Affirmation: REAL!TY.

Recently, I suffered a minor nervous breakdown. In terms of anxiety attacks, it was relatively brief, lasting hardly more than two hours, by my best estimate, though I was hardly in a state to make close records of the time. This was prompted by a series of unfortunate events and disconcerting observations which had seemed almost to act in some sort of conspiracy against me, though I did not dare until the end to feel myself to be the victim or even a target. They culminated in one message, numbering about four words in length, here paraphrased: “There are no facts.”

Awakening mere hours later (what I estimate to have been four, my average from high school) I could recall one aspect of my Dreams still fresh in mind. In Dream, the user who had written these four words rescinded them, somehow, to some extent. I can't express to you my joy and my relief in seeing this, though even in my Dream I felt quite scared and wary, skeptical that this might be a ruse, that his sincerity was insincere, and waking up to see that it was but a fantasy filled me with dread the likes of which I seldom can express but have to live with months and sometimes years on end.

Yet what a thought that it should be a Dream!! For, to my mind, and to that same extent of mind as I value my Life or any Life, perhaps to that extent that my own brain keeps my heart beating and can fill my head with Dreams in Sleep, it can’t be overstated just how basic an amenity this is: that we agree that Facts Exist. Our time has known so many ways with which to disconfirm another man’s humanity, it has become a joke. I’ve laughed at ethnic slurs, at sexist jokes, stereotypes and insults of surpassing wit and venom. Yet I always laughed in knowing that they did not matter, for beneath the surface loomed a Truth: that we are all in this together. Though on different sides, we’re seeking the Same Thing(s). To say that facts exist is to say this: that I am Real to you, and you are Real to me. That this most basic, sacred, banal bond between us can’t be broken. Though we disagree about that NATURE of Reality, our seeking it remains our first and final Right. There is a Truth, and there’s no fooling it, though we are fooled in our mortality.

Conversely, to insist there are no facts is to assault the Mind in such a way the Mind can’t handle. It’s to violate the Laws of Logic which must surely govern our physical existence, if such an existence can be grasped. It is to say, “I value my opinion, though it is mere, preferring it, with prejudice, to anything you claim, however piously, to know for certain, though I hope that being humble in my limitations I can sway the masses in my favour and supplant you.” Finally, it is to say: “You are not truly human to my eyes. There’s nothing I can learn from you, for I elect that which I can imagine for myself instead, and I’m more interested in what I can learn ABOUT you than what you can teach me.” To deny Reality is, IN Reality, to say that him whom you deny does not exist in YOUR World of Experience, and this Reality, though it’s denied, is felt more harshly than can be imagined by the man who’s disconfirmed in such a fashion. If “there are no facts” to which we can agree, we don’t share a Reality. You do not see me as a fellow in the World, but a phenomenon in your own head, if even, and though *I* can see, quite clearly, that you see me in this way, even the fact you see me thus you may deny.

So I say: just forget all your opinions, your pretenses to social justice, to some scientific rigour, to artistic credibility, to Beauty, Goodness, Truth, the lot of it. Beyond those niceties, we have to ask the simplest question: am I REAL to you? Does my existence truly matter more than your opinion? If so, then we can work from the presumption this is so, and we can do away with calling it “presumption”; It’s a Fact. Yet if not, then you have disconfirmed me, not just as a HUMAN being, not just as a CONSCIOUS being, but as ANY sort of Being in the World. What man can speak of treating others “fairly”, “clinically”, or “lovingly” if this most basic human need is never met?

In Practiced Life, Reality prefigures to extents we’re only starting to imagine. In the realm of Law and Order, economics, politics, and other social issues, moral facts are indispensable. We wish to help those most in need, according to some scientific calculation OF their needs, yet at the same time we don’t dare to disadvantage those whose needs are less but who surpass the piteous in Character. Were this not so, then people who are innocent of any blatant wrong can be turned into pawns within the hands of idealogues, reduced to an abstraction, murdered in mass quantities to serve a liberal agenda, while their murderers walk free, with sympathy, for it was simply “much too hard” for them to do what’s Right, and “Right” is relative depending NOT upon one’s Character but rather on one’s NEEDS.

Yet needs are not the point of progress. We set out to make life EASY for those in need with the INTENT that they would DO WHAT’S RIGHT, what we KNEW to be Right, because we’d made it EASIER TO DO SO. Human “rights” and humans “doing what is right” are not distinct, and being “in one’s rights” and “being right” are totally synonymous. All progress aims towards the same long-term goals, and those are shared by rich and poor, by dominator and submissive, even by the Master and the Slave of history; yes, even that condition we call Slavery, believed to be depraved, honours our common human calling MORE than moral skepticism. Thus, we don’t murder rich people for being rich, nor hate the Jews, nor blame the Whites, for all the Evils of the World, and “innocence” is not merely a euphemism for “naiveté”; it is both Goal and Modus Operandi. Nor do WE, as People, look to those in power thinking they have only bad intent. Motives ulterior to Innocence have to be proven; motives serving Innocence are demonstrated by default.

It’s so in Love and Sex as well. Plenty of peoples protested the “right to marry”, but how many people ever manage to attain this lofty posture we call “Matrimony”? Be that as it may, the difficulties are objective. If I like a girl, I am not justified by that alone to seek her out romantically. Yet if I have sufficient reason to believe that I am QUALIFIED to be her man, and if I have sufficient reason to believe that she is QUALIFIED to be my woman, and if, MOST IMPORTANTLY, I hold sufficient reason to believe that WE are QUALIFIED to DATE, that by our Dating we might serve Society, then I’m not just entitled to pursue her, but I must, and this is not an obligation either she or I can change. It matters not how many times the girl says “no”, for she does not decide this; nor do I get to opt out of the pursuit, however it may hurt me. Rules are rules, and what compels a man to seek a woman has been codified so many times it cannot be contested honestly without admitting to mere savagery. That stories of erotic conquest vary cannot be disputed; that they’re all just variations ON ONE THEME must be accepted with sheer veneration. Just as he who serves the Law is Innocent in serving it, unless he demonstrates BY HIS OWN ACTIONS that he’s been corrupted by opinions, so it is too that he who seeks a woman’s heart is Innocent in doing so until it can be PROVEN that the search is futile, that her heart, even if it could be attained, would only be corrupted by the effort.

Why, then, do we mock the men who try to use their power towards erotic ends? We should rather ask ourselves: Why should they HAVE to? Are they not attractive BY DEFAULT of their success?? And if Success is not the rule by which we measure that peculiar virtue which we call “attractiveness”, what is? How can you KNOW that you are dating someone Beautiful? How can one claim to be “in Love” if, by so doing, one does nothing for Society? What use are gossip, weddings, legal contracts, diamond rings, elaborate cakes and flowers, (not to mention flower girls in limousines who lose their lives to some drunk driver whose opinion entitles him to drink and drive) if Love is nothing more than quid pro quo between “consenting adults”? CERTAINLY one cannot call the Casting Couch a “quid pro quo” with such disdain if it is nonetheless SUPERIOR IN DIGNITY to modern love, the latter caring NOT for merit as a promise of affection but deciding matters based on need alone, employing status as a means and NOT THE END ITSELF. I ask you this: to those who think that Harvey Weinstein did abuse his power, what entitles ANY one to sex? To say “consent” says nothing, since consent must certainly BE EARNED, OBJECTIVELY.

Too many times, we take opinions too far, and we are proven wrong to humble us. Yet one is never “proven wrong” when no one can be right to prove it. Being Right is hardly easy, and sometimes we rather would be proven wrong and humbled. Yet PURSUING what is Right REQUIRES us to ACT AS THOUGH WE KNOW, and that Intent, in FACT, establishes our Innocence and Common Good. If we begin by SEEKING WHAT IS RIGHT, we soon are SPEAKING WHAT IS RIGHT, and that facilitates a LEARNING. Skepticism does not do that; it but warrants warrantless opinions.

Existence is not personal, but interpersonal, so “facts” exist around us, everywhere. Even our personal relationships are founded ON them. We might think, by an analogy, that charging nothing for a service makes the service somehow “righteous”. Yet, quite often, making something free just hurts the business of those who require profit to persist. It’s like buying out the competition, charging less for the same product, to the ultimate extreme. By the same token, claiming all opinions are equal and that none are facts, while it APPEARS to be more generous and humble, simply reinforces prejudicial self-entitlement to uninformed opinions. Reality requires all opinions to pass SOME sort of Test of Value, but unfortunately it’s the nature of Delusion that those who do not pass that test forget Reality Exists.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]