New material just below: The critical behavior/belief coupling (Historical Jesus got it right, finally, but Paul, with his Christ myth, then buried the critical breakthrough insight and main theme of Jesus). And the big Switcheroo (Democrats/liberals now embracing McCarthyism). Also, “Manufacturing monsters to alarm populations who will then surrender to irrational salvation schemes”.
Keep informed: How alarmism crusades try to “save the world” by destroying it. The inevitably destructive outcomes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” narratives, whether religious or “secular/ideological”.
The ancient validation coupling: Validating behavior by basing it on similar belief, Wendell Krossa
Summary: Historical Jesus (the one who is opposite to Christian “Jesus Christ”) used the “behavior based on similar belief” pairing to present his stunning new breakthrough insight- “the single most profoundly humane insight ever presented to humanity”- his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”, an insight that revolutionized theology. His insight absolutely revolutionized humanity’s highest ideal and authority over the millennia- deity. Paul then rejected that core insight and retreated to the primitive retaliatory theology of all past mythology. He retreated to the barbaric primitivism that has darkened and deformed human consciousness since the beginning.
Four thousand-plus years ago, two millennia before Jesus, an Akkadian Father had offered the single most humane ethical insight that humanity had discovered to that point in time. He urged his son to not retaliate against his enemies but instead to be kind to his enemies. His advice on non-retaliatory response toward offenders/enemies was a proto-version of the later “love your enemy” precept.
His words: “Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy… Do not speak ill, speak only good. Do not say evil things, speak well of people….”
But the Akkadian father did not make the full breakthrough on the belief side of the “behavior/belief” coupling that has always been foundational to human meaning and life. In his statement he re-affirmed the pagan ideal of threatening deity (threat theology) in urging his son to make a sacrifice to his god- “Sacrifice and pious utterance are the proper accompaniment of incense… this is proper toward a god…”
Meaning- He still believed in wrathful, retaliatory, punitive, destroying deities that demanded blood sacrifice for appeasement/atonement. Primitive mythology at its worst. That left a fog of cognitive dissonance swirling over his breakthrough ethic. He did not make the breakthrough to the fully humane understanding of deity that would be presented by Jesus 2 millennia later and would become the far more humane ideal to validate behavior.
The human impulse to “base behavior on similar belief”, to “base ethics on similar theology”, arises from our primal impulse to meaning. As conscious beings, our earliest ancestors found themselves alive in this mysterious material world, in a complex reality shaped by opposing dynamics of good and evil, the presence of violence and consequent suffering, and more, to confound their meaning-seeking minds and they had to know what it was all about.
And they especially wanted to know that they were doing the right things, good things. They had to know that they were living in accordance with what their “creating force or spirit” intended for them. They had to know that they were fulfilling their purpose on this planet. And that means they had to know (via speculation on the metaphysical) what the ultimate ideal and authority was like so they could mimic or model that reality and hence get some sense that they were fulfilling their purpose for existing on Earth.
We see the fundamental human impulse to base behavior on similar belief in the Greek endeavor to explain the invisible Ideas/Ideals or Forms that should guide the creation of an ideal society (e.g. Plato). We see the impulse to base behavior on validating belief in the Hebrew project to ensure that all aspects of their lives were based on their beliefs in the revealed will, law, or word of their God (Old Testament). The Hebrews applied their understanding of the divine patterns or ideals to everything- i.e. to what foods they could eat, to what clothes they were allowed to wear, to sex and defecation protocols, to the location of the 12 tribes when camping in the desert, to the details of the portable temple that they believed was an exact replica of the divine holy of holies, to their ventures in war to destroy enemies, etc. Everything in their lives and society was to be modelled according to the law of their God.
So also, in a contemporary example of this “basing behavior on belief” relationship, anthropologist Clifford Geertz noted that the Balinese modelled/built their villages and houses according to what they believed was the divine model.
(I would add Bob Brinsmead’s point here that we ought to focus on improvement of this world without the felt need to appeal to metaphysical reality. We should embrace the full freedom to “play God” in life and take full charge/responsibility for our lives- i.e. fully embrace “self-determination”, with no felt need for divine approval. We ought to grow up and no longer play with “childish” things like seeking the approval of divine parents. But over the transition period to that more mature orientation to full “self-determination”, we need to provide better alternatives to people who still feel the need for some guiding ideal or authority, for a divine model or higher authority to submit to. Part of the transition would include helping people to focus their felt need for guidance from higher authority- to focus such felt need on their own personal authority, on their own personal sense of the human thing as the ultimate authority to guide and validate their lives. Their own “inner God”, if you will.)
Continuing…
The problem of the Akkadians, and other ancient peoples, was that they had projected inhumane features out to define the invisible realities (gods) that they honored as the guiding ideals and authorities of their era- the ultimate realities that served as the patterns and ideals for their lives (the deities of their age). Projecting the inhumane features of their primitive era onto their gods resulted in the creation of monster gods that then validated the worst of their inherited animal impulses.
(“We become just like the God that we believe in.”)
Two millennia after the Akkadian Father, Historical Jesus (someone entirely contrary to Paul’s Christ of the New Testament) finally made the critical breakthrough to the second part of the foundational coupling of “behavior based on similar validating belief”. He fully humanized the belief part of this pairing.
Jesus rejected the pathology of primitive deity that demanded blood sacrifice for atonement. He offered the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-punitive, non-destroying God. An unconditionally loving God. A God who did not demand blood sacrifice for appeasement (again, note the barbarity and personality-deforming outcomes of this “monster God” theology in the comments of psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo in sections below).
The stunning new theology of Jesus is expressed in the statements in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 to reject eye for eye retaliation and instead (here is the “behavior based on belief” relationship) “Love your enemies… because God does”. How so? Non-retaliation or unconditional love as evident in that “God gives sun and rain to all alike, to both good and bad people”. With the God of Jesus there is no discriminatory exclusion, no retaliatory punishment, and no demand for sacrifice or payment before forgiveness will be shown.
Such statements expressed “a stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson) that should be the new ideal that our non-retaliatory behavior should be based on.
Jesus further illustrated this new theology of an unconditionally loving God in his short story of the father in the Prodigal parable. That father did not retaliate against the wasteful son. He did not punish him or demand sacrifice or payment for his “sins” (Note that the slaughtered calf was for a celebratory feast, not as a sacrifice, as some Christians argue).
The central unconditional feature makes the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 the single most profound statement in all history, the single most profoundly humane statement of “ethics paired to similar theology” to have ever arisen in human consciousness. It presented a new definition of ultimate ideal and authority (deity) to inspire and guide humanity to a more humane future.
(Insert: Again, note the qualifiers in sections below on issues like “restorative justice” as necessary to maintain our humanity in the face of evil, the irreplaceable role of criminal justice in restraining violent people, and love as primarily responsible to protect the innocent while also seeking to rehabilitate offenders where possible- holding offenders responsible for behavior. “Love your enemy/restorative justice” is not advocacy for pacifism in the face of horrific human offense.)
Jesus went directly to the most fundamental of models, patterns, ideals, or archetypes to correct a long-standing pathology that had darkened human consciousness over previous millennia. He rejected the inhumane features of previous deity mythologies and offered the single most humane alternative ever- that of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God.
These humane insights of Hist. Jesus are presented in the Christian New Testament but are embedded/mixed with the inhumane features of the larger New Testament context that is dominated by Paul’s Christ myth. That context distorts and buries the better insights of Jesus. This was the point made by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy that the diamonds of Jesus were buried in Paul’s Christ myth.
And in a strikingly confusing use of the “behavior based on belief” coupling (but similar to the Akkadian Father’s statement), Paul presents a “consonant dissonant” contradiction that is a complete denial of the core message of Historical Jesus. He appears to pair a non-retaliatory ethic with the very opposite theology of a retaliatory God.
Paul intentionally confronts (my view) the coupling at the core of Jesus’ message in order to directly contradict the theological breakthrough of Jesus and re-establish the very opposite theology of divine retaliation that would be the core theme of his theology and his Christ myth (Romans 12:17-20, and related Romans passages on divine retaliation in “the revelation of the wrath of God”).
But closer examination reveals the basic harmony in Paul’s “behavior based on similar belief”. He only appears to initially urge the same non-retaliatory ethic as Jesus (“Don’t repay anyone evil for evil done to you… Do not take revenge…”).
He states clearly that retaliation is “evil”. But he then continues, basing that apparent non-retaliatory ethic on what appears to be an entirely contradictory theology (Don’t you retaliate because God will retaliate- “’Vengeance is mine. I will repay’, says the Lord”). The “evil” of retaliation is the divine prerogative.
But actually, while initially appearing to affirm non-retaliation, the ethic of Paul is also retaliatory in intent. He states that believers should not take revenge “in order to leave room for God’s wrath”. By not taking personal revenge you “will heap burning coals on your enemy’s head”. That is- Your non-retaliatory response toward enemies will ensure their punishment by a vengeful, retaliatory God. Hence, both the ethic and the theology are essentially retaliatory. The behavior that Paul advocates is essentially retaliatory in intent, and hence it does harmonize with a similar belief.
The book of Revelation takes Paul’s urge to validate retaliation, to ultimate expression. It presents the graphic rising crescendo of divine retaliation intensifying to its utmost summit of horror in the enraged and bloodied Christ (eyes of fire, sword coming out of mouth) trampling out the “fury of the wrath of God” in destroying the world and all who did not believe Paul’s Christ myth.
Added notes:
I repeatedly go after Paul’s Christ myth on this site because it has been the main source of validation for some of the worst themes in Western narratives, notably for validating the horrifically destructive myth of apocalypse, both in religious and “secular” versions.
This is part of my project to reveal how underlying mythical/religious themes (archetypes) still shape and influence both religious traditions and so-called “secular/ideological” systems of belief like climate alarmism. The primitive themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythology have been deeply embedded in human subconscious and narratives and continue to wreak harm on human personality and societies.
Another:
Note how materialist types also engage the “base behavior on similar belief” relationship. They do something similar in basing human behavior on what they believe to be greater realities, creating realities that explain what we are about. Richard Dawkins and others do this by presenting natural selection as a godlike reality that defines and explains human existence and life. They attribute godlike creating powers to natural selection in order for it to explain the existence and development of life. Note his comment in “The God Delusion” that “Natural Selection Is The Source Of All Enlightenment” (all capitals). That is his “secular” version of a deity-like reality that defines, guides, and explains all in the history of life. It is the ideal that explains and thereby should guide human life.
A young rapper also illustrated this pattern of basing behavior on some related belief in response to someone who criticized him for promoting violence in his songs. He replied, validating human violence with the argument that violence was natural to us because we were just animals. “Its just what we are”- descendants from animal reality. He used an evolutionary biology point as his appeal to a higher ideal and authority, the belief or explanation that validated his behavior.
Summary statement of Jesus’ core message
How to end cycles of retaliatory violence, how to achieve lasting peace in societies….
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full…
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
Again, an example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31 (the Father representing God).
Monetizing… Contact: wkrossa@shaw.ca
The material on this site is copyrighted but feel free to copy and share anything. It is more important to get ideas out into the public for discussion and debate. And I have never figured out the “monetizing” thing. I have never been good at business, so this has been a ‘freebie’ site.
I never figured out how to use media platforms to gain income to support and further spread the projects of this site. Any feedback ideas/input??
Wendell Krossa- Key points, arguments, facts, insights, speculations repeatedly presented on this site include:
(1) There is no “climate crisis”. The mild 1 degree C warming over the past century has been significantly beneficial in a world where 10 times more people still die every year from cold than die from warmth (Lancet study). The 1 degree warming has been part of the natural recovery from the 17th Century descent into the destructive cold of the Little Ice Age- the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial. The subsequent warming is a natural return to a more optimal climate for all life. Even 3-6 degrees C more warming (the average for most of the history of life over the past 500 million years when life flourished) would also be net beneficial for all life.
I present these paleoclimate averages to counter the alarmist panic-mongering over 1-2 degrees C more warming. That much warmer paleoclimate world was a “paradise… ‘the golden age of mammals’”. Donald Prothero details this Eocene history in his book “The Eocene-Oligocene Transition: Paradise Lost”.
(2) Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms, floods, ocean rise, tornadoes, etc. are not getting worse and in some cases are decreasing in intensity and frequency. Even the IPCC admits this.
(3) With more global warming, the already warm areas of the world- i.e. the tropics- do not “fry” because the extra heat is redistributed by convection currents to the colder areas of the world and climate then “evens out” more across the world (i.e. more tropical-like conditions spread to colder areas and that means extended habitats for the more diverse life forms of warmer areas). The tropics have remained “remarkably stable” during times when average world temperatures were from 3-10 degrees C warmer than today. This is known as the “equable climate” issue that confounds climate alarmists. It points to potent negative feedbacks that maintain climate within parameters beneficial to life.
(4) CO2 is not the main influence on climate change, because other natural factors show stronger correlations to climate change across history. Such natural factors are the main influences on climate change (i.e. “meridional transport”). See the good research on “the physics of CO2” by atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others. Learn more about climate and thereby lessen your fear of the alarmist exaggerations and distortions on climate. See also the excellent series on natural factors driving climate change in “Sun-Climate Effect: the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” by Javier Vinos, available at Wattsupwiththat.com. The physics of CO2 as presented by Lindzen and Happer is the single most critical factor to understand in climate science.
(5) Fossil fuels used by humanity are not threatening our world. CO2 is not a pollutant that needs to be decreased or banned.
As the atmospheric physicists (Lindzen, Happer, others) tell us- CO2 has reached “saturation” in terms of its warming effect. Much more CO2 in our atmosphere (e.g. a doubling to 800 ppm over the next two centuries) will contribute very little to any further possible warming. Possible warming? Yes, as Vinos notes, we don’t yet know if climate will warm or cool over the next decades. But we can be certain that more CO2 will continue to fertilize plants/crops and that will be beneficial to animal and human populations. Also, a further warming of several degrees will also be net beneficial to all life. Life emerged, developed, and flourished during the Phanerozoic era when there was no ice on Earth (for over 80% of those 500 million years). There is no rational scientific reason to create fear over ice disappearing in the polar regions when that means extended habitats for more diverse life forms and extended crop production for humanity.
(6) More warming and more CO2 will continue to be net beneficial to all life just as the small rise in CO2 over the past few centuries has resulted in a massive 15% addition of green vegetation to the Earth just since 1980 (i.e. more food for animals, increased crop production for humanity). We are still in a “CO2 starvation era”. Further, over the paleoclimate past when CO2 levels were in the multiple-thousands of ppm, there was no climate crisis. Earth was a paradise for mammals.
(7) The Net Zero “decarbonization” salvation scheme of climate alarmists is destroying the energy sectors of Western nations in an irrational crusade to “save the world by destroying it”.
(The evidence above in numbers 1-7 challenges and overturns the climate alarmist narrative that pushes people to irrationally fear the basic food of all life and to fear 1-2 degrees more warming that will be net beneficial to all life.)
(8) Overall, life is not “declining” toward something worse but is “rising” toward something better- meaning, life is on a long-term trajectory toward improvement on all the main indicators (i.e. forests, land species, agricultural soils, ocean species). This is especially evident over the past few centuries and is affirmation that humanity is most essentially a compassionate and creative species and not the destroyer of the world. See “The True State of Life” further below.
(10) The climate alarmism movement is another “profoundly religious movement” influenced by the same old themes of the “lost paradise/redemption” complex (also known as “apocalyptic millennialism” mythology).
(11) And on the metaphysical or “spiritual”: There is no great threat behind life as has always been falsely presented by the ‘threat theologies’ of past mythology- i.e. the punitive, retaliatory, destroying God of religious traditions, now given “secular” expression in ideological belief systems. Point? The themes of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption (listed further below) continue to harmfully dominate human narratives and consciousness in varied “secular or ideological” versions.
(Note: This site confronts the Christ myth of Paul because it has been the most influential myth in history, re-enforcing some of the best and worst of primitive themes in modern narratives and consciousness. Along with more humane themes (love, forgiveness, mercy), the Christ myth of Paul promotes the themes of retaliatory deity, tribal exclusion of unbelievers, ultimate domination (“Lord, King, totalitarian Ruler” as in Revelation), apocalyptic ending of life and the world, and ultimate punishment and destruction in hell- all inhumane themes that had been previously rejected by Historical Jesus. The Christ of Paul is most responsible for re-enforcing the violent and destructive theme of apocalypse in modern consciousness, narratives, and societies.)
(12) Historical Jesus was someone entirely opposite to the Christ myth of Paul that dominates the New Testament and Christianity. The original message of Jesus has been distorted and buried by the Christ myth of Paul (this was the argument of, notably, Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, as well as Einstein, Gandhi, and others).
Einstein, “If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and takes Christianity as Jesus taught it, purged of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.”
(13) Historical Jesus, like the Old Testament prophets before him, protested against priestly sacrifice as necessary to appease God and attain forgiveness. Hist. Jesus taught that God was unconditional love and did not demand sacrifice/payment, or other conditions for forgiveness, acceptance, salvation. Note the unconditional theology illustrated by Jesus in his story of the Father in the Prodigal parable (Luke 15:11-32). This was the stunning new theological insight of Jesus that overturned all previous human understanding of deity.
(14) Conclusion from the original core message of Historical Jesus- i.e. the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel- There has never been any judging, punitive, destroying deity. There is only a stunningly inexpressible “no conditions Love” at the core of reality and behind life. (Note: The calf slain in the Prodigal story is for a celebratory feast, not as a sacrifice.)
(15) Paul rejected the central message of Jesus to present an entirely opposite theology of conditions- i.e. demanded sacrifice/payment, faith in his Christ myth, etc. Paul, contrary to Jesus, embraced the priestly tradition of the sacrifice industry. Paul affirmed primitive retaliatory threat theology- that God would judge, punish, exclude, and destroy those who did not believe his Christ myth.
(16) The same old complex of myths- i.e. “lost paradise/decline/apocalypse/redemption”, or “apocalyptic millennialism”- the same core myths have dominated human narratives and consciousness from the very beginning of early mythmaking. These mythical themes were eventually embedded in the belief systems of the great world religions (notably in Christianity), and they have now, in the modern world, been embraced in “secular/ideological” systems of belief, even in “scientific” systems of belief. Note, for example, the dominance today of Declinism ideology in climate alarmism (i.e. the decline of life toward something worse, toward collapse and ending- a central theme taken from Christian apocalyptic.).
Note that the lost paradise/redemption complex of ideas embraces themes that validate the worst of our inherited impulses- the impulse to tribalism (true believers versus unbelievers or outsiders to the true religion or group), the impulse to domination that is validated by a deity that dominates (God as lord/king who validates human forms of domination- kings, priesthoods), and the impulse to the violent destruction of threatening others/enemies (by a God who uses ultimate violence in apocalypse, and hell). See again the Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo quotes below on how violence enshrined in deity has always validated human violence. We do become just like the God that we believe in.
(17) The great threat to freedom today is coming from ever-evolving extremist “Woke Progressivism”, from the liberal or left side of society that appears to have abandoned the values and principles of Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy.
(18) Alternative themes for new narratives, more humane themes. See below: “Explaining reality and life: The worst and best ideas that we have come up with”, “Inherited bad myths and better alternatives”, or “Old Story Themes, New Alternatives”.
Further detail on the above topics, and much more, in sections below…
The big Switcheroo…
Greenwald and Siegel present the new McCarthyism, now on the other side- endless “Russia, Russia, Russia”
Note the point made below by Glen Greenwald and Jacob Siegel on how Joe McCarthy in the 1950s claimed to have a list of Americans who were Russian agents. Democrats/liberals at that time were rightly horrified at such lies and McCarthy never actually produced his list of collaborators. Now today, it is Democrats who have “wholeheartedly embraced the core tenets of McCarthyism” (i.e. the “Hamilton 68” list of supposed activists for Russia, that was referred to hundreds of times by mainstream media outlets- notably MSNBC- as their credible “source” on Americans collaborating with Russia). Democrats today are now doing just what McCarthy did decades ago.
The Hamilton 68 list had been exposed as a fraud but one Twitter executive argued that the public should not be told that it was a scam, while other Twitter executives strongly protested it as “bullshit” (notably, Yoel Roth- safety officer on Twitter and staunch opponent of Trump but with enough integrity to call a halt to something as outright fraud and lying).
Roth admitted privately that his company was allowing Americans to be labelled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.
Note these sections from Glen Greenwald’s May 9, 2023 report on Locals- “The Disinformation Fraud: How America’s Most Powerful Institutions Joined Forces to Crush Speech and Silence Dissent, with Jacob Siegel.”
Quotes on the wholehearted embrace of McCarthyism tactics (Russia, Russia, Russia) by the Democratic/liberal side today:
Jacob Siegel:
“In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day, he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era.
“For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts and demagogues. Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and the American political class. A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Donald Trump win the election. Russia stood accused of hacking social media platforms, the new centers of power, and using them to covertly direct events inside the United States.“
Glen Greenwald:
“One of the things that struck me in the article when I sat down to read it was you began a paragraph devoted to the scandals of Joseph McCarthy and the controversy surrounding what he did, namely, accusing all sorts of people of being covert agents of the Kremlin, claiming that he had secret lists of people whom he could prove to hide allegiances, American citizens, well, allegiances to the Russians. And I recall the very first time I heard the Russiagate narrative presented in May 2016, which was when the Clinton campaign released this very ominous ad with that kind of heavy music and that deep intonation – “What is Donald Trump doing with the Kremlin?”
“You know, I immediately assumed that everybody remotely affiliated with the left or with liberalism steeped in the evils of McCarthyism would be horrified by this resurrection of this narrative. It was almost verbatim what was used and what was said. And to this very day, anyone who now stands up and questions the proxy war in Ukraine or who dissented from Russiagate was accused of being a Russian agent.”
Jacob Siegel:
“I mean, for exactly the reason you just pointed out, which is that for more than half a century, the Red Scare and McCarthyism was not just one historical episode among many for American liberals, which is, you know, the tradition and the milieu that I grew up in was that kind of Cold War American liberalism and its aftermath is something I’m very familiar with. And McCarthyism was, if not the central moral allegory, then certainly the central moral allegory of the last 50 years, let’s say. And it was supposed to have revealed the true face of America and what the American political system was capable of. And all of that was supposed to be in the DNA of American liberalism.
“And to see all of that abandoned so quickly, to see it abandoned – abandonment is the wrong word – to see precisely the thing that American liberalism had supposedly been against – it had to find itself in opposition to – to see it so quickly and wholeheartedly embraced, seemed to me significant and to signal the kind of epochal change which is that something from the polls had reversed somehow. And north was south and south was north now. And also just the parallels were so striking with the two secret lists in narrative terms – McCarthy with his list, you know, the famous list that he brandished and then never actually produced, and then this Hamilton 68 secret list that they couldn’t produce, they couldn’t reveal to the public. And so, I found it – I couldn’t open it any other way.”
G. Greenwald:
“Yeah. I mean, even if people generally support the notion that there was more communist infiltration of the United States in the 1950s than was known or whatever, it’s still seemingly a support for the core tenets of McCarthyism because all of that was based on things like secret list and destruction of reputation with no due process and all kinds of excessive abuses of power that we should all object to, no matter what the cause.”
And this further note from Siegel’s report on Tablet- “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation”.
“It is a supreme irony that the very people (Democrats/liberals) who a decade ago led the freedom agenda for other countries have since pushed the United States to implement one of the largest and most powerful censorship machines in existence under the guise of fighting disinformation.
“Or perhaps irony is not the right word to capture the difference between the freedom-loving Clinton of a decade ago and the pro-censorship activist of today, but it gets at what appears to be the about-face done by a class of people who were public standard-bearers for radically different ideas barely 10 years earlier. These people—politicians, first and foremost—saw (and presented) internet freedom as a positive force for humanity when it empowered them and served their interests, but as something demonic when it broke down those hierarchies of power and benefited their opponents. That’s how to bridge the gap between the Hillary Clinton of 2013 and the Clinton of 2023.”
Siegel details how and why this shift has occurred over the past decade or so.
Another note on the radical shift in Democrat/liberal attitudes to polar opposite positions today. US liberals, once known as the great advocates and defenders of freedom/free speech, inclusion, diversity, tolerance, and other great Classic Liberal or liberal democratic principles, have now taken the opposite stance in pushing the Censorship Industrial Complex.
“Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich responded to the news that Elon Musk was purchasing Twitter by declaring that preserving free speech online was “Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue, and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.” According to Reich, censorship is “necessary to protect American democracy.”
Anti-farming crusade
Here’s a good report on the anti-farming crusade spawned by climate alarmism with some helpful detail from atmospheric physicists on climate science- “Entire Global Food Supply at Risk From Disastrous Response to So-Called ‘Nitrogen Crisis’” by Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic (posted by Charlese Rotter). This illustrates further the consequent destructive salvation schemes spawned from the alarmist creation of threatening monsters.
Quotes from report:
“The full horror of the ‘nitrogen’ war on agriculture is becoming more apparent every day. Food supplies around the world face collapse if the use of nitrogen fertiliser is severely restricted under Net Zero requirements. It is claimed that the fertiliser is warming the Earth and causing the climate to break down, as the by-product nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere. In fact the entire global food supply is in danger of being trashed for the sake of what recent scientific work notes is almost unmeasurable 0.064°C warming per century.
“Policies to address this non-existent crisis have already done enormous harm in Sri Lanka, where a ban on nitrogen fertiliser caused a rapid collapse in food yields, and led to the President fleeing the country in a hurry. The Canadian Government is committed to a 30% reduction in N2O levels by 2030. In the Netherlands, the Government is following European Union instructions and trying to remove farmers from the land… Political discontent is growing, and there are already fears for the supply of agricultural products since the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world….
“Before the arrival of commercial nitrogen fertilisers, famine was a frequent feature of the unreliable food supply across parts of the world. Without the fertiliser, famine will resume its gruesome role, something mainstream Net Zero politicians have to address in the near future. Virtue-signalling green delusions about ‘rewilding’, bug diets and organic farming will not feed the world, probably not even a quarter of it.
“A recent theoretical physics paper from four distinguished scientists said there was evidence that the amount of N2O in the atmosphere, a gas with warming properties, had never been constant over time. There have been large changes in atmospheric concentrations in inter-glacial periods like the current one. Nitrous oxide is a more powerful ‘greenhouse’ gas than carbon dioxide, but it accounts for only 0.34 parts per million (ppm), growing at only 0.00085 ppm per year. Currently CO2 is at 420 ppm, and the molecules are increasing 3,000 times faster in the atmosphere than N2O.
“Like all greenhouse gases, (CO2’s) ability to trap heat within narrow bands of the infrared spectrum diminishes after a certain level as the gas becomes ‘saturated’. This helps explain why greenhouse gas levels have been much higher in the past without the Earth turning into an Armageddon fireball. After a certain point, any increased warming becomes logarithmic, according to the physicists, meaning it rises ever more slowly in response to additional greenhouse gases, which again provides a plausible explanation as to why temperatures have stayed within a relatively small band across the paleo record.
“Every day seems to bring fresh concerns about the destruction likely to be wrought by the collectivist Net Zero project. As we have seen in recent articles, absolutist Net Zero fanatics at the Government-funded U.K. FIRES project look to a world in 2050 where Britain will lose 75% of its energy. Flying, shipping and eating beef and lamb will be banned, while bricks, concrete and glass will almost cease to exist. All the major political parties supporting the current strategy run away from facing true Net Zero reality. In the view of U.K. FIRES leader Professor Julian Allwood, the current strategy is as unrealistic as “magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood”.
“The four physicists note that few citizens realise that the effects of N2O on the atmosphere are “negligible”. The proposed burdensome regulations on farming, ranching and dairying “will have no perceptible effect on climate, but some of them will do great harm to agricultural productivity and food supplies”. It is noted that one of the major factors behind the world’s “unprecedented” abundance of food in recent years has been the use of mineral nitrogen fertiliser. “It is not possible to maintain highly productive agriculture without nitrogen fertiliser,” they add.
“One of the authors of the recent report, Professor William Happer of Princeton, recently teamed up with Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT to make clear what a disaster the world faced. Billions of people around the world faced starvation if the production of nitrogen fertiliser was banned. It would create “worldwide starvation” once half the world does not have enough to eat.
“In his theoretical paper, Happer also notes some of the disasters that have occurred in the past when “ideologically-driven” government agriculture mandates “have usually led to disaster”. In the Soviet Union, a war on farmers in the 1930s led to millions dying of starvation. Folk memories of the Golodomor (hunger-murder), when millions of Ukrainians also died at the same time, “played no small part” in the present war in Ukraine.
“Mandates to restrict animal numbers and fertiliser use will dramatically slash agricultural yields.”
Two critically important reports on the “disinformation” crusade to undermine liberal democracy…
I posted this to a discussion group….
“Once again, a strong urging to read and pass on to others, especially these two articles below, along with others by Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi. They are outlining and presenting evidence of the great threat that we face today, a new totalitarianism perhaps worse than any before (reaches further beyond the geographical limitations of previous totalitarianisms) and it is coming from the very side of society that we not long ago (just around a decade ago) considered to be the main protectors of the rights and freedoms that we all value so highly in our liberal democracies.
“As Siegel states well- “It is a supreme irony that the very people who a decade ago led the freedom agenda for other countries have since pushed the United States to implement one of the largest and most powerful censorship machines in existence under the guise of fighting disinformation. (He quotes statements of Hilary Clinton where she had said previously that internet freedom was vital to democracy)
““Or perhaps irony is not the right word to capture the difference between the freedom-loving Clinton of a decade ago and the pro-censorship activist of today, but it gets at what appears to be the about-face done by a class of people who were public standard-bearers for radically different ideas barely 10 years earlier. These people—politicians, first and foremost—saw (and presented) internet freedom as a positive force for humanity when it empowered them and served their interests, but as something demonic when it broke down those hierarchies of power and benefited their opponents. That’s how to bridge the gap between the Hillary Clinton of 2013 and the Clinton of 2023.”
“His point is to show that Clinton represents something larger, more widespread- the stunning shift that has occurred among Democrats/liberals in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and other places. From formerly advocating for liberal democracy to now opposing and undermining it.
“They note statements of leading liberals who now argue that free speech and democratic freedom in general are too dangerous to continue and must be restricted. These liberals argue that freedom is “a threat to democracy”- meaning (“dogwhistle”) a threat to their power and control of society.
“These journalists are presenting the detailed history of this emerging threat and movement, the psychology, reasons, and events behind it- i.e. what changed in the minds of US Democrats/liberals to now censor free speech and push a totalitarianism as bad as any other under the worst regimes in history (their point that the worst totalitarian movements were hindered by geography but this new totalitarianism is not so limited).
“The two critical reports:
“Glen Greenwald: The Disinformation Fraud: How America’s Most Powerful Institutions Joined Forces to Crush Speech & Silence Dissent, with Jacob Siegel”
And “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation”, Jacob Siegel.
With Solzhenitsyn, I would argue that our greatest threat and battle today is not with other people (i.e. the fight over political/social divides and differences). Our greatest battle takes place within each of us- the battle with our inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others (what Joseph Campbell termed the “animal passions”). Critical to our struggle is to tackle the ideas in our narratives that continue to validate these base subhuman impulses. See detail below in “The core themes (mental pathologies) that have dominated human consciousness across history”- The “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths.
This “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex (also known as “apocalyptic millennialism”) still dominates world religions, and more critical to recognize, it shapes so-called “secular ideological” systems of belief also. This persistence of primitive mythology in modern narratives, both religious and secular, is notable in the climate alarmism narrative and the overall resurgence of collectivism ideology (“Woke Marxism”). The “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of mythical themes was given its initial ideological formulation in 19th Century Declinism and that ideology birthed or influenced varied offspring like Marxism, Nazism, and general environmental alarmism. Until we deal with the core themes of such narratives, this pathology will continue to incite and validate our worst impulses and thereby harm our societies.
Again, the more destructive impulses that are incited by the above complex include the impulse to tribally set ourselves against one another as enemies, the impulse to dominate others, and the impulse to destroy some competing other who is viewed as an enemy. These darker impulses of our nature have been behind uncountable eruptions of bad behavior (personal and larger scale) and consequent human suffering across history.
Patterns in alarmism narratives/movements:
Note carefully the patterns that unfold in the never-ending eruptions of alarmism that flood across our societies. H. L. Mencken warned us that the aim of politics was to alarm populations with an endless series of imaginary hobgoblins, rendering people susceptible to embrace the salvation scams of the alarmists. Politics, he claimed, was very much about manipulating people that have been made desperate due to their aroused survival impulse. Frightened people more willingly give up their freedom and surrender to the salvationist projects of totalitarians (that impulse to domination/control of others).
Matt Taibbi, and others, are warning that, as the climate alarm now appears to be losing credibility and steam, a new monster is being manufactured. The new alarmist monster to fear is AI (Artificial Intelligence) that the apocalyptic prophets claim will destroy us all. Additionally, alarmists have manufactured the monster of “disinformation” that they claim threatens democracy. So we must surrender our critical freedom of speech and submit to censorship by highly partisan and ideological state elites who claim to know what is right for all others.
Another emerging manufactured monster, noted by Michael Shellenberger, is the claim of Woke Progressives that “hate incidents” are rising (his May 9, 2023 post- “Elites Manufacture Fake ‘Hate’ Crisis As Pretext For Mass Spying, Blacklists, And Censorship: Totalitarian measures spread to California from Germany, New Zealand, and Europe”.
Shellenberger notes that while reporting on hate incidents has increased, there is no evidence that actual hate crimes have increased, and the actual prosecutable number of such crimes is miniscule in relation to population (e.g. 285 hate crime “complaints” in California with a population of 39 million). The increased reporting may be due to excessive media focus:
“It may be that Californians simply labeled more crimes as “hate” crimes because they were primed to do so by the media’s 700% – 1,000% increased focus on racism between 2011 and 2020”.
Shellenberger adds: “If there’s no evidence that “hate incidents” are rising, and abundant evidence that tolerance is rising, and overwhelming evidence that the media created a moral panic about racism, why are nations and nation-sized states like California urging mass spying and creating blacklists?”…
“In truth, acceptance of racial, religious, and sexual differences has never been higher in recorded human history. Never before have same-sex and mixed-race couples have been more accepted across all Western nations, which are far more tolerant than most other nations worldwide.
“Trans people are celebrated, with an entire reality show dedicated to documenting in celebratory fashion the sexual reassignment surgery and hormone use of a trans girl named Jazz Jennings. And few places are more celebratory of transgenderism than California.”
Shellenberger states that the crusade of numerous countries to now criminalize hate speech is motivated by the desire to use “hate speech as an excuse to spy on and censor citizens”.
He adds: “The motivation is plainly online censorship. What California is doing is effectively the same system that U.S. government-funded contractors like DiResta put in place to “flag” disfavored social media posts during 2020 and 2021 relating to elections and covid.
“If hate isn’t increasing, why are nations like Germany and nation-sized states like California cracking down on it? The answer is increasingly obvious: global elites are working together to instill fear in the population, turn people into spies, and control what information people are allowed to be exposed to online….
“Germany is leading the West into a totalitarian future. Currently, the government is investigating 8,500 cases of wrongspeech and, according to the New York Times, “more than 1,000 people have been charged or punished since 2018.”
“The government has brought charges against citizens for mere insults. “The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics, and brought people in for questioning,” reports the Times.
““We are making it clear that anyone who posts hate messages must expect the police to be at the front door afterward,” said the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office last year.
“The claim by everyone from Biden and Obama to Newsom and Ardern that online hatred is so out of control that it imperils our democracy is part of a larger attack on free speech and, thus, democracy.
“Terrorizing a large share of the population into believing another share of the population threatens democracy, urging them to become spies, and creating blacklists, is the road to totalitarianism.
“The haters are the elites, not the people. Hilary Clinton called a significant percentage of the country “deplorables.” Obama faulted his political enemies for “clinging to their religion” rather than being Woke. And it was Arden who called her political opponent a “prick.”
“Through their gatherings at Davos, Aspen, and the United Nations, global elites have decided they know what’s best for the people and are deadset on imposing their Wokeism on the entire planet. As such, it’s not the public’s hatred that imperils democracy, it’s the elites’.”
Such is how you create a monster to terrorize populations and force them to give up their freedom and submit to totalitarian salvation scams.
Continuing with patterns in alarmism movements…
If we don’t familiarize ourselves with the patterns of alarmist movements, then we will continue to fall for alarmist narratives and their consequent irrational and destructive salvation schemes. That was historian Richard Landes’ point regarding Hitler and the Nazis. Landes said that if you dismissed Hitler as just another madman (he was) and did not understand how “apocalyptic millennial” themes can carry a society toward mass death, then you have learned nothing and will just repeat the same mistakes again and again with each new alarmism movement. In response to Landes’ good point, I would urge- keep an eye on the narrative themes that alarmists use to incite panic in populations (apocalyptic scenarios) and then manipulate them to embrace irrational and destructive salvation scams (millennialism).
We have been watching these alarmist patterns play out in the climate alarmism crusade over the past few decades.
Most harmful among the outcomes of these alarmism movements is that they rob us of our freedom. Frightened by some threatening monster, we become too willing to submit to self-appointed saviors and their irrational salvation schemes to save ourselves, to save our world. With our survival impulses incited by exaggerated apocalyptic scenarios, we too readily give up our basic rights and freedoms as required to combat whatever great monstrous threat that has been presented to us.
Alarmism eruptions and their irrational salvation schemes wreak immense damage as the decarbonization madness is exhibiting today. See further details below in varied essays on this topic, notably, the comments on the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of ideas. Note how these ideas influence thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior (e.g. Psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo).
The project here is to understand the basic themes and patterns used by alarmism movements, in both religious traditions and their “secular” offspring. The project is to probe how we can fight the monsters of alarmism narratives, what potent weapons we can employ to slay the monsters that are manufactured by alarmism prophets.
Trigger warning or spoiler alert:
My personal take on the “hero’s quest to slay a monster” focuses mainly on the “Monster God” of religious traditions (the term used by Christian psychologist and theologian Harold Ellens), notably the monstrous features of Paul’s Christ myth (contrasted with the central message of Historical Jesus- the single most profound ethical/theological insight ever presented). I then laser in on the monstrous offspring of Paul’s apocalyptic Christ- the manufactured monsters of “secular/ideological” belief systems like climate alarmism (looming apocalypse from industrial civilization purportedly destroying the planet). But most critical, I then re-orient the focus to the battle with the monster that resides within each of us- i.e. our inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of competing others. Ideas of monster gods (still at the core of our meta-narratives, both religious and “secular”) have been used across history to incite and validate our worst impulses to harm others.
More on Site project:
Understand the themes that define our narratives, both religious and secular, the themes that shape our consciousness, our emotions, our motivations, and our responses/behaviors. Understand the consequences and outcomes of varying ideas, at both personal and societal-scale impacts. Probe for better alternatives that tell us the true state of life, that defuse alarmist exaggeration and distortion, that enable us to maintain our humanity in the battles of life, that enable us to protect freedom, to counter totalitarianism… and more.
Go Michael, go- The never-ending battle to protect freedom (more on the new totalitarian censorship crusade)
This is critically important reporting from Michael Shellenberger. His latest post “Need To Keep Masses Afraid Is Behind Elite Embrace Of Wokeism And Censorship”, May 7, 2023 on Public News at Substack.
Quotes from post:
“For the last half-decade, elites in government and the media have created a culture of self-censorship on race, climate change, and trans issues. In the workplace, in schools and universities, and online, politicians, activists, and journalists instilled in ordinary people a paralyzing fear of saying the wrong thing and finding oneself accused of being a “climate denier,” a “racist,” or a “transphobe.”
“It’s now clear that, at this very moment, media elites are seeking to turn this culture of informal self-censorship into formal government censorship. They call their legislation, which would destroy free speech, based centrally on their hatred of the masses, “pro-democracy” and “anti-hate.”
“To be sure, Wokeism is a genuine grassroots religion. It demonizes and scapegoats heretics, journalists, and truth-tellers. And it demands sacrifices from ordinary people in the form of more expensive energy, the sterilization of psychiatrically disordered children, and self-censorship.
“But it is also a state religion. News media and social media elites took Wokeism from being a marginal cult into being the dominant ideology of every major institution, from NBC and the CDC to the AMA and the CIA.
““Think tanks” and “journalists” behaved as propagandists, leading much of the public to believe that police were wantonly murdering thousands of unarmed black Americans, that climate change threatened human existence, and that surgeons can (and should) “change the sex” of children.
“When people said, “Hold on a minute,” and point out that those things aren’t true, and result in bad outcomes, elite institutions and their activist Praetorian Guards, were on hand to attack the unwoke as witches, deem their claims “hate speech,” and un-person them socially, financially, and politically. The simultaneous worldwide push for censorship is the latest step in this rising, elite-driven totalitarianism.
“The truth is that Western societies have never been more tolerant. Over 90% of Americans support interracial marriages. Americans and Europeans are the most welcoming people in the world of people from different nations, cultures, and religions. Our governments allow same-sex marriages and adoptions.
“But elites apparently believe our unprecedented level of tolerance is a problem. They want intolerance, not tolerance. Elites plainly believe they must keep the population in a state of fear to stay in power. For that reason, they keep ginning up moral panics, whether of climate change, racism, and transphobia, or “Russian disinfo,” covid, and Ukraine.
“The other problem remains the Internet. The Internet means that people could learn inconvenient facts, including that: in 2022, thirty-one unarmed black Americans were killed by the police while 60 police officers were killed by gunfire; natural disasters are declining not increasing; and that no amount of surgery or drugs can turn a boy into a girl or vice-versa.
“Most troubling, they persuaded the leadership of the CIA, FBI, and NATO militaries to join them in using Woke fear-mongering campaigns to demand Internet censorship. It’s clear now that military and intelligence community elites feared that populist nationalism would undermine their ability to control the news media in the ways they had since World War II. And so they funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council to run Woke campaigns demanding censorship.
“Elites used fear-based campaigns in order to demonize, scapegoat, and marginalize the people and institutions in society who opposed their demands to make energy expensive, replace meritocracy with structural racism, control the minds and bodies of children, and be able to engage in wars abroad.
“But all that still wasn’t enough for people, particularly Americans, to give up their freedom of speech. And so they convinced millions of people around the world that the failure of security and resulting riot at the Capitol on January 6 was, in reality, a coup attempt meriting government censorship. That an almost identical incident in Brazil on January 8 is now being used to justify sweeping government censorship should not surprise us.
“Totalitarianism may be inevitable. Western civilization may be nearing an end. Woke totalitarianism may be replacing Enlightenment liberalism in the same way Christianity replaced the Roman empire. And it may be too late to stop government censorship.
“Or it may be that the love of freedom is stronger than Woke hatred. The secret ways in which Woke elites are demanding censorship is proof that they themselves know how unpopular agendas are. When Irish journalist Ben Scallon asked his country’s prime minister why he was pursuing censorship even though his own government’s polling found that 70% of voters are against it, the prime minister responded by denying the validity of the survey.
“Elites have over-reached, in our view, and badly. But we must also make that apparent. As such, the most important thing we can do is shine a light on their demands for censorship since once they are debated openly, they will fail.
“We must also turn the tables. That starts with our purpose. Because the hearts of the censorship Renees are filled with hate, ours must be filled with love — love of humankind, civilization, and freedom. We should celebrate our progress against intolerance, including racism and sexism, and defend it.
“That will require courage. The official state censorship we are seeing today emerges directly out of the culture of informal censorship elites imposed on institutions and the culture over the last half-decade. We can’t resist formal censorship without resisting informal censorship in the workplace, in schools and universities, and online.”
The warnings continue:
This from Glen Greenwald’s monologue of May 5, 2023 on “Locals”. He, along with Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, among others, have been warning us of the totalitarian censorship crusade spreading across the world- i.e. the “Censorship Industrial Complex”…
“Media & Biden Admin Get Far Too Cozy at WHCD—Revealing Rotten Core of US Journalism. Plus: Lula/Google Ominous Online Censorship Battle”
Quotes:
“New Law Sought by Brazil’s Lula to Ban and Punish ‘Fake News’ and ‘Disinformation’ Threatens the Free Internet Everywhere. Many nations seem poised to abandon the core lesson of the Enlightenment: that no human institution can or should be trusted to decree Absolute Truth and punish dissent from it. (Glen Greenwald, Feb. 25, 2023)
“And that ultimately is the point. That was the lesson of the Enlightenment. Prior to the Enlightenment, we did have institutions, monarchs, churches, and emperors who dictated truth. Nobody was permitted to dissent or deviate from those decrees. You are punished, you are killed, you are in prison. You are exiled. And the point of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire and John Locke and the philosophers from France and Britain and the rest of Europe, that ended up being the foundation for the American founding and modern-day liberties throughout the democratic world is that what should dictate truth is human reason and a free debate, not centralized control. We’re reverting back to the pre-Enlightenment era, where institutions of authority dictate to us what truth is. That’s what this law is for.”
Libertarian David Boaz made the comment in his “Libertarianism: A Primer” that both sides of the US- political/social divide- Republicans and Democrats- lacked a full appreciation of Classic Liberal principles of freedom. Republicans, he said, needed to respect freedom more in regard to social issues (i.e. respect women’s freedom of choice regarding pregnancies, gay rights, etc.). And Democrats needed to respect freedom more in regard to economic issues (fight “Big government”, oppose excessive taxation, excessive regulation). His comments pointed to the needed revival of the “live and let live” ideal. Why do we find it so hard to grant others the freedom that we want for ourselves, to live uniquely diverse stories, to have full freedom of opinion and speech, to enjoy full self-determination over all aspects of our lives.
The crunch in respecting freedom for others is when they say or do things that we may find personally repugnant (as long as not overtly criminal). Classic Liberalism argued that states/governments should leave citizens alone. As long as people did not assault others (engage violence) then they should be left alone to enjoy full self-determination and freedom of choice. But the residual impulse to domination of others incites many of our fellow citizens to still engage busybody interference in other’s choices and lives. This totalitarian control impulse becomes worse when it is unleashed by those gaining position of power in states at any level. We saw this unleashed totalitarian impulse at its worst during the Covid lockdowns.
And continuing my “Learn more, fear less” project:
There is no “climate crisis” from the roughly 1 degree C warming over the last century. The real climate threat is from the current suboptimal cold state of our world and possible future cooling. 10 times more people still die every year from cold than die from warming. Place climate in the big picture context: We are on a 6000-year long term cooling trend, since the end of the Holocene Optimum (spanning 10,000 to 6,000 years ago) that was warmer than today.
Cautioning rushed decarbonization while affirming the climate crisis. Huh?
This linked article illustrates what confuses so many today- Politicians cautioning against rushed decarbonization while at the same time affirming climate crisis alarmism. Huh? I mean- WTF?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/04/china-russia-oil-gas-coal-climate/
“The West faces a serious predicament: How to weigh the value of guarding against what many view as the potentially serious long-term effects of climate change versus the current phasing out of fossil fuels despite the risk of geopolitical failure.”
My response: Learn more about the actual physics of CO2 and stop affirming the exaggerated climate crisis narrative (“Human-caused climate change that is becoming catastrophic”). It has no scientific basis. See science details at “co2coalition.org”, notably the research of atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer.
Basic project and argument here: Wendell Krossa
We have inherited a complex of myths/ideas that shape our narratives, our worldviews, our belief systems, and hence, our outlook on life- i.e. the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennial” complex of myths. These inherited mythical ideas shape how we think about reality, how we feel about things (our emotions), our motivations, and hence, our responses/actions/behavior. And that influence, working through many individuals, shapes human societies. So narrative themes do matter.
Our inherited beliefs (views, ideas, values) were long ago created by our primitive ancestors to validate our inherited impulses, both good and bad. Among the worst of inherited animal impulses that people still validate today- (1) the tribal impulse (to separate from and oppose differing others), (2) the impulse to dominate others (not respecting the equality, freedom and self-determination of all others, controlling others), and (3) the impulse to punish and destroy differing others (retaliatory, punitive justice). These impulses, along with their validating ideas, have caused immense damage across history- especially when exhibited in retaliatory responses and cycles, when responding to “offenses” of imperfect others by resorting to violence/war.
Many have learned to moderate their worst impulses but still hold the themes or ideas in their belief systems that incite those impulses- themes long protected under “the umbrella of the sacred” in religious traditions, even embedded in views of God. Note, for example, the widely held beliefs (1) that God is tribal (God favoring true believers in a true religion, excluding and damning outsiders), (2) God as lord, king, ruler, validating the same domination by priesthoods or secular leaders, and (3) God as a judge that punishes and destroys unbelievers (apocalypse, hell).
Many continue to embrace these primitive themes in their personal narratives and worldviews, and that persistence in holding to the old validating ideas permits and incites a residual influence on our worst impulses. Hanging on to the old themes hinders our full liberation from the animal inheritance, from the old impulses. The old themes, merged in narratives and worldviews along with newer and better insights, results in confusion (cognitive dissonance). This is what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy argued in stating that the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus were “buried” in the larger New Testament context of Paul’s Christ myth. The old themes distort and bury the newer and better alternatives. You cannot merge the inherited animal with the truly human without deforming the human element.
An example of mixing/merging the old and the new- In Matthew 5:38-48 Jesus affirms the single most profound statement of love ever uttered- “love your enemies”. Then a few chapters later (chapter 11) Matthew has Jesus stating that those villagers who refused his miracles and message would be cast into hell- the single most horrific statement of hatred ever uttered. Those two entirely contrary statements could not have been made by the same person. So it goes throughout the New Testament- the mixing and merging of the core message of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christology has led to endless confusion and the distorting and burying of the profound insights of Jesus.
Continuing…
Go to the root issues- to the ideas that validate our impulses, what many call the “archetypes”.
The old mythical themes that validate our worst inherited impulses are summarized in the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. These myths continue to dominate the great world religious traditions and over past centuries the same themes have been embraced in newer “secular/ideological” systems of belief, notably in 19th Century Declinism and its offspring- Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism, climate alarmism. Sources: the “apocalyptic millennial” scholars Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, among others. The ongoing preservation of the old themes in contemporary ideologies continues to wreak horrific destruction on societies.
Critical to understand- What are the actual themes of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex and how do such ideas work out in alarmism movements to cause immense damage at a personal level and in wider societies. As Richard Landes stated at the end of his chapter on Nazism- If you dismiss Hitler as just another madman (which he was) then you have learned nothing about such hellish eruptions as in Nazism and you will repeat those mistakes again and again. Landes’ point: To learn the lessons of history, we have to understand how apocalyptic millennial ideas can influence societies toward mass-death.
Below are some revised repostings of the ideas/themes/myths of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennial” complexes, the impulses they incite, the harm they have caused, and how to counter them with better alternatives. Familiarize yourself with the key themes, their influence on people, the patterns exhibited in alarmist movements, and the outcome on populations/societies.
Most critical- Note how we can counter such pathology with entirely new alternative themes for new narratives that inspire our better impulses- i.e. more humane ideas that inspire and affirm the basic humane impulses of our human spirit. See “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” also posted as “Explaining reality and life: The worst and best ideas that we have come up with”, or “Inherited bad myths and better alternatives”.
See details further below in varied repostings of revised material….
Some main site points: Wendell Krossa
Evidence to counter alarmist narratives and exaggerations that distort the true state of life. Alarmism incites people to desperation (i.e. fear incites the survival impulse). That incitement then renders people susceptible to embracing irrational salvation schemes that “save the world by destroying it”, as with decarbonization.
I respond to climate alarmism as the latest incarnation of Declinism ideology. And I recognize that Declinism is the more historically recent “secular/ideological” formulation of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” mythology that has descended down through previous history, mainly through the Christian tradition (Arthur Herman- “The Idea of Decline in Western History”). Hence, I go after Paul’s Christ myth as the primary influence that has kept the pathology of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” alive in Western consciousness and society. And further, I also affirm Arthur Mendel’s evaluation of apocalyptic as “the most violent and destructive idea in history”. We are watching in real time as this pathology works destruction once again in climate alarmism and its highly irrational salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization.
My “go to the real roots of a problem” approach to problem solving explains the double-barrelled approach here of going after climate alarmism (as a movement that embodies and illustrates profoundly religious themes), along with going after the core background themes that fuel such “madness of crowds” eruptions- i.e. the themes of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennialism” mythology.
The first of the double-barrel- climate alarmism- can be countered with good climate science facts. The other barrel- “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” mythology- needs to be countered with good alternative information from areas like the history of mythology and religion research, notably, the almost three-century long “Search for the Historical Jesus” and his original message that contrasts with Paul’s Christ myth (i.e. “Q Wisdom Sayings” research). Along with input from related metaphysical speculations, alternative religious/spiritual beliefs, etc.
“Love your enemies because God does”. There is no more profound statement or insight anywhere in human thought and writing. It combines the single most profoundly humane ethic, with the single most profoundly humane statement of theology ever made. This coupling of a “behavior based on similar belief”, or ethic based on similar theology, is the central theme of Historical Jesus, and it is entirely contrary to the Christ myth of the New Testament. By the way: People have done this all across history- i.e. validating their behaviors and lives with appeal to metaphysical or divine realities. This illustrates the primal human longing to model human life according to some greater ideal and authority.
The central theme of Historical Jesus- unconditional love of imperfect others- presents the potent insight and ideal to liberate us from the animal inheritance in all of us, to humanize us at a personal level, and then to permeate and humanize our societies, as nothing else can.
The central message of Jesus overturns entirely the destructive tribalism of human history- the persistent tendency to separate from one another in groups that view differing others as threats, as dehumanized “enemies” to be excluded, dominated, and destroyed.
The central Jesus theme overturns the impulse to dominate others. His no conditions love is an advocacy to respect the freedom of others, to treat all others as equals who are not to be subjugated, manipulated, and controlled, but to be affirmed in their individual diversity with personal self-determination.
Further, “love of enemy” does not seek punitive justice or the destruction of the failing other. This love will hold all responsible for offenses committed (i.e. the responsibility to cease violent behaviors, to make fundamental changes to life, to “grow the fuck up”, and to make restitution). Love of enemies is not some form of “turn the other cheek” pacifism. But once violent people are restrained (as in the criminal justice system) then we are responsible to treat them humanely and thereby maintain our own humanity.
The “love of enemies” ethic enables us to become godlike- to become just like God who is unconditional love (“Be unconditionally merciful just like your heavenly Father is unconditionally merciful”, Luke 6). And anyone can achieve such godlike status in daily life. That is what Jesus meant by the unnoticeable spread of the kingdom of God throughout the ordinary and mundane of daily existence where God exists, as exhibited through the human spirit of ordinary people.
The unconditional ethic and theology of Jesus overturns the entire history of religion as an institution that has always been essentially about conditions. No religion has ever presented the reality of an unconditional God to humanity. All religions have advocated endless conditions- i.e. conditions of right belief, tribal membership in the true religion or tribe, demands for sacrifice/payment, demand to engage a righteous battle against evil enemies (the hero’s quest to conquer a monster), and the obligation to punitively destroy some enemy.
Summary statement of Jesus’ core message
How to end cycles of retaliatory violence, how to achieve lasting peace in societies….
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full…
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
Again, an example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin via a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone (See Paul’s letter to the Romans for detail).
Campbell on universal love:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Added note: The “love of enemy” ethic is probably best exhibited through Classic Liberalism with its protection of the freedoms and rights of all individuals. Authentic love will respect the freedom of others, not overruling, intervening, and controlling others, but respecting their right to self-determination, their freedom of choice, etc. Where there is no such freedom (at the individual or societal level) there is no authentic love. Intervening, overriding self-determination, and controlling others is not love. The application of Classic Liberal principles is most difficult, but most necessary for overall freedom, when it comes to opponents/enemies that we find repugnant. Then we discover what it really means to “love your enemy”.
Added note (from another post but related to above point): Again, I would suggest that the core theme of Historical Jesus- unconditional love for all- is best exhibited today through the principles of Classic Liberalism, the system of institutions that affirms societies of free and fully equal individuals as the ultimate authority in society. The principles of Classic Liberalism urge us to protect the rights of all as free individuals. They urge us to respect every human person as a full equal in the human family. They urge us to respect the self-determination of every person, not dominating or controlling others. And they urge us to respond to human failure with restorative, not punitive justice.
Notable repeats: C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis’s warning in relation to the moralizing busybodies who believe that they alone know what is right and best for all others and will seek to coerce and control others:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals”.
The personal safeguard to the self-delusion of being solely right- Hold fast to Classic Liberal principles regarding the protection of individual rights and freedoms, as against the ever-creeping totalitarianism of collectivist approaches that subject individuals to some claimed “greater good or common good” that has to be managed by “enlightened elites” who believe that they alone know what is best for all other and will use coercion to control others.
Another notable repeat…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke about the real battle against evil in the world when he said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”
Ira Glasser on Joe Rogan’s podcast- the important issue re free speech, Wendell Krossa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU
The above link contains a brief explanation from Ira Glasser, former ACLU director, on the critical need to protect free speech, even hate speech, repugnant speech. The main issue, he says, is- “Who gets to decide what hate speech is?”. If your side bans the other side’s speech today as hate speech, then when the other side gains power in the future they will in turn ban your speech as hate speech. Everyone then suffers loss of freedom.
The only safe solution is to “duke things out in the public free speech arena”, countering other’s speech with your arguments and ideas. Protecting all speech, even repugnant speech, is the safest way to protect our own freedom of speech.
“Power is the antagonist”, says Glasser, and the great threat to civil liberties, and power must be restrained. No matter who has power. Both sides are equally dangerous with unrestrained power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU
Glasser offers one of the best explanations and defenses of free speech anywhere. As Glasser says, freedom of speech is not intuitive but is a learned taste. He presents helpful illustrations of the issues involved.
And Glen Greenwald again: “Your defense of free speech only matters if you’re defending the free speech rights of people who not just disagree with you, but who express views you find repugnant”.
Similarly, physicist Lawrence Krause warns regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the concern to teach AI “universal human values” so it will not pose a danger to humanity. Krause says, “This sounds good, in principle, until one tries to define universal human values, because it is difficult “to find consistent examples of logical, ethical, or moral behavior running across time and geography”. The problem, he says, “is the question of who gets to provide the guidance, and what their values are”. It is very much, says Krause, the coding problem of “junk in, junk out”.
https://quillette.com/2023/02/21/artificially-intelligent-offense/
I would suggest, contrary to Krause, that Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy principles do “define universal human values” and “provide consistent examples of logical, ethical, and moral behavior running across time and geography”.
Added note: Who said that the most dangerous people in society are those who assume that they know what is best for all others and will coerce others to embrace their view of things, “for their own good” of course, or “for the greater or common good” as they see it?
Lots of interesting talk in public about AI (Artificial Intelligence) or AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Some (e.g. Elon Musk) warn of dangers as they believe AI has become a “runaway train”.
Just a bit of speculation (from a place of personal ignorance): Why not program the principles of Classic Liberalism into the core of AI as a safeguard against abuse?- i.e. the protection of individual rights and freedoms in societies that are governed by institutions like “representative parliament” and “common law” (such as in the US Constitution), institutions that disperse power among competing individuals and groups. Why not program AI with principles where all are equally protected from totalitarian collectives and the elites that run the collectives. Just sayin…
Remember Frederik Hayek’s point that the best way to prevent totalitarianism is to disperse power among competing individuals, or competing institutions/organizations/groups, etc.
To the contrary, collectivist approaches centralize and concentrate power in states/governments. And then some elite, or some group, has to run the collective or the state, and that responsibility has inevitably been taken up by “enlightened elites” who believe that they know what is best for all others… according to their vision of the “common or greater good”. That mindset and approach to organizing human societies has inevitably unleashed the totalitarian impulse, as evident in the some 20 failed attempts at creating “true socialist societies” over the past century-plus.
For a good history of Socialist experiments and the views of Western intellectuals on those experiments- i.e. initially affirming each new Socialist project, then after the inevitable failure, the denial that they were truly Socialist approaches (“retroactively redefined as ‘unreal’”). See historical details of the repeated failures in Kristian Niemietz’ “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.
See also former Socialist Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven On Earth: The Rise And Fall of Socialism” for a good history of Socialism. Also, Arthur Herman’s “The Cave And The Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”. Herman details the history of human endeavors to organize societies according to the collectivist approach versus “the free and equal individuals” approach.
Best books on the improving state of life on Earth:
Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. Simon set the standard for understanding the “true state of life on Earth” by looking at the complete big picture (all the data on any issue) and longest-term trends (not just focusing on short-term aberrations or downturns in longer trends).
Many subsequent studies have affirmed Simon’s basic research on the big picture and long-term trends of life-
Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment On the Earth”,
Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”,
Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”,
Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”,
Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”,
Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”,
Tupy and Bailey’s “Ten Global Trends”, also “Superabundance”,
Hans Roslings “Factfulness”, and others.
The core themes of lost paradise/redemption mythology that dominate world religions, and also dominate contemporary “secular/ideological” systems of belief like Declinism (the most dominant and influential theme today). These core themes now dominate the offspring of Declinism, such as climate alarmism. Wendell Krossa
A ‘quickie’ summary for visitors on the run.
The core themes of the “lost paradise/redemption” complex of myths are evident in the earliest human writing (i.e. scattered throughout the Sumerian/Babylonian mythologies, later more formalized in Zoroastrian theology). These themes have subsequently dominated human narratives across history in the main religious traditions and are now found in the “secular/ideological” belief systems of the modern world.
The core themes of human narratives vary little across history. We repeatedly get the “same old, same old”, world without end. Young moderns self-identifying as “materialist”, even atheist, also mouth these very same themes, notably in “profoundly religious” movements like climate alarmism. The lost paradise/redemption complex of ideas are the basic themes of Declinism ideology, the “most influential and dominant ideology in the modern world” (i.e. life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending).
Note: Try to find a contemporary public story (i.e. Hollywood movie) that does not affirm some form of decline toward apocalypse as true and inevitable.
Get this point that in contemporary versions, primitive myths have been given new “secular/ideological” expression for the modern era. The terms may change but the core ideas or themes remain the same. Campbell nailed it in stating that “the same primitive mythical themes have been believed all across history and across all the culture of the world”. This speaks to the issue of deeply embedded “archetypes”, subconscious things that keep re-emerging in meta-narratives generation after generation. It helps us to understand why people keep falling for the same old scams again and again, despite the horrifically destructive outcomes.
Many people simply respond to narratives like climate alarmism at an intuitive, emotional level as unquestionably “true”. Apocalyptic Declinism narratives just “feel right and true”. That is how subconscious archetypes work on human minds, emotions, motivations, and responses. This subconscious intuition also explains the widespread tendency to “confirmation bias”- the tendency to select data that affirms our personal beliefs and to ignore or discredit contrary data. We have a hard time letting go of beliefs that meet deeply felt emotional needs.
(Again- archetype: “model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc.” My own definition of archetype would be- “inherited impulses and the ideas/myths people have created to validate the impulses”. These have become the models, ideals, prototypes, patterns that shape our narratives, consciousness, emotions, and behaviors.)
Re-evaluate your personal worldview to see if it is really as “scientific” and rational as you have assumed. Perhaps your worldview contains more primitive mythological themes than you might like to admit. The “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennial” complexes provide a baseline of comparative ideas against which to evaluate your own views.
Also worthwhile is the project to try to understand why we hold certain themes in our personal narratives. What “emotional” needs do our beliefs meet? What fears are we responding to, and what incites those fears? What sense of guilt are we trying to assuage, and what is that guilt actually based on? Much contemporary human shame/guilt is based on the primitive fallacies we have inherited in myths of a human fall from original purity into sinfulness/corruption, human guilt for ruining an original paradise and sending life into decline toward worse, and consequent human responsibility to make some sacrifice, to endure some form of suffering as redemptive, in order to “save the world” and restore an imagined lost paradise. The myths that have long incited such deeply embedded guilt are entirely false. And what “salvation/redemption” are we seeking? From what threat? Is it real or just mythical?
See in sections below… “False original premises or assumptions, and the wasteful outcomes and responses to the false original premises or assumptions”.
A repost of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex that is further detailed below:
There was a better past (i.e. an original wilderness paradise world), but early people “sinned” (“fell” or degenerated into something worse) and ruined paradise. Life- then cursed by God- began to decline toward something worse, toward collapse and ending, even toward the ultimate catastrophe of apocalypse. The threat of collapse and ending (apocalypse) was the ultimate punishment for human sins. A sacrifice then had to be made to pay for sin, and suffering would have to be embraced as part of the “redemptive” process. Self-punitive (self-inflicted) suffering today involves giving up the good life for a return to the “morally superior” simple life, a return to primitivism (“de-development”). This general felt need to embrace self-punishment as payment for personal failure, driven by guilt, is more common than many imagine. It has a long history as “archetypical”.
As part of the salvation/redemption schema there must also be a violent purging of some purported evil threat to life (CO2 has been demonized as a “pollutant/poison” that threatens life today). Further, affirming the myth of cosmic dualism, people must heroically engage a righteous battle against the evil threat or enemy. Industrial civilization has been demonized today as the “evil” that destroys the paradise wilderness world (CO2 is the identity marker of this larger evil threat). With atonement and purging accomplished, people are then offered the hope of salvation in the restoration of the lost paradise, or the installation of a new utopia/millennium (i.e. a “fossil fuel-free” world).
(Note in sections below that tribal dualism is wrongly applied to differing others in the human family when any imagined dualism should focus on the real battle against enemies/monsters/evil that ought to take place inside each of us- i.e. the dualism battle of our better self against the animal inheritance in us that is our real “evil enemy” in life. This was Solzhenitsyn’s point, and Joseph Campbell’s point on conquering the “animal passions” in us.)
Solzhenitsyn: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”
Continuing….
The above “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” ideas have shaped ancient and modern worldviews and this is not my conclusion alone. Good historians have traced these themes in recent past apocalyptic movements like Marxism and Nazism. These themes are also evident now in the latest apocalyptic movement of environmental alarmism (see, for example, Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, and David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, among others historians of religious ideas.).
One book alone overturns entirely the above complex of apocalyptic Declinism themes- i.e. Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. Varied others have subsequently offered the same evidence. Simon potently discredited apocalyptic environmentalism, just as the one central insight of Historical Jesus on non-retaliatory, unconditional deity (his anti-sacrifice message) overturned the Christian version of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex (i.e. the core message of Jesus’ overturns Paul’s Christ myth).
We know today that there was no original paradise and life is not declining toward something worse. To the contrary, due to the creative input from human minds and hands, life has been rising toward something ever better than before. So also, no sacrifice is necessary to appease some imagined metaphysical threat. And no violent purging is required to save life, but rather, our “salvation” is to be found in contributing to the long-term “gradualism” of improving life (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”). That is the only “salvation” that we need to embrace. We will never attain utopia, but we can continue to make life ever better over the long term, just as we have successfully done over past centuries.
The impulses and ideas that dominate human consciousness and life (a revised, updated reposting of the longer version of the “Lost paradise/redemption” complex of myths). Wendell Krossa
Subtitles: How to understand human thinking, feeling, motivation, response, and behavior today. The dominant themes of our narratives/worldviews and how they influence us.
(Useful definitions of Archetype: model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc. I would suggest that archetype has to do with our inherited animal impulses and the ideas/myths that our ancestors created to explain and validate these primitive impulses, notably the impulses to tribalism, to domination of others, and to predatory destruction of others. The ancients created the lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption complex to explain and validate these impulses. They tried their best to deal with the world that they lived in and the state of their consciousness at that primitive time.)
A prominent example to illustrate where I am going with this…
Climate alarmism is a “profoundly religious movement” with a consequent salvation crusade that is proving highly destructive of Western societies (i.e. Net Zero decarbonization). The “save the world” crusade of climate alarmism is being dogmatically and zealously pushed by elites (politicians, scientists, celebrities, others)- the people who control public narratives and consequently use state coercion to advocate policy applications that impact all of us, policies that consequently harm the most vulnerable people the most. Decarbonization is becoming very much like all apocalyptic alarmism across history with the same old outcome of “saving the world by destroying the world”. Such is the irrational outcome from inciting the survival impulse in people with alarmist narratives of looming apocalypse.
Some illustration of saving the world by destroying it…
In the Tubi series “Architects of Darkness” Season 1, Episode 2, the narrator tries to explain what drove Hitler’s associates to engage mass-death madness. He notes that they let themselves become possessed by an ideology that placed the state’s vision above the needs of real people. Their loyalty to their state ideology then enabled them to inflict evil on others. Their ideology placed the goals of a regime above the lives of actual human beings.
Bob Brinsmead has often spoken of how dangerous people become when they place their loyalty in something that is set above people- in some law, religion, political ideology, nation state, or whatever. Loyalty to that thing that is placed above or before real people, then results in the neglect or harm of real people.
As the Tubi narrator says, “Government enchanted by its own vision of what the future should look like turned the present into an unimaginable hell for countless victims”. Such has always been the outcome of apocalyptic millennial movements.
The narrator concludes how loyalty to some ideology incites evil in our hearts by quoting the famous statement of Solzhenitsyn, “The line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart and through all human hearts”.
“Enlightened elites” have always believed that they have been called to heroically engage righteous battles against evil, and that they know what is best for all others. They come to view themselves as the specially enlightened ones who have seen some great injustice or wrong in life, some great threat to life, and have a vision of how to gain some version of salvationist utopia. And consequent to their unquestioning belief in the urgency of their cause (i.e. saving their world from an imagined “imminent” apocalypse and attaining utopian salvation) they will justify the need for violent crushing of any dissent or opposition to their crusade. Dissent from their vision and orthodoxy is labelled “dangerous and life threatening”.
The outcomes of such arrogant self-righteousness have cost hundreds of millions of people their lives. Remember the 100 million who died last century due to the forced collectivization of societies under the “enlightened guidance” of Socialist elites in China and Russia, and elsewhere (Cambodia, etc.).
The same outcomes are becoming distressingly evident again today with the resurgence of the coercive collectivism that is being pushed on humanity through the environmental movement and its attacks on industrial civilization. The outcome is the undermining of individual freedoms and rights (i.e. abandoning and overturning the principles and practises of Classic Liberalism). The ideology of climate alarmism and its salvation scheme of decarbonization has been placed above the well-being of real people, and millions of lives are being harmed because of this.
Back to the “impulses and ideas” point of this article…
All mythological and religious movements have embraced a similar complex of ideas or themes and this is evident from the earliest human writing. Very little changes across human history as these themes were long ago hardwired in human subconscious as “archetypes”. And today, the most primitive of past ideas have now been given expression, not just in the world religions, but also in the dominant secular/ideological systems of our world, like Declinism and its offspring- i.e. environmental alarmism/climate alarmism. (Source: Arthur Herman- “The Idea of Decline in Western History”)
The line of historical descent of ideas runs from primitive mythology to world religions to ideological belief systems, and even to the “scientific” belief systems of the modern world. Its always the same old, same old. As Joseph Campbell stated, the same primitive myths have been embraced all across history and across all the cultures of the world.
I repeatedly post lists of these themes on this site because they are foundational to what is wrong in our world today. And we have better alternatives now to take human consciousness and life in a more rational direction, toward a more humane future. We do not have to continue suffering under the impacts of the old mythologies that have contributed to so much misery across history by inciting unnecessary additional fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, resignation, fatalism, despair, depression, nihilism, and even violence. We can now embrace the ultimate human liberation- freedom from mythical pathologies that have long distorted reality and life and that have long incited our worst impulses. We have alternatives to inspire the better angels of our nature, alternatives that inspire our better impulses to live as authentically human.
The ideas in the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennialism” complex set us up to believe that something is wrong, that something (commonly exaggerated to apocalyptic-scale) is threatening our very existence. That naturally incites our primal survival impulse. The gatekeepers of these mythical complexes then claim to know who is to blame, what actions must be taken to correct what they purport is wrong, how we should counter their imagined threat to life, how to save ourselves/our world, and how to make things all right again by restoring cosmic justice.
These complexes of bad ideas have long motivated and validated human beings to harm one another, and even destroy entire societies, all the while believing that they were doing good, their consciences approving them and their actions, affirming their belief that they had God and good on their side, that they were fighting righteous battles against intolerable evils/enemies who had to be stopped even if with coercive violence.
Consider these most basic ideas or themes and their destructive outcomes, whether at the individual level or at larger societal scale:
The core themes (mental pathologies) that have dominated human consciousness across history… the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” narrative:
(1) The myth that a perfection-obsessed deity created a better past or original paradise (i.e. Sumerian Dilmun or Jewish Eden). This is the baseline bad myth. It is perhaps the single most fundamental pathology in human consciousness and narratives. It sets the stage for all the rest. If the past was better, and the present is so obviously worse (imperfect), then logically- What went wrong? The history-long obsession with blaming humanity (i.e. the myth of “fallen/sinful” humanity) arises out of this original error of a better past.
The initial mistake of early people was to blame themselves for committing an “original sin” and thereby ruining an imagined primeval paradise. But contrary to this long-affirmed “original sin” myth (humanity ruining paradise), the original human mistake was actually their wrong assumptions that the past was a paradise world and that early humans had committed a primordial sin and thereby ruined that original perfection, and consequently they deserved punishment.
That wrong initial assumption of a past paradise world ruined by people became the baseline idea for a complex of related pathological ideas, notably myths that have subsequently blamed humanity for all that was wrong in life. That original bad myth then “logically” (logical to myth-oriented minds) led to the demand for punishment and a sacrifice to pay for the initial sin. And further, it led to the requirement that to make things better again you had to violently purge some evil threat to life. And thus, out of the original wrong assumptions, emerged all the rest of the lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption complex of bad myths.
(Insert: See below- “False original premises or assumptions, and the wasteful outcomes/responses to false original premises/assumptions”)
How to respond and correct the original pathology? We need a complete re-orientation of consciousness to fundamentally different themes in a new narrative of reality and life.
Start with rational alternatives to the baseline bad myth.
First, there was never a better past or original paradise, and the overall trajectory of life has never declined from a previous “golden age” toward a worsening future. Any history of our world shows this- i.e. the horrific conditions of early Earth (see, for example, Robert Hazen’s “The Story Of Earth”). And, since that early uninhabitable world, there has emerged a long-term trajectory of improvement toward a more habitable planet for life, such as in the emergence and development of an atmosphere suitable for life, along with many other factors. The history of our world shows long-term improvement in features like the emergence and increasing complexity of multi-cellular life, increasing organization/complexity in ecosystems, and an overall world that has become more conducive to life. There is nothing in the overall story of life on this planet to support the idea of a mythical decline of life from original perfection toward something worse.
Biologists like E. O. Wilson and Charles Darwin both affirmed the overall, long-term “improving” trajectory of life toward more complexity and more organization. Darwin added that life evolved toward more “perfection”.
Conclusion from such evidence? There was never an original paradise that humans ruined. Hence, reject that foundational myth that was the basis for blaming and devaluing humanity. There was no “original sin” or fault that resulted in the loss of paradise. We never “fell” or degenerated from something better to become something worse. We never, in the past, became corrupted beings. Imperfection was our original natural state in brutal animal existence.
An alternative narrative (including metaphysical or “spiritual” speculations) would speculate and suggest that deity created the cosmos and world as originally “imperfect” and there is some good reason for that. So, with other philosophers and theologians, explore the “theodicy” possibilities- that, for example, an imperfect world exists as an arena for human experience, struggle, learning, and development. And that we only learn the better things in life when they are experienced in contrast with the worst elements of life.
Also, that problems, and consequent suffering, inspire our struggle to make life better, and bring out the best in people. For example, through suffering we learn compassion with suffering others (i.e. empathy as fundamental to being human). Much human creativity across history has arisen out of compassion for suffering others. Julian Simon noted that our problems bring out the best in us- i.e. creative endeavor to solve problems and find solutions that benefit ourselves and others. Imperfection is essential to human learning, growth, and maturing.
The myth of a better past dominates 19th Century Declinism ideology, as in the environmental Declinism that states the past wilderness world was paradise and humanity in civilization, notably in industrial capitalist society, has ruined that paradise and life is now heading toward collapse and catastrophe. CO2 has been demonized as the latest primary indicator of the evil of too many people consuming too much of Earth’s “limited” resources and thereby destroying the world. This primitive “lost paradise/apocalyptic/millennial” mythology, that distorts entirely the true story of life, still dominates the thinking of many people today.
(2) (A further aspect of number 1) The myth that the earliest humans committed an original fault or error and subsequently “fell” or become “sinful/corrupted” beings who then ruined the original paradise. Again, this “original sin” myth is the primal root of all “blame humanity”, all anti-humanism. The Sumerians gave us the first examples of this pathology in the Sumerian Flood myth (Gilgamesh epic) with fuller versions coming later in subsequent Babylonian mythology. In the Sumerian Flood myth, Enlil, the waterworks god, was pissed at too many humans making too much noise- the original human “sin” of that era and place. Imagine: People just being sociable and having fun was considered an original sin by the grumpy gods of that time. That is as petty as Adam bringing the curse of “inherited sinfulness” on all humanity for just enjoying the taste of good fruit and curious to learn something new (i.e. wanting to access the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil’). Sheesh, eh.
To get some sense of the petty and unbalanced nature of those primitive mythologies, with their ideas of pathological deities that are obsessed with human imperfection and mistakes, note the Biblical lists of sins that incite God’s wrath and consequent intention to torture people in an eternal lake of fire. The lists include “sins” like “boasting, gossiping, coveting, sensuality, impurity, fits of anger, rivalry, dissension, drunkenness, greed, gluttony, slander, lying, pride, foolishness, loving money, disobedient to parents, loving oneself, loving pleasure (watch out you wankers), ungrateful, and reckless (i.e. adrenaline junkies in extreme sports), etc, etc.” Talk about punishment not fitting the crime, eh. It illustrates the obsessive moralizing pettiness of people that they then projected onto deity, reducing the reality of God to something perversely petty like themselves.
And after considering such lists- No wonder many believe Paul’s statement that “all have sinned” and must embrace his Christ myth or be damned to eternal burning in the lake of fire (Revelation).
(3) The vengeful deity of primitive imaginations, thoroughly pissed at human imperfection, then supposedly cursed the world and sent life declining toward something worse, eventually toward complete corruption, collapse, and final ending via apocalypse (as the final punishment for human sin). This apocalyptic decline myth has long incited survival fear, even terror and desperation to find some salvation.
(4) The great creating Force or Spirit behind life, still obsessed with lost perfection, and obsessed with punishing imperfection, then demanded a sacrifice to pay for the sins of corrupted humanity, to restore his offended honor and rebalance justice in the cosmos. (Note: Offended holiness in Judea-Christian theology is on the same spectrum as Islamic “honor killing” to restore the offended male sense of righteousness/purity).
Few raise the logical question here- Why can’t a God of love (supposedly much better than we are) freely forgive people just as we are expected to freely forgive imperfect others, as a response that is fundamental to basic human decency. Are we held to a higher standard of basic human decency or love, than God? As Bob Brinsmead reasons in a related manner- If you demand full payment for wrong before forgiving (like the Christian God), well, then that is not genuine forgiveness. Love and forgiveness must be freely given or they are not authentic.
(5) In “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” mythology, the angered deity also demanded suffering in this life as further punishment- “suffering as redemptive”. Humanity has long embraced this pathology in self-flagellation, in varied forms of self-punishment to assuage guilt/shame over being identified as bad. Today, one form of self-inflicted punishment involves giving up the good life for a return to the “morally superior” simple life (i.e. “de-development”). This myth-based thinking advocates for a retreat to the primitive status of original “noble savages”- i.e. early people who were believed to have been stronger and more pure humans who lived in tune with nature, who lived low-consumption lifestyles (i.e. hunter gatherers) before the “fall of humanity in civilization…the degeneration of humanity in the abundance of industrial civilization”. Such is the “human degeneration” theory of Declinism ideology (humanity degenerating in civilization) as set forth by Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”.
The “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” narrative has been beaten into humanity for multiple-millennia now and the outcome is a deeply-rooted guilt and shame over being imperfectly human. Most people across history have subsequently felt the distressing obligation to find absolution for their sin. They long to be told how to make atonement, and in response, priesthoods across history have offered people the pathological solution of blood sacrifice, or other forms of sacrifice/payment/punishment to assuage the human guilt that has been exacerbated by the original sin myth. Declinism mythology (human sinfulness as the cause of life declining toward something worse), and the threat of looming apocalyptic destruction, intensifies the primal felt need to make atonement of some kind.
Again, it is the bogus problem of “False original premises or assumptions, and the wasteful outcomes/responses to false original premises or assumptions”.
(6) The punitive Force or deity behind life also demands “the violent purging” of some great threat to life, the purging of some threatening “enemy”. This involves the embrace of the hero’s quest, to heroically engage “a righteous battle against evil”, to engage the quest to conquer an enemy, to slay a monster. These ideas are validated by the myth of cosmic dualism- i.e. that there exists a great cosmic battle of a good Spirit against some evil Force or Spirit (see Zoroastrian mythology for detail). That “cosmic-level” dualism (as ultimate ideal and authority) has been endlessly replicated in “this-world” dualisms among people. Cosmic dualism myths have long validated various forms of human tribalism- i.e. tribalism based on race/ethnicity, nationality, religion, ideology, etc.
Think of the horrific outcomes of this pathological myth alone- i.e. the cosmic dualism of ultimate Good against ultimate Evil. Note the incalculable damage that has been caused across history by inciting the impulse to view differing others as “enemies”, accompanied by the felt need to engage a righteous battle against such enemies, to conquer and destroy them as threats to one’s own tribe. Tribalism, incited by dualism mythology, is among the most damaging of all primitive ideas. And tribalism intensifies its impulse to harm others by granting true believers the sense that God is on their side, that God approves their righteous battles against intolerably evil enemies who must be destroyed.
It is critical to understand these primitive archetypes and how they continue to influence human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior. We need to recognize the dangerous outcomes of these ideas over history, harmful outcomes still erupting repetitively today. And we ought to recognize that we have much better alternatives today that work to counter our baser impulses and to inspire our better human responses. Notably, the recognition of the fundamental oneness of humanity that inspires us to view all others as family, to treat all as free and self-determining equals, and to embrace restorative justice toward the failures of others.
Remember again Joseph Campbell’s comments on conquering our “animal passions” by embracing “universal love”, by viewing enemies as family and thereby maintaining our humanity:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Further, religious mythology teaches that the ultimate violent purging takes place in the apocalyptic punishment and destruction of the present “corrupted world”, a necessary destruction in order to make way for the new world (see the New Testament book of Revelation for detail on this apocalyptic millennialism mythology). “Violent purging of evil” themes also validated the revolutionary purifying that was central to Marxism (purging the world of capitalism) and Nazism (purging the evil of Jewish Bolshevism). Again, see detail on this is Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline In Western History”. Violent purging (“coercive purification”- Arthur Mendel) is also embraced by environmental alarmism today as in the need to purge purported threats like CO2, and industrial civilization in general.
(7) With atonement and purging accomplished, the threatening deity then promises salvation for true believers, salvation in the restoration of the lost paradise, or salvation in the installation of a new utopia or millennial kingdom.
(Sources for historical detail on the above myths: Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian mythologies. Also, Jewish-Christian history and belief systems. Add further, similar mythical themes in Eastern religious belief systems, such as Hinduism.)
Such is the basic outline of the complex of pathological “lost paradise/redemption” myths. Note the intense anti-human orientation of these primitive myths. They advocate the fallacy that humanity has “fallen” or degenerated from an imagined original perfection. That distortion buries the entirely opposite truth that the real story of humanity is how amazingly we have improved over history, compared to our original subhuman, animal-like existence.
(Other sources: James Payne in “History of Force” and Stephen Pinker in “The Better Angels of Our Nature” both detail the long-term historical trajectory of improving humanity, though I don’t think Pinker’s arguments on “evolutionary biology/psychology” fully explain all the causal factors behind our ongoing improvement. While our animal past goes some way to explaining our present makeup, the human spirit and human consciousness are something uniquely new in the history of life and cannot be fully explained in terms of our animal past. I side more with neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles on such things- “The Human Mystery”, “The Wonder Of Being Human”.)
These “lost paradise/redemption” myths constitute the mythical or spiritual substrate- i.e. the archetypes- that undergird most human belief systems or narratives, whether religious or “secular or ideological” narratives, and even scientific ones. These themes are deeply embedded in human subconscious- hardwired in human minds from millennia of tight interaction with some of our most basic impulses. This is the outcome of the ancient human project to create ideas/myths to affirm and validate inherited impulses. The complex of primitive “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” themes continue to dominate human narratives today.
Further comment on “Where and how it originally went wrong”… Wendell Krossa
Early people created ideas/myths to validate some of the worst of the animal drives that humanity inherited from previous millions of years in animal existence. They were following their primal impulse for meaning- to understand and explain their conscious existence in this imperfect world. And when they first started doing that- i.e. creating ideas/myths to explain things- they were still living as more animal than human, still very primitive in their thinking and behavior. Consequently, they created very primitive ideas/myths to explain and validate their still very primitive lives and existence.
Those earliest myths, buttressed with the eventual human hesitancy to challenge the sacred (fear of the sacred was a priestly innovation to protect priestly authority), those primitive myths were eventually embraced by the great religious traditions and eventually became religious dogma, and then, latterly in our history, they have even infected modern-era “secular/ideological” systems of belief.
But now, it is entirely inexcusable for us moderns to continue to hold those same themes of our primitive ancestors when we have far better insights available today, far better alternative explanations to satisfy our primal impulse for meaning and purpose. Note, for example, the lists of alternative ideas in the essays below titled “Explaining reality and life: The worst and best ideas that we have come up with”, or “Inherited bad myths and better alternatives”, or “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”.
The more prominent of our darker inherited animal impulses, along with their related validating myths, would include (1) the impulses to small band existence or tribalism (given expression in human societies in such divides as those between true believers versus unbelievers, as in religious and ideological systems), (2) the impulse to alpha domination given expression in myths of dominating gods and the related validation of powerholding kings/lords/priests as representatives of the dominating gods, and (3) the impulse to the destruction of competing others (myths of enemies/unbelievers that should be eliminated in this life, or cast into religious hells).
Advocates of contemporary “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” narratives, such as in the climate alarmism crusade, give voice to the same themes as those listed above and these “secularized” versions of primitive myths still resonate powerfully with many people today. The core “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” themes resonate with deeply embedded archetypes, lodged even at a subconscious level. (Again, “archetype” meaning- prototype, representative, pattern, model, standard, exemplar, ideal, etc.- or early primitive ideas created to explain and validate inherited impulses that became patterns or models for all subsequent human narratives.)
An example of the primitive “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths resonating with modern minds to devastating outcomes:
Remember that Hitler, embittered by his WW1 experience and the Versailles Treaty, was initially considered a fringe lunatic madman and largely ignored by most Germans. But eventually his rantings began to resonate more widely with the Christian worldview of the German population. With the onset of the Weimar-era collapse of the German economy due to the Great Depression, his formerly ignored message of “decline toward looming apocalypse and promise of salvation (i.e. the creation of the millennial Third Reich)”- that message then began to resonate more widely with the same archetypical themes and impulses that had long dominated the belief systems and consciousness of most Christian Germans. Hitler was then able to persuade many ordinarily good Germans to join, or at least not oppose, his mass-death crusade. Again, note the good historical research of the apocalyptic millennial scholars Herman, Landes, Mendel, and Redles.
The message of “decline toward disaster” incites primal fears of some punitive spirit or force behind the natural world that is justly punishing “bad” people for ruining something originally pure and paradisal, such as nature. People then feel intuitively that they deserve such punishment coming at them through natural disaster, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty from “enemies”, and other misfortunes common to life. Remember the Japanese lady, after the 2011 tsunami, giving voice to this mythical pathology when she asked rhetorically, “Are we being punished for enjoying the good life too much?” She illustrated the very intuitive human sense that natural disasters are expressions of some angry god punishing people for their sins. Similarly, Nancy Pelosi claimed (Sept. 2020) that the forest fires of California were evidence that “Mother Earth was angry” with humans enjoying too much fossil fuel energy and causing the “climate crisis”. Bad people were being punished by an angry deity seeking retribution. Ah, its all just the same old, same old primitive thinking as ever before.
The belief that there exists some great threat to life then incites the human survival impulse. The panic-mongering over such threat (in the climate alarmism crusade it involves exaggerating natural events to apocalyptic scale) then pushes many to abandon rationality, out of their desperation to survive. Hence, many people will then accept the craziest exaggerations of the apocalyptic prophets of any given time. Note the repeated failing prophesies of Paul Ehrlich as a contemporary example, also Al Gore among others (i.e. his recent rant that “the oceans will be boiling”). Alarmed populations will then support the most irrational salvation schemes, to “save the world”, even when the evidence mounts that those schemes are so obviously destroying societies as in the outcomes of the Net Zero mania that is currently devastating Germany and Britain (see Net Zero Watch newsletters of Global Warming Policy Forum).
The contemporary climate alarmism crusade and its destructive decarbonization salvation scheme is just another repeat of similar apocalyptic millennial eruptions that have repeatedly destroyed societies across history. Remember again the irrational Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1860, and on a larger scale, the horrific destruction of the Marxist and Nazi “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” crusades (i.e. mass starvation from forced collectivism and the horrific environmental damage from centralized planning of resource use).
As Richard Landes warned in “Heaven On Earth”, regarding the Nazi madness- If you don’t understand how apocalyptic millennial themes can lead to mass-death in societies then you have learned nothing from past history. We are watching this same “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” pattern play out again today- the same old themes of “better past, sinful humanity ruining paradise, world declining toward apocalypse, demand for sacrifice and suffering as redemptive, obligation to enact a violent purging of some threat as necessary to ‘save the world’ and restore the lost paradise, obligation to heroically engage a righteous battle against evil enemies, etc.”
These profoundly religious themes undergird the cult of climate alarmism. We see them in the claims that a better past existed in the earlier more pristine wilderness world. We see these primitive themes in the false claim that life is declining/worsening due to the impact of human industrial civilization. We see them in the demonization of the basic food of all life- i.e. CO2- as the great threat to life that must be purged. And we see them in the endless media hysteria and exaggeration that a climate apocalypse is imminent. They are evident in the consequent irrational decarbonization madness that is claimed to be the only way of salvation in order for the lost paradise to be restored. The outcomes will not be good if we continue to let this myth-based madness shape public policy as in the elimination of fossil fuels.
Now: A reposting of critical points on the harmful influence of bad theology…
Important comments from psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo (quoting psychologist Harold Ellens) on how images/beliefs, notably mythical images of ultimate reality and ideals, like deity, how such images influence human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior. Note that such threat theology has long dominated primitive mythology, subsequent world religions, and now shapes modern belief systems both religious and secular. Threat theology incites fear and the consequent embrace of irrational salvation schemes. The outcomes of such panic-mongering do not enhance human well being.
Quotes from Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”
The Introduction states that, among others, “(Lotufo) explores the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience… (this is of the) highest urgency today when religious motivation seems to be playing an increasing role, constructively and destructively, in the arena of social ethics, national politics, and world affairs…”
I would insert here that the destructive outcomes of “religious motivation” are notable especially in the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade and its destructive “salvation” scheme of Net Zero decarbonization (“save the world from the evil of CO2”). Note the outcomes of spreading harm, from Net Zero and renewables zealotry, in societies like Germany, Britain, and California. Climate alarmism exhibits the same old themes and destructive outcomes of all past apocalyptic crusades.
Lotufo then notes “the pathological nature of mainstream orthodox theology and popular religious ideation”.
He says, “One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…
“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that God, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God. Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Added comment- Bob Brinsmead: “We become just like the God that we believe in”.
Also note again, regarding the dualism myth in the “lost paradise/redemption” complex of ideas, Joseph Campbell’s comments on embracing “universal love” and viewing enemies as family and thereby maintaining our humanity. Campbell is countering the human tendency to divisive tribalism.
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Added note on irrationality:
Marinate a bit on the scale of irrationality in the widespread public acceptance of the demonization of the basic food of all life- i.e. CO2- as the great threat to life today. And consider these contextual factors- CO2 levels over the past millions of years of our “ice age era” have been at “starvation” levels, just in the hundreds of ppm. Plant life prefers CO2 in the multiple thousands of ppm and thrives when it is that high. Over paleoclimate history, when, with CO2 levels 5 to 10 times higher than today, life was a “paradise… a golden age for mammals”. And with CO2 in the multiple-thousands of ppm over past history, there was no “climate crisis”, no “world on fire”. Varied paleoclimate studies (Phanerozoic era) note the significant disconnect when climate was much warmer but CO2 levels were low, or when CO2 levels were high but climate was cold. So also, the Vostok ice core samples appear to reveal that climate first warmed, followed by warming oceans that outgassed CO2, which then rose in the atmosphere. Not the other way around- i.e. rising CO2 causing climate warming.
Further note: Consider the fact that during the Eocene era some 55-33 million years ago, average temperatures were up to 10 degrees C warmer than today (25 degrees C average versus today’s world average of 15 degrees C) and that was the “Golden Age of mammals” when our ancestors flourished.
It needs repeating- That over the entire 500 million years of the Phanerozoic era life, when temperatures averaged 3-10 degrees C higher than today, and along with much higher CO2 levels, life thrived. Just as plant life is once again beginning to flourish with the restoration of more optimal levels of CO2 today- notable in the addition of 15% more green vegetation to the Earth since 1980. Sources: Wattsupwiththat.com, co2coalition.org, co2science.org, among others.
A further note on my claim that the myth of a better past or original paradise is the foundational or baseline myth of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. Wendell Krossa
The belief in an originally more perfect world may have arisen from early humanity’s experience of decline in the natural world. John Pfeiffer (“The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion”) suggests that the belief in an original “golden age” may have emerged over 100,000 years ago. I took a closer look at how that mythical belief may have first arisen in early human minds.
The previous interglacial- i.e. the Eemian- occurred between 130-115,000 years ago. That blissfully warm interglacial (some 3-5 degrees C warmer than our current Holocene interglacial) may have ended quite suddenly, over just centuries or even decades. Life then descended from previous life-affirming warmth into the devastating cold of the following ice age or glaciation (called the “Wisconsin” in North America). Early conscious people would have remembered that better past compared with what became their more miserable conditions in a colder world. That would have given rise to their speculation that the past was more paradisal or perfect, and their present reality was a decline toward something worse.
That has been true at all times across history: If you believe that the past was better, or perfect, and then compare that better past with the obviously imperfect present world that you inhabit, then you can “logically” conclude that life is declining toward something worse. You have created a reasonable baseline argument for your belief in apocalypse- i.e. life declining toward something worse, even toward life ending. People have done that across history (the fallacy of “presentism”, according to James Payne in “History of Force”).
Add here that traditions of sacrifice have been around for a long time also. People have long offered sacrifices to appease what they believe were angry, punitive spirits or gods. The ancients believed that gods expressed their anger at “sinful” people through the destructiveness of the natural world- i.e. through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty.
Those primitive beliefs contributed to the fallacious mythology of “Lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” that we have inherited from those ancestors. It is inexcusable that many people today continue to hold to contemporary versions of such primitive thinking, contemporary versions as in the major world religious traditions, along with many “secular/ideological” and even scientific versions (notably, in the “profoundly religious” cultic climate alarmism crusade).
This very appropriate (for today’s world) comment in David Redles’ history of how apocalyptic millennial themes shaped Nazism. He points to the irrational commitment of apocalyptics to their cause, despite evidence of the destructiveness of their salvation crusades (to “save the world”). Note this point in relation to the climate alarmist’s commitment to their salvation scheme of decarbonization that is destroying modern energy sectors, destabilizing electrical grids, and causing immense suffering with inflated energy costs that cause inflation throughout societies, with the consequent potential for general collapse.
Redles’ comment: “For some millenarians, the signs of imminent apocalypse, and the promise of a coming, transformed, better world, is their signal to induce that apocalypse. Believing themselves chosen not only to witness the End-time, but also to help bring it to fruition, some true believers consciously or unconsciously induce the apocalypse, “forcing the end”, as the ancient Hebrews terms the actions of impatient messianic movements. These millenarians assume that, since the signs of the time tell them that now is the time and since they have been chosen for a special mission, then the apocalyptic event must occur in their lifetimes. The apocalyptic event is induced because the possibility that the prophesied apocalyptic event will fail to occur, means that the believer’s sense of being chosen, of having a special mission, of being immortal, indeed the whole new post-conversion identity, is illusory. This cannot be tolerated….”.
Also from Redles…
“The messiah/prophet (of apocalyptic millennialism) knows all truth, knows exactly what must be done to achieve salvation. He often is a warrior figure who will lead the righteous into battle against the minions of evil…” (David Redles in “Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic belief and the Search for Salvation”, p.6,5).
A contemporary example of a warrior figure leading true believers into righteous battle against evil enemies…
UN Secretary General says, “Battle against climate change calls for ‘war footing’”.
https://press.un.org/en/2008/ga10725.doc.htm
Another reposting- Patterns in apocalyptic movements: Destructive outcomes from alarmism crusades
Apocalyptic millennial scholar Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”) stated that apocalyptic was the most violent and destructive idea in history. Today we are living through a real-life eruption of “human-induced apocalypse” (Redles’ point above) in the destructiveness created by history’s latest apocalyptic movement- the climate alarmism movement and its “human-induced” crusade to overturn the success of Western societies (too much abundance, too much resource use) by destroying their energy sectors (i.e. decarbonization, Net Zero- all in service to the larger crusade of “De-development”). Is climate alarmism exhibiting the pathology of “unconsciously inducing the apocalypse” through its “salvation” scheme of decarbonization? Nihilism is the inseparable consequence of apocalyptic thinking.
(Note: “Net Zero Watch” newsletters of the Global Warming Policy Forum daily update the devastation from decarbonization policies in European countries like Germany and Britain).
It needs to be probed: Is the destruction of Western societies perhaps more just an “unintended consequence” of the alarmist’s irrational, though otherwise ‘nobly-intentioned’ salvation scheme? That is quite likely. I would grant that possibility in the mix of motivations. As Redles said above- “true believers (will) consciously or unconsciously induce the apocalypse”. So yes, “unintended” may be the more logical explanation in the mix. True believers in some righteous crusade are often well-intentioned people, convinced by their narrative that they are heroically saving something, saving their world. I see that in Rachel Carson’s anti-chemical crusade, notably against DDT, and her sincere belief that she was saving life from her imagined and exaggerated chemical apocalypse. She probably did not imagine, nor intend, the mass-death that resulted from her influence (again, see “The Excellent Powder: DDT’s Political and Scientific History”, Richard Tren and Donald Roberts). See also…
There is a well-known historical pattern that operates with apocalyptic millennial narratives and crusades, and if we had learned anything from history we would not be ignorantly and irresponsibly repeating this destructive pattern once again today. So yes, while “unintended” may be partly behind the alarmist’s motivation, I would be careful to not fall back on that for an excuse as the destructiveness of apocalyptic millennialism once again unfolds. We ought to know better, what with the historical examples that have occurred even over our lifetimes (i.e. the apocalyptic millennial movements of Marxism, Nazism, and general environmental alarmism).
(Further reposting of previous comment- revised) The pattern:
First, you abandon your own sanity and rationality by credulously and unquestioningly embracing primitive lost paradise, apocalyptic, redemption, and millennial themes. These themes are still everywhere present in the major world religions and are now also embraced by varied “secular/ideological” versions like Declinism and its direct historical offspring- climate alarmism, or overall environmental alarmism. Contemporary story-telling (movies) endlessly promotes apocalyptic as unquestionable fact.
With apocalyptic millennialism (or “lost paradise/redemption”) themes ensconced in your worldview, you then view life and its ever-present nasty elements (i.e. natural disaster, extreme weather events, disease, predatory cruelty) through that apocalyptic millennial lens. You also then begin to view yourself as some sort of enlightened insider who has seen the truth (true believer) and you then start to feel responsible to go forth and heroically save yourself, your people, and your world. You begin to believe that you have found a righteous cause, a “righteous battle against evil enemies/threats” that must be eliminated in order to “save the world” from imminent catastrophe.
Then you begin terrorizing others with your apocalyptic narrative and its exaggerated threat scenarios. Today’s apocalyptic prophets have been waging a crusade of panic-mongering over a very mild period of natural climate change (1 degree C warming over the past century). This hysterical panic-mongering exhibits the anti-science irrationality of apocalyptic alarmism crusades. Climate change has been very mild and beneficial in a still too cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth. But such facts be damned. They get in the way of the apocalyptic narrative and its need to exaggerate every twitch in nature as something portending the imminent end of days.
Irresponsibly inciting fear among the wider public then results in the further spreading abandonment of rationality and a willingness of many to believe the most distorted scenarios of threat. Again, note the widespread practise of now viewing all extreme weather events (common all across past paleoclimate history) as ongoing affirmation of your hysterically exaggerated and irrational narrative. A narrative that is shaped by pathologically distorting mythical themes from the “lost paradise/redemption” or “apocalyptic millennialism” complex of myths.
(“Pathologically distorting themes”? Yes, apocalyptic themes distort entirely the true state of life and the actual trajectory of life across history. I repeatedly urge visitors to read the amassed evidence in studies like Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, and numerous similar follow-up studies. See also the good research of climate physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others listed below. “The True State of the Earth” is also reposted just below.)
(Insert note on the apocalyptic prophet’s exaggeration of contemporary mild climate change: See, for example, paleogeologist Ian Plimer’s graph (p. 33 of “Heaven and Earth”) of the past 55,000 years of climate change and note how massive were the changes in climate from roughly 55,000 to 20,000 years ago during the tail end of the Wisconsin glaciation (i.e. swings between cooling and warming periods of up to 25 degrees C). Then note how that previous severity of climate changes moderated significantly and became much milder with the beginning of our Holocene interglacial some 20,000 years ago. Subsequently, over our interglacial we have had swings between cooling and warming periods of only a few degrees. Nothing anywhere near any “climate crisis” scale of climate change. Point? To understand the “true state” of anything, place that thing in its fullest long-term context.)
Continuing with “human-induced destructive outcomes of alarmism crusades”…
Populations of normally rational people, now with their survival impulse incited, are then rendered desperate to embrace the most irrational of salvation schemes to save themselves, to save their world. Even if those salvation schemes entail the “unintended” destruction of their way of life, the destruction of their well-being and societies.
The promised hope of salvation offered by apocalyptic millennial narratives, the promise of a renewed paradise or utopian future, also helps keep alarmed populations receptive, subservient, and committed to apocalyptic millennial salvation schemes.
The apocalyptic millennial themes outlined above distort entirely the true state of life, of the world. But with exaggerated apocalyptic scenarios (manufactured monsters) they frighten people into embracing salvation schemes that “save the world” by destroying it. We know apocalyptic millennialism in its secular version today- “Declinism” (i.e. life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending). The direct offspring of Declinism is climate alarmism. Again, see Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”.
The entirely false narrative of apocalyptic millennialism, in its contemporary Declinism incarnation, states that human industrial civilization has destroyed the former paradise of a wilderness world and we are now heading toward environmental collapse and even ending. This narrative of despair has deformed public consciousness and prevented people from recognizing the amazing capability of humanity to correct mistakes of the past, to learn from such mistakes, to engage new measures to protect the natural world, and the result has been an ongoing improvement of life. We are now living in the best of all times, historically.
https://www.humanprogress.org/weve-just-had-the-best-decade-in-human-history-seriously/
Some authentically progressive facts (“progressive” in the sense of life progressing toward improvement over the long-term): The human lifespan has more than doubled over the past century. Deaths from climate-related disasters are down 95% over the past century. Major diseases have been eradicated. Species are protected and flourishing. There is more forest cover on Earth today than 70 years ago (with three times the population). Poverty has been undergoing a stunning decline across the world… and much more improvement of both the human condition and the natural world (see Humanprogress.org, Ultimate Resource, etc.).
Now- Alternatives to the lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption complex of themes:
Mental pathology and corrective alternatives, and the influence of both on human personality, to both good and bad outcomes.
“I think and therefore I am”.
“There are no really bad people, just bad ideas that make people do bad things”, comment of a friend.
‘Cruel God’ images- “These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture… (The) consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities.”, psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo.
“We become just like the God that we believe in”, Bob Brinsmead.
Project: Offer alternative themes to apocalyptic millennial narratives:
Much like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg castle church door in 1517, so I am nailing my theses to this door of the Internet. But unlike Luther just protesting the way that the indulgences were sold, but not protesting the very sale of indulgences, I am going more directly to core issues of fundamental belief. Much like my friend Bob Brinsmead’s refreshingly direct presentation of the central anti-sacrifice message of Historical Jesus and exposing how Paul buried that liberating message in his contrary gospel of the Christ that presents Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice. When Bob posts his good research on his site, I will link to that. It is mind-blowing. That the “stunning new theology of Jesus” (an unconditional God who does not demand sacrifice for forgiveness)- that central message of Jesus has been buried for two millennia under the entirely contrary message of Christianity- i.e. the claim that the supreme sacrifice of the Christ was necessary for the forgiveness of sin.
Below are the some of the more prominent myths that have dominated human consciousness, beginning with the earliest human belief systems and continuing down into our modern world. These myths still dominate religious traditions today and have even been embraced in more historically recent “secular/ideological” versions. Note, for example, the “apocalyptic millennialism” or “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” themes regularly expressed by the climate alarmism cult. Even many in “science” embrace such myths. I recently noted again how Stephen Hawking fell for apocalyptic mythology in the final two years of his life, making his own prophesies of the “end-of-days”, even setting dates (first suggesting an apocalypse in a millennium or so, then reducing that to just 100 years up ahead).
The ideas listed below have profoundly influenced human outlook, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior, often for the worse- i.e. inciting our worst animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.
Fortunately, we have more humane alternative ideas now to inspire the “better angels of our nature”, to inspire our authentically human impulses. Embracing these new themes/ideas will involve the revolutionary transformation of human narratives, worldviews… the overturning of foundational core themes.
The list is fundamentally about the contrast between humane and inhumane, between good and evil, between right and wrong- and which ideas express these stark differences. These are some of the worst and best of ideas that we have used to shape our narratives, both public and personal. While reading the list, ask yourself- What ideas shape your personal worldview/narrative at the most fundamental level?
Responsible, mature humanity will be open to rethinking and challenging the primitively inhumane ideas in narratives, to reject the worst ideas, even those that have long been protected as “sacred” due to their history of having been long embedded in world religions.
Are you ready for a mind revolution? For the most profound form of liberation- liberation at the depths of human consciousness/subconscious, at the core of your human spirit and self.
This project is about the hero’s quest or journey that each of us must venture forth to engage, the heroic engagement of a “righteous battle against evil”, a battle that takes place most critically inside every human heart (Solzhenitsyn). And most importantly, this is about universal or unconditional love as the weapon to slay the most dangerous of all monsters/enemies that we all face- i.e. the animal drives or passions inside each of us.
Again, the worst of the animal drives that we have all inherited include (1) the impulses to tribal exclusion of differing others (small band mentality), (2) to domination/control of others (the Alpha thing), and (3) to punitive destruction of others. We conquer these base drives by affirming our better impulses (1) to universal inclusion of all others as family (the fundamental oneness thing), (2) by respecting the freedom and self-determination of others (not controlling others), and (3) by embracing a restorative justice approach to human failure.
When we orient our narratives and minds to the ideal of universal/unconditional love, that gives us a cohering center, a new baseline ideal to humanely influence our thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Universal/unconditional love is the potent weapon that enables us to fight and win the greatest battle of all.
When we confront this intensely personal inner monster of inherited animal drives and slay it, then we tower in stature as maturely human, like a Nelson Mandela. Having first conquered the real monster/enemy in life, we can then go out to properly contribute to making our world a better place. Our personal victory over the animal within us is our primary responsibility and the single greatest contribution that we can make to improving life overall.
The list below helps sharpen (focus) the weapon of unconditional that slays the monster. This list necessarily deals with metaphysical speculations because that is the underlying nature of most of our inherited ideas from prominent historical narratives.
Added note: Winning the personal battle first, puts us in a better place to “maintain our humanity” as we engage the varied public “righteous battles against evil” in our world. That was the jist of Campbell’s point that when we orient our lives to universal love, and view our “enemies” as family, we thereby maintain our humanity:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Inherited “bad myths”, and better alternatives (revised short version, longer version in sections below on this site), Wendell Krossa
1.The inherited myth: The idea of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality. Contemporary “secular” versions of judging, punishing deity include “Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, and payback karma”.
An alternative: The new theology of deity as a stunningly “no conditions” reality (no conditions love). There is no threat from an unconditional God, no judgment, no exclusion of anyone, and no ultimate punishment or destruction. All are safe- in the end.
2. The inherited myth: The idea of a perfect beginning (i.e. Dilmun, Eden) and a God obsessed with perfection, enraged at the loss of perfection, demanding punishment of imperfection, and atonement (sacrifice/payment) to remedy imperfection and restore the lost perfection or paradise.
Alternative: The world was purposefully created as originally imperfect in order to serve as an arena for human struggle, learning, and development. Deity has no problem with imperfection. Others include the argument that there can be no such reality as good without its opposite- i.e. evil/imperfection. Good cannot exist alone, or be known and experienced without a contrasting reality.
Again, this is not to excuse, diminish, or defend evil. We are rightly enraged at imperfection and evil in this world and fight it in all its forms. But we are also responsible to maintain our own humanity as we engage righteous battles against evil. As Joseph Campbell argued, we must not forget that even our “enemies” are still our family (the underlying oneness of all things).
And in this life, as Campbell suggested, we are all just “actors on God’s stage” engaging oppositional roles in a temporary dualistic realm to provide one another with contrasting life experiences. Yes, this is metaphysical speculation. But what might be a better alternative to explain evil? The inherited mythical/religious speculations of the ultimate tribal division of humanity? Eternal cosmic dualism (i.e. the divide between true believers/unbelievers existing forever, eternal heaven and hell?). Or the better alternative- an ultimate return to our original “oneness” after experiencing a human story in this realm of material dualism?
3. The inherited myth: Humanity began as a more perfect species (the myth of primitive people as pure, strong, and noble hunter gatherers, “Adam/Eve”). But those early people then became corrupted/sinful (i.e. the myth of the “Fall of mankind”). This myth has led to persistent anti-humanism- blaming humanity for all the imperfections and suffering in the world.
Alternative: Humanity emerged from the brutality of animal reality to gradually become more humane across history (a long-term trajectory of humanity rising/improving, not falling into a trajectory of degeneration/decline). Rather than focus, as Declinism narratives do, on what is still wrong in life and humanity, we ought to focus more on how far humanity has risen from our primitive past and celebrate how well humanity has done in making things better. (Note, for example, the amazing decline in human violence across history- see James Payne’s “The History of Force”, Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”)
4. The inherited myth: The world began as an original paradise (again, the past was better) but after the “Fall” the overall trajectory of life has been declining, degenerating toward something worse.
Alternative: The long-term trajectory of life does not decline to worse but overall rises/improves toward something ever better (i.e. more complex, organized, advanced).
5. Inherited myth: The belief that natural disasters, disease, human cruelty, and death are expressions of divine punishment, and that humanity deserves punishment.
Alternative: While there are natural consequences all through life, there is no punitive, destroying deity behind the imperfections of life. The natural consequences throughout life are just that- natural and not expressions of divine intent to harm or punish.
6. Inherited Myth: The belief that humanity has been rejected by the Creator and we must be reconciled via blood sacrifice/suffering. The deity offended by human imperfection demands payment/punishment for all wrong.
Alternative: No one has ever been rejected by the unconditional Love at the core of reality. No one has ever been separated from God. Ultimate Love does not demand appeasement/payment/atonement, or suffering, as punishment for sin. See the “Prodigal Father” story for an illustration of deity not demanding sacrifice/atonement before forgiving, accepting, and loving.
7. Inherited myth: The idea of a cosmic dualism between Good and Evil (i.e. God versus Satan) now expressed in human dualisms (tribes of good people versus their enemies- the evil people). Ultimate Good versus Evil is used to validate our inherited animal impulse to tribalism- to view ourselves in opposition to differing or disagreeing others (This is not to deny there is actual evil to be opposed, but to challenge the tendency to view differing others as irredeemable “enemies”, when they are essentially members of the same one human family.).
Alternative: There is a fundamental Oneness at the core of all and we all share that oneness. We all belong equally to the one human family and equally share the ultimate eternal Oneness that is God. Note that quantum mechanics also points to a fundamental oneness (i.e. the “Wuwu” factor that offends quantum purists).
Add: Our real enemy, the real monster in life, and the real evil, is not other people but is something inside each of us- our inheritance of animal drives, the drives to tribal division and exclusion, to domination of others, and to punitively destroy differing others. Solzhenitsyn again- the real battle between good and evil runs down the center of every human heart.
8. Inherited myth: The belief in a looming apocalypse as the final judgment, the ultimate punishment of wrong, and the final destruction of all things.
Alternative: There are problems all through the world but there is no looming threat of final divine destruction and ending of the world. Apocalypse is a great fraud and lie. There will be no apocalypse as in the religious version of divine intervention to punish humanity and destroy the world (i.e. as illustrated, for example, in the New Testament book of Revelation).
9. Inherited myth: The always “imminent” element in apocalyptic mythology demands urgent action to save something, even the use of coercive violence to effect “instantaneous transformation”. (Arthur Mendel, in “Vision and Violence”, details the difference between the approaches of totalitarian “instantaneous transformation” by “coercive purification”, as opposed to democratic “gradualism”.)
Alternative: While unexpected catastrophes could still happen, there is no “imminent end of days” on the horizon, inciting the urgency to “save the world”. Rather, life improves through gradual democratic processes as creative humanity cooperatively solves problems.
10. Inherited myth: The demand for a salvation plan, a required sacrifice or atonement (debt payment, punishment). The cosmic principle that all wrongs must be righted/corrected, all debts must be paid somewhere, somehow, sometime. God cannot just forgive freely, as that father in the Prodigal Son parable did without demanding restitution.
Alternative: Unconditional deity does not demand sacrifice, atonement, payment, or punishment as required for appeasement- as prerequisite for divine acceptance, forgiveness, and love. Deity freely forgives, universally includes all, loves unconditionally. Just as we are told to do- to “keep no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13), to not expect repayment of debt (Luke 6), to love even enemies (Matthew 5). To forgive without limit.
Additionally, this important comment from Bob Brinsmead (“Understand the root themes of the environmental religion”):
“The area often touched on superficially and skirted around like a root out of the dry ground is the matter of the anti-sacrificial movement launched by John the Baptist and brought to a head by the very issue that led directly to the death of Jesus. This is the matter of the real nature of Jesus’ temple protest. This was always destined to become the central issue of all Jesus research. No one disputes that Jesus died. If the temple event is seen as Jesus carrying forward the anti-sacrifice mission of his cousin John, then Jesus has to be seen as utterly against the whole religious idea that a sacrifice, an act of violent blood-letting to make an atonement for sin, should ever be required for reconciliation with God or with one another.
“This would mean that the Christian religion was founded on a false interpretation of the meaning of the death of Jesus, and it was out of this grave misunderstanding, that the whole edifice of its Christology arose– the Christology of a divine, virgin born and absolutely sinless man by whom God supposedly defeats evil by an act of apocalyptic violence, first in the Christ event and finally in a holocaust at the end of the world.
“Or to put it more simply, Jesus died protesting at the temple, the place where sacrifices were offered, affirming that God requires no sacrifice (no blood-letting violence) to put us right with God; yet the Christian religion turned the death of Jesus into God’s supreme sacrifice to put us right with God.” Bob Brinsmead
11. Inherited myth: The belief that retribution or payback is true “justice” (i.e. eye for eye, hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, punishment for punishment).
Alternative: Unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs, forgives freely and without limit. And yes, there are natural/social consequences to bad behavior in this world, but all justice should be humanely restorative/rehabilitative in response to human failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCZt2YipiIs
Note the points, in the above link, on recidivism rates, and also the comment of a US prison official (in another Netflix documentary on criminal justice) that, yes victim’s feelings matter. But they, as prison officials, are primarily responsible to ensure public safety by lowering recidivism rates and preventing future victims. Most criminals will be released at some point. Will they be resentful and vengeful from suffering under a punitive justice system, or rehabilitated? Also, see Karl Menninger’s criminal justice classic “The Crime of Punishment”.
Guard’s comment: “If we treat inmates like animals, they will respond like animals. If we treat them like humans, they will respond like humans”. Not all, but most.
And of course, in these points on criminal justice, we recognize pathologies like psychopathy and the inability to rehabilitate some people, hence the need for permanent incarceration of repeat offenders to protect the public, as the primary responsibility of criminal justice. We never abandon common sense in our struggle to “love the enemy”.
Further consider again Campbell’s point- i.e. that how we treat others is vital to maintaining our own humanity as we engage “righteous battles against evil”.
12. Inherited myth: The belief in after-life judgment, exclusion, punishment, and destruction (i.e. hell). This pathology of after-life harm adds unnecessary sting to the natural human fear of death.
Alternative: Unconditional love does not threaten ultimate judgment, exclusion, punishment, or destruction.
13. Inherited myth: The idea of a “hero” messiah who will use superior force and violence to overthrow enemies, purge the world of wrong (“coercive purification”), and install a promised utopia. The belief that superior violence (as in the New Testament book of Revelation) is the model for solving problems, for correcting all that is wrong in the world.
Alternative: A God of authentic love does not intervene with overwhelming force that overrides human freedom and choice. It is up to maturing humanity to make the world a better place through long-term gradualism processes that respect the freedom of others who differ.
Again, see Zenon Lotufo and Harold Ellen’s comments above on how images of violent deity incite/validate violence in humanity.
14. Inherited myth: The fallacy of biblicism- the belief that religious holy books are more special and authoritative than ordinary human literature, and the related fallacy that people are obligated to live according to the holy book as the revealed will, law, or specially inspired word of God.
Alternative: We evaluate all human writing according to basic criteria of right and wrong, good and bad, humane or inhumane. Holy books, written by fallible people like ourselves, are not exempted from this basic process of discernment/evaluation.
15. Inherited myth: The idea of God as King, Ruler, Lord, or Judge. This myth promotes the idea that God relates to humanity in domination/submission forms of relating. This is based on the primitive idea that humans were “created to serve the gods”. Such ideas have long been used to validate human forms of domination over others (i.e. the “divine right of kings, priesthoods, public leaders”).
Alternative: There is no domination/subservience relationship of humanity to God. True greatness is to relate horizontally to all as equals. The “greatness” of God is to relate to all as free equals, not to “lord over” others. Similar human greatness is exhibited in not overriding the free self-determination of others, not controlling others. Note the statement of Jesus in Matthew 20:25-28 that true greatness is not expressed in domination of others, but in service to others.
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their ‘great ones’ exercise authority over them. It should not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as I came not to be served but to serve others”.
16. Inherited myth: The idea that humanity is obligated to know, serve, or have a relationship with an invisible reality (deity), that we are to give primary loyalty to something separate from and above people.
Alternative: Our primary loyalty is to love and serve real people around us. Their needs, here and now, take priority in life. Loyalty to realities placed above people (laws, institutions, or higher authorities) has always resulted in the neglect or abuse of people.
17. Inherited myth: The perception that God is silent or absent during the horrors of life (i.e. Where was God during the Holocaust?). This myth of absent deity is based on the primitive belief that God is a sky deity (dwelling in heaven above, separate from humanity), a deity that descends to intervene in life and change circumstances, override natural law, in order to save or protect people.
Alternative: There has never been a Sky God up above in some heaven. The reality we call “God” has always been incarnated equally in all humanity. God has always been immediately present in all human suffering and is intimately present in all human raging and struggle against evil. God is inseparable from the human spirit in all of us and is expressed in all human action to prevent evil, to solve problems, and to improve life. We are the embodiments/incarnations of God in this world, and nothing saves us except our choices and actions to oppose wrong and to help one another, to make life better in this world.
18. Inherited myth: The fallacy of “limited good” and the belief that too many people are consuming too much of Earth’s resources, and hence world resources are being exhausted. This relates to the ancient religious belief in the moral superiority of the simple, low-consumption lifestyle. The belief that denial of comfort- i.e. separation from “worldly things”, and rejection of material possessions, is a more “spiritual” and holy route to take. Add here the belief in suffering as somehow redemptive. Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist fell for this while Jesus took an opposite stance of “eating and drinking” and enjoying all that life had to offer.
Alternative: More people on Earth means more creative minds to solve problems. More consumption means more wealth to solve problems and enable us to make life better- i.e. enables us to improve the human condition and protect the natural world at the same time. Evidence affirms that human improvement and environmental improvement has been the outcome of more people on Earth enjoying the good life. See “Population Bombed” by Desrochers and Szurmak, “Ultimate Resource” by Julian Simon, “Humanprogress.org”, and related studies.
Further, we are not exhausting Earth’s resources. With the emergence of some apparent resource scarcity, humanity through improving technology then works to discover more reserves of those scarce resources or makes the shift to alternative resources. There is a superabundance of resources in our world. Note also the “dematerialization” trend in modern advanced societies (i.e. the ongoing trend of less material inputs per person, economies of scale with increasing urbanization, etc.)
Exchange this idea of stinginess as superior, for a theology of an extravagantly generous God (scandalously generous) who has given us an Earth of ‘superabundance’ to enjoy.
Add your own themes/ideas and alternatives.
Carefully observe the alarmist patterns that are repeatedly played out in our societies, patterns related to and incited by apocalyptic Declinism mythology: Wendell Krossa
First, apocalyptic prophets- e.g. Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, James Hansen, John Holdren, and varied others- alarm people with hysterically exaggerated scenarios of the decline of life toward looming catastrophe. Commonly now, the apocalyptic prophets promote their message, via panic-obsessed news media, with claims that extreme weather events (i.e. rain, floods, heat, drought, wildfires, storms, etc.) have become more frequent and intense. Every extreme weather event becomes the latest indicator that the end is nigh, again and again and….
Evidence on extreme weather trends show that such events are not becoming worse, and in some cases they have even become less frequent, less intense.
Further, paleoclimate evidence shows that extreme climate changes were far worse across distant past history. Note the graph of the last 55,000 years in Ian Plimer’s “Heaven And Earth” (p.33) showing that climate change has moderated significantly since the beginning of our Holocene interglacial roughly some 20,000 years ago.
The exaggeration and panic-mongering over historically ‘normal’ weather events then incites people’s natural survival fear and that leads to the widespread abandonment of rationality. Populations are then susceptible to embracing the most irrational salvation schemes of alarmists.
The alarmists then appeal to another primal human impulse- i.e. the impulse to make a sacrifice and voluntarily suffer some punishment for sin (the belief in and acceptance of suffering as “redemptive”). Many people will then readily embrace calls to make some sacrifice to pay for their sin, as in the calls to give up the good life in modern society, to repent of the “sin” of enjoying life and abundance too much (using too much energy, consuming too much of nature’s resources). Remember, we are dealing with a “profoundly religious” movement in climate alarmism.
Further in alarmist patterns- All people possess the fundamental impulse to engage a heroic battle against an evil enemy, to be on the side of good against some evil. Alarmists distort this fundamental impulse in their demonization of humanity enjoying the good life as the “enemy” of nature. Alarmists portray people as the corrupt destroyers of the world in human civilization, humanity as a “cancer or virus” on Earth.
Fleshing out this argument- alarmists have lasered in on CO2 as the main indicator today of human evil. They claim that CO2 is the main indicator of human excessive consumption, the leading indicator of how corrupt humanity is destroying life.
With that distortion of CO2 as a threat to life, as the evil monster to be fought and slain, climate alarmism has profoundly deformed the natural human impulse to engage a heroic battle against evil. Alarmists have created a new enemy for the modern world, claiming that humanity’s success in using cheap and abundant fossil fuels to lift billions out of poverty over the past two centuries to enjoy an immensely improved human condition- this is the great evil to be fought today by embracing “De-development” in a return to primitivism (reject fossil fuels). Add here the Ecological Footprint model that claims too many people consuming too much of Earth’s resources is leading to environmental collapse. Alarmists see themselves as heroically defending pure, innocent nature, and her limited resources, from human greed and plunder as in modern industrial civilization. But here, in response, is Bjorn Lomborg’s assessment of the Ecological Footprint…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2017/08/02/one-planet-is-enough/?sh=a25dc0b32631
The alarmist call to righteous battle against evil enemies also incites the innate human tribal impulse, the primal impulse to embrace the dualism of “good people fighting bad people”, heroes fighting and conquering some monster or enemy.
Include also in the alarmist call to heroic battle against evil enemies, the specific project to “purge” the evil from life, the thing that threatens life. This involves the demand to use “coercive purification” to get rid of your purported threat. The purging of the threat, according to alarmists, must be accomplished with coercion because regular democratic processes (open debate, questioning, dissent, challenge to dogmas) are too slow to deal with the threat that alarmists always claim is “imminent”- a claim they back with endless “end-of-world” dates always set, and reset, just up ahead a few years or decades. So keep the urgency pressure on. Democratic delay is deadly and threatens life itself, the alarmists claim. Hence, the slow, messy processes of liberal democratic freedom be damned. (Note: See Arthur Mendel’s treatment of “coercive purification” and “instantaneous transformation” in his book on apocalyptic millennialism- “Vision and Violence”.)
Alarmists view questioners and dissenters as “deniers/unbelievers” of the truth that they alone see clearly- the “truth” of their apocalyptic narrative. Add here the “true believers” delusion that they, as the enlightened elite, know what is best for all others. They have found their “righteous battle against evil”, their opportunity to engage a “hero’s quest to slay a monster”. Ah, such primal impulses at play in all this.
And finally in alarmist patterns, note the element of hope that is offered in the promised restoration of a lost paradise or the installation of a new utopia, as in the carbon-free future of the alarmist narrative (life purged of the “pollutant or poison” that is CO2, a world with far fewer “corrupt and greedy” people plundering the natural world).
Further note: Watch the element of irrational insanity in apocalyptic Declinism crusades. This is most notably evident today in the claim of alarmists that the food of all life- CO2- is now the main threat to life. This basic plant food has been in desperately short supply for the past millions of years. With the minor recovery of CO2 levels that Earth has experienced, 15% more green vegetation has been added to Earth just over the past 40 years. Earth would benefit even more from CO2 levels returning to the multiple-thousands of ppm that were common over most of the history of life. So also, all life would benefit from a recovery of temperatures to the 3-6 degrees C warmer climate that was the average for most of the history of life.
Qualifier note: The application of a difficult thing, Wendell Krossa
Note carefully: An emphatically repeated point on this site- We are responsible to maintain our own humanity in this life and that is most successfully accomplished by treating all others unconditionally (e.g. restorative approaches in criminal justice systems).
An unconditional approach toward others is not about dogmatic pacifist responses to human criminality (e.g. “turn the other cheek”). Maintaining our humanity is not about abandoning common sense in an imperfect and often violent world.
Dangerous, repeatedly violent offenders must be forcefully restrained/incarcerated to protect the public. They should be dealt with in criminal justice systems, and even permanently incarcerated where rehabilitation is not possible (i.e. in cases of psychopathy). Criminal offenders should also be held responsible to make restitution to victims.
An unconditional approach, in situations of criminal offense (also international aggression), is directly related to the issue of how we maintain our own humanity in responding to human failure and offenses. Unconditional is about how we treat criminal offenders once they are incarcerated and how that relates to reducing recidivism rates (reducing future victims) in order to protect the public (e.g. as per the evidence, for example, from the Norwegian criminal justice approach).
Unconditional treatment of offenders has a lot to do with love as the “intention” to do the humane thing, not primarily as emotion. We are naturally and rightly enraged at human criminality and offense but then we are best advised to respond as human by breaking patterns of hurt for hurt, pain for pain, etc., as in avoiding punitive justice approaches that dehumanize us.
Simon Wiesenthal (“Justice, Not Vengeance”) and others have wrestled with this struggle between punitive and restorative approaches. See also Karl Menninger’s “The Crime of Punishment”. Netflix has done documentaries on this- i.e. comparing the Norwegian restorative justice approach with punitive-oriented criminal justice that operates in US prisons like Attica.
This site argues that the feature of unconditional is absolute for defining theology- i.e. meaning, God is love as in the stunningly inexpressible wonder of unconditional love. Defining deity with unconditional means there is no such divine reality as in the “threat theology” that still dominates the major world religions and similar “secular/ideological” belief systems (i.e. “Angry God, Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, or payback karma”). This is a critical point as human views of deity have always served as ultimate ideals and authorities. See again, Ellens and Lotufo’s comments on the influence of deity beliefs on human personality and life.
Threat theology has long been a primal fallacy, a pathology in human minds, a damaging mythology that has long deformed human consciousness and life. Threat theology has been most commonly expressed through myths of deity punishing human imperfection (”sin”) through the natural world (natural disasters, disease, accident, predatory cruelty), through threat of apocalyptic destruction, and through threat of after-life harm in hell.
Further, defining deity with unconditional means that there has never been any such reality as a tribal God that favors true believers but rejects and excludes unbelievers. Tribal thinking and opposition is very much the offspring of cosmic dualism mythology- i.e. the myth of a great Good deity opposing and fighting a great evil Force/Spirit (Satan mythology).
Also, unconditional deity means that there has never been any such reality as a dominating God (God as king, lord, ruler, judge), a deity that lords over humanity through dominating priesthoods or other forms of domination (i.e. the divine right of kings or other leadership positions). Humanity does not relate to deity in a domination/submission relationship (i.e. the fallacy of “humanity created to serve the gods”).
And unconditional deity means that there has never been a destroying God as in the mythical fallacies of apocalyptic destruction of the world and after-life harm myths (e.g. hell myths).
One of the more stunning insights on the unconditional nature of deity was presented in the central theology and message of Historical Jesus. He continued the anti-sacrifice theme of the Old Testament prophets, the theology of a God who desired mercy not sacrifices, a God that forgave all sin without demanding prerequisite sacrifice or payment (note the Prodigal Father story in this regard). More historians/theologians recognize today that Jesus was actually put to death for his public protest against sacrifice mythology and practice.
In part, I base my conclusion that unconditional is critical to maintaining our humanity on the profound breakthrough insights of the Historical Jesus that deity was an unconditional reality and that ultimate ideal/authority inspired similar unconditional ethics. Historical Jesus was a person quite entirely opposite to Christian “Jesus Christ”.
In his central message, as per Matthew 5:38-48 and Luke 6:27-36, Historical Jesus had argued for the radical overturning of all historically previous understanding of ultimate reality. He argued for a radical reframing of humanity’s ultimate ideal and authority- deity.
I have repeatedly noted, for example, James Robinson’s statement that Historical Jesus introduced the “Stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. That breakthrough insight was then subsequently rejected by Paul who gave us, in direct contradiction to the theology of Jesus, his Christ myth that re-enforced the primitive themes of a tribally-oriented deity (favoring believers over excluded unbelievers), a dominating Christ (supreme Lord, King), and a retaliatory God (ultimate retaliation in apocalypse and hell).
Most contradictory- Paul turned the anti-sacrifice Jesus into the ultimate icon of sacrifice- the demanded sacrifice of the cosmic Christ as punishment/payment for the sins of all humanity, as necessary for forgiveness and salvation. Paul rejected the unconditional God of Jesus for his highly conditional Christ religion- i.e. (1) the demand for sacrifice/payment to appease a wrathful God (see Romans), (2) the required belief in his Christ as necessary to access forgiveness and salvation, (3) along with the conditions of fulfilling Christian rituals and living a Christian lifestyle as identity markers of membership in his Christian religion.
Unfortunately, Paul’s “Christ”-ianity has shaped the dominating narratives of Western civilization for the past two millennia. His Christ myth has been mainly responsible for validating punitive justice approaches, for the ongoing tribalism of dualism theologies/mythologies (a cosmic Good against cosmic Evil with demand for people to engage similarly tribal battles), and worst of all- for maintaining the destructive myth of apocalypse in Western consciousness and narratives.
The central themes of Historical Jesus included the rejection of retaliatory, punitive responses to others, the rejection of tribalism, and the rejection of apocalyptic panic-mongering.
We need to restore and re-affirm the breakthrough insights of Jesus on unconditional reality and overturn the last two millennia of consciousness-deforming Christ mythology. We need to reaffirm “Jesus-ianity” (his actual core message) in contrast with Paul’s “Christ-ianity”.
Democrats locked in a bubble, Wendell Krossa
Intro-
When you demonize others excessively then you create for yourself a monster that is so dangerous that you must act to save yourself, your community, even if with violence to destroy the monster that you have imagined and manufactured. By excessively demonizing differing others, you have validated your totalitarian impulse to even use violence. The Germans did this with Jewish Bolshevism, the Hutu did it to Tutsis in Rwanda, and now US liberals are on the same spectrum moving toward demonizing all who differ as dangerous threats to democracy, as purveyors of hate speech and dangerous disinformation, and hence, enemies that deserve to be censored and even criminalized (e.g. parents disagreeing with school Woke policies have been labelled “domestic terrorists”).
Democrats have locked themselves into a mentally-limiting cul de sac position, a serious distortion of reality that many on the left appear to have become trapped within. You see this in statements made regularly on mainstream media- i.e. the references to all on the other side as intolerable evil in some manner. Commonly, the differing others are smeared as “racists, white extremists, fascists, threats to democracy, promoters of hate speech, purveyors of dangerous misinformation/disinformation, threatening violence, etc.”. That is the generalizing of all who disagree in terms of varied forms of extremism. We hear this generalizing extrapolation (all on the other side as “evil’) in the Democrat’s defensive validation of their censorship crusade that is now being exposed by journalists like Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberg, and others (The Twitter files thing).
(Insert note: Both sides of the political/social divides in Western societies practise this distorting “collectivist” projection- i.e. extrapolating the features of the extremist elements on the other side out to demonize the entire other side. This is the tribal dualism that uses collectivist thinking to manufacture the narrative that all members of an opposing group are oppressors, contrasted with all on one’s own side as victims, and righteous defenders of truth and good.
This “generalizing that threat emanates from all on the other side” has become more notably a problem exhibited today from the Democrat/liberal side of society. Again, note the work of the journalists listed above. And note the embrace of this “collectivist projection of evil to all on the other side” (common to Woke Progressivism) as it has spread to dominate higher education, Hollywood, mainstream media, Big Tech/social media corporations, etc.)
Democrats/liberals repeatedly point to right-wing extremists such as White Supremacists, and so on, as potentially dangerous threats, and they are. No one disagrees with that, including many on the right. But then Democrats cross the line and claim that such extremism on the far right characterizes the entire other side- it defines all conservatives/Republicans, all that disagree with the Woke Progressivism which now dominates the Left/liberalism. Woke Progressivism has itself become a form of extremism.
Democrats have taken the fundamentally “collectivist” approach in claiming that all on the other side can be reduced to the extremist positions of “Nazis, racists, fascists, white supremacists, threats to democracy… etc.” (Example: Michael Moore, among others, stated that all who voted for Trump in 2016 were racists- https://variety.com/2017/legit/news/michael-moore-cnn-interview-trump-racist-1202529456/). Hence, all Republicans are threats to democracy, purveyors of disinformation/misinformation, dangerous, and therefore it is valid to censor their dangerous, threatening comments and positions.
That focus on the minority extremists on the other side, and then extrapolating that minority extremist element out to characterize all on the other side, is actually the essence of racism. To view all those in some group, in terms of a collective, as “bad” in some manner (i.e. “all whites are oppressors”), to demonize all in some group as evil in some way, is a form of racism itself (see, for example, “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter).
Marxist Robin DiAngelo in “White Fragility” also takes this position– ignoring the uniqueness and difference among individuals to make collectivist generalizations (you are either, and only “oppressor or oppressed”). She then states that “there is no form of being white that is good”.
Added notes on generalizing about entire groups:
Here are some applicable points from author and scholar Douglas Murray (The War on the West), commenting on Robin DiAngelo’s arguments in “White Fragility”.
DiAngelo’s reasoning, says Murray, takes you into the logical trap of the witch-dunkers of the Middle Ages- If a woman drowns, she is innocent. If she floats, then she is a witch and must be burned. DiAngelo does this in claiming that white people are all racist and if they object to being labelled racist then that only proves they are. You can’t win with such logic.
White people are stained with this original sin (Black scholar John McWhorter notes the same- the irremovable stain and sin of just being white). Murray adds that DiAngelo knew that what she was doing was wrong but she didn’t mind and admitted it, saying, “I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism- I am generalizing”. That is the essence of racism- to generalize about an entire group of people in some negative way. Yet she gloats about doing that and believes that she can get away with that because it is against white people, says Murray.
Her generalizing about entire groups affirms her Marxism, a form of collectivism that sees people as members of either the oppressors group or a victims group. The claim that blacks are subjects of endless victimhood is also dealt with by black scholar McWhorter who says that such ideology is harming blacks and is simply not true any more except in isolated cases. Blacks today have amazing opportunities for advancement and many have taken advantage of such opportunities.
Murray adds- DiAngelo makes the strongest claims without evidence- stating “white identity is inherently racist”.
During a Christiane Amanpour interview, DiAngelo made such extreme claims without evidence and a black guest, Michel Martin, tried to pin her down, asking “You’re a scholar. Where’s your data? What makes you say that?” She had no evidence to back up her generalizations. She also made other assertions like, “There’s a glee in the White collective when Black bodies are punished”. Another generalization that is not true. Pretty shoddy scholarship, said Murray.
Murray says later in his book that no amount of anti-racism will ever be enough for DiAngelo. She promotes the Woke Racism that McWhorter writes about that is making life worse for all groups as it advocates new forms of racism.
Murray then repeats the story of a life-long liberal, Jody Shaw of Smith College in Massachusetts, where white staff were constantly berated in diversity and inclusion initiatives. In her resignation statement Shaw said, “I asked Smith College to stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is, based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color”.
As more and more black people are also arguing now- this new Woke Racism is not what Martin Luther King advocated- that we stop judging one another based on skin color but rather judge one another on our individual character. The new Woke Racism is all about judging others as an entire group, based on their skin color, no matter how different each individual may be.
And “systemic racism”? What about US surveys showing that almost 100% of the US population approves of mixed marriages, mixed neighborhoods, mixed everything. What does that say? It shows amazing progress on this issue. Unfortunately, people like DiAngelo deny that progress and continue to divide groups over race.
Also notable: Movements like BLM start with wide acceptance by the public. But then, unfortunately, extremists tend to get involved and take movements off in extremist directions, like DiAngelo, and that shift to extremes turns many people off, including many blacks who are now protesting against Critical Race Theory which leans toward DiAngelo’s assumptions and distortions.
Both sides need to return to a more discerning approach that views people on any side in terms of their individualism- individual differences and uniqueness. And then we ought to affirm the commonalities that most people on all sides share. As presidential candidate Nikki Haley wisely said in an interview:
Interviewer: “You’ve spoken out against identity politics, and yet in your campaign announcement, you emphasized your identity as a minority woman, as the daughter of Indian immigrants. In that same announcement, you emphasized your femininity: “When you kick back,” you said, “it hurts them more when you’re wearing heels.” To me, it’s a kind of Lean in, you go, girl play that’s typically reserved for Democrats. How central is your identity as a woman, and particularly a woman of South Asian descent, to your candidacy? Do you draw a line between a sort of inclusive identity politics and exclusionary identity politics?”
Nikki Haley: “When I was bullied, when I was younger, my mom would say to me, “Your job is not to show them how you’re different; your job is to show them how you’re similar.” I think that’s a lesson for all Americans. Don’t let people divide you based on what you look like. Instead, show them how similar you are to them.
“I think it also helps people understand me more when I talk about being a woman. I’m proud of being a woman. I’m a feminine girl. I love that. I don’t deny what people can see, which is that I’m a brown woman. That’s fine. I have fun with it. If you’re going to criticize me for those things anyway, I’m going to lean into it and have fun. It’s not identity politics; it’s just loving who you are. I love being a woman. I love my heritage. I love how I was raised, and I love how it has made me who I am today.
“Identity politics are when you divide people based on what you are. I’m not dividing people based on what I am. I’m trying to show people that we are all more similar than we are different.”
A further post on the generalizing of the other side as all evil in terms of the minority extremists on that side…
Its more than unsettling, the apparent lack of self-awareness among many identifying as liberals today. Out of their zealous struggle to “protect democracy” against threats from the other side, there has emerged a dangerous authoritarianism that sees no danger in censorship, silencing dissent and free speech, banning others from public spaces (notable in university campus rioting and refusing to allow conservatives to speak), even criminalizing differing others (again, for example, Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, proposing to criminalize skeptical science on climate in 2016). These behaviors have always been emanations of the totalitarian impulse, more forms of extremist tyranny than any form of true liberalism.
Liberals need to ask themselves- What self-delusional arguments are validating this dangerous new authoritarianism? What liberals are doing in censoring others who disagree is undermining the very fundamentals of liberal democracy, of freedom in general.
I repeat, as noted previously above- Be careful of building features into your perspective that are distorting your ability to see reality clearly and objectively. I refer to what has become the common liberal tendency today to see extremists on the other side (the tiny minority of racists, White Supremacists, fascists) and then to extrapolate the disgusting positions of those lunatic fringe people out to characterize all on the other side- i.e. thereby demonizing all conservatives/Republicans, even demonizing center Right and center Left moderates who disagree with Woke Progressivism. (To balance- People on the Right also engage this collectivist demonization of all differing others in terms of extremists on the other side.)
The extrapolating of extremist positions out to characterize all who disagree with you, then validates your sense of engaging a “righteous battle against evil enemies” and provides the justification for your abandonment of basic Classic Liberal principles to descend into dangerous totalitarianism while at the same time feeling like a righteous savior when censoring, silencing, banning, and criminalizing all who disagree with you.
Note the justification when varied public “liberals” defend their crusades to censor and ban “misinformation/disinformation” (the views and speech of those who differ from them) which they claim is a “threat to democracy”. Differing opinions and speech are labelled “racist, fascism, hate speech, violent extremism…” and more. Again, those doing this will point to the minority of actual extremists on the other side with the claim that those few represent all on the other side. Notably public figures that have done this- i.e. Joy Reid of MSNBC, the ladies on The View (particularly Sonny Hostin arguing all who vote Republican are racists), Michael Moore, and others.
One liberal commentator took all this a step further when he argued, during Trump’s presidency, that liberal violence against those on the other side was legitimate violence. He said, if they- conservatives, Republicans- are all Nazis (and he affirmed that they were), then our violence, he argued, to stop them is like the Allies fighting Hitler during WW2. It is legitimate violence. Such logic advocated in public ought to be a wake-up call to many true liberals still on the left side.
Another example:
https://news.yahoo.com/prof-suspended-post-saying-admirable-000425889.html?
All sides need to pull back from these dangerous excesses.
And an interesting essay on “respectable authoritarianism” (validating your totalitarianism as “good”, versus the other side’s totalitarianism as “evil”)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/27/joe-biden-and-the-rise-of-respectable-authoritarianism/
This good counter to the false climate alarmism claim of “more people dying from warming”. The claim of more warming deaths (all deaths being regrettable) is never placed within the larger context that shows 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warming (Lancet study). More warming decreases the deaths from cold by a larger number than the increased deaths from warming. Meaning- more warming will continue to be net beneficial to humanity and to all life.
Further contrary to John Kerry’s alarmism in the link below- Hard evidence shows that storms are not getting worse, tornadoes are declining, hurricanes are not increasing, floods are decreasing, crop production has improved significantly, and overall, temperature and weather-related deaths have declined dramatically over the past century. As the article says, the fear-mongering of Kerry is more dangerous than climate change. How so? Climate fear-mongering incites populations to embrace the irrational decarbonization crusade that is destroying Western societies.
Another good one in responses to alarmist claims that we are now experiencing a “Sixth Mass Extinction event”, also claimed by Kerry. I am not affirming all that the author argues or concludes below, but overall he makes important points. See Julian Simon also on the wrong assumptions made by extinction alarmists, notably that a loss of 90% of habitat would result in a loss of 50% of species related to such habitat loss. That assumption has been discredited by the experiences of the Northeastern US and Northeast Brazil over past history.
Quotes:
“”We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.”
“”The sixth mass extinction has begun.”
“Such statements are repeated so often that they have become accepted as truth.
“But they are not true.
“There is no ongoing sixth mass extinction.
“For many species, the negative trend has been reversed.
“However, the issue is complex. The populations of many species have declined significantly, and this is a problem to be taken very seriously. Humans have been responsible for many extinctions throughout history.
“Today, we are much wiser, and support for preserving biodiversity is strong. We have learned how to solve the problem and protect the Earth’s species….
“We had six hypotheses before our investigation:
“(1) For the past 50 years, species populations are no longer shrinking in wealthy countries. In many cases, they are increasing. Recently, populations have also stopped declining in poor countries.
“(2) What is called species extinction is almost entirely about shrinking populations.
“(3) The extremely large number of species that are said to be continuously dying out comes from theoretical models of insects and even smaller organisms that are assumed to disappear.
“(4) Among larger species, few extinctions in modern times have been truly documented.
“(5) Humans were much worse for animals and nature in the past than they are today.
“(6) Many species thrive in urban environments….
And…
“There are documented cases of extinctions (relatively few).
“There are theoretical cases of extinctions (very many).
“Calculations are made of the extinction rate that should be normal.
“Assessments are made of species populations, which are often confused with actual extinctions….
“According to IUCN red list:
“… over the past 400 years, a little over 800 species have gone extinct, or around 900 with the definition of extinct in the wild….
“Notable critic of mass species extinctions: John Briggs
“Myers and Wilson were challenged by some colleagues, with marine biologist John Briggs being perhaps the most prominent critic. Before he passed away a few years ago, Briggs published over 150 scientific articles and six books.
“In a 2016 article, Briggs made short shrift of not just Myers and Wilson but also Al Gore, Richard Leakey, and Roger Lewin, who had all made estimates of between 17,000 and 100,000 annual extinctions. In the past 50 years, Briggs wrote, “a wave of propaganda” of exaggerated numbers and talk of an impending sixth mass extinction has washed over us “making the public feel guilty.”
“Briggs came to completely different numbers. He was skeptical of the calculations on the “background rate” of extinction that prevailed several million years ago. His own analysis suggested that humans are responsible for 1.5 extinctions per year beyond what can be considered normal. This loss is also likely offset by the concurrent formation of new species, he argued.
“John Briggs also pointed out that the studies done on plants have barely shown any decrease in diversity, which is rarely acknowledged.
“Without evidence of a significant net loss of species, mass extinction is merely speculation without substance,” he wrote. At the same time, it should be noted that he was very concerned about shrinking populations:…
“Ecologist Stuart Pimm
“… the greatest diversity does not and has never existed in the areas humans exploit the most.
“Is climate warming a threat?
“It is actually somewhat backward to say that a warmer climate is solely a threat to biodiversity. Earthly life thrives better in heat than in cold. This is a biological fact. Species richness declines dramatically from the equator towards the poles. Tropical rainforests harbor half of the world’s plant and animal species. Most species can be traced back to the tropics, including Homo sapiens….
“What conclusions can we draw?
“So, what conclusions can we draw from all these facts, estimates, and opinions?
“It is indisputable that the populations of a large number of species have shrunk as humanity has left a greater footprint on the Earth’s surface. However, the rate of decline has begun to slow down. It is documented that around 900 species, of which 350 are vertebrates, have gone extinct in the past 400 years.
“By common definition, it is clear that a sixth mass extinction is not taking place on Earth. With that established, however, a quagmire of trends and data awaits, which can be toned down or emphasized depending on their direction.
“At its core, as in many other cases, it is a matter of disposition. If one is a pessimist and downplays improvements and emphasizes everything that can go wrong, it may seem perfectly reasonable to decide, like Paul Ehrlich, that we are already in a sixth mass extinction.
“If one is an optimist and focuses on trends that have turned or slowed down and trusts that people’s desire to preserve nature is genuine, one can feel confident that a sixth mass extinction will not occur. We will be able to live side by side with all the fantastic biodiversity on this planet, even when our species reaches its expected peak of ten billion.
“In the misanthropic nature conservation debate, it is said that it is now the first time in Earth’s history that a single species, humans, is responsible for a mass extinction of other species. But it is equally true – and increasingly so with heightened awareness – that it is the first time a species actively protects and saves other species.
“The nature conservation efforts of recent decades show that when humans understand that they are destroying and therefore retreat, nature can recover quickly and strongly. North America and Europe are the best examples so far. Today, there are more mammals in Europe than in the past 8,000 years ….
“Warp News and our partner The Progress Network have a different view. We argue that alarms completely dominate media coverage. At the same time, we believe that most people can think for themselves and also hold more than one thought in their head at the same time. A report on the situation that is as objective as possible is likely to inspire confidence and does not affect people’s desire to protect nature at all.
“An international survey conducted in 2019 shows a strong willingness to care for animals and plants, and the extinction of species concerns virtually everyone. This applies to both the affluent part of the world and poorer countries….
“Hypotheses and results: Summary
“So, this is the result of our deep dive:
“(1) Hypothesis: For the past 50 years, species populations are no longer shrinking in wealthy countries. In many cases, they are increasing. Recently, populations have also stopped declining in poor countries.
“Not entirely accurate. Populations stopped shrinking only about a decade ago in most regions, but not all.
“(2) Hypothesis: What is called species extinction is almost entirely about shrinking populations.
“Mostly accurate. Media, environmental agencies, and even some researchers often describe decreased populations in terms of extinction.
“(3) Hypothesis: The extremely large number of species said to go extinct continuously comes from theoretical models of insects and even smaller organisms assumed to disappear.
“Accurate. Since Norman Myers’ book The Sinking Ark from 1979, spectacular assumptions have gained attention, suggesting that tens of thousands, perhaps even more, species go extinct each year. The numbers are impossible to verify.
“(4) Hypothesis: Among larger species, few extinctions in modern times have actually been documented.
“Generally accurate. The words “few” and “modern times” need to be more clearly defined. In a geological sense, even what we see as “few” (less than one percent of all vertebrates in 500 years) is a high rate.
“(5) Hypothesis: Humans were much worse for animals and nature in the past than today.
“Accurate. (However, the hypothesis mainly applies to inhabitants of civilizations, not indigenous people.) In our opinion, this is a key reason why a sixth mass extinction will never become a reality.
“(6) Hypothesis: Many species thrive in urban environments.
“Accurate. There are numerous studies showing that many animals and plants have successfully made cities their habitats.”
Full report at the link above.
The true state of life on Earth (a revised reposting- Evidence that is critical to a new narrative of life) Wendell Krossa
While problems exist everywhere, they are solvable and humanity has done well in caring for and preserving world resources. For detailed research on the true status of world resources see Julian Simon’s ‘Ultimate Resource’, Bjorn Lomborg’s ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’, or ‘Population Bombed’ by Szurmak and Desrochers, among many similar studies. Below are some basic facts on the main resources of our world. They are the main indicators of the true state of life on our planet. They all show that life is not declining toward something worse. There is no looming environmental apocalypse.
Leading indicators for evaluating the true state of life:
(1) World forest cover in the 1950s was 3.8 billion hectares (FAO stats). World forest cover today is 4.1-plus billion hectares, despite the world population tripling from 2.4 billion people in the early 1950s to almost 8 billion today. Deforestation rates continue to decline and reforestation/afforestation projects continue to succeed. We are not destroying the world’s forests.
http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/52045/en/
and https://www.humanprogress.org/what-do-the-numbers-show-about-global-deforestation/
(2) Proven species extinctions. While any species extinction is unacceptable, we have dramatically improved our care of nature. Species extinctions are on a notably declining trend line and have decreased from about 5 per year in 1870 to about 0.5 per year today (see the IUCN Red List All Extinct Species by Decade on p.101 of Patrick Moore’s new book ‘Fake Invisible Catastrophes And Threats of Doom’). While nature has destroyed over 95% of all species over the span of life on this planet, compassionate humanity is now protecting species as never before.
See also Julian Simon’s chapter on the IUCN report on species loss (in Ultimate Resource and other books) and the discredited assumption/correlation between habitat loss and species extinctions. The wrong assumption was that with habitat loss of 90% some 50% of species would go extinct. Both the Northeastern US and Northeastern Brazil study areas disproved that assumption. The assumption did not understand the resiliency, adaptability, and toughness of life. There is no species holocaust occurring. Nature is not “fragile”.
(3) Climate change (the atmosphere as a main resource): There has been a mild 1 degree Centigrade of warming over the past century and a half. That slightly warmed our still abnormally cold world. We are still in an “ice-age era”. Average surface temperatures today are around 15 degrees Centigrade. That is 5-10 degrees Centigrade below the more optimal average surface temperatures of the past 500 million years. For over 90% of the past 500 million years there was no ice at the poles. That is a more normal and optimal world. And contrary to the falsified climate models, there is no settled evidence of much more warming occurring in the future. There is no “climate crisis” looming.
Also, most of our Holocene inter-glacial, that began around 11,000 years ago, has been warmer than today. The Holocene Climatic Optimum (roughly 10-5,000 years ago) was more than 1 degree C. warmer. The Roman Warm Period (250 BCE to 400 CE) and the Medieval Warm Period (950- 1,250 CE) were also warmer than today. Life overall and human civilization flourished during such warming periods. From about 5,000 years ago our interglacial began a long-term cooling trend (the “Neoglacial” period). Our current Modern Warm period is the coolest of the four warm periods of our interglacial.
We are also still in a “CO2 starvation era” where CO2 has declined to its lowest levels compared to most of past history. 20,000 years ago CO2 levels declined to 185 ppm, barely above the level at which all plant life dies (150 ppm). We have experienced a mild increase in atmospheric CO2 levels to 400-plus ppm today but this is still far below long-term historical averages (multiple-thousands of ppm) when life flourished with much more of its basic plant food.
(4) Ocean fisheries are not collapsing and aquaculture is meeting the growing human demand for fish. See Ray Hilborn reports and FAO summaries on fisheries. The world fisheries are not being decimated, though various species are over-fished and need more protection/better management. Wild fish consumption has peaked over past decades and aquaculture has been growing rapidly to meet the growing demand for fish. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/01/13/fisheries-management-is-actually-working-global-analysis-shows/
(5) The overall agricultural land-base is not severely degrading. Also, any soil erosion must be understood in net terms, as related to new soil regeneration rates. Further, over the past century and more, we have returned several hundred million acres of agricultural land back to nature as hi-yield GM crops enable farmers to produce more crop on the same or less land. We have probably already passed “peak-agricultural land” use.
Thanks also to increasing levels of basic plant food in the atmosphere (i.e. CO2) there has been a 30% increase in green vegetation across the Earth over the past century. This aerial CO2 also contributes to remarkable increases in crop production (see CO2science.org). Humanity now produces 25% more food than we need. Hydroponics will also meet much of future food demands.
These, and other indicators, show that the overall long-term trajectory of life is improving, not worsening.
A note to our children: Do not fear the future of life on our planet. With continued wealth creation we will continue to solve the remaining world resource problems and life will continue to get ever better than before. Your personal contribution to making life better will add to humanity’s overall success. Do not let false alarmism narratives rob you of hope.
Other indicators of the state of life
These are some of the most important things in life and they tell us where life is heading. This is not to deny that serious problems remain in many areas of life, but to re-assure with hope that people are working to find solutions and our track record affirms that we have done well in solving problems and vastly improving life for most people. The best is yet to come.
Infant mortality rates
In 1800 one third of children (33%) died before reaching 5 years of age. The global rate today is 4.5% and much lower (well below 1%) in most of the more developed countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-global-overview
Human life span
In the pre-industrial era the average life expectancy was about 30 years. Today the world average is over 70 years and higher in many countries. See sources like Ourworldindata.org.
Human health
Over the past century major diseases have been conquered, others turned into long-term maladies. The current pandemic appears to have been caused by human action against better advice (i.e. continuing gain of function research despite a ban, and substandard lab safety measures). Hopefully, this outbreak will result in more pro-active vaccine research and other preventative measures that will lessen the chance of future similar outbreaks.
Decline in poverty
Poverty has declined rapidly over past decades and much of the world’s population is entering middle-class status. There is no reason this trend will not continue.
Human comfort and well-being
Ongoing technological advances have made human existence much less punishing with breakthroughs in transportation, communication, and general human comfort. Workplace safety has increased significantly. Deaths from natural disasters have declined by 96% over the past century.
Once more- Plant and animal life
With more basic plant food in the atmosphere (CO2) plant life has flourished with a 30% increase in green vegetation on Earth over the past century. Animals have benefitted with more food and humanity has benefitted with increased crop production from aerial fertilization. Also, GM crop breakthroughs have resulted in crop records being broken annually with more breakthroughs to come. We now produce significantly more food than humanity needs. And a warming climate (in an abnormally cold world) will further benefit animal and plant life with extended habitats.
Further, extinctions are at all time lows.
Committed pessimists ignore the many improvements to life and focus obsessively on remaining problems without locating them within the larger overall context of improving life. Alarmist types tend to exaggerate problems out to apocalyptic scale thereby distorting the overall big picture and long-term trajectory of life.