Alcoholism as Cult-Like Polylogism

Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises published a seminal work on the inner failings of totalitarian systems.

First, he established that every human being, regardless of his standing, bearing, upbringing, or rearing possessed the same ability to reason and be informed:

"Until the middle of the 19th century no one ventured to dispute the fact that the logical structure of mind is unchangeable and common to all human beings. All human interrelations are based on this assumption of a uniform logical structure. We can speak to each other only because we can appeal to something common to all of us, namely, the logical structure of reason. Some men can think deeper and more refined thoughts than others. There are men who unfortunately cannot grasp a process of inference in long chains of deductive reasoning. But as far as a man is able to think and to follow a process of discursive thought, he always clings to the same ultimate principles of reasoning that are applied by all other men." (http://mises.org/daily/1457/What-the-Nazis-Borrowed-from-Marx)

Mises further explained this common trait of mankind that while every man grasps 2 + 2= 4, there are some who have not advanced beyond arithmetic, while there are men and women who have chartered space and time using dimensional math, college algebra, or even quaternions. Still, just because a man does not grasp the higher order thinking does not mean that he is incapable of doing so, nor does it therefore relegate a man to second-class citizenship or bestial status. A man still possesses the same common capacity for reasoning.

The "uniform logical" structure belongs to everyone. Mises explains further:

"There are people who cannot count further than three; but their counting, as far as it goes, does not differ from that of Gauss or Laplace. No historian or traveler has ever brought us any knowledge of people for whom a and non-a were identical, or who could not grasp the difference between affirmation and negation." (Ibid.)

The law of identity and the excluded middle, per Aristotle, is not open for debate. From the universal premise that either something exists or something does not, man can construct his understanding and communicate with his fellow man.

The communist argument, according to Von Mises, could never persuade anyone based on its merits, for the results of a system based on common store and ownership inevitably fail. So, instead of debating the merits based on one system of logic, one which belongs to every man, regardless of race, class, or upbringing, the Marxists, and later the Nazis, formulated the fanatical and erroneous hypothesis that individuals who did not receive, or openly disputed, the policies and false reasoning of statism were simply incapable of understanding what they were saying.

Basically, an individual who repudiates Communism or Nazism is operating under a "false consciousness", a different and dysfunction form of logic which cannot yet fathom the party line of hostile regimes.

As for those individuals who have been brought up as true-believers, who then abandon the regimen of force and falsehood, the are eventually branded "traitors".

The heinous heresy of "polylogism" is based on the unjustified proposition that individuals of a different class or race think differently, and thus they simply cannot understand the argument posed by the economic and political terrorism of others.

This line of hierarchical shaming is common in cults, where a limited elite dictates to lesser adherents who do not have the same "access" to the truth, or the proper or encompassing revelation essential to the movement.

This cult-like division is manifest in Alcoholics Anonymous:

"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.

"We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

"This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick." (AA, pg 66)

"Normal men", indeed. Right away, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous conveys the frayed message that there are different classes of people.

The beginning of Chapter 3 dramatizes the essential, polylogical distinction further:

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. (AA, pg 30)

"The persistence of the illusion" touches on a different view and value of the world entirely. The growing division continues:

"We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals - usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

"We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones." (Ibid.)

"The people who wronged us were spiritually sick," the passage later relates. Even the formation itself is fraught with contradiction. If spirit speaks of something that is neither material or mental, then where is the disease? Disease speaks of physical condition, not a spiritual matter, which in many cases results from an error in thinking, which can be corrected with proper respect for the truth and the facts of an issue.

The division of "normies" and "alcoholics" implies a meaningless distinction, one which keeps members in bondage to the false idea that they are "different", which in fact they manifest a behavior which has no place in healthy and prosperous living.