Chapter 1
I. Dogmatic organisms
I am a poor lover upon writing my ideas. So eager to share a personal epiphany, I burst forth with a brief statement of the answer, not realizing that you, the reader, could hardly begin to see what I mean without a slow build-up of the problem. I answer nothing. The blame is all me. But when I try to caress the answer slowly, I find myself stretched over the problem in too many directions, and the imagined effort to explain each piece exhausts me from the start.
So I stare at the problem. It is a giant red sphere with a ridged surface that wriggles in time, and I look for an entrance to the sphere, a place where I might begin upon a path that pulls me with ease, but more often than not I push into the sphere and am bounced on my back. The problematic sphere is flexible—it gives when pushed, and seduces me with the belief that I am making progress towards a solution, wrapping me up around its rubbery surface, showing me a depth that exists only because I am trapped within.
Are we not all trapped? The faithful do not appear so. I am envious of those who speak scientific or religious truths with ease, gathering followers to their flocks in great sermons and plenary academic lectures. Wrapped in dogmas—material and theistic alike—and surrounded by believers, they are shielded from the enveloping grasp of the problem that frightens me daily.
I speak dogma, too, but mine crumbles in a moment of analysis. Truly, there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The problem, like gravity, penetrates all material substance, pervades all space, and can be shielded by nothing. It dissolves belief upon contact. It turns belief against itself and gives the problem strength. The more dogma, the more material belief, and the more theistic faith we pile upon top of us; the more the problem gains access to our core and perverts us from the inside. As belief dissolves, we believers react by enforcing more ceremony, more procedure, and more rules that allegedly preserve the sanctity of fallen belief but really reflect nothing more than a futile attempt to capture what was long lost.
The acolytes of each dogma compete to gather believers in their dogma—do you know why? It is not to share the Truth of the world with others. It is not necessarily to help others. The acolytes of a dogma—whether molecular biologists or Buddhist monks—gather other believers in mass to form human shields between the acolytes and the enveloping problem. But this shield blocks nothing. The beast's tentacles slyly weave around the believers and through the infinite holes in every dogma, and more, the beast gathers strength from each person it passes through. Still, infecting other believers takes time—even gravity is limited in speed—thus gathering more believers slows down the process and allows the acolyte to live one minute more. A pyramid scheme develops as believers within the inner circle recruit others as barriers, placing them on the outer rim. Believers in the outer rim, being new to the dogma, are less infected by it and can carry a greater burden for the time being; they still throb with life and can shape the world with their own hands, unlike interior members who have long lost the ability to effect the world directly
What does the acolyte gain by gathering crowds of like-believers if the problem cannot be stopped and the process ends in perverting the acolyte at the core? Like any addiction the process begins by offering a moment of comfort. Each convert is a sigh of relief. Loneliness and fear lessen, temporarily, with each new recruit. But the rush of a new convert wears off quickly, and whatever anxiety existed prior hits us two-fold in withdrawal, thus beginning the frantic scurry to obtain more believers and renew the transient high of newly shared belief. Addiction also explains why dissent is not tolerated within a crowd of believers. A voiced dissent is like a shot of Narcan during an opiate high—it suddenly awakens the believer from a euphoric bliss into a frozen world of pain and fear.
Acolytes of dogmatic faith and knowledge do benefit the world, and I do believe that altruism is possible; but it remains that any group of common believers that persists long enough will inevitably be corrupted from within. Perhaps I am making an unsubstantiated claim, but tell us, what group has not been corrupted in time? As the downfall of Christianity in the West flows on and philosophy whimpers in the shadows for scraps, we are now witnessing the growing corruption of a powerful group of practitioners of the scientific method. Chanting that science is self-correcting will not stop the descent—the fact that believers need repeat this mantra only demonstrates how far science has already fallen. Have faith, God will save you; Science will correct all errors. These words are spoken by the devout to stop questioning, to quell fear in the face of a crumbling edifice.
Belief is not a static state of the mind or brain. It is not an identifiable disposition to act. It is not a persisting faith in something. Belief is the fuel of humanity; it is a finite, physical resource that impatiently pulses with power awaiting to be unleashed in the processes of creation and destruction, and like any other useful fuel is consumed in the process. Once a believer's belief is consumed, the believer is left hollow, riddled with holes and tainted by the residue products of burned belief. Burnt-out, the believer, rather than facing the emptiness of used-up belief, will often repeat in mere words the belief that has been lost, but the words do not bring back energetic belief, leading the believer to chant louder, to work harder to recruit new believers who have not yet been used up.
Every person starts with a finite quantity of formless, raw natural material—let us call it primordial belief—that contributes to the world-warping potential energy. Primordial belief, initially formless and undirected, can acquire shape as active belief, but active belief, once directed on its task begins to wear down. Acolytes of dogma lack the substance of active belief (having consumed it over years of use) yet they retain the form of belief, a form that can be imprinted through language, experience, and action. They compete to imprint the form of their lost beliefs onto the primordial belief of others, and in doing so, partially enslave the new believer. I use the word imprint, but this word does not capture the organic violence done when one purposely shapes another’s belief. Not only is the new recruit forcibly shaped by the acolyte; the acolyte also drains the recruit of a portion of primordial belief, drinks of this stolen substance and, like a vampire sucking bright blood, is transiently rejuvenated by it. New victims are needed regularly.
I speak of acolytes of dogma, but dogma thrives independent of a person to dispense it, thus an acolyte of dogma is simply any structure, object, or organization capable of proliferating dogma. Books, companies, committees, groups, cultures, ideologies, governments, cities, academic fields, families, myths, movies, and other things still may dispense dogma; and each of these things is inevitably corrupted to the extent each spreads dogma in time and space. You may wonder how an entity like a government rejuvenates itself on the primordial belief of the state’s members—how can a government partake of belief anyway? Yet this is precisely the life blood of totalitarian (and other) regimes. By imprinting the primordial belief of its members, the regime drains its members of primordial substance, converting it into a fuel that perpetuates the government. Dissent—opposing belief—saps the government of fuel and must be suppressed. Perpetual control through systematically constrained belief ensures a steady flow of primordial substance into the governmental organism.
Families and romantic couplings often rotate around a central dogma. A typical example: one child of the family is identified as ‘the problem child’ or ‘the sick one.’ To the extent that the child believes she is the sick one, and the other family members believe it as well, then this dogmatic belief will drain each family member of primordial substance. Sapped primordial substance through dogma can in turn power and sustain the family unit; it directs the family’s interactions, behaviors, and active beliefs, including the belief of the problem child. The labeled sick child is often not initially sick at all; she is often the one richest in primordial belief, the one whose light shines brightest in the family and thus eyed greedily by dogma, but when consumed over time she begins to decay with true sickness.
Many romantic couples persist primarily through dogma. The ‘reoccurring-argument’ between partners often reflects the competition to subjugate the other with dogmatic belief, thereby draining the other of primordial substance. The couple persists so long as each partner feeds off the other—a mutual parasitic relationship little known to modern biology but quite common among human partnerships. Once drained, each partner of the couple, empty of primordial substance, nevertheless may perpetuate the form of the dogmatic belief, but this form is impotent without substance, thus the couple brings a child into the world, a child with new potential that may be violently imprinted with dogmatic belief. If the child accepts this imprinting or cannot resist, then the child will be gradually drained of potential. The stigmata of dogmatic consumption are mental illness or any variety of bodily pathology, and especially insatiable hungers for food, money, sex, power, drugs, fame, violence, information, experiences—anything that can be had and consumed. As an adult she will be empty and hollow but will often, against her desire, repeat the same dogma that drove her parents.
These examples may suggest that only negative beliefs consume people, but this is hardly the case. Dogma makes no distinction between negative and positive, good and evil. Still, all dogmas are not equal within the individual. There are dogmas that are present, yet we fight to reject them, and those that we actively welcome. Our attitude toward our dogmas influences their effects upon us.
Directly opposing dogma is almost always unsuccessful. Can you right now, as you read this sentence for the first time, not imagine a red elephant? The act of reading that sentence, should you truly understand it, almost guarantees that you will fail the task. In a similar way fighting against dogma necessarily solidifies that dogma within you. Several tropes in fiction attempt to explain this situation to us. Some creatures, when attacked, grow stronger. In Greek Mythology, The Hydra of Lerna grows back two heads for each head severed. In the movie Hell Boy, Samael the hellhound is re-incarnated twice after one is destroyed. In Japanese anime, many beings grow more powerful after being struck.
Another trope of fiction, perhaps more relevant to dogma, is that of the invasive organism that merges with the body. This parasite couples so closely with the nervous system, or with vital bodily functions, that any attempt to remove the parasite will cause greater harm to the host. Outside of fiction similar situations arise in medicine. Within cancer patients the cancer may invade vital arteries and organs, and any attempt at a resection will probably cause more harm than benefit. Even closer to dogma, sarcoidosis is a condition in which the body’s own immune cells accumulate in and destroy bodily organs while the immune system as a whole becomes weakened. We attempt to treat sarcoidosis by crippling the body’s immune system which may leave the patient more susceptible to further attacks.
Suppose an organism is growing within your body and spreading nano-sized tentacles through your muscles and into your heart, lungs, bowels, and brain; and that this parasite binds with your organs, co-opts the organs for its own use, and more, makes your organs dependent upon the parasite for their survival and functioning. Suppose destroying any tendril of the parasite causes it to infiltrate the body faster, to consume more bodily resources, to plunge more deeply into your organs. Suppose that systematic eradication of the parasite, if that were even possible, would only kill the host—not because the treatment is toxic like chemotherapy—but because the host’s organs are now dependent upon the parasite for their functioning. The host begins to need the parasite for the host’s survival. This is approximately the difficulty of trying to oppose internal dogma directly, a process that may be happening within you right now. If so, you know that these fights leave you frustrated and worn-down.
Those who accept a dogma are infiltrated by similar organisms, but rather than attack the parasite, they actively work to create a hospitable environment for it to thrive. The parasite is given free-rein of the body’s organs; the host’s immune system agrees to stand down and allows the organism to invade where it may while enmeshing itself in the host’s organs. In facilitating the take-over by the parasite, the individual invaded by dogma begins to lose his individuality and becomes a person-dogma complex. Fully infiltrated by the parasite, the remains of the once-person become a husk whose sole purpose is to replicate the same dogma in others. The person-dogma complex, or acolyte of dogma as above, needs to imprint this dogma on others, for the parasite, having consumed all primordial substance within its host, will wither away without feeding further. In fiction, the zombie is the advanced stage of the person-dogma complex, the inevitable progression from the vampiric stage where traces of individuality still remain. Zombies are once-persons who have lost individuality and have no living substance, but as roving carcasses still seek to feed on and infect the living. In fiction, it is often a virus that turns a person into a zombie, and I have used a similar parasitic metaphor. In life, it is dogma and it surrounds us all.
By welcoming dogma, by allowing it to consume us, we become numb to the pains and frustrations of life and disconnected from the suffering of others. We trade individuality for the ability not to feel. Many people find this trade reasonable. When life is a sequence of painful events, perhaps becoming a numbed zombie is the best option. The zombie only longs to feed, to spread dogma, and to infect others. The complexities of the world fade. All discomforts end except for an insatiable hunger for the living.
Those who do attempt to oppose a dogma often unknowingly facilitate infections. These people sense that something eats away at their internal organs, but rather than search inside for the parasite, they attack the beliefs of others. I am referring to dualistic battles, the polarized positions that generate never-ending arguments with no obvious progress toward resolutions. Consider dogmatic theists and atheists who feel both compelled to oppose one another and to evangelize new recruits. Most people do not see that both sides are subjugated by the same dogma with the form of a contradiction, a single dogma that is roughly the conjugation of theism and atheism. The theism-atheism dogma is a contradiction in its native form, a quantum superposition of theism and atheism states. When the theism-atheism dogma infects a person, the parasite takes on a definite state, theism or atheism, and begins feeding, although it is quite possible for the dogma to flip over to the other state. Who has not heard of the theist who lost his faith and the atheist who discovered it?
But then, doesn’t this dogma attack itself? If two people are infiltrated by theism-atheism dogma, but one expresses the theistic variant and the other the atheistic variant, then won’t these two people attack each other and subsequently destroy both copies of theism-atheism dogma in the long run? What sort of evolutionary strategy leads to destruction of the species? Firstly, dogma does not want to kill the other, it slowly drains the other and host of substance, a process that may continue over the normal life expectancy of the organism. Even when completely drained, the remaining husk can yet spread dogma and is useful. Secondly, dogma works to imprint itself on others; when the other already carries the polarized dogma, changing the expression state of that dogma changes nothing. If an atheist, already infected by theism-atheism dogma, is persuaded by the theist’s attacks, what consequence is this to theism-atheism dogma? A recruit is neither lost nor gained. A carrier is cured of dogma only when she no longer sees the need to push that dogma on others.
Still, what is the benefit? I imagine that dualistic dogmas make use of our attraction to oppositions. Observers, witnessing a conflict between people, are often attracted to, curious about the opposition. While many reasonable people do not like to engage in conflict, most are excited to watch it. Children gather around a playground fight. Almost every popular sport on the planet incorporates a competition. Literature and movies with mass appeal almost always involve conflict. The media highlights controversial material at the expense of emotionally neutral topics. Conflict draws us in. Controversy sells. Dualistic dogmas hijack our attraction to oppositions. By infecting people with opposing expressions of the same dogma, the dogma creates opposition where none existed prior. This opposition in turn attracts bystanders who, if they get too close to the conflict, can become infected by the same dogma. Thus, many polarized arguments have nothing to do with championing the good or the truth, but simply reflect group infestation by a dualistic parasite that spreads by creating conflict.
At this point I will have been misinterpreted as saying that all conflict is pointless, or that one side of a conflict cannot have right on its side, but I believe no such thing. Not all conflicts are dualistic, and people fight for many reasons. Nor is dogma necessarily evil as I have said, and every description I have given occurs on a continuum—I have only highlighted the extremes for efficiency of presentation.
II. The Feeding Habits of Governments
I believe that as children, most of us have no conception or interest in politics—to a child the political game looks like a war of words between average adults where winning the game offers no obvious prize to the victor. How can one even tell if a politician has political talent? Whereas a great scientist produces, but his own hand and team, experiments and theories that allow us to determine our world in previously unknown ways, the great politician cannot convincingly take credit for whatever successes happen in the state during his tenure. Perhaps the unemployment rate decreases during a president’s term—this fact of the state may have happened at that time regardless of the particular president in office. The unemployment rate, being a dynamical quantity, will either rise or fall during a president’s term with perhaps a fifty percent probability on either side. There is no knowable causal link between the particular president in office and the quantifiable metrics of the state that people care about; there are only correlations each with an n of 1, which is why we spin stories about how the president’s decisions influenced state metrics, and paint these decisions in either a positive or negative light using the same data.
As children we must realize that politics are saturated by dogma and that it is best to look away. As adults we begin to see that although dogmatic, the actions of politicians do influence our lives even though we are not certain how these actions directly do so. Yes, at times the government passes concrete laws that effect us very clearly (speed limits come to mind), but most legislation concerns processes and organizations alien to the average citizen. These unnoticed laws, hidden from plain sight by arcane verbiage, are likely the most dangerous and least discussed.
The primary purpose of a government is to distribute power within the state such that the government thrives—to the extent that the government requires the state in order to exist, a government will typically foster the state, but only as much as needed for the government to survive. If the state and government happen to thrive mutually, than so much the better for both, but a government does not need a healthy state in order to persist—one need only consider repressive governments that live well while its state limps on to see this.
A democracy claims to give power to the people, but it is the government that distributes this power, thus the government must in some sense have this power over the people. If a democracy gave all of its power to the people, then the democracy would be quickly overrun by the desires of the state. The democracy, without power concentrated within itself, would be consumed by the elements of the state, leaving the state’s elements competing for power. Therefore, even in a democracy, the government both distributes power to the people and takes power from the people. I say people, but power is actually transferred from the government to the various elements of the state, where a state element could be a person, family, company, non-profit organization, race, religion, academic field, or what have you.
All governments, including democracies, both distribute-to and take power from the state. The relative flow of power in each direction in part determines one simplistic categorization of governments. Democracies are characterized by a proportionally greater flow of power from the government to the state than from the state to the government. Reciprocally, anti-democracies—such as totalitarian rule—exis