The Philosophy Cure by Laurence Devillairs

Author:Laurence Devillairs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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OPIUM SMOKERS

KARL MARX ASSERTED that religion is the “opium of the people,”1 a system of beliefs with the power to ease suffering and deaden consciousness. All belief is an escape from reality, an aspiration to artificial, and hence illusory, paradises. For to believe is to nurture illusion—illusion about the reality of your own situation and what you can reasonably hope for. Belief is a pathology of hope that leads you to wish simultaneously for too much and for too little: too much, when it denies reality; and too little, when it is unable to effect change.

Our opium dens are not designed to promote action. They respond to a unique need—the need to be consoled. Reality is what it is—the unvarnished truth—but beliefs, utopias, myths, and ideologies are all ways we have found to console ourselves over it.

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