie of the Obamessiah which now has the left hurtling back to the ground).

You'd think it would be uncontroversial to utter a simple truth, but you'd be wrong, wouldn't you? I am reminded of Obama's shamelessly opportunistic and manipulative "dialogue about race," when the whole reason we cannot say anything useful or productive about race is that the left will brand you a racist if you do. It seems that to carry Truth is to pick up a cross and paint a target on one's back, as one fellow put it.

Animals cannot lie. While they can have certain naturally selected mechanisms of deception, they certainly cannot consciously live a lie. But living a lie is in the normal course of events for human beings. Someone said that language was given to man so as to conceal his thoughts.

Interestingly, this problem is also fully recognized in scripture, as the very first conversation recorded in the Bible is a tissue of lies. The serpent lies to the woman, the woman transmits the lie to the man, the man lies about it to God, and then a rebellious angel leaks the scandal to the New York Times.

The very emergence of self-consciousness seems to be inseparable from lying. For how could it not be? Once we have an interior and an exterior (a self and a persona), the two can grow so far apart that our existence can shade off into the lie (which is one of the reasons actors have always been viewed with suspicion, since they are so adept at pretending to be what they are not).

So lying is absolutely fundamental to human existence. The psychoanalyst W.R. Bion developed a sophisticated epistemology -- which you cannot say three times in rapid succession -- showing how a vital lie is at the basis of most all forms of psychopathology (at least those that aren't mainly genetic and/or biochemical). Once the lie is in place, it causes the psyche to enter a sort of parallel universe, for it constructs itself on the foundations of that initial falsehood.

A mind parasite is essentially an internalized lie that takes on a pseudo-life of its own. I believe the term is an accurate one, for it is meant to convey the idea that a vital lie that lodges itself in the psyche is not static, but avails itself of the marvelously elaborate machinery of the mind. Therefore, it can easily justify itself, elaborate itself, gang up on the truth, intimidate healthier parts of the psyche. It's like a dictator who uses legitimate means to come to power, but then corruptly uses all of the levers of power to stay there and eliminate opponents.

Now, those in thrall to the Lie are by definition slaves. While they may enjoy a subjective sense of freedom, the freedom is an illusion, since it does not converge on the truth that dilates being and liberates the self. In fact, they have forfeited their freedom and are attached to a monstrous demon that they have generated out of their own psychic substance, in the same way that a spider weaves a web out of its own butt.

Think of a vivid example that is readily at hand -- the Islamists. Is it not obvious that they are absolutely enslaved by artificial beings of their own creation? And that they want everyone else to be enslaved by the same demon? Does this not demonstrate the insane power of demons?

There are personal mind parasites and collective mind parasites. Many cultures revolve entirely around monstrous entities that have been engendered by whole communities, such as the Aztec.

Here again, it would be wrong to say that the Aztec had a "bloodthirsty god" -- rather, it clearly had them. Thousands upon thousands of human beings sacrificed to satisfy this god's appetite for human blood, elaborate mechanisms set up to supply fresh bodies, the heart of the sacrificial victim cut out by the officiating priest who would himself take a bite out of it while it was still beating. A whole society of Jeffrey Dahmers trying desperately to allay anxiety by vampirically ingesting the life force of others. The Islamists are just the latest maninfestation of this gruesome religion. But you undoubtedly know some people in your own life who do the same thing -- hungry ghosts who vampirically feed on the spirit or blog of others. Here comes one now! Hello, 'Nonyman.

In all times and in all places, human beings have looked for ways to objectify and worship their self-created demons. This is preferable to having them run around loose in one's own psyche. Take again the example of the Islamist. How would one even begin to tell him: "you have a persecutory entity inside of you that your life revolves around. You have placed it outside of yourself so as to make your life bearable, for it conceals a truth that is too painful to endure."

To a large extent, this dynamic is at the heart of more mundane politics as well. For those who do not experience George Bush as a demon, it is almost impossible to understand those who do, any more than we can really understand the motivations of the Aztec. The collective mind parasite has a grammar and logic all its own, inaccessible to all but initiates into the Lie.

You don't actually want to get that close to an intoxicating Lie of that magnitude. It's not safe. Better to observe it from a respectful distance. Otherwise, you will find yourself pulled down into a false world of counter-lying rather than simple truth. You cannot create an artificial "good demon,” which is what secular leftists are trying to do when they aren't creating bad ones. Those who criticize my "negativity" toward the left probably think I am engaging in the former -- heatedly countering the lie -- when I am calmly engaged in the latter -- simply affirming the truth that Is and has always been. This is the inner meaning of "resist not evil." Resist it in the wrong way, and you come into its orbit.

For as our Unknown Friend points out, a demon operates through a combination of will and imagination. You may think of perverse will as the male principle and perverse imagination as the female principle. Together they beget the demon child that then controls the parents, taking over both will and imagination. Consider how so much art and tenured nonsense are nothing more than the elaboration of the perverse imagination -- ideological superstructures giving cover to lies of various magnitude. Think of how much "activism" is simply the sadistic will of a corrupt superego that mistakes moralism for morality.

This is the inner meaning of "you shall not make for yourself a graven image," for Truth is a living thing, a precious Being that cannot be reduced to the idolatrous systems of men, especially corrupted monkeymen who do not honor Truth to begin with and cannot distinguish it from a banana. Most modern and postmodern ideologies and philosophies are opiates of elites too sophisticated for such powerful pneumaceuticals as principial Truth.

And this is the inner meaning of "honor your father and mother”: not rebelling against received truth and tradition in a reactionary, adolescent manner, especially before you are even mature enough to understand what it all means. But those who flee from Truth will always exist in one form or another. Which is why "the poor will always be with you."