A Word for the Façade of Truth
Illumination • noun • (ih-loo-mih-nay-shun)
Definition: A false concept of knowledge where one illuminates the knowledge of the divine
Origin: English
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My book THE CRIME WITHOUT A NAME was released on October 12, 2021 and NPR has picked it as one of the top books of the year!
You can order the book—including the audiobook—and watch recordings of my book tour discussions at Eaton and the New York Public Library at thecrimewithoutaname.com.
As disinformation becomes more prevalent in America, our society confronts a crisis of truth, knowledge, and trust.
If we do not believe that people are telling the truth, then we cannot trust what they say and now it will become almost impossible to obtain knowledge. This quest for truth requires a good faith conversation or a dialectic. Truth is discovered through honestly-shared information and good faith conversations.
The method of obtaining truth and knowledge through a dialectic seems like a natural and obvious technique, but within much of the western world and especially within an ethnocidal society like America, people have aspired to obtain truth without dialogue or knowledge.
Within an ethnocidal society, the truth has long been of little concern because truth could undermine the power of the ethnocider who implements ethnocide and the master-slave dialectic. Within ethnocide, the oppressors or ethnociders live to sustain their power and they will embrace the “truth” so long as it does not undermine their power. Within an ethnocidal society, disinformation and lies are of equal value to the “truth.”
Therefore, within a society where the truth has been rendered meaningless, it is important to recognize how this society cultivates the “truth” or at a minimum presents the façade of the truth. Within American ethnocide, the “truth” has long existed as a conversation amongst the ethnocider. Not all white Americans aspire to perpetuate ethnocide but in America those who do embrace ethnocide play a disproportionate role in shaping the conversation and defining the “truth.” Slaveowners had a greater role in shaping America’s government than proponents of democracy.
In addition to creating a false discourse sustained by legitimizing lies, societies that undermine the truth also often rely on a Christian conception of the truth known as “Illumination.”
By destroying the dialectic and embracing illumination, a society can be devoid of the truth while believing that it is the most truthful place on the planet.
What is Illumination?
Illumination is a concept that has been integral to Christian theology and philosophy. Within Christianity, truth resides with God and due to this belief many Christians and those influenced by Christianity have believed that human beings cannot determine the truth on their own and, instead, they can only aspire to “illuminate” the truth of God.
By illuminating the truth of God, human beings are not tasked with determining the truth by conversing with other people, but by aspiring to best illuminate God’s will. This bizarre understanding of the truth facilitates countless questions such as: “What does illumination look like?” and “How can you know God’s will?”
To answer the latter, people believed that God’s will could be found in the Bible. Therefore, studying the Bible would bring you closer to the truth, closer to God, and more likely able to illuminate his will.
To answer the former, illumination would often take the form of “visions” or “revelations.” Through these visions, God would reveal his truth to mankind and only the most devoted or chosen followers of God would be able to receive God’s revealing visions.
Throughout history, Catholic priests have received “visions” from God and their illuminations would influence kings and queens for centuries. Europe’s Dark Ages, or Middle Ages, that lasted from the 5th to 15th century was shaped by Christian theology and the “truth” during these thousand years of darkness primarily derived from illumination.
Finding truth through illumination is not only absurd, but also incredibly dangerous. Since it dismisses conversation and dialogue, and professes a divine, perfect truth, illumination can also encourage violence towards those with conflicting ideas. Those who do not submit to the allegedly divine, unquestioned truth of God that has supposedly been illuminated through another person can be labelled as heretics or witches.
Also, since this “truth” must be unquestioned, the powerful people who “receive” illuminations are also empowered to spread lies and falsehoods that benefit themselves financially or politically because people will feel a moral obligation to believe these “truths.” Challenging an illumination could result in death through unimaginable torture and the prospect of eternal damnation.
Much of the violence that engulfed the Middle Ages—the Spanish Inquisition, crusades, and the persecution of Jews—derived from the “truth” of illumination. Illumination does not create a culture of tolerance, diversity, and inclusivity.
Unfortunately, the beliefs of the Dark Ages were not confined solely to Europe because as the Dark Ages were coming to a close, Europeans began colonization. The genocide of Indigenous people and the ethnocide of African people mixed with the rampant forced conversion to Christianity is a continuation of Europe’s status quo from the Dark Ages.
Unsurprisingly, many of America’s numerous Protestant religious sects derive their truth, wisdom, and knowledge from illumination. For example, the Mormon Church is built entirely upon Joseph Smith’s illumination about the Book of Mormon and the “truth” that the Garden of Eden is located in Missouri.
Additionally, one of the main reasons why Protestantism became so popular amongst Europeans and Americans was that illumination was no longer under the control of the Catholic Church. Under Protestantism, any person could receive God’s illuminations. Ignorance under the disguise of wisdom and truth had now become accessible to the masses.
The spread of illuminations via Protestantism has resulted in a strange, quasi-secular expansion of illuminations into all walks of life.
Illumination Today
In America, derivatives of illumination abound and can be found in abundance amongst American conservatives and the religious right. Illumination still pervades much of Christianity, but America also has a proclivity to deify non-religious figures and apply the principle of illumination to this random assortment of historical and living figures.
For example, The Federalist Society is a conservative American school of thought that has transformed the American judiciary and their members make up the majority of the United States’ Supreme Court. Members of this society adhere to an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and originalism consists of attempting to interpret the constitution according to the intent of the Founding Fathers.
Originalism is absurd for many reasons and most notably due to three key questions. How can we truly know the intent of men who died hundreds of years ago? If our Founding Fathers were alive today, would they still be considered upstanding individuals? Why should ideas from the 19th century usurp the ideas and needs of the present?
In addition to these questions, originalism seeks to deify America’s Founding Fathers. According to originalists, knowledge and truth do not come from a dialectic, but from the belief that the Founders’ intent will magically become illuminated through conservative Supreme Court Justices and other members of the Federalist Society.
These American jurists believe they are paragons of truth, knowledge, and morality because they allegedly exist as the vessels in which the spirit and intent of America’s Founding Fathers flow and are revealed.
Their concept of knowledge and truth turns existence into a farce. Their confirmation hearings become mere meaningless spectacles because they have no desire to engage in a good faith conversation with the American people. For them, truth does not come from dialogue but from some magical capacity to channel the intent of white men, many of whom were slaveowners, from over two hundred years ago.
An honest discussion at a senate confirmation hearing could potentially cause problems and result in their confirmation being rejected as Robert Bork’s was in 1987. Instead, obfuscation and the erasure of truth help elevate them to the court, and now they can make awful decisions that harm the American people while being wholly confident the spirit and intent of the birth of America flow through them.
They are the modern-day judicial brethren of the Dark Ages theologians who gleefully participated in turning Europe into a dangerous, unenlightened continent for a thousand years.
At a micro or personal level, illumination can manifest in the simple desire to believe that one’s idea or dream equates to a fully-formed, perfect vision that should be executed without discussion. Many people’s ego is attached to their capacity to secularly conceive of perfect ideas, and now any amount of criticism or discussion equates to the shattering of their ego instead of a good faith endeavor to uncover or reveal the truth.
Illumination at a micro-level often results in good ideas never becoming great ideas, and instead, causes more harm than good. At a macro-level, illumination always causes far more harm than good, and as it causes unimaginable amounts of destruction, we will be linguistically instructed to describe the chaos as the divine will of a deity.
In order to create a good society we must seek truth through a dialectic and not illuminations.
This week the Altars Festival was profiled in The Washington Post! You can read it here.
The Altars Festival exhibition is open to the public Friday - Sunday from noon to 6pm until December 10 at STABLE Arts located at 336 Randolph Place NE, Washington, DC 20002.
