Classic Liberalism is the best that we have come up with to protect our societies from the destructive elite impulse to dominate

See below “An inside job: Western liberal rejection of liberal values and policies”, and much more on elite domination of commoners…

The comments below probe the endless struggle against the elite/commoner divide in human societies. Classic Liberalism was created to liberate us from that primitive animal-like shaping of human societies and to protect the equal freedoms and rights of every individual. Classic liberals formulated systems of common laws and institutions to keep government institutions oriented to serving the will of commoners- “the people”, to prevent elites from using governments to meddle in, dominate, and control the lives of common citizens.

The struggle against the impulse of elites to dominate and control others is the struggle for equal freedom and rights for all.

Among other articles summarized below, this from Jesse Kline of National Post…

“Jesse Kline reviews Brendan O’Neill’s new book ,”After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation”, that “sheds light on the morally bankrupt ideology that has caused many of our elites to turn their backs on liberal values and forge an unholy alliance with religious extremists”. Kline says that O’Neill blames the current worldwide eruption of virulent antisemitism on “modern progressive ideology, which is a complete bastardization of the values that liberals once held dear.”

“Western support for the genocidal terrorism of Hamas is, according to O’Neill, “the logical inhumane conclusion to a pseudo-progressive politics that judges people’s moral worth by their skin colour, their presumed privilege and their placement on a racial hierarchy fashioned by the unaccountable overlords of western opinion.”

Kline comments on the “hysterical hatred” once again being widely incited against Jews, with Canada leading the way. So also, we see the base tribal impulse stirring “hysterical hatred” against political opponents, illustrated notably in US society, but also across most Western nations and elsewhere.

This, by C.S. Lewis, deserves a reposting for nailing the sickness of the busybody personality that we are all currently suffering under. Relate this to the contemporary eruption of elites re-establishing the “elite/commoner divide” in our societies.

“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”, C.S. Lewis.

What is this busybody impulse to meddle in the lives of others, to dominate and control others? What is this mind that believes it should “righteously” meddle with and dominate others for “their good”? Where is the Classic Liberal mind that embraces and promotes “Live and let live” as in respecting individual freedoms and rights to self-determination?

See also below, Libertarian Kat Timpf’s comments on John Kerry’s recent advocacy for neo-totalitarianism, his demand to set aside the First Amendment so he can “hammer out of existence” all dissent to his “consensus”. As Timpf said, “This is scary”.

The totalitarian impulse to dominate now being unleashed in Western societies, from within, Wendell Krossa (PS. This writer is a proudly independent “commoner”.)

And comment on the Jesus insight that deflated entirely the elite appeal to the validating myth of God as dominating Lord or king.

The contemporary leftist crusade for societal domination in the 21st Century is the latest crusade by power-mongering elites to re-establish the “elite/commoner” divide in societies, what Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”) terms the “prime divider” in societies, as opposed to democratic society. This mother of all pathologies- i.e. the elitist lust to dominate others- has wreaked incalculable destruction across human history.

I have posted before the research of pre-historian John Pfeiffer (“The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion”) how early shaman elevated themselves over fellow tribe members with the claim that they knew the secrets to the invisible realm (i.e. what angered the gods, what sacrifices were demanded, etc.). The earliest emergence of religion in human societies (metaphysical speculations) included this element of some people positioning themselves above others, to manipulate and control others.

This site tackles pathologies like domination by probing the origins and subsequent historical development of primitive ideas/myths, notably myths that have long validated elite domination of commoners. Our ancient ancestors began to validate the domination of commoners by elites when they started creating myths of kings as divine beings (e.g. one line of historical descent of such ideas is through Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and then Christian mythology).

The myth of primitive elites as divinely appointed then fed the offspring mythology in Western history of leaders/kings as divinely appointed to rule commoners.

Buttressing this myth of elites as divine, or God-appointed to rule others, are the similarly primitive myths that common people were “created to serve the gods”, to do the work of the gods, to feed the gods. Add that the submission of commoners to divinely-anointed rulers would be mediated through submission to the self-proclaimed representatives of deity- i.e. submission to the kings and their co-elitist priesthoods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_of_life_from_clay#:~:text=The%20Sumerian%20myth%20of%20Enki,

Priestly elites from the beginning have employed the totalitarian’s formula- i.e. “fear=control”. Early shaman/priests quickly mastered the skill of using complexes of terror-generating myths to subject susceptible commoners to elite domination.

Among the most effective and prominent examples of early elite fear-mongering in order to manipulate others into submission, is the claim that the gods who were believed to be behind the all the elements of the natural world, those gods were punishing people’s sins through natural disaster, disease, accident, and death. That “threat theology” was among the earliest tools of elite control.

The logical complement to such threat was the natural question that arose in primitive minds of how to appease the angry gods in order to survive? How to atone for human sin that caused such misery and suffering from the natural world? Hence, the corollary to “humans were created to feed the gods (i.e. offerings)” was the offering of blood sacrifices to appease the gods as in atonement.

Some historians deny that offerings were of the nature of atonement to appease divine anger but then admit that if offerings were not made, the gods would become angry and punish the negligent people. Duh, eh.

Early shaman/priests were humanity’s first experts in creating monster gods to terrorize commoners into unquestioning subjection to priestly salvation schemes.

Little has changed over subsequent millennia. “There is nothing new under the sun”. The ideas and practices that the earliest elites formulated to manipulate and control populations continue to function today with contemporary political and environmental elites terrorizing people to submit to their latest salvation schemes in order to “save the world, save life”.

Yes, I view the “climate crisis” apocalyptic narrative as another “profoundly religious” crusade. Its core themes would resonate comfortably with ancient minds.

Note, for example, the contemporary prominent version of threat theology to enforce submission to an elite salvation scheme in the climate alarmist narrative where we are told that God is angry with our enjoyment of the good life in industrial civilization, based on using fossil fuels. The pissed deity now demands the sacrifice of abandoning our profligate use of energy to penitently return to the “moral superiority of the simple life”.

Again, that Japanese lady nailed this mythology in rhetorically stating after the 2011 tsunami, “Are we being punished for enjoying the good life?”

We are urged to sacrifice the good life by returning to primitivism via “de-growth, de-development” and thereby placate some imagined nature deity and atone for human sin. And note that such sacrifice is presented as obligatory for commoners while elites are excused to continue to enjoy the good life- i.e. the elitist escape clause of “rules for thee but not for me”. Because elites view themselves as members of an “enlightened class” who are leading us commoners on the path of righteousness toward the restoration of a lost paradise, toward utopia.

Elitist politician Nancy Pelosi exemplified this when she used the totalitarian’s formula, i.e. “fear=control”, to coerce commoner submission to her climate salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization. She threatened commoners with the claim that Mother Earth was angry and expressed that anger at the human sin of using fossil fuels through the California wildfires of 2020. Same old, same old as ever before. The full contextual meaning of her statement was obvious to all listening.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-on-wildfires-in-california-and-west-mother-earth-is-angry

These primitive themes (i.e. the validation of elites as divinely appointed) are endlessly reframed in new versions and given expression in new movements across history. They were exposed as driving Marxism and Nazism, and continue now as the basic drivers of environmental alarmism, notably in the “climate crisis” apocalypse narrative.

Elitist narratives of domination as divinely authorized, distort and bury entirely our modern realization, emerging and developing since Magna Carta, that every individual in human society has the “natural right” to full freedom and equality, with every other citizen, under common law systems. This freedom and equality of all people has been the great discovery of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or libertarianism.

The right of every individual to full freedom and equality is the only true “divine appointment”. Without such freedom and equality there is no “God is love”, as in Bob Brinsmead’s insight that “where there is no authentic freedom there is no authentic love”. God as “ruler, king, lord” is a primitive perversion of the reality of deity as love, a rejection of the true nature of deity as defined by historical Jesus (i.e. God as “no conditions love”).

Matt Taibbi recently said, “defy authority”. Yes. And I would also add- defy this primitive nonsense that God appoints rulers to dominate commoners, that the elite/commoner divide is the right and true way to organize human society, an expression of the divine pattern or model. That is nonsense squared.

Here is Matt’s statement in his speech to the “Rescue the Republic” rally

https://www.racket.news/p/my-speech-in-washington-rescue-the

“I’m not encouraging you to be skeptical of authority. I’m encouraging you to DEFY authority. That is the right word for this time.”

Matt further protests the “reflexive siding with authority” that seems too prominent a response today among the US population. He discusses this with Walter Kirn in the latest “America This Week”.

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-october

“America This Week: Biden’s Hurricane Katrina?- Elite America responded with sympathy to the revelations of Hurricane Katrina. Is it the same this time?”, Oct. 4, 2024, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn.

Again, I would add to Matt’s statement urging defiance of authority, so also defy the background mythology that has long validated human narratives and thought on authority- i.e. the God of elites that validates domination of commoners. That mythology has always undermined human appreciation of the natural rights (i.e. “God-given”) of every citizen to full freedom and equality under common law and Classic Liberal institutions (i.e. representative parliaments that exist to actually serve the will of the people).

Historical Jesus corrected the great lie of elites that their domination of commoners was the divine order of things, when he rejected the scrambling and jostling among his followers to be the considered the greatest.

Note Matthew’s account of this: “Jesus called his followers to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles (i.e. the pagans) lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave’,” Matthew 20: 25-27.

Jesus was arguing to his followers that if they claimed to believe that he represented God in some manner, then they needed to understand that true divine greatness was not to dominate others like the pagans do, but to serve. Meaning- If “God is great” and “God is love” then God will respect the freedom and equality of all individuals. Where there is no such freedom and equality then there is no love, there is no “God is love”. (Yes, I am filling in the blanks of what the wisdom sage Jesus was communicating.)

This profound anti-domination statement of Jesus is tucked away, “buried” as Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy would say, in the larger New Testament context that contradicts the core themes in Jesus’ message and repeatedly affirms Paul’s contrary myth of “Lord Jesus”, as in affirming domination as divinely approved.

The Jesus insight on non-domination reframes the nature of deity entirely by rejecting the long history of gods as “rulers, lords, kings” who appointed elites (i.e. kings, lords, priesthoods) to dominate and tell commoners how to please and placate deity, how to live in subjection to elite control.

Marinate your minds on how profoundly transformational this is to our views of the true nature of deity. It is another insight into the greatest potential liberation ever proposed- i.e. liberation of mind, spirit, and life at the deepest levels of consciousness.

God, as humanity’s highest ideal and authority, and contrary to all previous mythology, is a street-level God, not an elitist dominator of people, validating elite domination of commoners.

Illustration:

Remember the story of the priest who climbed a tower to get closer to the God that he believed ruled from the heavens above, praying that God would reveal himself to him from the high heavens? Apparently, God responded to his prayer, stating, “I am down here among my people. Not somewhere in the heavens above.” Deity as street level, ordinary, common, affirming the freedom and equality of all.

Added notes:

I would add that Bob Brinsmead recently had me read Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion Of The Hellenistic Age”. Koester recounts how the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans developed these ideas of kings as divine persons, appointed to embody and mediate the rule of gods over commoners.

Again, the liberating message of Jesus has been buried in a New Testament context that teaches the very opposite, contradicting his core themes. The New Testament emphasizes the “Lord Jesus” of Paul, framing deity as all about ultimate King/Ruler, ultimate and eternal domination of subservient humans. And that, according to Paul, is the divine will or model. Domination forever.

I would further add this non-domination theme of Jesus to his other central themes that have been deformed and buried by Paul’s Christ myth: i.e. (1) Paul claiming that Jesus was the ultimate divine sacrifice in contradiction to Jesus saying nothing about coming to offer himself as a sacrifice for sin in his original message (i.e. Q Wisdom Sayings gospel), (2) Jesus’ non-retaliatory message in Matthew 5:38-48 as opposed to Paul’s message of ultimate retaliation through apocalypse and hell, (3) Jesus’ no conditions message as opposed to Paul’s gospel of supreme conditions (i.e. blood sacrifice demanded as condition for salvation in Romans), among other contradictions.

Get clear that domination of others is animal and not human (i.e. alpha male/female). Domination is certainly not divine. It is one of the most destructive of the evil triad of inherited impulses. Do not defame and deform deity by claiming that God is an ultimate Dominator, more animal than human.

Understanding how elites manipulate us commoners with primitive and deformed narrative themes is an essential first step to freedom, to resisting elite meddling and control, to fighting back and protecting our freedoms and rights, our equality, inclusion, our right to diversity as in disagreement and dissent to elite messaging and control.

Yes Matt, “Defy authority”.

Further notes:

Paul in Romans 13 urges people to submit to governing authorities as appointed by God. Paul appears to overreach in this passage to communicate too generally that any dissent to governing authority is to be punished. This obfuscates the nature of “governing authority” with the myth of elite domination as divine will- “The authorities are God’s servants”.

More correctly, much “governing authority” is the result of domination-obsessed elites scrambling for power among themselves and very little of “government exists to serve the people and protect their freedom and rights”. Too much governing authority results from self-appointment, not divine appointment. The outcome (Thomas Sowell’s “test of facts”) affirms the true nature of governing authorities. Do state elites and their bureaucracies actually exist to protect and promote the supremacy of the will of all free and equal individuals? Do they actually “serve” the citizens?

Paul’s statement:

“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you. The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong. So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience.”

Yes, one element in Paul’s statement argues for a common-sense position- i.e. that there are natural and social consequences to bad behavior and all of us accept systems of law and criminal justice systems that uphold public order with such consequences. But Paul generalizes beyond that common-sense fact to urge a more general submission to state authorities as representing God. That has to be defied.

While we all agree to affirm the common law systems and institutions of Classic Liberalism, we do not “submit to governments” or state leaders in any general sense. We support government leadership where they actually protect and promote the equality and freedom of all citizens- the supremacy of the commoner’s will over governing authorities. State “authorities” must submit to and serve the will of the people, not the other way round as Paul appears to propose.

Governing authorities are only “God’s servants” in a very limited sense, in the Classic Liberal sense of serving commoners.

There is so much to tie in here to properly and fully understand the impulse to dominate. For example, the deformation of the hero’s quest, where those wishing to validate their own impulse to dominate, will use that story framework to portray themselves as righteous activists opposing evil monsters, fighting enemies that need to be exterminated in order to save something good that is threatened. Their enemies deserve to be dominated and vanquished in the crusade for some greater good.

The elite deformation of the hero’s quest ends with people locking themselves into bubble narratives that feed a personal satisfaction (virtue-signaling, deformed compassion) to be framed as righteous in opposition to evil.

The test of true heroism- Does it fight for the equal freedoms and rights of all people? Does it affirm Classic Liberal principles and institutions?

Remember, that those we label as “enemies” are still family. Hence, “love your enemy” is the fundamental human obligation, the obligation of authentic love.

More to come…

Presenting as righteous conqueror of evil enemies- Understanding how a totalitarian’s mind functions and the narrative that affirms their domination impulse, Wendell Krossa

Exemplifying left-wing compassion, and virtue-signaling of noble intention and righteous cause, Hilary Clinton presents as defending children against harm. This from the same lady who would put children into collectivism as in her “it takes a village to raise a child”, affirmed by her subsequent push for more state supervision of children. Similarly, Justin Trudeau presents as nobly advocating for protection of children with his “Online Harms” Bill C-63 that would allow for open-ended application to far more than just protection from harm.

The terms used by these neo-totalitarians frame their endeavors as righteous cause- i.e. “content moderation… stop harmful disinformation, misinformation, mal-information” etc.

But the “test of facts” again- Twitter Files revealed a political party shifting into totalitarianism (70% of Democrats now want censorship of opponents). The same party had state agencies- i.e. FBI- censor opponents, even censor comedy as Mark Zuckerberg admitted in his recent letter. Totalitarians hate the mockery of their power-mongering. So also Gov. Gavin Newsom is criminalizing and banning parody.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/zuckerberg-expressing-regrets-admits-bowing-biden-administration-pressure-remove-content

Add here the CIA and other intelligence officials who lied to hide the inconvenient truth of the Hunter Biden laptop and thereby interfered in an election where follow-up surveys showed some 1 out of 6 Biden voters would not have voted for him had they known the laptop was true, among varied other true things that were hidden from Biden voters.

I had to use the search engine “Brave” to find this report as biased Google will not show it, only presenting rebuttals of this survey as “right-wing conspiracy theory”.

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2020/nov/26/cooper-biden-voters/

Yes, Jimmy Dore, we are the most propagandized people, most lied to people, and we often don’t know it.

And then there was the suppression and censoring of true facts about Covid. Highly respected scientists (epidemiologists John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and others, e.g. Bret Weinstein) were censored, deplatformed, demonetized, and outright banned on social media. They were accused of promoting “harmful disinformation, misinformation” that was actually true but contradicted state-approved narratives.

The danger in these “content moderation… protect from disinformation, misinformation” projects, is that “concept creep” enables totalitarians to use the cloak of righteous cause and virtuous concern for victims to unleash their domination impulse and to extend “hate speech… harmful speech” categories to include opponent’s political/ideological views and speech, even criminalize such differing opinions and speech.

Hilary’s claim that they must not “lose total control” is a confession of her party’s totalitarian impulse to entrench their domination. They frame that as noble cause to protect the innocent from harm, but extend that to disagreeing others in more general terms.

“Illiberal progressivism” has now gone whole hog to legitimize the censorship of differing others. They have locked themselves into the view that their ideological positions are the only right and true ones for human society, and it is therefore necessary to maintain those ideas and policies as dominant in order “to save democracy” from all who differ, dissent, or disagree. All others (healthy democratic diversity) are framed as “threats to democracy”, to civilization. Dissenting others are even demonized as “existential threats” to all good. Hence, Progressives now believe that it is legitimate to censor and even criminalize opponents, to actually lock them up, not just chant that mantra.

Again, this illustrates the deforming of the hero’s quest to fight a monster and vanquish an enemy in order to save something. The leftist crusade for domination even plays dangerously with the later-phase shift to “exterminate or be exterminated” extremism that resulted in mass-death under Marxism and Nazism.

Remember, Hilary Clinton is the lady who sponsored the lies of the Steele Dossier that initiated her attempt to overturn the 2016 election that she still insists was “illegitimate”. She refuses to accept the outcome of a democratic election, as do other Democrats.

As with all such crusades to “moderate content, to protect from harmful disinformation/misinformation, and hate speech”, who gets to decide what falls within these categories and definitions? What are the protections then for freedom of speech? Even the protection of offensive, upsetting, disgusting speech (a highly differing categorization in the eyes of differing beholders).

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-says-social-media-companies-need-moderate-content-we-lose-total-control

“Hilary Clinton says social media companies need to moderate content or ‘we lose total control’: Clinton called for section 230 of the Communications Act to be repealed”, Landon Mion, Fox News, Oct.5, 2024

Clinton demands social media companies must moderate content or “we lose total control”. She frames her crusade for censoring content as protection against “threats to our children”. She wants “guardrails to be implemented”. If only she were one of Plato’s “noble and wise rulers”, unbiased, objective, fair, who could be trusted with running such a project.

And she wants opponents, whom she claims interfere in elections by spreading propaganda, to be criminally charged. Sheesh. Talk about projection of one’s own crimes onto others, eh. Hilary- “spreading propaganda”? What about the Russiagate lies? And financing the Steele Dossier? And more…

Oh, and I forgot all those buried bodies that Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, and others repeatedly joke about.

An inside job: Western liberal rejection of liberal values and policies, Wendell Krossa

What Jesse Kline points to below, in his comments on Brendan O’Neill’s new book, is the great perplexation of today- How those among us who recently identified as liberals have now outright abandoned true liberal ideals, principles, and institutions for collectivist totalitarianism in extreme leftist “Woke Progressivism”.

On one hand, this speaks to the success of neo-Marxist indoctrination of recent generations of university students who have graduated to populate all sectors of our societies. And it speaks to the failure to ground our citizens, especially students, in Classic Liberal principles and institutions that protect the freedom and rights of all citizens, equally.

I have again posted the basics of Classic Liberalism below- i.e. the supremacy of free and equal individuals over state elites and their bureaucracies that should exist to serve the people. Socialist experiments also claim to operate “for the people” but never do so as concentrating power and control in enlightened elites, who run the collectives, unleashes the domination impulse with no Classic Liberal checks on the concentration of power in collectivist systems.

The abandonment of Western liberalism, by US liberals, erupted notably with Trump’s election and his moves to dismantle the very institutions and programs that dominating liberal elites lived to defend and promote- i.e. the big government elite positions, bureaucracies, and supporting agencies (intelligence and military), along with the elite control mechanisms of ever-increasing taxation and ever-expanding regulatory regimes.

Trump’s threats to end “military industrial complex” domination with his anti-war stance, and his talk of going after the corruption of the intelligence agencies supporting the state elites, antagonized those agencies. As Chuck Schumer warned Trump, you better not antagonize or threaten those agencies as they have “six ways to Sunday to get back at you”.

The response of the entrenched elites, bureaucrats, and their supporting agencies (along with their propagandizing “news” media) was to demonize Trump beyond anything seen before. They incited a spasm of hysterical hatred of the man with endless smears to dehumanize him as “Hitler, Nazi, racist, dictator, threat to democracy, etc.”.

Few will acknowledge that Trump actually did something profoundly “anti-dictatorial” by eviscerating the concentrated power of state elites, through weakening the two common tools by which elites control populations- i.e. by decreasing taxation and regulations. He did the very opposite to collectivist elites who centralize power and control and subject individuals to state-run programs.

Elites take power from citizens by confiscating their property via taxation in order to redistribute that property according to elite agendas (the elite arrogance of “we know better how to spend your money”), and they take power from citizens by expanding government regulatory control over people (increasing regulations). Trump gave that power and control back to citizens in tax relief and a significant decrease in the regulatory burden. He acted the very opposite to how elite dictators would.

Trump, with his “bull-in-China-shop” approach, blew elite domination and control programs apart. And if Elon Musk is appointed to dismantle government, just as he has “unburdened his companies from what has been” in terms of excessive regulations, then power will be further returned to the people (see “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson).

We have also heard rumors of RFK possibly being appointed to head up the CIA and expose corruption there. I would caution- Watch out. Because when the monster feels threatened, it will likely strike back in order to survive. It may also shift into the dangerous phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”.

Here is Kristian Niemietz again on the concentration of power in state elites and the lie of elites to governing on behalf of the people:

“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.”

This from Jesse Kline of National Post on woke progressivism’s antisemitism resulting in abandoning liberal values to forge an alliance with genocidal Hamas.

“How woke progressivism drove a surge in antisemitism in the West: A new book explores how an irrational hatred of Israel led the left to betray its most deeply held values following the October 7 massacre”, Jesse Kline, Oct. 6, 2024

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/how-an-irrational-hatred-of-israel-drove-the-left-to-betray-its-most-deeply-held-values

Kline says that Hamas’s October 7 massacre “was shocking, not just due to its barbarity, but the reaction it elicited on the streets of liberal democracies, with masses of westerners actively cheering on the slaughter of innocent civilians and siding with a genocidal terrorist organization”.

He reviews Brendan O’Neill’s new book, “After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation” that “sheds light on the morally bankrupt ideology that has caused many of our elites to turn their backs on liberal values and forge an unholy alliance with religious extremists.”

Kline notes that O’Neill blames the current worldwide eruption of virulent antisemitism on “modern progressive ideology, which is a complete bastardization of the values that liberals once held dear.”

Western support for the genocidal terrorism of Hamas is, according to O’Neill, “the logical inhumane conclusion to a pseudo-progressive politics that judges people’s moral worth by their skin colour, their presumed privilege and their placement on a racial hierarchy fashioned by the unaccountable overlords of western opinion.”

My inserted point here (Wendell Krossa): Others have also spoken to the new tribal dualism in progressive ideology (really the same old Socialist/collectivist division of humanity) that simple-mindedly assigns all people to one of two opposing classes- i.e. victimizers versus victims. One is all evil and vilified. The other is all virtuous and honored. Elon Musk noted the insanity in this simple-minded perversion of the dualism of good versus evil. He said that Hamas are considered “victims” according to Western Progressive dualism, hence “virtuous”. Even after the Oct.7 savagery.

Kline continues: “Not only did many feminists ignore or downplay the atrocities, some pretended the whole thing was fabricated to make Hamas look bad. And this is from a crowd that spent years telling us that something as innocuous as a flirtatious glance or a hug in the workplace was evidence of “rape culture” run amok.”

Kline interacts further with O/Neill’s points on how progressives have abandoned their former liberal values for the insanity of today: “How did we get to a point where a supposed anti-war movement is preaching violence; where self-styled “anti-racists” are espousing antisemitism; where so-called anti-fascists are actively supporting Islamofascists; where feminists are turning a blind eye toward mass rape and defending some of the most misogynistic regimes on the planet; and where LGBTQ activists are advocating for governments that criminalize homosexuality?”

He then notes O’Neill’s chapter on the “perverse political marriage between secular leftists and the religious extremists of radical Islam,” arguing, “It was the left’s turn against the principles of Enlightenment that made it so lethally susceptible to the ‘charms’ of radical Islam.

“Having replaced class politics with identity politics, and its old anti-capitalism with a myopic anti-westernism, and its one-time commitment to civilizational ideals with a heavy-hearted angst over the ‘sins’ of our civilization, the left found itself drawn ever closer to those other haters of everything the West stands for: Islamists.”

Kline quotes O’Neill a bit more: “A left that thought it could make just the occasional alliance with fascism now finds itself at the service of fascism, dutifully doing Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s bidding on the streets of our cities.”

Kline ends, noting that today’s antisemites are motivated by hysterical hate that has led to woke progressivism enabling “the re-emergence and normalization of antisemitism and provided cover for western elites to side with theocratic mass murders… their hatred toward Israel has created a blind spot that has allowed them to violate all the values they claim to hold dear.”

My added note:

And this same hysterical hatred, incited against Trump, has led many liberals to now reject liberal values and practises to affirm censorship of opponents (“content moderation… fighting disinformation, misinformation”, interfering in elections as the CIA did with Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Russia collusion lie, etc.), actually condemning free speech and freedom itself, because freedom allows people to elect opponents that the liberals do not approve of. “Hysterical hatred” that has led liberals to deny the very Classic Liberal values that they once claimed to hold dear.

A reposting of Classic Liberal ideals, systems of law, and institutions

A ‘sitesplainin’ clarification: 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?

The 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

And this on the battle for free speech

“The Censorship Industrial Complex is US Government Counter-populist blowback: Mike Benz on the U.S. government’s role in creating the global war on free speech”, Michael Shellenberger, Oct. 6, 2024

https://www.public.news/p/the-censorship-industrial-complex-3c1

Shellenberger notes that the Biden-Harris White House has been engaged in the large-scale censorship of information related to elections, vaccines, etc.

He says, “preventing people from criticizing elections on the Internet undermines our democracy. The public’s ability to exercise free speech and question election results or procedures is something that ensures our elections are free and fair.”

He then details points made in a speech by Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online.

Benz revealed that the CIA created the “National Endowment for Democracy” to pry open foreign societies to US propaganda projects and rig foreign elections in favor of the US and its policies.

Benz notes that a key player in US foreign propaganda and interference projects was George Kennan, who said,

“We have to inaugurate a doctrine of organized political warfare to achieve our national objectives, further our influence and authority, and weaken those of our adversaries. We have to do this in ways that are both overt and covert. This includes clandestine support of friendly foreign elements, black psychological warfare, and, yes, even encouragement of underground forces.”

Benz goes on to show that internet freedom began to undermine US state propaganda and control efforts and resulted in the populist movements of Brexit and Trump’s election that were both viewed as disasters and loss of control by US state agencies.

Consequently, “The National Endowment for Democracy said Benz, “embarked on a formal quest to get censorship laws passed around the world, which touches on what everybody in this room is concerned about, which is this sort of mysterious homogeneity of all these censorship laws, from Australia to Brazil to Europe with the EU Digital Services Act. They have one thing in common: USAID’s National Endowment for Democracy program.”

Shellenberger continues:

“As such, what is behind today’s demands for censorship around the world” is a pushback against populism movements that is “waged by US government “deep state” agencies, namely CIA, abroad.”

He notes that “the Censorship Industrial Complex has faced significant and growing resistance since 2022. It was that year that the DHS announced a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which both Democrats and Republicans denounced as Orwellian and un-American. It was dissolved a few weeks later. Then, Elon Musk bought Twitter. Reporters, including us, released the Twitter Files, exposing deep state agencies including FBI, DHS, and CIA, and their intermediary NGOs, demanding censorship.”

He concludes:

“As a result of Benz’s work, millions of Americans have what the US Intelligence Community calls “situational awareness” of the deep state Censorship Industrial Complex and were able to understand Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris “is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale.” Many of them will understand that supposedly “neutral fact checkers” like Politifact are in fact highly partisan, counter-populist, and agents of spreading disinformation as a pretext for demanding censorship. And the international free speech, as our meeting in London in June showed, is gaining power through mutual aid.”

This affirms my argument to program AI with Classic Liberal principles and practices.

“The fatal flaw in Artificial Intelligence: Climate change?”, by Leigh Haugen, Oct. 6, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/06/the-fatal-flaw-in-artificial-intelligence-climate-change/

Haugen begins, noting, “The development of large language models (LLMs) has transformed our world in many ways, making artificial intelligence (AI) a powerful tool capable of generating and interpreting massive amounts of information. These models, however, are fundamentally shaped by the data that feeds them—data taken from the internet, which is itself a collection of human input. While AI has the potential to aid in a variety of fields, there is a glaring flaw inherent to its very design: its reliance on human data. If this data is corrupted, biased, or fundamentally flawed, then the AI simply echoes and amplifies those same distortions.

“One of the clearest examples of this issue is the topic of climate change. Whether you use a search engine or consult AI for information on climate change, the overwhelming majority of the data you will find supports the concept of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CACC). This is no coincidence—it is a reflection of the sheer volume of information that has been generated by those who have accepted this hypothesis, compounded by the biases of institutions and corporations that build the algorithms responsible for curating and ranking this information.”

He continues, explaining that AI is designed to draw conclusions from existing data and if such data is biased then AI becomes “a tool for amplifying misinformation rather than a mechanism for critical analysis. In the case of climate change, AI is unlikely to offer nuanced perspectives or promote healthy skepticism. Instead, it mirrors the consensus-driven model that has been artificially constructed by political, financial, and globalist interests.”

Haugen states that this flaw in AI design becomes a threat to freedom. He argues that “The ability to challenge prevailing wisdom and to question powerful institutions is fundamental to a free society. However, if AI consistently promotes only one perspective, it serves to stifle dissent, limit critical thought, and bolster the authority of those in power.”

As with similar biases built into Google’s presentation of information to searchers, so AI, shaped by such data bias, will marginalize, deplatform, censor, and reduce any virality for the many scientists who challenge climate alarmism.

Haugen then explains “The Origins of the Climate Change Scam: A Tool for Control.”

He says, “The origins of the climate change agenda trace back to the 1950s and 1960s, when powerful organizations like the Club of Rome and the Club of Budapest began to lay the foundations for what would become one of the most effective tools for controlling humanity. These elite organizations, composed of influential politicians, business leaders, and academics, sought a way to unite the world under a common cause—a cause that could justify unprecedented levels of government control, wealth redistribution, and societal restructuring.”

Haugen presents the Club of Rome declaration that stated, “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine, and the like would fit the bill… All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

As Haugen explains, the motive behind the climate alarmism narrative was to justify control of populations, not to save the environment. He says, “these organizations laid the groundwork for a global environmental crisis that would allow governments and powerful elites to increase their influence over virtually every aspect of life—from energy production and consumption to economic policies and personal freedoms….

“By presenting climate change as an existential threat, they have created a justification for implementing sweeping economic and political changes that benefit the global ruling class while imposing new burdens on ordinary citizens.”

He continues, “The climate change agenda, far from being a grassroots movement to protect the planet, is a carefully orchestrated scam designed to redistribute wealth, consolidate power, and generate massive profits for a small group of global elites. From the Club of Rome’s early declarations to the admissions of modern-day climate profiteers, it is clear that the climate change narrative has always been about control—control over the economy, control over political systems, and ultimately, control over people’s lives….

“This is not about saving the planet; it’s about exploiting a manufactured crisis to create a market that benefits a select few at the expense of the public.”

Haugen warns that the climate change alarm as viewed through AI is a great threat to human freedom because it is increasingly relied on to shape public opinion but only produces information that “aligns with entrenched narratives”. It suppresses skepticism of climate alarmism and that is an issue of “freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the ability to hold power to account.”

“In a world where AI dominates the production, and dissemination of information the control of data becomes the control of truth itself. Those who feed the AI their data, whether through search engines, research institutions, or government bodies, hold immense power. If that data is biased, incomplete, or misleading, the AI will echo those distortions to an unsuspecting public. This is the fatal flaw in AI—it cannot rise above the limitations of the data on which it is trained, and as long as that data is influenced by corruptible human interests, AI will remain a tool that mirrors and magnifies the errors, biases, and deceptions of its human creators.

“In the case of climate change, this flaw is especially dangerous. The powerful interests that have built the climate change narrative are not only distorting science but also restricting our freedoms.”

Haugen concludes:

“In summary, the climate change scam is not only a scientific and political farce; it is also an economic disaster with staggering opportunity costs. AI bias is playing a pivotal role in propping up this narrative, influencing both people and the media to accept and promote a one-sided view that serves the interests of the powerful. But climate change is just the beginning. The same inherent flaws in AI—its reliance on biased data, institutional agendas, and consensus-driven information—will extend into many other major subjects that directly impact our freedom and future. From public health and economic policies to energy production and social governance, AI’s role in amplifying dominant narratives will continue to stifle dissent, limit open debate, and impose restrictive controls on society. If we allow this to continue unchecked, AI will become a tool for shaping thought, controlling discourse, and eroding the very freedoms it was meant to empower.”

And another from National Post on “progressive illiberalism”.

“The lessons we should have learned from October 7: Canada has not taken the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously enough”, Colin May, Oct. 6, 2024

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-lessons-we-should-have-learned-from-october-7

“Even the ultimate antisemitic act of the Holocaust is thrown back at Israel, with claims that its defensive actions against Hamas constitute a “genocide.”

“The old lesson we need to remember here is that this is exactly what antisemitism is. Since the time of the medieval blood libel, Jews have been repeatedly dehumanized by those who diminish their humanity while expanding the scope of their imaginary treachery.

“Today in Canada, as elsewhere in the West, the return of antisemitism is justified by the ideology popularly called “wokeism,” though it is better labelled as “progressive illiberalism.” This doctrine was born in our universities from a mixture of postmodernism, post-colonialism, critical theory and neo-feminism.

“Over the last decade, it has made immense gains throughout our society. It now expresses itself explicitly through theories of anti-racism, gender ideology and in the settler-colonial narrative that’s used to attack Israel.”

“This is scary” (Kat Timpf of Gutfeld), Wendell Krossa

Libertarian Kat Timpf says around the 33-minute mark, after the comments by John Kerry against the First Amendment protecting free speech, “This is scary”.

Soured with rage at the public resistance to his apocalyptic climate crusade, Kerry is a leading voice of neo-totalitarianism. The First Amendment, argues Kerry, gets in the way of his “hammering the differing opinions and speech of others out of existence”, so only his views and speech get to rule the public space in our so-called liberal democracies.

Listen to Kat’s response to that “scary” demand for totalitarian control of public messaging, as the other Gutfeld panel members remind us of how often the government has lied to us over past years- i.e. the Russian collusion lie, the Hunter Biden laptop lie (Russian disinformation) and Biden family corruption, Covid and vaccine lies, the Charlottesville lie, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON7asJBU1r4

Timpf nails this point- that it bothers her “how comfortable these people are talking like this”. Advocating for their totalitarian control of our democracies. People who once identified as “liberal, Democratic”, a branch of politics that not long ago stood zealously for free speech, for freedom in general, for inclusion, diversity, and equality (not collectivist equity), and other Classic Liberal principles, but now rejects those ideals and practises to advocate for a developing and strengthening totalitarianism.

I use the term “totalitarianism” as Michael Shellenberger and others now correctly use that to define the extreme leftist Woke Progressivism that has infected our societies. It is now out of the closet and unabashedly totalitarian.

With Timpf, I am repeatedly disturbed by how so many of these people who only recently identified with the liberal side of society now support authoritarian positions, like the 70% of US Democrats that favor censorship of opponents. What has happened? So also, Trudeau here in Canada with his new “Online Harms” bill that will criminalize the speech of any who disagree with his extremist and cultic Woke Progressivism. Jordan Peterson talked about this in his speech at the rally for “Rescue the Republic”.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Classic Liberalism is the best that we have come up with to protect our societies from the destructive elite impulse to dominate

The battle for freedom is a struggle for the restoration and affirmation of love in our societies

The battle for freedom, Wendell Krossa (Note: The attacks on freedom are a bothsideism issue and problem, but obviously one side dominates more today, as noted below.)

Why do some among us incessantly try to meddle in other’s lives, to dominate and control others? Why do these people not understand that where there is no freedom- no individual self-determination as in Classic Liberalism- then there is no love. Freedom and love, that is to say “love” as the fundamental criterion of authentic humanity, are inseparable realities.

The latest commentary here continues to probe the totalitarian impulse, one of the worst of the “evil triad” of inherited animal impulses that has done incalculable damage in human relationships and societies across history (i.e. the destructive anti-humanism of the “elite/commoner” divide). Of particular interest here are the ideas that incite and validate this inhumane impulse, the archetypal themes that incite and validate this archetypal impulse.

“Archetypal” as in the deeply embedded impulses and validating themes of the human subconscious. The things that powerfully shape our lives even when we are not fully aware of that influence. The things that influence us to hold certain beliefs and engage certain behaviors because they are “emotionally satisfying”. As Kristian Niemietz states, “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs” (“Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”).

Domination of others as in the current trend across Western societies to ban free speech, is more base animal behavior than human. It is certainly not about “compassion for victims” as proclaimed by the Woke Progressive activists, the zealots for fighting “disinformation/misinformation” that then reaches beyond (concept creep) to censor and ban the free speech of any who disagree with the Woke Progressive overlords.

Some very interesting discussions…

Vivek Ramaswamy on Lex Fridman discussing the core function of government as protecting borders and protecting property rights. And the need for massive cuts to government beyond these two basic functions…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtXuNX77Hk

Thank God we live in a time with free spirits like Matt Taibbi. This is beyond good, way beyond. I love the spit, fire, and spicy sauce of Matt’s language. I will soon post quotes from this…

https://www.racket.news/p/my-speech-in-washington-rescue-the?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

A ‘sitesplainin’ clarification: 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

A note on the “equity” curse of collectivism: Wendell Krossa

When you force “equity” outcomes on populations you destroy the motivation of individuals to improve themselves and their families. You undermine the motivation of people to create new businesses (products and services), to build personal assets/property that then benefits the greater good (increased spending capacity, increased hiring capacity, etc.).

Look at what forced equity (collectivism) did to China under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, or Stalin’s collectivism. 100 million dead, societies ruined, environments destroyed, as the inevitable outcome of centralized planning of resource distribution by state elites and bureaucrats.

I believe it was former socialist Joshua Muravchik who noted that socialists, in their zealotry to socially engineer “communalist humans” through coercive collectivism, have never understood human motivation. Socialists are possessed of the obsession to “liberate the oppressed” from Marx’s number one evil- personal property (see his “Heaven On Earth: The rise, fall, and afterlife of socialism”). Socialists frame their collectivist crusade as the righteous battle for greater or common good against the evil of individual selfishness and greed.

Socialist framing of the individually-oriented Classic Liberal system, repeatedly falls back on a simple-minded tribal dualism that distorts entirely and demonizes the human impulse to create a better life, to improve oneself and one’s family as the most fundamental expression of love. When people’s individual freedom and rights are protected as in Classic Liberal societies, then liberated people, knowing their personal rights and freedoms are protected, creatively produce solutions that benefit others.

Free creative, hardworking individuals have done more to promote greater or common good than any other approach to organizing societies, notably in the billions of people lifted out of poverty over the past 2 centuries, now approaching the majority of humanity.

Another take on the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion” might be this apparent quote in Joshua Muravchik (taken from a review): “Robert Owen- He became a humanitarian, and lost his humanity.”

The “probing deeper” project of this site… What lies behind, Wendell Krossa

Fitting pieces together for a bigger background picture and then considering the deeper roots of it all- the bad ideas that have always incited and validated bad behavior across history.

“There are no really bad people. Just people acting badly under the influence of bad ideas”, paraphrase of Bob Brinsmead.

Back to the present:

Take the US situation as an illustrating example of what is happening today across Western liberal democracies. Since around 2016, we have seen a renewed expression of the totalitarian spirit, particularly on one side of the population- i.e. on the “left” side, coming from those previously identifying as “liberals, Democrats”. Many in that sector of the population have shifted to embrace what even many of their fellow liberals frame as “highly illiberal” positions and policies. “Totalitarian” views and policies.

And yes, the totalitarian spirit stews and slinks around also throughout the Right side of our societies. It is a fundamental and commonly shared impulse, a residual from our animal past. The pathological impulse to domination and control of others.

But one side- i.e. the left (now embracing and promoting “Woke Progressivism”)- exhibits this impulse more widely and prominently today through (1) its domination of education, (2) in the protection and promotion of the left by major state agencies and institutions like the FBI, CIA, Military, (3) in the defense and promotion of the left by mainstream media, and (4) in the favored bias toward the left by big tech social media such as the affirmed leftist bias by Google that was exposed recently by Robert Epstein during his Joe Rogan interview. And so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azu8XnZdxeA&t=26s

And if and where the Right tries to respond to leftist domination with its own version of meddling control of free citizens, then that must also be exposed for the deforming pathology that it is. Fairness is critical to a healthy, peaceful society.

The emergence and expression of the totalitarian spirit in US leftism/liberalism is related to a larger historical crusade that never fully died away after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The contemporary eruption of the totalitarian impulse among US Democrats (i.e. the 70% that now favor censorship of opponents) is part of the larger resurgence of totalitarian Marxism that is the result of US 1960s Marxists deciding to play a long-game approach by penetrating the educational system and indoctrinating generations of students to then enter and populate all sectors of society.

Note in the link below, around the 7 min 30 second mark, Rob Schneider’s comments that 60s Marxists decided to retreat, recoup, and then go “underground” to focus on infiltrating the US education system. British historian Niall Ferguson has similarly noted that 60s Marxists realized that they could not win wide public support so chose instead to focus on infiltrating Western education systems to indoctrinate future generations. Is there a correlation here with the significant majority of professorships in the humanities and social sciences of Western universities that are “liberal/Democratic/leftist”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a85Go-v1Peg&t=543s

Insert note on “Political Views of American Academics” (Wikipedia):

“Lawrence Summers said at a symposium about ‘The Social and Political Views of American Professors’ that he considers it a problem that some academics express an “extreme hostility” to conservative opinions. He observed that faculty who were invited to give Tanner Lectures on Human Values were almost always liberals, and expressed concern that an imbalance in political representation at universities could impede rigorous examination of issues”.

Well, that’s a mild and overly cautious statement that appears fearful of upsetting touchy “tyranny of minority” wokesters. I prefer the fiery spirit and spitting language of Matt Taibbi (see link above).

And here in Canuckville… (Canada for you ignoramuses)

And just like US Democrats, so also here in Canada the liberal side of our society has bought into the reframing of the old Marxist collectivism in “Woke Progressivism”. This is not traditional liberalism, Classic or liberal democracy, by any stretch of imagination, though it does hold shreds of that tradition that came out of England over past centuries (i.e. elements of inclusion, toleration, diversity, etc.).

Unfortunately, far-left features in the Progressive narrative dominate, distort, and reduce the influence of the residual better features. Just as Paul’s Christ distorts and buries the humanizing influence of the better insights of Jesus’.

Woke Progressivism, in the US variety, is the latest reframing of leftist collectivism that billions suffered under during last century’s eruption and spread of Marxist revolution. Growing numbers of US liberals/Democrats have affirmed the recent uninhibited shift of their side toward old school Marxism in noting that US Democrats have gone “far-left”, meaning into the extremism of “leftist Wokeism”.

Woke Progressivism as neo-Marxism? Yes, both embrace the fundamental tribal dualism that separates populations into basically two opposing classes of “oppressors versus oppressed”. In Progressivism, while the old “capital owners and capital-less workers/peasants” is still in the mix, a new element tribal dualism includes separating people into the classes of “victimizers versus victims”. This is the separation of people into the more general classes of “good versus evil” that is now based significantly on skin color. White/Jewish/Asian as victimizer and black/brown as victim.

Elon Musk, in an interview, said this DEI grouping and defining of people has to end. DEI people, he said, claim that all those in their “victim” category are to be viewed as “virtuous”. Noting the insanity of such generalized grouping, he said that they even put Hamas in the victim category and hence under the umbrella of “virtuous”. That is patently crazy. Others note that even violent criminals are treated by Progressives as “virtuous victims” and subsequently released into the public arena to commit further crimes instead of being incarcerated.

There are many strands (fronts) in this new surge of collectivist totalitarianism for us to try to comprehend- i.e. the programs and policies of DEI, ESG, Woke Racism, decolonization, de-growth and de-development, social justice, broader environmental alarmism, etc.

Overall, these varied sub-projects or sub-crusades, are all part of the larger revival of the Western Marxism that faded in the 60s as those activists realized their goal of society-wide revolution would not gain public support due to the overwhelming anti-communism fever of that era. So they chose to go “underground” into Western education institutions to play a long-game approach to undermining and collectivizing industrial/capitalist society.

Atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, adding another element to this, has noted that 60s Marxists realized that by going after the energy that fuels Western society, they could more effectively accomplish their goal of bringing down capitalist industrial civilization. We now see this approach in environmentalist projects to push “de-development, de-growth”, etc.

As some note, this is the “watermelon” thing- i.e. old reds finding new life in the green movement.

My interest in all this

This relates to my project on this site to engage the thorough problem-solving that was mentioned by the military guy after the 2014 eruption of the ISIS crusade in Syria to establish their caliphate. He said that you can beat back these eruptions of religious violence with superior force, but they will only continue to repeatedly erupt until you go after the fundamental ideas that incite and validate them. Good point, military guy.

Focusing issues more intently, I would argue that it is most critical to go after the retaliatory, violent God theories that center the narratives of religiously violent extremists. The Ultimate Reality themes that function as the cohering center of human narratives, the embodiment of ultimate ideals and authority, whether deities or other “secular/ideological/scientific” speculations on metaphysical realities.

And we are not just talking about Islam here. All the major world religions hold similar views of deity validating violence toward differing others. Islam has simply inherited what went before.

And as posted repeatedly here, psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo have detailed how “Cruel God” theories of religions deform human personality with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair and depression, nihilism, and violence. Hence, the critical need to understand and promote “Kind God” alternatives.

Further on the Islamic thing: Note that Muhammad’s spiritual mentor- i.e. Waraqa- was an Ebionite priest (a Jewish Christian sect) who was the cousin of his wife Khadija. Waraqa taught Muhammad everything about theology. Note the influence of the gospel of Matthew on the Quran, Matthew being a later version of the “Gospel to the Hebrews” that Waraqa used to teach Muhammad.

Example: Matthew states that after being rejected by the hamlets of Bethsaida, Capernaum, Chorazin, etc., Jesus angrily damned to hell those who rejected him and his miracles/message (“they will be cast into outer darkness where there will be gnashing of teeth”). So also the Quran, on almost every page, sometimes every other page, notes that those who “reject the message and the messenger” will be cast into hell.

Add other correlations between Ebionism and Islam, like water purification rites. It’s the parent/offspring thing in regard to these historical religions.

Now: Stepping back more to view the big background picture and long-term history of our narratives– Historians have detailed for us the fundamental drivers behind the “profoundly religious crusades” of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. They are all driven by the same basic themes of “apocalyptic millennialism”. Meaning- they are all driven by profoundly religious themes. There is not much new under the sun, more often just the endless restating of the same old themes as ever before. (Sources: Historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and so many more.)

Insert note to counter denialism and self-delusion: I repeatedly urge readers to recognize that what identifies often today as “secular ideological”, and even “scientific/materialist”, is, in terms of core structure and themes, still often profoundly mythical and religious.

Continuing…

And what the historians refer to as “apocalyptic millennialism” I would expand to the larger complex of the mythical themes of “lost paradise, corrupt humanity ruining paradise, the subsequent decline of life toward apocalyptic ending, the divine demand for sacrifice/payment, suffering as redemptive, the divine demand for violent purging of evil threat, and the hope for salvation in a restored communalism paradise”.

This complex of themes, that is expressed through ever-changing new terms, definitions, and movements, has endlessly deformed human narratives, consciousness and life to horrific mass-death outcomes.

Much more to come on this totalitarian impulse being released and validated once again in our societies…

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on The battle for freedom is a struggle for the restoration and affirmation of love in our societies

New report confirms we are in the coldest time on Earth. Oops, there goes the “climate crisis” narrative and related gravy train.

New topics below:

“Historical Jesus was “anti-Christ” as in “against the Christology” that Paul used to radically redefine Jesus, Wendell Krossa”

“Some inserts before moving on to Bob Brinsmead’s great points on Paul replicating Greek thinking and theology in his Christ.”

“The Daddy thing driving me (i.e. there are no monsters), Wendell Krossa”

“My own experience of holding the “secular/ideological” version of apocalyptic millennialism, Wendell Krossa”

“Bob Brinsmead explains how Greek thought and practice shaped Christianity into another Hellenistic religion.”

“This on climate- “Media confirms the Earth is not abnormally warm. Rather, it is in its coldest period in 485 million years”, Anthony Watts, Sept. 25, 2024”

See data graphs at the link included in above report that show the much higher temperatures and much higher CO2 levels over the Phanerozoic history of life (i.e. the last roughly 500 million years of life). Both the much higher temperatures and the much higher CO2 levels were net beneficial to all life.

And for 80% of this 500-million year era there was no ice at the poles, benefitting life with extended habitats for more diverse life forms (the highest diversity of plant and animal life is in the warmer tropical regions). Backing this up- Fossils of both tropical plants and animals have been discovered in both polar regions. And you ask- Why then the contemporary hysteria over melting ice?

Our current “coldest ever world”, with ice at the poles, is responsible for 10 times more people dying every year from cold than die from warming (Lancet study). With the mild warming of the past century, the increase in lives being saved from cold deaths is more than any increase in lives being lost to warming deaths. Again, net beneficial.

Much more warming would continue to save life, not destroy it.

And our “CO2 starvation era” (Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore) is now benefiting from more basic plant food. Our world has greened to amazing extent with the addition of 15% more vegetation just since 1980. There is now more food for animals and increased crop production for humanity. All good.

Everyone concerned for the environment, and especially eco-zealot Greens should celebrate the recent warming and increased CO2 but they won’t because these two immense benefits to all life undermine their apocalyptic narrative that validates their terrorizing and thereby controlling populations to keep the money flowing into their pockets. The trillions being wasted on Big Green. With the poorest people suffering the most through increased taxation to cover green subsidies, increased energy costs from blocked fossil fuel development, overall inflation related to the preceding, etc. Add the burdensome regulations consequent to cultic eco-zealotry and lust to meddle in and control the lives of others.

Yes, the climate alarmism crusade is, just like Marxism and Nazism before it, a “profoundly religious crusade”. Nuff said.

Also, see below- “Disarming the alarming” on Bjorn Lomborg’s recent presentation of evidence that major climate alarms continue to be proven false. And then some good advice from Jordan Peterson on facing our fears.

Michael Shellenberger, formerly a radical leftist and progressive, on his bewilderment over fellow liberals/Democrats advocating now for a new totalitarianism…

“These Four Things Are Behind The Totalitarianism We Are Witnessing: It’s taken us a year and half to understand what’s happening. But we think we finally get it now”, Michael Shellenberger, Sept. 18, 2024

https://www.public.news/p/these-four-things-are-behind-the

Michael says that as a former “radical leftist and progressive” he was bewildered at fellow leftist Democrats demanding censorship (some 70% of US Democrats now approve of censorship). He says that after documenting things like the weaponization of the FBI and CIA and lawfare aimed at Trump, he now understands the drivers behind the elite totalitarianism of today.

His suggestions:

(1) His first driver is the elite’s fear at the populist revolutions that threaten their power and the elite belief that a free internet and independents challenged their narratives and power, hence over past years they “took extraordinary measures to regain control over social media.”

(2) Shellenberger’s second driver is “the narcissism and psychopathy of these elites” that is characterized by “entitlement, grandiosity, relative fearlessness, and lack of compassion”. These, he says, are displayed by people working for governments that demand censorship and weaponize government agencies.

(3) The Third driver of totalitarians is “the hunt for heretics”, and I would add to Shellenberger’s points that this expresses the totalitarian’s intolerance of dissent, diversity, and the equality of individual freedom.

Tyrants of today mouth the mantra “DEI” but in their actions they deny that utterly. They permit no inclusion of differing opinion or speech, no diversity from their extreme-left Woke Progressive narrative, and no equality of individual opportunity and merit due to the distortions of collectivist equity.

(4) Fourthly, Shellenberger notes (what others have warned) the danger that totalitarianism in our democracies would emerge from government bureaucracies through “the professional managerial class that controls the government, the media, and the NGO sector”.

Shellenberger ends on a note of optimism that the extremism of totalitarians is generating a backlash from populations in general (i.e. populism) and even from moderate liberals. Some have even pushed back against California governor Newsom’s recent signing a law that criminalizes free speech, i.e. criminalizes spoofs, parodies, comedy. Who said that totalitarians/leftists hate being laughed at. They cannot tolerate humor that mocks their drive for power and control.

Madness leading to mass-destruction. A warning of looming energy disaster from zealous over-dependence on renewables.

Don’t you love common sense, rationality, and facts/evidence. Especially in the midst of the “madness of crowds” insanity that dominates our world today.

“Looming European energy crisis: A lesson in averages that won’t soon be forgotten”, Terry Etam, BOE Report, Sept. 23, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/09/23/looming-european-energy-crisis-a-lesson-in-averages-that-wont-soon-be-forgotten/

Quotes:

Etam begins noting the problem of relying on averages.

“A whole world of trouble will come your way if your plans are built on averages but you cannot live with the extremes.”

He notes that in the race to decarbonize the energy systems of Western societies, “wind and solar have taken a dominant lead. Nuclear is widely despised.”

He says that renewables zealots claim that the US is installing record amounts of wind and solar capacity and that capacity contributes, on average, a significant amount of power to the electrical grid. “On average”.

“But what happens when that load factor is…zero? Because it happens.”

His point is that it is not the averages but the extremes that matter. He then refers to Great Britain where “over the past few weeks wind dropped almost to zero, and output from that 24 GW of installed capacity fell to about 1 or 2 GW.”

“More pertinently, what happens when the likelihood of near-zero output happens to coincide with the times when that power is needed most – in heat waves, or cold spells?”

Add the fact that backup power is not available. Renewables zealots have blocked and dismantled the natural gas system, “taking energy policy advice from Swedish teenagers – and (now) stand there shivering in dim-witted stupor when the wind stops blowing, and the world’s energy producers are not in any position to bring forth more natural gas.”

The harsh reality of this is now causing renewables zealots to experience what becoming “woke” really means.

“The world has been sold a faulty bill of goods, based on a pathetically simplistic vision of how renewable energy works.”

“A lot of the global energy-transition-now madness stems from such a basic inability to grasp certain fundamentals… You can install all the wind and solar you want, but if their output can go to zero, and more importantly if their output is more likely to go to zero when most needed during extreme heat (low wind, inefficient solar panels) or extreme cold (low wind, obvious solar shortcomings)), then you don’t have an energy system at all.”

He ends, “There will be consequences. Serious ones.

“Hundreds of millions of people without adequate heating fuel in the dead of winter is not particularly funny. If a cold winter strikes, all the yappiest energy-transition-now dogs will fade into the woodwork, distancing themselves from the disinformation they’ve propagated and the disaster they’ve engineered.”

“Tone down the rhetoric, eh”, Wendell Krossa

Which rhetoric is really the most dangerous, and incites the worst forms of violence against others?

After the second assassination attempt on President Trump, there have been blame-accusations thrown from both sides about rhetoric claiming that the other side poses such a threat that they have to be stopped. That rhetoric incites some to take desperate action to “save democracy” from the threat of the person who has been demonized by their side to extreme characterization- i.e. as “Hitler, Nazi, dictator, fascist, racist, criminal”, etc., or from the other side, “Marxist, Communist”, etc. People are then exhorted repeatedly that they must act to make sure that the threat is stopped and whatever is threatened can thereby be saved.

But this contemporary episode of political exaggeration of threat, and the calls for urgent response to stop the threat, pales beside another form of threatening rhetoric and demand for saving something that is far worse and at much larger scale.

What about the larger background context of hysteria over the claimed threat from CO2 and consequent incitement to action to save something that the alarmist prophets claim to be under threat? What about the most egregious example of exaggerated and hysterical rhetoric coming from the climate alarmism crusade where the thing claimed to be under “existential threat” is not just one nation’s democracy but all life itself, the entire world? And the threat is not just from one demonized person but from humanity itself enjoying the good life as provided by fossil fuels.

Talk about inciting rhetoric and dangerously violent outcomes. As Arthur Mendel said, apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive rhetoric in history. And as historians Richard Landes and others have shown, such inflamatory rhetoric has incited mass-death scale violence over the past century in Marxism, Nazism, as it is now doing in environmental alarmism.

And the outcome is not just a few deranged people willing to take action to save the threatened thing, but entire populations incited by their survival impulse to embrace salvation schemes (“save the world”) that are not just threatening one person but that are destroying economies, entire societies.

Many people, incited by fear of threat, are embracing and supporting policies of coercive state action to end the freedoms and rights of others through totalitarian censorship of dissent to the alarmist narrative, even supporting calls to criminalize challenges to the climate alarmism narrative as “dangerous disinformation”. Many citizens across Western societies have now been convinced that they are embracing something heroically righteous by affirming the totalitarian endeavor to eliminate a purported threat and save the world.

So who is your real “threat to democracy”?

A recent bulletin from “co2coalition.org” scientists, among the best of climate experts on Earth (e.g. atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer, and the 2022 Nobel laureate in physics- John Clauser, among others).

“485 million years of non-correlation: CO2 vs temperature”

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adk3705

Quotes:

“How in the world did this new temperature reconstruction get past the Climate Industrial Complex’s censor machine?

“The recent publication by Judd et al looked at nearly half-a-billion years of global surface temperatures and found that, rather living in a time of extraordinarily high temperature, we are in a period of near-historic lows. In fact, the global temperature peaked 100 million years ago at about 96.8oF (36oC) which was 37.8oF (21oC) higher than the temperature for 2023 (59oF and (15oC)! The inconvenient fact for the climate alarmists is that Earth’s temperature has been in a 50-million-year decline.

“We then compared this data to long-term CO2 data (see below) and found that CO2 and temperature don’t correlate very well at all.

“The scientists at the CO2 Coalition have been educating thought leaders and the public in this fact for many years.” (end of quotes)

They reference the paper in the link above that has revealed paleoclimate temperatures were much hotter than today by far, by up to 25 degrees C warmer than today, and more. And during those much warmer past eras, CO2 levels were low. And during eras when atmospheric CO2 was in the multiple thousands of ppm, temperatures were ice-age lows. The lack of correlation between climate and CO2 is the point. Meaning, this evidence undermines the “climate alarmism” narrative quite entirely.

Historical Jesus was “anti-Christ” as in “against the Christology” that Paul used to radically redefine Jesus, Wendell Krossa

Jesus would have had nothing to do with Paul’s Christ myth that was projected onto him two decades after his death, turning “Jesus-ianity” (the Jewish movement led by James) into its entire opposite- “Christ-ianity” (the Gentile movement led by Paul). Point? Honor the man Jesus for who he was and what he actually taught.

Another point here? Just as Plato and Aristotle had an oversized influence on Western civilization, both for good and bad, so Jesus and the Christ of Paul have both had an immense influence on Western narratives, consciousness, and societies, for both good and bad. Bad, as in the influence of apocalyptic millennial ideas on the subsequent apocalyptic crusades of Marxism and Nazism, and their horrific mass-death outcomes (both embracing the “exterminate or be exterminated” phase of failing apocalyptic millennial crusades).

The apocalyptic millennialism of Paul’s Christ myth is now having the same destructive influence through environmental alarmism and its salvation scheme (“save the world”) of Net Zero decarbonization. James Tabor is right that Paul, and his Christ, has influenced us more than anyone or anything else.

The real issue here is that the good stuff in the mix (i.e. the actual message of Jesus as stated in the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel) is distorted at the least, and at worst buried entirely by the bad stuff in the larger context of New Testament Christ mythology. That was Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s point about “diamonds buried in dung”.

Take love, for example. Love in Paul is tribally limited and exclusionary love. Unbelievers are not included in Paul’s version of love, contrary to the inclusive love that was taught by Jesus as per Matthew 5 (“sun and rain are given freely to both good and bad people”). See also Revelation’s later chapters (i.e. ch.19-20) for illustration of the ultimately exclusive love of Paul’s Christ.

The tribal discrimination and exclusion of Paul’s Christ love deforms the true nature of love as taught by Jesus (universal, unconditional). As Bob Brinsmead says- If love is not unconditional then it’s not true love. Just as we could add- Where there is no authentic freedom of equals then there is no authentic love.

This pushes me to challenge the common practice of leaving things just as they are in the New Testament, with its profound “cognitive dissonance” consequence from the merged and mixed opposites of two entirely different realities- i.e. living with the profound contradiction between the persons and messages of Jesus and Christ.

The mixing and merging of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christ has, for two millennia, distorted and buried the stunning new theological insight at the heart of Jesus’ gospel, that God was a “non-retaliatory” deity.

And note further how Paul dishonors the wisdom tradition and message of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. Paul outright mocks that wisdom tradition that Jesus belonged to.

Paul, in his varied letters, further re-enforces the mythology of retaliatory deity that Jesus had rejected. Paul tells the Corinthians that God is punishing them through elements of the natural world- i.e. their sickness and deaths were divine punishment for their sins.

Jesus had straightforwardly rejected that fallacy in stating that God, to the contrary, manifests his character of non-retaliatory, no conditions love through the elements of the natural world, i.e. giving the good gifts of life- sun and rain- to all people equally, without discrimination or exclusion, without hint of retaliatory punishment against “unbelievers”. Jesus stated that there is no threat of an angry deity punishing people through natural disasters, disease, or death.

Paul made repeated efforts to discredit and bury the message of Jesus.

For instance, in Romans 12: 17-20 he directly confronted the core theme of Jesus’ gospel that God was non-retaliatory, and he affirmed, to the contrary, his theology of divine retaliation by quoting an Old Testament statement- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. Add also Paul’s proclamation of ultimate divine retaliation in his letter to the Thessalonians, stating, “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish and destroy all who did not believe my Christ myth”.

Then, as noted above, he attacked the wisdom tradition of Jesus in 1 Corinthians.

Paul also pushed the mythology of ultimate domination by his “’Lord’ Jesus Christ”, who would rule eternally with an iron rod (Revelation 19), demanding, dictator-like, the utter and total subjugation of all. That is a direct contradiction to Jesus’ statement that true greatness was not in domination but in service. Meaning, that if God is great and good then God would serve, not dominate. I would add to Jesus’ point- Where there is domination there is no love.

And remember how Jesus mocked the Jewish longing of his era for the return of a conquering and dominating King? He repeatedly repelled the desires of many of his contemporaries who wanted him to become the new delivering messiah, the true descendent of King David, who would destroy and exterminate their enemies.

Mocking such longing, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. As if to say- Here’s your conquering messiah riding an ass. He would have none of that dominating King stuff. And yes, I reject the contextual details that were added by Luke to make it appear that Jesus was trying to fulfil some promised King mythology.

Bob Brinsmead has been doing some good material recently on how Plato and others influenced the New Testament authors to view the Old Testament as offering all sorts of hidden prophecies of a coming messiah. Thereby twisting OT statements to mean something more than the plain history of the time that they were recording. That is what Luke did when trying to explain Jesus riding the donkey, trying to make it appear as though he was fulfilling the prophecy of a returning King.

Most critical to emphasize in the contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ- Where Jesus had protested the sacrifice industry, and died due to his protest against that industry, Paul turned Jesus’ death into the supreme fulfilment of prophecy for blood sacrifice as the ultimate demand of God. The message of blood sacrifice was the heart and core of Paul’s Christ gospel (“I preach nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified”). That is his central theme in his letter to the Romans, the main presentation of his Christ gospel. In Romans Paul states the demand of his God for the ultimate condition of blood sacrifice as required for salvation.

Where Jesus, to the contrary, had taught that God was no conditions love. No demanded conditions of sacrifice, payment, atonement. None of it. Just unconditional love. Note Jesus’ portrayal of God in the Prodigal Son parable where the Father refuses any attempt at repentance/atonement and instead calls for a celebratory feast.

My point in all the above? If you claim to “believe in Jesus” then honor the man for who he really was and what he actually taught. Do not honor the perversion of him and his message in Paul’s Christ mythology. Be anti-Christ just as Jesus was against the Christology of his time.

The choice is between Jesus-ianity or the entirely opposite Christ-ianity of Paul.

Some inserts before moving on to Bob Brinsmead’s great points on Paul replicating Greek thinking and theology in his Christ.

Neo-Marxism adds new identity markers to the old tribal dualism of collectivism, Wendell Krossa

Neo-Marxism hasn’t abandoned its original tribal dualism- i.e. the oppressors/oppressed division of humanity as in the evil property owners (big corporations, rich people) versus the less fortunate workers/peasants, but the resurging Marxism has added new elements to the traditional identity markers of collectivism. It now also identifies its classes of victimizers/victims in terms of skin color (the new “Woke Racism”), as in whites/Jews/Asians against black and brown colored people. Two classes of people, one all evil, the other all virtuous by dint of skin color. Ah, life is so simple now. Just two types to remember.

Leading DEI theorist Robin DiAngelo said to Christiane Amanpour (recounted in Douglas Murray’s “War on the West”), that she rejects the individual for the general, the “general” meaning the collective identity that she tribally pigeonholes people within, as members of only one of two groups, with membership dogmatically assigned by skin color. Again, as in the new “Woke Racism” (i.e. title of scholar John McWhorter’s book).

Also meaning- She rejects Martin Luther King’s call for colorblind society where we view one another as unique and diverse individuals, not as members of only two collectivist identities.

The Daddy thing driving me (i.e. there are no monsters), Wendell Krossa

This site is driven by a determined impetus (impulsion, driving force), intention, or goal- To alleviate fear, to push back against unnecessary fear and anxiety, whether from natural world threats, and especially to push back against the fears and anxieties that have long been incited by bad “mythical, religious” ideas. Doing what Historical Jesus did before Paul contradicted and buried him and his message.

The project here includes the responsibility to present the evidence that we live in “the best time ever to be alive on Earth”. Contrary to dominant public narratives today, notably “climate crisis” alarmism, life is not declining toward something worse, toward disastrous ending, as a majority of humanity have been led to believe (i.e. that YouGov world survey noted in the Preface to “Ten Global Trends” by Tupy and Bailey of Humanprogress.org).

This site exists to liberate minds and spirits at the deepest levels (subconscious archetypes) from fears that we have inherited from a primitive past. This site traces the historical descent of fear-mongering ideas from ancient mythology to world religions to contemporary belief systems, both religious and “secular/ideological”, even “scientific”.

In regard to the natural world, this site takes the Julian Simon approach that we understand the true state of life, the true state of the world, by examining the best evidence from the best data sources on all the major indicators of life. What does the best evidence tell us about the true status of the four or five most fundamental indicators of life- i.e. the data on ocean fisheries, on land species, on forests, on soils, and the data on climate? Simon and many others have presented volumes of that good evidence. It shows that we are “more creators than destroyers”. That’s 1 for basic human goodness, 0 for the anti-humanism of people as corrupting “virus, cancer” on the planet.

But even more critical in regard to alleviating fear, this site goes behind the physical elements of life, and the human fears that are oriented to the dangers of the natural world, to probe the deepest levels of thought behind human fears, to tackle the foundational contributing factors to the “primal fears” that exacerbate and intensify natural fears. Now we are talking about mythically/religiously incited fear.

Primal fears are incited by bad human mythology that has always intensified natural fears, and has notably magnified the fears of natural disasters beyond all rational perspective.

Primal fears are the product of our ancestors endeavors to explain their natural fears, and intensifying those fears, with myths of deities behind the natural world that were punishing people for being bad. The Japanese woman illustrated the continuing influence of this primal fear factor in her rhetorical question that followed the horror of the 2011 Japanese tsunami- “Are we being punished for enjoying the good life too much?” She believed that God was punishing them through a natural world event.

That woman’s words exposed again the single most-enslaving belief that humans have ever created- i.e. of angry, retaliatory deity punishing us through the natural world. That has added immeasurable misery to human minds over the millennia, adding a further enslaving mental/emotional burden to already intolerable physical suffering. The myth of God punishing human sin through nature has added the incalculable psychic misery of fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, despair, depression, and more to ordinary human suffering.

Nancy Pelosi echoed the very same belief as the Japanese woman when in 2020 she stated that God was punishing humans through a natural world disaster for being bad. She spoke of deity in contemporary terms as “Ma Nature”, stating, “Mother Earth is angry with us”.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-on-wildfires-in-california-and-west-mother-earth-is-angry

The unnecessary additional psychic burden from threat theology is based on the primitive but still widespread mythology that there are greater forces or spirits/deities that threaten and punish people through natural disaster, destruction, disease, and death.

Further, to add to this mess, there are the primal fears of after-life harm, eternal rejection, tribal exclusion, horrific torture, and destruction (i.e. the psychopathology of hell myths).

Paul also pushed this pathology of God punishing human sin through natural world elements, i.e. through disasters and disease, in his warning to the Corinthians that they were sick and dying consequent to their sins. He referred to the Old Testament incident where God sent venomous snakes to poison the sinning Hebrews and told the Corinthians that a similar divine punishment was being executed on them.

Historical Jesus would have none of that egregious fallacy and said that, contrary to an angry god punishing people through the natural world, there was an unconditionally loving deity behind nature who generously gave the good gifts of life to both good and “sinful” people (those outside Jewish law). His point? There is no divine judgment, no retaliation, and no punishment.

Jesus’ statement- “Let there be no more retaliatory eye for eye response to enemies but instead love your enemies because God does. How so? God gives the critical gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain for agrarian life- to both good and bad people.”

Historical Jesus wiped out the psychopathology of punitive deity expressing anger at imperfect people through nature with one clear statement that there was no such retaliatory God behind the world. There was only the God of unconditional love.

The NDE movement, the latest phase of human spirituality, has clearly affirmed the Jesus message on “no conditions” deity. The NDE movement (at least the better experiences in that movement) states repeatedly that there is only a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love behind all reality. Meaning- There is no ultimate monster.

Again, that means… Do I have to spell out the details(?), that there is no threat of judgement, no tribal exclusion of unbelievers, no divine domination that violates human freedom, and no punitive violence or destruction. Among many other “no” elements. One can only hope, eh. But you see how that insight of Historical Jesus overturns the mythical/religious basis of primal fears?

Then also consider this- Oneness has been discovered as a fundamental feature of reality (i.e. quantum entanglement). Oneness is also a fundamental feature of humanity (i.e. “Mitochondrial Eve” as the best explanation of human origins, meaning that all humans alive on earth today are from the same ancient mother). And then the NDE movement further affirms human oneness with deity, and oneness with all things.

This discovery of oneness is among the more common general insights of the NDE movement. Many of those people state their surprise to discover that we are one with the transcendent Love that is God. They add that we are never separated from that Light and Love while we are in this world. And that ultimate Love is also our essence, our true self.

That means, and this is critical to counter the anti-human insanity of today, that we are not the “fallen, sinful” beings taught by religious traditions. And we are not the “virus, cancer” taught by secular belief systems.

Most of us struggle with our imperfect status/state in this world, and we are often misled by bad ideas to do stupid and bad things. But that does not change the underlying truth that we are inherently love, love is our true nature and self.

And our future home is to return to the Ultimate Love that birthed us. That is the hope element that pulls us forward. The tug of our human spirits toward something ever better than what is.

And based on the above insights, we can know that everything that happens to us in life, down to daily details, has a purpose and meaning that comes from ultimate love. There are no real accidents in life. All is grounded in and backed by love. So also the NDE people affirm this.

These insights are offered to counter the overwhelming anti-humanism in so many public and personal narratives that descend from religious myths of original sinfulness, fallen humanity deserving retaliatory punishment and destruction.

Note:

Why touch base with NDEs? Because no one else across the millennia has ever offered the insight into the true nature of deity as unconditional reality. No one, aside from Historical Jesus. No religion has ever communicated this true unconditional nature of God to humanity.

All religions are fundamentally highly conditional traditions- existing to present the conditions of right belief, demanded sacrifices/payments, atonement, required rituals and lifestyle as identity markers of true believers in the religion. Religious conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions.

The fundamental conditional nature of all religion distorts and buries the truth of an unconditional God. Entirely buries that truth.

To communicate God as unconditional reality would spell the death of conditional religion. To embrace such a core belief would undermine all the conditions of religious traditions. And also end the authority of mediating priesthoods who exist to communicate and burden people with the endless conditions demanded to please and placate their deities.

My own experience of holding the “secular/ideological” version of apocalyptic millennialism, Wendell Krossa

Soon after leaving UBCs School of Planning, a friend urged me to read Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. That pushed me to recognize that, even though I assumed that I had “left my religion” over previous decades, I was still holding the core beliefs of the apocalyptic worldview, only in a secular version (i.e. environmental alarmism) that was common to the modern world.

I had abandoned the outer trimmings of a religious tradition but still held to the core mythical beliefs of that system, similar to most other moderns, many identifying as “secular materialist”, even atheist. That leaves most people in the state of believing themselves to be intellectually modern but still holding the most primitive ideas from a subhuman past.

After reading Simon and coming to my senses, because of what Simon says, things changed. Radically so.

Personally, that “awakening” (becoming truly woke) resulted in a more thorough re-evaluation of my personal narrative, a more complete “death to the old and rebirth to something entirely new”, a total revamping of my belief system that I have summarized and posted on this site in such things as “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”.

Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

Point in offering my personal experience? Many moderns, similarly identifying as “secular” even materialist/atheist, continue to hold personal narratives that are shaped by profoundly mythical themes inherited from a primitive past. See the summaries below of the complex of mythical themes that have long dominated religious traditions and today shape “secular/ideological” and even scientific belief systems- i.e. the complex of “lost paradise, life ruined by corrupt people, life declining toward a worsening state, toward apocalyptic ending, demand for sacrifice/payment, demand for purging evil threat to life, and promise of restored paradise, or new utopian society”.

Note: Sitesplainin’, Wendell Krossa

I am not a “believer in Jesus”. I do not believe that people need to “accept Jesus into their hearts” or become devoted to Jesus, to “love Jesus”, to have a relationship with Lord Jesus. But I do honor the man for his brilliant insight into the true nature of God as unconditional love, an insight into the true nature of ultimate love, an insight that took us to the highest, to the transcendent reach of love.

And I believe his insight can helpfully influence people in the sense of liberating minds and spirits from millennia of personality-deforming threat theology. All religious traditions have given us the inheritance of threatening gods (i.e. the “threat theology” god theories created by our primitive ancestors).

Threat theologies, as in the mythology of angry gods punishing people through natural disasters, disease, and accidents, have intensified this-world human fears and anxieties as well as intensified the deforming influence of shame, guilt, despair, and nihilism. Threat theology has subsequently been used to coerce people to submit to the mental/emotional and physical domination of priesthoods and their religious authority backed with innumerable meddling, controlling conditions. It has all been a horrific history of unbearable mental and emotional slavery. There is no worse enslavement than mental emotional slavery. You can exist as free in body but be entirely enslaved in mind and spirit.

Threat theology has dominated humanity for millennia. The man Jesus offered the ultimate and final freedom for human minds and spirits, freedom from threat theology. But his breakthrough insight, and related liberation movement, was short-circuited and then buried by Paul in his retreat to primitive threat theology.

Honor the man Jesus for who he was and what he actually taught. That is true belief in Jesus.

He gave us the single most profoundly humane insight ever offered, in taking love to its highest, most humane reach. He offered the single best example of a “behavior based on belief”.

Grasping the reality of an unconditional God is not license to go out and do all kinds of stupid things. While a sense of ultimate safety liberates us to create a unique and new life story, we are all still under obligation to respect the natural and social consequences of our societies. We all have to find the line and balance between order and chaos in life. Note, for example, that after the 60s invention of the pill there was very little discussion of the consequences of sexual freedoms (i.e. mental, emotional as well as physical consequences). We humans tend to swing between extremes (the recent Diddy thing comes to mind). Ah, we are still learning, eh.

Preface to Bob’s comments below

Most everything in human thought today is the offspring of things that were created before, by our primitive ancestors. Revolutionary new ideas in the “spiritual/ethical realm” emerge rarely, insights contrary to all that we have inherited. One insight alone stands out against the backdrop of the entire history of human thought as uniquely fresh and new and against all that went before, entirely against. I refer to the core insight of Historical Jesus.

To the contrary, Paul’s Christ was as old as the fundamental themes of primitive Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian mythologies. Paul’s Christ was just another rehash of the very same ideas. Rehashing the same old themes of retaliation, tribal exclusion, domination, and punitive destruction. But yes, it was given the new twist of supreme cosmic Savior of all humanity, a universal status.

Below Bob Brinsmead explains how Greek thought and practice shaped Christianity into another Hellenistic religion. Paul, soundly based in Greek philosophy, created his Christ as another Greek god. Bob explains how Paul and the New Testament authors followed Greek philosophy and the Greek practice of treating this world features as allegories/types/figures of the “more real” invisible Forms or Ideals.

Bob’s posts:

“Someone has been quoted for his arresting saying, “God hates obedience.” In an important respect, this is profoundly right. Jesus told his disciples that their disposition to attain to greatness was of the same bent to domination that Gentiles seek after. It also comes through in Daniel 7, an apocalyptic book, where the son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days to receive the kingdom and the dominion from the Ancient of Days. Bound up with these notions are false ideas of a Monarchical Sky god rather the kind of greatness which Jesus said considered in being the greatest in the service of others.

“The Greek images of associations of kings who were the divine offspring of the gods and were entitled to having dominion over others is the kind of Christ that Jesus resisted and even mocked by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Conquering Greco-Roman emperors do not ride to dominion on donkeys! This is a parody of their notion of dominion. Jesus lampooned the popular notions of an apocalyptic messiah – like the one depicted in the book of Revelation… Patricia Williams says that the two main reasons they killed Jesus is that he mocked the kind of messianic kingdom they were expecting, and he rejected the temple sacrifices.

“Jesus was the great anti-Christ of human history.”

Another from Bob on how Greek views of history treated it as allegorical. This Hellenism shaped Paul and early Christian treatment of the Old Testament as allegory prophesying the coming Christ:

“Here is a summary of my recent studies on where Jewish Hellenism led: Treating the Hebrew scripture as not real but only as typology, allegory, symbolism. This is all classical Hellenism. It comes from Plato, and was developed by Philo of Alexandria- the greatest Jewish writer of the first century era. Philo influenced Paul. The so-called proof texts for Jesus being the Messiah/Christ all treat the Hebrew accounts as not real things but only types of the real thing. For example, the book of Hebrews and the tabernacle as a pattern of things in the heavens. This treats the OT as an allegorical. To the Hellenist, the mythical, the heavenly etc. is the real. To the Hebrews of the apostolic church the real was the historical.

“The Christ of Paul, the beyond-death-Jesus, is mythical. The real Jesus was not apocalyptic, for apocalyptic is the realm of the mythical. The real Jesus was non-violent in his ethics and theology. The mythical Christ is violent. Jesus killed no one at his coming. The Christ will kill millions at his coming. Jesus dispensed with the violent images of the OT. The mythical Christ puts the violence of the OT on steroids with a blood atonement and Hell fire. The name Jesus Christ is a total oxymoron. E.g. real versus mythical, non-violent versus violent, non-apocalyptic versus apocalyptic, love versus violence as the final solution to violence.

“Christology was constructed over a 400-year speculative romp in things supposedly happening beyond this life. It is Classic Hellenism as if crafted to suit the tastes of the Greco-Roman Empire. Crafting a Christ that looked like he had just stepped out of a Greek myth– in the image of a Greek king, a Greek virgin birth (certainly not Hebrew), Greek dying and rising divinity, Greek mystery supper of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the godman, etc., from Greek myth to Christian myth– a creation of Hellenism with first steps taken in the cradle of Antioch.

“There is nothing more certainly believed than that which is not known.” (Montagne)

Here is another from Bob on Plato’s influence leading the early Christians to view the Old Testament as allegorical, figurative, typological (all pointing toward and prophesying a coming Christ). Bob’s larger point is how Paul’s Christ myth is shaped by the Greek mythology that Paul admired and imbibed. Paul and the New Testament writers follow the Greek practice of viewing this world as types, figures, allegories of things more “Real” in the heavenly realms (i.e. the realm of invisible Forms, Ideals). Consequently, Paul did not focus Christians on life in this world but on the world to come where Christ dominated. That was the “real”.

Paul’s Christ and Christianity are Greek through and through, hence the success of Paul’s Christianity throughout the Roman empire that was itself heavily indebted to the Greeks as the Roman elites were dominated entirely by Greek philosophers. The Roman elites were in awe of Plato and Aristotle and subjected their minds and messaging entirely to Greek philosophy. There was no independent Roman way of thinking (Arthur Herman details this in his history of the influence of Plato and Aristotle across history in “The Cave and the Light”). Point? Paul created his Christ myth in the larger context of Roman domination during his time.

Brinsmead’s comments:

“In another letter missing here, Heppenstal struggles with the way the New Testament cites Old Testament passages. These are my comments on the Platonic influence of Hellenism on the Greek-speaking Jews. For a long time we have skirted around the way the NT writers (all Hellenist Christians) used the Old Testament. Here are some of my comments…

“Hep raises the issue of how the NT and the early Christians interpreted the OT. I suggest this is an area which heretofore has been poorly understood.

“The NT methodology of using the OT is the method used by the Greek-speaking Jews known as the Hellenists. They acquired the name of Christians at Antioch.

“Hellenism had a background that goes way back to Alexander the Great and the spread of Hellenistic language, culture, philosophy and religion. Hellenism penetrated Judaism and for at least two centuries had a big impact. There were a lot of admirable things about the spread of Hellenism. It spawned all kinds of associations with buildings for libraries, gymnasiums, recitals of poetry, theatre, learning, sculpture, medicine and everything related to the cultivation and development of mind and body. Within the Jewish community, it attracted the more liberal, affluent and educated people, but always caused a lot tension with the more conservative or Aramaic speaking Jews which Acts 6 calls the Hebrews.

“The NT was written by Hellenists and that includes Paul. The entire NT, except the Pauline letters, were written post-70 CE.

“The standout Jewish thinker and writer in the time of Jesus was the Hellenist philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. He was the classical Hellenist who embraced Platonic thought about earthly things being only shadowy copies, allegories, types, figures of the Real meta-physical heavenly Forms. This worldview explains so much of the features of the Greek culture and religious thinking. Philo used Platonic thought to forge a harmony between the Jewish Torah and Greek philosophy using allegorical, figurative, typological interpretation of Hebrew scripture via the Greek Septuagint version. In this mode of interpretation, Jewish Scripture/Torah, whether it was lore or law, became a figure, an allegory or example of the Real. This effectively emptied the text of its actual history and real historical meaning.

“In this way Matthew can take passages out of his Septuagint bible, that had nothing in its context about a prophecy of a coming Messiah, to read the passage as if that was the only real purpose of the passage. If we would use our common sense, or rational thinking, we might say that that Matthew is being intellectually dishonest because there is nothing in Hosea that even remotely sounds like a prophecy of Jesus coming out of Egypt and nothing in Isaiah 7 that remotely makes a prophecy about the birth of the Messiah.

“This method of interpretation was the way of Platonic Hellenism, and Paul exhibits this method constantly. An outrageous example of this is when he cites, in his letter to the Corinthians, a passage from the Torah about not muzzling the ox that treads out the corn. Paul denies that this law shows that God is concerned about the welfare of animals. He empties the passage of any real meaning in historical context with his Greek allegorical nonsense…. But this sort of Biblical use does not happen in just one single place. It represents Paul’s overall view of OT scripture. This method takes what is earthly and meaningful and turns it into something considered real. This Platonic principle means that the real is made to be apocalyptic, heavenly, spiritual, and mythical.

“How much of the OT is “interpreted by the Holy Spirit” and how much of it is inspired by Plato?

“Hellenism is certainly not all bad, but we need to be aware that the Christian religion which was able to penetrate the Greco-Roman Empire was heavily influenced by Hellenism and hence became so compatible to that culture. But at the same time it was poorly qualified to penetrate the Semitic culture of the East that remained outside the Roman Empire.

“Here is a great quote out of Koester (“The History, Culture and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”): “Even when Greek culture encountered the Roman, the Greek element prevailed, the while the eastern part of the Roman empire remained essentially Greek, and the Greek language and culture as well as Greek religion gained considerable ground even in the Latin west… Indeed, Christianity, which had its beginnings in the early Roman imperial period, was rapidly Hellenized and appeared in the Roman world as a Hellenistic religion, specifically as the heir to an already Hellenized Jewish religion.”

“What was the birthplace and where was the cradle of the Hellenized Christian religion? Antioch.

“What group did Saul of Tarsus persecute? Not the James party who were called the Hebrews, but the Hellenists.

“To what was Saul converted to became Paul the apostle? To the Hellenists in Antioch.

“Did Paul visit the apostles at Jerusalem when he was converted? No, and only after three years did he make a brief visit to Jerusalem and another visit 17 years after his conversion. The relationship between James and Paul, Jerusalem and Antioch, was cool at best and hostile at worst.

“What about Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem? He was treated disgracefully by James who might have used his huge public influence to save Paul from arrest by the Roman authorities. Paul was left by the Jerusalem church to stew in his own juice. And what about Paul’s great collection as a gift from the Gentile Churches? It was apparently scorned by the brother of Jesus… almost as unthinkable as leaving Paul to be carted off to Rome for execution!

“What happened when James was stoned soon after at the orders of the High Priest? The public protest among the Jews was so great that the Roman authorities dismissed the High Priest just three months after his appointment. According to Josephus, it was generally believed that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple soon after the death of James was a divine punishment for putting James the Just to death.

“Did this favourable attitude toward the Jerusalem “church” of the Nazarenes or Hebrews continue after the outbreak of hostilities with Rome? No, the tide of goodwill toward the Nazarenes dissipated because, being pacifists or advocates of non-violence, they were regarded as non-patriotic or even traitors of the Jewish nation. So, they lost their previous goodwill. They were expelled from Judaism and the synagogues 20 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.

“What was so life-threatening about being expelled from the synagogue? Because the Jews were granted freedom by Rome not to be involved in military service like all other indigenous peoples of the Empire and Jews were not required to engage in Emperor worship. Refusal of either obligation could result in death. This is why most of the Jewish Jesus people, such as the Ebionites, moved East to be out of the reach of the Roman Empire and later, the reach of the Christian Empire.

“What is so deficient about this treatment of history as presented in the book of Acts? The book of Acts does not admit to the seriousness of the tension between James and Paul, Jerusalem and Antioch, or frankly acknowledge that, like Abraham had two sons so the Jesus movement had two sons, the Hebrews and the Hellenists. The Jesus movement did not develop like a seamless robe as presented in the book of Acts, but more like the two sons of Abraham who are still hostile to each other as Jew and Arab.

“How might we reflect on this kind of brotherly estrangement? Joseph said to his brothers when he sent them home to Canaan, “You will not see my face unless your brother is with you.”

Another from Bob:

“Apocalyptic is the worldview that this world is not our home, but home becomes the one beyond the apocalypse which is called Heaven. Heaven is mythical language. It forms the view that heaven is God’s home and therefore our true home, and therefore our life and our affections have to be centred where this mythical Christ is at God’s right hand. It is all mythical.

“The Hebrew thinking is very different. This world is our home. God is in this place as much as God is in any other place and God is present in this time as much as God will be present in some post-Apocalyptic time. We should cherish this world as our home and make it the best within our powers. This is a good world where we sow and reap, work, play and eat, and a place of rain and sunshine, birds and lilies, and so many things for which to give thanks, to love and to share, etc. To do what our hands find to do with all our might for we have no other time to make this world what it should be.

“Jesus never regaled people about the next life in heaven or life after death. We know nothing beyond. It is God’s surprise and we need know nothing about it. All speculation of what we will be doing hereafter is in the same category of trying to understand what happened to Jesus when he died- which was the same thing that happened to my grandmother when she died. That realm is mythical.

“Christology is myth. Paul forged the greatest myth in the history of mankind– but unlike the teachings of Jesus which are all focused on this world and how to live in it in the here and now, Paul’s Christ myth is all focussed on living in heaven, as it says, “Let your way of life be in heaven and not on this earth.”

“Some observations: You need to put Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age” alongside of your classic literature such as Herman’s “Cave and Light”.

“Don’t neglect to look at Plato’s Forms and the realm of the heavenly or meta-physical as real and this world as types, figures, allegories of the heavenly. This leads to Philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria using allegory, patterns, figures, symbolism to interpret Hebrew scripture to bring it into harmony with Greek philosophy. This is the method Paul and the rest of the Christian Hellenists used to interpret the OT as if history there was not real or to be taken at face value but only used to foreshadow Christ, and so on.

More from Bob

“It was Persian Zoroastrianism influence that developed Judean apocalyptic that became the prevailing worldview of Judaism in the first century. Then that Judean apocalypticism was amalgamated to Judean Hellenism to create Christian Hellenism. The Fall story of Genesis 2-3 was copied straight out of Zarathustra’s vision. He was the true father of the apocalyptic worldview of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

“A worldview dominated by the Fall of man myth began with Zarathustra (Zoroaster). The OT prophets did not have a theology of the Fall. Their theology was founded in the story of the Exodus as the story or worldview of human progress, the opposite of the Fall thinking. You can’t find the Fall of man thinking until you find it as the foundation of Jewish Apocalyptic literature in the 2nd century.

“I would like to know to what extent did the Zoroastrian thinking influence the worldview in Greek culture and thinking.

“Apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology (Kaseman) and to that valid observation we must add this: And Hellenism was the father of all Christian Christology/theology.

“I have already observed that while Jesus’ existence is not a myth just as John the Baptizer is not a myth, but the Christ of the Hellenists of Antioch is a myth.

“In his ‘Honest to Jesus’, Funk points out how the NT Gospels are an amalgamation of history and myth. The authors were writing of an historical figure to which they added legendary material such as nativity stories and the account of the apocalypse, supposedly according to Jesus. They also added the great nature miracles and stories like the raising of Lazarus and some parables which are junk, such as the Ten Virgins (yuk!) and the Rich Man and the Beggar at his gate. The authors are all post-Paul and post-70 CE or post-Second Temple era. They are written by Hellenists to support the Christology of Antioch and to refute the non-Christology of Jerusalem. These authors, following Paul, tried to unite Apocalyptic Judaism with the theology of the Jewish Hellenists that soon became Gentile Hellenism. It was Kaseman who said that Apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology, and we may add that Hellenism was the father of it.

“I have done further research into the influence of Hellenism, beginning with Plato, on the Jewish Hellenists with whom Paul joined forces. What strikes me as having enormous significance, is how the influence of Plato on Philo of Alexandria influenced the way the Greek-speaking NT authors, including Paul, adopted the Platonic method of applying his interpretative principles to the Septuagint Version of OT. Platonic thinking and Philo’s attempts to amalgamate Judaism and Hellenism led directly to interpreting the scripture allegorically/figurately/typologically/symbolically which are all terms to identify the methodology.

“To give one supreme example, the book of Hebrews interprets the Jewish sanctuary ritual as a type of the heavenly Patterns or Forms. This is classically Platonic.

“Paul uses the Law in this Hellenist way too when he interprets the story of the two women in Abraham’s life as an allegory (see Galatians 4). Or when, in his Corinthian letter, he takes the law about not muzzling the oxen which tread out the corn as having no intrinsic value (“does God care for oxen. Of course not!”) but only as allegorical or typological is it of value. These are not isolated instances of how Paul uses (and abuses) Scripture by ignoring the historical context as having real meaning. It is this Hellenist use of Scripture that is found in the greatest Jewish writer of the first century- Philo of Alexandria– that devalues the actual history being referred to in Hebrew scripture by making room for what is the real meaning of history by turning it into an allegory about heavenly Forms.

“I refer also to Matthew’s series of so-called messianic proof texts where he uses (abuses) scripture in this way. For example, he reads how the prophet is talking about God calling Israel as his son out of Egypt. The context in Hosea is not remotely connected to a prophecy of a future Messiah, but Matthew ignores the real point of Hosea and turns it into an allegory of the coming Messiah. He does the same with Isaiah 7:14 which is an account of the prophet’s wife bearing a son who won’t make his teens before the nations of Judah and Israel will lose both their kings. The historical context does not mean a thing to Matthew anymore than the law about caring for your beast means a thing to Paul.

“People have wondered where in the Scripture Paul is citing when he says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture.” There is no such scripture. Paul is just using a far-fetched allegory, or typology or what have you, and lifting it right out of its historical context. According to Paul you can take every OT story, devalue its history and its real meaning, and read in it a message for the present end-time- an allegory for those “upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Amazing!

“This gives way to any hair-brained expositor who is able to “find Christ” in any story or incident in the OT– in every piece of cloth or arrangement or every joint in the tabernacle– all is taken to be an allegory of Christ. Just think of all those animals sacrificed on altars for century after century, supposedly to be read off as figurative lessons about Christ– a Hellenist one, for sure! The real Jesus loathed the wretched institution of animal sacrifices which really originated in primitive people killing humans to propitiate the gods, and did such ghastly things until sacrificing animals to the gods was a humane step forward.

“Yet religious minds turned this sub-human religiosity into allegories- shadows, copies (as Plato would say) of the heavenly or meta-physical Forms. The protest of the Hebrew prophets against this appalling blood-letting institution of the temple wasn’t enough for the Jews to reform away from this barbaric human behaviour until they had killed John and Jesus for revivifying the protest of the prophets. No, no. Hellenism had to turn the teaching of Jesus around to make him the supreme sacrifice which invested all that animal slaughter with a sacred significance. That was not the work of those who like James and the apostles had listened to the teachings of Jesus, but it was the work of the Hellenists who raised the Christology of the Christian religion in the cradle of Antioch rather than Jerusalem.

“I recommend the reading of Helmet Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”. He says, “Christianity was deeply engaged in the process through which it became one with the Hellenistic world and its religious concepts”, p. 201. “Christianity, probably more than the other religions of its time, was able to adapt itself to a variety of cultural and religious currents and to appropriate a numbers of foreign elements until it was ready to succeed as a world religion, thoroughly syncretistic in every way,” p. 166-167.” (End of Brinsmead quotes)

This on climate

“Media confirms the Earth is not abnormally warm. Rather, it is in its coldest period in 485 million years”, Anthony Watts, Sept. 25, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/09/25/media-confirms-the-earth-is-not-abnormally-warm-rather-it-is-in-its-coldest-period-in-485-million-years/

Quotes:

“Recently, many media outlets touted a new scientific study “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature” as proof that the current modest rise in temperature over the last 150 years is going to be catastrophic. The data and the methodology used strongly suggest that such claims are false.

Watts notes that media are predicting doom and gloom for the immediate future due to climate change, but they are ignoring the bigger paleoclimate picture that falsifies their apocalyptic narrative on climate. Media are ignoring the fact that today’s climate is the “coolest Earth has been in 485 million years”. They also ignore the wide swings in temperature that all happened naturally before human and the industrial revolution.

“At its hottest, the study suggests, the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) — far higher than the historic 58.96 F (14.98 C) the planet hit last year.”

Watts concludes: “It is clear that the media wanted to spin this scientific study, which makes no alarming claims at all, into a tool to bolster their erroneous viewpoint that the world presently faces a “climate crisis” caused by humans. However, the data clearly show that the Earth’s temperature and the climates of its varied regions, have shifted radically in the past, that present temperatures are much cooler than has been the norm for the majority of Earth’s geological history, and that humans have lived through both cooler and warmer temperatures than we are currently experiencing at various points in history.

“It is a shame, but not unexpected, that the mainstream media spins reports such as these into something frightening. Such behavior is not only dishonest, but reprehensible.”

Disarming the alarming

“True, New York Post, Oft-Cited Climate Catastrophes Have Not Materialized”, Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Sept. 26, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/09/26/true-new-york-post-oft-cited-climate-catastrophes-have-not-materialized/

Lueken notes that Bjorn Lomborg has recently pointed out mainstream media alarms over polar bears, Great Barrier Reef, and flooding Pacific Island nations have all proven false. Yet climate activists refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence and move on to continue their obsession with panic-mongering the public and pushing destructive climate policies.

The climate alarmists are even trying to incite alarm over the amazing global greening that has resulted from the inconvenient fact of more basic plant food in the atmosphere- i.e. CO2. Alarmists claim that more food for animals and increased crop production for humans is “dangerous”.

Lueken quotes Lomborg on polar bears: “after years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible for them to ignore a mountain of evidence showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially from around 12,000 in the 1960s to around 26,000 in the present day.”

On the alarmism over the apparent disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef, she says, “Lomborg recalls that ‘scientists predicted the reef would be decimated by 2022,’ and ‘The Guardian even published an obituary.’ He points out that the GBR has more coral cover right now in 2024 than at any point in time since recordkeeping began in 1985.”

And when the evidence comes out that the alarms are false- “’The good news gets a fraction of the coverage that the scare stories did, Lomborg writes.”

She adds Lomborg’s point that almost all Pacific Islands are increasing in size and not sinking beneath the ocean. “‘While rising sea levels do erode land, additional sand from old coral is washed up on low-lying shores,’ Lomborg explains, and ‘studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-caused erosion, meaning the land area of Tuvalu is increasing.'”

Her conclusion on the New York Post article publishing Lomborg’s evidence: “No doubt the Post will get some hate mail for it, but it is a sign of a good news organization dedicated to serving its reader’s interests by following the facts where-ever they lead, even on controversial topics, to publish the truth, however unalarming, rather than hyperbole and lies.”

Good advice from Jordan Peterson posted on his Mondays of Meaning newsletter: Confront Your Fears To Improve Your Life

“As a clinician, I often witnessed the curative in therapy to be truth. This is characteristic of clinical experience and described explicitly by great clinicians. Truth is, indeed, what cures in therapy, and exposure to what you are afraid of and avoiding is a form of truth. If, for example, you know there is a task you should undertake by your own set of rules but you are avoiding it, then you are enacting a lie.

“But if you can face what the task is — and confront what you should not be avoiding — then you engage in the process of attempting to act out your deepest truth. That radically improves people’s lives, the clinical evidence of which is overwhelming.

“If you were to come talk to me about some problems, first of all, you have admitted they exist. That is a good start. Second, if you explain them, we can begin discussing solutions you can then act out to assess if they work. But if you do not admit the problems exist, solutions are not possible. While it might be comfortable moment-to-moment staying encapsulated in a delusion, avoidance ultimately will not work.

“You must practice exposure carefully, cautiously, and voluntarily, but if you are exposed to what you are afraid of and have been avoiding, we know that you get better. Clinicians have established this process as credible. Furthermore, this clinical experience is redemptive because it is designed to address suffering insofar as the people who are engaged in the process tell the truth.”

What to make of the endless warnings from one side… “They are a threat to democracy”. Meaning- Every smear projected onto the differing/dissenting other is a confession (Dr. Drew Pinsky).

This from the comments section below a post from Michael Shellenberger:

“’The much hyped “threat to Democracy”? Truly, all that means is ‘threat to Democrat-Party domination.’”

https://www.public.news/p/theyre-trying-to-normalize-censorship

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on New report confirms we are in the coldest time on Earth. Oops, there goes the “climate crisis” narrative and related gravy train.

The new totalitarianism now in full tidal surge- and a “commoner’s” comments on a bunch of things

See below: Lines of historical descent: Plato depressed the Romans who depressed Paul and the rest of us (notably children) over subsequent millennia

A whole bunch more below, in this opening section, notably on the Jesus versus Paul’s Christ thing- “Honoring the wrong person and the wrong message: History’s greatest contradiction has shaped Western civilization for both good and bad” (playing a bit with Arthur Herman’s research on the influence of Plato and Aristotle on Western civilization).

As oft noted here- History’s greatest oxymoron (two contradictory things held in conjunction) has resulted in history’s most profound cognitive dissonance (holding two entirely contradictory beliefs), this “Mother of all oxymorons” is right there in the mixing and merging of Jesus in Paul’s Christ. Two entirely opposite persons with two fundamentally opposite theologies/messages. As Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy said, “Diamonds/pearls buried in ….…”. Ah,… the Canadian in me wants to be nice.

And some comment on good science versus philosophical materialism’s perversion of science (i.e. the dogmatic demand for materialist conclusions about ultimate realities and other mysteries, and the materialist’s constant crossing of the science/philosophy boundary, just like all others curious about the “spiritual”). And comment on materialism’s conflict with “spiritual” insights, spiritual as in “let 8 billion flowers bloom”, not religious spirituality. And more…

This from Humanprogress.org’s latest “Weekly Progress Roundup” (Sept. 15, 2024), a newsletter worth subscribing to that affirms that we live in the best time ever to be alive on Earth. Life is not declining toward something worse but is on a long-term rising trajectory toward an ever better future.

https://humanprogress.org/easter-islands-population-never-collapsed-dna-study-suggests/

This report responds to Jared Diamond’s tale of the collapse of Easter Island as his warning illustration of the coming apocalyptic collapse of human civilization, based on the fallacy of limited resources. Bill Rees referred to Diamond’s fable to buttress his own version of apocalyptic in his “Ecological Footprint” model (yes, I took most of his courses at UBC). What these apocalyptic prophets missed was the unlimited potential of human minds- the “Ultimate Resource”, according to Julian Simon. And they missed the fact that though varied societies have ended across history, the overall human venture in human civilization has progressed from strength to strength on a grand trajectory of improvement. Place that emergence and rise of human civilization in the larger context of our exodus from animal existence- the meta-story of humanity.

See “From Retaliation to Unconditional love- the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human”, Wendell Krossa

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809

These quotes from the Humanprogress.org link above

“The history of Easter Island has long served as an environmental fable.

“The popular “ecocide” theory claims that, during their escalating obsession with building the famous Moai statues, the native Rapa Nui people deforested their once-verdant island, creating an ecological crisis that led to population collapse, cannibalism, and a complete reordering of Rapa Nui society.

“A new study raises serious doubts about this narrative. After analyzing the remains of 15 ancient islanders, researchers found no evidence of the drop in genetic diversity one would expect after a population collapse. In fact, the genomes suggest Easter Island’s population grew steadily until European contact. According to archaeo-geneticists Stephan Schiffels and Kathrin Nägele, “the study concludes that there were never more than 3,000 people living on Rapa Nui — a number close to that observed by the first colonizers and far from a previous estimate of 15,000 inhabitants — implying that the hypothesized collapse was always a fantasy.”

“Clearly Easter Island was deforested, but it seems the Rapa Nui adapted to that environmental change and continued to thrive for hundreds of years. Humanity has once again proven to be more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.”

Malcolm Cochran, Digital Communications Manager

Added note: Bill Rees, father of the Ecological Footprint as “apocalyptic prophet”? Huh? Yes, in a later online discussion with Bill (after I left the School of Community and Regional Planning where Rees was director), I mentioned to him that his views, and EF model, were very apocalyptic in nature. His response: “Well, apocalypse is true, isn’t it”. Sheesh, eh.

This is a stimulating discussion on Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), episode 2201, available on YouTube or Spotify. A discussion with researcher Robert Epstein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azu8XnZdxeA&t=6122s

The YouTube blurb on this episode of JRE:

“Robert Epstein is an author, editor, and psychology researcher. He is a former editor-in-chief of “Psychology Today” and currently serves as Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He also founded the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.”

Epstein adds that he is a Democrate who voted for Hilary in 2016.

Epstein presents disturbing research on the bias of Google in presenting tailored information to searching individuals and the political manipulation that goes on with that presentation of information, that is basically, as Rogan says, “interference in elections”, interference that influences millions of votes. Epstein says that due to this secretive manipulation by Google, there have been no free and fair elections since 2012. Our democracies are an illusion. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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A main project here- Go after basic themes that drive and validate alarmism crusades

This good science below from sources like “co2coalition.org”, where atmospheric physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others like 2022 Nobel laureate in physics John Clauser, post their research. My point is to focus on the physics of CO2 which shows that the warming influence of CO2 is now “saturated”, meaning it will contribute very little if any to further warming, if such warming should continue to occur.

Takeaway from their research? It is natural factors that are mainly responsible for climate change, not CO2. And warming has not and is not becoming a “crisis”. It has been mild (roughly 1 degree C over the past century) and hugely beneficial to all life, just as the increase in CO2 has been hugely beneficial to all life in adding some 15% more green vegetation to the world since 1980.

Again, there is no good scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.

Climate facts:

Outgoing longwave radiation (thermal radiation) spans wavelengths from 4 to 100 micrometers (UM). CO2 absorbs that radiation at 15 micrometers on the longwave spectrum. CO2 re-emits the absorbed outgoing longwave radiation in all directions, sending about 50% back downward to contribute a minor influence to any warming.

This quote from the third link below…

“Although there is little-to-no evidence of any significant changes in the earth’s climate since the post-industrial age [2,6,7], man-made global warming proponents are concerned because measured CO2 levels have increased by about 30% over the past 100 years (0.028% to 0.041%), and CO2 has been identified as a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

“However, skeptics argue that not only are current CO2 levels in the atmosphere negligible compared to levels seen in the history of the planet, but that the infrared radiation wavelengths that are absorbed by CO2 are already saturated, so the maximum CO2 effect on the earth’s temperature has already been reached, as will be discussed further below. Thus, adding more CO2 beyond current levels is not likely to have much effect on global warming.

“In fact, warming of the earth is related to many other factors, including the natural variability of the climate. In any case, the role of CO2 itself is insignificant compared to that of water vapor, which is present in the atmosphere up to 4%, i.e., 100 times more than CO2. In addition, the H2O molecule has a higher warming potential than the CO2 molecule. Moreover, man’s contribution to global warming gases is tiny compared to that of natural processes, as will also be described below.”

https://co2coalition.org/facts/the-warming-effect-of-each-molecule-of-co2-declines-as-its-concentration-increases/

https://co2coalition.org/media/how-co2-saves-the-earth-greenhouse-gas-have-vital-warming-cooling-effects/

https://co2coalition.org/publications/why-human-contribution-to-climate-change-is-minimal-and-negligible/

New comment below: The narrative themes that are driving the climate alarmism crusade. No different from the same old myths that shaped “the profoundly religious crusades” of Marxism and Nazism, and all previous apocalyptic crusades. Note David Redles’ good historical detail (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”) on how Hitler used apocalyptic millennial ideas to carry Germany into mass-death. As that military guy warned about ISIS- you can defeat such eruptions of violence with force, but they will only keep erupting and re-erupting until you go after the fundamental ideas that incite and validate them. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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It feels “true and right”. But what are the outcomes?

“Well, there are always wonderful words to describe things that are not very wonderful”– Thomas Sowell and his “the test of facts” that expose the impacts of well-intentioned policies. Think also the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion” in this regard, also known as “the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism”, today’s “real threat to democracy”. Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others in alternative, independent media probe these threats to democracy regularly.

After the early 1990s collapse of communism, who would have thought that we would be facing the greatest threat to freedom from within our liberal democracies? That the formerly “liberal” side of our societies would reject Classic Liberalism for extreme leftist Woke Progressivism, a newly framed version of collectivism with its varied new fronts of DEI, ESG, etc.? DEI? Yes, the new tribal dualism of opposing classes of oppressor/oppressed, victimizer/victims, still embracing the old dualism of capital owners vs capital-deprived peasants/workers but now with the opposing classes also defined by race, by skin color. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King’s dream of colorblind society of equally free and uniquely differing individuals?

Warning re the outcomes of alarmism crusades, Wendell Krossa

The apocalyptic millennial scholars noted below present stunning evidence that Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism, are “profoundly religious crusades”. And more unsettling for true believers, these researchers expose the fundamental role that Christian “apocalyptic millennial” themes have played in the above mass-death movements. I take that further and argue that their histories of these themes point to the line of historical descent over the past two millennia that runs directly from Paul’s apocalyptic Christ.

My point relates to the comment below on the recent speech by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen who offers the quote from Voltaire that “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”. Lindzen warns that leftist revolutionaries have co-opted and perverted climate science and are bent on destroying Western civilization.

Lindzen is right to pushback against the absurdity of climate alarmism “science” with the better evidence of good skeptical science. But then the question- Why does that evidence change so few alarmist minds?

Kristian Niemietz offers some insight on why factual evidence changes so few minds. Niemietz explains this in relation to Socialism but it applies equally to climate alarmism, a similarly apocalyptic crusade.

From my previous summary of Niemietz: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”

“Kristian Niemietz brilliantly explains the psychopathology of why people continue to embrace and affirm this failed ideology (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”), how emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. Think also “confirmation bias” in the mix. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Child abuse today- adults promoting the irrational hysteria of an apocalypse crusade

Topics in this section (below Brinsmead post):

New comments below on the “social contagion” of childhood “climate anxiety”. The prominent outbreak of child abuse today as adults panic and traumatize children with the apocalyptic crusade of irrational and unscientific climate change hysteria.

Viktor Frankl on the search for meaning. “The primary motivation for living is to find meaning.”

Ken Hapaala on “The Week That Was: The Science and Environmental Policy Project.” “The common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is no longer true and is scientifically false.”

Hapaala on “A Strong Historical Case for Nullification.” “The ‘peoples of the states’ are the sovereigns.”

This from Bob Brinsmead. See also https://bobbrinsmead.com/

For those who may have missed this below and want to know who the “Historical Jesus” really was and what he actually taught, Brinsmead is among the best at explaining these things. Bob has long exhibited the finely tuned ability to see core issues in relation to anything that he is looking at. And he does so without resorting to “ad hominem attack” against any who disagree with him, sticking to the core issues at play. A great human spirit.

Here is a recent post from Bob that presents his research on this subject of how the man Jesus was transformed by Paul into the Christ of the New Testament. In that process of “developing Christology for early Christianity” the Historical Jesus was deformed utterly to represent something entirely opposite to who he actually was and what he actually taught.

Both Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy have made brutally blunt conclusions about what happened with Paul’s Christology as burying the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus in (pardon my quoting of their actual terms) “dung, slime and muck, garbage”, the “product of lesser minds”.

“(The early Christian development of Christology- Jesus as the Christ, deification of an ordinary human person) meant taking the focus away from the teachings of the messenger and putting all the focus on to the person of the messenger”, Bob Brinsmead.

The outcome of the multiple-century process of Christology was a hideous deformity of the person. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Probing the impulse to dominate, and validation of this pathology. The role Paul’s “Lord Jesus” myth plays in this.

Some goodies below…. See J.D. Tuccille’s article below on the “less state regulations/more state regulations” positions of this year’s candidates for US president/VP. Good points on politicians with no business experience campaigning to run/ruin major economies, versus the value of candidates with business experience. Interesting comment included from US Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, after he was involved with a business venture and became truly “woke” about that. So also, the leader of the Communist faction of Mitterrand’s 1980 coalition of socialists/communists became really woke after ruining the French economy with typical collectivist nationalization projects. They had the sense to back off their nationalization projects and he then concluded, “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Well, holy shit, eh.

Again, I refer to the US situation because it is so illustrative of major issues/trends in all our Western, formerly liberal democracy, societies.

Topics added to bottom of this opening section:

The Gutfeld panel comments on the new totalitarianism that Michael Shellenberger warns below is “accelerating” as governments of what we thought were “liberal democracies”- i.e. Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, etc.- are clamping down on freedom of speech and criminalizing the online comments of people who dissent from state-approved narratives.

And Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn do a new discussion of “weird” shaming, a new propaganda tool to kowtow independents and dissenters back into the conformity of the consensus group.

And a new one from Bob Brinsmead on how Hellenism shaped the Christ myth of Paul, taking the focus off the teachings of the man Jesus to re-orient focus to Paul’s new theory about the man- i.e. the Greek God or Christ myth that Paul created to explain the man, that was entirely opposite to the actual teachings of Jesus. This illustrates why I consider Brinsmead one of the finest theological minds on the planet.

Also, some added inserts from scholar, and solid empiricist, Thomas Sowell. His “test of the facts” approach that expose the fallacies in many assumptions about race, elite arrogance in “social engineering” approaches, and other issues.

This site will continue to probe varied sources of research on the great meta-narratives that have shaped human behavior and societies across history, including today, and what are the outcomes of those narratives. The ideas/ideals that constitute our narratives are the themes that guide our lives. They shape how we think, how we feel, they motivate us, and they influence how we respond and act in our lives. They matter in the ordinary and mundane of daily life- how we treat one another. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Arthur Herman on the dangers of centralizing power and control over populations

These two topics are in the next section just below this top section:

Kristian Niemietz- Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. The question of why people continue to hold to the fallacies of socialism and climate alarmism?

And…

A quibble with Joe Rogan’s doomster narrative on ocean fisheries, Wendell Krossa

I have a quibble with Joe Rogan’s doomster position over ocean fisheries- a persistent one that he brings up repeatedly about ocean fisheries dying over this century, becoming exhausted and ruined. Balance this quibble with my strong affirmation for his excellent podcast and endless series of fascinating discussions with diverse guests.

Joe’s alarmism illustrates the larger psycho-pathology of apocalyptic alarmism in our societies that dominates narratives religious, ideological, and even scientific.

‘Sitesplainin’ qualifiers: Wendell Krossa

Despite my, by all appearances, negative comments regarding religious traditions and the dark themes still dominating those traditions, I affirm very much the majority of people who are able to selectively comb through their tradition to find humane, positive, and comforting insights, to select out life-affirming ideals that are common to all humanity (i.e. found in human rights codes/declarations, constitutions, Bills of rights). My affirmation of such “pick and choose” approaches? Go for it. I am all for that.

I am trying to point out what weakens, distorts, and buries the better ideals and insights in religious traditions, and that we need to clean off the deforming “muck” (Leo Tolstoy’s term, similar to Thomas Jefferson’s) that dominates in the surrounding contexts of religious holy books and other supporting material- i.e. the teaching on themes like judgment, tribal exclusion/discrimination (true believers included, unbelievers excluded), deity dominating humans (humans created to serve the gods), the threats of punitive apocalypse and hell, etc., all the nasty stuff in religious traditions that messes up the good stuff.

Isn’t this a basic obligation for all of us- to discern and sort out the good from the bad, everywhere in life? Nothing out of bounds- i.e. protected “under the canopy of the sacred”?

This from the best: “The search for God cannot wait. And love one another”, the final words of George Harrison.

Another good one from Michael Shellenberger

We can only fight for and defend freedom when we understand what and where the real threat to freedom is coming from. This by Shellenberger is the best of independent journalism and speaking truth to power, exposing abuse of power. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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My quibble with Rogan’s “fishies apocalypse”. C’mon Joe, read the experts. And more…

A Jordan Peterson insight

Good point, affirmed by psychology, that if we confront what terrifies us, if we confront that voluntarily, engage it, just do it, then we become stronger. Part of that is realizing that the thing we fear has been exaggerated in our minds and is not the monster that we thought or imagined it was. This process of facing and conquering our fears is a gradual and ongoing process throughout life.

Kristian Niemietz- Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. The question of why people continue to hold to the fallacies of socialism and climate alarmism? Wendell Krossa

Why does fact/evidence change so few minds, as we observe in regard to the apocalyptic climate alarm? Because we live by emotional attachment to our beliefs, beliefs that just feel right. They seem true (a ring of truthiness) because they have been beaten into human consciousness across multiple millennia through endless iterations of the same old primitive mythical themes that have become deeply embedded in the human subconscious as archetypes.

The complex of themes that have shaped human narratives from the beginning and still dominate today:

“Original paradise. Corrupt humans ruined paradise. Life then began declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending. Now humanity faces the demand for atonement, for sacrifice/payment/suffering as punishment and redemption. There is also the demand to engage a righteous battle against some evil that threatens life (the hero’s quest to conquer a monster or evil enemy), followed by the promise of restored paradise or new utopia.”

So, for example, many people hear a contemporary version of an apocalyptic narrative like climate alarmism, and it just feels right and true to them. It resonates. No need to rationally analyze it any further. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Niemietz- Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs

I will soon post a full summary of Kristian Niemietz’s great analysis of the 24 Socialist experiments over the past century, their inevitable failure, and the defensive excuse-making of socialists after every failure. This sample quote from Niemietz…

“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.”

Note revisions below, such as this….

“Kristian Niemietz brilliantly explains the psychopathology of why people continue to embrace and affirm this failed ideology (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”), how emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. Think “confirmation bias”. He bases his arguments on the research of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Add here the research on how deformed (i.e. narcissistic) versions of compassion for the oppressed can result in people supporting approaches that harm the very people they claim to have compassion for.”

If you want to “run as you read”, then skip this opening part just below and go to the main comment below on “The Jesus/Paul contradiction” (Historical Jesus versus Paul’s Christ myth) and how the Christ element in this contradiction has profoundly shaped everything in Western consciousness and society today. Notably, the feature of apocalyptic in Paul’s Christ myth has been most responsible for embedding and affirming the fallacy of apocalyptic in subsequent Western narratives and consciousness, in narratives religious, “secular/ideological”, and even “scientific”. Apocalyptic has been “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”) and central to inciting alarmism in populations that are then rendered susceptible (due to incited survival impulse) to irrational salvation schemes that destroy society to “save the world”. Note Net Zero decarbonization here.

The Jesus element in this contradiction is critical for overturning the fallacy of apocalyptic. His “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God (hence, non-apocalyptic)” guts entirely the old primitive deity of past mythical and religious narratives. His “greatest contribution to the history of human ideas” (James Robinson) transforms the cohering center of the “lost paradise, decline of life toward apocalypse, demand for atonement/salvation” complex of myths. Unfortunately, the stunning new theological insight of Historical Jesus has been buried for two millennia by the Christ myth of Paul (conclusion of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy). Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Projection of our faults onto others, the exaggerated demonization of others as irredeemable evil

See recent report on climate by atmospheric physicists Richar Lindzen and William Happer below. “The common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is scientifically false…. All Net Zero Actions Worldwide Should Be Stopped Immediately”.

Sitesplainin qualifier: This site repeatedly appeals to the US situation to illustrate common major issues that are afflicting most Western societies.

Projection, demonization of differing others, Wendell Krossa- Just some musing with other curious explorers of these things.

This is some street-level psychology from a fiercely independent commoner, or populist if you will, as in Winston Marshall’s comment that “populism is democracy”. Definitely not dogmatically right or left but more floating butterfly as per Louis Zurcher’s “Mutable Self” trying to exist in open process- open to ongoing learning, development, change, and progress toward a more humane future. Shaped by the basic principles of Classic Liberalism (Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom” or David Boaz’s “Libertarianism: A Primer”, etc.). Paraphrased as “Live and let live”.

And patience liberals/Democrats… After some early hard knocks for your side, the bothsideism element appears further below.

Intro note:

We dehumanize ourselves when we engage the projection of our faults onto others and then exaggeratingly demonize the differing others as “evil”. All sides of political and social divides exhibit such behavior. This social pathology has become so prominent over recent years- to view the differing other as an enemy and then to frame our disagreements in terms of us positioning ourselves on the purely righteous side and battling intolerable evil on the other side. Such framing deforms the hero’s quest. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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