Thomas Holctoft: Parson Trulliber (1806)
from Henry Fielding's 1742 novel
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews
and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams.

" … indulging in innocuously guilty pleasures to discover some sense of freedom …"

I suppose I've been steadily accumulating my belief system since just after birth. I don't know this for sure, but I could speculate that my beliefs are merely the sum of my exposures, though that assertion somehow doesn't seem completely genuine. I understand, as nobody else ever could, how I weighted my absorption, favored some inputs over others, and utterly avoided placing myself in the position where some might influence me. I remember back in the eighties when a vendor mentioned how she'd discovered an entertaining new radio commentator. She said he was on for hours daily and couldn't help but listen in as she made her rounds between clients. She played a piece of one of his programs as she drove us to a lunch meeting. I'd never heard of Rush Limbaugh before. I was appalled by his program. I felt as though my vendor had shared porn with me. Her not-even-a-little-bit-guilty indulgence convinced me I should probably not be doing business with her. I quietly withdrew her contracts as they expired and never hired another contractor from her firm.

It seemed to me that she had been poisoned. I felt genuine concern that I could be similarly influenced, so I ensured that none of my radio presets accessed that station. Later, I learned about FauxSnooze and realized it would just be another apologist outlet, malevolently programming viewers. I have subsequently been extremely careful. I understand the natural attraction that both bread and circuses have. We cannot hardly look away once they gain our attention. The resulting BeLeef systems seem to be underlying our present NextWorld's emergence. Otherwise ordinary-looking people might be carrying the most outrageous BeLeef systems deeply rooted in fundamental falsehoods. They carry grudges they have no natural right to hold, let alone nurture into poisonous possessions. Nobody might suspect that they are every bit as dangerous as any odd suicide bomber. They seem determined to do themselves in and take as many innocents as possible to their utterly fictitious promised land. They were nurtured on misinformation they might have innocently mistook for the genuine article.

Once they open their mouths, though, they disclose. It's genuinely upsetting to me when I come to see that a long-term acquaintance grew up to become a nazi. The misogyny seeps from wherever his soul used to be. He acts overtly racist yet doesn't seem to notice. He speaks with the sorry inevitability of any dedicated nazi. "They were a part of a bloated bureaucracy, so they deserved to get fired." Without an ounce of empathy for the position their illegal firing might put them in or any apparent understanding that by eliminating one senior scientist's position, you also inflict hardship on the dozen service providers whose livelihoods he'd helped support. He doesn't say how he deserved to be treated so viciously; otherwise, it was inevitable. Somebody needed to root out the waste in the system to make it efficient. Such cruelty has nothing to do with efficiency or sufficiency; it's vengeance. That the vengeance has no root in anything real probably renders it more cruel.

These BeLeef systems seem to have been the deliberate product of a frustrated conservatism. Those who attempt to retaliate against their inevitable irrelevance dream up these dances. They employ propaganda tactics that are well known and easily accessible to any aspiring despot. They exclusively offer what most of us would call Guilty Pleasures: temporary political correctness suspensions. They first nudge the edge of propriety before leaning clear through the fence and into the neighboring property. That neighboring property had been cordoned off for good and reasonable reasons. Nobody ever needed such indulgences, let alone become addicted to them. Once the delicate boundaries of propriety get pierced, only degradation can result. What happens to a man when he discovers he can indulge in bottomless obscenity, however tiny each instance? He can cloak it as freedom and insist that the Constitution guaranteed this right, but he could only be wrong. When such wrongs replace actual rights, he becomes a nazi, for that's precisely what nazis have always done. They turn aspiration into perversion and then defend to the death their god-given right to pervert themselves and you along with them. Come on in; the water's fun! (if you're a sadist)

Humans consume no greater poison. It demands some discipline to reject the invitation to indulge in guilty pleasures, for the perverse pleasure of them effortlessly erases any guilt that might have initially been associated with engaging in them. Those poisoned imagine themselves possessing great insights and power, though they are disappointed when so few initially share their views. They seek converts with a Southern Baptist's fervor, for they firmly believe that they've discovered the truth through their liberating perverseness. Their BeLeef seems as unshakable as only myth and misinformation ever can. If it were true, it might be self-evident and not require continuous reinjections of the poison. Our local misinformation AM radio station broadcasts deep mistruth twenty-four-seven. Mechanics and workers, farmers and deliverypersons listen in and get poisoned, indulging in innocuously guilty pleasures to discover some sense of freedom through their days.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz