The crusade to establish the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies, and the “influencer” ideas behind these crusades.
See below a summary of the Joe Rogan interview of Mike Benz on the massive infrastructure of the elite censorship complex that is now in a full-frontal battle against populism.
Here is the link to the JRE interview of Benz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA&t=2s
Most dominant and influential theme in the modern world, Wendell Krossa
“Declinism”- I make the argument below that you cannot understand our world today aside from the research on the 19th Century ideology of Declinism. The ideology of Declinism, outlined by Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, dominates the modern world- “The most dominant and influential theme in the modern world”. And add this- Declinism is an essential element of the psychopathology of apocalyptic that is the most violent and destructive idea in history (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”). As in life declines toward something worse, toward collapse and apocalyptic ending.
I relate this directly to the dominant influence that Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth has had, and continues to have, on Western narratives, consciousness, and society.
We see surveys like the YouGov research (“Ten Global Trends”, Tupy and Bailey) that revealed most people across the Earth today believe “the world is becoming worse”. This is in direct contradiction to the research of Julian Simon (Ultimate Resource), and many others, who have amassed evidence that life has been improving across the long-term trajectory and, unless there is contradictory evidence emerging, life will continue to improve in the future due to human creativity, innovation, and compassion.
But why then do so many people continue to believe that life is becoming worse?
There are varied contributing factors to the widespread acceptance of the Declinism psychopathology.
Start with propagandizing media that are committed to “Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis” and, in particular, are committed to apocalyptic insanity as in the “climate catastrophe” narrative. Add the lunacy of those committed to the destruction of industrial capitalist civilization by shutting down humanity’s critical dependence on harmless fossil fuels.
Add also Kristian Niemietz’s point- “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” Apply this to the ongoing embrace of socialism today after some 24 failed tries over the past century or so. And apply it to the widespread embrace of decarbonization as the salvation scheme that destroys societies to “save the world”.
My contribution to why people respond to “emotional satisfaction” in choice of beliefs, is to note the deeply embedded archetypes of the human subconscious that have been shaped over millennia by primitive mythological themes. The influence of said archetypes on our emotions is always in the background, affirming our animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Our embrace of contemporary apocalyptic narratives like climate change hysteria is not always conscious but more subconscious, more on the level of “emotional satisfaction”, not rational evidence. We embrace narratives with the same old themes because they intuitively feel “right, true, good, and just”. So, not doing due diligence and probing the history behind such things, people just embrace them again and again despite the repeated destructive outcomes, as with socialism (a version of collectivist equity).
In discussion groups, we had one fellow who argued that ideas don’t matter. Just act as you usually do because some 95% of our behavior is subconsciously motivated. We act mostly without thinking. Another person in that discussion group disagreed and argued that ideas, and thinking about ideas, is very much about who we are as intelligent humans with conscious minds that make reasoned choices. As he paraphrased, “I think and therefore I am.”
My point in the group was that ideas and behavior work together as in the ancient human habit of “basing behavior on validating beliefs”. That habit arises from our primal impulse for meaning and purpose. Hence, all across history this impulse has driven people to seek validation for their behavior and lives. Unfortunately, people have too often embraced bad ideas to validate bad behaviors as in validating the impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of tribal outsiders, differing others.
This is where I bring in Historical Jesus and Paul for their entirely contrary themes that have validated entirely different behaviors. Such as Paul affirming divine retaliation in his Christ myth that would subsequently, across two millennia, validate behaviors like retaliation.
On the 95% of our behavior being subconsciously influenced.
If it is true that 95% of our behavior is in response to subconscious influences (archetypes), then that is exactly the problem. Archetypes across millennia have been shaped by the worst of primitive mythological themes to reenforce inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of others. Those fundamental impulses and associated ideas of the subconscious must be changed, even though the validating ideas are often related to the divine, as in features of gods that define the archetypes and are therefore considered immutable.
Examples of features of deity that serve to validate human impulses: God as tribally favoring true believers, excluding unbelievers. God as “Lord, King, Ruler” that validates elite domination. God as Judge meting out violent punitive destruction as in apocalypse, or hell, thereby validating punitive justice systems.
If such archetypal features are wrong, then change them and radically so. Throw out the old just as Historical Jesus did. (“Historical”- as in the person entirely opposite to Paul’s Christian “Lord Jesus” or “Jesus Christ”.)
To embrace the radical, fundamental transformation of narrative that H. Jesus proposed, start by changing your personal narrative, the themes of your narrative. We do this by replacing old story ideas/themes with better alternatives. And let the new work its way back into the subconscious to change deeply rooted archetypes. Historical Jesus threw out the old God entirely and created a completely new view of deity based on the features of non-retaliation, unconditional and universal love. A God that is the ultimate Oneness of love.
And, a necessary caution, his new theology was not an affirmation of pacifism in life. It’s about how we confront evil and maintain our own humanity at same time. How we treat the offenders that we are obligated to restrain/incarcerate, but then try to rehabilitate.
Pacifism does not work in this world. The primary obligation of responsible love is to protect the innocent from violent people who must be restrained and incarcerated to maintain public safety and peace. No questions on this. Unconditional deity is not validation for dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek”. Though such response is the free choice of individuals.
Other topics:
What we expect from Matt Taibbi- the best of journalism. This report is just one small piece of the picture of the mass corruption of a democracy over the past decade, corruption by those who screamed loudest (projection) about their opponents being an existential “threat to democracy”, that political opponents needed to be criminalized and stopped with lawfare. Journalists like Taibbi continue to expose the corruption of a political party that promoted endless media lies that demonized opponents as “Nazis, fascists, racists” and more. Journalists like Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others are exposing this corruption to the cleansing power of light. The politicization of the FBI is one element in the larger story.
“The Bell Finally Tolls for the FBI: The reported nomination of Kash Patel means chickens are coming home to roost for the FBI, which needs to be destroyed as a political entity”, Matt Taibbi, Dec. 2, 2024
https://www.racket.news/p/the-bell-finally-tolls-for-the-fbi
In this report Taibbi details the corruption of the FBI over past decades with its involvement in the origins of the Russiagate lies- i.e. the Steele dossier and related issues.
“In the last eight-plus years, the Bureau went beyond the excesses of the J. Edgar Hoover era, attempting to install itself as a KGB-like domestic intelligence service with gatekeeping power over everything from the White House to the speech landscape. Forget Trump: we are not safe unless its bureaucracy is fully dismantled.”
Taibbi details the developing history behind the great lie of Trump collusion with Russia. The final reports on that scandal exposed what was going on behind the scenes.
“Ultimately what that report showed is that the FBI in its zeal to get Trump not only embraced a concocted story about collusion with Russia, it sat on exculpatory evidence through years of leaks while engineering scheme after sordid scheme to knock out a sitting president. This planet-scaled dirty trick was without precedent and may be difficult to criminally prosecute, since “changing reality for political reasons” is not in the federal code… However you define what the FBI did, the press was clearly an accomplice.”
After covering the main actors and issues of Russiagate, Taibbi refers to the entire mess as an endless series of “squalid episodes” and concludes “No matter what you think of Trump, the FBI became a criminal organization under his tenure, and defanging it will be an urgent priority of the next government… Kash Patel will be the focus of scrutiny now, but the Bureau needs to look in the mirror. How J. Edgar Hoover’s legacy was revived in the Trump years.”
Taibbi adds a note:
He says, “When I heard Kash Patel had been tabbed by Donald Trump to run the FBI, I could already imagine the pushback and moved immediately to start the just-published article “The Bell Finally Tolls for the FBI” piece.”
Taibbi realized that there was a larger context to the development of an ugly fight over Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI. He refers to the transformation of the FBI back into a “J. Edgar Hoover-style domestic spy service with sweeping political ambition has been a long-developing story… the post-9/11 Bureau used the pretext of an enhanced counterintelligence mandate to throw off some mild restraints that had been placed on it the last time it had to be slapped down, i.e. after the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.”
Taibbi is concerned that few people realize the FBI story is about the “unbroken progression toward a fully politicized police force.”
He later notes the book written by an undercover agent named German, “a 2019 book called ‘Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide’ that described the Bureau’s descent to a thought-policing mission.”
Taibbi concludes regarding the lie of Trump collusion with Russia that the details of the actual history show “the Bureau knew early on that premise was nonsense, there’s no other explanation for its conduct in the Trump era. A massively empowered national police organization that considers the elected head of the Executive Branch to be a criminal target in need of “disrupting” and “discrediting,” the way Hoover went after the Revolutionary Action Movement or the Nation of Islam, is by definition an illegal/subversive organization that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt with a much narrower mission.”
Taibbi says, “ironically, it’s the FBI that now needs to be disrupted, urgently, and he’s (Kash Patel) at least shown a willingness to do it. I doubt they’ll go quietly.”
Further note: Wendell Krossa
The secrecy principle and protocols of governments, as in classified materials, has gone way too far. Who said that there are now some 1 billion classified documents in the federal government (Tucker Carlson?). Elites and bureaucrats have fallen for the self-deluding distortion that they are the owners of government and its bureaucracies, and hence, must protect information from the public that is viewed by elites as the enemy (the shift of state agencies from focus on enemies abroad to domestic enemies as in populists that challenge state elites and bureaucracies).
No to the delusion of elites that they own government. The people are the true owners of government that must be accountable to them, must serve them, not the other way around.
And what are elites and bureaucracies hiding with all the secrecy classifications? Some have suggested they are hiding evidence of their corruption of democracy.
Yes, some things need classification of secrecy but no where near the extent of today’s secrecy bureaucracy. Point? Open up the Epstein lists, the Diddy lists, the JFK files, the Bobby Kennedy files, the Martin Luther King files, the UFO files, and so on. That is public property.
But oh, complain the holders of the secrets- People will lose faith in their public state institutions. Huh? People have long ago lost faith in government. Have you elites and bureaucrats not seen the surveys of public distrust of government? Restoring faith will follow openness, holding state elites and bureaucracies accountable for corruption, with exposure to light doing its cleansing thing. Trust will return with bureaucracies freed from tribalism, politicization, and restored to a more neutral position that represents and serves all segments of populations equally.
The state secrecy thing is illustrative of the larger problem of elites and their domination of commoners.
Further…
Parenti’s comments jive with what Joe Rogan’s guest Mike Benz said the other day about the history of CIA meddling with political parties (i.e. the Democrats in the 60s and 70s) to shift support toward the state institutions that promote the war machine and to support the censorship of any dissent to the narratives of such institutions. CIA meddling in political parties, jives with Parenti’s comments on the manipulation of black communities to shift their attention away from any challenge to elite powerholders, elite control of our societies. The challenge of commoners to elite domination should be the shared concern of all commoners of all races.
This is the primary psychopathology of elites- i.e. that they can dominate commoners in the elite/commoner divide and that is true “democracy”, as in their perverted version of democracy. They deny the fact that they and their bureaucracies must exist to serve the population, the citizens of a society, by protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally. They, and their institutions, should never operate to protect “the consensus of state institutions” where elites manipulate behind the scenes, lying through control of media narratives, to smear, undermine, and demonize the “populism that is true democracy” (Winston Marshal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFmjgbdNNgw ).
State elites now further corrupt democracy with their rejection of the First Amendment. They are the totalitarians, the authoritarians whom they once fought in other countries to, according to their narratives, liberate people into democracy. Today’s elites in our liberal democracies are the real “threat to democracy”, the real “enemy within”.
The first thing I would tell today’s elites is to read that profound little statement of Historical Jesus that true greatness is not lording over others but serving others. True greatness is not Paul’s “Lord Jesus” as the divine ideal. Paul got it all wrong in his validating elite domination.
Big background issue:
More on the repeated push to establish the elite/commoner divide on our liberal democracies, the ideas/beliefs used to validate this pathology that destroys freedom and democracy.
The two great “influencers” of Western narratives and civilization, Wendell Krossa
Pre-splainin notes (prelude):
With my blog-style writing on this site I am sort of mimicking the “weave thing” of “You Know Who” as he explained on comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast (i.e. “Flagrant”. Just type in “Schulz/Trump” on YouTube).
Another prelude note- I also recognize the ongoing influence of Plato and Aristotle as per Arthur Herman’s research in “The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”. I just think, with James Tabor and others, that Paul and Historical Jesus had, and still have, greater influence.
And again, to do some pre-alleviation of possible outrage from true believers in the Christ myth, I am not entirely denouncing Paul and all that he said. He was good in places, such as his comment on being free from law in his letter to the Galatians.
My position re Paul is about the need for careful delineation of Historical Jesus and his message, to distinguish what Jesus actually taught, as contrasted with the entanglement of his wisdom sayings in Paul’s distortion of his message (i.e. the Christ myth) that dominates the New Testament and Christianity.
My comments relate to how Historical Jesus and his message have been “buried” by the Christ. Point- If you claim any sort of interest in what Jesus was on about, then honor the man for who he actually was and for his actual message of wisdom sayings. The research has been done over the past three centuries and the general framework of conclusions is now more clear. The evidence is in.
I repeatedly return to the central themes in the messages of these two religious icons- Paul and Jesus, agreeing with James Tabor (“Paul and Jesus: How the apostle transformed Christianity”) that their influence has dominated our Western civilization, and still dominates today in both religious traditions- and this is critical to understand- also in the secular/ideological narratives of our contemporary world.
Notable historians (Sources just below) have discovered the same thing that Tabor revealed- i.e. that the religious ideas associated with, especially Paul, have continued to powerfully shape narratives and outcomes in Western civilization down into the present. Paul’s contribution of narrative themes, so profoundly contrary to what Jesus taught, has been egregiously harmful in inciting mass-death outcomes in modern apocalyptic millennial crusades like Marxism and Nazism.
Marinate on that a bit… That ought to be front page news till the problem is confronted, tackled, and resolved. The military guy outlined it quite simply and correctly- “You can crush eruptions of religious violence with military force (like the ISIS crusade of 2014) but those will only continue to erupt until you deal with the ideas driving them”. Nuf said. And that applies to all versions of harmful crusades, like “climate alarmism” and Net Zero decarbonization.
When I refer to “Paul’s ideas or themes in his Christ myth”, I mean the complex of “(1) lost paradise, (2) corrupt/sinful humanity ruining paradise, (3) life declining toward apocalyptic ending, (4) demand for salvation through violent sacrifice as payment, and (5) demand for violent purging of threatening enemies, (6) the call to engage a heroic, righteous battle against evil enemies, and (7) promise of restored paradise/new utopian communalism”.
Sources of good research on this– Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline In Western History”), Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”), and others have affirmed the same. These authors summarize in their term “apocalyptic millennialism” the fuller complex of themes that I listed above.
Add also James Carrol’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews” on the destructive tradition of antisemitism in Christianity across two millennia. Carrol reveals the harmful influence of Paul’s focus on the cross or death of Jesus, something that Historical Jesus had given no significance to in his “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel, the closest we get to what he actually taught, his actual message.
The warnings have been made, repeatedly- i.e. That until we understand how these religious themes, notably the themes in Paul’s Christ myth, can carry societies into mass-death crusades, then we have learned nothing and will continue to repeat the same horrific outcomes as we saw with Marxism and Nazism. 100 million deaths from Marxism last century, some 50 million from Nazism.
My takeaway from all this research– Today we are once again embracing just what the historians warned us about. Many today have embraced two notable crusades and their destructive salvation schemes, (1) the mass-harm emerging from the “climate crisis” narrative (climate apocalypse) and its salvation scheme of decarbonization that is ruining societies like Britain, Germany, California, etc. Some warn of even potential mass-death if we continue this trajectory to societal destruction with decarbonization.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/30/time-for-starmer-to-be-honest-about-what-net-zero-means-rationing-blackouts-and-travel-restrictions-in-the-next-five-years/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/01/how-the-rush-to-net-zero-is-accelerating-britains-industrial-decline/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/30/california-dreamin-newsoms-energy-fiasco/
And then we are foolishly toying with another mass-harm crusade in the (2) ever-resuscitating, ever-persisting, and still-developing neo-collectivism of Woke Progressivism.
In the link below, Jordan Peterson cautioned the post-2024 election jubilation with the reminder that the US education system, similar to others, is still almost entirely controlled by Woke Progressives.
The Woke Progressivism strain of ideology, notably in its extreme leftist version, functions as the new collectivist approach pushing for domination in our societies. It is the latest historical push to re-establish the ancient elite/commoner divide in human societies.
With the neo-Marxists still in control of Western education systems, they will continue to graduate new generations of Woke Collectivist activists, innovatively creating ever-new approaches, projects and programs, with the same old basic ideas and principles. Note, for example, that the traditional Marxist tribal dualism of oppressor/oppressed, as in capital owners versus workers/peasants, is still the mix.
And over past decades a new version of Marxist tribal dualism has been crafted in the Progressive classification of populations as “victimizer or victim” with membership in either category assigned according to your race or skin color. This is the new discrimination of “Woke racism” added to help push tribal collectivism, once again, on our societies.
I posted before the comments of Michael Parenti who speculated on how, for example, black communities in the US were possibly manipulated back in the 60s to focus more on varied social issues like racism and their victimhood, in Woke terms, and how this set black communities against other ethnicities in order to distract them from economic issues and any possible revolt against controlling elites.
I am not affirming Parenti’s views and comments or denying the importance of issues like racism. I just posted his comments as interesting suggestions to note, especially for his comments about the behind-the-scenes manipulation by state agencies like the CIA to distract communities from other important issues that might present some challenge to controlling state elites, elites and the elite control that constitutes the real opponent of all lower/middle income people of all races.
https://www.michael-parenti.org/article-monopoly-media-manipulation
And this from Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson
Here is Peterson, like Joseph, in his coat of many colors: My comments from a post to a discussion group… Wendell Krossa
“Jordan Peterson says that we view the world through a story, and what story prevails in our culture? The progressives, post-moderns insist the story is that of power while the correct story is that of voluntary sacrifice.
“I also appreciate his comment on Trudeau, when he goes from calm to pissed and such heat communicates better the complete and utter mess that Trudeau has made of Canada.
“He cautions against the jubilation of the post-election victory of Trump, that there is still a fly in the ointment in that the education system is almost entirely controlled by progressives and that is the root of the problem that will block the cultural change that many are hoping for with the election of Trump to end the Woke insanity. Many from both sides of society are hoping for this cultural change. But Peterson says that such change may not happen as the universities provide the people to populate all sectors of society and they are still dominantly progressive, notably the university administrations, as well as most professorships.”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365371167112
Weaving back onto the topic of religious themes/ideas driving harmful movements, Wendell Krossa
Back to this point of how primitive religious themes impact our present world, because we are still in the midst of sliding down the slope toward another mass-harm and potential mass-death outcome. We should, at the least, try to understand the complex of religious themes behind such crusades, both the climate madness crusade and resurging Marxism/collectivism, and then try to understand what alternative themes would serve better to shape our meta-narratives.
Woke Progressives are still very much in control of what many term the “deep state”, or better Vivek Ramaswamy’s alternative term- “Managerial class”, referring to the unelected state elites and their government bureaucracies. They are also still in control of the education sector of our societies. These highly tribal ideologues will not go away quietly but, as before, after apparent setbacks they will reconvene and reconstitute themselves and plan new approaches/programs to continue their assault on the hated Classic Liberal societies of Western civilization. Hated? Yes, Marx’s number one hatred- the private property rights of free individuals in societies that are oriented to protecting individual rights and freedoms. As in Classic Liberalism.
Marx suffered from Nietzsche’s “ressentiment” (i.e. “hatred, wrath, envy, revenge, and the like”).
Another insert:
Don’t forget the point that 60s Marxists, who realized that they could not democratically win public support for their revolution, decided then to sneak around and try to push their way in through the back door of society and take over the educational systems. British historian Niall Ferguson, for one, has offered comment on this- i.e. that Marxists decided to infiltrate the teacher’s colleges to indoctrinate a generation of teachers/professors in order to then indoctrinate students. Looks like their plan succeeded quite well.
60s Marxists also realized that just generally going after the evil of industrial capitalist society was not working as it was too successful in alleviating poverty and improving the lives of workers. They then decided to go after what fuels the success of industrial civilization- i.e. fossil fuels, and particularly the gas CO2 that had been previously discovered to contribute to Warming.
They recognized that going after what sustains industrial capitalist civilization would be more effective to destroy industrial civilization (atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen’s point). Hence, Marxists joined forces with the environmental movement. Patrick Moore also saw this shift to ideological and related attacks on industrial capitalist society among his Greenpeace colleagues. His colleagues were no longer concerned with any actual science in environmentalism but shifted to tribal political ideology as in anti-capitalism collectivism.
And so far, the “watermelons” have been successful. Watermelons? Yes, green on the outside but red on the inside. Think “smiley” emoticon here.
Weaving back again to the main “influencers” behind all this madness: Wendell Krossa
My persistent point here is that the central themes of Jesus and Paul are starkly opposite in nature and have very opposite effects on human minds, emotions, motivations, and behavior. I will keep reminding readers of the statements by psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo that people seek validation for their behavior from their image of God, among the other ideals that they look to for validation.
Meaning: “We become just like the God that we believe in”, Bob Brinsmead. As in the child looking to ultimate Daddy for approval, for affirmation of doing the right thing.
Ellens states bluntly that the Christian God (Paul’s God) uses violence to solve problems, as in the “first degree” intentional murder of his son. That metaphor of an angry, violent God, solving problems with violence, has “dominated the Master Story of Western civilization for two millennia”.
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a (violent) God Image… If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’.”
The Mennonite theologians have also affirmed this “behavior based on belief” pattern in noting that the image of a punitive God has shaped Western justice systems to be oriented to punitive, not restorative, approaches.
The contrarian Historical Jesus rejected the harsh theological archetypes of the ancient world (i.e. threat theologies, cruel God theologies) with his “stunning new theology”. His central breakthrough insight was an entirely new and radically different understanding of deity. He framed his understanding of God with the central themes of non-retaliation, non-tribal inclusivity or universalism (all were safe in the same divine Love), non-domination in relationships- i.e. no lording over others but instead true greatness was in service to one another, no punitive destruction as in eye for eye justice (no hell), but instead restorative justice, etc.
Jesus added that with a non-retaliatory, unconditional God there was no demand for violent blood sacrifice as payment for sin. And there would be no violent apocalyptic purging as the final solution to the problem of evil in our world. All part of his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson).
The extrapolated conclusions above are not Robinson’s. I take off from his “non-retaliatory theology” comment to make the above extrapolations that I see as common-sense conclusions.
Back to Paul’s subsequent rejection of the breakthrough insight of Jesus.
Historian Arthur Herman noted one particular Christian theme that contributed to the violent revolutions of the Marxist and other apocalyptic millennial crusades- i.e. that of the divine demand for “violent purging of enemies”. The New Testament book of Revelation presents a graphic portrayal of how this theme is expressed in apocalyptic destruction. Paul had also earlier touched on violent purging of enemies in letters like Thessalonians, Romans, etc. “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire to destroy all who do not believe my Christ myth”. The same as “Lord Jesus trampling out the fury of the wrath of God” in Revelation as he destroys all who refused to bow the knee and believe Paul’s Christ-ianity.
The theme of violent purging of “enemies” was embraced in modern ideologies like the “Declinism” that shaped the violent revolutions of Marxism and Nazism. Violent purging of enemies was viewed as necessary to cleansing society of the polluting evil of what socialist revolutionaries viewed as the old “corrupt” systems. Revolutionary violence was necessary to prepare the way for, in their view, the restoration of the original tribal communalism that had been lost or ruined, the lost or ruined original paradise world.
Revolutionary violence was also valued because it exhibited the “pure and strong spirit” of the original humans more connected to nature, before humanity was weakened and degenerated in modern industrial civilization. This was of particular concern to the Nazis. The “will to power”.
Herman recounts that Christians viewed the religious wars of 16th Century Europe in terms of the apocalypse and that salvation required violent and catastrophic destruction of the status quo (p. 19-20, “The Idea of Decline in Western History”).
The enemies to be purged were those who created Classic Liberal societies of individuals with protected freedoms and rights like private property rights. Purging such enemies was considered necessary before a collectivist/communalist society could be revived and installed.
Collectivism, in its varied expressions, is an impressively constructed ideology that continues to appeal to primitive themes for validation. I am grateful to the historians for tracing the dense arguments made by the originators and subsequent activist champions of collectivism crusades. I cannot recommend strongly enough that if you want to fully understand these destructive movements in our contemporary world then read the sources listed above.
They explain why these destructive crusades continue to erupt and afflict our world. Add the delusional self-blinding view of collectivists that they are heroically involved in righteous battles against the intolerable evil that is Classic Liberal society with its free and equal individuals.
Resuming my point on the main influencers on these ideologies and crusades… Wendell Krossa
Jesus rejected outright, not just violent retaliation, but the entire complex of primitive myths that the religions of his era had inherited and promoted. He replaced the old with his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”, an unconditionally loving God.
Then Paul, just two decades later, outrightly rejected the new theology of Jesus. In his Christ myth he retreated back to the theology of a wrathful, violent deity. He retreated to re-enforce the primitive themes of tribal favoritism and discrimination- i.e. only true believers in his Christ myth would be approved/accepted by his deity and “saved”. This is stated clearly in the sacrifice/salvation theology of his main book- Romans. Note his demand for belief in a salvation scheme that involves violent blood sacrifice which then models, as Harold Ellens argues, solving problems with violence.
Paul repeats throughout his Romans letter the condition of belief in his Christ myth as required to gain access to God’s tribe.
Psychologist Harold Ellens, among others, has warned of the harmful influence of beliefs, ideas that are held more strongly than ordinary ideas that are not beliefs. The problem intensifies with religious beliefs that have long been regarded as divine and ultimate ideals, therefore immutable in nature. Add threats that any challenge, questioning, or doubting of religious beliefs is “heretical” and must be punished with excommunication from the tribe, or worse.
Further points:
Collectivists claim that the contemporary Classic Liberal approach to organizing Western societies around free individuals is an evil that must be dismantled/destroyed, as the necessary prerequisite to resurrecting and installing the utopian salvation of a communalist/collectivist society. This view dominates neo-Marxism and environmentalism.
The collectivist distortion of industrial civilization as a force that is destroying the planet is entirely wrongheaded as Julian Simon and many others have shown with good evidence. Industrial civilization, organized according to Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and representative institutions is the best that we have come up with to improve the human condition and at the same time properly care for the planet.
Collectivists portray the Classic Liberal orientation to protecting free individuals and their private property as all about selfishness and greed, not as the fundamental responsibility that it is to improve one’s life and family. With their distorted narrative, Collectivists naturally feel that their system, oriented to collectives where all receive equal outcomes, is morally superior. As they state, their collectivist equity is about “common or greater good”.
Read Acts 2 and 4 again for the Christian version of this communalism. As that scripture argues- individualism is evil and individuals holding personal property are killed by God. God is obviously a collectivist, eh. And a nasty, violent one at that. There, you have your validating ideal.
You have divine affirmation for your communalism. And if God acts violently to destroy the old individual property system, then so may we (collectivist revolutionaries) follow God’s example and destroy such civilization with violence. The collectivist reasons- Our revolutionary violence is just, noble, and the means of salvation from that which threatens life- i.e. society oriented to protecting individual freedoms and rights, equally.
Hence, collectivists, through violent revolution, and overturning of systems oriented to individual freedom and rights, have believed that they were saving societies from decline toward apocalyptic ending (according to their narrative). This is a profound deformation of the hero’s quest and especially delusional in light of Simon’s good research on the actual improving state of life that has been the outcome of the Classic Liberal approach to organizing societies.
To return once more to the influence of Paul and Jesus-
The use of divine violence for problem solving is illustrated notably in Revelation with its epitome demonstration of destructive apocalyptic purging of enemies.
Paul had initiated his affirmation of the ideal of punitive destruction by wrathful deity in his first letters to the Thessalonians claiming that “Lord Jesus would return in fiery rage to punish and destroy all who refused to believe his Christ myth”.
Paul also argued for the pathology of domination in relationships with his constant appeal to domination as the divine ideal and model as summarized in his term- “Lord Jesus”.
“Lord”? Historical Jesus had rejected this theme of “lording over others” and stated that true greatness was in serving others. He would have bluntly rejected Paul’s theme of “Lord” Jesus.
Paul re-established elite domination of commoners with his Christ myth and its defining themes.
Nothing is more violent and destructive among these pathological divine ideals that were re-enforced by Paul than the apocalyptic element. As Revelation says about the Christ of Paul- He tramples out “the fury of the wrath of God” in his violent apocalyptic destruction of the world, before casting all unbelievers into the eternal lake of fire. Metaphor only? Well, that is pretty sick stuff then. Metaphor or literal, it’s the same pathological content. And its ongoing influence on Western narratives, consciousness, and life has been horrific.
Keep in mind, again, James Tabor’s point that Paul has been the most dominant influence on those of us in the Western tradition.
How apocalyptic-scale panic-mongering works in human life and societies, Wendell Krossa
Irresponsibly inciting fear in public engenders irrationality among populations (i.e. incited survival impulse) and that renders people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that destroy life as required to save something, to save their lives and their world.
Plus, it’s the old totalitarian’s formula… Fear=control. The power thing.
Marxists and Nazis used this formula to manipulate populations, just as environmental alarmists continue to do today. Environmental alarmists beat the public consciousness daily with the assistance of their propagandizing media. And they have successfully persuaded entire Western societies to join them in their mass-harm death cult, claiming the ruin of Western societies is required to “save the world”. “Breaking eggs is required to make an omelet”.
Arthur Mendel was right that apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history.
Further, I remind readers repeatedly of the “test of facts” (Thomas Sowell)- i.e. the actual outcomes of our narratives and programs. Historians have done good research on how the themes of Paul’s Christ-ianity drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism.
Its way past time for all of us to become truly “woke” to these themes that continue to shape narratives today, both religious and secular/ideological. See the quotes from Richard Landes just below on how these Christian themes validated mass-death movements (i.e. his “Heaven On Earth” volume of evidence based on detail from historical sources).
This will be uncomfortable for committed Christians to acknowledge- i.e. the influence of core Christian themes on mass-death movements, to recognize that the main themes of Paul’s Christ myth drove and validated Marxism and Nazism.
These points from Richard Landes in his chapter on Marxism:
“Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused… very emotionally seated aspirations and hopes of young or older intellectuals are at stake. Everybody who dares to take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered as a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution…
“(to the) proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and the new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy… when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers…
“Among the historical issues of the twentieth century, nothing poses greater problems to scholars than the similarities and difference between the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian systems, both of which… were active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements,” (p. 347, Heaven On Earth).
Back to influencers Paul and Historical Jesus: Wendell Krossa
These two present entirely opposite messages with entirely contrary influences on minds, spirits, emotions, and behavior. Note the Harold Ellens quotes again on how cruel God themes, as in the divine resort to violence to solve problems, deform human personality and function as a model for the human resort to retaliatory violence to solve problems.
Where Jesus rejected entirely the myth of a retaliatory, violent God punitively destroying the world in apocalypse, Paul re-instated that theology in his apocalyptic Christ myth.
Again, if it’s any comfort to believers, this site emphasizes that the message of Historical Jesus had nothing to do with Paul’s Christology. This site argues for isolating out the actual message of Jesus and then honoring the man for who he actually was and what he actually taught. The Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy approach of recognizing the “diamonds/pearls” as contrasted with the context of ______. Well, you know the blunt terms they used.
The problem is that the entirely opposite messages of Jesus and Paul have been so merged and mixed in the New Testament that the insights of Jesus are nullified, distorted, and even buried by the more dominant message of Paul, and his Greek Christology. See Bob Brinsmead on the distorting Hellenization of Judaism and then the subsequent Hellenization of Christianity (Source: Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”).
How to begin sorting out these contrary messages? Start with the general “Jesus Seminar” work, and then especially the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research. Add also the varied special research on Paul’s Christology that deformed the message of Jesus. Sources like Maurice Casey’s “From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God”, Hyam Maccoby’s “The Myth-maker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity”, etc.
Hollywood, as a major public story-telling forum, unquestioningly embraces the Christianity of Paul, and beats the apocalyptic mythology into public consciousness endlessly. So also, the “profoundly religious” climate crisis crusade and its propaganda arm- news media- beat this into public consciousness.
Note with Jordan Peterson, Bob Brinsmead, and others, that we all live primarily by story and it is critical that we get the story right that shapes our societies. Apocalyptic is a dominant feature in relation to this.
Insert:
I repeat the above points because religious themes/beliefs have been a critical element driving the mass-death crusades of just decades ago- i.e. Marxism, Nazism. The apocalyptic millennialism that drove Marxism and Nazism is now working the same harm through climate crisis apocalyptic and its decarbonization salvation scheme.
The point to get is the role of Christian themes inciting and validating these profoundly religious crusades. This blunt conclusion will grate on true believer’s ears and even incite offended outrage among some.
But the evidence is overwhelming, undeniable. And the military guy, back in 2014 when ISIS tried to establish the Caliphate, repeated the same point as Richard Landes- i.e. that if you don’t learn the lesson that millennial ideas can carry a society into mass-death then you have learned nothing and will continue to repeat the same madness.
The historians have done the research- i.e. Herman, Landes, Mendel, Redles, and others. They have carefully researched the statements of the leaders of apocalyptic millennial crusades like Marxism and Nazism, noting speeches by leading figures, their writings and comments to others, also the statement by colleagues who later wrote their own autobiographies, quoting their recollections of comments by Hitler and others. And so on.
Note, for example, how Hitler presented himself in stages- first as the John Baptist-like forerunner to the messiah, then as the messiah, and then finally as the violent destroying Christ of Revelation. Hitler went from a disregarded fringe lunatic to Fuhrer during the Great Depression of the Weimar years because his religious message of looming apocalypse and promised salvation in a new millennial kingdom began to resonate widely with the German Christian public.
Again, I do not deny the better elements in the Christian religion- notably the material of Historical Jesus (i.e. “Wisdom Sayings”). But this site sets forth the contrast between Jesus and Paul because I recognize the harm-generating elements in the mix- i.e. the themes of Paul’s apocalyptic Christ.
This site carefully delineates the darker themes of Paul’s narrative, because of the horrific outcomes of such validating themes, and because those themes were only recently involved in driving the apocalyptic millennial crusades of Marxism and Nazism, and are now, once again, driving the climate apocalyptic crusade and its millennial element of decarbonization salvation. This ought to be of critical concern to us all.
And that was the point I was making in the above blog comments.
More on my take on all this: Wendell Krossa
We respond subconsciously to deeply embedded impulses and archetypal themes that validate our impulses. We respond emotionally to narrative themes that affirm our felt impulses. It’s a very resonance-type thing. Often subconscious. That 95% of our behavior that is apparently subconsciously motivated. (The 95% number comes from a friend who researched that as part of his consumer behavior business.)
We are responding to things that were embedded millennia ago, that unfortunately continue to validate our animal inheritance of drives to (1) tribalism, (2) domination, and (3) punitive destruction of differing others.
Insert: I have my own mishmash understanding of “archetypes” as some combination of impulses conjoined with validating ideas/myths. I claim no expertise regarding this stuff. But like most commoners, I am quite curious about it all. And being of average intelligence, I have to reconstruct the terms and statements of the elite experts just to understand what is going on.
Like my read of David Chalmer’s “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory”. Sheesh. I get it that he is a philosopher speaking to and arguing with other philosophers. And I basically get his “panpsychism” and its “poof” theory, that as consciousness becomes more complex up the chain of reality and life till you get to the complexity of electro-biochemical interactions in the brain, then “poof”- the wonder of the human self and mind just pops into existence. Mind from meat, from material.
This from the Amazon blurb on Chalmer’s materialism:
“For example, in exploring the notion that consciousness could be experienced by machines as well as humans, Chalmers asks us to imagine a thinking brain in which neurons are slowly replaced by silicon chips that precisely duplicate their functions–as the neurons are replaced, will consciousness gradually fade away?”
My point in response to Chalmers: If mind is produced by the “meat” or material stuff of the brain, then yes, machines, also as material, should be able to replicate the same experience of consciousness as the brain that is material. If its just about very complex interactions among materials that then produce consciousness, then yes, you should be able to also get the “poof” emergence of the conscious self from complex material interactions in machines.
And of course, the poof theorists add that there may be some relation to the quantum realm just to show that they recognize some element of mystery still in the mix. But its all really a “mind from material” issue, according to philosophical materialists. I won’t get into the counter arguments of neuroscientists who point out how “absurd” these arguments are.
Anyway, on my redo of the esoteric language of elite experts- Chalmers used the term “supervenient”. Consciousness is not supervenient on the brain, he argued. It is “primitive”, as in being its own fundamental reality. Like gravity. The best alternative that I could come up with for supervenient is- “not dependent upon”. I know the experts will pick that apart. But close enough for me.
Amazon blurb on supervenient:
“an irreducible entity (similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space)”.
Ah. I dunno. A basic reality like gravity? Nah. I think its more like consciousness is the most basic reality from which all other reality derives its existence. That new pyramid of reality with consciousness at the base, then physics, chemistry, biology, and on up to anthropology/psychology.
Now, I will once again do the Trump “weave”, after wandering away from my original points, now weaving my way back again to where I started.
Continuing with that deeply embedded influence, a profoundly religious influence where our inherited animal impulses are validated by religious themes, notably by gods that embody the themes.
And taking Karl Jung’s point on the “collective unconscious”- I would not accept the collective unconscious as something defined with immutably right or unchangeable archetypes. Why not? Because we know today that varied fundamental archetypal features are profoundly wrong and need to be changed. Notably, those related to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Most people will not dare consider touching things considered divine or sacred, especially theology- i.e. ideas of God. But that ultimate ideal and authority is where some of the worst of features of primitive life have been projected by our ancestors, deeply embedded in the human subconscious, and subsequently protected with the “immutable divine” cloak.
Historical Jesus initiated the singularly critical breakout from the human mental prison that was traditional mythology and religion. He courageously confronted and changed that reality by going after core narrative themes, and specifically after the most central of all themes- i.e. those related to deity theory, to God theories. Jesus overturned that reality entirely and profoundly reframed it, reconstructed it. He rejected outright the dominating threat theology of all past history and presented his stunning new theology of God as nonretaliatory, unconditional love. That was the most profound mental revolution ever offered to human minds.
The most profound liberation ever.
My suspicion is that in changing the fundamental nature of deity, he undertook a profound revolution of human narratives and that works back into the subconscious to change the deeply embedded archetypes there, and then that operates to reverberate out again to transform everything else- i.e. how we think, feel, are motivated, and respond/behave.
He probably did not operate on the level of our contemporary understanding of narratives and the influence of the subconscious archetypes. Its more likely that he just felt empathy when seeing people suffering under cruel god theories and responded to help people at that level of awareness, giving them an entirely new view of God, a God of authentic universal, unconditional love.
Another note on a point made above:
My friend, businessman Herb Sorensen, has often reminded me that 95% of our behavior is influenced by the subconscious. We act subconsciously 95% of the time. And that is what Niemietz meant in quoting Jonathan Haidt that “emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, is how we intuitively choose our beliefs and form our narratives”. And then we act in accordance with our belief systems.
How we feel (emotional satisfaction), is powerfully influenced by previous millennia of deeply embedded archetypal themes validating impulses in human brains.
This explains why very intelligent people continue to embrace pathological beliefs and systems like socialism that have, due to their very nature of centralizing power in elites, inevitably failed and done massive harm to humanity. Nonetheless, many feel collectivist equity is right, just, fair, good, and that approach allows them to virtue-signal their compassion for “victims/oppressed”. Even as that system has repeatedly destroyed societies and millions of lives, as in the 24 socialist/collectivist experiments over the past century or so.
Socialism/collectivism harms people and destroys societies because it rejects Classic Liberal principles and institutions that protect the rights and freedoms of every individual, equally. Socialism, by its fundamental principles, subjects individuals to collectives, removing individual power and control and centralizing that power and control in collectives run by dominating elites (self-imagined as enlightened and noble philosophers), elites who claim to know what is right for all others. Such elites inevitably succumb to their own impulse to domination and hence the subsequent socialist intolerance of diversity, inclusion, and equality.
Add also Peterson’s point that while power corrupts, it also attracts psychopathic types who see opportunity for power and control of victims. Even for sadism.
Socialism/Marxism has been the dominant embodiment and expression of the totalitarian impulse over the past few centuries. It repeatedly comes back at us in evolving new versions and masquerading under new programs and projects like Woke Progressive DEI and ESG. It re-invents itself with new versions of the same old tribal dualisms- as in the categorization of humanity as belonging to one of two categories- oppressed or oppressor, victim or victimizer. The dividing of humanity is now accomplished according to skin color as in “identity politics”.
Socialism/collectivism ends affirming the same old elite/commoner divide of society, the same old “good vs evil”.
Now, the Joe Rogan interview of Mike Benz
What I post in my summary below of Mike Benz’s comments to Joe Rogan is nothing of the detail that he offers on the people and agencies creating the massive infrastructure of elite domination and censorship today. The “censorship industrial complex” infrastructure originates from CIA meddling, post-WW2, in the fight against communism that, over recent years, has turned to a fight against the populism movements of Western liberal democracies that are the battle of commoners against the domination of state elites and their bureaucracies. Populism movements, though smeared as “right wing extremism”, are the expressions of the will of the people from all sectors of society, fighting for their rights, freedoms, and equality.
The massive behind-the-scenes infrastructure (“deep state”, or “managerial class”, according to Vivek Ramaswamy) now portrays liberal democracy/Classic Liberalism as the evil threat to their democracy defined as their control of narratives, government, and overall society. These elites define democracy now as “the consensus of state institutions” that they control.
These elite state institutions are in a battle against populism that they frame as the “struggle for democracy”. Benz offers dense detail on the massive infrastructure that intervenes in some 140 other countries, as well as the US, and is the new elite push for establishing the elite/commoner divide in human societies, the real threat to freedom and democracy.
Here is a post to my discussion group re the Benz interview…
Give this the first 10 or so minutes to get the flavor of their discussion… Wendell Krossa
“You get repeated notices from me on good sources for understanding our world today. Every once in a while, I push one of my posts as especially important for some insights. This one is a new “head and shoulders above” the rest for insight on the formation of the Censorship Industrial Complex (the social media infrastructure) that is at the cutting edge of the new elite totalitarianism today…. Benz relates this to things like what happened when the US overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014… and other things.
“This is an incredible exposure of the behind-the-scenes operations of the new totalitarian elites establishing once again the elite/commoner divide in our societies. This is a history of the corruption of democracy and destruction of freedom like nothing before, all the while presenting itself as a noble cause defense of democracy and fight against misinformation/disinformation, all the while demonizing the real battle for democracy- i.e. populism- as the threat to democracy.
“Rogan notes that Musk buying Twitter was a critical point in exposing the censorship complex operating behind the scenes.
“Others have also pointed to Musk buying Twitter as a critical turning point in the history of struggle for freedom.
“Benz says the Trump administration has an enormous task to deconstruct this censorship behemoth and will run into strong pushback from the groups behind this.
“The current censorship crusade apparently arose out of early CIA/US programs to win the “soft-power influence game”, an approach similarly recognized by Russia. The argument was that if you could influence populations with narratives that you controlled then you need not invade with tanks but with Twitters and your control of information could change minds and win hearts. If you could censor and control the information that populations in countries were exposed to.
“This goes back to CIA interference in media to control narratives that began post-WW2 in the battle for world influence. These secret programs have been pushed in some 140 countries around the world now.
“He explains how this web or censorship infrastructure silenced Trump in 2020 and did not allow him to win that election. It has the power to ensure who wins elections, says Benz. Someone else also noted how often the US overthrows democratically elected governments, like in Ukraine, all in the name of “saving democracy”. Just like the coup against Biden, eh. Endless anti-democratic projects to “save democracy”.
“The comments Benz makes on the current censorship crusade by elites are backed by another guest of Rogan months earlier who studies Google’s bias in selectively promoting certain responses to user searches, and downplays others- deplatforming, etc. (to get around First Amendment issues) and thereby moves millions of votes one way or another.
“Benz notes that Victoria Nuland is a main character behind the scenes who was critical to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected Ukraine government. Taibbi and Shellenberger have also regularly pointed to her involvement.
“What strikes me, in this expose, is how we are propagandized with some threat like ISIS using the web to proselytize new recruits, and how such purported threats are then used to validate the push for programs of censorship against others, even though not associated with some group like ISIS. Much like the “concept creep” thing that has happened with hate speech- extending that category further to include censoring the speech of political opponents, even censoring comedy.
“Benz notes the guy who identifies as “Obama’s chief propagandist”, once a free speech “maximalist” but who then changed his views and claimed the First Amendment was a mistake. This guy was involved in the shift of intelligence agencies from their original mandate of counter-terrorism to their current focus today on fighting populism.
“The intelligence agencies have shifted from going after communism in the past, to now going after populist “right-wing” movements all over, smearing them as dangerous anti-democracy authoritarians like the former leftist authoritarians that the CIA went after to overthrow. This is behind US intelligence agencies now spying on, surveilling, monitoring, and censoring their own people.
“Winston Marshall was right that “populism is democracy”. Populism is the struggle of commoners against controlling elites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFmjgbdNNgw&t=14s
“Ah, so much detail here on CIA and other agencies and groups intervening in the societies of others to manipulate and control people. Benz talks about how in the 60s and 70s the CIA interfered in Democrat party politics to tilt them away from anti-war protests to become more supportive of the military industrial complex. We see the outcome today as the Democrats have become the pro-war party.
“This is a detailed expose of how the US elites and state agencies have turned inward to spy on and censor the US population as they push to control of narratives and thought across the entire society.
“Interesting how this complex of state agencies has redefined democracy as not about individual freedom but about the “consensus of state institutions”, hence any challenge to such elites and their programs is viewed as a “threat to democracy”. So also, these elites now view elections as a threat to democracy and have dictated to leadership in Ukraine to ban elections because elections allow populists to circumvent the will and consensus of the institutions of the elites.
“Benz gives the history of the shift from counter-communism to counter-populism the populism of Brexit, of Trump and other “right wing” movements now viewed as the enemies of democracy, as defined by the elites. Manipulating language to demonize opposition, the elites now frame democratic populism as the new “authoritarianism” that the CIA had fought decades earlier in other countries where it claimed to be promoting democracy.
“Benz unveils the tangled mess of state agencies behind this, the manipulation by the CIA and others, using a massive infrastructure of programs, agencies, and NGOs, like the “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED) to do their dirty work and that permits the CIA to keep their fingerprints off things. Benz says the NED is all over the censorship complex.
“Benz also talks about how the NED gets foreign governments to create censorship laws to then go after US social media companies, arguing for censorship to stop “disinformation/misinformation” which is how the elites portray the populist movement and social media like X. Note how this has been expressed in the Brazilian government going after Elon Musk and X.
“Mike Benz is a former official with the U.S. Department of State and current Executive Director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, is a free speech watchdog organization dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA
On Spotify this is episode 2237 of Joe Rogan Experience
Added note: Wendell Krossa
It is stunning to see these elites, loudly clamoring about their defense of democracy, while damning free speech and the First Amendment as threats to democracy (e.g. John Kerry, Tim Walz, Robert Reich, Hilary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other Democrats). Their new definition of democracy is the “consensus of state institutions” that they control for their own interests. They have subverted and overturned entirely the understanding of freedom and democracy to support elite domination and control of populations.
This 1984ish co-option and manipulation of language exposes this crusade to establish the elite/commoner divide to be an ugly totalitarianism deformed entirely by the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, the psychopathology of left-wing compassion that cannot be understood as anything other than something psychopathic-like for its cruel disregard of the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.
Regular quotable things and good sources of evidence
Archetype– “model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc.”
Main articles presenting critical points made on this site:
From Retaliation to Unconditional love– the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– the hero’s journey and conquest. The intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, along with the mythical themes that validate such impulses, and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661
And then some repeats of good sources and comments on this and that…
“Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’’, Climate Depot, Nov. 13, 2023
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/13/climate-data-refutes-crisis-narrative-if-you-concede-the-science-only-challenge-the-policiesyoure-going-to-lose/
Quote:
Edward Ring: “If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game. Who cares if we have to enslave humanity? Our alternative is certain death from global boiling! You can’t win that argument. You must challenge the science…”
Best summaries of climate science available at “co2coalition.org”, “Wattsupwiththat.com”, and related sites.
Notable counter-point to warming alarmism: 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth (Lancet study).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/?sh=2e67170e1d88
From Niemietz’s “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
Niemietz on “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
They’re made of meat (poking fun at the absurdity that meat produces the wonder of mind or the human self):
https://philosophy.tamucc.edu/texts/bisson-theyre-made-out-of-meat?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The very best climate science reports and news:
https://co2coalition.org/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/
https://www.netzerowatch.com/
http://co2science.org/
Summary of Historical Jesus’ core message:
How to end cycles of retaliatory violence, how to courageously initiate peace in societies….
Again, this is not prescriptive for criminal justice systems to adopt dogmatic pacifist approaches that do not work in the face of evil. States and their criminal justice systems are obligated first and foremost to restrain violent people and protect all citizens from assaults, both foreign and domestic. De-criminalization and de-carceration policies, especially as applied to violent people, do not work.
Take this advice of Historical Jesus as more about how we maintain our own humanity as we go about the dirty work of dealing with offenders.
These statements have more to do with how victims may freely choose to respond to offenders in the multi-varied incidents and relationships of life. Its very much an individual freedom of choice issue. People who have suffered horrific abuse from offenders should never be pushed to engage these issues of forgiveness or love, until perhaps much later and if presented as fundamentally helpful in some way to their own condition.
As the father of a brutally murdered girl said years later. I chose to forgive, not for the sake of the offender but for the sake of my daughter who would have wanted me to. She would not have wanted me to spend the rest of my life darkened by hatred and bitterness. And that would have ruined my other children.
Just a mental gimmick? No, such intention to forgive effects profound outcomes on the mental/emotional state of the one doing it.
Other points:
These principles of how we think, perceive, how we then feel and are motivated, impact our intentions, our thinking and responding to offenders, our motivations and intentions to avoid inhumane responses and choose more humane responses.
Forgiveness and an unconditional approach to offenders works at the individual level and at scale in societies. Note, for example, Nelson Mandela employing his unconditional love approach toward former enemies and thereby defusing a potential civil war in South Africa (Richard Stengel in “Mandela’s Way”). Compare that with Rwanda and Serbia around the same time.
The guiding ideals/principles of Historical Jesus:
“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”.
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 in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.
Joseph Campbell
“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).
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the real battle of good against evil that is the personal inner battle to conquer the animal inheritance of impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others:
“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.”
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 long trends).
Many subsequent studies 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.
A reposting of the basic principles of a humane society: Wendell Krossa
What do I mean when I refer to “Classic Liberalism”?
And as people talk about creating a “safe AI”, why not ensure that safety by programing AI with Classic Liberal principles?
Basic principles, systems, institutions of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or Western liberalism.
Daniel Hannan in his Introduction to “Inventing Freedom” provides the following lists and descriptions of the basic features of a truly liberal society or civilization:
“A belief in property rights, personal liberty, and representative government…
“Three irreducible elements. First, the rule of law…Those rules exist on a higher plane and are interpreted by independent magistrates…
“Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish with your assets, to work for whom you please, and conversely, to hire and fire as you will…
“Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us… the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty…
“The idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion… elevate the individual over the state…
“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus (see below), free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials…
“The idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract…
“Individualism, the rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values…
And this full summary:
“Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied nor laws passed without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed”.
Hannan’s book is invaluable for tracing the historical emergence and development of Western freedom down through the English tradition, from pre-Magna Carta to the present.
Definition of habeas corpus (varied online definitions):
“A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful.”
“A writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.”
“The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body”—that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed. In United States law, ‘habeas corpus ad subjiciendum’ (the full name of what habeas corpus typically refers to) is also called “the Great Writ,” and it is not about a person’s guilt or innocence, but about whether custody of that person is lawful under the U.S. Constitution. Common grounds for relief under habeas corpus— “relief” in this case being a release from custody—include a conviction based on illegally obtained evidence; a denial of effective assistance of counsel; or a conviction by a jury that was improperly selected and impaneled.” (Miriam Webster)
One of the best at defining and articulating Classic Liberal ideals and principles, notably in the US version- Full interview of Vivek Ramaswamy on Lex Fridman podcast. Vivek for president. Note how Vivek frankly acknowledges and responds to deformities of Classic Liberalism on the right side of US society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw
Bob Brinsmead: Love and freedom are inseparable realities. Where there is no true freedom there is no authentic love.
Quotes from Landes to help us understand our world today.
These quotes below are to wet your appetite to read his excellent research on apocalyptic millennial movements and the damage they wreak on human societies. We are currently living through one of the most widespread and damaging outbreaks of apocalyptic hysteria today in the climate alarmism crusade with its salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization that is ruining societies.
Add the research of his colleagues- Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) and David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich). Start with Landes overall history of these apocalyptic crusades, the themes that incite and guide them, the stages they go through, the destructive outcomes. … from his book “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”.
Historian Landes says there is an “almost instinctive hostility most historians feel toward millennialism”. He notes the “overwhelming resistance (he) got from modern historians to the identification of these allegedly ‘secular’ revolutionary movements (i.e. Communism, Nazism)” as religious. His point is to “challenge positivist notions about the clear division between secular and religious phenomena”.
He states that in his research he will “illustrate how key millennial tropes- apocalyptic scenarios filled with both outrageous hopes and fears and paranoid conspiracy thinking- continue to work on allegedly modern, enlightened minds”.
“Millennial world histories are the mother of all grand narratives… millennialism is a… revolutionary ideology”, p.13.
“Apocalyptic believers… tend toward hyperactivity… the more impending the end, the more frenetic their behavior…”, p.18.
Landes then comments on the age-old human pattern of basing human behavior on what people believe is the divine reality or model, appealing to a belief to validate human behavior, “Heaven’s order becomes a model for that of earth (p. 23)… the forces of order must annihilate those of evil”, p. 25.
This affirms what psychologist Harold Ellens similarly stated about beliefs in a heavenly or divine pattern that are to be followed, to be replicated in human behavior and life. Here is a brief summary of Ellens and Lotufo quotes. See full set further below…
“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 (see Romans, Revelation). 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’”.
Continuing with Landes…
“Cataclysmic apocalyptic scenarios foresee enormous destruction preceding the advent of God’s kingdom (or just total annihilation). These scenarios tend to emphasize the depravity of humankind- most people are damned and must perish before any truly just society can come about. This is true even for many “secular” scenarios like the more radical versions of global warming which identify human failings (greed, irresponsibility) as the source of the problem.
“Cataclysmic apocalyptic scenarios often involve staggering levels of violence and destruction- rivers of blood, plagues, earthquakes, floods, famines, the devastation of war, and natural calamities”, p. 3.
“Environmentalists are the most obvious current case of roosters crowing warnings that range from the prophetic to the apocalyptic, using the stick of cataclysmic destruction if we do not change, and the carrot of millennial harmony with both nature and technology as the reward for repenting of our greedy, wasteful ways”, p. 46.
“’Chicken Littles’- alarmists whose excessive imaginations have cooked up panic from nothing…”, p. 50.
“Apocalyptic failure… Rarely can any respectable historian say so categorically about any phenomenon, much more about a religious one, ‘In every case, this belief has been wrong’”, p. 56.
On grand narratives…
“Both religious and secular historiography seems to gravitate toward the vesperian. Too often, they obscure rather than clarify the history of perhaps the greatest and most tenacious grand narrative of all”…
“This issue goes deep. The very foundations of Western literate consciousness come in significant part from two of the most profoundly millennial religious cultures in world history- Judaism and Christianity. The faithful in both religions, even more than others, have been subjected to repeated and repeatedly inaccurate apocalyptic prophecies”, p. 84.
“Apocalyptic conflicts are among the few religious phenomena to survive secularization, indeed, mutate into recognizable and powerful secular forms of millennialism that have dominated the history of the last century… (i.e.) communism, Nazism…”, p. 87.
“The degree to which the apocalyptic enthusiast believes his or her fellow humans to be corrupt- still worse, irredeemably corrupt- correlates directly to the intensity of the cataclysm that must precede the earthly redemption. The angrier and more unforgiving the messiah, the more destruction necessary to purify the world of sin, and the more divine assistance fails, the more he will feel justified in raining down vengeance on the world”, p. 193.
Elites versus commoners…
Then Landes comments on the common features of pre-modern societies “all of which center around the creation of a vast and profound division between elites and commoners. In such societies the elites monopolize weapons, communications technology, and wealth… Research supports the idea that prime dividers dominate the structures of agrarian societies with world over.”
Landes notes that prime divider societies which center around the division between elites and commoners are “oppressive”. However, he fails to note this very same division of ancient and agrarian societies has again been developed and promoted (largely behind the scenes) in our modern liberal democracies. Varied independent journalists have been exposing this resurging totalitarianism to the public over recent years, notably Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, among others.
“Elites construct prime dividers along four major lines: legal privilege, stigmatization of manual labor, restricted access to the technologies of knowledge, and weaponry…” p. 216.
Landes adds that elites legislate, judge, execute, and pay fewer taxes. Elites despise manual labor and avoid it, and they monopolize elite education. They seek to maintain control over information and keep the best weapons away from commoners.
Elites hold a “dominating imperative… rule or be ruled, dominate or be dominated, enslave or be enslaved… Do unto others before they do unto you… If we do not subject them then they will subject us. One must dominate as a defensive measure”, p. 218.
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 re 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.
Ellens and Lotufo- full set of quotes
A reposting of comments from psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo regarding their work on the influence of bad religious ideas on human personality and society. Again, my point here is that the fundamental themes of primitive mythologies have not faded from human narratives and consciousness today but continue their presence and influence in the great world religions and have also been given new embodiment and expression in so-called “secular/ideological” versions as in the “climate alarmism” crusade. The old themes still impact our consciousness, lives, and societies.
Here are the statements from psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo (quoting psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens) on how images/beliefs, notably images of ultimate reality and ideals, like deity, how such images influence human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior in daily life. Both men affiliated with the Christian tradition. Ellens was a US Army chaplain. Meaning- There is no throwing stones from without.
The old themes still impact our consciousness, lives, and societies.
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…”
My insert: The destructive outcomes of “religious motivation” are notable also in terms of the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade and its destructive “salvation” scheme of Net Zero decarbonization (“save the world”), as evident in the 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. The themes of climate alarmism, as another apocalyptic millennial crusade, are energized by the cohering center of an angry deity threatening harsh punishment and destruction through an apocalypse.
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 (see Romans, Revelation). 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’”.
Add also that the themes of (1) tribalism (true believers favored and “saved”, versus unbelievers who are rejected and destroyed), (2) domination (deity as dominating Lord, Ruler, King that validates human forms of domination- state leaders, priesthoods, fathers…), and (3) ultimate violent destruction of the differing others (apocalypse, hell)… such themes, sacralized in deity as ultimate ideals and authority, then serve to re-enforce the same features in the adherents of such belief systems.
