Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real World with Louis James by Doug Casey

Author:Doug Casey [Casey, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-12-08T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Doug Casey: Bah! Humbug!

October 13, 2010

Louis: Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, Doug. But you’re an atheist, and you pay for your own meals, so whom do you give thanks to, if anyone?

Doug: Yes, I guess it’s getting to be that time of year. Holidays can be fun, regardless of one’s beliefs, and for the record, neither you nor Bob Cratchit have to work Christmas Eve.

L: I probably will anyway. I celebrate the New Year, and sometimes raise a glass to Sir Isaac Newton, whose birthday was December 25, but not Christmas.

D: Why is that? I know you’re an atheist as well, but you also call yourself a student of the carpenter of Nazareth, so why not celebrate his birthday?

L: You’re right. I’m what you might call an Atheist Christian; I don’t believe in any gods, but I do find great value in what Jesus actually said and taught, which was to love, forgive, and let live. That’s quite different from what many modern churches teach, which is to fear and to try to control the behavior of others. Such people often have no qualms about employing the coercive machinery of the state to impose their values on others, which Jesus never did nor advocated—his slate was clean, and yet he cast no stones.

But to answer your question, ever since I was a teenager, I’ve thought Christmas, at least as practiced in most of the West, is a bad idea. It all revolves around a massive conspiracy of lies aimed at controlling children. I never wanted to control my children; I wanted to help them learn self-control. I decided long before I had any children that I would never lie to mine. That’s bad psychology. I wanted my children—whatever else they might come to think—to always regard me as a reliable source of information. And 23 years after the first was born, they all still do.

Plus, if you think about it, Santa Claus is basically God on training wheels. He’s omniscient—knows if you’ve been bad or good—and punishes or rewards you accordingly. If I believed in a god, this would seem like a bad idea to me, as children come to first discover that Santa does not know everything, and then find out the whole thing is a scam. The collapse of the Santa conspiracy sows seeds of doubt as to the supernatural, not to mention distrust of parents.

D: But you didn’t send your kids back to school having to confront their peers after receiving no presents.

L: Of course not. We enjoyed the holiday songs and stories, I just never told my children they were true. They were fun fantasies like Curious George or Batman. I buy trees and decorate them, but I call them New Year’s trees, and we give each other presents on New Year’s Eve.

Later, when I started making friends in former Soviet countries, I found that the Soviets had done essentially the same thing; Marx said religion was the “opium of the masses,” after all.

It was a slightly embarrassing discovery for a staunch capitalist to make, but a good joke on me.

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