The Doubter's Companion Read Online Free PDF Page A

by society. These religions also share a disdain for animism.
    This usually takes the form of an attack on superstition. Some of it is justified. But most animistic superstition consists not of destructive fear but of populist ways to deal with social problems. Dietary rules. Marriage restrictions. The abstract religions do the same, except that their rules on everything from eating pork to fornication are apparently received as direct instructions from God.
    What bothers the intellectual religions about animism is not the idea that everything from rocks to humans contains life, but that humans are therefore no more than a constituent part of a living whole which is the earth. That this view denies special rights and powers to the human is upsetting. That it denies special rights and powers to the structures of society is unacceptable.
    Large organized societies are dependent on the separation of the human race from all the rest. This denial or demotion of the non-abstract frees us to act as if we were not limited by our physical realities. Without this liberation much of our PROGRESS would not have been possible.
    And yet we are limited by physical realities. So our liberation has been built upon a great deal of self-delusion, which has turned gradually into very real political, social and economic weaknesses.
    The argument today between those who see themselves as the forces of progress and those who appear to be resisting is a continuation of the old drive by the abstract religions to eliminate the animist view. Yet many of the new animists—environmentalists and sociologists, among others—are the product of a strange cross-breeding. They call for the reintegration of humanity into the worldly whole, but belong themselves to the intellectual structures of their enemies.
    The professional environmentalists are a good example of this contradiction. They lobby like arms contractors. Haunt international conferences. Fight for tiny amendments in government and corporate behaviour. Small changes in content rules. They have the strength of fighting with their opponents’ best weapons.
    But after only twenty years in existence much of the environmental movement has taken on the form of just another corporation or interest group. Their interest may be disinterest, but their methods are one with the rational élites and are therefore limited to the details of corporatist life. These new animists are attempting to justify restraint and a common-sense approach to self-respect with the use of intellectual tools designed to eliminate both.
    Still, they are a sign of more than dissatisfaction. There are dozens of other signs of people trying to take their distances from the rational system. Often these attempts seem silly or naïve and are discounted by the corporatist structures. But these people are reaching in the same direction, away from the isolation of our society. What they are seeking is some sense of integration or balance.
    ANOREXIA    A condition aspired to by most middle-class women. See: MONARCHS.
    ANSWERS    A mechanism for avoiding questions.
    This might be called obsessional avoidance or a manic syndrome. It is based on the belief that the possession of an education—particularly if it leads to professional or expert status and, above all, if it involves some responsibility or power—carries with it an obligation to provide the answer to every question posed in your area of knowledge. This has become much more than the opiate of the rational élites. It may be the West’s most serious addiction.
    Time is of the essence in this process. An inability to provide the answer immediately is a professional fault. The availability of unlimited facts can produce an equally unlimited number of absolute answers in most areas. Memory is not highly regarded. Right answers which turn out to be wrong are simply replaced by a new formula. The result of these sequential truths is an