I know people who ascribe to the teachings of the late (and unlamented, by me anyway) Aleister Crowley. Crowley, a British scholar of the occult and other things "magickal," created a belief system he called Thelema. He summarized his teachings thusly: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
I always have been uncomfortable with that as a guiding principle for life. Until I started reading a series of articles in this week's Omaha World-Herald on a superficially unrelated topic, however, I could not clearly say why. Now I can, so I will.
The articles, which are to conclude this-coming weekend, tell in chronological order the story of one Jim O'Gara, erstwhile attorney and consummate fraud artist, who wreaked pure havoc all over the Midwest and left a tangled mess of debt, divorce, and fraud victims in his wake. He got disbarred for (among other things) lying in affidavits to the court. He obtained a grand total of well over $ 1 million from banks and private investors by fraud, including forging his then-wife's signature on loan guarantee paperwork. (Her father, the original developer of Westroads shopping mall, was quite rich . . . and so was she, until she married O'Gara. She wound up bankrupt and got a divorce after O'Gara defaulted on the loan for which he had forged her signature--a loan she knew nothing about until she was served with the court papers notifying her of the judgment against her.) He bought a thriving, well-established furniture-crafting business and ran it into the ground in only 3 years. He hid its tangible assets from creditors and lied about that under oath. He generally conned his way through the court system, getting naught but slaps on the wrist from courts in several jurisdictions because O'Gara managed to con friends and family members over and over to speak out on his behalf.
While I do not yet know the ultimate outcome of O'Gara's story, I think he will finally pay for his crimes. The World-Herald articles have included enough foreshadowing to suggest it, at least. That's what separates reality from Aleister Crowley's teachings.
In the real world, humans are social beings. We live in societies. We create societal institutions to protect us from the things from which we cannot protect ourselves. In the real world, you can do any damn thing you like, so long as you are willing to accept the consequences. But in Crowley's world, you can do any damn thing you like, period. There are no consequences. You are to serve yourself and your own self-perceived needs, wants, and desires.
It's upside down. It raises the individual above the whole. It's a recipe for anarchy and chaos. Now don't get me wrong. I do not believe everyone must live in perfect lockstep, conforming "or else." The title of this blog establishes that. And I am a great believer in protecting the rights of the minority against the tyrannies of the majority. Just because most people believe something doesn't make it true, right, or correct. After all, when asked, a great majority of Americans consistently state that "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is enshrined in our US Constitution . . . instead of correctly identifying it as being the cornerstone of classical Marxism.
But as I said, we are social beings. And the problem with Crowley's belief system, oddly enough, is the very same as the problem with Marxism (as Karl designed it, not as it has been misused by the totalitarian governments claiming to implement it), to wit: who decides? In the real world, we social beings work though our social institutions and come to consensus. Often, this is not without acrimonious contention (even to the point of shooting wars), but we do work it out. In Crowley's world, as with classical Marxism, the individual's judgment of his own circumstances is raised above everything else. So what do we do when one individual takes advantage of that to his gain and others' detriment? The real world has answers (e.g., "don't do the crime if you can't do the time"). In Crowley's world, nothing happens. The individual is all. If anyone gets run over in the process, too bad for him.
Who knows? I may be wrong about this. Crowley may very well have instituted larger controls on the individual's behavior. Frankly, however, I found what I read of Crowley's writings so disturbing that I could not delve deeply enough into them to discover any such larger controls. If I am wrong, and am shown to be wrong, I will stand corrected. But I don't think I am wrong. Larger controls would be antithetical to Crowley's statement of The Law. In any event, I am totally certain I do not want to live in a world that lets predators and psychopaths like Jim O'Gara justify their behavior in victimizing the rest of us with no adverse consequences to themselves.
[Which leads me to an observation about those who claim passing a law to stop something will do not good, "because criminals will continue to break the law." Laws do not deter. Many laws are broken by people who have no idea those laws even exist. In the real world, we pass laws so that we have a societal mechanism for dealing with people who break those laws. We cannot prevent bad things from happening to people. We can make amends or provide some compensation to those who have suffered as a result.--Ed]
[Which leads me to a related observation as to why I am an iconoclast in the first place. I reject "isms," and political correctness to boot, for the reason that the people pushing those agendas impose their notions of what is good and right and proper on the rest of us without any regard for the sensibilities of the people being imposed upon--or for those of the people being affected by said imposition.--Ed.]
The real world is most certainly not perfect. The line between the rights of the individual and the rights of the larger social whole is amorphous at best. Nor is it always drawn in the correct place. But the real world is much preferable to a system that would loose people like Jim O'Gara on the rest of us without giving us any recourse against the predators amongst us.
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Postscript: How to Identify a Psychopath
[from the Psychotherapy Checklist for Clinicians, created by psychology professor Robert D. Hare]
Is someone you know: glib and superficial? Egocentric and grandiose? Deceitful and manipulative? Impulsive? Lacking in remorse, guilt, and empathy? Lacking behavior self-controls? Lacking a sense of self-responsibility? Addicted to excitement? Demonstrating early behavior problems and adult anti-social behavior?
That someone may be a psychopath. Exhibiting some of these traits is not by itself conclusive. But it does raise red flags all over the place, and you should be very careful in any dealings you must have with such a person.
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