Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
and the truth will set you free.
–Jesus of Nazareth: John 8:32
What is truth?
–Pontius Pilate: John 18:38
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said: “The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of Truth”. I completely agree with Goethe’s declaration. But I would go farther and say that we must demand, or at least, expect, the love of truth from everybody, especially the authorities, political and religious leaders, and teachers. But, is that a reasonable expectation? Is it possible to get close to the Truth? Is there such a thing as the universal absolute truth? Perhaps there are only relative truths, and maybe that is the reason why the Roman prefect seemed confused at the words of the Nazarene, and therefore responded the way he did.
In a general sense, the commitment to truths by institutions of all sorts is weak, has a double-standard, one for us, one for them, or is plain and simple hypocritical. In a world where history has been written by the ruling class, and is full of lies and half-truths, where the mainstream media, owned by them, cover the topics, and present them under a light that will justify the power elite, having even an approximation to the truth is very difficult.
The mainstream media and other ideological institutions will generally reflect the perspectives and interests of the established power. Those media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of their owners, and limiting debate and discussion accordingly. The media are supposed to be a counter-weight to government, in other words, an obstinate, ubiquitous press which must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know, and to help the population assert meaningful control over the political process. But in reality, the media present a picture of the world which defends and inculcates the economic, social, and political agenda of the privileged groups who dominate the domestic economy and who therefore also largely control the government. They do that by things like the way they select topics, distribute their concerns, frame issues, filter information, focus their analyses, through emphasis, tone, and other techniques. The terminology they use is ideologically laden. Many words have two meanings, a dictionary meaning, and a meaning that is used for ideological warfare.
Instead of doing what the Nazarene proposed, spreading truths as an instrument of liberation, many political, religious, and commercial institutions do exactly the opposite: they disseminate lies as a means to enslavement. For them, by offering the people freedom, the Christ condemned them to misery; they seem to think that, according to the myth of the Garden of Eden, God’s greatest mistake was to give humans free will, or in other words, freedom of choice. They must therefore correct this evil work by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they are supposed to desire and need: absolute submission. They must vanquish freedom, to make humans happy. Free will is hell; obedience and ignorance are bliss.
In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, and private profit, called free enterprise. Those organizations must create the necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications that keep the ignorant masses disciplined and content. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the sorcerers or the inquisitors, who employ the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority, they must conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of the rebels, and deny them the freedom of choice.
The educational system doesn’t help either. True education should teach us how to think, not what to think. True educators should present all sides of an issue and encourage discussion.
Those organizations expend vast resources educating the people about the facts of life, to ensure a favourable climate for them to thrive. Their task is to control the public mind which, according to them, is the only serious danger. They do that through indoctrination, that is to say, mind control, which entails behaviour control, thought control, emotional control, information control, and subliminal messages. Each form of control has great power and influence on the human mind. Together, they form a totalitarian web that can manipulate even the strongest-minded people.
Though it may be obvious, we human beings aren’t totally rational creatures. Complete rationality denies our emotional and physical nature. We can’t function without our emotions. We all need love, friendship, attention, and approval in our lives. Everyone is vulnerable to mind control. Intense stress is commonplace in the modern world. Many people experience great pressure at work or school, or tension from family problems, social relationships, health concerns, new jobs, new homes, money crises, or combinations of several of these stresses at once. Usually our defence mechanism helps us cope, but we all have vulnerable moments. Everyone wants to be happy. Everyone needs affection and attention. Everyone is looking for something better in life: more wisdom, more knowledge, more money, more status, more meaning, better relationships, or better health. These basic human qualities and needs are exactly what many organizations prey upon.
A newly found doctrine could be sensed as a revelation, an epiphany that brings so much joy that we become addicted to it, regardless of how unfounded it may be. We may be addicted to certain indoctrinations which generate strong release of brain chemicals which cause not only a dissociated mental state but also a “high” similar to that created by illegal drugs. So we willfully yield to it. Mind control involves no overt physical abuse. Instead, hypnotic processes are combined with group dynamics to create a potent indoctrination effect. The individual is deceived and manipulated, not directly threatened, into making the prescribed choices. On the whole, he responds positively to what is done to him.
Guilt and fear are necessary tools to keep people under control. Guilt is probably the single most important emotional lever for producing conformity and compliance. However, most members of certain organizations can’t see that guilt and fear are being used to control them. They are conditioned to always blame themselves, so that they respond gratefully whenever the leaders point out their shortcomings. Problems are always their fault, and are due to their weak faith, lack of understanding, evil spirits, and so forth. They come to believe that evil is out to get them. Fear is a major motivator. Each one of those organizations has its devil lurking around the corner waiting for members to tempt and seduce, to kill, or to drive insane. The more vivid and tangible a devil the group can conjure up, the more intense is the cohesiveness it fosters. Some organizations know how to implant negative images within our unconscious minds, making it impossible for us to even conceive of ever being happy and successful, if we ever change our beliefs. When the unconscious mind is programmed to accept the negative images, it behaves as though they were true.
Loyalty and devotion are the most highly respected emotions of all. Members are not allowed to feel or express negative emotions, except toward outsiders. They are never to criticize the leaders, but criticize themselves instead. Confession of past sins or wrong attitudes is a powerful device for emotional control, too.
There is no reason in a mind control environment for regarding the group beliefs as mere theory, or as a way to interpret reality, or to seek reality. The doctrine is reality. Even the most complex doctrines ultimately reduce reality into two basic poles: black versus white; good versus evil; spiritual world versus physical world; we versus they. There is never room for pluralism. The doctrine allows no outside group to be recognized as valid, good, godly, real, because that would threaten the organization’s monopoly on truth. There is no room for interpretation or deviation. Ironically, its members look down on everyone involved in any other group. They are very quick to acknowledge that those people are being brainwashed. They are unable to step out of their own situations and look at themselves objectively. They come to live within a narrow corridor of fear, guilt, and shame.
The organization urges its members to reject subtle error, manipulation of facts and half truths from other people, and at the same time disallows this approach to its own teachings. It also attempts to impose a rule of silence on anyone who would use their mental power to discern such errors. It encourages its member to apply these principles when dealing with sources of information and influence outside their particular community, and yet abandon the same principles within its boundaries. They praise independent thinking with regard to outside information, but condemn it as a sign of immodesty, and a lack of humility, when it comes to information supplied within the organization. Anyone of its members that dares question the dogmas of their organization, who “commits the indecency of trying to show things as they are” (as Zenon, the protagonist of “L’Oeuvre au Noir”, by Marguerite Yourcenar, said) will be considered a rebel, a heretic, a blasphemer, an apostate, and may be expelled from the organization.
Totalitarian control, whether political or religious, fears individuality, views it as a threat. That fear is a sign of weakness, not of strength. Similarly, falsehood fears truth, shrinks away from its light, seeks to hide from it. It may, either aggressively or by devious means, try to blot out that light. Unity based on a forced uniformity, though solid on outward appearance is actually fragile. It has no inner natural strength; it survives only through manipulation, coercion and fear. The essence of those systems, which effectively take control of humans’ entire social and personal life, is the submission of all, but a handful, to an authority over which they have no control.
What about us, as individuals? Very often, the reality of life and the human condition is ugly, we don’t like it, and we try to change it; and if we can’t change it, we invent an alternative reality and convince ourselves that it is true. But there is a big difference between what life is, and, what we think it should be. We humans have a tendency to see what we wish to see. Many of us promote useless ideas, defend poor reasoning, and defy clarity, and they will never change their position regardless of how much overwhelming evidence is offered. The mind functions in such a way that it always want to be right. The mind will hang on to ideas, opinions and beliefs, regardless of how wrong or erroneous they may be.
Many people hold beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts, as well as rival religions followed by others. Everybody thinks that their beliefs system is superior to science, and certainly to other religious systems, without any evidence to prove it. They remain loyal to their belief systems because they were brought up that way. Some think that faith (belief without evidence) is a virtue. The more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you are. Those who can believe something really weird, unverified, and unverifiable, in the teeth of evidence and reason, are highly respected.
Martin Luther treated reason as an enemy, and he frequently warned of its dangers. He used to say that Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; that it never comes to the aid of spiritual things; that whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason; that Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.
In this, our modern internet world, with so much misinformation and propaganda, we suffer from information overload. So, how can we go about in our search for truth? One approach could be as follows:
–Do your own thinking; do not let others do it for you.
–If you believe something, be sure you know why, and if you find the reason unconvincing, do not adopt the viewpoint.
–Do not go along with an idea just because your associates accept it. Make sure that the views you adopt are truthful, soundly based, and supported by evidence.
–Do not be pushed into acceptance by pressure from others, by fear of what others think, and fear of being labelled adversely.
–Do not believe just because you are told to believe by somebody important.
–Do not let the tyranny of authority either silence your objections or intimidate you from testing the statements made by such authority.
–Do not fail to speak up on behalf of truth, nor seek excuses to compromise.
–Do not believe things because tradition says so. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on; or from books handed down through the centuries. The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that is not true, handing it down over any number of centuries does not make it any truer. Children are likely to believe anything adults tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children from believing that too. Now when children grow up, what do they do? They tell it to the next generation of children. So once something gets itself strongly believed, even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place, it can go on forever.
–Revelation is a bad reason to believe. When religious people just have feelings inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feelings “revelation”. We all have inside feelings from time to time, and sometimes they turn out to be right, and sometimes they don’t. Different people have opposite feelings. So, how are we to decide whose feeling is right? Religious leaders claim to have a direct line with God, they assert their sacred books were revealed by God to their prophets; that their sacred books are the only true word of God, and that theirs is the only true religion, and that they are God’s chosen people, with absolutely no proofs to support such claims.
Also, when it comes to the truth, we should be consistent. We cannot have a double standard. Some people question some scientific truths; but truths about everyday life and religion are as much, or as little open to philosophical doubt as scientific truths. At the same time that they deny certain scientific truths, they believe other pseudoscientific nonsense like crystal balls, star signs, angels, telepathy healing, homeopathy, for which there is no verification whatsoever. Pseudoscientific belief is a disturbingly prominent part of the culture of our age. There is no obvious limit to human gullibility. We are docile credulity-cows, eager victims of quacks and charlatans who milk us and grow rich.
We can’t have two sets of rules. If we denounce the crimes committed by our enemies, we must also denounce the crimes committed by our friends. When our enemies commit genocide, murder, violation of human rights, and acts of terrorism, we call those acts by their names. But when our friends, our governments, and our religious institutions commit the same atrocities and crimes against humanity, we call it “war for democracy and human rights”, “holy war”, “civilizing and saving the soul of the savages”, “defending our interests”, “protecting the stability of the world”, “defending civilization from the barbarians”, “liberating the holy land from the hands of the infidels”, or any other name along those lines.
Again, as Zenon, the protagonist of the novel “L’Oeuvre au Noir”, by Marguerite Yourcenar, said: "There is no lasting accommodation between those who seek, weigh, dissect, and take pride in being able to think tomorrow otherwise than today, and those who believe, or pretend to believe, and force their fellow human beings, under the threat of death, to do the same.”
Childhood is a time of little responsibility, or relatively few choices and personal decisions. The child looks to parents or others to exercise that responsibility. Adulthood normally brings release from that dependence, and brings with it responsibility, and a multitude of choices, and personal decisions. The transition is not an easy one. Yet it is a step we each must take or we remain stagnated in our development.
Though it may seem strange, many find such freedom, or just the prospect of it, frightening. For that freedom means assuming the responsibility to come to conclusions based on our own understanding and convictions, the responsibility to make personal choices and decisions, and to accept their consequences. For that reason, a large part of humanity seeks to escape from freedom. The means of escape, very often, is by capitulating to an authority that will make the decisions for them, will be their conscience, and will direct them in their life choices. Were it not for this willingness to exchange freedom for such submission, the totalitarian forms of government would never have the incredible attraction they exert on the masses, and could never gain the power they do. Whenever we seek to avoid responsibility for our own behaviour, we do so by attempting to pass that responsibility to some other individual, organization, or entity. But this means that we give away our power to that entity, be it our boss, the corporation, society, government, the church, fate, or God. In attempting to avoid the pain of responsibility, millions attempt daily to escape from freedom.
Some obstacles on the road to our growth may include fear of aloneness, a sense of insecurity and impotence. Though no longer small children, we still feel an innate need of others. A sense of isolation can therefore produce feelings of insecurity, vulnerability, powerlessness, and uncertainty, and can create a compulsion to escape from these feelings by submerging ourselves in something larger. Some persons have no sense of personal identity, no sense of security, no sense of strength, not even a sense of meaning to their lives, apart from belonging to some structuralized system, and submitting to the external authority the system represents. They will even calm any feelings of doubt and uncertainty that may arise, by simply increasing their submission, and forcing their minds to accept claims of certainty made by the system. Because one suppresses the awareness of the problems, it is as if these did not exist. What results is not a genuine relief or healing, but more numbing of one’s feelings.
When one has been submerged in an organization of any size, the thought of disengagement can be disturbing. Having lived in a close society with its ties giving a sense of security and the feeling of belonging, the person now faces the challenge of life outside that closed society. That prospect may bring a renewal of anxiety and feelings of impotence. Organizations often play on those feelings, causing the person to feel that leaving their confines will mean being essentially alone and weak in a hostile world.
Our human tendency is to want to resolve all questions of belief, to free ourselves from any uncertainty. What is the truth? Exactly what do we believe? Because we would like to escape from the pain uncertainty carries with it, most of us would be happy if there were someone to tell us this, relieve us from having to wrestle with these issues ourselves, lay out a precise path for us. An organization that claims to have the answers to all questions attracts many. But, as mature persons we need to recognize that no human has all those answers, nor need the lack of them hinder our growth.
There are many who, by virtue of their passivity, dependency, fear and laziness, seek to be shown every inch of the way and have it demonstrated to them that each step will be safe and worth their while. This cannot be done. For the journey of growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action
Some people think that attitude of denial is actually good, because sometimes we can’t handle the truth; and that in the same way we would tell lies to a child, because he can’t understand the real answers, it is better, much better to believe in a noble myth, if it brings us peace of mind, consolation and comfort, while we are alive; if it satisfies our yearning to understand why we exist.
But that safety and happiness would mean being satisfied with easy answers and cheap comforts, living a warm comfortable lie. The alternative is risky; we stand to lose our comforting delusions. But we also stand to gain growth and happiness, the joy of knowing that we have grown up, faced up to what existence really means. As George Bernard Shaw once said “The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
If we are to grow we have to have dedication to the truth. Truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. But to a greater or lesser extent many people choose to ignore this. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps of life will be. Many, however, do not want to make this effort. By the end of middle age many people have given up the effort, and they are no longer interested in new information. Only a relative and fortunate few continue, until the moment of death, exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging, refining, and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.
When one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong, the painful effort required seems frightening. What we do, and more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is not passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than change their view, an individual may try to destroy the new reality.
The learning of something new requires a giving up of the old self and a death of outworn knowledge. To develop a broader vision we must be willing to forsake, to kill our narrower vision. In the short run it is more comfortable not to do this, to stay where we are, to avoid suffering the death of cherished notions. The road to growth, however, lies in the opposite direction. We begin by distrusting what we already believe, by actively seeking the threatening and unfamiliar, by deliberately challenging the validity of what we have previously been taught. The path to growth lies through questioning everything.
We have to accept that some or most of our beliefs may be wrong, that they may have no relationship to reality. Unfounded beliefs can be dangerous, because they shape the way we feel, think, and act; they can run or ruin our lives; they can become perpetual attachment that hold us in bondage for ever.
My take on the words of the Nazarene in Mathew 11:15 “Whoever has ears, let them hear” is that the prerequisite to arrive at any truth is the desire and the courage to know it; and that such a thing is possible if we keep our eyes and ears open. As the famous television series slogan used to say, “The truth is out there.” Humorist Gelett Burgess once pointed out, “If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major belief or acquired a new one, check you pulse. You may be dead.”
© Picture, An Allegory of Truth, by Howard Lyon
BIBLIOGRAPHY
–Combatting Cult Mind Control, Steven Hassan
–In Search of Christian Freedom, Raymond Franz
–Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky
–Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky
–L’Oeuvre Au Noir, Marguerite Yourcenar
–The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck
–101 Really Important Things You Already Know But Keep Forgetting, Ernie J. Zelinski
–A Devil’s Chaplain, Richard Dawkins
–Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
