In this time of defeat and humiliation, it is useful for me to reflect on lessons I have learned but have forgotten. One of my earliest disillusions occurred in adolescence when it dawned on me that most people do not value truth for its own sake. Life was less a laboratory of fact-finding scientists and more a courtroom of unscrupulous lawyers bent on suppressing or discrediting their opponents' evidence.
The fact that I found this suddenly-altered worldview disturbing says something about my personality. The fact that none of my friends found the courtroom model of epistemology all that terrifying says a lot about other people's personalities. It also foretold a lifelong pattern where I would be in the minority opinion on almost every subject.
Personality tests can be informative but none that I know of address a passion for truth. The Myers-Briggs test approaches the subject of truth and mental processes. They categorize people on sensing vs. intuition, thought vs. feeling, perception vs. judgment (also introversion vs. extroversion but that's probably not as relevant here) but they stop short of categorizing people based on their pursuit of truth vs. people who pursue comforting fantasies.
People who read this blog and blogs like this probably value truth for truth sake. Not so, the general public. Few people would follow Vernon Wayne Howell across the street but dozens of people followed David Koresh to their death. Truth is, David Koresh was Vernon Wayne Howell. The fantasy was David Koresh, prophet and Chosen One. Those who knew him found the fantasy comfortable beyond reason.
It is no stretch to compare Barack Obama to David Koresh. The fainting women, the Obama halo, the mesmerizing speeches void of content, Oprah pronouncing that he is "The One." From its inception, transcendentalism has been a staple of the Obama Campaign.
There are those who focus on the wizard and those who focus on the man behind the curtain. Unfortunately for all of us, there are more of the former than the latter. For a slim majority of American voters, reality is overrated. Truth, so it seems, is indeed inconvenient.
No comments:
Post a Comment