The heart of authority

This is gonna be one hell of a confused mother of a text.

But it is because I am confused that I want to write it.

Some free association, it might turn out to be clarifying, purifying.

I was just thinking about authority.

An old professor of mine has written a book about this, which I have read of course. He states that the paternal authority, the top-down ordering and bossing-around kind of style of authority was killed in the spirit of the sixties, and instead, everything became possible. It was like a pendulum that started to sway all the way to the opposite side of ideology. And now, he says, the pendulum is swinging again, because people are confused and they are longing for a firm voice again, they are looking for authority.

This is linked to the absent father. The father who has to be a mother, a brother and a friend, but can no longer be an authority and a way for people to believe in, to obey and adhere to.

Thinking about all of this, I tend to abstract two things from it. First, there is a collective and widespread madness, where everything is possible, and I believe this is a state of fear. I have written about this in my essay ‘the game’, which is part of the booklet ‘some jungle, some music and some games’. It is the freedom the human being has, but I believe it is foremost a freedom to avoid and flee from the simple and undeniable being of truth. It is the freedom of denial, it is the freedom of confabulations and lies.

And when every phantasy becomes acceptable and tolerated, there is the fact that the truth still remains absent, and the only thing which will lead us to true health and freedom is truth. The truth of pain, the truth of sadness, the truth of revolt and ecstasy. Whatever truth is, it should be acceptable, it should be tolerated.

But the lies should not.

We should not all become walking excuses, weak and dark, obscuring and covering up our true hearts and voices.

The second thing I would like to abstract from our desire to return to firmer ground and our search for someone who is prepared to tell us once again that ‘this is the way’, is not really a desire to return to a willful and perhaps unjust and usurping form of installing dogma without justification or rationale, but a desire to find truth just as well. A desire to get out of the randomness of the lies, which are nowadays all possible to believe and to salute to. When everything is possible, there is no more fact.

I think this is why some people, scientists they are mostly called, demand facts and figures, and the replicability of their observations, before they are willing to glue a label of truth unto their findings and resulting theories.

They demand proof, they want things to be sober and not nutty and crazy.

So maybe some people are only believing in science, and maybe science could be a kind of new father-figure, a new form of authority that gets us out of the madness and randomness of human delusion. It can be reassuring to hear from the doctor that that lump we have is not cancer. It can be reassuring to hear that we will not get Crohn’s disease ourselves when someone who does have it has used our toilet.

Science can do much to stop the fear, and it is therefore, since the last few centuries, we have sought this form of ‘enlightenment’ as a way out of madness and fear, which are typical of the ego and the mind.

But it is also possible that science becomes a servant itself. That it starts to soothe and pacify the ego and the mind in ways that are devoid of authority. I want a toy car that runs on fuel and is remotely controllable. I want a gas that will kill the lungs of everyone who breathes it.

So science begets a little brother, called ethics. The ethics of science. But ethics, is that even scientific itself? Is that not more of a philosophical subject? And is philosophy not the field by excellence where every theory is possible, in the idle realms of private thought and idosynratic wish fulfillment?

So I do not know if science is the authority we expect it to be, and if it will ever be that.

We see nowadays, with the issues of climate change and global warming, how she tries to be an authority, but the real authority, considering people like Donald Trump, is still in the realms of delusion, confabulation and lies.

I do think we need a little psychology in all of this, I do think we need perhaps the last of our resorts, and that is psychoanalysis. Freud, Lacan.

We need facts, yes, truth, yes, no more lies, no more illusions, no more madness. But I believe this is a task every man must strive to accomplish and fulfill in his own life and being. Every one of us needs to start being honest, even if this means being open and vulnerable. For there is strength in honesty, which is called integrity. It is standing firm in one’s belief and opinion, in one’s heart and soul, in one's way and conviction. It is being naked, and not covering oneself up with excuses, hastily dug up and displayed in a mostly total irrational reasoning of fear.

I believe the authority we are looking for, we can find within.

It is that which we mostly seek to avoid.

Truth. Honesty. The facts.

No more lies, no more lies.

No more hiding behind a thousand excuses.

Then there will be peace, and the madness will end.

We are longing, in the call for authority, for an end of the lies.

And science, for the moment, is not devoid of lies herself.

The gasses, the toys. The golden cars, the luxury jets. Is all that the way of facts and truth? While people are starving, sometimes brought to starve by force and shrewdness, do the cars and the jet planes really say that all is going good, that everything is great? Are they telling the truth?

They may be scientific, but are they truth?

Or are they just another form of madness?

I am thinking now of the late engineer Jacque Fresco, who I have always admired very much. He claimed that the ways of science were the way to save the world, the way of the future, the way out of poverty, violence and crime. He tried to envision a world without money, based on facts and not human ego and superstition. He also said, no more lies. He has written a few books, with beautiful illustrations of his visions for the future, and all of this is part of the Venus Project, which is continued still today by his companion and colleague.

But science, I do not know. How about the social sciences, like psychoanalysis? What do they value as authority, and to Lacanians, how does authority relate to truth?

Well, it is easy to see. For to be recognized as a Lacanian psychoanalyst, it is demanded that you have made what is called the pass. It is where you have gone through enough soul searching to have found your own truth. It is where you have experienced the habit of avoiding, hiding and denying the truth yourself, and have overcome it in coming to face your own roots and emotional reality.

If you have not come face to face with your own truth, you are not given the recognition of having the authority to guide another person through his or her lies and self-avoidance. So in psychoanalysis, truth and authority are very related. Without realizing truth, there is no recognition of any authority.

Maybe this is not such a bad thing. Maybe it is more than just a promotional trick to get more people into paying an analyst.

And of course, when I am speaking of psychoanalysis, I am already thinking of Buddhism and Eastern thought.

How about the road to becoming a Zen master? A guide in meditation and self-realization, which is also a way to truth? Well, you must equally have come to a realization yourself, you must have realized truth and the emptiness of self in your own inner life.

So could the analyst and the Zen master be the next form of authority? And what would they say? Would they just give you a nod, an aha or a whip on the back? And would they forever say keep going, you are doing great? Without stating any facts themselves? Letting you give them the facts, letting you find your truth, letting you go your way? Being nothing but patient, humble and tolerant?

Like Mother Nature perhaps.

This may be very different from the patriarchal form of authority we were seeing before the sixties. The kind of authority where you may be mad, and you may be crazy, but everyone obeys because of your rank and position in the hierarchical chain. The kind of authority the Nazi’s formed.

This is more of a faith authority, an appreciative and even loving authority. Perhaps it is a form of authority of the mother.

Do you think authority and feminism go together? Or do you think women are unscientific and have no sense for truth?

Do you value intuition?

Your mother ever teach you to be nice to people? She gave you a place to speak your mind? She listened? She cheered you along with open arms when you met your first girlfriend? She give you a forehead kiss when you were down with the fever?

Perhaps the authority of truth is truly a feminine one, an intuitive one, a loving one.

It is a presence which takes the fear away, which calms the mind and brings peace to the questions and illusions. Perhaps it is a presence which heals us like a walk in nature. Perhaps it is an experience of oneness, of finding yourself in peace and contentment, like you knew when you were a baby, and mommy was rocking you in her arms.

Perhaps truth is not so much about words, and when we are asking for validation we are perhaps asking for a heart that beats next to ours, a body that breathes and dreams with us when we sleep, something, or maybe more like it, someone, we can count on.

Can we count on life, can we count on nature? Can we count on things going right when we are naked, vulnerable and not hiding? Can we come out and find a smile, find open arms, and find a heart the beats with ours?

The way to truth, and the way of facts, is a quest for the mother, it is a quest to lose first and foremost. To lose illusions, to lose our ego. For only on truth we can depend, and when the world is full of people lying in pretense, we feel indeed that there is no more ground to stand on. We long for roots, we crave for the earth. We are drowning in lies and delusions, and we all delude each other. Everyone is hiding and every thing is fake.

I think the return to authority cannot be a return to ego, it should not be fascism and right-winged dogma.

It should be about the finger pointing at the moon, not showing off itself, but reality, nature, the being. Open, present and vulnerable, as we all are, and are afraid to be. To be who and what we are. To be true, to give the other person a feeling of solid ground and something, someone they can count on. Something that doesn’t change every second, like the express train of lies some people just vomit and shit out in utter despair, like their lives depend on it.

Maybe we have lost the way, maybe we have gotten used to lying. Maybe all we do is use excuses. And then try to display some authority in all the desperate displays of our panicking ego. Impotence this is. Despair this truly is. It is not what we need. It is not a peaceful reassurance, it is not what gives us faith, it is not what makes us believe in our efforts and endeavors, it is not the way things can really function and work out.

I believe we are all working against each other, we are all keeping each other at a distance, deluding one another and growing ever more fixed and fixated in our images and our lies.

And underneath all of that despair, underneath that ego, we are crying for someone to state a fact. Someone who does not vomit lies. Someone to believe in.

Well, why don’t we start believing in ourselves? Why do we not start being people other people can believe in?

Because the way forward is anarchy, it is working together, it is not obeying some random and relative law, it is not even physics or medicine that is going to save the day.

It is us, it is we, it is all of us together, changing, being there for one another, being honest, in yes, in no. Being open and real, providing firm ground instead of marshes. Speaking our heart, opening our soul.

It is us, we are the ones who have to be about facts. Not about the law, nor the police, not about another father, scientist or devil.

If we need and need something to believe in, and if we need to believe in something, we must start to believe in ourselves, and making sure others can believe in us. No more lies, no more cover-ups, no more hiding, no more of the image and the ego.

And thus will stop the mind, thus will calm delusion.

Thus we’ll be authority, thus we’ll find ground we can grow our roots in. Thus we find trust, belief, faith and the energy and spirit to go on, to continue, to be doing as we’re doing and be just who we are.

And before you know it, you’re the one with that bright smile when your baby daughter brings home her first boyfriend. You’ll be the one saying ‘you’re doing great’. You’ll be encouraging, you’ll be inspiring, you’ll be the fire in another’s heart, that will take them through the cold of winter’s days.

So let us be true, let us be who we are, and let us brings warmth and spirit so others can be true and not any different from just who they are.

Let your heart be the authority.

And instead of hard, the world will become art.