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First, I want to
make one observation on the comments to last week’s blog. I am sorry
that I am offending people. But your life and happiness are at stake, and the
freedom of America is at stake. So the issue is worth pursuing.
Anyone who reads the Bible has to be impressed with one basic fact. It
instructs us that we should do two sets of mutually impossible things: When
faced with the evil man, we should give him an eye for an eye and
simultaneously turn the other cheek. We should be fruitful in the sexual
sense and multiply and at the same time regard even sexual thoughts as evil.
Also, we should be fruitful in the productive sense, yet take no thought for
tomorrow; what we shall eat or what we shall wear.
Clearly what happened was that, once the original works of Moses and the
prophets had won great esteem, other people came along and tried to promote
their own ideas by sneaking them into the Bible (originally the works of
Moses and the prophets). The first case of this (of which I am aware) is with
regard to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah, of course, preached that the evil man
should receive the evil consequences of his evil actions. But some time after
Isaiah was dead, another fellow came along with a very opposite philosophy,
that one could escape the consequences of one evil acts by putting them off
on a goat. This fellow pretended to also be Isaiah, and in the King James
version the writings of both men are jumbled together as the Book of Isaiah.
Fortunately, modern linguists have analyzed the Book of Isaiah and concluded,
from an analysis of grammar and style, that two parts of it were written by
different men (whom they call First Isaiah and Second Isaiah). First Isaiah
was the real Isaiah, and he taught the principle of justice. Second Isaiah
was a phony who tried to slip over his philosophy of the scapegoat by
claiming to be the great prophet.
In general, precisely because the Bible is so widely respected by so many
people, those who have an intellectual axe to grind try to slip over their
own ideas under its guise. Thus the Bible which has come down to us today is
a confused amalgam. For example, some people were offended by my observation
that Jesus of Nazareth was a communist.
There are broad hints of this in the New Testament, the violent attacks on
the rich, the persecution of individuals making foreign exchange (the money
changers). But the real evidence that Catholic Christianity endorsed
communism comes from a study of history. And the real failure of those who
accept the Bible as the word of God and claim that it is the central
influence on their lives is that they do not want to know as much as possible
about the historical facts concerning the characters they so admire.
Jesus, for example, was a member of the Jewish group called the Essenes. They
preceded him in time, and his teachings were the same as theirs. But the
Essenes were openly communist. Again, the classical Roman Empire had a mixed
economy. When the Christians took over in the 4th century A.D., Rome became a
communist/feudal economy without money.
Communism was abolished by the Protestants, specifically the Calvinists. The
Catholics defended it tooth and nail. To this day, to join a Catholic
monastery one must share one’s wealth in common and not own any private
property. When one realizes that the Jewish Essenes often called themselves
The Poor, Jesus’ advice, “Take all that thou hast and give to the
Poor; come follow me,” takes on new meaning (i.e., join Jesus’
Essene group and share your wealth in common).
This week I would like to step back from politics and consider some issues as
to how a causal view affects one’s personal life. First, the use of
alcoholic beverages.
It is well known that among those who drink, alcoholic beverages are very
highly esteemed. Indeed, the way that the institution of slavery got started
in ancient Rome was not by conquest. Rather the Romans grew grapes and made
wine. They then traded this wine to the barbarians in Gaul, who would capture
their own people and trade them as slaves.
Against this very strong desire on the part of drinkers, let us weigh the
non-drinker argument.
1. Alcohol tastes terrible. Mixing it with a good-tasting fruit juice only
mitigates the bad taste. For example, grape juice is very sweet. Wine has no
real taste. The sweetness of the grape juice offsets the ugly taste of the
alcohol. If drinkers object to this, all they have to do is to think back to
the effort it took them to acclimate themselves. There is something else
about the alcoholic beverage that is attracting them besides the taste.
2. The side effects of serious drinking are quite disturbing. The human body
is desperately trying to get rid of the poison, and the drinker will often
regurgitate what he has consumed. It is not a pleasant experience.
3. Under its influence, one becomes progressively less and less aware of his
surroundings. One acts like a clod in social situations. One cannot drive a
car safely. Often one cannot walk. And, for males, one cannot perform the sex
act. The puzzle here is that these people consider alcohol an absolute must
when contemplating a relation with the opposite sex. (During Prohibition
deaths from cirrhosis of the liver dropped significantly.)
4. And if one persists, then there is a phenomenon called the hangover
through which one’s body is wracked with pain for quite some time the
following day (again the result of the ingested poisons).
5. Finally, there is an issue of which most drinkers are not aware. But if
you talk to a teetotaler, such as myself, we are simply not tempted. If I meet
a person who likes to consume a lot of refined sugar, I can understand the
temptation because sugar is sweet. But if I meet a drinker, then I am at a
complete loss because alcohol smells and tastes terrible You drinkers seem
like freaks to me, and I cannot understand you..
So if you are uncertain how to meet the above arguments, then wait just a
moment. I have an ability to put things into words, and I believe that I can
answer for you.
Alcohol interferes with the higher levels of the brain. In particular, it
destroys one’s judgement in regard to right and wrong. Most people in
our society are brought up with a Christian code of ethics. They are taught
that to defend one’s self against evil is wrong, to accumulate any
degree of wealth is wrong, to feel hate toward even the most evil person in
the world is wrong and to even have a desire for an attractive member of the
opposite sex is wrong. Most emphatically, it is drummed into their heads
again and again that everything fun is immoral, and everything moral is
boring/painful/ or destructive of their lives in some way.
It therefore follows that, whenever they go out for fun, their conscience is
going to nag at them. Indeed, these people have an expression as to what it
is that alcohol does for them. “I was feeling no pain.” That is,
they are in pain most of the time. Since the alcohol dulls the mind, it gives
them a respite from pain.
When these people look at me, they have a feeling of sympathy. “Poor
Howie. He is an ethical person, a square. He must be in pain most of the
time. I don’t know how he does it.” On the other hand, when I see
an alcoholic falling over into his own vomit, I also have a feeling of
sympathy. “Poor idiot, his life is full of pain.” Obviously we do
not understand each other.
What is wrong with this drinker is that he can not even imagine the code of
ethics he was taught as a child being wrong. He was taught, for example, that
feeling hate is evil. But he cannot help but feel hate. And every time he
feels hate, he feels guilty.
It does not make any sense to me. These people are taught that morality
consists of a set of actions which are directly opposed to human nature. But
who created human nature? In their view, it is God. Let’s see. God
creates a code of morality which human beings cannot practice. But God also
created that human nature which cannot live up to His code. So who’s
fault is it that human beings are bad? Obviously, it is God’s fault.
It’s not our fault that God gave us a human nature that can’t do
the job.
So these people fail in two ways. They fail existentially, meaning that they
cannot perform. In this regard, I always think of the Spanish Armada, which
attempted to invade England in 1588. The Spanish (Catholics) built a large
navy, but it was a disaster. The Catholics of that day (as noted) had a
communist/feudal economy, and it was reflected in the way they built their
ships. English guns had longer range. The English stayed out of range and
inflicted heavy damage. Not one English ship was sunk. The Spanish guns could
only be fired once and could not be reloaded. The ships were badly packed,
food spoiled, cannonballs were the wrong size for the cannons
But even on the rare occasions when these people succeed existentially, they
fail spiritually. That is, win or lose, they come away feeling that they have
done evil, that they are worthless, immoral creatures. So through most of
their lives they have this double sense of failure. They can’t succeed,
and they are not worthy of success.
On this issue, I have been strongly influenced by Nathaniel Brandon’s
concept of self esteem. Self esteem is the conviction that one is fit for
existence and is worthy of existence. To be fit for existence means that, if
action is required, you will know what action to take. If you don’t
know, then you have a confidence that you can learn. This gives you a feeling
that you can succeed at your chosen job. To be worthy of existence means that
you are the type of person who deserves to have good things happen to him.
Quite clearly, it is those people who do not have self esteem who need refuge
in alcohol. It looks to them that they are going to fail at pretty much
whatever they do. And they further have the burden that, if they do succeed,
then they are not worthy of the success. Blanking out one’s mind is the
natural reaction to such misery. And that is the real attraction alcohol has
for them.
If alcohol is the natural reaction to low self esteem, then obscenity is the
way of expressing it. There is nothing which so perfectly captures this sense
that one cannot succeed in reality and that anyway one is not worthy of
success as an obscene word or phrase. In my army days, it seemed that many
sergeants could not complete an English sentence without throwing in an
obscene adjective to modify one of the nouns. To roughly translate, this
meant, life is lousy, I am lousy, everybody is lousy. Can such a person be
said, in any sense, to be happy?
Related to the use of obscenity, is the degradation of sex. Since sex is the
most intense pleasure a human being can experience, it comes to stand for
pleasure, per se. But a person with low self esteem has said in his mind,
“I am not worthy of pleasure.”
Human beings are capable of sexual pleasure on a much higher level than an
animal. This is because humans have 3 levels of motivation. A human being is
motivated by pleasure and pain, just as all animals are. A human is motivated
by emotions (love, hate, fear, anticipation, etc.) as the higher animals are.
(Pleasure and pain are not emotions. They are sensations and have a more
intense but short range quality.)
But finally, human beings are motivated by moral considerations (seek the
good and avoid the evil). Good and evil are abstract concepts, and it is only
the human mind which has the ability to understand them.
Animals are attracted to a sexual mate by outer physical characteristics
which convey that this individual would make a good father or mother. (For
example, large breasts in women convey a high level of estrogen, hence more
intense feminine traits. Visible musculature in men conveys a good provider
and high testosterone (hence more intense masculine traits).
But over and above the traits we have in common with animals, humans have the
ability to think, “This person is of high moral value (or vice
versa).” Romantic love is the combination of an animal attraction with
a high moral evaluation. (Obviously people who have a body-soul dichotomy
cannot fall in love. Such a view tells its adherents that physical sex and
spiritual love are mutually opposite and contradictory. This is why there are
no reports of romantic love through most of the Middle Ages. Romantic love
entered England with the Reformation, and Shakespeare called attention to it
in Romeo and Juliet.
In the 20th century, we had Hugh Heffner, who went back to treating sex as a
purely physical attraction. Heffner’s promise was great pleasure if you
followed the Playboy Philosophy. But the generation which followed that path
is the most miserable and sexually unhappy in modern times. Not only are
there a great many divorces, but no longer do people marry for love. In the
1950s and ‘60s, almost every popular song was about love. The people
who married for love stayed together “until death do us part.”
Today people tear each other apart emotionally and inflict terrible wounds.
One incident which will remain with me for the rest of my life was a phone
call from a women (with whom I had a platonic relationship). She was moving,
she announced, and wanted to give me her new phone number. She suspected, she
went on, that her ex-husband was trying to kill her. She was cutting off all
connection to her former address and phone (easy to do in Manhattan) and
would, as far as he was concerned, just disappear.
I could not know whose fault this situation was. But it amazed me that the
relation between two human beings who had once said that they loved each
other could deteriorate so badly. This is perhaps a worst case, but when I
review my friends and their married/romantic lives, I see one long record of
heartbreak and emotional pain among the generation brought up on Hugh
Heffner’s philosophy.
Cultivating a high self esteem is one of the most rewarding things one can do
in one’s life. It gives you a basic good feeling about yourself.
Whatever hardships life brings your way, you have the spiritual strength to
sail right through them. Avoidance of obscenity and promiscuity are two
important musts. If you feel a temptation to use alcohol (or drugs) to evade
reality, then you must question the moral code you were taught as a child. Is
it really true, and are you really evil for breaking it? Once you have the
right moral convictions and know how to act on them, the temptation for
alcohol will disappear.
Howard Katz
The Gold Speculator
Howard S. Katz is
the editor/publisher of the One-handed Economist, a financial letter which
combines fundamental and technical analysis. He was a bug on gold in the
1970s and became a bug on gold again in late 2002.
Subscribe to the Gold
Speculator (the One Handed Economist)
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