Editor’s Note: Go read more good stuff at Didactmind.com
As you can probably guess, I’ve been RIDICULOUSLY busy this week – I was up until 1am writing a massive report and putting together the graphics (I do love myself some R code, especially the ggplot2 package), and generally wracking my brains until my head felt like it was going to explode. And I STILL found the time to go out for a walk and nearly get my hand pecked off by the local geese (them bastards are VICIOUS – try feeding them bread some time and you’ll quickly see what I mean), and even managed to hit the gym for bench day.
All of that means, of course, that posting has fallen straight into the shitter. Now that the pressure is off (slightly) for about half a day, I think it’s well past time that I start catching up on a few things. For, although I have been absurdly busy, I have not completely forgotten about the wider world.
There has been quite a bit of outrage from the Usual Suspects about a recent 60 Minutes episode, in which Establishment whorenalist Leslie Stahl did the unthinkable:
She interviewed people suffering from gender dysphoria who took mind- and body-altering drugs, and even underwent surgery, about what they went through. And she gave them a platform to tell other Americans that there are actual, serious, terrible consequences to screwing with the realities of human biology.
#BasedTucker covered it for us in a segment on his show:
The “trans” community – also known as “mentally ill freaks who need counselling and therapy, not self-inflicted hormonal and surgical mutilation” – reacted extremely angrily to Ms Stahl’s rare moment of actual, honest journalism. This is what you might expect. Liars always and inevitably claim that they are happy living with their own lies and delusions, but the moment you pierce their bubble of delusion, they react with outrage and hatred.
People like you and me understand the following sentiment very well:
https://didacticmind.com/2018/10/do-not-unmake-what-god-made.html/embed#?secret=YZ4dW9cLKa
Those who disagree with this notion, directly challenge the truth and refuse to acknowledge it. Such liars also claim that saying things like, “the ‘T’ in LGBT contradicts the ‘B’” is violence. They claim that saying things like, “transgender people are mentally ill”, is violence. And they claim that any man who doesn’t want to date another man who surgically mutilated his own body to pretend that he is a woman, is guilty of violence toward trans “women”.
This is but the most obvious of their long series of lies. And normally, people like us would not waste time dealing with such nonsense.
Yet, there is a good point from all of this that is worth understanding and exploring a little bit. And that is a simple fact:
Telling the truth is, in fact, an act of violence.
And that is a VERY GOOD THING.
Consider, brother, what happens when you tell the truth to someone trapped in a bubble of delusions. You have shattered, perhaps irreparably, that person’s self-image. He or she will never be able to go back to the comforting warmth of those lies ever again, and will instead have to face the cold, harsh truth.
That IS, absolutely, without question, an act of violence. You have quite forcefully and violently smashed your fist straight into someone’s illusions about the world.
There are at least two ways of looking at this. The way that you look at this act will largely depend on your personal psychology, and that in turn and inevitably comes back to the standard heuristic of r/K selection theory.
I have talked and written about this many times before, so I won’t go into the details yet again. Basically, if you have an r-selected mindset, one major consequence of that mindset is that you will seek to warp reality to suit your vision of a Utopian ideal. By contrast, if you are K-selected, one major consequence of the alternative mindset is that you will tend to accept things for what they are, and do your best to work within the established order that you see in the world around you.
Which do you suppose is the more productive, healthy, and useful attitude?
Furthermore, those who argue that you must not strip people of their delusions, are being downright stupid. Essentially, they are telling you that it is right, good, and just, to infantilise people and keep them in a state of permanent idiocy, dependence, and foolishness.
So who, then, is the more evil? You, or the person that you are keeping in that state by pushing that person to believe in lies?
Those who believe in and love lies would also like you to believe that it is not Christ-like to tear up lies and confront people with them. They claim that it is not “tolerant” and “loving” and “kind” to do so.
Oh, really?
What, exactly, do you suppose His Hugeness was doing when He walked into His Father’s temple, took up come cords, twisted them into a flail, and beat the shit out of the gamblers and tax collectors who had defiled the place?
Furthermore, was the Big Cheese being all nice and kind and polite when He said THIS?:
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? 34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah,[f] whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
— Matthew 23:29-36, English Standard Version
Again, I must have rather missed that bit of the Bible that said that Jesus Christ was some sort of totally tolerant, totally chilled-out hippie. He was absolutely nothing of the sort. He was – IS – the Truth. And He went forth and told the truth, and people reacted violently to it.
That, again, is a VERY GOOD THING.
So do not be discouraged if someone tells you that he is offended by you. As long as you are speaking from a desire to tell the truth and state plainly that 2 + 2 = 4, then you have nothing to worry about. The fact that your opinion is violently disagreeable to others, is very good. Whoever it is that you have violently offended, might just wake up and take another look at what he or she is doing wrong in life, and might just take steps to fix it.
You will have to pay a price for speaking those truths. There is no doubt about this, precisely because telling the truth is an act of violence. So be it. That is the reality of our world. If we did not live in a world built on lies, there would be no need to worry about the cost of telling the truth.
If you want to live in a world built on truths and not lies, then you have to be willing to work for it. And that means that you have to speak the truth, no matter what it costs you. So stop making excuses, and get on with it.
Very good article!