By Whatever Name

Karl Marx is credited with coming up with the term, “personality cult.” Marx was against personality cults. This, as it turns out, was a major irony, since most printed (and many verbal) discussions of Marxism sprinkle proof-texts with the earnest insistence of a tract-theology evangelist. No point is legitimately made, it often appears, without a reference to or a direct quote from The Master. It sometimes appears as though there is no independent truth but rather, that truths are uniquely identified with only certain people. “X” is true because Marx says so right here, “Y” is true because the Bible says so right here, and “Z” is true because Norman says so right here. Does this seem familiar to Goreans? Truth can sometimes take a back seat to its attributed expositor.

John Norman (as we know, a pen name) chose to expound certain philosophical ideas through the medium of literature, choosing fiction as his category. Many of us are both fans of the fiction and holders of the ideas. It is tempting to package ideas using only the labels that we associate with them, and the danger in doing so is that we may then tend to forget that the ideas have been expressed by others and that they can be legitimately expressed without reference to our pet source. In short, when we create a personality cult, we limit our own understanding of the power of the ideas.

I will use the Marxism and religious evangelism analogies from the opening paragraph to illustrate the idea that truth can point more widely than to its popularizer. Marx is popularly credited with “mode of production” analysis, which is a cornerstone of Marxian thought. Lenin, who considered himself to be Marx’s intellectual heir, wrote that mode of production analysis was not original with Marx and that in fact the only idea distinctive to Marxism was the belief in the eventual victory of the proletarian class. In such a view, one need not quote Marx in order to discuss topics that Marx addressed. Similarly, (as I understand, recognizing that I was not there at the time) at least some early Christians held the perspective that, whether or not a given truth can be found within holy writ, if there is a truth, then there has to be a Christian version of it; truth is not antagonistic to Christianity but can be incorporated/accomodated within Christianity. The idea that truth exists beyond quoting Marx or Jesus frees the adherents of the given truth to proclaim it without being limited to the context of one promoter.

This is important. When discussing viewpoints with friends, colleagues, relatives, or strangers, starting a sentence off with, “Karl Marx wrote ...” or “Paul says in ...” can turn listeners off and undermine the effect that the ideas themselves might have had if they had been free of the associated personality. Personality cults are limited to the believers. Truth is not so limited. Similarly, a sentence leading with “John Norman wrote ...” or “Book 15 of the Gor fiction series says that ...” might trivialize whatever words follow since they limit the source of the truth. Granted, you might get a listener’s attention if you scandalize the source; for example, you might get someone’s ear if you begin a sentence with “The controversial author who writes under the assumed name ‘John Norman’ and who has been blacklisted and pretty-much banned takes the view that ...”. However, the listener from the “outside world” may then limit the viewpoint to the quoted source.

Among ourselves, we accept labels such as “Natural Order Philosophy,” “Gorean thought,” and perhaps even the one I used to use in email exchanges, “Normanism.” My encouragement to the readership is that, when speaking with outsiders, it is not necessary to confine truth to the source label.

I recently had 2 interesting exchanges with female colleagues. In one discussion, the woman argued strongly against the idea of women in the military and vehemently against the idea of women being sent into combat. She used a word that will be familiar to Norman’s readers: “insanity.” She said that it was an insanity. In my agreement of our common position, I smiled at her choice of words but never once invoked the name of Norman to justify the position. No justification was needed. In the other discussion, the other woman admitted that she was not being PC but that she believes that men are programmed genetically to lead and that women are genetically built to follow. She did not understand why some men do such a poor job of leading, and our discussion took off from there once I affirmed my belief in her genetic premises. In both instances, we were having a Gorean conversation without the word “Gor” coming up. The results of both conversations were important; invoking the name of some luminary of the literary fiction world would have been pointless in a conversation between adults when the focus was on the ideas being relevant in the modern world, this modern world.

Truth has no personality cult. Don’t diminish it by acting as though it did.

I wish you well,

Hersius