“God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next—Amen.”—Reinhold Niebuhr

 

 

“The negativism which Nietzsche falsely regards as the genius of Christianity is therefore really the Schopenhauerian Buddhistic variant of Christianity.”—Reinhold Niebuhr, in The Nature and Destiny of Man  (negativist, Buddhistic, and focused on the victims representing others’ destructive willfulness to themselves in a pragmatic fashion?  That sounds like “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” and, “Spirituality requires courageously changing what you can and serenely accepting what you can’t.”  Also, an unusual word that sure is used frequently in The Nature and Destiny of Man, is:

 

“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding.  I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”—Helen Keller

 

 

 

 

 

webpage about Hitler, A Born Soldier, says, “Hitler’s favorite writer during the war was the early 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer....  Hitler, like Thomas Mann, was greatly impressed by Schopenhauer’s book: The World as Will and Idea.  Hitler read the book over and over again during the war and was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer’s teaching.”  Another webpage, The Enigma of Hitler, from the Stormfront neo-Nazi group, says about him, “He could quote entire paragraphs of Schopenhauer from memory, and for a long time carried a pocked edition of Schopenhauer with him.  Nietzsche taught him much about the willpower.”

 

The Stanford webpage on Nietzsche says, “Wagner and Nietzsche shared an enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—who had been composing piano, choral and orchestral music since he was a teenager—admired Wagner for his musical genius and magnetic personality.  Wagner was exactly the age Nietzsche’s father would have been, and Wagner had also attended the University of Leipzig many years before. The Nietzsche-Wagner relationship was quasi-familial, sometimes-stormy, and it affected Nietzsche deeply: twenty years later, he would still be assessing Wagner’s cultural significance.”  Therefore, Schopenhauer shaped the thinking of all three super-Krauts, those most associated with the worldview known as “Wagnerian,” which, actually, is Schopenhauerian.

Schopenhauer described the German word translated as Idea, Vorstellung, as an “exceedingly complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is the consciousness of a picture there,” what cognitive therapy would call an “outlook.”  While some cognitive therapy for depression aims to stop distorted thinking, limiting cognitive therapy to this would be unpragmatic in those situations where reality is unreasonable.  Since cognitive therapy arose in the 1960s based on the then-popular Eastern transcendence, this could be called “Calcutta survival skills.”  Feeling Good, by David D. Burns, MD, “The Clinically-Proven Drug-free Treatment for Depression” and copyright 1980,

says, “The problem-solving and coping techniques you learn will encompass every crisis in modern life, from minor irritations to major emotional collapse. These will include realistic problems, such as divorce, death, or failure, as well as those vague, chronic problems that seem to have no obvious external cause, such as low self-confidence, frustration, guilt, or apathy.”  This is neo-Buddhism.

What we have here, could be described as both “The World as Will and Idea,” and “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” both of which are synonymous with each other.  Schopenhauer called his ideal state of mind “sublime,” which is the same as an unconditional, spiritual transcendent serenity.  We’re simply supposed to accept that human aggressive tendencies are ineradicable, so the best that we could do is to choose to have what Schopenhauer called a “sublime” outlook toward them.  “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” doesn’t necessarily mean, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” but is necessarily that unconditional, all-or-nothing, and

If we don’t, then that could seem to be simply our SELF-WILLS expressing themselves.  Schopenhauer wrote, “Wrong through violence is not so ignominious for the perpetrator as wrong through cunning, because the former is evidence of physical strength, which in all circumstances powerfully impresses the human race.  The latter, on the other hand, by using the crooked way, betrays weakness, and at the same time degrades the perpetrator as a physical and moral being,” and, “The concept of good is divided into two subspecies, that of the directly present satisfaction of the will in each case, and that of its merely indirect satisfaction concerning the future, in other words, the agreeable and the useful.  The concept of the opposite, so long as we are speaking of beings without knowledge, is expressed by the word bad, more rarely and abstractly by the word evil, which therefore denotes everything that is not agreeable to the striving of the will in each case.”  We must be realistic enough to remember what the threshold of human endurance is.  Though Schopenhauer wrote, in The World as Will And Representation, that some wrote that his acceptance that pederasty exists all over the world implies a dangerous moral laxity, that serene acceptance of reality is a lot less dangerous than is this honoring of strength and distrusting of weakness that led to the main ideas of Nazism, as well as the current “We are all victims of victims,” thinking in self-help psychology.

(Nazi posters about the will, saying “Through military will to military strength,” “One battle, one will, one goal: Victory at any cost!,” and “National Socialism—the organized will of the nation,” along with a poster for the classic Nazi film Triumph of the Will)

Pat Buchanan, in a syndicated column in 1977, wrote, “...despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was an individual of great courage...  Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone.  His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”  The “defects of character” stressed by AA’s Big Book, resentment anger and fear in general, are the same as what Buchanan and Hitler meant by “character flaws,” i.e. not handling one’s own problems (whatever they may be) with enough stolid and self-reliant backbone.  “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” as well as, “Whatever your problem is, courageously change what you can and serenely accept what you can’t,” also define “character flaws” as supposed weakness masquerading as morality.

Agent Orange has a webpage on how shocked Reinhold Niebuhr was about the fact that Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group (now called “Moral Re-Armament”; “Oxford” must have sounded too dreadfully intellectual), the conservative Christian group that AA grew out of, had similar attitudes toward Hitler.  Niebuhr was a hell-raiser, before Stalinism made him fatalistic about human nature.  Yet if any organization preaches the Serenity Prayer at people, the final result would be the same, that self-reliant STRENGTH seems good, and weakness that tries to get persuasive strength from emotion and/or abstractions seems intolerably bad.  As the history of The AA School of Self-Help Psychology shows, Nazism, minus anti-Semitism and committing outrageous aggression, equals taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as you’d have it.

Something very vital is missing.  A brother of The Lawrence Welk Show’s tenor Joe Feeney, a priest named John Patrick, was found guilty in 2004 of sexually assaulting two boys.  One could say that since the Feeneys no doubt try to be as square as The Lawrence Welk Show, no matter how “nice” this square quality tries to look, its patriarchal roots would still entail that we must accept the strong dominating the weak.  Yet the theme of both The World as Will and Representation, and Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man, would interpret that as that no matter how much anyone, including perfectionist squares, try to live up to certain moral ideals, if one has a pedophile’s brain, then he’ll probably feel compelled to offend.  Therefore, we all must serenely accept the strong dominating the weak, since this is an inevitable part of human nature.  Likewise, if someone has the brain of an addict, we’ll just have to accept that that’s reality.  Schopenhauer says nothing about whether pederasty occurs in those hunting-and-gathering societies that are especially cooperative or, like the Trobirand Islanders, especially free of restrictive sexual norms.

The biggest inspiration for The Nature and Destiny of Man, was the fact that Stalinism committed its atrocities despite the fact that it claimed to be fighting for what’s good.  The February 1, 1997 issue of the Maoist Internationalist Movement Notes, said, “MIM opposes all rape, including the rape of children, but we also oppose the bourgeoisie’s pretensions that child sexual abuse is a problem of a few deranged individuals, rather than a problem of a society which eroticizes powerlessness.”  Yet as the following says, pederasty, aimed at young teen boys so it doesn’t relish powerlessness as much as does much pedophilia, is found everywhere.  The problem isn’t in who has the most influence on our culture.  (And Mao’s regime were the ones who responded to the fact that greedy Britons had addicted many Chinese to opium, by executing the current addicts.  Yet, at least, that didn’t involve any excitement about the strong triumphing over the weak.)  François Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century says, “[Maoism] one-upped Stalinism, but as an illusion about an illusion.  It was like a child arriving at the store of the century’s ideologies after closing time...,” and such attributions of certain destructive behavior to sociological factors, is certainly childish.

This conception of who is or isn’t personally responsible for what, would look very different in a society that does have rampant depression, than in a society that doesn’t.  The Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website, says, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated.  Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw.  It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression....  Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”  It seems that the question is whether this consists of 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws, or 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions.

 

 

 

 

Manic-Depressive Illness, Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, by Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin and Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, says, in its chapter on personality differences, “Character has been defined as ‘personality evaluated’—that aspect of an individual which bears a moral stamp and reflects the person’s integrative and organizing functions.  The concept of character is employed less frequently in the United States than in Europe, although it is often used interchangeably with that of personality.”  Actually, the word character is used plenty in the United States, whether it be in comments on depression or from the likes of Pat Buchanan and Frank Buchman, to pass judgment on how integrated and organized are traumatized people.  After all, such judgments aren’t moralistic.  Someone absolutely has to provide our society’s homeostasis, since things simply have to remain integrated and organized.

The homepage of the Mental Illness—What a Difference a Friend Makes website, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, says, “An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older—about one in four adults—suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.”  As the title suggests, this website is about getting the friends of the 26.2% of the American adult population, to support these people rather than stigmatizing them.  The ways in which one friend treats another, is one of the few sociological factors of this huge social problem, that we could honorably take seriously.  If we take the other sociological factors seriously, we could seem to be trying to manipulate like untermenschen, and/or to restrict the übermenschen.  Everyone knows that what’s at fault, is inside the millions of victims.

When you’ve seen ads and other guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this?  In order to produce that much depression, that society must accept a good deal of übermensch personal shortcomings.  Aggressive tendencies seem ineradicable.  An acceptance of aggressive and other selfish behavior, therefore, is realistic and mature.  We mustn’t be repressive or restrictive or controlling. Those who try to suppress such freedoms, look pretty scary.  Strength and risky action have exciting, dynamic appeals to them, etc.  The stronger you are, the more likely you are to have what’s exciting, pro-freedom, übermensch, red-blooded, self-reliant, etc., on your side.  It seems that we must fear the untermenschen and their victim-power, and mustn’t fear the übermenschen and their freedoms.  Yet the magnitude of this social problem, can’t just be brushed aside!

“In order to keep functioning despite that, this society must refuse to accept a good deal of untermensch personal shortcomings.  Just because the behavior that would naturally cause resentment anger and fear is ineradicable doesn’t mean that the warranted resentment anger and fear must be, or that we could afford not to eradicate such hurt feelings.  In each case, even the most sincere assertiveness reflects the assertive person’s SELF-WILL and strivings, so could be called manipulative, and, therefore, insidiously dangerous.  One can’t defend himself from such manipulation, without looking as if he’s re-victimizing the victims.  Whining looks very unappealing, etc.  Apropos of that norm, how much lowering of that unnaturally high rate of depression would seem centrist, and how much would seem radical?”  It’s pretty safe to say that there’s always an out, in that if the person who has the problem wants to be well-adjusted and non-passive, then she’ll see how what caused the problem is at least excusable, and how much she plays an active role.


 
 

 

The above quote from Helen Keller appeared in a message from the friend of a man who died from a drug overdose, which probably had something to do with the fact that his priest repeatedly molested him when he was a teen.  His aunt put The Serenity Prayer on his memorial website.  His friend obviously objected to this use of the peace that passeth understanding, to cope with something this horrible.  Yet the bottom line of what Schopenhauer wrote here is that no amount of understanding could stop pederasty.  Therefore, the only option that we really have is the peace that passeth understanding, that we represent the consequences of pederasty to ourselves as being as innocuous as we could.

We keep hearing that since addiction is a biological disease, we should be so understanding of addicts, including recovering addicts who relapse, that we treat them as if they’re basically not guilty by reason of insanity.  Dr. Mark Willenbring, on HBO’s special Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop, described addiction as, “wanting the wrong thing very, very badly.”  Therapy for sex addiction usually includes promiscuity to which one had habituated oneself, and predatorial perversions, which the affected person in no way chose to have.  In the case of the sexual predators, they could plead that malfunctions in their own brains had compelled them to attack.  Brainscans of sexual predators feeling cravings to attack, might show just as much compulsive activity as do brainscans of recovering addicts who’ve just seen things that remind them of their drugs of choice, and this makes them really crave it.  If this is the case, then if addicts plead that their own addictive cravings make them not responsible, others would have to say that therefore they’re just as irresponsible as are predators who act out their diseases.  Once the cravings take over, disaster could result, but that’s reality.

The appendix of The World as Will and Representation ends, “Finally, by expounding these paradoxical ideas, I wanted to grant to the professors of philosophy a small favor, for they are very disconcerted by the ever-increasing publicization of my philosophy which they so carefully concealed.  I have done so by giving them the opportunity of slandering me by saying that I defend and commend pederasty.”

So simply to say, “Thus the sense of beauty, which instinctively guides selection for sexual satisfaction, is led astray when it degenerates into a tendency to pederasty,” seemed too accepting of pedophilia.  This shows both how much those of that era had a “zero tolerance” toward pedophilia, and also how an acceptance of destructive behavior could legitimately be called relatively permissive.  “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it” certainly isn’t intended to defend and commend sinfulness, yet an attitude of “Oh, well, that’s human nature,” can permit sinfulness a lot more firmly than would moral relativism.  One is free to disagree with it, yet one who disagrees with “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference....  Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” would likely be accused of victimology, victimhood, pity-parties, melodrama, resentment, blame-finding, manipulative machinations, guilt-tripping, attempts to control, etc.

Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man regards the doctrine of “justification by faith,” as far more realistic than the doctrine of “justification by works.”  “This doctrine of the ‘imputation of righteousness’ has always been offensive to moralistic interpreters of Christian faith.  They have made much of the non-moral character of such imputation.  But forgiveness, as a form of love which is beyond good and evil, is bound to be offensive to pure moralists.”  Yet plenty of Christians who certainly aren’t permissive, call John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” “The New Testament in a nutshell.”  The New Testament in a nutshell doesn’t say anything about people taking moral responsibility, only their getting a get-out-of-jail-free card.

More pertinently, justification by faith is more realistic.  “But even when the definition of the human situation is more Biblical than classical, (as in the case of Augustine) the proposed solution of the situation defies the limits of human possibilities, as the Bible conceives them.  It seeks for a place in history where sin is transcended and only finiteness remains.  In seeking for that place it runs the danger of falling prey to the sin of spiritual pride and of illustrating in its own life that the final human pretension is made most successfully under the aegis of a religion which has overcome human pretension in principle.”  Just as with what Schopenhauer wrote about pervs, it may seem that this fatalistic acceptance of the way that this sinful world ineradicably is, is permissive, but it’s actually realistic.


 
 

 

Dr. Burns, in Feeling Good, lists the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression as: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, Disqualifying the Positive, Jumping to Conclusions, Magnification [of what’s wrong with yourself or right with others] or Minimization [of what’s wrong with others or right with yourself], Emotional Reasoning, Should Statements, Labeling and Mislabeling, and Personalization, which Dr. Burns defines as, “You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.”  Naturally, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, absolutely must accept that others’ harmful choices simply are the way that human nature is, and absolutely must focus your attention on dealing with your own problem as well as you can.

If you don’t, then it’s your weakness that could be labeled a “character flaw.”  Since the only thing that really matters is how effectively you’re dealing with whatever your realities are, you’d be amazed by the degree to which how powerless you are, determines how your actions or inactions are labeled, as successful or failing, etc.  In a society without rampant depression, though, this sort of personal responsibility wouldn’t mean this level of self-blame.

 

 

What we end up with is along the lines of what William James described, when he wrote that Americans tend to classify people as either redbloods or mollycoddles.  The strong seem impressive in all circumstances, and the weak, unless they just shut up and take care of their own problems, seem ignominiously cunning, more horrifying than violence.  All their talk about bad and evil seems to be just an expression of their WILLS, their victimology, victimhood, pity-parties, melodrama, resentment, blame-finding, manipulative machinations, guilt-tripping, attempts to control, etc. This sort of character defect involves mollycoddle ignominious cunning, which might be harder to defend oneself against than would be open and honest aggression, and is insidious rather than explicitly WILLFUL, so an untermensch-phobia could become popular.  Whether the weak are labeled as mollycoddles or ignominiously cunning untermenschen, the bottom line is that their claims that their rights had been violated, are actually a manifestation of hidden human selfishness.

 

 he Tragedy of Victim Correction as a Panacea~

 

 

As the above says, this is Al-Anon approved literature,  for Alateen.  You couldn’t make this stuff up!  Persuasion to think like this works best with Groupthink, but if you, on your own, must deal with a devastating reality in order to fit in and function, then you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and our self-responsible cultural norms (“Everybody knows that The Serenity Prayer is good.”) would provide the Groupthink.  As Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop?, by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke, says, in a survey of addicts’ family members, “...the words that everyone used were powerfully negative: ‘devastating,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘horrible’.”  Serenity, indeed!

Whether or not you live with an addict, etc., whatever you must do to take care of yourself, is whatever you must do to take care of yourself.  That’s why self-help in general tends to admire Al-Anon, The Serenity Prayer, etc., and this self-reliant ethos.  The only thing that really matters is what you do and don’t have the power to change.  Since Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA who wrote much of their Big Book, was a stockbroker around the time of the Great Depression, one could call this The Great Depression Stockbroker’s Approach to Self-Responsibility.  Literally and inevitably, whatever anyone’s life is (including during the Great Depression), is “life on life’s terms,” “reality,” “life’s challenges,” etc., for him.  Likewise, you’d simply have to deal with whatever consequences of 2008’s run on the bank, “Our entire economy is in danger,” would affect you, including the consequences of the government’s strong reluctance to “control” the businesses it should have been regulating adequately and “great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions.”  That’s how people in trouble must take care of themselves self-reliantly, so intercultural studies have consistently found that self-blame as a symptom of depression, anxiety, etc., is unique to Western and Westernized people.  Depressed people who’ve lived outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid, but modern Westerners, whether depressed or not, tend to figure that even if someone did “get you,” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser; you must “look at yourself” so you could independently resiliently and resourcefully find a solution to your problem.  Self-help means that if it’s your problem then you provide the help, which is why self-help for people in trouble in general has really taken to the AA-Al-Anon approach, so “Archie” is more than just emblematic of self-reliant self-empowerment for people in trouble in a society with rampant depression.  Bush also talked about faith in our economic “resilience” regarding the financial crisis of 2008.  This gutsy and self-responsible moral bankruptcy, “Care only about whether you can change it,” is de rigueur.  What personal problems don’t have to be taken care of this unconditionally, where the only thing that really matters is what oneself can or can’t change?  If your back is against the wall, you must serenely accept this fact.  Neo-Conservatives would love this folksy “perception management.”  Self-reliance seems to be The Great Liberator.  Freedom from government and other “control” is a sacred American tradition, but endurability isn’t.  Aggressiveness seems ineradicable, and our objections to it seem eradicable.  The moral bankruptcy is a tragedy in the ancient Greek dramatic sense, meaning that if all that victims could care about is whether or not they can change things, moral bankruptcy and immunity from accountability would inevitably result.  As can be seen in Nietzsche, the weak could easily seem to be the dangerously WILLFUL ones, since everyone’s beliefs regarding what they deserve are shaped by their own SELF-WILLS, and the weak can exercise their supposed SELF-WILLS only in ways that would seem mollycoddle, “dishonest” and “ignominious,” whereas red-blooded strength is “honest,” proud, and at least forgivable.  (We must appreciate all the hidden dangers of unchecked “victim-power.”)  “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” could happen to anyone.

Sure, A Dictionary of Psychology defines blaming the victim as, “A pervasive tendency to assume that a person who has suffered a misfortune must have done something wrong to deserve it.  It is explained by the just world hypothesis.”  Yet it should be obvious from any self-help that victim-blaming is most important when someone must self-motivatedly take response-ability for injustices.  This must be as pervasive as the injustices that must be courageously changed.  Victim-blaming gets things done, since the victims are motivated to do them.  Whatever matters in the real world, matters in the real world.  Whatever is reality, is reality.  The basic idea is that the weak should become more self-responsible and the strong should be forgiven, and then, realistically speaking, things would keep functioning efficiently.  As Dr. Thomas A. Harris wrote in the preface of his I’m OK—You’re OK, “To many people [psychiatry] is like a blind man in dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there,” but Al-Anon-style psychology-psychiatry, neo-Buddhism (which self-disciplines the yin but not the yang, “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” so could also be called Yang Buddhism), is productive, does produce contrived serenity courage and self-responsibility, whereas telling addicts’ family members, “You’re OK, even if his addiction really bothers you,” wouldn’t: mindless formula, mindful victims.  This prevents victimhood.  Defiance of this could be labeled as ignominious uppity untermensch WILLFULNESS, not “maverick” defiance.  This mental health treatment is all-natural.  Your feeling bad about anything would hurt only yourself.  Everyone must adjust.  Blinders bring serenity.  For everyone, functioning productively and resiliently is all-important.  Any fear could be dangerously problematic.  To function in the real world, you can’t be horrified.  This spirituality is the ultimate radical religion, which you must interpret literally.  If the economy collapsed in 2008 because of a few people in the financial sector making risky loans or panicking during the crisis, all of those who’d have suffered the consequences would have had to have taken care of themselves, too; either they’d keep “looking at themselves,” or they’d fail in life since they wouldn’t recognize their own inadequacies.

All problems must be resolved.  Attention must be systematically focused on how any victims (who are the most motivated to do this successfully), could most effectively take response-ability for their own welfare, since thoughts about right and wrong would be unpragmatic manipulative and judgmental opinion.  Alateen isn’t extremist.  Treating victims as victims seems so old-school, mollycoddling.  The way that the Iraq war resulted so automatically from the whiny claims that Americans were victims of WMD, shows the great danger of manipulative victim-power.  Moral relativism (“Your morality is culturally biased!”) becomes amoral absolutism (“Your morality is biased toward believing that you deserve better!  Shame on you!”).  Blame the victim, and you’ll get well-motivated self-reliant and anti-judgmental results, solutions.  That’s the only thing that really matters (especially for those with big problems).  In the real world, some things work and some things don’t, and whenever those who are morally responsible won’t take physical responsibility, cult-like neo-Buddhism would work much better than would moral responsibility.  Don’t be pessimistic!  In all situations, this is what it takes to win, so everything except “Can I change this?”, should be ignored, is for weaklings.  The ignominious banalities of life, aren’t issues.  This might not look sociopolitical or socioeconomic, but this is just cultural norms and expectations, along with social pressures, determining who is personally responsible for what in certain interactions, and those of the society at large tend to find the same unconditionally self-correcting platitudes inspiring.  Very little of what could counter our rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc., would sound or feel gutsy, so very little of it could sell.  (Endurability wouldn’t make good Populism.)  Frank Buchman, leader of the Oxford Groups, the club on which AA and then Al-Anon was based and which is now called “Moral Re-Armament,” said, “D’you know Heinrich Himmler?...  Say, you ought to know Heinrich.  He’s a great lad....  [Hitler] lets us have house-parties whenever we like.”  Anyone who’d love the Nazis, couldn’t help but love victim-blaming, targeting weaknesses (as in whiny) of character, etc.

For an exemplary alkie’s kid who looks like Archie, to preach, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, should seem like wryly Kafkaesque theater of the absurd, but instead that seems very pragmatic and honorable.  His group’s leaders are just trying to help him take care of himself better, which he really needs, and this would also help anyone else in trouble.  No self-responsibility for victims sounds nice, but all victim-blaming that isn’t illogical could help the victims by improving their chances of success in the future.  For everyone, not just a-holes’ families, realism means accepting that others won’t do what they’re not motivated to do.  The only difference between those who Al-Anon corrects and everyone else, is the situation they’re in, and “self-responsibility” and “self-help” would mean the same things in any other situation where, to the same degree, you can’t change others’ actions but can change your own reactions.  No matter what any Al-Anon or Alateen members, or those in equally desperate situations, may whine about, self-help psychology could respond, “But to look at yourself instead of blaming others would benefit you, by changing what you can and accepting what you can’t!”  (Being in denial about the unconditionality, could make you more serene and courageous.)  That’s reality, not victim-blaming.  This doesn’t intend to blame or criticize you or be morally bankrupt, just make you more well-adjusted and spiritual.  After all, the more that anyone judging such situations tried to be fair, the more unfair he’d be, since no one would solve the problems.  Certain things simply have to get done, by those who are the most motivated to do them.  Sometimes in life, the pragmatists must stand up to the weak.  As Al-Anon shows, and self-help for everyone admires, unconditional acceptance and adjustment toward anything that you’re helpless to change, would always lead to peace and confidence—serenity and courage.  (That’s a strong character.)

As Miranda says in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “O brave new world, that hath such people in it.”  Those who most believe in this sort of unconditional self-responsibility are good, hard-working people.  (As the Wikipedia webpage on Phil Gramm begins, “Gramm often noted in his political campaigns that he had repeated three grades in school but had overcome his academic deficiencies by hard work.”  He’s a proven maverick.)

AA is avowedly anti-intellectualist and pro-self-responsibility.  Unconditional and resilient, “can-do” self-responsibility like “Archie’s,” is what made America great.  Self-blame is the can-do attitude for people in trouble, “If only I can... better, I can succeed!”  If it weren’t unconditional, it would allow cowardice, inadequacy, excuses, faking problems, unearned entitlement, maladjustment, dysfunctionality, etc., and we mustn’t be naïve about this.  In a society with rampant depression, everyone could have an excuse for failure, and such cowardice saps productivity.  Self-responsibility along the lines of the law of the jungle works (and worked very productively in the nineteenth century), if you make it work.  Losers lose and winners win.  The weak can be so unfair.  Like any other reductionism, if you listened to many victim correctors’ insistent solutions to peoples’ problems, these solutions would all say basically the same things: change the specifics of one solution to the specifics of any other, and the one could sound just like the other.  When reality requires that these expectations go to the point of a reductio ad absurdum (as in “Archie’s” case), then that’s what reality (and self-motivated self-reliance) require.  Even if this requires more Stoicism than some Stoic saints had, if that’s what reality requires, then that’s what it requires.  (These saints’ self-control shows that it’s possible, and Al-Anon-style self-control isn’t moralistic.)  Such unconditional Stoicism can eliminate all misery, the worst of which could have caused big problems.  Some ideas sell, some don’t, and this one sells.  Which would you rather be, right, or happy?  To the uninitiated, victim-blaming would seem bad rather than pragmatic, for 15% of the American adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year wouldn’t seem to be among the diseases that are parts of the natural order, etc.  This is the same sort of logic that led to Phil Gramm calling America a “nation of whiners,” etc., that has the same unconditionally red-blooded, resilient, exhilarating, hard-working and character-building appeal to it!  (Of course, the huge financial crisis that followed that, should have indicated that those on Wall Street were much bigger whiners, dangerously so, but they’re übermenschen.)

The alkies aren’t controlling Al-Anon members in the authoritarian, paternalistic, anti-freedom sense; that’s just the way that life sometimes goes.  We all must adjust to our realities.  That’s inherent to life.  To end the description of each and every traumatic experience with, “So now I’m supposed to just shut up and deal with this reality, since doing so would benefit me,” might sound like the punch line of a sick joke, but the bottom line must always be pragmatic and well-adjusted.  That’s how victim correctors are supposed to operate, since correction is good, and a lack of it is self-defeating.  This is the language of letting go.  AA slogans such as “Anger is one letter short of danger,” would apply, but “Easy does it,” wouldn’t.  Unless what happened was so extreme that this would sound untenable, trying to correct the person who caused the problem, even assertively, could very easily seem or suggest: unrealistic, unreliable, others-helping, naïve, stupid, conditional, optional, half-hearted, limited, judgmental, troublemaking, “on principle,” moralistic, unattractive, sophistry-rewarding, altruistic, controlling, whiny, mollycoddling, intellectualist, philosophical, pathetic, resentful, maladjusted, negative, blaming, subjective, unproven, emotionalistic, manipulative, passive, etc.  Trying to correct the person who has the problem in ways that would help him “take care of himself” better, could very easily seem or suggest: realistic, reliable, self-helping, natural, wise, necessary, vital, steadfast, limitless, forgiving, peace-making, pragmatic, trendy, marketable, achievement-oriented, “getting on with life,” self-empowering, gutsy, achievement-oriented, down-to-earth, material, proud, competitive, well-adjusted, hopeful, solving, objective, self-justifying, practical, self-reliant, active, etc.  And if what happened was extreme, then the worse was what he did, the more that expecting him to take moral responsibility for that much could seem draconian, naïve, etc.

Victim-blaming can’t make traumas worse, since victims can’t be counterproductive, dysfunctional, maladjusted, defeatist, negative, whiny, unaccepting, demanding, etc.  Those who are trying to defend themselves from this (Defend yourself from personal response-ability for your own welfare?  Horrors!), could feel uncomfortable expecting others to take such banalities seriously, but the end result of the banalities is rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc.  Whatever happens that contributes to these gargantuan social problems, “Oh, well, that’s life, and the victims probably could have stopped the damage,” so even conspiracy theorists could feel very safe with this massive devastation.  Al-Anon would probably say that the reason why it would expect members to accept whatever alkies do is that their disease of addiction makes them not guilty by reason of insanity (Addiction, a disease of people’s motivations, might as well be as involuntary as Alzheimer’s, and disease might as well equal total helplessness.), but if a non-addict caused a member a big problem, the only things that would really matter would be the victim’s serenity and courage.  “That’s just the way that human nature is,” “That’s just the way that this sinful world is,” “Boys will be boys,” “That’s just the way that he is,” etc., imply the same level of fatalism and serene acceptance as does, “That’s just the way that addicts are.”  This unconditionality would apply to the self-help and self-responsibility in handling any problem whatsoever, since whatever the real world requires, the real world requires.  Coping with reality requires that the realities be interchangeable.  What could possibly keep victim correction in check, limiting self-responsibility to what’s reasonable?  Just think of all the resentment, self-righteousness, wimpiness, etc., that moral clarity would lead to.  As one could see in how domestic violence was once minimized, destruction within the family, especially if from the husband, is considered especially banal, personal, excusable, understandable, natural, inevitable, etc., and these minimizing labels come from the usual “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” social norms.  If only the weak took care of themselves better...  All that you’d have to do is not care, and primitivism could happen so easily.

 

(Cartoon generated by “Build Your Own Meat”)

 

“Archie” was taught to have great confidence in the self-reliance and self-determination of the individual.  Instinctively, Americans would tend to be a lot less offended by Al-Anon-style victim correction, than by the whining and the victim-power that it corrects.  That self-help formula feels right, helpful, beneficial, self-empowering, resilient, self-efficacious.  Victims’ counselors care about them.  This empathy requires correcting them, saving them from their own negativity and passivity.  After all, “Oh, you poor thing!”, treats people as things.  Victim correctors only want addicts’ kids, etc., to be more self-efficacious, serene, etc.  The nescient majority has no problem with this level of victim correction, with just expecting people to “get on with life” despite realities this lurid, which seem to be just acceptable losses.  The lower middle class approach is about solving problems self-reliantly and realistically, so we should teach the same self-responsible ideas that it does, instead of the petty bourgeois approach, which is palliative.  Coping with reality means overlooking some realities, and such pragmatic and red-blooded cultural norms have to be insistent and unquestionable.  As White House press secretary Ari Fleischer unabashedly said after Bush admitted that the Iraq-Niger-uranium documents are fake, “Yes, the president has moved on.  And, I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well,” a top-notch professional attempt to get the public to conform to letting go regarding Bush’s Machiavellianism.  (Fleischer is rebelling from his petty bourgeois family, who obviously can afford not to adequately appreciate why, in the real world, sometimes when others cause you problems it’s necessary to move on rather than whine and intellectualize.)  Caring about social problems is so passé, so 1960s, even caring about our rampant depression.  In the 60s it was Big Brother AND the Holding Company, but now it’s Big Brother OR the Holding Company, since it seems that either we accept Wall Street excesses or we’ll have Big Brother.  During the Vietnam War, defending it by telling opponents to move on, would have seemed morally bankrupt, rather than unconditionally resilient.  As Al-Anon shows, it’s possible for pragmatists to expect someone to move on from, let go of, etc., literally anything that he can’t change.

That’s how all cultural conditioning and social pressures work, including that of all those strange foreigners who can’t think for themselves.  (BTW, those who think for themselves wouldn’t conclude that for 15% of the adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, is only natural.)  Depression is the only dread disease of which many of the causes seem sacrosanct.

Nothing that anyone in trouble could possibly say, could possibly counter expectations that are based on what the real world objectively requires.  No matter what an alkie or any other problem parent might do that could traumatize his kid, he absolutely could change himself, and absolutely can’t change anyone else including the parent, which is all that the zeitgeist of The Serenity Prayer cares about.  A priori, that’s all that you could care about.  That mustn’t seem repulsive.  You mustn’t really care about “the elephant in the living room” if you can’t change the elephant.  If you think that that’s revolting, then that would be very unserene, discouraging, etc.  Obviously, that, like Bontsha the Silent, is far from a natural way to think, though it could be called “cognitive therapy” (“Behavior Therapists and Cognitive Behavior Therapists... concentrate on a person’s views and perceptions about their life, rather than personality traits.”), which has been called, “a natural alternative to anti-depressant medication.”  The above is the fully-approved outlook, since it’s very effective in preventing depression.  All that you’d need to give self help advice, would be a tape recording that says, “It would really do you a lot of good if you changed what you can and accepted what you can’t!  That’s just the way the real world works!”, and you’d play that over and over as the person describes his own trauma.  Any reasonable alternatives to victim correction as a panacea, could seem too unrealistic, fallible, subjective, passive, defeatist, untermensch, etc., for the realities that one must deal with.  Pragmatism leads to happiness.  Victim-correctors, therefore, are the ones who really care about victims.

If one were to apply what On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular.  It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments,” certainly the specifics of what addicts’ kids must deal with, would argue for someone else being to blame.   Yet blaming others wouldn’t accomplish anything, and would divert attention from solving one’s own problems.  It’s your problem, so what are you going to do about it?  You’d better just serenely surrender to the inevitable.  If we showed an understanding acceptance toward everyone, including the people who have the problems and aren’t dealing with them adequately, nobody would solve them, and the victims would be weakened in the long run.  For these people to get on track in taking care of themselves, is the only thing that really matters.  If everything must be pragmatic, nothing can be sacred.  “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, is inculcated humility, expedient and well-adjusted, without coercion or authoritarian obeisance so this is pro-freedom.   Even if the reason for the “negative thoughts” that the victim is washing his own brain of, is that he was unfairly overpowered, that wouldn’t be an authoritarian brainwashing, so his sincere opinion could still seem to be dirt that’s to be washed away and replaced with what he’s supposed to believe.  The October, 2007 issue of Counselor, the Magazine for Addiction Professionals includes an article that says, “rigid fidelity may produce an adverse effect,” but for those who must deal with realities like this, rigid fidelity is as necessary as are adequate resiliency and coping skills.  Naïveté doesn’t work.  Victim-blaming optimistically and determinedly looks for very necessary self-motivated solutions, so, in the words of the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and the facts” must be “fixed around the policy.”

Reductionism is key.  In whatever respects one is weak or strong, the weak serenely accept, the strong courageously change, and the stronger don’t have to worry about changing or accepting anything.  As any self-help counselor would tell you, abstractions are immaterial, and judgmental abstractions are self-serving, so conflicts are reduced to the concrete realities.  Ambrose Bierce defined platitude as, “A moral without the fable,” and the self-reliant, self-responsible, morals of victim correction sound a lot better without the fables, which would have told of what the people had to deal with self-reliantly.  The central message of any self-help approach for people in trouble is that to help yourself: No matter what caused your problem, you absolutely must focus your attention on correcting yourself, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, and absolutely must make your life productive (whatever that requires).  The real world requires certain things.  Everyone must play their part.  The only choice that you have is either you do whatever it takes to deal with your problem, or it doesn’t get dealt with.  The only legit question is, “Can I change this?”, so no injustices could seem profound.  As long as they happened in the past, they’re past history.  Unendurability happens.  Addicts’ friends and loved ones are the ones who are motivated to correct themselves, and they need more motivation to: change, empower themselves, accommodate to reality, be well-adjusted and productive.  That’s only natural.  Everyone, not just fundamentalists, must take this sort of spirituality literally.  Focus on self-responsibility.  Only the person who has the problem, is reliably motivated to deal with it as well as possible.  We could live without moral responsibility (which we can’t count on), abstract principles like morality, etc., but can’t live without victims taking response-ability for their own welfare.  Some things are luxuries; some are necessities.  There’s nothing paternalistic here, so you could feel free.

Even addicts’ families, etc., are sustainable like this, since naturally everyone is motivated to be well-adjusted and functional—serene and courageous.  Homespun fortitude is homespun fortitude.  Addicts’ kids shouldn’t feel bad about themselves, guilty, etc., but when dealing with what their alcoholic parents do the kids should look at themselves rather than blaming others, so as they do this they should choose not to feel self-blame, and, of course, simply looking at themselves means simply looking at what they should have done better.  Their self-help mentors would simply check to see how well they’re doing in following these instructions.  (It’s no wonder that Should Statements are one of the single-mindedly self-responsible cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, or that depressed self-blamers have no gauge of how good is good enough other than, “Am I adequate to deal with my [devastating] realities?”!)  If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another.  As “Mary Smith” wrote in her suicide note, “All [my psychologist] could do is nitpick about how I need to feel small + helpless,” though Mary obviously had a gutsy personality, which is typical of the self-empowering “thinking” of victim correction: plenty of all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, and disqualifying the positive.  To paraphrase British prime minister David Lloyd George, such alkies’ kids cannot conquer the chasms in their own lives by gingerly taking one step at a time.  NOTHING CAN LIMIT HOW MUCH ALL THIS COULD AFFECT YOU.  (As you could see in “Archie” and in all the other self-blame you might encounter, that isn’t just a fear of a slippery slope, of what might happen to you if this goes too far.  Naturally, the realities that you’re response-able for dealing with, will go however far they’ll go, and with realism, there’s no such thing as going too far.)  Samia Labidi’s chapter of Ibn Warraq’s Leaving Islam, Apostates Speak Out says, “The shackling of women had to be pursued without any letup, otherwise men risked losing control of the situation,” and with victim correction as a panacea, the shackling of untermenschen has to be pursued without any letup, otherwise übermenschen risk losing control of the situation through: untermenschen believing that they’re ENTITLED to better so they’ll stop “looking at themselves,” others pitying them, and these feelings getting more and more compelling since fear, including legitimate fear, is the strongest motivator.

Just imagine how this conception of self-responsibility would look, if people could see how much depression, anxiety disorders, etc., our normalcy creates, including some helplessness that “everyone knows” is just life’s inevitable imperfections that normal people will adjust and adapt to!  Much of this is actually beyond the threshold of human endurance, unfit for human consumption!

       

 

 

 “He dare not come in company for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him, aims at him, derides him, owes him malice.”—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, written in Elizabethan England, before the victim-self-blaming cultural norms replaced this attributing helplessness to others, with attributing it to one’s own supposed inadequacies in taking care of himself.

 

“But above all, the young, healthy boy must also learn to suffer blows”—Hitler, Mein Kampf

 

 

 

 

 

 

This could seem pro-freedom, since:

Since helpless isn’t tyranny, expecting people to serenely accept whatever they can’t change, even in a society with rampant depression, could still seem very pro-freedom.

 In fact, this could seem necessary for freedom, since the only other alternative would be not to take care of your own problems well enough, to try to control others (including those who’d qualify as “sinful”), etc.

The Fine Art of Propaganda, by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf as saying, “A lie is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated and because it takes advantage of the sentimental and extreme sympathies of the masses.”  It should be obvious to anyone that the problems of the victims of alcoholic parents (or anything comparable) aren’t inside of themselves.  Yet the sentimental and extreme sympathies of Americans tend to insist that one take personal response-ability for his own welfare.  If he doesn’t, he could be insolently and inflexibly accused of having “pity parties” and the like.  A stolid self-reliance with self-empowerment simply seems good, while passivity simply seems bad.

With all cognitive therapy, the more impressionable that one is, the more that he could learn to think pragmatically.  Al-Anon’s approach was based on AA’s approach, in which the more impressionable a recovering alkie is, the more that he could get rid of his pathological thoughts.  But Schopenhauer’s focus on how we represent the world to ourselves, wasn’t about getting rid of pathological thoughts.

Just imagine what it would look like if cognitive therapy gave equal time to re-engineering any aspect of human nature that might give us problems:

If you’re overpowered, you might think that power does matter.  His having more power than you, is what determined the outcome. Yet if you act as if this fact does matter, you could seem to be playing the victim role, manipulatively using victim-power, self-defeatingly acting passive, etc.

Sure, the law doesn’t simply accept alkies’ willfulness as if they’re not guilty by reason of insanity, but alkies’ family members are to have exactly that acceptance toward them.  Therefore, their family members, including their kids, should try to represent their own experiences to themselves as stoutheartedly as possible.  If they don’t, their refusal to fit in with this would be treated as if it’s their ignominiously weak, possibly cunning, WILLS expecting the world to be as they’d have it.  And since this would apply equally to any situation, including alkies’ kids dealing with life with the alkies, this is the world as will and representation.  Telling alkies’ normal kids to look at themselves rather than blame others, doesn’t seem any different than would telling manipulative or hypochondriac blame-finders to do that.

 

 

The following is one example of what Schopenhauer regarded to be “the world as will,” that since so many men throughout history have been pedophiles, this is just one of those imperfections that we must take as a given.  In a chapter near the end, he wrote, “Thus the sense of beauty, which instinctively guides selection for sexual satisfaction, is led astray when it degenerates into a tendency to pederasty.”  In an appendix to that chapter, he wrote the following.

Schopenhauer was also very willing to take as a given, more literal predatorialism, such as, “But the futility and fruitlessness of the struggle of the whole phenomenon are more readily grasped in the simple and easily observable life of animals.  The variety and multiplicity of the organizations, the ingenuity of the means by which each is adapted to its element and to its prey, here contrast clearly with the absence of any lasting final aim.  Instead of this, we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need, and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks,” and, “This universal conflict is to be seen most clearly in the animal kingdom....  But the most glaring example of this kind is afforded by the bulldog ant of Australia, for when it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail.  The head attacks the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head.”

Yet this is what “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” must mean, to varying degrees, depending on how severe the sinfulness is.  As the following says, “Expel nature with a pitchfork, she still comes back.”  If this means pedophilia, then that’s the tendency that we must take as a given.  Sure, we could do our best to stop the actual molestations and rapes, but we’d still have to accept the aggressive tendencies.  Many women and children have suddenly found their lives to be thrown into chaos and desperation, when they suddenly find out that the women’s husbands were pedophiles, and, therefore, the rest of the family simply must flee at all costs.  This desperation would be characterized as the liberated approach, since the women are free of obligations that they remain good little wives.  Therapists who try to lower the likelihood of each pedophile offending again, must think about the measures that the public must take to protect themselves, in terms of whether treating all pedophiles as risks might make some of them not want to try to control themselves.  Sure, the needs of those hurt by this, to have more sane lives, could be called ineradicable, but they don’t have the power to effect their wills, while the sinners do have the power to effect theirs.

The following gives another example of just how much one must accept, in order to have a fatalistic acceptance of human nature.  It also shows that the “zero tolerance” attitude that we now have toward pedophilia is nothing new.  Some excuse the enabling of the pedo-priests, by saying that until recently many people didn’t realize how harmful pedophilia is.  Though Schopenhauer didn’t write anything about the harm done, to say, “pederasty appears to be a monstrosity, not merely contrary to nature, but in the highest degree repulsive and abominable,” certainly indicates that it wasn’t thought of as just another breaking of sexual morality.  (Of course, the Catholic hierarchy could always say that they could be more forgiving than that, since their spirituality transcended the willfulness of, “That’s a monstrosity, in the highest degree repulsive and abominable.”  Pious people don’t use strong words like that.)

 

 

Considered in itself, pederasty appears to be a monstrosity, not merely contrary to nature, but in the highest degree repulsive and abominable; it seems an act to which only a thoroughly perverse, distorted, and degenerate nature could at any time descend, and which would be repeated in quite isolated cases at most.  But if we turn to experience, we find the opposite; we see this vice fully in vogue and frequently practiced at all times and in all countries of the world, in spite of its detestable nature.  We all know that it was generally widespread among the Greeks and Romans, and was publicly admitted and practiced unabashed.  All the authors of antiquity give more than abundant proof of this.  In particular, the poets one and all are full of this topic; not even the respectable Virgil is an exception (Eclogue 2).  It is ascribed even to the poets of remote antiquity, to Orpheus (who was torn to pieces for it by the Maenads), to Thamyris, and even to the gods themselves.  The philosophers also speak much more of this love than of the love of women; in particular, Plato seems to know of hardly any other, and likewise the Stoics, who mention it as worthy of the sage.  (Stobaeus, Eclog. eth., bk. II, c. 7.)  In the Symposium, Plato even mentions to the credit of Socrates, as an unexampled act of heroism, that he scorned Alcibiades who offered himself to him for the purpose.  In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates speaks of pederasty as a thing blameless and even praiseworthy.  (Stobaeus, Florilegium, Vol. I, p. 57.)  Likewise in the Memorabilia (Bk. I, cap. 3, § 8), where Socrates warns of the dangers of love, he speaks so exclusively of love of boys that one would imagine there were no women at all.  Even Aristotle (Politics, ii, 9) speaks of pederasty as of a usual thing, without censuring it.  He mentions that it was held in public esteem by the Celts, that the Cretans and their laws countenanced it as a means against overpopulation, and he recounts (c. 10) the male love-affair of Philolaus the legislator, and so on.  Even Cicero says: Apud Graecos opprobrio juit adolescentibus, si amatores non haberent.  [“Among the Greeks it was regarded as disgraceful for youths not to have lovers.”]  Here in general there is no need of proofs for well-informed readers; they can recall them by the hundred, for with the ancients everything is full of it.  But even among less cultured peoples, particularly the Gauls, the vice was very much in vogue.  If we turn to Asia, we see all the countries of that continent permeated with the vice from the earliest times down to the present day, and likewise with no special attempt to conceal it; Hindus and Chinese, no less than the peoples of Islam, whose poets also we find much more concerned with love of boys than with love of women; for example in Sadi’s Gulistan the book “On Love” speaks exclusively of the former.  Even to the Hebrews this vice was not unknown, for the Old and New Testaments mention it as punishable.  Finally, in Christian Europe religion, legislation, and public opinion have had to oppose it with all their force.  In the Middle Ages it was everywhere a capital offense; in France it was punishable even in the sixteenth century by burning at the stake, and in England, even up to about 1830, the death penalty for it was rigorously carried out; the punishment now is deportation for life.  Such strong measures therefore were needed to put a stop to the vice; indeed, they were remarkably successful, yet they did not by any means succeed in exterminating it.  On the contrary, it slinks around at all times and in all places, in all countries and among all classes, under the veil of the deepest secrecy; and it often comes to light where least expected.  Even in earlier centuries it was no different, in spite of all the death penalties.  The mentions of and allusions to it in the works of all those times are evidence of this.  If we realize all this, and think it over carefully, we see pederasty appearing at all times and in all countries in a way very far removed from that which we had at first presupposed, when we considered it merely in itself, and hence a priori.  Thus the universal nature and persistent ineradicability of the thing show that it arises in some way from human nature itself; since for this reason alone could it inevitably appear always and everywhere, as a proof of the saying:

Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret.  [“Expel nature with a pitchfork, she still comes back.” [Horace, Epist. i, 10, 24. Jr.]

Therefore we cannot possibly escape this conclusion if we intend to proceed openly and honestly.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 


 

 

  

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Out Of The Same Mold As Enron

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