Chapter 1 Idolatry
Fidelity
The baby is the result of microscopic biological causes, themselves born of sentimental motives: the perceptions of the lovers, but also acquired and inherited from their educators. Formidable is this capacity of the living to rest, to repair itself, to reproduce itself—virtues beyond the reach of any human engineering! If the matter of what lives already contains so much, what can be said of the elusive reality? What system of equity or retribution should be presumed for sensitive injuries? It is in this vital, material and immaterial support that the child grows up as an assertive effect, its concretization relying, above all, on conceptions and learning that are not his/hers. A majestic set of causes that allows it to prosper and flourish—a success testifying to the wisdom on which it rests, a wisdom that demands fidelity as much as to the truth received from the senses.
As we sometimes ignore the truth, any degree of skepticism, objectivity or empiricism that supplants acquired fidelity leads straight to barbarism, dictatorship, and disintegration. Yet, between choices and positions, we can distinguish those with the best consequences for those we love, those we could love, and for all things created. In this faith in coherence of the causalities and effects, in fidelity, we reassure ourselves of the un-perceivable realities that represent our choices.
Fidelity guides attention; enhances intuition and judges perceived facts then assimilated. To neglect it gravely arms our learning capacities, the accumulation of falsehood further alters future learnings—since without fidelity, without faith in causal coherences, no usefulness is anticipated, and intuition and imagination cease to function and stop guiding attention. Thus, the hard science of the Cartesians, based solely on the senses and rejecting all received ideas, is considerably limited: it is the acquired coherence that must direct the quest for more coherence, not experience.
In the same way, it is better to consult not the pious or the just, but the most atheistic followers of witchcraft: experts in the exploitation of occult forces, from which they derive abuses that escape human laws. By throwing their anathemas every day at rivals, they know that there is more than meets the eye, and this, pious and wise, lovers of harmony and equity, forbid themselves absolutely. To measure the care due not to offend the paranormal world, it is not the priests who should be consulted, but the impious devotees who secretly indulge in the worst heresies and illegal rituals for the sake of prestige, to the point of defying the laws to ensure the support of demons. They turn mathematics into numerology and astronomy into astrology to justify their crimes—denying the virginity of Mary or the water turned into wine… They will be considered the most qualified to praise sex change in infants or the latest vaccine.
But in the face of this evidence, divinity has reserved a formidable argument for empiricist and opaque minds. Few of them too will continue to think that only the world perceptible to the senses exists, given their psychedelic zeal.
The set of coherence of cause and effect, given the success achieved through experimentation, requires the fidelity of those who attest to this wisdom. For the rejection of this vital evidence stands against coherence, and, therefore, against all these lives. It is unthinkable to obtain their approval for what threatens them and their community. Neither have scientists attained more wisdom nor idols have been so successful. Original coherence may well seem old-fashioned: it remains vital. We owe it absolute fidelity. The truth of the senses is sometimes vital; the wisdom of fidelity always is.