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What the Opioid Crisis is Really All About
There is a wonderful post by Avner Zarmi that compares the clash between traditional and contemporary culture to a Twilight Zone episode. In that episode, people with beautiful faces were shunned because the average face was horribly misshapen. Worse, those with beautiful faces had to live in a restricted area away from the normal, ugly people.
Zarmi contrasts traditional, religiously observant individuals of our own day with everyone else. He compares these shunned traditionalists to the beautiful faces in the Twilight Zone episode. By contrast, those who go with the flow and live by more casual standards are the normal, ugly people in the Twilight Zone episode.
Per Zarmi, people are less content today than when they lived more traditional lives. Proof of this is increased drug use. Life is too much to bear, despite increased material prosperity, and people demand drugs to hold their own in an upside down world where beautiful is ugly and ugly is beautiful.
Based on my own experience as a rehab counselor, I can assure you that the increased legalization of marijuana is extremely troublesome. Marijuana use may lead to use of hard drugs and, even when it does not, marijuana itself can easily become addictive.
Brave New World, a book written by Aldous Huxley in 1931, painted a picture of a future where people lived an anesthetized existence perpetuated by consumption of soma, an anti-depressant and hallucinogenic drug. Less than 100 years later, Huxley’s dystopian nightmare has become a desirable reality among increasing numbers of lost souls.
Zarmi calls for a return to “Biblical morality,” which could be interpreted every which way, but I think a good starting point would be observance of the Ten Commandments. If we could only follow them — especially #10, not to envy — our lives would certainly be a lot simpler and less in need of substances to make us feel better.
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I’m not trying to nick pick nor twist anything around. What you are proclaiming to be absolute truths have just as little evidence for them as the people who claim the opposite. Just because they are not “exotic” beliefs has no relevance at all. Einstein’s theory of warping space/time was considered extremely exotic, if not loony, when he proposed it, but it is now accepted theory.
You said it yourself with “If there is no evidence for something, we don’t presume it into existence.”
Now what is your evidence for these propositions?
I notice you didn’t address my point. Do you believe you are happier, psychologically healthier, and a better person than believers? Do you find it intolerable to be friends with believers? Are they a drag on your existential existence? Do you think western societies are better off for embracing the meaninglessness of it all? More virtuous?
I was an atheist for about half my life to date. At some point (yes, related to suffering — God reaches us in ways we need reaching) I decided it was a conceit of mine to believe I just knew better than all those knuckle-dragging troglodytes. It wasn’t making me (or my world) better or a joy to be around. Maybe Wm F. Buckley, Thomas Aquinas, JPII, and St. Augustine were onto something I should consider. Maybe faith isn’t the “opiate of the masses” (a convenient condescension for would-be tyrants) — maybe there are some deeper truths discernible by means other than the material empiricism I’m (and you’re) demanding. Maybe I’m a coward for not wanting to explore the possibility of a God who makes moral demands… Ahem.
Indeed, practicing an orthodox religion is one of the few ways we regularly face up to the Four Last Things (a focus of Advent): Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.
By denying yourself a different means of knowing other than materialism, you are denying yourself your full humanity, in my humble opinion.
There are atheists in every political party. There are even atheists in foxholes, I’d wager.
There is an excellent youtube video (Alex Epstein and Dave Rubin Discuss the Climate Change Debate) where Epstein lays out the religion of environmentalism.
It’s interesting that as traditional religion is abandoned, there is still a need to address the fundamental anxieties with another religion. The revelation is that there is no way to really get the upper hand on the givens of existence. Religion purports to do this, but there is no evidence that it works other than to relieve the anxiety at the expense of constant ritual and meditation to reconvince oneself that it is real when it is not.
This should be obvious. I am simply stating what is not there. You are attempting to turn this around and make me prove it is not there. Best I can say is that there is no evidence of it. And you are asking, where is the evidence that there is no evidence?
Someone asserts that there is a glass of water on the table where none exists. I say, there is no glass of water on the table because there is none to be seen, none to be felt. The surface of the table is finite and can be examined easily.
And you respond, “What is your evidence that there is no glass of water on the table?”
And I respond, “I am not the one asserting that there is a glass of water on the table. The burden for proving that assertion is on the one who asserts it. I am the one saying that there is no such thing – because there is no evidence of such a thing.”
If I am wrong and the universe has an obvious sense or meaning and I am just failing to see it, then enlighten me. What tangible, physical, provable theory explains it all? My experience is that people cannot do that without resorting to metaphysics.
Okay, here is the crux.
Your argument is essentially “if I don’t see it physically, it is not there.” That is your “evidence.” However, all the things you are asserting are not even part of the physical Universe. Meaninglessness, Cosmic Justice, Invisible Comforter, and things not happening for a reason, are abstract ideas, not physical objects (with the possible exception of God).
I did not say that all of those actually exist. I just said that you have not provided any evidence that they do not. This is in the realm of trying to prove a negative. You are just making an assumption without any evidence other than “I don’t see it.”
There is a vastly underrated human weakness for being unable to tolerate uncertainty. You suggested in comment #54 that religious believers are just not facing up to the four undeniable givens of existence, and that you and others have the courage to face up to these. I would suggest that you have not garnered the courage because you have simply decided the answers to these unknown questions in the way that comforts you the best. And you feel so confident about it that you seek to convert others.
The more honest and rational answer would be to say “I don’t know” and have to live with that. But that is a difficult thing to live with.
I ran out of space, but to clarify:
You are correct in asking someone to provide evidence or proof of the assertions they are making. This is a tenet of logic. However, you are also required to provide the same evidence or proof if you make the declarative assertion that something does not exist either. Otherwise you should simply say “I don’t really know, but the best I can say is I haven’t seen it.”
I never asserted superiority for having abandoned religion as a means of coping with existential givens. I stated that I would never want to deny anyone the bliss their religion gives them.
I believe I am happier and psychologically healthier than I used to be now that I accept things are they are and not as I wished they could be. It’s usually not possible to tell who is happier than another based on outward appearance. Robin Williams seemed pretty happy.
Why would I find it intolerable to be friends with believers? I think you are projecting hostility. Why is that?
Are Western societies better off for embracing the meaninglessness of it all?
I don’t think they have and I’m not suggesting that nothing in life has meaning. Family, friends, learning, love, work, etc. Lots of things provide meaning. Rather, there is no obvious overall meaning to our existence. We are not put here to glorify God, for example. We are not born with a special destiny that would guarantee us happiness.
I would not refer to religion as the “opiate of the masses” because that implies a conspiracy to delude. I don’t think there is such. I think the deception is self-deception. But I do think religion can be a substitute for accepting uncertainty.
I used to be a Born-Again Christian. I believe that religions like that create an extra anxiety – the anxiety that comes with having to pretend. The act of pretending is usually called Faith: A commitment to believing something despite a complete lack of evidence. Put simply: It feels better to believe than not to, so we believe. That’s fine so long as one can pretend it is so. I lack the imagination necessary to believe in things that look like they’re not there.
The worst part of this is the utter silence of God. People claim to communicate with him, but it’s never a form that can be recorded and confirmed. The message is always conveyed to a single individual and no one else gets the message until the recipient explains what he heard. Admitting the truth – God never communicates in any of the traditional forms (speaking, hand-waving, telephone, email). All we have are secondhand reports.
So you think Western Civilization suffers from Obsessive Christianity Disorder?
I’m not going to repeat my point again. The burden of proof for someone asserting that something exists is on the person making the assertion.
True. It does not exist in this universe. There is no obvious sense or meaning to the universe. We agree on the this existential given.
But the meaning of a credit card lies within the credit card system.
True. There is any number of things that have meaning to individuals: Family, wealth, work, recreation, sport, health, sexual gratification, good food, Western liberal values, etc.
But the “why” questions fail to yield answers.
OK. There may be ghosts, UFOs, Norse gods, Greek gods, Elephant-headed gods, a way to make gold out of lead, leprechauns, flying pigs, talking dogs, tin woodsmen.
We just don’t know.
Seems like we agree that humans are reluctant to accept uncertainty. I am just suggesting that there is more relief in accepting it than making up a myth to explain it away.
That is a fair summary.
But I do not have “answers to these unknown questions”.
(a) They are Givens, not questions. We are all going to die someday. Everyone we know is going to die someday. Even Jesus died (it’s the coming back from the dead part that lacks evidence). There is not much question about this.
(b) The point is not to try to find “answers” to these things. E.g. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does god let the righteous man suffer? To accept the existential given is to say there is no reason. The common, vulgar expression is “S**t happens” (i.e. it happens for no reason).
I don’t know that I am trying to convert others who I do not know and for whom I have no significant personal interest. But I see no harm in laying out the theory.
The following is taken from a speech Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered in London in 1983:
“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened . . .’
And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: ‘Men have forgotten God.’ The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.
It was Dostoevsky who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that ‘revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.’ That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends, Communism needs to control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this entails the destruction of faith and nationhood.
The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.
(Note: This “drying up of religious consciousness” and “sapping of strength from within” makes the Islamic threat that much greater. When true believing Moslems take on wishy-washy believers and non-believers in Western countries, the outcome of that battle is not in doubt, and capitulation to Sharia is already under way at every turn.)
Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system.”
The above note expresses precisely and completely the foundation of my political belief system. At the moment I don’t recall reading anything quite like it, even though I knew I couldn’t be the only one who thought these things.