I can’t adequately measure the anger I felt toward those pigheaded dinosaurs, a kind of pointless rage that obnoxious little brats arouse in the saintliest of parents. You know me. I have no beef with God. We parted ways long ago. The “supernatural” and mysticism are realms in which I have set neither mind nor foot. I accept the proposition that some unquantifiable energy orchestrates the rhythms of evolution and unleashes the cataclysmic spasms that convulse the universe. But since I never found any evidence of a finicky and vengeful paranormal over-achiever, I tossed the subject in the trash bin of speculation, irrationality and blind faith. Nor has the presumed existence of a workaholic creator/judge/jury/executioner ever inspire in me the slightest urge to worship it.
I also resented the prophets Yossi and his minions kept quoting: Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk, and their disciples for endorsing and augmenting with their own terrifying hallucinations the wrath that the Almighty threatens to unleash -- should they err -- on his beloved people. And it is only insofar as the prophecies were legitimized by catastrophes, from Genesis to the Crusades, from the “Holy” Inquisition to Armenia, from the ovens of Auschwitz to the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan and beyond, that historical events have assumed the kind of metaphysical sentimentality that keeps otherwise lucid human beings in a state of controlled terror.
Prophets? Antiquity’s talking heads. Prognosticators, soothsayers, fortunetellers and mystic diviners who spoke in riddles and esoteric babble designed to inspire awe and fear in the hearts of the masses. They must all have been bombed out of their heads on hallucinogenic mushrooms, cannabis, hashish, coca leaves and toad secretions; Resistol shoe glue had not yet been invented. They suffered from acute megalomania, monomania, egomania and a terminal case of thanatomania: a consuming preoccupation with death. They would all have been diagnosed as certifiably insane had modern psychiatry been available to people cowed by superstition, trembling with fear, pickled in gooey mysticism and predisposed to treat all inexplicable natural phenomena as the mysterious manifestation of an enigmatic, invisible spirit.
As for the “tradition” that would have me take the reins of the clan, however briefly, I found it inequitable and demented. To vest the powers of family rule in one man is to weaken the independence of both the ruler and the ruled. The former, charged with enforcing traditions, lacks the incentive (or courage) to change them, while the latter is constrained by statutes and protocols that deserve to be rescinded, should they so much as violate legitimate individual rights -- but never are.
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What emerges from the doctrinal struggles that cleave society is a frenzied tug-of-war between conflicting ideas. Essential truths are often trampled in the process. Everybody has “beliefs,” opinions, pet views. Much of our mental constructs are erected on a vast scaffolding of dogmas, generally someone else’s, often someone who precedes us by decades, centuries, if not millennia and whose canons we never question, however skewed, antiquated or unjust.
Keen on cramming dormant brain cells, we adopt these creeds and tenets, we cling to them, claiming they are the offspring of our own cogitations because they encourage us not to think, because they shield us from what we fear most -- reality -- because they keep us warm and cozy in our self-created doctrinal cocoons.
Back in my day, as I do now without compunction, I faced my reality and I bared it with conscious self-abandon every time I composed essays and commentaries, aware that candor and disquieting facts will trigger caustic ripostes and bitter condemnation.
The deconstructionist arguments advanced by the rabble to malign my columns may have sounded, at first blush, rhetorically alluring. But all they did in the process was to articulate other points of view, none of which could legitimately claim to echo some irrefutable truth. In free societies, however absurd, all opinions are charitably granted a status of equivalence.
What also transpires from some of my detractors’ critiques -- Yossi’s warning that I not exceed the limits of “philosophical freedom” comes to mind -- is the malignant suggestion that finding and telling the truth is tantamount to apostasy. Everybody read my words, one by one, but they all stumbled on the verities they conveyed.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I dig for the truth, groping in the miasmic darkness of ignorance and fear. I ask questions, some troubling, some unendurable. What I uncover will never be to everyone’s liking. Muckraking is not a popularity contest. I take no special pleasure in chronicling the ills of mankind, for in them I discover my own frailties and shortcomings.
Yes, there are more opinions than facts and yes, we are enamored of them. After all, opinions can blithely disregard, defy and, if need be, corrupt the truth. Tainted fruits of ignorance and self-delusion (or planted seeds of malice) opinions can also conveniently overlook faulty data or peddle arguments riddled with ideological monstrosities. Opinions shield us from the risks of personal experience.
In the mouths of demagogues, personal convictions assume dangerous dimensions: They are no longer what can be borne out by deduction or experience but what opinion-mongers themselves can pull off. Regurgitated by imbeciles, they are promptly espoused by other imbeciles.
Voicing an opinion, especially unsolicited, is an incorrigible human reflex. Every time we inhale a wisp of fact, we exhale a gust of inferences. Opinions have merit when they stimulate inquiry and rational dialogue, when they embody essential truths, when they are advanced with lucidity and when, having withstood the rigors of scrutiny, they harmonize with the facts they endeavor to interpret. Opinions are worthless when, by their ferocity or absurdity, they inhibit the coherent exchange of ideas or, worse, when they are contrived to manipulate or obscure the truth.
Advocates of extreme political and religious dogma, as are some of my most virulent foes, have been particularly adept at blurring the truth to advance their own agendas (or deflect the glare of incontrovertible fact). The greater their zeal in promoting their causes (or silencing their ideological opposites), the more tempting it becomes for them to suggest that freethinkers, iconoclasts and gadflies (the vast majority of honest journalists) are not merely wrong but are actually engaged in some sinister cabal designed to expose impious or discomfiting truths. In practice, this mindset leads to brainwashing, as witch-hunts ancient and modern have shown.
Only those willing to question the validity of “conventional wisdom” ever get closer to the truth. Fallacious reasoning, licit as it might be, is a greater enemy of truth than an outright lie. It is the prison in which we lock ourselves to feign a clear conscience. As someone once remarked, a clear conscience is usually the sign of a very bad memory. This willful myopia helps subvert good judgment and defile the truth.
Troublesome facts, computed by rational minds, are more useful than myths peddled by uninformed or self-righteous crusaders. When flock mentality is at play, as it was the other night in the communal hall, it is the myths, alas, that capture the imagination of the majority. Inflexible convictions render men blind, arrogant and, carried to the extreme, mad.