What is it about “evidence”? We live in a society dominated by lawyers—case builders. In a sense, we’re all trained to be amateur lawyers; we’re all trained to “make a case” why we deserve something—why we deserve a job (a CV + interview), why we deserve a promotion, even why we deserve to be loved. There are some people who make the case through victimhood—“I’ve been abused”, “I’m a drug addict”; and there are others who make a case through virtue—the perfect exam transcript, the fact they never missed a day at work, the trophy on the desk. Whether your case is good or bad—and there are definitely people who “make the case” they’re criminals—you have “a case”; and your objective is for it to be bullet-proof, buttressed by evidence and not amenable to contradiction.
This is why lawyers are among the most miserable people on earth (along with policemen, psychiatrists, journalists, and other patrolmen); they’re all about “making a case” and making it stick—they build up the evidence, point the finger, and say, “I accuse!”; or, alternatively, they say, “You can’t prove nothing, mate. You’ve got nothing. I’m airtight, mate. Can’t touch me <gives smug smile>.” It’s all about attention to the rules and regulations and loopholes—you know, “technically” I’m allowed to do this if you refer to paragraph 2542§a/g. The perverse form is the “barrack-room lawyer”, the type who walks through your back garden and when you say, “Hey, mate what d’you think you’re doing? This is my garden,” says, “Alright, mate. Alright. Thing is this is an ancient right of way under the Huntsman’s Act of 1367 as passed by Edward III <waves computer printout>. I have right of access every full moon…”.
So pretty much everyone to varying degrees is engaged in case-building—why they are the victim, why they deserve compensation, why they are “the good boy”, and so on. Grievance. The problem is that cases have nothing to do with reality since reality defies the carefully constructed case you’ve made about yourself—what your rational excuse denies, the repressed, will return and “get you”. The person who made out the case that they were the “world’s greatest victim” was actually the world’s greatest bully—and you know that’s true.
Evidence? My eyes are my evidence—or my nose, or my intuition. People ask for “evidence” to protect themselves from reality. “The Muslims want to kill us and take our lands.” “Er, what evidence do you have for that?”. It’s just reaction formation—an attempt to hold reality at bay; perhaps you can go “build a case” with an article “10 times Christians and Muslims worked peacefully together”. You know, that might help you in the court of public opinion but in the end we’re not tried in the court of public opinion.
It’s about not living your life as a Pharisee. What did they try to do? Build a case. They tried to catch Jesus out—“Should we pay taxes to Caesar, teacher?” “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and what is God’s unto God.” No case was built there, in that little paradox. The teaching is very similar to a schizophrenic’s paradoxical replies. Schizophrenics are not popular with case-builders either—and that’s because, albeit in a perverted way, they have a little of the teacher’s magic. As with Jesus, they’re not there to sell you a case—they’re there to tell you to pay attention to reality and reality is paradoxical; “if you want peace, prepare for war”—what’s the evidence for that? Come on.
The more bureaucratic a society gets—especially a society like America, land of the lawyer—the more addicted it gets to case histories, to “evidence”. It’s protection, it’s armour—it’s a way to hold reality at bay with logic and reason. “I can prove I’m a good person”—or do you not have the courage to say, “I don’t know if I’m a good person.” Case closed.