An overview of “truth groups” and the “honesty culture” strategy (longer, anti-esotericist version)

(The following post constitutes virtually the entirety of the updated final section of Part I of my “Against the Lie” essay.  If you do not consider yourself an “anti-esotericist,” or are still unfamiliar with the subject matter of religious esotericism and have not yet formed any opinions with regard to it, then I recommend that you instead read a shorter version of this post which does not discuss the subject of religious esotericism or its relevance to an “honesty culture” social strategy.)

 

“Principle is not limited by Precedent.”
—Thomas Troward

I believe that it would actually be possible to solve the age-old problem of lying and dishonesty in human affairs if there were only a relatively small number of people who were willing to consistently adhere to a strategy based on the formation of what might be called “truth groups” (or “honesty groups,” to be more precise).  I certainly make no claim that the thorough elimination of dishonesty in society would be achieved in the very near future by using this strategy; but I do believe that, in time, it would be achieved.  (Incidentally, I also envision that these same “truth groups” would constitute the nuclei or beginning cores around which the moral communities that I describe elsewhere might come to form—with each of these moral communities practicing a non-esoteric religion or practical philosophy of its choice.)

I propose that members of truth groups would make four pledges, the first three being the most important to stress.  First:  They will never lie, either to each other or to outsiders—not even to those who have lied to them.  (There would be a single exception to this blanket “never lie” rule:  a kind of “self-defense” or “self-protection” exception that would apply in cases in which an individual’s personal privacy or autonomy was being unreasonably threatened—for example, by being asked intrusive and impertinent questions.)[1]  SecondTo the extent that they are reasonably able, they will never tolerate lying by others.  ThirdTo the extent that they are reasonably able, they will never tolerate the condoning (or promoting, or endorsing, or enabling) by others of lying by others.  Fourth:  They will strive to reduce how much they lie to themselves (at least to the extent they are able to do so, given that some degree of self-deception in every person is inevitable, and one must fight a never-ending battle against it).[2]

A particular truth group could be formed around any interest that its members shared in common, or any mission or goal that they wished to jointly pursue.  Any currently-existing group or association, including a small business, a non-profit organization, or an informal club, could always choose to additionally identify as a “truth group.”  Members of different truth groups wouldn’t need to have anything in common with one another except a shared desire to promote the development of a thoroughly honest society.[3]

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Profs. Ogden and Richards on the misuse of language in religion

The following is from The Meaning of Meaning (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968 [1923]), written by the philosophers C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards.  The underlined emphases are mine.

… Words, whenever they cannot directly ally themselves with and support themselves upon gestures, are at present a very imperfect means of communication.  Even for private thinking thought is often ready to advance, and only held back by the treachery of its natural symbolism; and for conversational purposes the latitude acquired constantly shows itself to all those who make any serious attempt to compare opinions.

We have not here in view the more familiar ways in which words may be used to deceive.  In a later chapter, when the function of language as an instrument for the promotion of purposes rather than as a means of symbolizing references is fully discussed, we shall see how the intention of the speaker may complicate the situation.  But the honnête homme may be unprepared for the lengths to which verbal ingenuity can be carried.  At all times these possibilities have been exploited to the full by interpreters of Holy Writ who desire to enjoy the best of both worlds.  Here, for example, is a specimen of the exegetic of the late Dr. Lyman Abbott, pastor, publicist, and editor, which through the efforts of Mr. Upton Sinclair, has now become classic.  Does Christianity condemn the methods of twentieth-century finance?  Doubtless there are some awkward words in the Gospels, but a little “interpretation” is all that is necessary.

“Jesus did not say, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth.’  He said, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.’  And no sensible American does.  Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller’s oil wells, and thieves do not often break through and steal a railway.  What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth.”

Each investment, therefore, every worldly acquisition, according to one of the leading divines of the New World, may be judged on its merits.  There is no hard and fast rule.  When moth and rust have been eliminated by science the Christian investor will presumably have no problem, but in the meantime it would seem that Camphorated Oil fulfils most nearly the synoptic requirements.  Burglars are not partial to it; it is anethema to moth; and the risk of rust is completely obviated.

Another variety of verbal ingenuity closely allied to this, is the deliberate use of symbols to misdirect the listener.  Apologies for such a practice in the case of the madman from whom we desire to conceal the whereabouts of his razor are well known, but a wider justification has also been attempted.  In the Christian era we hear of “falsifications of documents, inventions of legends, and forgeries of every description which made the Catholic Church a veritable seat of lying.”  A play upon words in which one sense is taken by the speaker and another sense intended by him for the hearer was permitted.  Indeed, three sorts of equivocations were distinguished by Alfonso de Liguori, who was beatified in the nineteenth century, which might be used with good reason; a good reason being “any honest object, such as keeping our goods, spiritual or temporal.”  In the twentieth century the intensification of militant nationalism has added further “good reason”; for the military code includes all transactions with hostile nations or individuals as part of the process of keeping spiritual and temporal goods.  In war-time words become a normal part of the mechanism of deceit, and the ethics of the situation have been aptly summed up by Lord Wolseley:  “We will keep hammering along with the conviction that ‘honesty is the best policy,’ and that truth always wins in the long run.  These pretty sentences do well for a child’s copy-book, but the man who acts upon them in war had better sheathe his sword for ever.”  [pp. 15-17; citations omitted; the underlined emphases are mine.]

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that in certain Christian teachings, “A play upon words in which one sense is taken by the speaker and another sense intended by him for the hearer was permitted.”  After all, this is precisely what one finds in the Bible itself.  This practice is what makes the Bible “esoteric” (and it provides the reason why I find religious esotericism so objectionable).  So does anyone really expect that later Christians would have felt compelled to denounce the practice?  Hadn’t they been trained by the Bible not to do so?  There is absolutely no inconsistency between the attitude of the authors of the Bible and the attitude of later clergymen.  The act of misleading people “for a good cause” has always been considered excusable by traditional religionists.

If Christians ever became too scrupulous about honesty, then they would have to come to the conclusion that the Bible is fundamentally a morally defective writing (though, of course, not a completely valueless writing) to which they themselves had become morally superior.  In terms of moral advancement, they would have “gotten out ahead” of their own foundational religious writing.  And because to do that would have caused the religious basis of their lives to be undermined—since that religious writing was supposedly revealed directly by God in the person of the Holy Spirit—they made sure that that would never happen.  The existence of the Bible has thus always had the effect of keeping Christians from ever becoming too morally scrupulous; it acts as a restraint on morality.  At best, the Bible makes some people more moral than they would have been apart from the Bible; but, so long as they treat the Bible as an authoritative religious writing, they will never have the ability to become more moral than the authors of the Bible were.  And that is why, if humanity is to reach its full potential, it is imperative that religious writings of this kind lose their authoritative status.

The foregoing should suffice as a response to Christians who claim that the Bible and their religion are not esoteric.  Christians are not innocents.  The Bible is an esoteric writing; and whether or not they’ve been willing to admit the fact, Christians, taken as a whole, have always understood it at some level of awareness.  (I’m sure that some Protestants would like to believe that the way of thinking described is something merely “Catholic” or “Jesuitical,” something in which they are not morally implicated; but again, it is a way of thinking that is endorsed and even required by the logic of Christianity as set forth in the New Testament; the Catholic clergymen were only making the point explicit.)

Later in the text, Ogden and Richards make a distinction between the “symbolic” or “referential” function of language (generally corresponding to the purpose of “prose” writing) and the “evocative” function of language (generally corresponding to the purpose of “poetic” writing).  They advocate

a rule which all those who are aware of the functions of language will support, namely, that in discussion, where symbolic considerations are supposed to be prior to all others, the evocative advantages of terms are only to be exploited when it is certain that symbolically no disadvantage can result.

But a more general consciousness of the nature of the two functions is necessary if they are to be kept from interfering with one another; and especially all the verbal disguises, by which each at times endeavors to pass itself off as the other, need to be exposed.  It ought to be impossible to pretend that any scientific statement can give a more inspiring or a more profound “vision of reality” than another.  It can be more general or more useful, and that is all.  On the other hand it ought to be impossible to talk about poetry or religion as though they were capable of giving “knowledge,” especially since “knowledge” as a term has been so overworked from both sides that it is no longer of much service.  A poem—or a religion, though religions have so definitely exploited the confusion of function which we are now considering, and are so dependent upon it, as to be unmistakably pathological growths—has no concern with limited and directed reference.  It tells us, or should tell us, nothing.  It has a different, though an equally important and a far more vital function—to use an evocative term in connection with an evocative matter.  What it does, or should do, is to induce a fitting attitude to experience.  But such words as “fitting,” “suitable” or “appropriate” are chilly, having little or no evocative power.  Therefore those who care most for poetry and who best understand its central and crucial value, tend to resent such language as unworthy of its subject.  From the evocative standpoint they are justified.  But once the proper separation of these functions is made it will be plain that the purpose for which such terms are used, namely to give a strictly symbolic description of the function of poetry, for many reasons the supreme form of emotive language, cannot conflict with the poetic or evocative appraisal of poetry, with which poets as poets are concerned.

Further, the exercise of one function need not, if the functions are not confused, in any way interfere with the exercise of the other. … [pp. 158-59; citation omitted; the underlined emphases are mine.]

As an example of how “religions have exploited the confusion of function,” consider the willingness of Christian theologians to cite verses from the Bible—which really ought to be viewed as a collection of literary and poetical writings—in support of philosophical and historical arguments.  Doing this represents a highly inappropriate use of writings from one genre as if they in fact belonged to a very different genre of writing.  It is analogous to citing a passage from Moby Dick or a poem by Edgar Allen Poe in support of (as opposed to “in illustration of”) a particular philosophical proposition.

I take the position that the authoritative writings of a religion ought to be “prosaic,” clearly focused on carrying out what Ogden and Richards call the “symbolic” or “referential” function of language.  Any “poetical” or “literary” writings associated with a particular religion ought to be non-authoritative writings only; that is, writings that no member of the religion would be expected to claim to “assent to” or “agree with.”  There is a place for “evocation”—just not in the authoritative religious writings.  When it comes to those writings, the meaning should be as clear and indisputable as possible (even if it leaves some members of the religion feeling a bit “chilly”).

The important conceptual distinction between “meaning” and “belief”

At the heart of the strategy that I propose for replacing esoteric religion with non-esoteric “religion” (by which I mean, any kind of non-esoteric belief-system) lies a crucial conceptual distinction:  the distinction between “meaning” and “belief.”  A “belief” can be thought of as a certain type of “meaning”:  one that a person has accepted for himself or herself as “good” or “meritorious” or “worthy” or “correct” or “right.”  Placing emphasis on this conceptual distinction helps us to imagine a society—unlike the society we now have—in which most of its members who spoke the same language could be expected to assign roughly the same meanings to any given assertive communication of a religious nature—without those people also being required to accept those particular meanings as “good” or “meritorious” or “worthy” or “correct” or “right” for themselves.

In other words, I believe it is possible to imagine a society in which the meanings conveyed by assertive communications of a religious nature would be more or less shared in common by everyone, and in which the commonly and generally agreed-upon determination of meaning would always precede belief in, or agreement with, the meaning that was being asserted.  It would only be after the meaning had been determined with reasonable certainty by society as a whole that it would be considered permissible for the various members of the society to “go their separate ways” in deciding whether or not to accept that meaning as a personal belief.  So it would not be considered permissible for a person to say, “This writing means such-and-such to me, which is why I believe it,” even if the writing did not have roughly that same meaning in the view of most of the other members of the person’s society.  It would also not be considered permissible for a person to say, as esoteric religionists often do, that it is necessary to “believe in” or “have faith in” a religious scripture before it will be possible to determine its meaning with reasonable accuracy.

This would represent a definite departure from the way things currently work with the existing, traditional, esoteric religions.  According to the thinking of esoteric religionists, the particular esoteric writings that they happen to regard as “holy” or “sacred” should always be interpreted in a way that makes the writings “good” or “meritorious” or “worthy” or “correct” or “right” in their own individual minds.  In other words, with an esoteric religion, the reader’s personal belief or wish precedes the determination of the author’s meaning—which is exactly the reverse of how a sane person ought to be thinking.

The mentality found among esoteric religionists is thus essentially the mentality of a spoiled child:  “I wish this writing to mean such-and-such; and so it should mean such-and-such; and so it does mean such-and-such.”  The upshot is that the reader’s own personal desire comes before the meaning that the author actually intended—that is, personally desired—to convey.  So the reader’s desires are always made paramount; and the meaning of an author’s communication is made to conform to the reader’s own idiosyncratic ways of thinking, instead of being allowed to confront the reader on the author’s terms.  The result is that genuine communication between persons is not able to occur.[1]

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Why did Jesus lie?

John 11:11-14 says,

(Jesus) said to (his disciples), “Our friend Lazarus is taking his rest [or, ‘has fallen asleep’: koimaō], but I go (to him) that I might awaken him [or, ‘bring him out of sleep’: ex-ypnizō, derived from hypnizō, which means ‘to put to sleep’ and is in turn derived from the word hypnos, meaning ‘sleep’].”  Therefore his disciples said to him, “Lord, if [ei] he is taking his rest [or, ‘has fallen asleep’: koimaō] [in other words, “If what you are telling us is in fact true”], he will be kept safe [or made safe, or saved, or rescued, or preserved: sōzō, related to the Greek word sōtér, meaning ‘savior’].”[1]  Now Jesus had spoken [ereō] about his death [thanatos], but it seemed [or appeared: dokeō, related to the word doxa, which can mean either “opinion” or “glory”][2] to them that he was speaking [or “meaning”: legō] about the rest [koimésis, derived from the word koimaō] of sleep [hypnos].  So then Jesus told them plainly [or openly, or forthrightly: parrésia], “Lazarus has died [apo-thnéskō, related to the word thanatos, meaning ‘death’].”

Carefully observe the Greek words being used, and notice how Jesus’s disciples initially took everything that he said at face value.[3]  The disciples’ supposedly incorrect “interpretation” of what Jesus said was essentially nothing other than a straightforward restatement of what Jesus had himself told them.  In other words, what Jesus “really meant” was something other than what he actually said.[4]

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The Crucifixion understood as equivalent to the fall of Babel/Babylon; both events being understood to signify the end of religious esotericism (i.e., cryptic “prophecy”)

At one point in Romans 3:1-8, the apostle Paul quotes Psalm 51:4.  Both Paul’s quotation of Psalm 51:4 in Romans 3:4 and the Greek Septuagint version of Psalm 51:4 contain the same Greek word nikaō, which means “to prevail, to overcome, to conquer, to be victorious.”  Where the Septuagint version of Psalm 51:4 uses the Greek word nikaō, the Hebrew Masoretic version of Psalm 51:4 uses the Hebrew word zakah, which means “to be pure, to be clean, to be clear.”  A comparison of these two versions of Psalm 51:4 at least suggests the possibility that the idea of “prevailing, overcoming, conquering, being victorious” (Greek nikaō) which is spoken of in Romans 3:4 was understood by the Jewish translators of the Septuagint to be, in its essence, equivalent to the idea of “being made pure, being made clean, being made clear” (Hebrew zakah).  Such an hypothesis tends to be confirmed when we consider the use of that same Greek word nikaō in passages such as Revelation 21:6-7, which speaks of “the water of life” as being awarded to those who have “prevailed” or “overcome”—especially when that passage is read in conjunction with Revelation 22:1, which emphasizes the “clarity” of this same “water of life.”

Such an equivalence between the idea of “overcoming” or “prevailing,” and “being made pure” or “being made clear,” would also tend to reinforce the hypothesis that I offered in a previous post that the purified “spirit of Jesus”—that is to say, purified by having passed through the experience of the Crucifixion and the inevitably succeeding Resurrection—may have been regarded by the authors of the New Testament as something that would ultimately come to replace the “unclean spirit” or “impure spirit.”  (Consider Romans 6:3-5.  Is it merely coincidental that Jesus’s death and rebirth would be compared by Paul to being symbolically cleansed by the baptismal waters?)  This would indicate that the figure of “Jesus”—which I believe should be regarded, at least in part, as an archetype representing all of the schizophrenic “prophets” at once—was understood to “prevail” (think: “be made pure, be made clean, be made clear”) at the symbolic moment of his “death” on the Cross.  And I think that it was Jesus’s speech or language that was, more than anything, understood by the authors of the New Testament to have been made “pure” or “clean” or “clear” at that symbolic moment—that is, from the perspective of those listening to him—when he finally gave the “great shout” or “loud cry” that he had been holding back prior to that.  (Cf. Matthew 10:27.)

I think the belief of the authors of the New Testament was that non-schizophrenics would acquire the ability to speak in “schizophrenese” to some extent, even at the same time as their doing that would provide the schizophrenic “prophets” with a greater feeling of safety, giving them the freedom to speak less schizophrenically themselves.  I think the hope or expectation of the authors was that the two groups would “meet each other half-way,” so to speak—and doing this is what would accomplish the “fulfilling” (or “completing,” or “finishing,” or “perfecting,” or “bringing to an end”: Greek teleō or teleioō) of “prophecy.”

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