Looking Evil in the Eye: Pretense
August 16, 2014 Leave a comment
In my series of posts regarding aspects of evil found in our culture, I want to add this post due to its relevance to our current cultural and political makeup. I’m using the word “makeup “on purpose. Beyond it denoting a milieu or environment the word also connotes the topic of this post ~ pretense.
In his book People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, Dr. M. Scott Peck writes in the chapter titled “The Encounter with Evil in Everyday Life” that
“The issue of naming (evil) is a theme of this work. It has already been touched on in diverse instances: science has failed to name evil as a subject for scrutiny; the name evil does not appear in the psychiatric lexicon; we have been reluctant to label specific individuals with the name evil; in their presence, therefore, we may experience a nameless dread or revulsion; yet the naming of evil is not without danger.
To name something correctly gives us a certain amount of power over it. Through its name we identify it. We are powerless over a disease until we can accurately name it…The treatment begins with its diagnosis. But is evil an illness? Many would not consider it so. There are a number of reasons why one might be reluctant to classify evil as a disease. Some are emotional. For instance, we are accustomed to feel pity and sympathy for those who are ill, but the emotions that evil invoke in us are anger and disgust, if not actual hate…
Beyond our emotional reactions, there are three rational reasons that make us hesitate to regard evil as an illness…I shall nonetheless take the position that evil should indeed be regarded as a mental illness.”
Dr. Peck goes on to discuss the three reasons. I will use summary quotes.
“The first holds that people should not be considered ill unless they are suffering pain or disability – that there is no such thing as an illness without suffering….it is characteristic of the evil that, in their narcissism, they believe that there is nothing wrong with them, that they are psychologically perfect human specimens…For we realize that their inability to define themselves as ill in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is actually part of the illness itself…The use of the concept of emotional suffering to define disease is also faulty in several other respects. As I noted in The Road Less Traveled, it is often the most spiritually healthy and advanced among us who are called on to suffer in ways more agonizing than anything experienced by the more ordinary. Great leaders, when wise and well, are likely to endure degrees of anguish unknown to the common man. Conversely, it is the unwillingness to suffer emotional pain that usually lies at the root of emotional illness. Those who fully experience depression, doubt, confusion and despair may be infinitely more healthy than those who are generally certain, complacent and self satisfied. The denial of suffering is, in fact, a better definition of illness than its acceptance.
The evil deny the suffering of their guilt – the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy and imperfection – by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. They cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society.”…
Finally, who is to say what the evil suffer? It is consistently true that the evil do not appear to suffer deeply. Because they cannot admit to weakness or imperfection in themselves, they must appear this way. They must appear to themselves to be continually on top of things, continually in command. Their narcissism demands it…
Think of the psychic energy required for the continued maintenance of the pretense so characteristic of the evil!…”
“I said that there are two other reasons one might hesitate to label evil as an illness…One is the notion that someone who is ill must be a victim….One way or another, to some extent, all these people (the evil) and a host of others victimize themselves. Their motives, failures and choices are deeply and intimately involved in the creation of their injuries and diseases….
The final argument against labeling evil an illness is the belief that evil is a seemingly untreatable condition…It is the central proposition of this book that evil can and should be subjected to scientific scrutiny…It would, I believe, be quite appropriate to classify evil people as constituting a specific variant of the narcissistic personality disorder.”
Dr. Peck goes on to describe this variant of personality disorder:
“In addition to the abrogation of responsibility that characterizes all personality disorders, this one would specifically be distinguished by:
(a) consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
(b) excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
(c) Pronounced concern with a public injury and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of life-style but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
(d) Intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like disturbance of thinking at time of stress.
…
But there is another vital reason to correctly name evil: the healing of its victims.”
(all emphasis -bold type- mine)
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Over the course of some sixty years I have encountered some distinctly evil people. The common characteristic of their personality is the veneer of pretense with which they surround their lives. Perhaps, instead of the word “veneer” the word “mirror” would better convey the 360 degree reflection of themselves they so desire.
In their mind’s eye they see themselves in a grandiose role, a self-assessed worthy role (remember Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?). To support their ‘self-thesis’ the pretentious will seek out others who will regard them in the same way ~ a Super Pac to fund a super ego (the three witches met Macbeth; his ego chose to ‘believe’ their words). Pretentious people will demand to be seen in their ‘light’ only. You become to them only a speck in their shadow.
Those, of course, who can rightly see what every one else can see will disagree. And, if they make any statement contrary to the ‘fairy tale’ narrative imposed they will be called deniers and ignorant or worse.
Today our nation has a President who fits all of the above characteristics of pretense. God help us.
Jesus said, “If the light in you is darkness how great is that darkness.”
Jesus’ perfect love can cast out fear…and evil.
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I liken the characteristic of pretense to the walls of Jericho: The huge stone walls of Jericho looked invincible. Yet, after seven days of marching around the façade with God’s presence (the Ark) in the lead and with ram’s horns blowing on the seventh day, the walls fell down; the city of Jericho became indefensible. My how the mighty façades have fallen over the years.
Cindy Wity 
Realities From My Father
September 1, 2012 Leave a comment
OK. Tell me why the President of the United States would decide to weaken the work requirements related to welfare?
The obvious answer: political gain. But there may also be a not-so obvious reason.
A President who thinks that eighteen holes of golf is work enough has now decreed that laboring to obtain an otherwise free benefit is no longer required. Yet, free lunches, there ain’t no such thing. You the taxpayer are paying for someone to sit on their ass and collect welfare.
By presidential fiat just months before the November presidential election Obama has told us in effect that he doesn’t want the beneficiaries of welfare to have to strain themselves on the way to the 7-Eleven. Lifting that bottle of Jack or that can of malt liquor is work enough. Am I being cruel? No. You’ve been to the 7-Eleven and seen the line waiting to buy lottery tickets. Is this a generalization? Perhaps, but you can fill in your own eyewitness accounts. Obama by fiat diminishes individual effort and seeks to replace it with the collective effort (to win reelection.
What may not be so obvious a motive for this fiat by Obama, who is rabidly anti-colonialism (see Obama 2012, the movie), is his desire to denigrate the Protestant work ethic in America. Beyond political gain he may have decreed this because of his or his father’s own ill-will towards American missionaries. One can only speculate based on the familial and national dysfunction found in Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father.
Obama may very well have thought that American missionaries who were sent over many years from U. S. churches to foreign countries like Africa brought with them free-market enterprise, capitalism and the Protestant work ethic along with the Gospel. Because of Obama’s learned hatred of colonialism there would be little wonder when later Obama would sit within ear shot of the black liberation theology rants of “Rev.” Jeremiah (“God Damn America”) Wright. For Obama those “colonizing-looking” missionaries may have appeared to be bringing with them the shackles of Americanism. To Obama and Wright those falsely perceived “projected” purveyors of slavery via work ethic are anathema. And from Obama’s speeches one can readily tell that Obama detests anything American and especially the individual effort which produces human flourishing. Work is just to be a caged sideshow event outside Obama’s big circus tent of government. Obama’s Big Government Show does not need you to work. It just needs your ticket to the show (your vote).
This is the screwed up thinking born out of Obama’s father’s dreams. And, it is now America’s nightmare.
I learned about work from my father. He showed by his example how to support himself and his family. There were times when my dad worked at two jobs. He did what he had to do. He provided for his family and for his future. He also paid taxes and donated ten percent of his earnings to our local church. I’ve followed in my father’s footsteps (see my previous post). Obama on the other hand has no idea about what I talking about here.
Obama’s father spent his time drinking and womanizing. Obama’s “founding fathers” Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and mentor Frank Marshall Davis, a radical poet and former Communist, taught Obama how to radicalize what he felt inside.
Obama has learned nothing from his father except how to hate that mechanism that promotes cultural and material exchange and success via the marketplace. He hates the hard work that supports it. He lives in the valley of the shadow of colonialism.
Beyond this, Obama, in Howard Zinn-Noam Chomsky-like fashion defines America as the pompous ass that needs to bow the knee to the ever-gracious world – the same world that spits out Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, North Korea’s Kim Il-sung, Iran’s Ahmadinejad and countless terrorists and tyrants and those who support them. And like Zinn and Chomsky Obama thinks America has a big head. But what Obama and these other “big heads” don’t realize is that they are projecting their own dysfunctional personalities onto America.
Obama sees nothing exceptional about America. He sees America as the throw-away packaging that holds his own political gain.
Obama: why work so hard trying to reach for the stars when you can easily reach for your food stamps in the voting booth?
*****
What does the 2012 Obama Presidential election campaign look like? A collective of special interest groups (big labor unions, homosexuals, women on birth control who can’t afford to pay the five dollars every month to buy it even though they attend prestigious colleges, etc.), limp-wristed faux Indian progressives like Elizabeth Warren, extremely wack radicals like Van Jones, giant ‘plasticized’ Hollywood egos craving attention, Wall Street deep-pocket Super-Pac cronies, Green Energy Money Launderers, Occupy Whine Street-ers and all the disenfranchised “not-ready-to shovel” for their lunch people.
*****
Jesse Lee Peterson speaks w/ Dr. Dinesh D’Souza, NY Times Bestselling author of “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” and President of The King’s College. D’Souza’s new film, “2016: Obama’s America” – Love Him, Hate Him, You Don’t Know Him!
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Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Political Commentary, Politics, Writing Tagged with 2012 election, american missionaries, black liberation theology, culture, Jeremiah Wright, Obama, politics, protestant work ethic, social responsibility, welfare reform, work ehtic