Blood and Bones Part 4: Two Fairy stories, and the Monk with the Very Sharp Razor

If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a whopper. It’s been the rule of propagandists since time immoral. How can I claim to know what’s true when I spend my time making up enormous lies as a writer? Continuing my musings from eight years ago.

 “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily”.  Joseph Goebbels

Here’s a fairy story. 

There was once a wicked witch in the East who believed that everything that mattered could be weighed and measured and there was no need for any of the airy fairy flim flam that went on in the heads of mortals. But she had a rather beastly time in the East so she transported herself on her broomstick to the West where she became enraged when she found that things were even more sticky and gooey.  Unnecessary sticky things went on in people’s heads and what’s more they would keep running about having gooey fun with each other.  So she developed a severe grudge and came to want everything that could not be weighed and measured to be turned to stone.  But nobody would listen to her so she wrote all her grievances in a little book.  And when at last she died with her last breath she cursed the world brandishing her little book from her death bed and wished that all mortals be turned to stone.  At first, anybody who read her book laughed at it because it was very silly and childish.  (And very badly written.) But one day some greedy and selfish crooks wondered if turning people to stone wouldn’t be a first rate idea. So they took the wicked witch’s silly book and said to all their friends that it had magic powers and would change the world.  The book was passed around and, slowly, slowly, the magic spell began to work and a dark shadow was unleashed upon the whole world because everybody believed that this was true and, how things had to be.  And faster and faster, all the good things that were in people’s hearts like love and friendship (because the wicked witch had said such things were unfeasibly gooey and sticky) were replaced by selfishness and greed and hate and fear and everybody felt unhappy but they didn’t know why  And one of these crooks whispered in the ear of another powerful witch from another country and she spread the word and said that everything that all gooeyness and stickiness was now to be forgotten and laughed at.  And so it was that the darkness descended on the world like a thick choking fog.  And people had no way of defending themselves against it and they began to turn to stone and the witch’s curse began to come true,

If you haven’t guessed already, the villain of this tale is Russian born pulp fiction writer, Ayn Rand.  In Ayn Rand’s grindingly awful world, stability would be achieved by having no social organisation and with all individuals concerned only with their own ends. Altruism would be discounted and only self-interest allowed.

What is frightening is that her bonkers belief became widespread in the US government of Ronald Reagan and on to UK premier Margaret Thatcher who famously said “There is no such thing as society”. Yes, it’s true, she did actually say that in an interview with Women’s Own Magazine on 31st October 1987 and it was an idea directly channelled from Rand.

And when this stony hearted philosophy was put into action via economists such as Friedman and Hayek it devolved power from governments.  But lurking in the shadows were the banks (nb And the Oligarchs).  And the banks had only one end in view – accumulating money. and, eventually, through Alan Greenspan the ideas brought about the collapse of two world economies; that of South east Asia in the nineteen nineties and the whole western economy in 2008. It was indeed self-interest - an extraordinary display of open and naked greed, a great slobbering banquet that continued for years until nearly every cupboard and fridge was empty whilst the rest of us looked on in horror.   The Big Lie became the big Truth.

And still it continues.  As if with a wave of a magic wand The Conspiracy theorists, The Randists, the Scientologists, the Bankers, the Rhapsodists, the Capitalists, the corrupt politicians and other hoaxers and scammers are all clambering over one another like a pit of writhing vipers ready to sink their fangs into a cowed and cowering humanity. They see a world so maddened that it can be driven for their own ends. And so they can disseminate their own stories, the conspiracies, the year zero, any weird belief system, the necessity of accumulation of money and stuff – The Fairy stories spread.  A massive one up for Herr Goebbels.

“But, hey!  Hang about!”  Says Skidmore looking up from his artisan chilli flavoured gin.  “Here you are banging on about not believing in conspiracy theories and you’ve just farted out one of the biggest.  The virtual collapse of Western Civilization brought about by a pulp fiction writer. How come you can believe in this and not the one about the moon-landings or whatever?”  Fair play., Skidders.  Except that all of this is well known and documented.  The perpetrators admit to it openly. and speak freely about it with little remorse. The banks did a job on us and they got away with it, bonuses and all.

 “What’s more, Skidmore, I say, theatre cannot survive in a Randist world.  Theatre is a communal activity and in Ayn Rand’s world everyone will have retreated inside behind locked and bolted doors and shuttered windows staring at old videos of Dad’s Army, shotguns resting on their knees.

“Ah so you only care about your own self-interest.  Isn’t that what psychologists call cognitive bias?  What you believe is true and what everybody else believes is a conspiracy? Cognitive dissonance, innit?

I’m beginning to wish I didn’t recommend that part time course to Skidmore.

OK how do I cut through my cognitive bias?  The fact is, I don’t think I can.  Perhaps I shouldn’t.  It is what makes me, me after all.  But, as a writer I guess I ought to know where my cognitive bias lies at least.

Here is another story and one I was involved in and know, hand on heart, to be true. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes

I was travelling by train down Italy and happened to share a compartment with a young Swedish guy.  He was affable and easy going and for some reason he felt compelled to show me the contents of his suitcase.  It was literally stuffed full of bank notes.  He happily explained how he had sold everything he owned and was taking the cash to join a group in Corfu, he persuaded me to meet up with him on the island and he would show me round.  And I could join them if I liked.  If I donated all my money. As it turned out the headquarters of this cult was a large rusting hulk moored in the harbour.  The acolytes, having handed over all their worldly possessions were living and eating in communal dormitories in fairly Spartan conditions.  Nothing strange in that.  At that time There was any number of weird cults living communal lives in odd places. This particular cult was called Scientology. Oddly enough, rather than the peace and tranquillity promised the “Clears” the officers or priests or whatever they were, seemed to have a high old time living it up the bars and taverns of the town and, just down the quay, the founder of the cult, the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard was luxuriating in a large white motor yacht draped with bikini-clad lovelies. I saw it with my own eyes. Cognitive dissonance on the grandest of grandiose scales. I declined the opportunity to throw in my lot with them.

I love Science Fiction and I have a bookshelf full of crumbling paper-backs to prove it.  What I love about it is the way it can consider the what-ifs of the world.  But somehow you get the impression that there are people out there who believe, not only that this could be a future but that it actually is the present.  So you get Star Trek fans learning Klingon and, wait for it, people registering their religious beliefs as Jedi or, maddest of all, Scientologist.  OK, if you're doing it in a Santa Claus sort of tongue in cheek way, but, no, these folk are serious.  I mean Scientology is a pyramid selling scheme.  How do you get to worship a pyramid selling scheme?

And in another cult:

"We were taught that we were being persecuted because we were God's chosen people and that the world outside didn't understand us," Anna Baron - The Polygamists Daughter.

We believe there must be something more than just chance guiding the world otherwise why are we so poor while others have so much wealth? We reason, It must be the devil or the Illuminati. We look to spurious answers because they look so much more juicy and enticing.  Times journalist David Aaronovitch says “We like the idea that there is an explanation for everything but we also like the idea that there is a hidden explanation as well.”

Sometimes we can’t or won’t see what is in front of our faces.  The plain and simple truth.

The law that the simplest answer is usually the right one was dreamt up 700 years ago by a monk called William from Ockham near Guildford. In a complicated world of cock up and chaos, most conspiracies and belief systems require far too much in the way of organisational skill, money, resources and the bending of the laws of physics to make any sense at all.  They are too complicated to work without someone somewhere spilling the beans or inadvertently revealing the hidden truth.  If something is too good or bad to be true then it generally is. William of Ockham taught that cant and hypocrisy ought to be sliced away from any argument as if with a very big, razor.   Slice, slice, slice like a medieaval Sweeney Todd. Let us all remember this playwrights and poets alike, at least once a year on April 10th William of Ockham’s official commemoration day.