Love of truth as self-delusion or masochism
Semi-autobiographical, semi-observational:
To be proud of knowing a truth seems to me to be a defense mechanism to compensate for the fact that this truth has taken more than it has given, or has given nothing at all. Behind every smirk is a deadening of the spirit, signaled by the subtle twitch of the eyelid. If by spirit we mean the ability to rejuvenate, flourish and dance, then the loss of this is a terrible thing. The man who has nothing but truth has lost everything else - he is a worm, nay, a maggot, a bringer of death, a spiteful, bitter creature who claims to love what he hates and who decomposes before the eyes of others. The lover of truth, in his grandiosity, attempts to steal from others that which he does not have, and thus bring others down (not up) to his level. He is a megalomaniac, a narcissist, a gangster - one who fires deadly ideas into the minds of others as a murderer shoots a gun into his victims. He is also a charlatan, because truth is a snake-oil that has been conveyed magical properties by the crank Socrates. Truth is the last refuge for an aborted prototype, a being who cannot make reality as an artist and thus must submit himself to a tyranny of the absolutely mediocre. They are captured and tortured by it, and develop a deep hatred - and jealousy - of those who still have their freedom and happiness. The lover of truth despises others because they make him suffer alone. The lover of truth is in an unsound mental state, and his propensity for lying about his enamor of truth is a sign of profound self-delusion, the lack of self-restraint, or perhaps most seriously masochism.
Perhaps there is an objection that this is too hedonistic, that what is valuable is not necessarily what is pleasurable or congruent with vitality. But this is a pathetic ruffling of the feathers. Again - the man with nothing else turns to truth. "Truth" - this is the pig with makeup. To value truth for the sake of truth is outrageous and absurd, it is the final gasp of a dying soul. Truth is not valuable in and of itself, and a terrible truth will leave you on the side of the road, nursing your wounds and wondering why you ever thought it was valuable in the first place. It is masochism to want this.
I mistrust and pity self-proclaimed lovers of truth - for they are like a bachelor who proposes without acceptance. High and lofty in their castles in the clouds they rest, laurels on their shoulders, for they know while others do not. Yet the foundation of these glass palaces is the respect and adoration of the masses, without which they instantly wobble and crumble. A lover of truth need not advertise this to others - yet who can be a silent lover of truth? Yes, indeed! Truth is the great pheromone of the intellect - a lover of truth brags and boasts, flutters and flaunts as a prostitute does on the street corner. Indeed, the lover of truth whores his way into public notice through his submission to an idol. Truth is given magical properties and elevated to a status that is wholly undeserved.
Look at me! Listen to me! I have truth, I am the truth! In actuality there cannot be a lover of truth but only lovers of opinion, and more specifically their own. All of this is a charade - ironically, the lover of truth is in a state of profound self-delusion. They do not love the truth, they love their opinion and the power and influence it gives over others. Worse still, they construct a false idol of themselves. They love their image in the mirror, despite the frailty of their bones and the weakness of their heart. What has gone by the name "truth" has caused incalculable harm. Those who love truth for the sake of truth are at best fools, at worst, narcissistic megalomaniacs. Alternatively they may also be masochists.
To be proud of knowing a truth seems to me to be a defense mechanism to compensate for the fact that this truth has taken more than it has given, or has given nothing at all. Behind every smirk is a deadening of the spirit, signaled by the subtle twitch of the eyelid. If by spirit we mean the ability to rejuvenate, flourish and dance, then the loss of this is a terrible thing. The man who has nothing but truth has lost everything else - he is a worm, nay, a maggot, a bringer of death, a spiteful, bitter creature who claims to love what he hates and who decomposes before the eyes of others. The lover of truth, in his grandiosity, attempts to steal from others that which he does not have, and thus bring others down (not up) to his level. He is a megalomaniac, a narcissist, a gangster - one who fires deadly ideas into the minds of others as a murderer shoots a gun into his victims. He is also a charlatan, because truth is a snake-oil that has been conveyed magical properties by the crank Socrates. Truth is the last refuge for an aborted prototype, a being who cannot make reality as an artist and thus must submit himself to a tyranny of the absolutely mediocre. They are captured and tortured by it, and develop a deep hatred - and jealousy - of those who still have their freedom and happiness. The lover of truth despises others because they make him suffer alone. The lover of truth is in an unsound mental state, and his propensity for lying about his enamor of truth is a sign of profound self-delusion, the lack of self-restraint, or perhaps most seriously masochism.
Perhaps there is an objection that this is too hedonistic, that what is valuable is not necessarily what is pleasurable or congruent with vitality. But this is a pathetic ruffling of the feathers. Again - the man with nothing else turns to truth. "Truth" - this is the pig with makeup. To value truth for the sake of truth is outrageous and absurd, it is the final gasp of a dying soul. Truth is not valuable in and of itself, and a terrible truth will leave you on the side of the road, nursing your wounds and wondering why you ever thought it was valuable in the first place. It is masochism to want this.
I mistrust and pity self-proclaimed lovers of truth - for they are like a bachelor who proposes without acceptance. High and lofty in their castles in the clouds they rest, laurels on their shoulders, for they know while others do not. Yet the foundation of these glass palaces is the respect and adoration of the masses, without which they instantly wobble and crumble. A lover of truth need not advertise this to others - yet who can be a silent lover of truth? Yes, indeed! Truth is the great pheromone of the intellect - a lover of truth brags and boasts, flutters and flaunts as a prostitute does on the street corner. Indeed, the lover of truth whores his way into public notice through his submission to an idol. Truth is given magical properties and elevated to a status that is wholly undeserved.
Look at me! Listen to me! I have truth, I am the truth! In actuality there cannot be a lover of truth but only lovers of opinion, and more specifically their own. All of this is a charade - ironically, the lover of truth is in a state of profound self-delusion. They do not love the truth, they love their opinion and the power and influence it gives over others. Worse still, they construct a false idol of themselves. They love their image in the mirror, despite the frailty of their bones and the weakness of their heart. What has gone by the name "truth" has caused incalculable harm. Those who love truth for the sake of truth are at best fools, at worst, narcissistic megalomaniacs. Alternatively they may also be masochists.
Comments (31)
I am extremely skeptical of there being anyone in existence who has ever pursued truth in an impartial manner, independent of their own egological concerns, which ultimately comes down to the maintenance of their self-esteem. What about truth makes it worthy to search for in and of itself?
Everyone may have some difficulties in this area, but some are much more prone to not being in the mood to reason fairly than others; in my experience that truth is quite tangible. For instance, Sam Harris and his fellow discussant Jared Peterson, Harris who I generally don't agree with, as I find Scientism repellent, I nonetheless admit to be relatively open to the search for truth when compared to Dawkins or the vast number of the followers of both Harris and Dawkins.
There is another issue, that plays a great role, which I omitted. Nescience. Nescience corresponds to "bounded rationality". Ergo, we all, so it seems, have the decisive limitation of the lack of an all-rounded prospect. However, that is not, prima facie, the same as not being a lover of truth. The "bias" comes from a different cause.
The name Internet Stranger corresponds to the way I understand Plato's use of the trope or the Xenos, the stranger is someone who feels more constrained than the person at home, and so is more likely to be polite and obliging. In this way, I attempt to penalize myself, and remind myself to grind myself to dust.
I guess the love of philosophical truth can be similar.
I suppose you are unaware that the price of entering Plato's school was proficiency in mathematics? And that Aristotle understood Plato as a Pythagorean, and that his school, the Academy, was the fount of our universities to this day, and thus of the ruling power of mathematical physics. However, that being said, mathamtikos did not mean quite the same thing for Plato, the scholastics, and even for Newton as for us.
I’ve had similar thoughts, and similar self-doubts about my own interest in truth. It seems like it takes a certain amount of suffering, a lot of it often times self-induced (whether consciously or not), to allow oneself the realization that the search for truth isn’t a pure desire. But does this realization say more about truth, or more about the self? The human condition?
What you describe sounds to me like the first layer of the onion only.
Here's a song about the cold clear eyes of seekers of truth (from "How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying") The song starts at about 1:48
Does cognitive dissonance leave you any better? or fallacious reasoning? or reductive?
This isn't really about that per se, it's more about beautifying truth into something it's not.
OK, I see that. But I don't see how the cure gets formulated. It begins to sound circular; a true critique of truth? We must index to something. What index is "wholly deserved"?
Quoting darthbarracuda
You seem caught up in your own version of the liar's paradox.
"It is true that truth isn't true but a delusion. Listen to me. I'm telling you the truth. Therefore I'm deluded. Therefore what I said isn't true."
We get the same self-defeating rants from the anti-totalisers who make anti-totalising their totalising philosophical viewpoint.
Pragmatism offers the quiet exit door from these kinds of standard pathologies of thought. Walk out now and never look back!
I thought that laurels were worn on one's head, not one's shoulders. But since The Truth has become annoying, we won't hold you to it.
I do not quite understand how "truth" got you so riled up. I mean there is "truth" (all lower case) in some things. 5x5=25 seems like a truth. "Oxygen is heavier than helium." also seems to be "true" (all lower case).
There may be a hidden Truth (upper case T) in Hilary Clinton's e-mails, but I doubt it. But many people felt there was TRUTH (all upper case) to be discovered there. Most believers think their holy books are TRUE, though some believers will settle for "the Truth". What is true about President Trump? Is the statement, "Donald Trump is our president" true, True, or TRUE?
I can see getting riled up about "seekers of wisdom and TRUTH" (per the song above), but there are more limited "truths" that are practically worth finding.
Is your problem with TRUTH that it may be (sometimes is) hideous? The TRUTH of a terminal cancer diagnosis may be hideous. For some, maybe more in times past, the "truth" that "there is no salvation outside of the Church" is a sorrowful truth. The "truth" that Homo sapiens and many other species are probably screwed (thanks to CO2 levels) is a very sad truth. And so on.
Is the difference between the happy truth that "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free" and the less happy truth that "sometimes you just have to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation" what has stirred you up?
Just wondering what the truth is about your OP.
:rofl: shit
Again, my OP wasn't about whether or not truth itself exist. I'm not that silly to fall for that circularity, although certain versions of skepticism adeptly navigate around this (re: Sextus Empiricus and the difference between the utterance of global skepticism and the declaration of it).
My point, rather, was that there is no value to truth qua truth. There is always something else that truth is in the service to that makes it valuable, and that this is intimately associated with either delusion, masochism or megalomania in the case of self-appointed lovers of truth.
The point was that the search for truth is fundamentally conditioned by the psychology of the person. Whether or not truth is valuable cannot be determined apart from the person themselves, and to assert otherwise is to trample over others in power relations. Truth cannot be separated from its source in the power structures of society, nor from the psychological dispositions of its adherents.
Why?
Isn't this true of most abstracted qualities, like goodness, health, beauty, evil, and so on? "Goodness or "beauty" don't exist on their own -- they are features of something. There is no "evil qua evil" either. Some thing might be evil, some person might be evil. But evil doesn't have an independent existence.
Same for truth. Truth isn't floating around out there waiting to be discovered. It is only found in something.
People who seek abstractions (truth, beauty, power, evil, speed, etc.) are, I should think, not deluded, masochistic, or megalomaniac but are rather quite misinformed about the qualities or abstractions having material existence.
Jesus says "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free". Who actually said that, and what they meant is lost now. Anyway, Pontius Pilate sliced across that vague formula with "What is truth?" At another point Jesus claimed to be the truth. John 14:5-6 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life." In this case, Jesus named himself as the body of the truth. Truth is Jesus, and Jesus is truth. Take it or leave it, but at least here truth was something concrete.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I don't find this paragraph very compelling. What if the truth in a concrete embodiment of some kind (a fossil from the Cambrian layer of rock is the truth about the age of multi-celled organisms. The oxygenated atmosphere is the truth of the importance of cyanobacteria...) This truth doesn't originate in the power structure of society. Similarly, to deny that the fossil has anything to do with the age of the earth (which every right believing fundamentalist knows is about 6,000 years) doesn't run roughshod over power relations. Creationism is baloney, as far as I am concerned, but I don't think creationism has very much to do with power--as a disembodied noun.
I would assert that Creationism has something to do with the psychological comfort of the community of believers. Any settled belief that we share with others tends to be somewhat comforting -- even the settled belief that Homo sapiens has fucked himself over (and much of the animal kingdom as well) is comforting when held in concert with others. It's an embodied truth.
Because the kind of thinking you displayed, and which apokrisis countered with pragmatism, is just not good for you. Thinking that way will give you hives, hemorrhoids, and halitosis.
What @Bitter Crank said.
Also, if you say an obsessive pursuit of truth is some kind of grand delusion, who would disagree with that diagnosis - to the degree you aren't being well paid and enjoying high status for doing that?
But who would damn you for a life devoted to accumulating practical wisdom?
So why not focus on that?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Maybe I see what you mean; that we, as egos (operating systems), cannot (are not entitled to) co-opt revealed truth, as validation of our progress towards anything. Is that close?
I sympathize deeply with your post, tho also share some of the concerns voiced by others.
Quoting darthbarracuda
They may also be both of these in part while also being, just as much, people wounded by a confusing and unpredictable world which has led them, understandably, to seek refuge in the one constant they can find, an inner-space no one can take from them. It may be that all three parts work together. The megalomania and narcissism are the attack-dogs, keeping away anyone who would storm the gates and take the citadel. The masochism is the poker-faced advisor, avatar of the fortress's spirit, ensuring the advisee is too beaten-down to disregard his counsel and leave. (Frollo, to Quasimoto)
The best chance the advisor has at securing his position, if he suspects his influence is waning, and the advisee is in danger of leaving, is to bring the attack dogs into the citadel, keep them menacingly at bay, and then validate the advisee's suspicions, but with his own particular inflection. In this way, the glimmer of hope latent in the advisee's suspicions is rendered into a further rationale for remaining in the fortress. (here is what lies behind the liar's paradox@apokrisis mentioned - the weird way in which much of what you're saying repeats the thing it decries.)
What the advisor cannot abide, and fears, is that some kind of compassion or forgiveness will mingle with self-knowledge. Even worse: what if the advisee forgives the advisor and acknowledges that, in his own way, he was trying to provide security? The advisor's power would vanish in a flash. His strength is utterly dependent on the illusion that he understands the stakes best.
Here, I agree with apo:
Quoting apokrisis
Only thing I would change is the language - not 'accumulating' practical 'wisdom' - but just finding a way to live practically.
Cut-and-paste stew of Rilke's duino elegies:
Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply.
Many a star must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked past an open window, a violin gave of itself. All this was their mission.
But could you handle it? Were you not always,
still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced, like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her, with all the vast strange thoughts in you going in and out, and often staying the night.)
[...]
Ah, who then can we make use of? Not Angels: not men, and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at homein the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains some tree on a slope, that we can see again each day
[...]
Show him with love a confident daily task
Lead him near to the Garden
Give him what outweighs those nights.
Not that it matters, but there were the usual technical reasons for the choice of words. We accumulate wise habits like sedimented states of thought. And a lifecycle view of that kind of habit-taking recognises that it almost inevitably winds up in senescence. We become so fixed in our wise ways that our capacity to learn new particular things dwindles. Every novelty gets assimilated to the existing totality.
So wisdom becomes itself another stage rather than an endpoint. To be completely adapted to the world as you could know it creates its own new vulnerability of being completely surprised by some real environmental shift.
So the best we can do is grow to be pragmatically wise. And that will be such a sediment of habits that we are exposed if circumstances are changed radically. Like happens all the time in nature.
Based on my experience, the wisest people I know have little concern for wisdom. Or, at least, they learned what they now have to impart without considering how having that knowledge to impart would redound to their sense-of-self.
As an incorrigibly vain person, I envy that. My sense is that knowing this characteristic of people I consider to be actually wise will severely hobble me in my attempt to emulate them.
I agree with most of what you say, by the way.
But it's strikingly at odds with your metaphysics.
Quoting apokrisis
Of course one's metaphysics can be separated from one's practice. If your passion is [non-metaphysical-x] all the more power to you - but your passion seems to be metaphysics, no?
It probably isn't given it is a view that comes directly from Stan Salthe, the one person to have had the greatest personal influence on any metaphysical position I might have. Actually, a wise old bird is the best description I can imagine for Salthe.
Quoting csalisbury
Hey, I live a life too. I raise a family, play a role in a community, etc. Metaphysics is a hobby. Well, having a sound understanding of how the world actually works - socially and physically - has also been a paying gig. But I'm not some kind of theory nerd who reads dense textbooks all day. Pretty much the opposite all my life in fact. I have to start an argument to get interested enough to check if my facts might be right. :)
Are you telling the truth?
Yes: Then you're self-deprecating
No: It doesn't matter
Neither Yes nor No: Great post. I like your opinion
dose it not have to be unconditional in every sense if not then it must just be a fleeting moment otherwise it would have no longevity except in the sense of a memory of what once was isn't it a singular thing in the mind of the beholder? what ever his/her idea of love that may be. dose a bee gather nectar for love of the queen or the flower.