Quibble, or profound contradiction that is being ignored? Outcomes are everything.

The previous section is still just below this new comment- “Benz exposes the massive infrastructure pushing the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies”, Wendell Krossa

The crusade to establish the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies, and the “influencer” ideas behind these crusades.

Also still below this opening section- a summary of the Joe Rogan interview of Mike Benz on the massive infrastructure of the elite censorship complex that is now in a full-frontal battle against populism.

Here is the link to the JRE interview of Benz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA&t=2s

Now this new section:

Some may think that my repeated arguments about the profound contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ are lacking merit. Check out Brinsmead’s summary of research posted below… “What the scholars are saying”.

Here is a summary note from Bob Brinsmead’s powerful essay noted below: “It was an appalling mistake to turn the protest of Jesus about sacrifices into the myth of his own sacrificial death. That, as Patricia Williams says, is “where Christianity went wrong.””

Something for the “quibble” section: Jordan Peterson ‘peters out’ on this, Wendell Krossa (It’s the “contradiction”, stupid. A fun play on Bill Clinton/James Carville’s long-ago statement on the economy.)

The point here is not to push some issue of disagreement in order to diminish someone in some manner. It’s to focus in on something that impacts all of us at a very profound level- the level of deeply held beliefs that shape our minds, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Something that I hope Peterson comes to understand as part of his defense of the bible and Christianity. It’s the central issue overriding all other issues in that tradition.

But first…

Jordan Peterson is right in affirming, as many others have, that we all live by story. Our societies live by great meta-narratives. Stories that encompass the history of a nation and its heroic figures and great events.

No one lives solely by fact or evidence. This recognition helps understand Kristian Niemietz’s statement that “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” Our stories influence everything in our lives.

I add that I have much respect for Jordan Peterson for his courageous stand against Woke extremism. He has suffered personally from vicious attacks on his reputation and occupation and will be remembered as a strikingly courageous hero who fought for freedom in this generation. So yes, he is a “head and shoulders above the rest” figure. A ‘spine of steel’ man. Much admired by this blogger.

Back to topic

As narratives are vital to human lives and societies, it is critical, then, what actual story guides our personal lives and our societies. And the great question for all narratives, narrative themes- Do our stories produce humane outcomes? The “test of facts” (Sowell).

My point of contention with Peterson is his unclear argument for a general restoration of the bible as some sort of foundational pillar for our Western societies. He argues that the bible is the founding book of Western civilization. He sometimes posits the restoration of scripture in Western civilization as the only credible alternative to the contemporary abandonment of religion that, as he claims, has been replaced with the left-wing push for power and hedonism.

He appears (I don’t know all that he has said on this) to advocate for some sort of undifferentiated re-establishment of Christianity, and illustrates this with his probe into the scriptural archetypes as universal metaphors.

Well, if that isn’t the “Mother of all ‘missing the main points’ with Christianity”… I don’t know what is then.

He seems unaware of the overarching problem with Christianity and its bible- the singularly major contradiction in the Christian bible and Christianity itself. History’s single greatest contradiction, certainly greatest religious contradiction, a contradiction that has maintained a state of cognitive dissonance like nothing else anywhere in history.

All summed in one title- “Jesus Christ”. And while at it with all these “greatest” adjective-attachments, the “Jesus Christ” title is also the greatest oxymoron ever put together.

I would suggest that Peterson consider Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s point that there is a profound difference between the message of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth. What they termed the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus that were buried in the New Testament context of Paul’s Christ myth- the “dung, slime and muck, garbage… product of lesser minds”. Ouch, but true.

I recognize these harsh-sounding terms are sure to incite outrage in true believers, but Jefferson and Tolstoy understood the nature of the damage that Paul and his Christ had done to what Jesus had taught. Best summed as “burial”.

Further, I would suggest to anyone interested in tackling the bible and Christianity to explore the “Jesus Seminar” material and books, notably the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research. That is critical research to understanding what Historical Jesus was actually about. What he actually taught. Some scholars of “Q Wisdom Sayings” to Google include James Robinson, John Kloppenborg, Stephen Patterson, among others.

The differing themes of Jesus and Paul’s frame entirely opposite narratives.

A repost list from other sections below on this site: Wendell Krossa

Here are some of the points of contrast, the main contradictions that highlight the oxymoronically opposite themes in the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ mythology. The point I draw from this? The themes of Paul have shaped Western consciousness, narratives, and societies for the past two millennia. The Jesus themes have influenced us to a lesser extent, mainly moderating the harsher features of Paul’s message:

(1) Unconditional love (no sacrifice is demanded in Jesus’ original message- i.e. the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel). Versus the highly conditional atonement religion of Paul (i.e. the supreme condition of the sacrifice of a cosmic godman- the Christ).

(2) Nonretaliation in Jesus (no more ‘eye for eye’ justice but ‘love the enemy’ because God does not retaliate but loves and includes enemies- as in “sun and rain for all alike”). Versus supreme divine retaliation in deity punishing people through natural disasters, disease, accidents, etc., and punishing ultimately through apocalyptic destruction of the world and then after-life punishment in hell. Note Paul’s statement of his theology of a retaliatory deity in Romans 12- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. Also, in his first letters to the Thessalonians, “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire to destroy all who don’t believe my Christ myth”.

(3) To relate the above retaliatory theme to justice systems- Restorative justice (again- no eye for eye) versus punitive, destroying justice.

(4) Nonviolent resolution of problems (again, no violent retaliation against enemies) versus the violent destruction of apocalypse and hell, and the violent pacification of deity by blood sacrifice for atonement.

(5) Nontribal inclusion of all humanity (“sun and rain given freely to both bad and good people”) versus the ultimate tribal favoritism toward true believers and the discriminatory exclusion of unbelievers as per Paul’s Christ. The ultimate tribal divide is illustrated in Revelation as the eternal division of humans- assigned either to heaven or to hell, as per the cosmic dualism of Zoroaster.

(6) Nondomination in relationships (“If you want to be great then serve others”) versus ultimate eternal domination by Lord Christ with his rod of iron totalitarianism (“every knee shall bow… He will rule them with an iron scepter”).

(7) Non-dualism (God as the Oneness of Ultimate Reality that is love) versus eternal dualism (i.e. again, the cosmic dualism of “God and Satan”, “heaven and hell”).

And so on…

You cannot mix and merge these profound opposites in the one and same person- i.e. “Jesus Christ”. That supremely oxymoronic combination creates such profound cognitive dissonance that you are left in a state akin to severe mental deformity.

The egregious issue here is that the good elements (i.e. the Jesus insights) are distorted and buried by the primitive and darkening elements in the Christology of Paul.

Applying Christology to Jesus (i.e. the divinizing of a common man over the first few centuries of Christianity) has effectively buried the potency of his liberating insights, notably his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-apocalyptic God. The truth of his entirely new view of deity, though still present in the New Testament in summaries of his statements (see Matthew 5, Luke 6), that “stunning new theology” is no longer clearly visible to most people’s minds because the larger New Testament context overwhelms the Jesus material with its emphasis on Paul’s retaliatory, apocalyptic Christ.

Paul’s intention, two decades after Jesus died, was to redefine the theology of the young Jesus movement, to correct the “errors” of Jesus and his colleagues. Paul, for example, despised the wisdom tradition that Jesus belonged to and bluntly dismissed it in Corinthians as “worldly wisdom” (i.e. the “wisdom of this world is foolishness”). For contrast, he promoted his Christ myth as something like the secret knowledge of Hellenistic mystery religions- i.e. the “secret wisdom of the Christ”, the “secret truth” presented as the alternative to the ignorant/foolish worldly wisdom of Jesus and his followers, notably Apollos.

Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy both nailed the contradiction between Jesus and Paul in the bluntest terms and few have been as clear and direct since. Most dissenters to Christianity shy from using the forceful terms they used, perhaps because their comments are potentially offensive to true believer’s sensibilities.

And few since have paid much attention to their blunt clarification of the striking contrast between Jesus and Paul, preferring instead the religious reformism that tinkers around the edges and gets nothing done, that avoids the central issue of theology- how Paul’s Christology utterly deformed Jesus, burying his stunning new insight on God, along with his overall unconditional message.

For two millennia now most people have lived with this grand mental deformity- the distortion and burial of the single most profound insight ever offered to humanity, an insight that would have liberated people from threat theology, the “cruel God” image that psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo argue deforms human personality and development. The Jesus insight that God was a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love would have brought history’s greatest liberation movement ever- liberation from long-deformed archetypes, liberation at the depths of human consciousness, subconscious. Liberation of the human spirit as never before.

All of us are obligated to find and adopt the best of themes to shape our narratives/stories, the most humane features to serve as our guiding ideals. And it’s critical to our well-being that we get right which narrative themes produce humane outcomes.

Paul’s narrative themes have had devastating impacts on people and societies even to mass-death outcomes by inflaming and validating people’s worst impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction, as in Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism.

Historical Jesus provided a profoundly different narrative with better outcomes.

Note:

People rush to caution others about public statements and narratives that contribute to harming people, that they claim will incite hatred and violence. We saw this, from both sides, in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, as with the previous attack on Paul Pelosi. Warnings that public statements can incite crazies to harm people.

Well, this issue of the apostle Paul’s statements causing harm is on a scale far above any sort of harm caused to a single person by public statements. This is societal-scale harm, mass-death harm, that has repeated across history.

Another added note: The singularly stunning contradiction in Paul’s deforming of the message of Jesus- an anti-sacrifice icon portrayed as ultimate sacrifice:

Repeating psychologist Harold Ellen’s point- Paul’s myth of divine intention to violently punish Jesus in a bloody death, and then framing that violent death as “love”, is an utter perversion of the reality that is love.

Note Ellen’s statements in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”.

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation)… this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.

As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.

Jesus original message is found in the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel. This is the closest that we get to what Jesus actually taught. Nowhere in that original teaching does Jesus present himself as coming to offer himself as a bloody human sacrifice to God to pay for sin. He opposed the sacrifice industry and died because of his opposition to the sacrifice industry (Matthew 21:12, and other references in the gospels. See the Bob Brinsmead link just below for further detail on Jesus’ anti-sacrifice protest).

Scholars note that Jesus had taken up the Old Testament prophet’s protest against sacrifice, as expressed by Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.

Isaiah 1:11, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice…I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, and goats…”

Hosea 6:6, “I don’t want your sacrifices”.

Amos 5:25, “I did not demand sacrifices”.

Jeremiah 7:22, “I did not command sacrifices”.

Psalm 40, 51, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire… burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require… You do not delight in sacrifice… you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.”

Soon after Jesus died, Paul rejected Jesus’ life and message of opposition to sacrifice and turned his death, that was a protest against sacrifice, into the ultimate sacrifice of a cosmic godman- Jesus Christ. How does anyone get away with manipulating anything more contradictory than that?

These fundamental contradictions are so beyond profoundly, stunningly scandalous as to be in the area of the utter ridiculous and absurd.

See Bob Brinsmead’s good research on these issues:

https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/

Summary point:

I would not, as Peterson apparently does, just advocate for some form of restored religion or general restoration of the bible as foundational to successful Western civilization, without clarifying the stunning contradictions between the narratives of Jesus and Paul. The contradictions between these two main ‘influencers’ of Western consciousness and civilization are the central issue to probe, tackle, and explain.

Carefully warn people of the consequences they embrace to frame their narratives, personal and public. Nothing has been more destructive to Western narratives, consciousness, and overall civilization than Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth, the driving narrative behind Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.

See throughout this site the historians who have carefully researched the outcomes of Christian ideas on the above crusades- i.e. Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others.

Ignoring this “Jesus versus Christ” contradiction leaves many just tinkering at the edges of religious issues and reforms while denying the “Mother of all elephants/gorillas in the room”.

Note on the research on Jesus’ anti-sacrifice life and message, that was the primary cause of his death.

This concluding comment of Bob’s from below…

“It was an appalling mistake to turn the protest of Jesus about sacrifices into the myth of his own sacrificial death. That, as Patricia Williams says, is “where Christianity went wrong.””

The summary points below are from Bob Brinsmead’s excellent essay in this link that gathers varied strands of scholarship on Jesus. Bob is a specialist on Historical Jesus and how Paul transformed Jesus’ message into Paul’s myth of the Christ, that was a complete denial of what Jesus had taught.

https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/

Jesus the Jew and anti-sacrifice icon of first century CE Jewish culture.

Some of the initial material below is from Robert Eisenman’s “James the Brother of Jesus”, among other sources:

As one scholar summarized- “Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus”.

Then material from Keith Akers’ “The Lost religion of Jesus”.

Akers says, “I argue in this book that Jewish Christianity in the first century (Jesus and his first followers) was the direct spiritual ancestor of Jewish Christianity in the fourth century (the Ebionites)… Jewish Christianity is a single continuous entity, defined by two characteristics: loyalty to the Jewish law and acceptance of Jesus as the prophet of this law.”

He continues: “The Ebionites [ post-70 Jewish Christians] are not the only Jewish Christian group in the first centuries of Christianity but were the most important. The Ebionites are mentioned by more of the church fathers than any other such group…There are other groups usually classified as “Jewish Christian” – namely the Elchasaites, the Nazoraeans, and the Ossaeans…all of these groups were similar to the Ebionites on at least these three points: they adhered to the Jewish law, they were vegetarian, and they rejected animal sacrifice…the Ebionites are the best and most important representatives of early Jewish Christianity.”

Later, “The most obvious explanation is that Jesus’ family was part of the earliest Christian church, that that some of the relatives of Jesus, the successors of James, then became the leaders of the Ebionites.”

Then these points, “Jewish Christians detested Paul, and Ebionites represented Jewish Christianity.”

Bob adds, sometimes paraphrasing in summary and sometimes quoting the scholars, “Anti-Sacrifice was an essential feature of the Ebionites… The Ebionites unequivocally condemned one of the central aspects of Judaism, namely the practice of animal sacrifice; and they kept their grievance against animal sacrifice in their traditions long after the practice of animal sacrifice had ended when the temple in Jerusalem, the site of the sacrifices, was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. They also condemned some of the Jewish scripture as being false texts…

“Their view that the sacrificial system did not originate with Moses and was falsely attributed to Moses was unorthodox but, it should be noted, hardly without justification – many scholars believe the same thing… [Ed. note: see Richard Friedman’s highly acclaimed classic, Who wrote the Bible? as a scholarly endorsement that the elaborate sacrificial cult was added to the Law centuries after Moses]”…

“John’s Baptism was an alternative to sacrifice…”

“Ebionites read scripture critically, especially in the matter of violence and sacrifice

The Ebionites condemned many of the texts in the Jewish scripture as false texts: they believed they were not inspired by God but were false and shouldn’t be part of the scripture at all…if the Ebionites believed that sacrifice or warfare was wrong, how do we explain the existence of commands in Jewish scriptures to offer animal sacrifices and commands to engage in bloody warfare? Commands to make animal sacrifices are found throughout Leviticus, and accounts of wars sanctioned by God are found throughout Joshua….

“The Ebionites were not alone in feeling uncomfortable about these texts. However, they did not take this allegorical path… [They claimed that] the written tradition (the Jewish scriptures) had been corrupted by false texts….”

“Jewish Christians were against the cult of sacrifice

“In the ‘Recognitions’… in a celebrated passage describing a speech by James, the brother of Jesus, delivered in the temple seven years after Jesus’ death, James denounces animal sacrifices and predicts the destruction of the temple….

“Opposition to the cult of sacrifice was always a central feature of Jewish Christianity… the distinctive origin of Jewish Christianity lies to a large degree in its opposition to animal sacrifice….

“The Temple protest of Jesus was all about his opposition to the cult of sacrifice

Jesus was attacking the practice of animal sacrifice. “I came to abolish sacrifices,” says the Ebionite Jesus, “and unless you cease sacrificing, my anger will not cease from you.” (Panarion 30.116.5) Now there is a pronouncement explosive enough to cause the temple hierarchy to want Jesus crucified….”

Bob says, “Akers’ book is brilliant in presenting the evidence that it was Jesus’ passionate protest against the institution of sacrificing at the temple which led directly to his being put to death. Unless Jesus’ ultimate concern in his temple protest was that forgiveness of sin is always freely available and needs no atoning sacrifice (as if our alienation from God and one another is something that it can be bought or sold)…”

“Christology replaced the teaching of Jesus

“[The cult of the person of Jesus as the Christ Jesus developed after his death] These beliefs originated from the Christ Movement led by Paul. The image of Jesus changed dramatically over the course of just over one hundred years. Jesus became seen as a divine being holding cosmic importance. Along with that development went another: a repudiation of his Jewish heritage…The image of Jesus changed radically, while his roots within Judaism were forgotten. By the mid-second century, Christian leaders were touting Jesus as an incarnate saviour who redeemed humanity by his death and resurrection. Who he was thought to be came to obscure what he had taught and practiced. This represents a remarkable shift in emphasis – away from the religion of Jesus and toward a religion about Christ….”

“Jesus never suggested that a sacrifice was required as a condition of forgiveness or acceptance with God.

“The fourth Gospel comes nearest to telling what happened in this temple protest when it says “he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle.” (John 2:15)…”

“Jesus was utterly and passionately opposed to the cult of sacrifice. That was what his protest in the temple was all about.

“It was an appalling mistake to turn the protest of Jesus about sacrifices into the myth of his own sacrificial death. That, as Patricia Williams says, is “where Christianity went wrong.””

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Benz exposes the massive infrastructure pushing the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies

The crusade to establish the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies, and the “influencer” ideas behind these crusades.

See below a summary of the Joe Rogan interview of Mike Benz on the massive infrastructure of the elite censorship complex that is now in a full-frontal battle against populism.

Here is the link to the JRE interview of Benz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA&t=2s

Most dominant and influential theme in the modern world, Wendell Krossa

“Declinism”- I make the argument below that you cannot understand our world today aside from the research on the 19th Century ideology of Declinism. The ideology of Declinism, outlined by Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, dominates the modern world- “The most dominant and influential theme in the modern world”. And add this- Declinism is an essential element of the psychopathology of apocalyptic that is the most violent and destructive idea in history (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”). As in life declines toward something worse, toward collapse and apocalyptic ending.

I relate this directly to the dominant influence that Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth has had, and continues to have, on Western narratives, consciousness, and society.

We see surveys like the YouGov research (“Ten Global Trends”, Tupy and Bailey) that revealed most people across the Earth today believe “the world is becoming worse”. This is in direct contradiction to the research of Julian Simon (Ultimate Resource), and many others, who have amassed evidence that life has been improving across the long-term trajectory and, unless there is contradictory evidence emerging, life will continue to improve in the future due to human creativity, innovation, and compassion.

But why then do so many people continue to believe that life is becoming worse?

There are varied contributing factors to the widespread acceptance of the Declinism psychopathology.

Start with propagandizing media that are committed to “Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis” and, in particular, are committed to apocalyptic insanity as in the “climate catastrophe” narrative. Add the lunacy of those committed to the destruction of industrial capitalist civilization by shutting down humanity’s critical dependence on harmless fossil fuels.

Add also Kristian Niemietz’s point- “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” Apply this to the ongoing embrace of socialism today after some 24 failed tries over the past century or so. And apply it to the widespread embrace of decarbonization as the salvation scheme that destroys societies to “save the world”.

My contribution to why people respond to “emotional satisfaction” in choice of beliefs, is to note the deeply embedded archetypes of the human subconscious that have been shaped over millennia by primitive mythological themes. The influence of said archetypes on our emotions is always in the background, affirming our animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

Our embrace of contemporary apocalyptic narratives like climate change hysteria is not always conscious but more subconscious, more on the level of “emotional satisfaction”, not rational evidence. We embrace narratives with the same old themes because they intuitively feel “right, true, good, and just”. So, not doing due diligence and probing the history behind such things, people just embrace them again and again despite the repeated destructive outcomes, as with socialism (a version of collectivist equity).

In discussion groups, we had one fellow who argued that ideas don’t matter. Just act as you usually do because some 95% of our behavior is subconsciously motivated. We act mostly without thinking. Another person in that discussion group disagreed and argued that ideas, and thinking about ideas, is very much about who we are as intelligent humans with conscious minds that make reasoned choices. As he paraphrased, “I think and therefore I am.”

My point in the group was that ideas and behavior work together as in the ancient human habit of “basing behavior on validating beliefs”. That habit arises from our primal impulse for meaning and purpose. Hence, all across history this impulse has driven people to seek validation for their behavior and lives. Unfortunately, people have too often embraced bad ideas to validate bad behaviors as in validating the impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of tribal outsiders, differing others.

This is where I bring in Historical Jesus and Paul for their entirely contrary themes that have validated entirely different behaviors. Such as Paul affirming divine retaliation in his Christ myth that would subsequently, across two millennia, validate behaviors like retaliation.

On the 95% of our behavior being subconsciously influenced.

If it is true that 95% of our behavior is in response to subconscious influences (archetypes), then that is exactly the problem. Archetypes across millennia have been shaped by the worst of primitive mythological themes to reenforce inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of others. Those fundamental impulses and associated ideas of the subconscious must be changed, even though the validating ideas are often related to the divine, as in features of gods that define the archetypes and are therefore considered immutable.

Examples of features of deity that serve to validate human impulses: God as tribally favoring true believers, excluding unbelievers. God as “Lord, King, Ruler” that validates elite domination. God as Judge meting out violent punitive destruction as in apocalypse, or hell, thereby validating punitive justice systems.

If such archetypal features are wrong, then change them and radically so. Throw out the old just as Historical Jesus did. (“Historical”- as in the person entirely opposite to Paul’s Christian “Lord Jesus” or “Jesus Christ”.)

To embrace the radical, fundamental transformation of narrative that H. Jesus proposed, start by changing your personal narrative, the themes of your narrative. We do this by replacing old story ideas/themes with better alternatives. And let the new work its way back into the subconscious to change deeply rooted archetypes. Historical Jesus threw out the old God entirely and created a completely new view of deity based on the features of non-retaliation, unconditional and universal love. A God that is the ultimate Oneness of love.

And, a necessary caution, his new theology was not an affirmation of pacifism in life. It’s about how we confront evil and maintain our own humanity at same time. How we treat the offenders that we are obligated to restrain/incarcerate, but then try to rehabilitate.

Pacifism does not work in this world. The primary obligation of responsible love is to protect the innocent from violent people who must be restrained and incarcerated to maintain public safety and peace. No questions on this. Unconditional deity is not validation for dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek”. Though such response is the free choice of individuals.

Other topics:

What we expect from Matt Taibbi- the best of journalism. This report is just one small piece of the picture of the mass corruption of a democracy over the past decade, corruption by those who screamed loudest (projection) about their opponents being an existential “threat to democracy”, that political opponents needed to be criminalized and stopped with lawfare. Journalists like Taibbi continue to expose the corruption of a political party that promoted endless media lies that demonized opponents as “Nazis, fascists, racists” and more. Journalists like Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others are exposing this corruption to the cleansing power of light. The politicization of the FBI is one element in the larger story.

“The Bell Finally Tolls for the FBI: The reported nomination of Kash Patel means chickens are coming home to roost for the FBI, which needs to be destroyed as a political entity”, Matt Taibbi, Dec. 2, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/the-bell-finally-tolls-for-the-fbi

In this report Taibbi details the corruption of the FBI over past decades with its involvement in the origins of the Russiagate lies- i.e. the Steele dossier and related issues.

“In the last eight-plus years, the Bureau went beyond the excesses of the J. Edgar Hoover era, attempting to install itself as a KGB-like domestic intelligence service with gatekeeping power over everything from the White House to the speech landscape. Forget Trump: we are not safe unless its bureaucracy is fully dismantled.”

Taibbi details the developing history behind the great lie of Trump collusion with Russia. The final reports on that scandal exposed what was going on behind the scenes.

“Ultimately what that report showed is that the FBI in its zeal to get Trump not only embraced a concocted story about collusion with Russia, it sat on exculpatory evidence through years of leaks while engineering scheme after sordid scheme to knock out a sitting president. This planet-scaled dirty trick was without precedent and may be difficult to criminally prosecute, since “changing reality for political reasons” is not in the federal code… However you define what the FBI did, the press was clearly an accomplice.”

After covering the main actors and issues of Russiagate, Taibbi refers to the entire mess as an endless series of “squalid episodes” and concludes “No matter what you think of Trump, the FBI became a criminal organization under his tenure, and defanging it will be an urgent priority of the next government… Kash Patel will be the focus of scrutiny now, but the Bureau needs to look in the mirror. How J. Edgar Hoover’s legacy was revived in the Trump years.”

Taibbi adds a note:

He says, “When I heard Kash Patel had been tabbed by Donald Trump to run the FBI, I could already imagine the pushback and moved immediately to start the just-published article “The Bell Finally Tolls for the FBI” piece.”

Taibbi realized that there was a larger context to the development of an ugly fight over Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI. He refers to the transformation of the FBI back into a “J. Edgar Hoover-style domestic spy service with sweeping political ambition has been a long-developing story… the post-9/11 Bureau used the pretext of an enhanced counterintelligence mandate to throw off some mild restraints that had been placed on it the last time it had to be slapped down, i.e. after the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.”

Taibbi is concerned that few people realize the FBI story is about the “unbroken progression toward a fully politicized police force.”

He later notes the book written by an undercover agent named German, “a 2019 book called ‘Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide’ that described the Bureau’s descent to a thought-policing mission.”

Taibbi concludes regarding the lie of Trump collusion with Russia that the details of the actual history show “the Bureau knew early on that premise was nonsense, there’s no other explanation for its conduct in the Trump era. A massively empowered national police organization that considers the elected head of the Executive Branch to be a criminal target in need of “disrupting” and “discrediting,” the way Hoover went after the Revolutionary Action Movement or the Nation of Islam, is by definition an illegal/subversive organization that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt with a much narrower mission.”

Taibbi says, “ironically, it’s the FBI that now needs to be disrupted, urgently, and he’s (Kash Patel) at least shown a willingness to do it. I doubt they’ll go quietly.”

Further note: Wendell Krossa

The secrecy principle and protocols of governments, as in classified materials, has gone way too far. Who said that there are now some 1 billion classified documents in the federal government (Tucker Carlson?). Elites and bureaucrats have fallen for the self-deluding distortion that they are the owners of government and its bureaucracies, and hence, must protect information from the public that is viewed by elites as the enemy (the shift of state agencies from focus on enemies abroad to domestic enemies as in populists that challenge state elites and bureaucracies).

No to the delusion of elites that they own government. The people are the true owners of government that must be accountable to them, must serve them, not the other way around.

And what are elites and bureaucracies hiding with all the secrecy classifications? Some have suggested they are hiding evidence of their corruption of democracy.

Yes, some things need classification of secrecy but no where near the extent of today’s secrecy bureaucracy. Point? Open up the Epstein lists, the Diddy lists, the JFK files, the Bobby Kennedy files, the Martin Luther King files, the UFO files, and so on. That is public property.

But oh, complain the holders of the secrets- People will lose faith in their public state institutions. Huh? People have long ago lost faith in government. Have you elites and bureaucrats not seen the surveys of public distrust of government? Restoring faith will follow openness, holding state elites and bureaucracies accountable for corruption, with exposure to light doing its cleansing thing. Trust will return with bureaucracies freed from tribalism, politicization, and restored to a more neutral position that represents and serves all segments of populations equally.

The state secrecy thing is illustrative of the larger problem of elites and their domination of commoners.

Further…

Parenti’s comments jive with what Joe Rogan’s guest Mike Benz said the other day about the history of CIA meddling with political parties (i.e. the Democrats in the 60s and 70s) to shift support toward the state institutions that promote the war machine and to support the censorship of any dissent to the narratives of such institutions. CIA meddling in political parties, jives with Parenti’s comments on the manipulation of black communities to shift their attention away from any challenge to elite powerholders, elite control of our societies. The challenge of commoners to elite domination should be the shared concern of all commoners of all races.

This is the primary psychopathology of elites- i.e. that they can dominate commoners in the elite/commoner divide and that is true “democracy”, as in their perverted version of democracy. They deny the fact that they and their bureaucracies must exist to serve the population, the citizens of a society, by protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally. They, and their institutions, should never operate to protect “the consensus of state institutions” where elites manipulate behind the scenes, lying through control of media narratives, to smear, undermine, and demonize the “populism that is true democracy” (Winston Marshal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFmjgbdNNgw ).

State elites now further corrupt democracy with their rejection of the First Amendment. They are the totalitarians, the authoritarians whom they once fought in other countries to, according to their narratives, liberate people into democracy. Today’s elites in our liberal democracies are the real “threat to democracy”, the real “enemy within”.

The first thing I would tell today’s elites is to read that profound little statement of Historical Jesus that true greatness is not lording over others but serving others. True greatness is not Paul’s “Lord Jesus” as the divine ideal. Paul got it all wrong in his validating elite domination.

Big background issue:

More on the repeated push to establish the elite/commoner divide on our liberal democracies, the ideas/beliefs used to validate this pathology that destroys freedom and democracy.

The two great “influencers” of Western narratives and civilization, Wendell Krossa

Pre-splainin notes (prelude):

With my blog-style writing on this site I am sort of mimicking the “weave thing” of “You Know Who” as he explained on comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast (i.e. “Flagrant”. Just type in “Schulz/Trump” on YouTube).

Another prelude note- I also recognize the ongoing influence of Plato and Aristotle as per Arthur Herman’s research in “The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”. I just think, with James Tabor and others, that Paul and Historical Jesus had, and still have, greater influence.

And again, to do some pre-alleviation of possible outrage from true believers in the Christ myth, I am not entirely denouncing Paul and all that he said. He was good in places, such as his comment on being free from law in his letter to the Galatians.

My position re Paul is about the need for careful delineation of Historical Jesus and his message, to distinguish what Jesus actually taught, as contrasted with the entanglement of his wisdom sayings in Paul’s distortion of his message (i.e. the Christ myth) that dominates the New Testament and Christianity.

My comments relate to how Historical Jesus and his message have been “buried” by the Christ. Point- If you claim any sort of interest in what Jesus was on about, then honor the man for who he actually was and for his actual message of wisdom sayings. The research has been done over the past three centuries and the general framework of conclusions is now more clear. The evidence is in.

I repeatedly return to the central themes in the messages of these two religious icons- Paul and Jesus, agreeing with James Tabor (“Paul and Jesus: How the apostle transformed Christianity”) that their influence has dominated our Western civilization, and still dominates today in both religious traditions- and this is critical to understand- also in the secular/ideological narratives of our contemporary world.

Notable historians (Sources just below) have discovered the same thing that Tabor revealed- i.e. that the religious ideas associated with, especially Paul, have continued to powerfully shape narratives and outcomes in Western civilization down into the present. Paul’s contribution of narrative themes, so profoundly contrary to what Jesus taught, has been egregiously harmful in inciting mass-death outcomes in modern apocalyptic millennial crusades like Marxism and Nazism.

Marinate on that a bit… That ought to be front page news till the problem is confronted, tackled, and resolved. The military guy outlined it quite simply and correctly- “You can crush eruptions of religious violence with military force (like the ISIS crusade of 2014) but those will only continue to erupt until you deal with the ideas driving them”. Nuf said. And that applies to all versions of harmful crusades, like “climate alarmism” and Net Zero decarbonization.

When I refer to “Paul’s ideas or themes in his Christ myth”, I mean the complex of “(1) lost paradise, (2) corrupt/sinful humanity ruining paradise, (3) life declining toward apocalyptic ending, (4) demand for salvation through violent sacrifice as payment, and (5) demand for violent purging of threatening enemies, (6) the call to engage a heroic, righteous battle against evil enemies, and (7) promise of restored paradise/new utopian communalism”.

Sources of good research on this– Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline In Western History”), Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”), and others have affirmed the same. These authors summarize in their term “apocalyptic millennialism” the fuller complex of themes that I listed above.

Add also James Carrol’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews” on the destructive tradition of antisemitism in Christianity across two millennia. Carrol reveals the harmful influence of Paul’s focus on the cross or death of Jesus, something that Historical Jesus had given no significance to in his “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel, the closest we get to what he actually taught, his actual message.

The warnings have been made, repeatedly- i.e. That until we understand how these religious themes, notably the themes in Paul’s Christ myth, can carry societies into mass-death crusades, then we have learned nothing and will continue to repeat the same horrific outcomes as we saw with Marxism and Nazism. 100 million deaths from Marxism last century, some 50 million from Nazism.

My takeaway from all this research– Today we are once again embracing just what the historians warned us about. Many today have embraced two notable crusades and their destructive salvation schemes, (1) the mass-harm emerging from the “climate crisis” narrative (climate apocalypse) and its salvation scheme of decarbonization that is ruining societies like Britain, Germany, California, etc. Some warn of even potential mass-death if we continue this trajectory to societal destruction with decarbonization.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/30/time-for-starmer-to-be-honest-about-what-net-zero-means-rationing-blackouts-and-travel-restrictions-in-the-next-five-years/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/01/how-the-rush-to-net-zero-is-accelerating-britains-industrial-decline/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/30/california-dreamin-newsoms-energy-fiasco/

And then we are foolishly toying with another mass-harm crusade in the (2) ever-resuscitating, ever-persisting, and still-developing neo-collectivism of Woke Progressivism.

In the link below, Jordan Peterson cautioned the post-2024 election jubilation with the reminder that the US education system, similar to others, is still almost entirely controlled by Woke Progressives.

The Woke Progressivism strain of ideology, notably in its extreme leftist version, functions as the new collectivist approach pushing for domination in our societies. It is the latest historical push to re-establish the ancient elite/commoner divide in human societies.

With the neo-Marxists still in control of Western education systems, they will continue to graduate new generations of Woke Collectivist activists, innovatively creating ever-new approaches, projects and programs, with the same old basic ideas and principles. Note, for example, that the traditional Marxist tribal dualism of oppressor/oppressed, as in capital owners versus workers/peasants, is still the mix.

And over past decades a new version of Marxist tribal dualism has been crafted in the Progressive classification of populations as “victimizer or victim” with membership in either category assigned according to your race or skin color. This is the new discrimination of “Woke racism” added to help push tribal collectivism, once again, on our societies.

I posted before the comments of Michael Parenti who speculated on how, for example, black communities in the US were possibly manipulated back in the 60s to focus more on varied social issues like racism and their victimhood, in Woke terms, and how this set black communities against other ethnicities in order to distract them from economic issues and any possible revolt against controlling elites.

I am not affirming Parenti’s views and comments or denying the importance of issues like racism. I just posted his comments as interesting suggestions to note, especially for his comments about the behind-the-scenes manipulation by state agencies like the CIA to distract communities from other important issues that might present some challenge to controlling state elites, elites and the elite control that constitutes the real opponent of all lower/middle income people of all races.

https://www.michael-parenti.org/article-monopoly-media-manipulation

And this from Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson

Here is Peterson, like Joseph, in his coat of many colors: My comments from a post to a discussion group… Wendell Krossa

“Jordan Peterson says that we view the world through a story, and what story prevails in our culture? The progressives, post-moderns insist the story is that of power while the correct story is that of voluntary sacrifice.

“I also appreciate his comment on Trudeau, when he goes from calm to pissed and such heat communicates better the complete and utter mess that Trudeau has made of Canada.

“He cautions against the jubilation of the post-election victory of Trump, that there is still a fly in the ointment in that the education system is almost entirely controlled by progressives and that is the root of the problem that will block the cultural change that many are hoping for with the election of Trump to end the Woke insanity. Many from both sides of society are hoping for this cultural change. But Peterson says that such change may not happen as the universities provide the people to populate all sectors of society and they are still dominantly progressive, notably the university administrations, as well as most professorships.”

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365371167112

Weaving back onto the topic of religious themes/ideas driving harmful movements, Wendell Krossa

Back to this point of how primitive religious themes impact our present world, because we are still in the midst of sliding down the slope toward another mass-harm and potential mass-death outcome. We should, at the least, try to understand the complex of religious themes behind such crusades, both the climate madness crusade and resurging Marxism/collectivism, and then try to understand what alternative themes would serve better to shape our meta-narratives.

Woke Progressives are still very much in control of what many term the “deep state”, or better Vivek Ramaswamy’s alternative term- “Managerial class”, referring to the unelected state elites and their government bureaucracies. They are also still in control of the education sector of our societies. These highly tribal ideologues will not go away quietly but, as before, after apparent setbacks they will reconvene and reconstitute themselves and plan new approaches/programs to continue their assault on the hated Classic Liberal societies of Western civilization. Hated? Yes, Marx’s number one hatred- the private property rights of free individuals in societies that are oriented to protecting individual rights and freedoms. As in Classic Liberalism.

Marx suffered from Nietzsche’s “ressentiment” (i.e. “hatred, wrath, envy, revenge, and the like”).

Another insert:

Don’t forget the point that 60s Marxists, who realized that they could not democratically win public support for their revolution, decided then to sneak around and try to push their way in through the back door of society and take over the educational systems. British historian Niall Ferguson, for one, has offered comment on this- i.e. that Marxists decided to infiltrate the teacher’s colleges to indoctrinate a generation of teachers/professors in order to then indoctrinate students. Looks like their plan succeeded quite well.

60s Marxists also realized that just generally going after the evil of industrial capitalist society was not working as it was too successful in alleviating poverty and improving the lives of workers. They then decided to go after what fuels the success of industrial civilization- i.e. fossil fuels, and particularly the gas CO2 that had been previously discovered to contribute to Warming.

They recognized that going after what sustains industrial capitalist civilization would be more effective to destroy industrial civilization (atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen’s point). Hence, Marxists joined forces with the environmental movement. Patrick Moore also saw this shift to ideological and related attacks on industrial capitalist society among his Greenpeace colleagues. His colleagues were no longer concerned with any actual science in environmentalism but shifted to tribal political ideology as in anti-capitalism collectivism.

And so far, the “watermelons” have been successful. Watermelons? Yes, green on the outside but red on the inside. Think “smiley” emoticon here.

Weaving back again to the main “influencers” behind all this madness: Wendell Krossa

My persistent point here is that the central themes of Jesus and Paul are starkly opposite in nature and have very opposite effects on human minds, emotions, motivations, and behavior. I will keep reminding readers of the statements by psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo that people seek validation for their behavior from their image of God, among the other ideals that they look to for validation.

Meaning: “We become just like the God that we believe in”, Bob Brinsmead. As in the child looking to ultimate Daddy for approval, for affirmation of doing the right thing.

Ellens states bluntly that the Christian God (Paul’s God) uses violence to solve problems, as in the “first degree” intentional murder of his son. That metaphor of an angry, violent God, solving problems with violence, has “dominated the Master Story of Western civilization for two millennia”.

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a (violent) God Image… If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’.”

The Mennonite theologians have also affirmed this “behavior based on belief” pattern in noting that the image of a punitive God has shaped Western justice systems to be oriented to punitive, not restorative, approaches.

The contrarian Historical Jesus rejected the harsh theological archetypes of the ancient world (i.e. threat theologies, cruel God theologies) with his “stunning new theology”. His central breakthrough insight was an entirely new and radically different understanding of deity. He framed his understanding of God with the central themes of non-retaliation, non-tribal inclusivity or universalism (all were safe in the same divine Love), non-domination in relationships- i.e. no lording over others but instead true greatness was in service to one another, no punitive destruction as in eye for eye justice (no hell), but instead restorative justice, etc.

Jesus added that with a non-retaliatory, unconditional God there was no demand for violent blood sacrifice as payment for sin. And there would be no violent apocalyptic purging as the final solution to the problem of evil in our world. All part of his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson).

The extrapolated conclusions above are not Robinson’s. I take off from his “non-retaliatory theology” comment to make the above extrapolations that I see as common-sense conclusions.

Back to Paul’s subsequent rejection of the breakthrough insight of Jesus.

Historian Arthur Herman noted one particular Christian theme that contributed to the violent revolutions of the Marxist and other apocalyptic millennial crusades- i.e. that of the divine demand for “violent purging of enemies”. The New Testament book of Revelation presents a graphic portrayal of how this theme is expressed in apocalyptic destruction. Paul had also earlier touched on violent purging of enemies in letters like Thessalonians, Romans, etc. “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire to destroy all who do not believe my Christ myth”. The same as “Lord Jesus trampling out the fury of the wrath of God” in Revelation as he destroys all who refused to bow the knee and believe Paul’s Christ-ianity.

The theme of violent purging of “enemies” was embraced in modern ideologies like the “Declinism” that shaped the violent revolutions of Marxism and Nazism. Violent purging of enemies was viewed as necessary to cleansing society of the polluting evil of what socialist revolutionaries viewed as the old “corrupt” systems. Revolutionary violence was necessary to prepare the way for, in their view, the restoration of the original tribal communalism that had been lost or ruined, the lost or ruined original paradise world.

Revolutionary violence was also valued because it exhibited the “pure and strong spirit” of the original humans more connected to nature, before humanity was weakened and degenerated in modern industrial civilization. This was of particular concern to the Nazis. The “will to power”.

Herman recounts that Christians viewed the religious wars of 16th Century Europe in terms of the apocalypse and that salvation required violent and catastrophic destruction of the status quo (p. 19-20, “The Idea of Decline in Western History”).

The enemies to be purged were those who created Classic Liberal societies of individuals with protected freedoms and rights like private property rights. Purging such enemies was considered necessary before a collectivist/communalist society could be revived and installed.

Collectivism, in its varied expressions, is an impressively constructed ideology that continues to appeal to primitive themes for validation. I am grateful to the historians for tracing the dense arguments made by the originators and subsequent activist champions of collectivism crusades. I cannot recommend strongly enough that if you want to fully understand these destructive movements in our contemporary world then read the sources listed above.

They explain why these destructive crusades continue to erupt and afflict our world. Add the delusional self-blinding view of collectivists that they are heroically involved in righteous battles against the intolerable evil that is Classic Liberal society with its free and equal individuals.

Resuming my point on the main influencers on these ideologies and crusades… Wendell Krossa

Jesus rejected outright, not just violent retaliation, but the entire complex of primitive myths that the religions of his era had inherited and promoted. He replaced the old with his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”, an unconditionally loving God.

Then Paul, just two decades later, outrightly rejected the new theology of Jesus. In his Christ myth he retreated back to the theology of a wrathful, violent deity. He retreated to re-enforce the primitive themes of tribal favoritism and discrimination- i.e. only true believers in his Christ myth would be approved/accepted by his deity and “saved”. This is stated clearly in the sacrifice/salvation theology of his main book- Romans. Note his demand for belief in a salvation scheme that involves violent blood sacrifice which then models, as Harold Ellens argues, solving problems with violence.

Paul repeats throughout his Romans letter the condition of belief in his Christ myth as required to gain access to God’s tribe.

Psychologist Harold Ellens, among others, has warned of the harmful influence of beliefs, ideas that are held more strongly than ordinary ideas that are not beliefs. The problem intensifies with religious beliefs that have long been regarded as divine and ultimate ideals, therefore immutable in nature. Add threats that any challenge, questioning, or doubting of religious beliefs is “heretical” and must be punished with excommunication from the tribe, or worse.

Further points:

Collectivists claim that the contemporary Classic Liberal approach to organizing Western societies around free individuals is an evil that must be dismantled/destroyed, as the necessary prerequisite to resurrecting and installing the utopian salvation of a communalist/collectivist society. This view dominates neo-Marxism and environmentalism.

The collectivist distortion of industrial civilization as a force that is destroying the planet is entirely wrongheaded as Julian Simon and many others have shown with good evidence. Industrial civilization, organized according to Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and representative institutions is the best that we have come up with to improve the human condition and at the same time properly care for the planet.

Collectivists portray the Classic Liberal orientation to protecting free individuals and their private property as all about selfishness and greed, not as the fundamental responsibility that it is to improve one’s life and family. With their distorted narrative, Collectivists naturally feel that their system, oriented to collectives where all receive equal outcomes, is morally superior. As they state, their collectivist equity is about “common or greater good”.

Read Acts 2 and 4 again for the Christian version of this communalism. As that scripture argues- individualism is evil and individuals holding personal property are killed by God. God is obviously a collectivist, eh. And a nasty, violent one at that. There, you have your validating ideal.

You have divine affirmation for your communalism. And if God acts violently to destroy the old individual property system, then so may we (collectivist revolutionaries) follow God’s example and destroy such civilization with violence. The collectivist reasons- Our revolutionary violence is just, noble, and the means of salvation from that which threatens life- i.e. society oriented to protecting individual freedoms and rights, equally.

Hence, collectivists, through violent revolution, and overturning of systems oriented to individual freedom and rights, have believed that they were saving societies from decline toward apocalyptic ending (according to their narrative). This is a profound deformation of the hero’s quest and especially delusional in light of Simon’s good research on the actual improving state of life that has been the outcome of the Classic Liberal approach to organizing societies.

To return once more to the influence of Paul and Jesus-

The use of divine violence for problem solving is illustrated notably in Revelation with its epitome demonstration of destructive apocalyptic purging of enemies.

Paul had initiated his affirmation of the ideal of punitive destruction by wrathful deity in his first letters to the Thessalonians claiming that “Lord Jesus would return in fiery rage to punish and destroy all who refused to believe his Christ myth”.

Paul also argued for the pathology of domination in relationships with his constant appeal to domination as the divine ideal and model as summarized in his term- “Lord Jesus”.

“Lord”? Historical Jesus had rejected this theme of “lording over others” and stated that true greatness was in serving others. He would have bluntly rejected Paul’s theme of “Lord” Jesus.

Paul re-established elite domination of commoners with his Christ myth and its defining themes.

Nothing is more violent and destructive among these pathological divine ideals that were re-enforced by Paul than the apocalyptic element. As Revelation says about the Christ of Paul- He tramples out “the fury of the wrath of God” in his violent apocalyptic destruction of the world, before casting all unbelievers into the eternal lake of fire. Metaphor only? Well, that is pretty sick stuff then. Metaphor or literal, it’s the same pathological content. And its ongoing influence on Western narratives, consciousness, and life has been horrific.

Keep in mind, again, James Tabor’s point that Paul has been the most dominant influence on those of us in the Western tradition.

How apocalyptic-scale panic-mongering works in human life and societies, Wendell Krossa

Irresponsibly inciting fear in public engenders irrationality among populations (i.e. incited survival impulse) and that renders people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that destroy life as required to save something, to save their lives and their world.
Plus, it’s the old totalitarian’s formula… Fear=control. The power thing.

Marxists and Nazis used this formula to manipulate populations, just as environmental alarmists continue to do today. Environmental alarmists beat the public consciousness daily with the assistance of their propagandizing media. And they have successfully persuaded entire Western societies to join them in their mass-harm death cult, claiming the ruin of Western societies is required to “save the world”. “Breaking eggs is required to make an omelet”.

Arthur Mendel was right that apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history.

Further, I remind readers repeatedly of the “test of facts” (Thomas Sowell)- i.e. the actual outcomes of our narratives and programs. Historians have done good research on how the themes of Paul’s Christ-ianity drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism.

Its way past time for all of us to become truly “woke” to these themes that continue to shape narratives today, both religious and secular/ideological. See the quotes from Richard Landes just below on how these Christian themes validated mass-death movements (i.e. his “Heaven On Earth” volume of evidence based on detail from historical sources).

This will be uncomfortable for committed Christians to acknowledge- i.e. the influence of core Christian themes on mass-death movements, to recognize that the main themes of Paul’s Christ myth drove and validated Marxism and Nazism.

These points from Richard Landes in his chapter on Marxism:

“Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused… very emotionally seated aspirations and hopes of young or older intellectuals are at stake. Everybody who dares to take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered as a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution…

“(to the) proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and the new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy… when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers…

“Among the historical issues of the twentieth century, nothing poses greater problems to scholars than the similarities and difference between the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian systems, both of which… were active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements,” (p. 347, Heaven On Earth).

Back to influencers Paul and Historical Jesus: Wendell Krossa

These two present entirely opposite messages with entirely contrary influences on minds, spirits, emotions, and behavior. Note the Harold Ellens quotes again on how cruel God themes, as in the divine resort to violence to solve problems, deform human personality and function as a model for the human resort to retaliatory violence to solve problems.

Where Jesus rejected entirely the myth of a retaliatory, violent God punitively destroying the world in apocalypse, Paul re-instated that theology in his apocalyptic Christ myth.

Again, if it’s any comfort to believers, this site emphasizes that the message of Historical Jesus had nothing to do with Paul’s Christology. This site argues for isolating out the actual message of Jesus and then honoring the man for who he actually was and what he actually taught. The Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy approach of recognizing the “diamonds/pearls” as contrasted with the context of ______. Well, you know the blunt terms they used.

The problem is that the entirely opposite messages of Jesus and Paul have been so merged and mixed in the New Testament that the insights of Jesus are nullified, distorted, and even buried by the more dominant message of Paul, and his Greek Christology. See Bob Brinsmead on the distorting Hellenization of Judaism and then the subsequent Hellenization of Christianity (Source: Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”).

How to begin sorting out these contrary messages? Start with the general “Jesus Seminar” work, and then especially the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research. Add also the varied special research on Paul’s Christology that deformed the message of Jesus. Sources like Maurice Casey’s “From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God”, Hyam Maccoby’s “The Myth-maker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity”, etc.

Hollywood, as a major public story-telling forum, unquestioningly embraces the Christianity of Paul, and beats the apocalyptic mythology into public consciousness endlessly. So also, the “profoundly religious” climate crisis crusade and its propaganda arm- news media- beat this into public consciousness.

Note with Jordan Peterson, Bob Brinsmead, and others, that we all live primarily by story and it is critical that we get the story right that shapes our societies. Apocalyptic is a dominant feature in relation to this.

Insert:

I repeat the above points because religious themes/beliefs have been a critical element driving the mass-death crusades of just decades ago- i.e. Marxism, Nazism. The apocalyptic millennialism that drove Marxism and Nazism is now working the same harm through climate crisis apocalyptic and its decarbonization salvation scheme.

The point to get is the role of Christian themes inciting and validating these profoundly religious crusades. This blunt conclusion will grate on true believer’s ears and even incite offended outrage among some.

But the evidence is overwhelming, undeniable. And the military guy, back in 2014 when ISIS tried to establish the Caliphate, repeated the same point as Richard Landes- i.e. that if you don’t learn the lesson that millennial ideas can carry a society into mass-death then you have learned nothing and will continue to repeat the same madness.

The historians have done the research- i.e. Herman, Landes, Mendel, Redles, and others. They have carefully researched the statements of the leaders of apocalyptic millennial crusades like Marxism and Nazism, noting speeches by leading figures, their writings and comments to others, also the statement by colleagues who later wrote their own autobiographies, quoting their recollections of comments by Hitler and others. And so on.

Note, for example, how Hitler presented himself in stages- first as the John Baptist-like forerunner to the messiah, then as the messiah, and then finally as the violent destroying Christ of Revelation. Hitler went from a disregarded fringe lunatic to Fuhrer during the Great Depression of the Weimar years because his religious message of looming apocalypse and promised salvation in a new millennial kingdom began to resonate widely with the German Christian public.

Again, I do not deny the better elements in the Christian religion- notably the material of Historical Jesus (i.e. “Wisdom Sayings”). But this site sets forth the contrast between Jesus and Paul because I recognize the harm-generating elements in the mix- i.e. the themes of Paul’s apocalyptic Christ.

This site carefully delineates the darker themes of Paul’s narrative, because of the horrific outcomes of such validating themes, and because those themes were only recently involved in driving the apocalyptic millennial crusades of Marxism and Nazism, and are now, once again, driving the climate apocalyptic crusade and its millennial element of decarbonization salvation. This ought to be of critical concern to us all.

And that was the point I was making in the above blog comments.

More on my take on all this: Wendell Krossa

We respond subconsciously to deeply embedded impulses and archetypal themes that validate our impulses. We respond emotionally to narrative themes that affirm our felt impulses. It’s a very resonance-type thing. Often subconscious. That 95% of our behavior that is apparently subconsciously motivated. (The 95% number comes from a friend who researched that as part of his consumer behavior business.)

We are responding to things that were embedded millennia ago, that unfortunately continue to validate our animal inheritance of drives to (1) tribalism, (2) domination, and (3) punitive destruction of differing others.

Insert: I have my own mishmash understanding of “archetypes” as some combination of impulses conjoined with validating ideas/myths. I claim no expertise regarding this stuff. But like most commoners, I am quite curious about it all. And being of average intelligence, I have to reconstruct the terms and statements of the elite experts just to understand what is going on.

Like my read of David Chalmer’s “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory”. Sheesh. I get it that he is a philosopher speaking to and arguing with other philosophers. And I basically get his “panpsychism” and its “poof” theory, that as consciousness becomes more complex up the chain of reality and life till you get to the complexity of electro-biochemical interactions in the brain, then “poof”- the wonder of the human self and mind just pops into existence. Mind from meat, from material.

This from the Amazon blurb on Chalmer’s materialism:

“For example, in exploring the notion that consciousness could be experienced by machines as well as humans, Chalmers asks us to imagine a thinking brain in which neurons are slowly replaced by silicon chips that precisely duplicate their functions–as the neurons are replaced, will consciousness gradually fade away?”

My point in response to Chalmers: If mind is produced by the “meat” or material stuff of the brain, then yes, machines, also as material, should be able to replicate the same experience of consciousness as the brain that is material. If its just about very complex interactions among materials that then produce consciousness, then yes, you should be able to also get the “poof” emergence of the conscious self from complex material interactions in machines.

And of course, the poof theorists add that there may be some relation to the quantum realm just to show that they recognize some element of mystery still in the mix. But its all really a “mind from material” issue, according to philosophical materialists. I won’t get into the counter arguments of neuroscientists who point out how “absurd” these arguments are.

Anyway, on my redo of the esoteric language of elite experts- Chalmers used the term “supervenient”. Consciousness is not supervenient on the brain, he argued. It is “primitive”, as in being its own fundamental reality. Like gravity. The best alternative that I could come up with for supervenient is- “not dependent upon”. I know the experts will pick that apart. But close enough for me.

Amazon blurb on supervenient:

“an irreducible entity (similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space)”.

Ah. I dunno. A basic reality like gravity? Nah. I think its more like consciousness is the most basic reality from which all other reality derives its existence. That new pyramid of reality with consciousness at the base, then physics, chemistry, biology, and on up to anthropology/psychology.

Now, I will once again do the Trump “weave”, after wandering away from my original points, now weaving my way back again to where I started.

Continuing with that deeply embedded influence, a profoundly religious influence where our inherited animal impulses are validated by religious themes, notably by gods that embody the themes.

And taking Karl Jung’s point on the “collective unconscious”- I would not accept the collective unconscious as something defined with immutably right or unchangeable archetypes. Why not? Because we know today that varied fundamental archetypal features are profoundly wrong and need to be changed. Notably, those related to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

Most people will not dare consider touching things considered divine or sacred, especially theology- i.e. ideas of God. But that ultimate ideal and authority is where some of the worst of features of primitive life have been projected by our ancestors, deeply embedded in the human subconscious, and subsequently protected with the “immutable divine” cloak.

Historical Jesus initiated the singularly critical breakout from the human mental prison that was traditional mythology and religion. He courageously confronted and changed that reality by going after core narrative themes, and specifically after the most central of all themes- i.e. those related to deity theory, to God theories. Jesus overturned that reality entirely and profoundly reframed it, reconstructed it. He rejected outright the dominating threat theology of all past history and presented his stunning new theology of God as nonretaliatory, unconditional love. That was the most profound mental revolution ever offered to human minds.

The most profound liberation ever.

My suspicion is that in changing the fundamental nature of deity, he undertook a profound revolution of human narratives and that works back into the subconscious to change the deeply embedded archetypes there, and then that operates to reverberate out again to transform everything else- i.e. how we think, feel, are motivated, and respond/behave.

He probably did not operate on the level of our contemporary understanding of narratives and the influence of the subconscious archetypes. Its more likely that he just felt empathy when seeing people suffering under cruel god theories and responded to help people at that level of awareness, giving them an entirely new view of God, a God of authentic universal, unconditional love.

Another note on a point made above:

My friend, businessman Herb Sorensen, has often reminded me that 95% of our behavior is influenced by the subconscious. We act subconsciously 95% of the time. And that is what Niemietz meant in quoting Jonathan Haidt that “emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, is how we intuitively choose our beliefs and form our narratives”. And then we act in accordance with our belief systems.

How we feel (emotional satisfaction), is powerfully influenced by previous millennia of deeply embedded archetypal themes validating impulses in human brains.

This explains why very intelligent people continue to embrace pathological beliefs and systems like socialism that have, due to their very nature of centralizing power in elites, inevitably failed and done massive harm to humanity. Nonetheless, many feel collectivist equity is right, just, fair, good, and that approach allows them to virtue-signal their compassion for “victims/oppressed”. Even as that system has repeatedly destroyed societies and millions of lives, as in the 24 socialist/collectivist experiments over the past century or so.

Socialism/collectivism harms people and destroys societies because it rejects Classic Liberal principles and institutions that protect the rights and freedoms of every individual, equally. Socialism, by its fundamental principles, subjects individuals to collectives, removing individual power and control and centralizing that power and control in collectives run by dominating elites (self-imagined as enlightened and noble philosophers), elites who claim to know what is right for all others. Such elites inevitably succumb to their own impulse to domination and hence the subsequent socialist intolerance of diversity, inclusion, and equality.

Add also Peterson’s point that while power corrupts, it also attracts psychopathic types who see opportunity for power and control of victims. Even for sadism.

Socialism/Marxism has been the dominant embodiment and expression of the totalitarian impulse over the past few centuries. It repeatedly comes back at us in evolving new versions and masquerading under new programs and projects like Woke Progressive DEI and ESG. It re-invents itself with new versions of the same old tribal dualisms- as in the categorization of humanity as belonging to one of two categories- oppressed or oppressor, victim or victimizer. The dividing of humanity is now accomplished according to skin color as in “identity politics”.

Socialism/collectivism ends affirming the same old elite/commoner divide of society, the same old “good vs evil”.

Now, the Joe Rogan interview of Mike Benz

What I post in my summary below of Mike Benz’s comments to Joe Rogan is nothing of the detail that he offers on the people and agencies creating the massive infrastructure of elite domination and censorship today. The “censorship industrial complex” infrastructure originates from CIA meddling, post-WW2, in the fight against communism that, over recent years, has turned to a fight against the populism movements of Western liberal democracies that are the battle of commoners against the domination of state elites and their bureaucracies. Populism movements, though smeared as “right wing extremism”, are the expressions of the will of the people from all sectors of society, fighting for their rights, freedoms, and equality.

The massive behind-the-scenes infrastructure (“deep state”, or “managerial class”, according to Vivek Ramaswamy) now portrays liberal democracy/Classic Liberalism as the evil threat to their democracy defined as their control of narratives, government, and overall society. These elites define democracy now as “the consensus of state institutions” that they control.

These elite state institutions are in a battle against populism that they frame as the “struggle for democracy”. Benz offers dense detail on the massive infrastructure that intervenes in some 140 other countries, as well as the US, and is the new elite push for establishing the elite/commoner divide in human societies, the real threat to freedom and democracy.

Here is a post to my discussion group re the Benz interview…

Give this the first 10 or so minutes to get the flavor of their discussion… Wendell Krossa

“You get repeated notices from me on good sources for understanding our world today. Every once in a while, I push one of my posts as especially important for some insights. This one is a new “head and shoulders above” the rest for insight on the formation of the Censorship Industrial Complex (the social media infrastructure) that is at the cutting edge of the new elite totalitarianism today…. Benz relates this to things like what happened when the US overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014… and other things.

“This is an incredible exposure of the behind-the-scenes operations of the new totalitarian elites establishing once again the elite/commoner divide in our societies. This is a history of the corruption of democracy and destruction of freedom like nothing before, all the while presenting itself as a noble cause defense of democracy and fight against misinformation/disinformation, all the while demonizing the real battle for democracy- i.e. populism- as the threat to democracy.

“Rogan notes that Musk buying Twitter was a critical point in exposing the censorship complex operating behind the scenes.

“Others have also pointed to Musk buying Twitter as a critical turning point in the history of struggle for freedom.

“Benz says the Trump administration has an enormous task to deconstruct this censorship behemoth and will run into strong pushback from the groups behind this.

“The current censorship crusade apparently arose out of early CIA/US programs to win the “soft-power influence game”, an approach similarly recognized by Russia. The argument was that if you could influence populations with narratives that you controlled then you need not invade with tanks but with Twitters and your control of information could change minds and win hearts. If you could censor and control the information that populations in countries were exposed to.

“This goes back to CIA interference in media to control narratives that began post-WW2 in the battle for world influence. These secret programs have been pushed in some 140 countries around the world now.

“He explains how this web or censorship infrastructure silenced Trump in 2020 and did not allow him to win that election. It has the power to ensure who wins elections, says Benz. Someone else also noted how often the US overthrows democratically elected governments, like in Ukraine, all in the name of “saving democracy”. Just like the coup against Biden, eh. Endless anti-democratic projects to “save democracy”.

“The comments Benz makes on the current censorship crusade by elites are backed by another guest of Rogan months earlier who studies Google’s bias in selectively promoting certain responses to user searches, and downplays others- deplatforming, etc. (to get around First Amendment issues) and thereby moves millions of votes one way or another.

“Benz notes that Victoria Nuland is a main character behind the scenes who was critical to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected Ukraine government. Taibbi and Shellenberger have also regularly pointed to her involvement.

“What strikes me, in this expose, is how we are propagandized with some threat like ISIS using the web to proselytize new recruits, and how such purported threats are then used to validate the push for programs of censorship against others, even though not associated with some group like ISIS. Much like the “concept creep” thing that has happened with hate speech- extending that category further to include censoring the speech of political opponents, even censoring comedy.

“Benz notes the guy who identifies as “Obama’s chief propagandist”, once a free speech “maximalist” but who then changed his views and claimed the First Amendment was a mistake. This guy was involved in the shift of intelligence agencies from their original mandate of counter-terrorism to their current focus today on fighting populism.

“The intelligence agencies have shifted from going after communism in the past, to now going after populist “right-wing” movements all over, smearing them as dangerous anti-democracy authoritarians like the former leftist authoritarians that the CIA went after to overthrow. This is behind US intelligence agencies now spying on, surveilling, monitoring, and censoring their own people.

“Winston Marshall was right that “populism is democracy”. Populism is the struggle of commoners against controlling elites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFmjgbdNNgw&t=14s

“Ah, so much detail here on CIA and other agencies and groups intervening in the societies of others to manipulate and control people. Benz talks about how in the 60s and 70s the CIA interfered in Democrat party politics to tilt them away from anti-war protests to become more supportive of the military industrial complex. We see the outcome today as the Democrats have become the pro-war party.

“This is a detailed expose of how the US elites and state agencies have turned inward to spy on and censor the US population as they push to control of narratives and thought across the entire society.

“Interesting how this complex of state agencies has redefined democracy as not about individual freedom but about the “consensus of state institutions”, hence any challenge to such elites and their programs is viewed as a “threat to democracy”. So also, these elites now view elections as a threat to democracy and have dictated to leadership in Ukraine to ban elections because elections allow populists to circumvent the will and consensus of the institutions of the elites.

“Benz gives the history of the shift from counter-communism to counter-populism the populism of Brexit, of Trump and other “right wing” movements now viewed as the enemies of democracy, as defined by the elites. Manipulating language to demonize opposition, the elites now frame democratic populism as the new “authoritarianism” that the CIA had fought decades earlier in other countries where it claimed to be promoting democracy.

“Benz unveils the tangled mess of state agencies behind this, the manipulation by the CIA and others, using a massive infrastructure of programs, agencies, and NGOs, like the “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED) to do their dirty work and that permits the CIA to keep their fingerprints off things. Benz says the NED is all over the censorship complex.

“Benz also talks about how the NED gets foreign governments to create censorship laws to then go after US social media companies, arguing for censorship to stop “disinformation/misinformation” which is how the elites portray the populist movement and social media like X. Note how this has been expressed in the Brazilian government going after Elon Musk and X.

“Mike Benz is a former official with the U.S. Department of State and current Executive Director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, is a free speech watchdog organization dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet.”

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

On Spotify this is episode 2237 of Joe Rogan Experience

Added note: Wendell Krossa

It is stunning to see these elites, loudly clamoring about their defense of democracy, while damning free speech and the First Amendment as threats to democracy (e.g. John Kerry, Tim Walz, Robert Reich, Hilary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other Democrats). Their new definition of democracy is the “consensus of state institutions” that they control for their own interests. They have subverted and overturned entirely the understanding of freedom and democracy to support elite domination and control of populations.

This 1984ish co-option and manipulation of language exposes this crusade to establish the elite/commoner divide to be an ugly totalitarianism deformed entirely by the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, the psychopathology of left-wing compassion that cannot be understood as anything other than something psychopathic-like for its cruel disregard of the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.

Regular quotable things and good sources of evidence

Archetype– “model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc.”

Main articles presenting critical points made on this site:

From Retaliation to Unconditional love– the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.

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

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

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

The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).

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

Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– the hero’s journey and conquest. The intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, along with the mythical themes that validate such impulses, and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661

And then some repeats of good sources and comments on this and that…

“Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’’, Climate Depot, Nov. 13, 2023

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/13/climate-data-refutes-crisis-narrative-if-you-concede-the-science-only-challenge-the-policiesyoure-going-to-lose/

Quote:

Edward Ring: “If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game. Who cares if we have to enslave humanity? Our alternative is certain death from global boiling! You can’t win that argument. You must challenge the science…”

Best summaries of climate science available at “co2coalition.org”, “Wattsupwiththat.com”, and related sites.

Notable counter-point to warming alarmism: 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth (Lancet study).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/?sh=2e67170e1d88

From Niemietz’s “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”

“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”

Niemietz on “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”

They’re made of meat (poking fun at the absurdity that meat produces the wonder of mind or the human self):

https://philosophy.tamucc.edu/texts/bisson-theyre-made-out-of-meat?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The very best climate science reports and news:

https://co2coalition.org/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/

https://www.netzerowatch.com/

http://co2science.org/

Summary of Historical Jesus’ core message:

How to end cycles of retaliatory violence, how to courageously initiate peace in societies….

Again, this is not prescriptive for criminal justice systems to adopt dogmatic pacifist approaches that do not work in the face of evil. States and their criminal justice systems are obligated first and foremost to restrain violent people and protect all citizens from assaults, both foreign and domestic. De-criminalization and de-carceration policies, especially as applied to violent people, do not work.

Take this advice of Historical Jesus as more about how we maintain our own humanity as we go about the dirty work of dealing with offenders.

These statements have more to do with how victims may freely choose to respond to offenders in the multi-varied incidents and relationships of life. Its very much an individual freedom of choice issue. People who have suffered horrific abuse from offenders should never be pushed to engage these issues of forgiveness or love, until perhaps much later and if presented as fundamentally helpful in some way to their own condition.

As the father of a brutally murdered girl said years later. I chose to forgive, not for the sake of the offender but for the sake of my daughter who would have wanted me to. She would not have wanted me to spend the rest of my life darkened by hatred and bitterness. And that would have ruined my other children.

Just a mental gimmick? No, such intention to forgive effects profound outcomes on the mental/emotional state of the one doing it.

Other points:

These principles of how we think, perceive, how we then feel and are motivated, impact our intentions, our thinking and responding to offenders, our motivations and intentions to avoid inhumane responses and choose more humane responses.

Forgiveness and an unconditional approach to offenders works at the individual level and at scale in societies. Note, for example, Nelson Mandela employing his unconditional love approach toward former enemies and thereby defusing a potential civil war in South Africa (Richard Stengel in “Mandela’s Way”). Compare that with Rwanda and Serbia around the same time.

The guiding ideals/principles of Historical Jesus:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.

“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)

This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.

Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.

The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.

The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.

Joseph Campbell

“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the real battle of good against evil that is the personal inner battle to conquer the animal inheritance of impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”

Best books on the improving state of life on Earth:

Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. Simon set the standard for understanding the “true state of life on Earth” by looking at the complete big picture (all the data on any issue) and longest-term trends (not just focusing on short-term aberrations or downturns in long trends).

Many subsequent studies affirmed Simon’s basic research on the big picture and long-term trends of life-

Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment On the Earth”,

Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”,

Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”,

Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”,

Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”,

Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”,

Tupy and Bailey’s “Ten Global Trends”, also “Superabundance”

Hans Roslings “Factfulness”, and others.

A reposting of the basic principles of a humane society: Wendell Krossa

What do I mean when I refer to “Classic Liberalism”?

And as people talk about creating a “safe AI”, why not ensure that safety by programing AI with Classic Liberal principles?

Basic principles, systems, institutions of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or Western liberalism.

Daniel Hannan in his Introduction to “Inventing Freedom” provides the following lists and descriptions of the basic features of a truly liberal society or civilization:

“A belief in property rights, personal liberty, and representative government…

“Three irreducible elements. First, the rule of law…Those rules exist on a higher plane and are interpreted by independent magistrates…

“Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish with your assets, to work for whom you please, and conversely, to hire and fire as you will…

“Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us… the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty…

“The idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion… elevate the individual over the state…

“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus (see below), free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials…

“The idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract…

“Individualism, the rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values…

And this full summary:

“Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied nor laws passed without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed”.

Hannan’s book is invaluable for tracing the historical emergence and development of Western freedom down through the English tradition, from pre-Magna Carta to the present.

Definition of habeas corpus (varied online definitions):

“A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful.”

“A writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.”

“The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body”—that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed. In United States law, ‘habeas corpus ad subjiciendum’ (the full name of what habeas corpus typically refers to) is also called “the Great Writ,” and it is not about a person’s guilt or innocence, but about whether custody of that person is lawful under the U.S. Constitution. Common grounds for relief under habeas corpus— “relief” in this case being a release from custody—include a conviction based on illegally obtained evidence; a denial of effective assistance of counsel; or a conviction by a jury that was improperly selected and impaneled.” (Miriam Webster)

One of the best at defining and articulating Classic Liberal ideals and principles, notably in the US version- Full interview of Vivek Ramaswamy on Lex Fridman podcast. Vivek for president. Note how Vivek frankly acknowledges and responds to deformities of Classic Liberalism on the right side of US society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw

Bob Brinsmead: Love and freedom are inseparable realities. Where there is no true freedom there is no authentic love.

Quotes from Landes to help us understand our world today.

These quotes below are to wet your appetite to read his excellent research on apocalyptic millennial movements and the damage they wreak on human societies. We are currently living through one of the most widespread and damaging outbreaks of apocalyptic hysteria today in the climate alarmism crusade with its salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization that is ruining societies.

Add the research of his colleagues- Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) and David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich). Start with Landes overall history of these apocalyptic crusades, the themes that incite and guide them, the stages they go through, the destructive outcomes. … from his book “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”.

Historian Landes says there is an “almost instinctive hostility most historians feel toward millennialism”. He notes the “overwhelming resistance (he) got from modern historians to the identification of these allegedly ‘secular’ revolutionary movements (i.e. Communism, Nazism)” as religious. His point is to “challenge positivist notions about the clear division between secular and religious phenomena”.

He states that in his research he will “illustrate how key millennial tropes- apocalyptic scenarios filled with both outrageous hopes and fears and paranoid conspiracy thinking- continue to work on allegedly modern, enlightened minds”.

“Millennial world histories are the mother of all grand narratives… millennialism is a… revolutionary ideology”, p.13.

“Apocalyptic believers… tend toward hyperactivity… the more impending the end, the more frenetic their behavior…”, p.18.

Landes then comments on the age-old human pattern of basing human behavior on what people believe is the divine reality or model, appealing to a belief to validate human behavior, “Heaven’s order becomes a model for that of earth (p. 23)… the forces of order must annihilate those of evil”, p. 25.

This affirms what psychologist Harold Ellens similarly stated about beliefs in a heavenly or divine pattern that are to be followed, to be replicated in human behavior and life. Here is a brief summary of Ellens and Lotufo quotes. See full set further below…

“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…

“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…

“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.

As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.

Continuing with Landes…

“Cataclysmic apocalyptic scenarios foresee enormous destruction preceding the advent of God’s kingdom (or just total annihilation). These scenarios tend to emphasize the depravity of humankind- most people are damned and must perish before any truly just society can come about. This is true even for many “secular” scenarios like the more radical versions of global warming which identify human failings (greed, irresponsibility) as the source of the problem.

“Cataclysmic apocalyptic scenarios often involve staggering levels of violence and destruction- rivers of blood, plagues, earthquakes, floods, famines, the devastation of war, and natural calamities”, p. 3.

“Environmentalists are the most obvious current case of roosters crowing warnings that range from the prophetic to the apocalyptic, using the stick of cataclysmic destruction if we do not change, and the carrot of millennial harmony with both nature and technology as the reward for repenting of our greedy, wasteful ways”, p. 46.

“’Chicken Littles’- alarmists whose excessive imaginations have cooked up panic from nothing…”, p. 50.

“Apocalyptic failure… Rarely can any respectable historian say so categorically about any phenomenon, much more about a religious one, ‘In every case, this belief has been wrong’”, p. 56.

On grand narratives…

“Both religious and secular historiography seems to gravitate toward the vesperian. Too often, they obscure rather than clarify the history of perhaps the greatest and most tenacious grand narrative of all”…

“This issue goes deep. The very foundations of Western literate consciousness come in significant part from two of the most profoundly millennial religious cultures in world history- Judaism and Christianity. The faithful in both religions, even more than others, have been subjected to repeated and repeatedly inaccurate apocalyptic prophecies”, p. 84.

“Apocalyptic conflicts are among the few religious phenomena to survive secularization, indeed, mutate into recognizable and powerful secular forms of millennialism that have dominated the history of the last century… (i.e.) communism, Nazism…”, p. 87.

“The degree to which the apocalyptic enthusiast believes his or her fellow humans to be corrupt- still worse, irredeemably corrupt- correlates directly to the intensity of the cataclysm that must precede the earthly redemption. The angrier and more unforgiving the messiah, the more destruction necessary to purify the world of sin, and the more divine assistance fails, the more he will feel justified in raining down vengeance on the world”, p. 193.

Elites versus commoners

Then Landes comments on the common features of pre-modern societies “all of which center around the creation of a vast and profound division between elites and commoners. In such societies the elites monopolize weapons, communications technology, and wealth… Research supports the idea that prime dividers dominate the structures of agrarian societies with world over.”

Landes notes that prime divider societies which center around the division between elites and commoners are “oppressive”. However, he fails to note this very same division of ancient and agrarian societies has again been developed and promoted (largely behind the scenes) in our modern liberal democracies. Varied independent journalists have been exposing this resurging totalitarianism to the public over recent years, notably Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, among others.

“Elites construct prime dividers along four major lines: legal privilege, stigmatization of manual labor, restricted access to the technologies of knowledge, and weaponry…” p. 216.

Landes adds that elites legislate, judge, execute, and pay fewer taxes. Elites despise manual labor and avoid it, and they monopolize elite education. They seek to maintain control over information and keep the best weapons away from commoners.

Elites hold a “dominating imperative… rule or be ruled, dominate or be dominated, enslave or be enslaved… Do unto others before they do unto you… If we do not subject them then they will subject us. One must dominate as a defensive measure”, p. 218.

C. S. Lewis’s warning in relation to the moralizing busybodies who believe that they alone know what is right and best for all others and will seek to coerce and control others:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals”.

The personal safeguard to the self-delusion of being solely right… Hold fast to Classic Liberal principles re the protection of individual rights and freedoms, as against the ever-creeping totalitarianism of collectivist approaches that subject individuals to some claimed “greater good or common good” that has to be managed by “enlightened elites” who believe that they alone know what is best for all other and will use coercion to control others.

Ellens and Lotufo- full set of quotes

A reposting of comments from psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo regarding their work on the influence of bad religious ideas on human personality and society. Again, my point here is that the fundamental themes of primitive mythologies have not faded from human narratives and consciousness today but continue their presence and influence in the great world religions and have also been given new embodiment and expression in so-called “secular/ideological” versions as in the “climate alarmism” crusade. The old themes still impact our consciousness, lives, and societies.

Here are the statements from psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo (quoting psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens) on how images/beliefs, notably images of ultimate reality and ideals, like deity, how such images influence human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior in daily life. Both men affiliated with the Christian tradition. Ellens was a US Army chaplain. Meaning- There is no throwing stones from without.

The old themes still impact our consciousness, lives, and societies.

Quotes from Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”:

The Introduction states that, among others, “(Lotufo) explores the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience… (this is of the) highest urgency today when religious motivation seems to be playing an increasing role, constructively and destructively, in the arena of social ethics, national politics, and world affairs…”

My insert: The destructive outcomes of “religious motivation” are notable also in terms of the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade and its destructive “salvation” scheme of Net Zero decarbonization (“save the world”), as evident in the spreading harm, from Net Zero and renewables zealotry, in societies like Germany, Britain, and California. Climate alarmism exhibits the same old themes and destructive outcomes of all past apocalyptic crusades. The themes of climate alarmism, as another apocalyptic millennial crusade, are energized by the cohering center of an angry deity threatening harsh punishment and destruction through an apocalypse.

Lotufo then notes “the pathological nature of mainstream orthodox theology and popular religious ideation”.

He says, “One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…

“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…

“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…

“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…

“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.

As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.

Add also that the themes of (1) tribalism (true believers favored and “saved”, versus unbelievers who are rejected and destroyed), (2) domination (deity as dominating Lord, Ruler, King that validates human forms of domination- state leaders, priesthoods, fathers…), and (3) ultimate violent destruction of the differing others (apocalypse, hell)… such themes, sacralized in deity as ultimate ideals and authority, then serve to re-enforce the same features in the adherents of such belief systems.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Benz exposes the massive infrastructure pushing the elite/commoner divide in our liberal democracies

A better theological basis for human equality as in “natural rights” or “God-given rights”. No one is more special than any other person.

New comment below:

The Swedish system of mixed elements (democratic socialism/social democracy) is not an Eden-like answer to organizing societies. Bad elements in mixed systems undermine the good elements. Did we learn nothing from the merger of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christ? Look up “oxymoronic”. More on re-establishing tribal dualism as per Marxist collectivism and the inevitable consequence of another bout of the elite/commoner divide in society. And oh, Starmer pushes the destruction of British society with Net Zero zealotry. Imagine, the birthplace of Classic Liberalism being ruined by an apocalyptic death-cult.

See reposting of revised “Review of main site topics” below. Ideas to stir the Christmas pot, known in the vernacular as the “Number 2” pot. Ideas to transform consciousness and change the world for the better. And other new bits below.

Salvaging DEI concerns. Well, some of them, Wendell Krossa

Two of the main principles in DEI- i.e. “inclusion and diversity”- are generally acceptable to most people, depending on exactly what meaning is associated with them and what form of promotion is used to present them. Most of us can agree that inclusion and diversity are good for liberal democracy.

But not the “equity” element in the mix as in coerced equal outcomes that deny performance-based criteria.

And then we ask- Why are contemporary DEI programs too often promoted in our societies with such hatred and bullying? Why, for example, the quick and harsh condemnation by many DEIers of any diversity from dogmatically affirmed “correct speech”? Why the all-too-common follow-up calls of DEIers for censoring, cancelling, even criminalizing those who speak incorrectly or even just question the dogma?

Just to illustrate the bullying- Note this clip below of “Piers Morgan Uncensored”, where Democrat Ana Kasparian talks about the insane bullying that she endured for sharing the sexual assault that she suffered at the hands of homeless people in LA. Her “Woke DEI” colleagues then turned on her with nasty attacks that stunned her, smearing her as “hating homeless people, stigmatizing homeless people”, turning her, the victim, into the victimizer in her sexual assault.

As she rightly notes, the activists are a small minority (“tyranny of the minority”) but scream the loudest and then form mobs of bullies to threaten and cow others into silence. There is no authentic “inclusion and diversity” in DEI approaches.

The bullying that so often follows the implementation of DEI programs is justified as legitimate in order to protect and liberate the “victims” of imagined oppression. The required “revolution” thing- i.e. “break some eggs to make the good omelet”. But none of us are ever justified in abandoning the fundamental human obligations to “love one another”, to “love your enemy”, meaning- to live as human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkEZXp0GJe8

This Morgan/Kasparian episode illustrates the psychopathology of narcissistic virtue-signaling that appears to be behind much advocacy for DEI, a psychopathology that appears unaware of or cares not about vicious attacks and harmful outcomes but just wants to present the appearance of virtue in crusading for “victims”, virtue in activism for a “noble cause”, virtue in “heroic engagement in a righteous battle against evil victimizers”. Others have called this the “narcissism of left-wing authoritarianism”.

(Insert: This is not to deny that there are actual victims among minority groups. But we don’t advocate humanely for those people by bullying and harming others who challenge our activism. That exposes our claims to “compassion” as more the psychopathology of virtue-signalling that has become too common among activists for varied crusades today.)

Any basic awareness of the brutal murderousness of “equity” approaches (i.e. the 100 million people murdered last century by equity-oriented collectivism) will quickly sober common-sense minds and result in the rejection of collectivist approaches for their repeatedly inhumane outcomes that destroy liberal democracy and inevitably promote the horrific outcomes of the elite/commoner divide in societies.

Always apply Thomas Sowell’s “Test of facts”, as in what are the actual outcomes of the ideology or approach that you are promoting. Inevitable harm, and the failure of humane societies, is built into the guiding principles of collectivist equity systems or approaches. We have repeated historical examples that affirm these outcomes. So why keep ‘fooking’ things up? Well, Kristian Niemietz ends his book with an explanation why- “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” (Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies)

Read the great collectivist equity experiments of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others. Add another recent one in Venezuela. And don’t pivot defensively, as equity activists do, to the repetitious excuse that follows all failed socialist experiments- “Well, that last failed one was not true socialism. We just need another chance to show true socialism”.

The collectivist zealots promoting Chavismo made that very argument at the beginning of the Venezuelan experiment with socialism- i.e. that it would be different this time from the old Stalinist versions of the past. It would be “true socialism”.

And yes, it was “true socialism” because all socialist approaches- i.e. collectivist equity- embody the same essential core pathologies of subjecting individuals to collectives (falsely presented as “greater or common good”) that are run by “enlightened elites” who through state coercion confiscate private property and thereby undermine and overturn individual rights and freedoms. Every socialist experiment always and inevitably then becomes just another society-deforming application of the primitive elite/commoner divide. Milder versions of the same basic pathologies are evident in big government approaches that confiscate private property via excessive taxation and regulatory intervention in citizens lives.

Insert: Note the Hollywood activists (fitting the category of those whom Lenin termed “useful idiots”) who rushed south to give their support to Chavismo- i.e. Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Naomi Campbell, Kevin Spacey, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, and others…

https://www.foxnews.com/world/hollywood-adulation-of-venezuelas-socialist-government-proven-wrong-again

https://nypost.com/2016/06/05/hollywoods-chavez-cheering-stars-venezuelas-victms/

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/these-hollywood-stars-hailed-hugo-chavez-as-a-hero-and-friend/article9336154/

https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=6147631&page=1

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/11/why-actors-and-models-love-to-hang-out-with-hugo-chavez.html

The inevitable outcomes of collectivist equity experiments, outcomes that destroy freedom and democracy, are built into the basic principles of collectivist equity that refuse to protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.

Understand the basic principles of any system/approach and the related outcomes (correlation/causation) as evidence of what the basic principles of a system produce- i.e. Do they help or harm? It is especially egregious when the outcomes of a system/approach have been so consistently harmful to populations as socialism principles have been across previous history.

Continuing…

All collectivist equity approaches follow the same old destructive path of all past similar crusades and the defenders then make the same old excuses following every failed experiment with their approach. I listened to my profs at SFU (late 80s) make these very excuses as the Soviet Union was collapsing in the late 80s, early 90s, “It wasn’t true Socialism and we just need another chance to show true Socialism is the best way to organize human societies”. Such nonsense and blind denial of the pathologies in the system that you promote.

Sources: See Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s “Mao: The Unknown Story”. Also, Kristian Niemietz’s “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.

After failing 24 times across the last century or so, it is denialism of the worst kind to insist on “keeping on”. Isn’t the insistence on doing the same things that keep failing, the definition of insanity?

The outcome of inevitable harm and failure is built into any system that does not protect and promote the freedoms and rights of every person, equally.

Once again- A renewed totalitarianism is being pushed across our liberal democracies. What drives the repeated promotion of the elite/commoner divide in our societies? What incites people to reject the Classic Liberalism that protects the freedoms and rights of all, equally?

Added notes: Wendell Krossa

Get a good grip on the basic principles of Classic Liberalism and that will provide you with the tools to evaluate any ideology, system, or approach to organizing societies that is put forth in society. It will help you to evaluate any policy, project, or program offered by activists or politicians. Does it serve people as in affirming individual self-determination as much as possible? Does it give power to the people as in protecting and promoting the full rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally?

I have listed again below the basic principles from Daniel Hannan’s book “Inventing Freedom: How the English-speaking peoples made the modern world”. He offers the evidence that Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and representative institutions have produced the “common or greater good” more successfully and broadly than any alternative approach- i.e. producing “the most good for the most people” (Milton Freidman). The “good” of lifting billions of people out of the horror of poverty over the past few centuries (notably beginning around 1820- see William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”).

Classic Liberal principles have a solid history of functioning successfully to improve the human condition. Socialism, to the contrary, has inevitably and repeatedly produced mass-harm/mass-death, immiserating billions and ruining societies, as exemplified by the latest experiment in previously resource-rich and wealthy Venezuela, now a state in collapse.

Collectivist equity systems enslave people within the same old elite/commoner divide.

A reposting of the basic principles of a humane society: Wendell Krossa

What do I mean when I refer to “Classic Liberalism”? And as people talk about creating a “safe AI” why not ensure that safety by programing AI with Classic Liberal principles?

Basic principles, systems, institutions of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or Western liberalism.

Daniel Hannan in his Introduction to “Inventing Freedom” provides the following lists and descriptions of the basic features of a truly liberal society or civilization:

“A belief in property rights, personal liberty, and representative government…

“Three irreducible elements. First, the rule of law…Those rules exist on a higher plane and are interpreted by independent magistrates…

“Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish with your assets, to work for whom you please, and conversely, to hire and fire as you will…

“Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us… the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty…

“The idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion… elevate the individual over the state…

“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus (see below), free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials…

“The idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract…

“Individualism, the rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values…

And this full summary:

“Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied nor laws passed without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed”.

Hannan’s book is invaluable for tracing the historical emergence and development of Western freedom down through the English tradition, from pre-Magna Carta to the present.

Definition of habeas corpus (varied online definitions):

“A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful.”

“A writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.”

“The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body”—that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed. In United States law, ‘habeas corpus ad subjiciendum’ (the full name of what habeas corpus typically refers to) is also called “the Great Writ,” and it is not about a person’s guilt or innocence, but about whether custody of that person is lawful under the U.S. Constitution. Common grounds for relief under habeas corpus— “relief” in this case being a release from custody—include a conviction based on illegally obtained evidence; a denial of effective assistance of counsel; or a conviction by a jury that was improperly selected and impaneled.” (Miriam Webster)

One of the best at defining and articulating Classic Liberal ideals and principles, notably in the US version. See a full interview of Vivek Ramaswamy on the Lex Fridman podcast. Vivek for president. Note how Vivek also frankly acknowledges and responds to deformities of Classic Liberalism on the right or conservative side of US society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw

A little aside comment for your entertainment…The lunacy of apocalyptic nihilism.

Get the snip (ouch) to “save the world”. No, not Lorena Bobbitt’s snip of Johnny’s willy. Something milder. A bit on the nihilistic madness produced by the great lie of apocalyptic that incites people to destroy life to “save the world”.

This illustrates how Chicken Little fear-mongering exaggerates normal changes in the natural world and thereby promotes irrationality in traumatized populations and subsequent susceptibility to salvation schemes that harm or destroy life to “save the world”. Well described as the “madness of crowds” outcomes of apocalyptic crusades.

“Meet the woman so afraid of climate change she made her husband get the snip and refuses to have children”, Daily Sceptic, Sallust, Nov. 28, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/28/meet-the-woman-so-afraid-of-climate-change-she-made-her-husband-get-the-snip-and-refuses-to-have-children/

The above writer refers to an article that notes a businesswoman in her 30s who refuses to have children and pushed her husband to get a vasectomy. Her reason was “climate change”.

As she said, “How can I bring an innocent warm bundle into the world when none of us can say that the world will even be habitable for them?”

This helps, in part, to understand the falling birth rates in contemporary societies where fewer members of upcoming generations will be available to sustain ageing populations.

The businesswoman continues, stating, “I won’t have a child because of the threat posed by climate change.” She says that women like her are not having babies because adding to the global population “will simply hasten its demise… ‘Why bring children into a world when we don’t know if it’s going to exist in 100 years?’…

“Why have children to fulfil a biological need then not care that the world they will inhabit looks increasingly likely to resemble some post-apocalyptic wasteland? The seas barren, the skies raging, the deserts spreading and no way to turn back this ecological disaster… I have long been terrified of what the future holds.”

The article then notes that a U.S. poll revealed that “a quarter of adults without children say climate change is part of the reason”. Also, a 2021 analysis by a global bank found the decision “to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline”.

The businesswoman above “takes care to let the Mail’s readers know how she’s doing her bit to stop Britain turning into a boiling and barren desert”.

The author above concludes: “The article is a fascinating insight into the psychological effects of state-sponsored fearmongering, resulting in potentially the greatest catastrophe of all: a culture of total negativity… Worth reading in full if only to see just how nihilistic the culture of climate change has become.”

Robust justice and maintaining our humanity are not irreconcilable/conflicting realities, in opposition to one another, Wendell Krossa

A humane justice system will first and foremost protect the innocent from harm as per the Classic Liberal principle that the primary responsibility of government is to protect citizens from assault, both domestic and foreign. Meaning- Provide an environment of peace and safety for all citizens, free of threat. That is the number one job of criminal justice systems.

But then, of course, critical to maintaining our own humanity as we protect all others, we are obligated to exercise justice humanely, as in treating even offenders with restorative justice. This is not something to be set in opposition to robust protection of citizens. As if justice and acting humanely in all situations of life are somehow essentially contrary things. They aren’t.

Again, few have stated it as well as Joseph Campbell, remember your “enemy” is still your brother in the one human family:

“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).

And, once again, the best ever set of statements on how to live as maturely human in this world where we are responsible to combat evil, to restrain/incarcerate violent offenders:

A non-retaliatory response in life does not mean that we do not hold all responsible for behavior. It’s more an attitudinal thing (that influences and guides behavioral)- how we conduct ourselves as we engage the responsibility to hold one another accountable/responsible to act fully human:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.

“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)

This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.

Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.

The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son. Again, this is not prescriptive of how to treat violent offenders or how to run a business.

The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin through violent blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone. A God who solves problems with violence.

See material from psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lofufo in sections below on how such cruel God theories deform human personality and incite violence in people. “If you God uses violence to solve problems, then so may you”. As Bob Brinsmead adds, “We become just like the God we believe in.”

Now more on- What drives elites to believe that they are more special than others? What drives the persistent endeavor of the self-identifying “special people” to establish the elite/commoner divide in societies?

Helmut Koester below presents the beliefs and practises of early Greeks in promoting the tradition of elites as special, among other elements…

Added notes:

The sense of being special drives elites to push themselves to dominate others. But there are other motivations that push people to want to enter occupations like politics and that motivation is healthy when guarded by a robust understanding of Classic Liberal principles, laws, and institutions- i.e. the understanding of why and how such things should function in human society. Meaning- That that Classic Liberal principles, laws, and institutions have been created, and should function, to “serve” the population of a nation.

All political offices and state bureaucracies serve populations best when they are oriented to service through government mechanisms that maintain power with the people, affirming the self-determination of all citizens, protecting and promoting the individual freedoms and rights of citizens, equally across populations. Political positions, if authentically Classic Liberal, will exist to ensure that governments function to provide safety, security, and an overall system that assures that citizens can freely “live and let live”.

Also: Governing authorities need to recognize the discovery that peace and order in human societies is generally a bottom-up reality, something individual citizens contribute to in their local areas, not something coercively pushed from the top, though state criminal justice systems also have a role in maintaining peace and order.

Continuing with the desire of some to enter politics:

Confronting elitism is not to deny that some people feel its their calling to enter politics and that they have some special ability to serve in government and assist in organizing a society to function properly. Fine, as long as they are carefully constrained and guided by Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and representative institutions that are oriented and function to empower citizens, and, above all, to protect the rights and freedoms of all citizens equally. Because the people of a nation are the innovators, creators of businesses, jobs, and wealth. Government does not exist to create jobs and wealth and has a history of mucking things up for citizens.

As Ben Carson stated so well when he ran for president in 2016, government should exist to create an environment in which businesses can thrive, an environment of low taxation (meaning less state intervention in confiscating citizen’s property) and less regulation (meaning less elite interference in dominating and controlling citizens and their activities in commerce).

This element from Plato:

Centralizing power and control in “philosopher kings/noble rulers” has been one of the more dangerous elements in collectivist systems, especially when these leaders believe that they are specially “enlightened elites”. Much like the ancient shaman who claimed to know the secrets to the invisible realm of the gods and used that claim of specialness to elevate themselves over their fellow tribal members.

Worse, add the belief of leadership that they are divinely inspired and therefore chosen by God to dictate to all others what is right and best for them. Further add the cocoon effect of embedding oneself in a “hero’s quest narrative that affirms to some that they are on the side of unchallengeable righteousness in a battle against irredeemably demonized evil”.

Without the constraining guidelines of Classic Liberal systems of law and representative institutions, even those imagining themselves to be among the best and noblest of humans are susceptible to abusing others. We all need the protection of the constraints of Classic Liberalism to help us control our own impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

A reposting (revised, updated)…

Hating that “some people are better than others”, Wendell Krossa (revised, updated)

“Jordan Peterson was in pain for three years, Lex Fridman podcast clips,” on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjEcM11Fg-M

Lex Fridman says that he “has always hated the idea that some people are better than others”. He adds that he is afraid of dismissing people because of his perception of them. That launched some interesting discussion with Jordan Peterson on Lex’s podcast.

The idea that some people are better than others, that some are more important- By what arguments do we counter this perception and affirm the equality of all? The equality of all- Something that most of us recognize as a natural reality or “God-given” right.

I have posted before that in early human tribal existence some tribe members began to elevate themselves above others with claims to know the secrets to the invisible realm of spirits, and how to placate the upset spirits that were manifesting their anger in natural disasters like storms, accidents, and disease.

The earliest elites emerged as shaman/priests. Those early “better than others” associated themselves with deity as validation of their being better than others. They were anointed by deity to lecture and dominate others for their good.

Helmut Koester (“History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”) adds detail on how the belief that some are better than others was developed in Greek biography over the more historically immediate BCE era.

Divinity was associated the powerful deeds, great acts, and extraordinary human gifts of some people. Notably in Greek biography, divinity was manifest in kings/emperors and through their military and political achievements, also in the special abilities of great poets, philosophers, and artists. Their special skills were believed to be divine manifestations that made them better than others. Special abilities and accomplishments were believed to be “miraculous”.

“Hellenistic biographies incorporate miracle stories in a strikingly uncritical manner”.

Koester says the early Christians later adopted this Hellenistic approach in creating the biographical account of their founding hero (Jesus), hence the many miracle stories in the gospels. Further, “It is not surprising that subsequent literature, especially the legends of Christian saints is entirely dominated by miracle stories”, p.131-132.

In those ancient traditions we see the developing pattern of associating dominant figures and their great public deeds as special, making them “better than others.” Note how those “better than others” appealed to deity for validation of their specialness.

With Lex, I hate and reject that fallacy that some are better than others. This is not about the obvious unfairness among the human population in distribution of talents, gifts, or abilities in varied areas. Peterson, his psychological mind kicking in, speaks well to this element.

This is about the inherent value of all human persons, the intrinsic equality that is based on the God-given “natural rights” thing.

We could start in establishing fundamental human equality, as Peterson suggests, by accepting the metaphysical speculation that every human person is created “in the image of God”, whatever “image of God” means.

A better theology to affirm human equality

I would emphasize, derived from the varied “spiritual” insights noted below, that deity does not value humans according to the standards that we use to judge one another. Consider that God does not value people according to the out-of-the-ordinary, spectacular, and great achievements of the specially talented people that we often celebrate in our societies. There is nothing wrong with celebrating such things as long as we don’t permit that to undermine our appreciation of the inherent and equal valuation of all human beings.

Based on varied “spiritual/metaphysical” insights, I would argue that God does not prize special personal talents, or special success in business, sports, politics, education, etc., as more special than the vast majority of people living out their stories in the ordinary and mundane arenas of common life. The “commoner” lives of the majority of humanity are just as valued by deity as any other human story. None are more valued than any other.

On what basis do I assume this? Why do I affirm Fridman in hating the idea that some people are better than others, more valued than others? And why do I challenge the perception that some people, who appear to have failed at life, are therefore less valued than others?

For one, because I view love is the single most important criterion for evaluating success in human life, the one thing that survives forever, the one feature that everyone can achieve to equal heights of true greatness, aside from the special talents, abilities, or successes of some people in other areas of life.

This insert to stress something before moving along with this point- The fundamental basis of the equality of all is the metaphysical recognition that God loves all the same.

Continuing…

Like the ancient Greeks, we tend to evaluate and value one another according to great accomplishments in athletics, beauty, commerce/business, political power, etc. And with our tradition of holding these comparative valuations, we tend to diminish the value of the many “commoners” who live lives that appear ordinary, mundane, lacking notable public achievements. Our valuations miss the primacy of love as the great leveler and the thing that deity values above all else.

An example (again, appealing to metaphysical speculations): Ken Ring in “Lessons From The Light” notes the Near-Death Experience of one person who said that on meeting God, they discovered that God focused on one primary concern while helping that person to evaluate their life story (i.e. the “life review”). As that person recounted, God asked, “Did you learn anything about love? Do you know how to love? Did you love?”

In another NDE account, a successful businessman said that he was shocked to find that God ignored his business successes and was only interested in one thing- Did he love people? Did he learn something about love? All the rest that he had accomplished in his life, and considered of great importance, was ignored by God.

These insights challenge human evaluation criteria. Add that the greatest human achievements in love often take place unheralded in the secret areas of life. They are often anonymous acts, expressed in the ordinary and mundane, not celebrated publicly. Such “love is everywhere” is common among commoners.

Marinate a bit further on this: Our valuation schemes miss the primacy of love, and especially the hidden accomplishments of love in the ordinary and mundane areas of life. I have always appreciated the comments of Jesus in the Matthew summary posted just below where he frames what impresses God most- i.e. the divine dismissal of the great public displays for the hidden, secret acts of goodness, the anonymous displays of love. This also gets to human motivations. It’s comparatively easy to exhibit goodness when the cameras are on, but our true self manifests in the hidden arena of life, especially in the mundane and ordinary interactions with difficult others.

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:1-4)

And to laser in more on what feature of love takes us to the absolute heights of human achievement and greatness…

If the hero’s quest is fulfilled/accomplished when we conquer our inner monster by orienting our life to universal or unconditional love, then every person has the equal opportunity to succeed in terms of that supreme achievement, to attain greatness in that sense. I am referring to Joseph Campbell’s point that we attain human maturity when we orient our lives to universal love. I would use unconditional love as the more encompassing term.

“Love your enemy”, as the highest expression of universal/unconditional love, points us to the absolute height of human greatness and achievement. There is nothing higher to reach for or to achieve in life. That is the ultimate measure of real success in life. And- here is the levelling truth- we are all equal in terms of the opportunity for greatness in regard to such love.

I suggest “love your enemy” as the single greatest possible achievement in life for any human person to accomplish. There is no higher reach of love- if we understand that love is the defining feature of being human and the key determinant of a successful human life. As Ken Ring noted from the NDE accounts- God’s primary concern was, “Did you learn how to love? Do you know what love really is?”

Bob Brinsmead adds, “If love is not unconditional then it is not really love”.

Historical Jesus answered the question- “Do you know what love is?”- by defining authentic love as unconditional, as “love your enemy”. And that central insight of Jesus was then undermined and buried entirely by Paul with his retreat to arguing that highly conditional love defined God, as in his Christ myth. Paul re-established primitive tribal limits to love, stating that his God only favored and included those who became true believers in his Christ myth, and all others were enemies who would be ultimately retaliated against and destroyed- see Rom 12:17-20 for illustration. Also, books like Revelation.

Paul’s statement of his theology (his view of God) in Romans 12, “Do not take revenge… but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

My point here is the radical reframing of human concepts of deity that Historical Jesus introduced, but that Paul subsequently rejected and buried with his Christ myth. Paul was offended by Jesus overturning long-standing views of divine justice as retaliatory. Paul then re-established demands for conditions to be fulfilled before love, acceptance, and restoration could be manifested by deity. Paul wanted to restore tribal, limited love in deity. He subsequently re-established the basic narrative of retaliatory justice that has come down through a long history of human spirituality and religious beliefs.

Yes, in Paul’s New Testament there are scattered fragments of the history and wisdom sayings of Historical Jesus, notably in the gospels, but even that element has been deformed by the Christology of Paul that is used to interpret the Jesus material. Paul’s New Testament is mostly metaphysical speculation on his mythology of a cosmic savior sent to redeem fallen humanity and restore a ruined world to its imagined lost original perfection.

Paul’s Christ embraces the themes of Zoroaster’s cosmic battle of good against evil, with the Christ sent to vanquish unbelievers and establish his totalitarian domination of all. It’s a very tribal worldview with these features of eternal domination and punitive destruction.

Most egregious in Paul’s rejection of the actual message of Jesus was his retreat to re-enforce primitive notions of the love of God as highly conditional love that demanded sacrifice before forgiveness and salvation could be granted. That was a direct rejection of the stunning new theology of Jesus that God loved all unconditionally. Paul’s conditional God and conditional salvation was entirely contrary, for example, to the Prodigal Father parable who welcomed the wayward son back without condition. Paul’s Christ-ianity gave us a highly conditional religion that buried the unconditional message of Jesus entirely.

This site recognizes the great value in the original message of Historical Jesus, but that message has to be pulled out of its context just as Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy argued.

Moving along…

The point that I would make in relation to the Fridman/Peterson interview- There is no higher human attainment than love. We can possess great abilities and make notable achievements in sports, business, entertainment, politics, and intelligence/education and still be an overall failure at life if we don’t learn how to love, especially to unconditionally “love your enemy”, the ultimate reach of love.

As Peterson says to Fridman, great talents given unfairly don’t privilege people regarding moral conduct. He says there is no evidence for any correlation between intelligence and morality. You are not better because you are smart. And in the context of his comments on this, he argues for the value of holding the belief that all are made in the image of God despite immense differences in ability. In other words, we are all fully equal before God, despite the many obvious differences among the human population on so many varied elements.

Peterson’s point– We can assume radical equality of worth despite differences of ability.

I would add that, rather than affirm human equality with the common religious phrase “in the image of God”, I would frame the theological basis of human equality in terms of the truth that we are all embodiments of God. The truth that God indwells every human person equally, much like Jesus stated when he told people- “the kingdom of God is among or in you”.

The reality that we call “God” is not separate from our human spirit and mind. Others frame this as “God has incarnated in all humanity, equally”. Meaning that no one is more special than any other human person. No one is closer to God than any other. None are more privileged than others, more favored by God than others. As Bob Brinsmead says, God has never incarnated only in special holy persons or only been manifest in the great public achievements of special people. “Love is everywhere” means God is everywhere, in all.

This “God incarnate in all equally” is my metaphysical basis for affirming the equality of all people, for affirming that every person is as valued as anyone else, and for affirming the fundamental goodness of all people, despite failures to live as truly human.

Further to this, the God present in all humanity is not present as a dominating, overwhelming reality but a gently persuading influence. God is the “still small voice”, not the thunderous and frightening storm, as per Elijah’s account.

Point? Adding to Jesus’ transformation of fundamental theology- others made this point that God is not manifest in the overpowering, overwhelming and frightening thing, the thunderous fearful storm. But to the contrary, God manifests in the still, quiet thing, the gentle persuading voice. Perhaps this clarifies things for the many who complain that they don’t “feel” that presence of the creator. Because, as with many others across history, they are looking for deity in the spectacular, extraordinary, great thing- i.e. in storm and fire and fury. Consider the alternative- that God is not in the storm but manifests in gentle suggestions for good. The “feeling” to do what is right in the ordinary, mundane events of daily life.

Here is the interesting account of Elijah’s experience in1 Kings 19: 11-13…

“The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks… but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard God in that, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”

That is a stunningly new reframing of theology, similar to Jesus’ comment that true greatness was not to lord over others like kings and rulers do, but to serve. He overturned entirely traditional views of God as a dominating, threatening reality. Add his Matthew 6 statement that God prefers the humble, the hidden and self-effacing, the anonymous acts of goodness.

The “stunning new theology of Jesus” framed for us an entirely different view of God, nothing like the human-created deities of history who favored the great public deeds of notable public actors. That is rank elitism appealing to a deformed view of deity to validate the elite/commoner divide in human societies, employing dominating deity to affirm elite domination of commoners.

In the “stunning new theology of Jesus” you get a non-dominating reality, an entirely non-threatening deity, something that incarnates equally in all humanity and interpenetrates throughout the physical realm and throughout humanity as a gentle all-pervading presence, that serves to promote human goodness and love with gentle persuasion, the soft, quiet voice inside reminding us of what is good.

The God of Jesus does not intervene, interfere with, and overwhelm human freedom. That is a radical new framing of the reality of deity that began with historical Jesus. His theology had nothing to do with the “king/lord” deities of old, the tribal judges that struck fear into unbelievers and other free spirits.

Again, the central Jesus message sums it all:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.

“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)

Other points:

Further on affirming the basis of true human equality, I would suggest that critical for understanding true equality among people is the insight that we are one human family sharing this venture on earth. The oneness of the human family manifests a greater underlying oneness that affirms the truth that we are inseparable from the creating and sustaining reality that is God, the ultimate Oneness.

Varied insights/truths that affirm this- i.e. quantum entanglement (expresses a deeper oneness), Mitochondrial Eve (all humans on Earth today are descendants of the same African mother), and the NDE insight that we are one with God and with all others, meaning that we have an inseparable union with a greater Creating Consciousness. This was sort of touched on by Paul in his comment that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God.

On this site I am not entirely badmouthing Paul but just acknowledging, with Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy, that we need to get Paul out of the way, so the actual message of Jesus can be made clear. We ought to honor the man Jesus for what he actually said. There is nothing of Paul’s Greek “Lord Jesus” in the original message of Historical Jesus. With Jesus there is no “Lord coming in flaming fire to punish and destroy” (Paul’s first letters to the Thessalonians), nothing of John’s fierce warrior Christ as the destroyer of worlds (see Revelation). Those scriptural elements are due to the influence of deforming Hellenistic mythology on Christianity as noted by Helmut Koester in “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”.

Moving along…

Another note: On the “threat of AI”, Wendell Krossa

Why don’t Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, along with their other projects, set up public programs to educate people on the basic principles of Classic Liberalism? Why not have projects to advertise widely the basic principles of liberal democracy and disseminate such information throughout our education systems, and throughout state bureaucracies?

Classic Liberalism is not Left or Right but is about basic freedom and equality. All people on all sides can affirm these “natural rights” (John Locke). Classic Liberalism comprises the basic principles of freedom and democracy.

Both sides of our societies need to be reminded of what Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy actually entails. Libertarian David Boaz spoke well in stating that both sides need reminding of where they tend to fail on basic freedom. He illustrated with the US situation, saying that Republicans need to embrace more individual freedom in the social realm. And Democrats need to embrace more individual freedom in the economic realm.

Again, why not program AI with these principles? If you are really concerned that AI be developed as something safe that will not harm humanity then why not program it with Classic Liberal principles that protect and promote the freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally?

Another note:

Especially critical for today is the “habeas corpus” element of Classic Liberalism. Too often, notably leftist Woke Progressives have tried to criminalize and even lock up any who differ from their approved narratives and programs. Hence, their dangerous tendency to use lawfare to shut down, censor, silence, ban, and cancel differing others.

Britain takes this to dangerous extremes, even to urging criminalization and imprisonment of people for offensive or stupid speech. Speech that is best left alone and countered by better ideas and arguments in the public arena of free and open debate. As always, busybody, controlling types tend to take “hate speech” laws too far, to even stretch the definition (“concept creep”) to include political speech of opponents, and even comedy. Well, that’s a road too far. The “Twitter Files” revelations were very enlightening on this.

https://www.thefire.org/news/uk-polices-speech-chilling-practice-tracking-non-crime-hate-incidents

And these on the slide toward totalitarianism that we just missed…

https://www.public.news/p/we-are-only-now-starting-to-recover

https://www.public.news/p/why-trumps-victory-is-for-millions

https://www.public.news/p/uk-government-and-media-spread-disinformation

Ideas to stir the Christmas discussion pot… known in the vernacular as the “Number 2” pot.

Updated, revised reposting… A little Christmas gift for new visitors

Review of some main site topics, among many other things scattered throughout this site: Wendell Krossa

(Ideas to transform consciousness and change the world- a summary for visitors)

(1) There is no “climate crisis” because the best of atmospheric physicists (Richard Lindzen, William Happer, etc.) tell us that the warming influence of CO2 is now “saturated” (a physics term). See their research reports at “co2coalition.org”, and “wattsupwiththat.com”, etc. Even if CO2 were to double to 800 ppm, it would add no more to any possible future warming. See also Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore’s comments during his Jordan Peterson interview…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTBpds2dQA

The mild “1.2 degree C” warming over the past century has been highly beneficial in a still far-too-cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warming (Lancet study). Cold, not warming, is still the great threat to life.

The climate crisis crusade is a “profoundly religious movement”, just as the Marxism and Nazism crusades were driven by the same basic themes of “lost paradise, apocalypse, redemption/millennial utopia”. (Sources: Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, etc.)

(2) The ongoing crusade to re-instate the “elite/commoner” divide in our liberal democracies is the great threat to democracy and individual freedom. Varied articles posted here- i.e. Michael Shellenberger, Taibbi and Kirn, etc.- try to probe and understand the totalitarian impulse of elites, the psychopathology of elites seeking to meddle in, coerce, manipulate, and control commoners. That busybody meddling and control of citizens is a rejection of Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and institutions that were created to protect all of us from elite domination by dispersing power back to populations of equal citizens.

Classic Liberalism is the best that we have created to protect all of us from our own impulse to dominate, the best approach to promote the freedom, rights, and equality of every person. (Sources: Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, David Boaz’s “Libertarianism: A Primer”, etc.)

A metaphysical basis for the equality of all people, for arguing that everyone is as special as anyone else, and for fundamental human goodness- I would argue/speculate from the truth that the “God who is love” indwells every human person as inseparable from the common human spirit.

(3) The same set of primitive mythical themes has dominated human narratives across history, in both religious and “secular/ideological” versions, even scientific versions. (Sources: Books of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and other historians of mythology/religion.)

Here, listed just below, are some of the main psychopathologies of historical narratives, themes that still dominate the world religions and have now been embraced and repeated in “secular/ideological” narratives, even in “scientific” belief systems.

(4) There was no original better world, no original paradise in the past. This is the baseline fallacy in human narratives and mental pathology. It evokes the concern that justice has been offended and a wrong committed that must be made right again, to rebalance justice in the cosmos, to “save something”, to restore some critical good that has been lost. Hence, the millennial element in apocalyptic millennial narratives. Keep hope alive, even if the deformed hope that is dependent on the mass-slaughter of one’s “enemies” as per apocalyptic millennial books like Revelation in the New Testament.

(5) Humanity is not a fundamentally corrupt and inherently “sinful” species but is the best thing to have ever happened to life, people with creative mind and compassionate hearts. As Julian Simon concluded after detailing the historical evidence that life has improved across the long-term trajectory, “We are more creators than destroyers”.

Bob Brinsmead says that the real story of humanity is not the religious pathology of how far we have “fallen” but the amazing story of how high we have risen from our primitive past. This counters the pathological anti-humanism in both religious and “secular/ideological” narratives today.

(6) I repeat this point again…. Our contemporary narratives, both religious and “secular/ideological”, are still dominated by the inherited themes of primitive mythologies– i.e. the mind-deforming fallacies of a paradise past, corrupt humanity ruining paradise, life declining toward apocalypse, demand for sacrifice/payment, demand for suffering as redemptive, demand for violent purging of evil threat, demand to engage a tribal battle of true believers exterminating unbelievers, and the promise of restored paradise in utopian communalism.

Historian of mythology/religion, Joseph Campbell, said the same in his summary that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.

(7) The meta-story of humanity is the story of exodus from our animal past to become maturely human in civilization. Emerging and developing human mind, consciousness, language, and spirit is something entirely, qualitatively different from the animal inheritance that we still carry in our brains and bodies. Our meta-story is that of exodus from exclusionary and discriminatory tribalism, from base animal domination, and from retaliatory destruction of differing others. We have been liberated from the animal to explore the future of mature humanity that is oriented to inclusive human oneness, mutual non-dominating service, and non-punitive, restorative justice.

(8) Life is not declining toward some worsening state but is improving and rising toward a better future. Julian Simon and many others have presented volumes of evidence on the main indicators of life that shows, while problems still exist all over, life over the long-term continues to improve.

(Sources: Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” (single best book ever written), Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment On The Earth”, Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”, Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”, Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”, Tupy and Bailey’s “Ten Global Trends”, Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”, Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”, and more.)

(9) The Christ myth of Paul has buried the message of Historical Jesus that God is stunningly inexpressible no conditions love. Paul buried that stunning new theology in his highly conditional religion- Christ-ianity.

The basic framework of themes that present Paul’s Christ myth are entirely opposite to the message of Historical Jesus. Paul gave us the “Christ-ianity” that buried the actual “Q Wisdom Sayings” message of Jesus- i.e. what would have been “Jesus-ianity”.

Paul’s Christ myth has been the single most dominant influence on Western narratives, consciousness, and society (James Tabor- “Paul and Jesus”, among others).

(Sources: General “Search for Historical Jesus” research, Jesus Seminar books, and “Q Wisdom Sayings” research, notably the work of James Robinson, John Kloppenborg, and others. See also the essays by Bob Brinsmead- https://bobbrinsmead.com/ )

(10) Paul re-established the primitive theology of retaliatory, highly conditional deity (i.e. a God who demands the supreme condition of a cosmic sacrifice/payment) in his Christ myth and thereby buried the message of Jesus (an unconditional God) that could have liberated humanity as nothing ever before.

The stunning new theology of Jesus stated that there is no judging, condemning God who demands sacrifice/payment (see, for example, the “Prodigal’s Father” parable).

(11) There is no such reality as a tribal deity who favors true believers and damns unbelievers. There is no cosmic Zoroastrian dualism functioning as the divine model for human tribal dualisms. The human family is one family- i.e. based on varied insights such as that all humans on Earth today are descendants of Mitochondrial Eve, quantum entanglement as fundamental oneness, and the NDE discovery of the oneness of all.

(12) There is no God threatening punishment of human failures through natural world disasters, disease, and death, whether the angry deity of past mythologies/religions or the similarly pissed deity of contemporary narratives- “vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback Karma”.

The myth of a threatening, punishing God has been the single most psyche-traumatizing myth ever constructed. There is no retaliatory God threatening retaliatory apocalyptic destruction of life. Again, there is only inexpressible no conditions love behind reality and life.

What is my authority for stating these “truths”? The self-validating nature of unconditional love as ultimate good, truth, and reality, the critical missing element in any complete TOE.

(13) There is no dominating “Lord/King” God who interferes, intervenes, or meddles in human freedom and self-determination. This is critical to understand and hold to as elites try to re-establish elite domination in our liberal democracies, based on the archetypal belief that domination by elites is a non-negotiable divine reality and pattern. So just accept your fate, commoners.

Dominating deity has long been the ultimate ideal and authority to validate human elitism, elites dominating commoners. See comment on this throughout sections on this site.

Historical Jesus would have rejected outright Paul’s “Lord Jesus” myth because he taught his followers- “The rulers of the gentiles lord it over them… exercise authority over them. It must not be like that among you. Whoever wants to be great must be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave”.

Historical Jesus, not Paul’s Christ, was the original Classic Liberal advocating the equal freedom and rights of every person. God, according to Jesus, was a servant reality, a commoner reality. Historical Jesus rejected the Pauline pathology of “Lord Jesus”.

(14) There is no threat of future after-life harm– i.e. threat of eternal exclusion, punishment, and destruction (i.e. hell). There is only an inexpressible unconditional love in the human future and that is our true home.

(15) In his “no eye for eye retaliation” and “love your enemy” maxims, Historical Jesus was advocating for restorative justice as in the robust holding of all responsible for the consequences of their behavior- i.e. the necessary incarceration of violent people to protect others, but then treat all humanely as the Allies did post-WW2 defeat of enemies. So with criminal justice, as Leo Tolstoy said, there is no circumstance where people are not to be treated with love. But also, there can be no pacifist “turn the other cheek” in the face of violence. (Sources: “The Crime of Punishment” by Karl Menninger)

(16) We are not our animal brain with its inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. Our true human self and human spirit is love, inseparable from the Love that is God.

(17) The true “hero’s quest” is not a battle against other people but an inner quest to conquer our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. That is our real enemy, the real monster that we face in life and must learn to conquer and vanquish as we struggle to affirm our better human impulses.

(18) The God of Jesus is not a “sky-god” up above in the heavens but is immediately present everywhere in life as all-pervading love, inseparable from the common human spirit in every person- i.e. “The kingdom of God is within you”. The true nature of every human being consists of the same love that is God. “There are no really bad people, just people misled by bad ideas”, Bob Brinsmead.

(19) The “hero’s quest” is about learning and manifesting love in this world through a uniquely self-crafted life story that is as equally valuable as any other human story. People manifest love through the infinite diversity of their unique life stories, whether in the mundane and ordinary of common work, in home life and raising children, in recreation, or in sports, entertainment, business, politics, science, and all other human occupations.

True religion is to focus on this life and make a unique contribution to improving life in this world, not living for some after-life reality. Not trying to “have a relationship with God” as in focusing on some invisible, metaphysical reality (so “heavenly minded as to be of no earthly use”).

(20) Authentic human achievement, real success in the Hero’s Quest, is about love in the details of daily life, in the mundane and ordinary, when we are not publicly praised or even publicly known, where the true self is living authentically with no cameras to play to with virtue-signaling cosplaying.

The primacy of the ordinary and daily mundane is validated by the new theology of God as a street-level God, incarnated in every person equally, and not impressed with the great deeds of public people but more interested in the secret, hidden actions of common people in daily life.

(21) The God of authentic love opposes tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction.

(22) And then the many postings on the battle for free speech today, the new totalitarianism emerging from within Western so-called liberal democracies, mainly from the left side of our societies- i.e. the extremist left Woke Progressivism that threatens freedom and democracy.

Note: Neo-totalitarianism, neo-Marxism (neo-collectivism) is coming at us from far leftist Woke Progressivism in our democracies, from activists who are promoting censorship of speech as reported by courageous journalists like Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Douglas Murray, Glen Greenwald, and others. The Woke Progressive crusade is, once again, about the primitive impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

(23) Note particularly- The resurgence of tribal dualism in the neo-collectivism of Woke Progressivism. As in the DEI categorization of populations by skin color as good or bad (victim/victimizer). This is the latest addition to traditional Marxist categorization by the tribal dualism of oppressor/oppressed (capitalist property owners versus workers/peasants).

And many more topics…

Main articles presenting critical points made on this site:

From Retaliation to Unconditional love– the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.

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

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

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

The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).

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

Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– the hero’s journey and conquest. The intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, along with the mythical themes that validate such impulses, and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661

And then some repeats of good sources and comments on this and that

“Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’’, Climate Depot, Nov. 13, 2023

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/13/climate-data-refutes-crisis-narrative-if-you-concede-the-science-only-challenge-the-policiesyoure-going-to-lose/

Quote:

Edward Ring: “If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game. Who cares if we have to enslave humanity? Our alternative is certain death from global boiling! You can’t win that argument. You must challenge the science…”

Also, the critical counter point to climate warming alarmism– 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warming.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/?sh=2e67170e1d88

From the best climate minds on the planet at https://co2coalition.org/

“5 Things Climate Realists Can Be Thankful For This Year”, Nov. 29, 2024

Their list includes:

(1) More atmospheric CO2 is increasing crop productivity and feeding the world with crop records consistently being surpassed year after year.

https://co2coalition.org/facts/more-co2-means-more-plant-growth/

(2) Our modern warm trend, not unusual, has been beneficial in lifting us out of the destructive cold of the Little Ice Age of 1250 to 1850.

https://co2coalition.org/facts/naturally-driven-warming-began-more-than-300-years-ago/

(3) Warm periods are considered “climate optima” because they are more beneficial to most life.

https://co2coalition.org/facts/for-human-advancement-warmer-is-better-than-colder/

And more on their site…

Comment on mixed systems where the bad elements distort and undermine the good, Wendell Krossa

Intro note: Yes, we make compromises between opposing groups, narratives, and programs as important for peace in our societies. But note that essentially opposite realities work against one another, with the bad undermining the good.

Example: Social democracy/democratic socialism has long been pushed by collectivists/socialists as the “Eden-like” answer to our problems of how to organize our societies. Mixing and merging what some consider the best of different ideologies/approaches and getting the best of both worlds. And for decades Sweden was held forth by socialist activists as the great success story of using a mixed system of what was considered the best of left and right for shaping human societies.

But, as many of us suspected, that success has been due to the Classic Liberal democratic element in the social democracy mix, not due to the socialist element that has actually worked to undermine and weaken the liberal democracy element.

https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-myth-swedish-socialism-again

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/mirage-of-swedish-socialism-the-economic-history-of-a-welfare-state-parts-1-and-2

As the above links note, during earlier decades when the democracy element dominated, wealth was built up through the use of Classic Liberal principles that focused on individual freedom and rights that created an environment in which free enterprise/free market businesses could prosper. But then in subsequent decades, when the collectivist socialist element was introduced and dominated, that built-up wealth was frittered away by socialist obsession with redistribution of wealth to create equity outcomes, redistribution not backed by healthy protection of the freedoms and rights of individuals to create businesses, jobs, and wealth without the excessive taxation and regulatory burdens that necessary to sustain the excessive government bureaucracies of states overly oriented to redistribution policies.

Not to deny we all agree (social contract thing) to some coercive confiscation of our property to pay our share of commonly used infrastructure and to help the members of our societies who cannot function without some assistance, and so on. But the constant battle is with the push by some to endlessly extend the “nanny state” to excessive extent that then crushes the wealth-creating ability of citizens.

Insert:

See the good debates on the optimal size of government in research such as William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”. Milton Freidman had some interesting comment on the optimal size of government that would produce “the most good for the most people”. His estimate was that the optimal size of government would be around 15% of GDP, not the 30-40% we too commonly see today in so-called liberal democracies.

Note this list of world countries and size of their governments as percent of GDP (2022 figures). While this involves many programs that disperse benefits to citizens, it also involves vast amounts of waste, debts and debt payments that burden populations, and more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP

Note US at 38%, Canada at 41%, and many others in a similar range.

On the common embrace of oxymoronic systems… Wendell Krossa

The above mixing and merging of opposites in socialist democracy or democratic socialism systems is much like the mixing of the essential opposites as in the Jesus and Christ oxymoron. The bad element degrades and undermines the good element in the mix.

(As always, the Jesus material has to be dug out of the burial crypt of its context that is the New Testament. Yes, Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy were right that the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus were buried in the “d-ng, garba-e, sl-me, and m-ck” of Paul’s Christ mythology. See how nice I am trying to be, in blunting the full harshness of the terms they used, much like most media do in treating us like infants with the protective use of “f-ck”. Oh, I wonder what that is? “Fock, fick, fack, feck”? C’mon, we’re all big kids out here. We can handle being treated as grownups.)

The overall mixture/merger of contrary realities often exhibits some apparent success due to the good element in the mix but that good element is weakened, undermined, and buried by the bad element(s).

With social democracy/democratic socialism models and approaches you are mixing two very contrary and opposite things- i.e. collectivism that removes the freedoms and rights of individuals and subjects them to the collectives that are controlled by enlightened elites who run the collectives. The elites (virtue-signaling their narcissistic compassion) consistently present the great lie that they run the collective “for the people” (Kristian Niemietz, “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”).

Once more his good statement on this:

“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.”

The collectivist approach is oppositional to individual rights and freedoms as protected and maintained by Classic liberalism. You can’t mix these two without weakening the individual element in the mix. These essentially opposing systems do not go together without dissonance and the undermining and destruction of the individual element. Collectivism and individual freedom and rights do not mix unless you are prepared to weaken individual rights and freedoms.

Though in a somewhat different approach, we do embrace the element of social contract, as in a sort of voluntary sharing in terms of the recognition that there are those in our societies who cannot function fully in free enterprise approaches, due to personal disabilities of many varied types. We accept the need for taxation to fund programs to help such people, as well as to contribute to funding the shared infrastructure of societies, things we all use, or programs that help all of us.

But this is different from the essential nature and functioning of socialist collectivism with its orientation to elite control of the “greater or common good” program, with its general antagonism to a free business sector (“evil business” as about greed and selfishness- concern for profit), and with its bent to redistribution without the collar of robust wealth creation, and its coerced submission of individuals to collectives that undermines the rights and freedoms of individuals. Add here also the inevitable wastefulness of programs run by unelected bureaucrats with no business experience and no accountability constraints to make them function more efficiently.

Just an aside on even far leftist types becoming woke to common sense: Note Mitterrand’s coalition of 1981, where after taking office they began to nationalize sectors of the French economy, the reflexive approach of leftists to take control of private property to then redistribute on behalf “of the people”. Well, within the year the French economy went belly up (detail from former socialist Joshua Muravchik’s history of socialism, “Heaven on Earth”).

Mitterrand and crew then had the sense to back off and let the economy recover. And then the Marxist in the coalition made this incredible statement- “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Holy shitoli, eh.

They recognized the leftist fallacy of hating business as some evil to be constrained, even to be eliminated from society, was so wrongheaded and ignorant.

More on the fundamental problem with the socialist element in societies– Wendell Krossa

Socialism is another version of Collectivism, along with Robert Owen’s communalism, Marxist communism, community development approaches, and so on (see Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven On Earth”). All collectivist approaches dangerously centralize power in self-identifying enlightened elites that run the collectives “for the people”, on behalf of the people.

The centralization of power and control has been the most dangerous thing across history, centralizing power and control in elites and their state bureaucracies where people, with often no understanding of business and economies, dictate economic/commerce rules to the rest. That is the narcissistic arrogance of elites who claim to know what is best for everyone. We have undergone this progressive arrogance for 9 years under the incompetent management of Justin Trudeau.

Collectivists keep innovatively repackaging their centralized system of power and control in ever new forms with ever new terms, new categorizations and explanations, the latest being the “DEI/ESG” of Woke Progressivism with its buttressing claims to compassion for the oppressed and the need to engage a heroic battle against evil oppressors who challenge and dissent from their approach.

Look past all that endless repackaging to the core that is the same old tribal dualism that divides humanity into good versus evil, just as before in Marxism with its classification of people according to property ownership or not. The categorization according to two classes is now done more in relation to skin color. That now defines good as opposed to evil. Woke racism.

Always look past the surface issues and framing of things, to the core themes/ideas/principles operating and you will see the same old, same old pathology operating as ever before, ever pushing the elite/commoner divide on societies that undermines and ruins liberal democracies. The same old domination by elites is now validated by a new categorization of populations in the tribal dualism of the “victimizers/victims” of DEI woke racism.

Add the psychopathology of elite virtue-signaling of compassion as in claims to serve some “greater or common good”. The self-delusional element in this is evident in that the collectivist policies enacted by elites, actually operate to destroy societies and lives, having impoverished billions over the past century or so. The most recent example is Venezuela, a country rich in resources like fossil fuels, now an impoverished shell of its past affluence. Where are the Hollywood elites who all rushed down to celebrate Chavismo years ago?

A bit more…. Wendell Krossa

Marxism has been the latest greatest historical example of a tribal dualism that affirms the elite/commoner divide with its promotion of collectivism that elevates enlightened elites over commoners. Even though purportedly implemented as a system that functions “for the people… on behalf of the workers”. In practice it has always worked as a tribal dualism system to enforce elite domination of commoners.

Again (I never tire of good quotes), Niemietz’s good statement summarizes the actual outcomes of the 24 historical socialist experiments at organizing human societies over the last century or so:

“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.”

Marxism, by centralizing and concentrating power and control in collective elites, inevitably unleashes the totalitarian impulse in governing elites to dominate weaker others. Collectivism inevitably concentrates power and control in self-identified enlightened elites, Plato’s enlightened “philosopher kings”, much like Paul’s demand for the divinely-anointed “head of the family” that validates domination/submission relating. Or governing authorities as “appointed by God” (Romans 13). Elites who arrogantly believe and claim that they know what is best for all others, and then inevitably coercively and violently take over societies to dominate all others under totalitarian systems, the inevitable outcome of embracing another system of enslavement of commoners.

Others suggest that while “power corrupts” even good people, there is also the factor that power attracts psychopathic types who desire power for purposes of control, abuse, even sadism (Jordan Peterson, I believe).

The inevitable and repeated outcome of Marxist systems has been to re-establish the elite/commoner divide in societies and that favors elite domination. Again, see Kristian Niemietz’s “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.

While Marxist collectivism more straightforwardly presents its designs on human civilization, the essential principles and outcomes of all leftist centralization projects are evident in the push for big state, big government, increased state agencies and bureaucracies that multiply endless regulations, laws, and demand endless increases in taxation, coercively taking citizens wealth and concentrating that in controlling elites who claim to know better how to spend that wealth. It is all a denial of Classic Liberal protection of the freedom and rights of all people, equally.

It cannot be argued enough that Classic Liberalism, if actually understood and honored, promotes the safest way for us to organize human societies. Classic Liberalism is the best that we have discovered to protect us from the tribal and totalitarian impulses and their destructive consequences.

Exhibiting the pathology of tribal dualism, Marxism was another “same old” approach that classified people as one or the other in a simple tribal dualism of good versus evil- i.e. property-owning people (capitalists) as evil, and workers (often essentially property-less) as good, virtuous victims.

The collapse of communism in the late 80s early 90s was not the death spiral of the collectivist embodiment of the tribal and elite impulse to dominate. The impulse to dominate expressed via tribal dualism, did not die away as hoped. It was not completely vanquished by the West. It went underground and wormed its way into the education systems to indoctrinate new generations through all sorts of new programs, projects, movements, fronts, with new definitions, categories, and terms.

Woke Progressivism, the latest front of today’s leftist extremism, is the public result of the last decades of universities being dominated by far leftists. It now presents itself as another version of the simple-minded tribal dualism of “victim/victimizer”. It categorizes all people as one of two classes, as original Marxism did before. You are either oppressor or oppressed, and now Wokeism classifies you in either category, according to skin color. Asians, Jews, and whites are the oppressor class, and brown/black are the virtuous oppressed. Simple good versus evil. Thanks forever to Zoroaster.

And with Woke Progressivism we have the same old elite/commoner divide of societies in our Western liberal democracies. The same old tribalism and domination by elites with punitive destruction of differing, dissenting others.

Add the tribal dualism of a deformed Hero’s quest with “all on our side good versus all on the differing side evil” that has re-emerged again in Woke Progressivism. The “elite/commoner” divide is back once again as a new totalitarianism where those believing they are the good people must purge the other class of differing people who are evil in order to “save democracy, save the world, save whatever”. The climate alarmism crusade is another element in this mix. With the self-identified righteous climate alarmists set against the evil consumers of fossil fuels.

We endlessly repeat the same old mistakes because we do not heed the call of the wise men to tackle the fundamental ideas/themes/beliefs that drive all this endlessly repeating madness.

Our world religions continue to enforce and promote these ideas, as do our more recent secular/ideological systems of belief.

Destroying societies to “save the world”.

Britain, the nation that gave us Classic Liberalism, continues the descent into utter madness as it destroys its society with “de-development, de-growth” as in a return to primitivism.

Starmer and Trudeau are among the remaining extremist eco-zealots still in thrall to the doomsday apocalyptic cult of “climate crisis” and Net Zero salvation schemes that are destroying life to “save the world” (the millennial “hope” element in the mix). Making Net Zero very much like a mass-suicide cult. Yes, we are living right now through one of history’s worst “madness of crowds” episodes. Think of how future generations will look back and shake their heads as they compare us to other similar Chicken Little outbreaks across history, just like the Xhosa cattle slaughter back in the mid-1800s.

“Time for Starmer to be honest about what Net Zero means: Rationing, blackouts, and travel restrictions in the next five years”, Chris Morrison, Nov. 30, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/30/time-for-starmer-to-be-honest-about-what-net-zero-means-rationing-blackouts-and-travel-restrictions-in-the-next-five-years/

British politicians are warning people to make major changes in their habits in order to meet Net Zero emission goals by 2030.

What adjustments?

“Try a 30% reduction in energy demand. After 2030, consider that all beef, lamb and dairy will be banned and “replaced by new diets”. Then there is a massive 45% cut in most common building materials such as cement, along with a similar reduction in road freight traffic. The attack on farming will be remorseless with fertiliser restriction halving “direct emission” from the soil. To sum up: widespread rationing and blackouts along with food, holiday and travel restrictions, all within about 60 months.”

Morrison notes the horrors just ahead for Britain is Net Zero actually becomes a reality. He says, “The desire to “manage land use for Net Zero emissions” means a massive cut in chemical fertilisers, so expect food supply to fall off a cliff.”

I would insert: Remember that Sri Lanka just tried the “zero emissions” agriculture and its agriculture collapsed in 2021 and that spawned riots that resulted in the leadership fleeing for their lives. Dutch farmers had the sense to riot before their government forced them into Net Zero-type shutdowns of their agricultural sector, and the state backed off. So also in other places.

Decarbonization is unfolding, just as all other apocalyptic millennial crusades, with disastrous outcomes as renewables create intermittency problems that destabilize electrical grids.

Morrison concludes: “The shamble at COP demonstrates that the world is moving away from the idea that hydrocarbons can be removed from a modern economy. But an accident of recent electoral politics has left Britain with a fanatical Government of Net Zero zealots. The anti-working class Labour party was returned to power with a popular vote count less than its losing Marxist leader obtained in 2019. The U.K. FIRES work demonstrates what lies in store. A resurgent America bounding ahead on cheap energy and unleashed entrepreneurial spirits will contrast with its European allies shutting down industrial manufacturing in pursuit of an increasing unpopular state-mandated doomsday cult.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on A better theological basis for human equality as in “natural rights” or “God-given rights”. No one is more special than any other person.

Seeking validation from the Mother of all Daddies, and deforming deity with the animal

New below- Tackling a Tuckerism re the cosmic dualism myth used to validate human battles against evil.

What happened to Western liberal democracies? Wendell Krossa

After the early 90s collapse of Communism, Classic Liberalism did not automatically move to the fore in the West to dominate societies with its “self-evident truths” of natural individual freedoms and rights (i.e. “God-given”, not something given by states as the ‘natural rights’ precede the human creation of states).

Sample comment on natural rights:

https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/how-natural-law-informs-our-understanding-of-the-constitution

Classic Liberalism needs repeated explanation to populations and ongoing protection by the meta-institutions of societies (i.e. liberal democracy principles, systems of law, and representative state institutions). Liberal democracy needs continual reinforcement in public consciousness. It needs perpetual restating because over past decades Western liberals became sloppy and let the fringe voices of DEI, ESG, Woke Progressivism, and other anti-liberal programs through the doors and that “tyranny of an extremist leftist minority” took over Western societies.

This is good by Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin on Classic Liberalism (a short clip)- i.e. the English “free individuals” system, and its basic principles and institutions, that have been under assault by “barbarians”.

Classic Liberalism’s basic principles and institutions- i.e. the self-evident truth that “life, liberty, and property” (John Locke) are natural or God-given rights and representative governments exist to protect those individual rights and freedoms of all, equally. These principles and institutions have to be re-explained and re-enforced again and again.

As they discuss, free individualism does not function and succeed as a system if there is no overall protection by larger state laws and institutions, or by the overall informed population.

They note that it is now the “conservative” side that is doing more to protect and promote Classic Liberalism and that those formerly identifying as “liberals” have abandoned liberalism to the “barbarians” of Woke.

Dave Rubin adds that those former liberals let the “crazies” in- i.e. the Woke Progressives, DEI, and others- and those groups took over and started censoring people and most liberals did nothing in response, excusing the threat with “they won’t come for me”, and let the “crazies” take over.

Rubin gives interesting details on his meeting with Elon Musk, in response to his having been banned from Twitter, and then his meeting with Twitter engineers who opened up the Twitter operating system to show how it was shadow-banning and censoring, even banning those people who had just associated in some way with some other banned person (maybe just commenting on some other banned person).

As Rubin says, the entire Twitter system was built to silence certain people and promote others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5VcU7laT2w

This below by Amy Hamm illustrates exactly what Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin are talking about above in relation to Woke extremists. Here Hamm speaks to contemporary multiculturalism that has failed to affirm the need for immigrants to embrace and hold the Classic Liberal values of Western liberal democracies, and how Western liberals underestimated and denied the threat from Islamic extremism in the mix of immigrants. A threat that Richard Hitchens, Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others warned about. Hitchens noted that speaking about the threat is not “Islamophobia” or “racism” as charged by Woke Progressives. It is reality.

“The West ignored the threat of radical Islam- now Jews are paying the price: Comments by Berlin’s chief of police show that it’s not safe to be openly Jewish in one of Europe’s largest cities — in 2024”, Amy Hamm, Nove. 22, 2024

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-west-ignored-the-threat-of-radical-islam-now-jews-are-paying-the-price

Hamm begins, noting that Jews and gays in Germany have been advised by the Berlin police chief to hide their identities in majority Arab neighborhoods. Jews have been attacked and synagogues firebombed by immigrants who favor terrorists. Similar incidents have occurred across Canada. Example: Students at the University of BC are fearful of terrorist attacks.

Hamm then explains that Canada has adopted an “unfettered and incautious immigration” policy. The result has been immigrants who are antagonistic toward Western values. People who do not want to embrace and live according to liberal democracy values but reject them and want to replace them with extremist religious theocracy values. Along with this immigrant rejection of Western values, so also the political left in Western societies “hold a similar disdain for Western values”.

Hamm says the welcoming of such immigrants has changed the nature of our society with such things as “intolerance of tolerance” and that harms other Muslim immigrants also who came hoping for societies of openness, tolerance, diversity, etc.

She recounts the warnings of Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Murray, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the threat that radical Islam poses to our values and even to our physical safety. And this is not “racism or bigotry”, as Hitchens noted.

“Canadian scholars, meanwhile, have largely mocked this idea, predictably insisting that it is born of nothing more than “Islamophobia” — that nebulous euphemism for what they really wish to say, which is “racism… the nationalistic bigotry of the ‘far right.’…”

She adds that for decades, Canadian elites have “dismissed the threat of Islamic terrorism and portrayed immigration as our saving grace.” Her counter to this- “Nonsense”.

Hamm then quotes from Murray’s book (“The Strange Death of Europe”) that “Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide.” She adds, “Why? Because of mass immigration and an abandonment of Western culture and traditions. Canada suffers from the same type of leadership — the same intellectualized nonchalance regarding the survival of Western civilization.”

She concludes that “It remains to be seen if Canada can escape the clutches of this death spiral.”

National Post

And more bits on the theological front

Too mushy, weak, pacifist, Wendell Krossa

A friend has the hardest time embracing the belief that God can be no conditions love and justice in this world can still be effective, as in restraining the violent and holding all responsible for consequences of behavior. He cannot make that leap from an unconditionally loving God to the need to protect the innocent and robustly confront evil.

His point is that protecting the innocent here requires the backup image of an angry God breathing threats of hellfire. You need an angry god threatening damnation in order to have strong protective justice in this world. An unconditional God, in his view, promotes mushy, weak, soft pacifist love.

The psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo would respond that such monster God ideas do far more harm to human personality and societies, even promoting the nihilism and violence that most people want to avoid.

Dualism and Oneness realms, Wendell Krossa

The friend noted above cannot make the distinction between an Ultimate Reality that exists in a non-dual realm of Oneness, a Oneness that is love. That Reality and realm is distinct from this created material realm of dualism, the dualism of good against evil.

Others suggest the insights that this realm of dualism exists as a learning arena, a realm for experience with good and evil, and it is only in this realm of dualism that we can experience and learn what good is in contrast with evil as we exercise our free choice for good against evil. Without authentically free choice, real moral good is meaningless.

Authentically free will and free choice is absolutely vital to there being the possibility to experience and produce authentic good. This makes absolute nonsense of the arguments of those like Sam Harris who dismiss the reality of free will.

On the difficulty some have with the adjective “unconditional”, Wendell Krossa

Bob Brinsmead tried to help the mutual friend above to understand that unconditional deity, and the related ideal of unconditional love, does not mean no consequences in this life. It’s about ideals that draw us on to higher and better, about the nature of deity as ultimate ideal, about theodicy as in the defense of ultimate Goodness, and about what functions best as the most humane guide for life and treatment of others, also how we maintain our humanity in fighting evil, and more.

First, the friend having difficulty with an unconditional God and robust justice restraining evil:

“One should not read the book of Revelation as the Fundamentalists do. And you really can’t read and understand it if you think that the love of God is unconditional. Remember the story of the scribes and Pharisees who brought a woman who was caught in an act of adultery? Jesus condemned them but he also said to the adulteress “go and sin no more”. There is an inherent sense of morality in genuine love. Genuine love can effect an ethical transformation in our outlook and behaviour.”

“I beseech you Robert to let us all know that you believe that God is not just a God of love. Is he not also a God of justice?”

Bob’s response:

“___, may I suggest that you misunderstand and misconstrue the meaning of the adjective “unconditional.” It seems to me you change its meaning as if the word was “inconsequential.” Love is our birthright. We love our children whether they are good or bad just like God sends sunshine and rain on good and bad alike. But to accept love is going to have consequences. Don’t confuse no conditions with no consequences. If we think straight, we will shoot straight. I don’t see how any of us are so stupid that we might not accept “genuine love can effect an ethical transformation in our outlook and behaviour.” Since I am a Universalist, I accept what you say unconditionally. Love is unconditional. Love is not inconsequential. For Pete’s sake…. I laugh because this is so simple.”

My added comment (Wendell Krossa):

“Yes, I don’t see the conflict here, ___. God is unconditional reality, but we live in a world with natural and social consequences and for what reason? There are all sorts of speculations about this- Joseph Campbell offered his points, the theodicy people offer all sorts of insights, and on and on. Because God views us unconditionally and treats us unconditionally (i.e. sun and rain given to good and bad) does not then mean that we are then pushed to embrace some form of dogmatic pacifism as the only option or conclusion to make from an unconditional deity. The benefit and good influence of the Jesus insight speaks for itself- “Love your enemy because God does”. It’s the best of ideals to wrestle with and aim for.”

“____, Jesus responded to exactly that in stating there should be no more “eye for eye” justice but instead there should be “love your enemy” justice. And he illustrated it with the most common of evidence- God gives the good gifts of life, critical for that agrarian society, to all alike, without discrimination or exclusion of any, without tribal favoring of ‘true believers’ (the good guys) and punitive destruction of the bad guys. Universalism.

“But here we are in this realm of dualism for some reason. To “learn lessons”? To understand true moral good by freely choosing against evil? That can only happen in a realm of dualism.

“So, find out your reasons for understanding all this but it does not change the truth that Jesus pointed to- that in the Oneness that is God, there is only no conditions love. That “stunning new theology” was critical to the psychosomatic healing ministry of Jesus, to tell people there was no ultimate threat and thereby relieve their anxiety and fear.

“And we add to the Jesus insights that, yes, in life there are natural and social consequences to our behavior, as vital to human development, growth, maturing.”

More on the inflamed tribalism of today– Wendell Krossa

I hear a lot of concern voiced today about the intense tribalism and consequent bitter hatred between left and right factions of our societies with excessive vilification of differing others as irredeemable enemies, along with calls for censoring, banning, and even criminalizing of the differing others. Varied public commentators are asking- How do we get out of this mess and back to something better, to what we remember was a better time with less vitriol, more cooperation in our shared existence, an overall more peaceful time. We remember, for example, that over previous decades there was more tolerance of diversity and mutual respect, despite differences.

My British paraphrase of a ‘French’ expression- What the ‘fook’ happened over this past decade?

The point on this site is not just to try and trace what is behind things like the tribal impulse, to just note historical origins (i.e. the ultimate origin of tribalism from our animal past, subsequently validated, for example, by religious myths of “cosmic dualism”). The project here is more than just understanding what incites and validates such dark impulses. This site is concerned to then also discover how to counter such pathology in order to prevent further destruction from this impulse (i.e. division, exclusion, hatred among populations).

More so, this site is focused on how to successfully win the real battle of life, the real “battle of good against evil” that is the inner battle to conquer the “evil triad” of animal impulses inside each of us. Winning that battle first, then enables us to better contribute to solving the greater public battles of our societies.

That then focuses consciousness on what weapons have the wise sages given us to slay our monsters?

And this ties into a major point of this site. It’s about ultimate meaning and purpose- the big questions of life, ultimate realities, and ultimate ideals that tell us how to get to the more humane future that we all want.

This site does not accept “subconscious archetypes” as immutable, permanent realities in their current forms. Notably, the archetypes of “(1) Lost paradise. (2) Essentially corrupt humans ruined paradise and hence deserve divine punishment. (3) Life is now declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending. (4) Salvation as the demand for sacrifice/payment/punishment and (5) suffering as redemptive. (6) Divine demand for violent purging of an evil enemy that threatens one’s world. (7) Divine demand to engage a hero’s quest to conquer and exterminate an irredeemably evil enemy. And (8) the promise of salvation in a restored paradise or new utopian communalism.”

The concern of this site is how to change/transform these long-embedded archetypes. I suggest that it helps to start with your personal narrative themes and exchange those for better alternatives and then let that transformation of mind and spirit work back into the subconscious.

As before, this site repeats the critical importance of insights that help to counter tribalism- i.e. human oneness, Mitochondrial Eve, quantum entanglement, NDE insights.

My full list of alternative themes for narratives:

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

Anyway, here is some more on the tribal impulse…

This is kind of Christmassy….

This site is “obsessed” with some of the biggest questions of conscious human existence- i.e. Why are we here on this planet for a brief life experience? For what purpose? And why is love so dominant to understanding our primary impulse for meaning and purpose? And what does love really mean and involve? I mean that profoundly disturbing statement of Historical Jesus to “love your enemies” that points to the highest reach of love. What icons like Nelson Mandela wrestled with and applied to great success in, for example, preventing civil war in South Africa, post-apartheid (“Mandela’s Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age”, Richard Stengel).

And the probing for better answers goes on and on….

Here is more on understanding the deeply buried/embedded things (archetypes of the subconscious) that are behind the public presentation of varied issues in our societies. This is followed with how we might eliminate the pathologies in the mix of archetypes (i.e. the inhumane themes), how we transform that background influence on human consciousness, narratives, and society, Wendell Krossa

Political leaders, activists on both sides, and media present all sorts of policy issues to our societies that have to be confronted, debated, voted on, and resolved through the application of varied policies. While observing the public debate around all sorts of issues, keep in mind the bigger background picture of what is going on, what is happening behind all the public narratives, projects, programs, and resulting policy crusades.

The background influences?

Yes, that framework of archetypal ideas that are repeatedly manifested in our meta-narratives, the ever-persisting themes of “lost paradise, life declining toward worse, toward apocalypse, the demand for sacrifice and for purging of some evil threat, the obligation to join the right side of some battle against threatening enemies, to purge evil, and the promise of restored paradise in communal utopia, etc.”.

A critical issue that rightly worries many today… tribalism and the associated crusade to re-establish the elite/commoner divide of societies.

Notable in the mix of public issues today, we are being assaulted once again by the same old tribal dualism, presented over the past century and a half, or so, as the Marxist “oppressor/oppressed” divide of humanity. This time the tribal dualism is coming at us mainly through the “neo-Marxism” of Woke Progressivism, with its tribal divide of humanity according to the new DEI categorization by skin color. The new discrimination crusade of “Woke Racism”.

Insert: And we also keep an eye on the Right with that ever-present impulse from the fringe to establish some form of a Christian theocracy.

Today’s neo-Marxism still pushes the same oppressor/oppressed categories of capital owners as oppressors who are set against workers/peasants as oppressed (“big corporate power against workers/citizens”). Contemporary versions of collectivism frame the tribal divide in terms of the “victimizer/victim” categorization, with people divided into either group according to skin color. That is a rejection of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a colorblind society. It is known as the “identity politics” of the DEI crusade.

What these “newish” collectivist programs are re-establishing once again is what Richard Landes terms the ancient “elite/commoner” divide that has dominated human societies from the beginning. Some, like historian Arthur Herman in “The Cave and the Light”, trace this elite/commoner divide down from the Greeks- i.e. Plato and Aristotle, with Plato as the collectivist guy versus Aristotle the individual freedom guy.

I also bring in two other prominent influencers of Western civilization who make a significant contribution to validating the elite/commoner divide in human societies- Paul and Jesus, through their ongoing influence on the meta-narratives of the West. James Tabor, for example, in “Paul and Jesus”, rightly states the significant magnitude of their influence.

Paul re-enforced tribal dualism with his Christ myth and the demand for belief in his Christ as necessary for acceptance into the tribe of true believers that put people on the right tribal side for eternity (see Revelation chapters 19, 20). Unbelievers will be assigned to the outsider tribe to be excluded and damned for eternity. That is an extremist version of the tribal division of humanity, tribalism as an eternal reality. Zoroaster’s cosmic metaphysical dualism.

Paul also re-enforced elite domination of commoners with his urging slaves to submit to masters, wives to submit to husbands, and all to submit to his Lord Christ. He argued that government elites were appointed by God to rule commoners (Romans 13).

Jesus, to the contrary, rejected tribalism outright in both his message and his behavior. He presented a stunning new theology of a non-tribal God who refused to discriminate against the “bad people/enemies” but generously included them in his universal love, sending sun and rain on all alike, equally. Jesus further exhibited universalism by including the outcasts of his day in the critical rituals of social inclusion of his society- i.e. at meals, the important group occasions of Jewish culture that proclaimed who in the society were acceptable and who were not. Jesus challenged the divisive nature of that tradition and powerfully illustrated his inclusion of all, even those considered the most socially “unworthy”.

Note also his stories of universal inclusion as illustrated in the Good Samaritan short story, and the generous and forgiving Prodigal Father as representing God, making the point there was no demand from deity for sacrifice/payment under threat of tribal exclusion. The wasteful “criminal” son was included as fully as the righteous son.

Historical Jesus further rejected elite domination of commoners in his clear statements that true greatness was to not lord over others, like the gentile rulers did, but to serve others.

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you…whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave”.

These two religious icons- Paul and Jesus- have had a significant ongoing influence in Western civilization.

Insert note on the importance of countering the tribalism that has long been deeply embedded in the archetypes of the human collective subconscious. I repeatedly reference the “subconscious” because a friend, who has researched this, has oft reminded me that some 90-plus percent of human behavior is influenced by the subconscious. Most people just act in certain intuitive ways without consciously thinking about how they will act.

Continuing…

Add to Jesus “spiritual” message of universal inclusion other facts that we have discovered about human oneness in this world- i.e. the oneness of the human family affirmed by the fact (1) that all human beings on Earth today are descendants of a “Mitochondrial Eve”, (2) by the fact that “quantum entanglement” speaks to a more fundamental oneness behind all reality, and by the “truth” of (3) the NDE insights/discoveries of the ultimate Oneness that we are all part of, all inseparable from.

Meaning that there is no ultimate eternal cosmic dualism of good and evil, no metaphysical/spiritual realm of true believers versus unbelievers. There is only the Oneness of the ultimate unconditional Love that is God. There is no heaven versus Hell or other eternal tribal dualism as per Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism.

The mental/philosophical burden on us is then to grapple with and understand this world with its dualism of good and evil, as separate from the Ultimate Oneness that is love.

Varied “spiritual” sages have suggested that this material realm of dualism exists as a learning arena, a place where we come temporarily to engage struggles against evil in order to learn and experience true good. And the battle of good against evil in this world must be taken seriously, though as Solzhenitsyn reminds us, the most critical arena for this battle takes place inside each one of us, the struggle of our better angels against the animal inheritance in us. It is not primarily a struggle of human against human.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”

Insert:

It helps, as we engage the dualism battles of this world, to hold the big background assurance of ultimate Oneness and Ultimate Reality as unconditional love. The comfort factor. The nature of God as a Oneness of no conditions love also functions as the highest guiding ideal for humanity. It points to how we maintain our own humanity as we engage battles against evil in this life.

“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of (universal, unconditional) love (i.e. Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Joseph Campbell, “Myths To Live By”).

Meaning– Never forget that who you may dismiss as your “enemy” is still intimate family, ultimately.

When we triumph in the inner battle, then we are properly prepared to go forth and engage the public battles of life, cautioned by Joseph Campbell’s advice that those we view and fight as “enemies” are still our family, to be treated with restorative justice, not punitive. And that does not mean treated with dogmatic pacifism. Unconditional love tends to be wrongly associated with love as mushy, fuzzy pacifism of the “turn the other cheek” variety. That does not work in the face of real evil.

Each of us is fully responsible for our choices and behavior. Meaning that those among us who cannot or will not control their worst impulses must be restrained (incarcerated) to protect innocent others. And if psychopathy is involved then the key must be thrown away. That is the foremost obligation of justice systems and of any common-sense, the robust protect of innocent people.

The rest of us are obligated by love to treat failing humans around us humanely, to make the effort at rehabilitation. If we succumb to punitive, inhumane treatment of offenders then we will lose our own humanity. Leo Tolstoy was right that we are obligated to treat others with love in “all the situations of life”. He is not referring to love as primarily a feeling but love as the intention and follow-up action to do the humane thing in all situations. Like the tired “post-partum depressed” mother getting up to feed the crying baby in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time (while hubby snores on), and not feeling loving at all but forcing herself to do the right thing, the humane thing.

Back to the big picture background of issues in our societies

The above points on the re-emerging and intensifying tribalism in the neo-collectivist movements of today brings to the fore the task of understanding tribal dualism and the factors from across history that have incited and affirmed this pathology.

Just picking a point in history where an important mental pathology was introduced to human narratives that incited and validated the impulse to tribalism…

Begin with Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism of a good God (Ahura Mazda) in a metaphysical war with an evil Force (Angra Mainyu). People today believe that Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism is expressed in the great battles of good against evil that take place here on Earth.

That “spiritual”, or ultimate tribalism, is replicated down through subsequent religious versions of tribalism (true believers joining some “true religion” in battles against unbelievers or the false religions). Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism myth has long influenced Western narratives and civilization, including in the present in varied secularized versions. Scholars note that Zoroaster’s theology powerfully shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These religions then shaped Western civilization, including historically subsequent “secular/ideological” systems of beliefs that still dominate the consciousness of the modern world.

Add also the ongoing influence of Zoroaster’s myth of apocalypse. That theme shaped Judaism, Christianity and Islam as apocalyptic movements. Note the secularized version of this in the apocalyptic “climate crisis” crusade.

This site is committed to probing and understanding these fundamental contributing factors to today’s problems, the primitive beliefs that we have inherited that continue to shape public and personal narratives that in turn shape human minds, emotions, motivations, and behavior, including at-scale in societies.

This site hits the tribal dualism element (and associated elite domination) as part of the animal inheritance in all people of the “evil triad” of impulses to (1) small band or tribal orientation, (2) to alpha domination of weaker others, and (3) to punitive, retaliatory extermination of competitors, of differing others outside the tribal limits.

The tribal impulse has been a never-ending curse on humanity, inciting endless violence of group against differing group. Tribalism reaches the extreme of destructiveness when embedded within the deformed hero’s quest where there is the felt obligation to conquer and destroy some irredeemable enemy that threatens one’s world with apocalyptic ending. That then affirms Arthur Mendel’s point that apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive idea in history.

Added note: Historians have noted the perpetual state of war between tribes of the primitive past.

Example- Steven Le Blanc and Katherine Register’s “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage” where they detail the curse that tribalism has been across human history.

This from the Amazon blurb on their book:

“With armed conflict in the Persian Gulf now upon us, Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc takes a long-term view of the nature and roots of war, presenting a controversial thesis: The notion of the “noble savage” living in peace with one another and in harmony with nature is a fantasy. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, LeBlanc contends that warfare and violent conflict have existed throughout human history…

“Constant Battles surveys human history in terms of social organization-from hunter gatherers, to tribal agriculturalists, to more complex societies. LeBlanc takes the reader on his own digs around the world — from New Guinea to the Southwestern U.S. to Turkey — to show how he has come to discover warfare everywhere at every time…”

We can overcome and vanquish this inherited impulse to tribalism with new insights to reframe our narratives around themes of fundamental oneness, centered on the universalism that stems from insights like Jesus’ stunning new theology of an unconditional, nontribal God. Meaning- there is no dualism in the Ultimate Reality that creates and sustains all in existence. There is only ‘Oneness’ that is a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. Let that become the new cohering center of narratives, the center of TOE.

That is a stunning new framing of humanity’s ultimate ideal- deity. The ideal that gives overarching purpose to human life.

And that Oneness is our true home. My paraphrased take on “In God we live and move and have our home”…. “We come from that love, live in that love, and return to that love”. Have a great Christmas everyone.

Anyway, to conclude this comment- this is about transforming deeply embedded subconscious archetypes through exchanging/transforming the core themes of our narratives.

Added note: Here is a reposting of earlier comment on tribal dualism in response to something stated by Tucker Carlson…

Probing more the topic of tribal dualism, Wendell Krossa (This is a response to a recent interview of Tucker Carlson where he suggested there was a greater cosmic spiritual battle between good and evil that was expressed in the battles of good against evil in this world. Nah.)

To fully understand the problem of tribal dualism it is enough to recognize the Zoroastrian myth of the cosmic dualism of a Good God versus a satanic spirit, and how that metaphysical dualism has been used to validate much of human tribal dualisms across history.

But I do not believe there is some great spiritual battle behind our earthly struggles of good against evil. I do not believe that some evil spiritual entity or force exists behind the evil that we confront in life. I could be wrong, but I think that the evil in life can be explained well enough in terms of the animal inheritance inside us, particularly by the evil triad of animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive retaliation to harm and destroy differing others.

What we see as the cold cruelty exhibited by psychopathic personalities correlates with the same callousness of the hungry animal predator, as in the lion tearing and eating the baby antelope. Where Robert Hare termed it the “alien brain” I would call it the animal brain.

Others have suggested this also. See, for example, “Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil”, by Lyall Watson.

Amazon advertising blurb on this book:

“At a time when violence threatens to become epidemic and genocide takes the place of diplomacy in many regions of the world, it is no longer enough to simply dismiss such dark behavior as “human nature.” People need to know why such atrocities and horrors take place, and the usual moral, religious, political and philosophical explanations have proved inadequate.

“With Dark Nature, world naturalist Lyall Watson presents a scientific examination of evil. Drawing on the latest insights of genetics, evolutionary ethology, anthropology and psychology, he takes the discussion of evil out of the realm of monsters and demons to reveal it for what it truly A biological reality that may be terrifying but can be controlled. Groundbreaking, fascinating and eminently readable, Dark Nature is a vital and timely antidote to modern despair.”

Further, add here Jeffrey Schwartz’s book “You Are Not Your Brain”, and apply that title to the animal inheritance in our brain. That inheritance of animal impulses is not the real us, it is not our true human self. We are something higher and better with a human spirit that is inseparable from the God that is love.

The overall story of humanity is the story of exodus from our animal past to become human. And our human consciousness and human spirit are something uniquely different from the animal. We are not our animal inheritance, despite the residual influence of that in our brains.

Added note re Tucker Carlson interview:

I noted above that Zoroaster is a good place to start in trying to understand the tribal impulse because he formalized a theological explanation to validate the impulse to tribalism, to give it divine endorsement as something we are gifted with from God. The feeling of being on the side of right, of fighting for the righteous God, while our enemies are on the side of wrong and deserve destruction.

This is why I caution against Tucker Carlson’s belief that our battles in life express some greater behind-the-scenes warfare between God and Satan. The danger then is that some of us will lean on such mythology for approval, viewing our positions as unchallengeable righteousness and convincing ourselves that we are on the unquestionable right side in disputes, heroes fighting those who differ in some way from us as irredeemable, intolerable evil that must be destroyed.

Bringing in the divine approval factor for tribalism tends to exaggerate the good versus evil element in our battles. Not to say that there are no authentic situations of good versus evil in life. There are. But we don’t need the divine element to exaggerate and distort such situations further, feeding our sense of self-righteousness and intolerance of evil that then leads us to forget that our “enemies” are still family, as per Joseph Campbell’s caution. Then we lose our humanity.

More on challenging the appeal to Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism… Wendell Krossa

Point? Be careful about dragging ultimate Good into the muddier parts of our existence here on Earth.

Framing our tribalism in terms of a divine model (cosmic dualism) can intensify and deform our episodes of tribal experience here, our battles against differing others. The recent US election illustrated this- i.e. opponents exaggeratedly demonized as “Nazis, Hitler, fascists, threats to democracy, racists…etc.”

We don’t need the extra validation, with appeals to heaven, when we already tend to distort the hero’s quest by viewing ourselves as more purely righteous in opposition to differing others as irredeemably evil. Such distortion is already a danger (“narcissism, ego-maniac, psychopathy”?) and we don’t need to add divine approval to our own tendency to distort and exaggerate our righteousness as opposed to the purported evil of others, as though we are living out some greater metaphysical battle of good against evil.

Tribalism is enough of a pathology to struggle against without framing it as divinely sourced, as a god-like urge when we express it.

This has been a long-term issue across history- i.e. people placing pathologies under the “canopy of the sacred”, thereby putting them out of reach as unquestionable, untouchable realities. That only makes problems between differing groups even harder to resolve. Framing myself as heroically involved in a “divine cause”, how then can I admit that I might not be fully in the right and the other may not be irredeemably evil?

We are all susceptible to letting our impulse to meaning take us into deformity, to lead us astray, especially when we try to validate the worst of our animal impulses to tribalism, domination of others, or punitive destruction of others. Our impulse to meaning often expresses in the tendency of most people to want to be like Daddy (ultimate Daddy) as in the “behavior based on ultimate ideals or realities”- e.g. “Be merciful just as your Father in heaven is merciful”. Most humans across history, responding to the primal impulse for meaning/purpose, have wanted to get approval from the Big Daddy and that impulse can deform the hero’s quest.

Don’t drag deity into the pathology of the animal. Books like Alex Garcia’s “Alpha God: The Psychology Of Religious Violence And Oppression” have noted the deformity that is the result of framing deity with animal features. We get monster gods as ultimate animals, ultimate predators that are tribal chieftains (favor insiders to the tribe, exclude outsiders), dominating lords/kings, and punitively destroying judges.

Don’t deform deity with the animal. This has been one of the essential failures of religions across history with their tribal, dominating, and punitively destroying deities.

This is why this site focuses repeatedly on the feature of “unconditional” as the ultimate in humaneness, the highest understanding of what is most humane, the highest good, the ultimate reach of love. Unconditional is the best that we have discovered to define what love and good are, and we then naturally and correctly assume the Ultimate Good that is God is such love to transcendent level.

I wish there were some other less-misunderstood term, but unconditional best contrasts what is truly human with the inherited animal in us.

Even though we struggle to understand how to apply the unconditional ideal in this life, as an ideal to model our lives according to, it still best defines deity as the highest good. And that explains my “theodicy” (defense of Ultimate Good).

And am I being a bit too tough on Tucker?

This interesting bit from “OutKick.com”

“DEI training led people to agree with Hitler quotes: Study”, Ian Miller, Nov. 26, 2024

https://www.outkick.com/analysis/dei-trainings-led-people-agree-hitler-quotes-study

Miller notes a study on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” training programs and the impact on individual’s perceptions and behavior that revealed negative outcomes. The study examined the programs of DEI advocates like Ibram Kendi that try to “emphasize awareness of and opposition to ‘systemic oppression’.”

Miller says the study found that instead of promoting empathy, tolerance, and less racism, DEI pushed people to wrongly identify prejudice and hostility where none was present and then to react to that imagined racism “with anger and vitriol”.

“Across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice.”

As others have similarly noted “Woke Racism” (John McWhorter) causes more harm that it purportedly alleviates. DEI activists see racism where none exists and then want to punish the imagined racists severely, smearing them with dehumanizing terms as “parasites, viruses, the devil personified.” That them becomes what we have seen in totalitarian societies.

Miller concludes, “Instead of creating tolerance, acceptance and agreeable traits, DEI training and authors like Kendi and DiAngelo create hostility, disagreement and demonization. Because instead of instructing readers to treat people fairly, equally and with respect, they create a victim/oppressor ideology…. It’s harmful, malicious work.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Seeking validation from the Mother of all Daddies, and deforming deity with the animal

When are cautions too mild and it’s time to start voicing warnings more loudly?

See atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen’s presentation on how collectivist revolutionaries shifted, in the 1970s, to demonize fossil fuels/CO2 as the more effective means for destroying Western societies (the link for his presentation is below, with summary quotes). Politicians and other Western elites then joined the crusade for the trillions of dollars involved. Lindzen also notes the corruption of “science” in this crusade.

Fear-mongering and shifts toward irrationally dangerous salvation schemes, Wendell Krossa

This is generally an anti-alarmism site, but I also fully recognize the potency of alarmist narratives to incite fear and render populations susceptible to irrational and destructive salvation schemes to “save the world”. Apocalyptic narratives exaggerate threats, exaggerate and demonize differing others as irredeemable enemies, and that can engender irrational hysteria that begins to dangerously toy with shifts toward “exterminate or be exterminated” solutions to the imagined apocalyptic scenarios and threatening enemies.

We like to think the madness of the last century (i.e. two world wars) was a one-off at some final stage of history. Maybe, but maybe not.

Here’s hoping the saner leaders in our countries can help us find our way through this current spasm of insanity.

Note the “madness of crowds” episode that we are in the midst of right now- i.e. the “climate crisis” crusade and its Net Zero decarbonization project that is ruining societies like Britain, Germany, Canada, and more. Again, sources like the Net Zero Watch newsletter of Global Warming Policy foundation keep us up to date on the ongoing destruction in those societies. Also, see Wattsupwiththat.com for good reports on climate and energy issues.

We are on dangerous ground when we become susceptible to embracing a deformed version of the hero’s quest that has been distorted under the influence of apocalyptic-scale exaggeration and harasses us to engage some imagined righteous battle to conquer and purge an exaggerated monster/enemy that purportedly threatens our world. Add alarmist prophets who actually set dates for the “end of days” as climate alarmists have done for 3 decades now and thereby incite public panic to hysterical levels, Chicken Little levels.

And with the other features in a deformed hero’s quest (note the full complex listed below) so also watch the exaggeration of “evil enemies” that are so dehumanized they cannot be contacted, engaged, or compromised with, but must be exterminated. Well, then we are now in real “madness of crowds” territory.

Examples: Look at Joe Biden refusing to talk to Putin and now playing an insane game of escalation with missiles, hoping to outguess what the other side might do in response. And look at the insane demonizing of those who do try to engage enemies in hopes of reaching some peace accord- i.e. Tulsi Gabbard demonized as a “Russian asset” for advocating contact with Assad and Putin. Mica and Joe of MSNBC were recently blasted by fellow leftists for contacting the demonized “orange monster” Trump, whom Progressives claimed should never be “normalized”.

Such is the insanity that results from engaging narratives of apocalyptic-scale threats and exaggerated demonization of differing others as irredeemable enemies.

Note:

“Orange monster, Hitler, fascist, racist…”, these and other smears result from irrational fear-mongering and excessive demonization of differing others that feeds into the dangerous late-phase shifts of apocalyptic crusade leaders toward violent purging as necessary to their salvation scheme, the demand to exterminate the purported threats to their world.

I would also toss into the mix, to understand what is going on, the totalitarian’s formula, the elite formula of “fear=control”. This formula is evident in the constant elite push to establish and maintain the elite-commoner divide in societies.

Apocalyptic millennialism- Still a clear and present danger, Wendell Krossa

This below is from research on the “apocalyptic millennial” complex of themes that were behind the Marxism and Nazism crusades of last century and are now driving the environmental alarmism crusade, along with inciting/validating resurging collectivism in new versions like leftist Woke Progressivism.

The full complex of apocalyptic alarmism mythology: this reposting from below…

“This apocalyptic millennial complex is better understood when fleshed out as the larger complex of primitive myths that includes-

“(1) The baseline myth of a lost original paradise- i.e. a better past that “corrupt, evil humans” have ruined. That undergirds the sense of the loss of something good and, hence, now unbalanced justice demands that that the lost good must be restored in order to rebalance justice and righteousness in the cosmos and life. To make things right again.

“Consequent to the myth of a better past that has been ruined, primitive mythology pivoted to (2) blame people, to blame humanity as the evil enemy that must be punished and even exterminated in order to restore the lost paradise and to save life. In contemporary terms- today the evil enemy of nature is greedy, consuming humans in industrial civilization. And even more specifically, greedy humans using natural resources like fossil fuels that enables them to enjoy the good life.

“Then to further re-enforce the narrative that evil humans had ruined divine nature (i.e. Earth as goddess), the ancients added the ongoing threat that (3) life was declining toward apocalyptic ending. And to even further re-enforce alarm, apocalyptic prophets repeatedly set “always imminent” dates to raise hysteria levels and validate the use of desperate measures to “save” the world that was always threatened by the looming apocalypse.

“But also, the apocalyptic alarmists introduced “hope” into the mix, the perverse version of hope that was built on the violent destruction of enemies. And they create salvation schemes where specially enlightened elites lecture the ignorant and unenlightened commoners on what they must do to be saved from imminent destruction and death- i.e. (4) demand some sacrifice/payment. Today’s sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, as a return to primitivism as in a return to the more pure and strong existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with no ecological footprint. Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the redistribution programs pushed in the endless annual climate COPs.

“Couch this madness in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as true heroes will engage a righteous tribal battle to conquer and (5) violently purge a purported monster/enemy identified as demonized fellow humans.

“And when the enemy is fully purged/exterminated, then (6) salvation is attained in a renewed communal paradise.

“Most critical to understand in this set of primitive themes is- What is the driving Force behind this complex? What is the “cohering center” of this complex that has wreaked so much destruction across history? What validates the rest of the primitive and distorting ideas in the complex?

The cohering center is none other than the “wrathful” deity of all primitive mythologies, the deity royally pissed at humans for ruining his original perfect paradise. Hence, the subsequent threats of divine retaliation toward humanity by violently destroying the entire world in an apocalypse. The mother of all hissy fits. Followed by divine demands for sacrifice/payment/suffering as required conditions to achieve redemption.

“The cohering center of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths is the violent, destroying God who threatens people in this life through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty, and also threatens people with after-life harm that adds sting to death. That “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths. That psycho-pathological version of deity has dominated mythologies and religions across history and has now been transformed into secular/ideological systems of belief to also dominate those. I.e. “Vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma”, etc.

“These deeply embedded themes, long entrenched in human psyches as subconscious archetypes, help explain why emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence is behind our choice in beliefs. Hence, many people simply respond to contemporary apocalyptic millennial narratives, whether Marxist collectivism or climate apocalyptic, because they feel right, good, just, and true. They resonate with deeply embedded archetypes.”

(End of reposting)

Also, a repost once more of Kristian Niemietz’s comments in ch.10 of his book “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.

His point again: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”

My previous post on this:

“Niemietz highlights a critical issue to understanding the root of contemporary psychopathological problems such as the continuing wide embrace of destructive narratives like socialism and climate crisis alarmism. He states that “emotional satisfaction not rational logic or evidence determines our choice in beliefs”. Emotional satisfaction is our intuitive response to subconscious impulses and archetypes, things that we don’t consciously question. They just are.

“We embrace certain ideas, themes, belief systems because they intuitively feel right, true, and good. This is due to the reality that they have long been deeply embedded in human subconscious thereby creating the “collective unconscious” that Jung refers to, the collective subconscious of humanity that we see expressed repeatedly and endlessly across history in the great public meta-narratives of religion and in the secular ideologies of the modern era that have adopted the same core themes of the religious precedents.

“Hence, many of us intuitively respond to the same old themes and narratives just as Joseph Campbell noted, in stating that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.

“This helps to understand why people today hear another “new” apocalyptic millennial narrative like “climate crisis” and intuitively, subconsciously affirm it because it presents the same basic archetypes as ever before that resonate with emotional felt needs and personal narratives of populations. That happened with Marxism and Nazism and is now happening with environmental alarmism, as also with Woke Progressivism, a version of neo-collectivism similar to past versions of socialism.

“Many respond subconsciously to such crusades as “righteous battles for oppressed people” and subsequently are not able to admit to the evidence of destructive outcomes. The emotional affirmation of embracing a movement that is outwardly presented as right, true, and just, overwhelms rationality and evidence. People just affirm the crusade because the core themes resonate with deeply embedded archetypes in their subconscious.

““Emotional satisfaction”- the comforting and self-validating belief that we are part of something true, right, and good. That we are the “righteous heroes fighting a just war against evil enemies”. Even that we are on God’s side, the side of good in the great cosmic wars of good against evil.”

(End of reposting)

Continuing

Get a good grasp of the basic themes of the apocalyptic millennial complex listed above. Those themes will help you to better understand the argument of historians like James Tabor that Paul’s apocalyptic Christ has been the most dominant influence on Western civilization. Paul’s Christ has been most singularly responsible for re-enforcing the primitive psycho-pathology of apocalyptic millennialism in Western narratives, consciousness, and societies.

Why bother? The outcomes from the apocalyptic millennial complex continue to ruin lives and societies, even to mass-harm scale. That makes it critical to understand this complex of contributing factors and how to counter them in human narratives.

The line of descent of this complex of themes runs down from the earliest written mythologies of the Sumerians/Akkadians/Babylonians/Egyptians to Zoroaster’s formalization of apocalyptic millennialism, that then shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in our Western tradition. The apocalyptic millennial complex then continued into the modern era, still dominant in the world religions, and also through the 19th Century ideology of Declinism (mythology secularized as ideology, even science). Declinism then shaped the more recent varieties of apocalyptic millennial narratives in Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.

It is irresponsible to avoid confronting the apocalyptic millennial ideas behind the apocalyptic crusades of today (i.e. in resurging Marxism, in climate crisis alarmism). The irresponsibility relates to the dangerous element in the apocalyptic millennial mix of the “demand to purge some threatening evil”, to coercively and violently purge some imagined threat to life.

Richard Landes has spoken well to the refusal of Western intellectuals to acknowledge the “debt to Christianity” behind their Marxist heroes. They wanted to view Marxism in terms of the “modernity project of the French Revolution” and not as a crusade of backward religious extremists.

Continuing with the theme of demand for purging of evil…

When the element of violent purging is framed in terms of today’s all-too-common deformation of the Hero’s quest as an unchallengeable “righteous battle against irredeemable evil”, evil that must be purged in order “to save the world that is on the brink of soon ending”, well, now you are placing yourself inside a narrative bubble of dangerously extremist and irrational delusion.

Yes, there are authentic battles against evil in life, but some of today’s imagined battles against evil have been horrifically deformed as in the exaggerations of apocalyptic climate narratives (i.e. CO2- the food of all life- now demonized as the evil threat to be purged, a “pollutant/poison”, and natural climate changes as warning signs of imminent apocalypse).

Others have deformed the Hero’s quest in the resurging collectivist battle against what is claimed to be the evil of Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy (i.e. prosperous industrial, technological civilization), and purging this system in order to restore the imagined original communalist paradise that has been ruined and lost.

A repeated argument on this site…. The deforming of the Hero’s quest arises from people giving way to their dark impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

Richard Landes notes in “Heaven On Earth” that the threat from the element of violent purging becomes more critical as the alarmist crusades appear to be collapsing/losing. Then the apocalyptic crusade leaders “double down in desperation” and even move toward the late-stage phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”.

We can see elements of this dangerous shift to extermination, to “double down” solutions emerging in the climate crusade madness- i.e. Al Gore’s increasingly enraged frustration at people not listening to his narrative, and John Kerry’s similarly enraged demands to get rid of the First Amendment that hinders his totalitarian alarmist consensus. And we see this extermination urge in Justin Trudeau doubling down on his decarbonization madness even as it further ruins Canada. Delusional self-righteousness is blind to outcomes in the mass-harm consequences of Net Zero policies.

We also see this dangerous shift to extermination solutions in Putin’s fear of losing the war he started and lowering his threshold standards for using nuclear weapons. And we see it in Biden’s decisions to increase escalation in the Ukraine war to “save democracy” (i.e. with US personnel required in the latest launch of “ATACMS” missiles into Russia as noted by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn in their latest “America This Week”, Nov. 22, 2024). The Ukraine war was incited partly by the US/CIA involvement in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Ukraine back in 2014. And so on.

Note this recent comment from Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn after Ukraine was given the go-ahead by Biden to use the US “ATACMS” missiles…

“Keir Starmer himself… (said), “No, we can’t back off the use of these missiles, we have to double down.”

Minds/populations subjected to endless apocalyptic-scale hysteria- i.e. climate or other- then experience aroused survival impulses and consequently succumb to irrational “salvation” schemes. Then life becomes exposed to dangerous actions and counter-responses as the consequence of leaders “doubling down” on their crusades and even making the decision to shift toward exterminate or be exterminated solutions.

As someone said, “War is insanity”. That mass-death insanity is the outcome of populations driven to irrationality by apocalyptic alarmism, and susceptible to demands for violent purging as part of the salvation schemes of their alarmist prophets.

Read the historical research that has already been done in great detail. I post those historians repeatedly here (Herman, Landes, Mendel, Redles, etc.). We need to learn from history if we are not to repeat another episode of madness once again.

Note: Once again, note the alternatives to apocalyptic millennialism in “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

This illustrative bit of commentary from two of the best on world events– Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. These two are worth subscribing to- transcripts available at their site on Racket News.

Here is my post to a discussion group urging them to read Taibbi and Kirn…

“Guys, this comes with an urgent- “All of you read this”. There are some absolutely insane things happening in the world today and mainstream media largely ignore it all. Trump has voiced his concern that this is the greatest threat today, not global warming but nuclear warming. Not to affirm exaggerated doom and gloom but just to note some dangerous shifts and gamesmanship going on… dangerous poker moves..

“Historian Richard Landes noted the patterns of apocalyptic millennial movements. Most interesting was his research on the stage when movements appear to be collapsing, losing. And then leaders, disillusioned with the looming collapse, will choose to “double down” in desperation, and even shift toward the extremely dangerous phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”. We saw Hitler do exactly that as his war effort began collapsing around him.

And we are hearing the same arguments from Al Gore, John Kerry, and others as the climate apocalypse crusade appears to be collapsing. So also, similar dangerous murmurings are coming out of Ukraine as both sides fear losing.

Taibbi and Kirn try to describe the level of irresponsible insanity going on now as Western decision/makers play poker with nuclear war gambling. And no quibble with their comment that in all this “Trudeau is looking more and more like a gibbering idiot”.” His idiocy has more to do with the climate file as he and his environmental extremist pal Stephen Guilbeault “double down” on decarbonizing Canada. Trying to do as much further damage as they can before the door hits their asses on the way out.

“Transcript- America This Week, November 22, 2024: Gambling with Nukes: The US and Britain ‘double down’ over Ukraine, firing missiles into Russia. Strategic or insane?”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-november-59e

This sample line of comments from Taibbi and Kirn: They express exactly the outcome of what the apocalyptic millennial scholars detail in the patterns of apocalyptic movements, such as the dangerous shift to “doubling down” and moving toward “exterminate or be exterminated” madness…

Taibbi notes a New York Times story where “Biden allows Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range US missiles.” He then acknowledges that he initially under-reacted to how serious this was. As he adds, “for the first time in this conflict, Joe Biden is giving permission for Ukraine to use these ATACMS missiles.”

He continues, stating that these hypersonic, long-range weapons can only be launched by American of NATO personnel, not by Ukrainians. And the Russians know this.

Walter Kirn responds, “This is a real boundary that’s been crossed, and people come back at me, mostly automated people, part of this strange social media army that is meant to slowly lull you into World War III, and say, yeah, but it’s just a capacity, it’s just a capability, they don’t necessarily use them.” His point is- that is delusional thinking.

Taibbi then goes on to make the point of the danger in “doubling down” on this insane game of gamesmanship escalation: “The missiles, the first ATACMS landed on Tuesday, then the Storm Shadows hit on Wednesday, and in between there was an amazing moment where Sir Keir Starmer himself talked about how we have to, ‘No, we can’t back off the use of these missiles, we have to double down.’…”

“Sir Keir Starmer: We must double down on our support for Ukraine…. I’ve been really clear for a long time now that we need to double down…”

Starmer is asked by a reporter if this is dangerous: “How do you respond to the risk of the escalation triggering World War III?”.

Starmer replies once again, “My number one issue here at the G20 is to make sure that we absolutely double down on…”

Taibbi comments on Starmer’s response: “It’s amazing. He’s like a robot, right? He starts…”

Kirn then adds, “He is a disgusting, risible robot. The scariest thing about all this is this guy expects to walk the earth after all this is over. Or does he? Because I can tell you, if this goes bad, if this goes sideways, these people are absolutely personally responsible. And I call them the Biden missiles, or the Sullivan missiles, or the Blinken missiles, or the Harris missiles because there’s somebody at the helm and forgetting that and acting like this is some weather event is ridiculous. People are doing this, and this guy, with his double down, that’s a poker term you asshole.”

Then Taibbi again: “That’s what I mean. I thought it was so significant that he used that term twice, by the way.”

Kirn: “I think it was three times.”

“Matt Taibbi: Three times. Was it three times?

“Walter Kirn: He tripled down on double down.”

They continue, with Kirn stating, “Who cares about all the rules anymore? Who cares about the norms? Dude, they just broke the biggest norm in history, which was to send our missiles into a nuclear state to land and explode. That’s the biggest norm in American or world history since those kind of things were invented, frankly….

“It is beyond insane and it will not end well, Matt…. When this missile went off this morning, every power in the world that has modern warning systems had an alarm go off…

“For the first moments after its launched, the United States had to assume that it was under nuclear attack.”

And so on in their discussion…

Later, Taibbi and Kirn comment on how the wealthy people apparently running things from behind the scenes actually embrace the insanity of apocalyptic mythology (irrational madness) and they game-plan how they can survive in the post-apocalyptic world. This is beyond irrational lunacy…

Kirn talks about a college friend of his who directed his play on nuclear gamesmanship and then that friend was asked to meet with “extremely rich hedge fund types”. The friend thought the wealthy wanted a speech about futurism but instead they asked him specifically, “In a post-civilized world, how will we control our slaves? How will we control our servants? Will we have to use shock collars? What other techniques could we use?”

Kirn continues, “Now, there are people among you, and they are unfortunately your leadership, who think this way. And America has to wake up to the fact that all these jokes about Oprah and Zuckerberg and so on, building their arks in Hawaii, those aren’t jokes. All the people who are getting New Zealand citizenship or somehow rights to build or live there, those aren’t jokes. All these jokes about people with private jets who can take off at a moment’s notice to anywhere in the world, those aren’t jokes. These are the people who are running things and they are considering the world from the point of view of their own incentives and their own capabilities, and they differ vastly from ours.”

(End of quoted comments. See full discussion at ‘subscribed’ link above. Again, Taibbi and Kirn are so worth subscribing to for their commentary on world events.)

“Manufacturing consensus on climate change: How a political movement invented its own scientific basis”, Richard Lindzen Nov. 21, 2024

https://americanmind.org/salvo/manufacturing-consensus-on-climate-change/

Atmospheric physicist Lindzen presents his detailed explanation of how anti-capitalist Marxist revolutionaries decided to move into the Western environmental movement in the 1970s. This did not mean abandoning the traditional collectivist takeover of “the means of production”, as in the business/commerce sector of societies. It was the recognition that it would be more effective to destroy industrial capitalist civilization by going after the energy sources (fossil fuels) that fuel the industrial civilization. That would be more successful to destroying capitalist societies. And of course, CO2 naturally became the demonized core villain of their project to destroy Western societies.

Politicians and other Western elites then joined this crusade for the trillions of dollars being funnelled to environmental programs like Net Zero decarbonization.

Lindzen notes how the claim to “science” was part of this program. He details the march of the revolutionaries through educational systems, then the capture of professional societies as part of the program, and on through the rest of Western societies.

Quotes from link:

“I think it would be a mistake to ignore he traditional focus of revolutionary movements on the means of production. The vehicle for this was the capture of the environmental movement. Prior to 1970, the focus of this movement was on things like whales, endangered species, landscape, clean air and water, and population. However, with the first Earth Day in April of 1970, the primary focus turned to the energy sector—which, after all, is fundamental to all production and, relatedly, involves trillions of dollars. As we will see, this last item was fundamental.”

This on the mindless embrace of decarbonization by Western elites, politicians and others:

“Of course, the attraction of power is not the only thing motivating politicians. The ability to award trillions of dollars to reorient our energy sector means that there are recipients of these trillions of dollars…

“Virtue signaling elites promised to achieve net zero emissions within a decade (or two, or three) without the faintest idea of how to achieve this without destroying their society.”

See full presentation at link above.

“Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT, where he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor, beginning in 1983.”

Where are the steel-spined heroes to pushback against the ongoing drift of our societies into Woke Progressive extremism and its “climate apocalypse” madness?, Wendell Krossa

Whoever this is (a brief 4 mins video), he nails some of the factors at play in the “War on the West” (title of Douglas Murray’s book). Britain (the original home of Classic Liberalism) has been central to promoting the decline of Western Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy. Notably, the conservatives in Britain have been at the forefront of this decline by mindlessly shifting along with others over the past decade or so into extremist Woke Progressivism and “climate crisis” insanity. I mean, WTF, eh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoB7W8qF4L4

Net Zero Watch (i.e. the newsletter of Global Warming Policy Foundation) has long covered one element in the mix, the mindless/spineless embrace by conservatives of the climate alarmism crusade and its decarbonization salvation scheme (“save the world”) that has been ruining Britain as it has ruined other societies, notably cases like Germany, Canada, California, Nigeria, and more.

Note the current emerging mess in Nigeria, now due to the decarbonization madness being pushed on developing countries by wealthy Western elites caught up in the insanity of virtue-signaling heroism in fighting an imaginary monster (i.e. CO2):

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/09/climate-colonialisms-role-in-nigerias-blackouts-a-manufactured-energy-crisis/

Add examples from Germany…

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/07/scholzs-green-fantasy-government-collapses-proof-that-climate-policy-mania-is-ruining-germany/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/10/green-bluesas-fog-persists-for-days-in-germany-green-energy-output-falls-to-near-zero/

The hope element in this is the emerging populist pushback. “Populist” in that it involves all sectors of Western societies, from left to right, with moderates, independents, and others in between. The pushback of commoners against out-of-touch elites captured by extreme leftist Woke Progressivism (the latest “new front” of neo-collectivism).

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Hurting heads with cognitive dissonance from the “Mother of all oxymorons” (i.e. combining entirely contradictory things)

Topics below

“Anarcho-unconditional” or more realistic “min-unconditional” as my takeaway from Javier Milei’s “Anarcho-capitalism” and “min-archism” compromise in Argentina.

Also newly added at the bottom of this opening section:

A little Christmas gift to readers- My paraphrased translation of the core theme of the Historical Jesus message to affirm my “Historical Jesus-mas” alternative to “Christ-mas”. Again, don’t take my waggish impulse too seriously.

And the basic intention of this site to properly solve problems by confronting the “Mother of all oxymoronic combinations” in Paul’s “Jesus Christ” myth. I do this because of the critical issue of the rejection of history’s greatest potential liberation movement, a liberation that was short-circuited and buried by Paul- i.e. the liberation of human minds and spirits from threat theology, at the deepest levels of subconscious archetypes.

And then the G20’s latest program to push the “censorship industrial complex” as preparation for the new totalitarianism.

Sitesplainin excuses: The writing style here is running blog comment, not formal essay in any sense.

More below on probing what is behind public presentations of narratives, ideologies, movements, and related policies, programs, etc. The “evil triad” thing. And yes, further below I’m picking on Paul’s myth again. Its the anti-bullying thing in me, taking on history’s biggest ever threatening bully.

See also below: “Climate scientists officially declare ‘climate emergency’ at an end: Press release by the Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL).”

This from a post to our discussion group: Wendell Krossa

Jordan Peterson on Greg Gutfeld… All of you listen to this brilliant summary by Peterson on the adventure of life. He says so much in this few minutes of video… from minute 28 of the video on.

For example, he says that psychology long ago discovered there was no difference from “thinking about yourself and suffering from negative emotions”… “self-consciousness and suffering anxious emotions are the same thing”, and the answer is to not deny all thinking about yourself, as that is hard to do, but to pay attention to the moment as it unfolds, meaning the adventure of your life.

And in other places he has added that freedom from self-absorption is found in focusing on others and helping them with their problems, that is liberating and healing.

This is all good, but at the 28-minute mark Peterson starts on the quest of life for adventure, truth, responsibility… listen to that.

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

Elsewhere Peterson has noted that this has been the curse of this generation to focus intensely on themselves and how they feel as the dominant concern… This has ruined this younger generation with excessive self-absorption. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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“Historical Jesus-mas”? I dunno.

See new stuff below on Kevin O’Leary’s good rant about getting Trudeau out so we can begin to clean up the mess that he has made of Canada. Also Greg Gutfeld on “Get out of your own head” and focus on helping others (i.e. recommends from psychology research on getting over anxiety). And more…

More theological speculation, Wendell Krossa (In service to the meta-narrative issue)

It’s coming on Christmas and I am doing some theological speculation, aware that some share the view of the pissed atheist who said, “Let’s get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit”.

If only, eh. Reaction to religious speculation on the metaphysical is a well-intentioned materialist sentiment that is reacting to religious extremism, as it should. And notable materialists have done us all a service in exposing the lunacy of so much inherited religious belief and practice.

But speculation on “metaphysical” realities has always been critical to the human meaning impulse, and the inseparably related impulse for purpose. You know- the search for TOE, for what actually created it all and why, for what reason/purpose? The meaning/purpose impulse in our consciousness gets to nitty gritty daily life stuff.

The best that materialist minds have come up with to explain the creating and sustaining Source are speculations like “multiverse mythology”. That suits the materialist belief in meaningless randomness as a fundamental explanation for what is and why it exists. Philosophical nihilism in my view. The multiverse myth is widely accepted as true by the public, but entirely unproven, as physicist James Baggot argues. See his “Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth”.

Amazon advertising blurb for Baggot’s book:

“Modern physics is heady stuff. It seems that barely a week goes by without some new astounding science story; some revelation about hidden dimensions, multiple universes, the holographic principle or incredible cosmic coincidences. But is it true? What evidence do we have for super-symmetric squarks’, or superstrings vibrating in an 11-dimensional space-time? How do we know that we live in a multiverse? How can we tell that the universe is a hologram projected from information encoded on its boundary? Doesn’t this sound like a fairy story?

“In Farewell to Reality Jim Baggott asks whether all that we currently know about the universe is based upon science or fantasy. In addition, he wonders whether these high priests of fairy tale physics – such as John Barrow, Paul Davies, David Deutsch, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Gordon Kane and Leonard Susskind – are the emperor’s latest tailors.”

Multiverse is the myth that infinite trillions of universes have been and are being birthed till one randomly falls together in the impossibly fine-tuned balance of “Just Six Numbers” (Martin Rees). Just like the now disproven myth of DNA falling together randomly in the mud puddle long ago. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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The greatest-ever potential liberation movement aborted. Who did it? You guessed it- Pablo!

A wee ‘quibble’ before a strong affirmation: Wendell Krossa

I am not with Shellenberger and Jordan Peterson in their arguments (in other forums) for the general restoration of religion/Christianity in society. They appear unfamiliar with Historical Jesus research and the critical distinctions between Jesus’ message and Paul’s Christ myth. But where Shellenberger is good, he is real good. Notably in probing the psychopathology of elite domination in our societies, as in, for example, the Censorship Industrial Complex. He was a main figure in exposing the Twitter Files corruption of liberal democracy.

This from actress Justin Bateman, posted below in Shellenberger’s article: “I am neither one extreme or the other,” wrote Bateman, “but am one of the millions of people who believe in common sense, and that everyone should be free to live their lives however they want, unless that freedom interferes with someone else’s freedom to live their own life.”

“We Are Only Now Starting To Recover From The Madness: Its political power has broken, but Wokeism is still ruining the culture”, Michael Shellenberger, Nov. 10, 2024

https://www.public.news/p/we-are-only-now-starting-to-recover

Shellenberger is responding to posts on X by actress Justin Bateman…

He quotes from Bateman’s posts: “Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years,” she wrote. “I have found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period. A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of “permitted positions” in order to assess acceptability.”

Shellenberger notes that Bateman is not conservative and, in fact, writes from a more liberal perspective. Bateman says that over the past decade Wokeism discarded common sense, demonized intellectual discussion and only permitted certain speech and behavior.

Shellenberger continues with Bateman’s comments on Wokeism where “Complete intolerance became almost a religion… and one’s professional and social life was threatened almost constantly. Those that spoke otherwise were ruined as a warning to others.”

He notes that many other liberals agreed with Bateman’s assessment of how Woke especially took over Hollywood. “We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma.”

He adds: “The dominant emotion was fear: fear of being attacked by the Woke. While the latter was far more violent, the fundamental characteristics were the same — including the desire to remake society and the tendency of particularly weak individuals to join in with the mobs created by the bullies.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Probing the root contributing factors behind the elite impulse to domination

This site author identifies as “independent commoner”. Fiercely so. I also identify as a “mutable self” in open process (open to new information, change, growth, and development), not as an “immutable self”, focusing identity on fixed objects as in dogmatic loyalty to some ideology, religious belief system, nationality/ethnicity/race, occupation, or other objects. Source on this: Louis Zurcher’s “The Mutable Self: A Self-Concept For Social Change”.

Just so you know where I am coming from: Its about the open process of “float like a butterfly, alight to enjoy some nectar, then moving on”. On a journey through life with no “fixed place to lay my head”. A visitor to this realm trying to learn and experience what it means to be human. And mostly trying to understand what love actually is and how to love. Love as the main identity-marker of being human.

That explains my repeat posting of the central Historical Jesus theme: “Love your enemy because God does.”

This is a reach for the highest and best of being human. It is the single most profoundly humane insight in history. It gets the “behavior based on belief” relationship right as never before. It tells us how to tower in stature as maturely human like a Mandela. It tells us how to conquer the real monster/enemy in life by winning the inner battle to vanquish the animal inheritance of impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others.

Success in the inner battle is the greatest contribution that we can offer to making life better.

See some more “sitesplainin” at the bottom of this opening section.

See also below… The psychopathology of today’s hyper-sensitivity, as in the over-sensitivity to personal “hurt feelings… sense of being offended…” that then crusades for harshly punitive treatment of purported offenders, Wendell Krossa

Surveying the wreckage. Again, what lies beneath it all? Wendell Krossa

I am a tracer/prober of root factors that contribute to problems and argue that to properly solve problems for the long-term future we have to deal with the more fundamental contributing factors to problems.

You may notice a repeated pattern on this site of pushing past the “surface” engagement of issues to understand the deepest roots of the thing under consideration, of some problem. I am just taking the wise advice of that military guy, responding to the ISIS eruption of violence in 2014, who advised us that we can crush such pathology with force but it will only keep erupting until we deal with the ideas/ideology that drive such movements.

I apply that advice to the current situation in Western civilization where a new totalitarianism has emerged and has infected all sectors/institutions of our societies. And again, this site appeals to the US situation as illustrative of what is going on across Western liberal democracies. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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The deluding power of our narratives and the test of outcomes (Thomas Sowell’s “Test of facts”)

Some new stuff coming soon that takes off from Michael Shellenberger’s good probing of the psychology behind totalitarian Woke Progressivism that has tried to infect and take over Western liberal democracies, to the ruin of these democracies.

Personal Obsessions, Wendell Krossa (my identity “pronouns”- proudly “independent commoner…. Classic Liberal”)

The obsession of this site is with individual freedom and rights for everyone, equally, under common law systems and Classic Liberal institutions. This obsession is based on Classic Liberalism principles as the best that we have come up with to protect us all from today’s elites pushing the re-instatement of the primitive “elite/commoner” divide on our societies, the restoration of totalitarian control over us commoners.

Classic Liberal principles are also how we win the real battle of life against the real enemy in life and become the heroes of our personal quests- the inner battle against our inherited evil triad of impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others.

But even more than this Classic Liberal obsession I would suggest a deeper obsession with trying to understand our primary identity marker as humans- i.e. love.

This has led to a lifetime of questions: What is love, really? What does it mean to love? How do we achieve the highest reach of love and thereby “tower in stature as maturely human”, as the heroes of our personal quests?

My ongoing interest in Historical Jesus is because he pointed to the answer to such questions in this summary of his message: “Love your enemy because God does”.

My belief is that the no conditions love taught by Historical Jesus was a significant contributing factor to the eventual development of the Classic Liberalism that protects the freedoms and rights of all citizens, equally. Not the dominating “Lord Jesus” of Paul’s Christ myth (“Christ-ianity”), but the “whoever wants to be great must serve others” of Historical Jesus (“Jesus-ianity”).

And I do agree with my friend Bob Brinsmead that if love is not unconditional/universal then it is not authentic love.

Added note to the Christian influence on developing Classic Liberalism in England: The modern-era antislavery movement was initiated by British Christians, notably the 1783 proposal by Quakers to end slavery. That was no doubt influenced by the teaching of Jesus as opposed to Paul’s contrary command to slaves- “slaves submit to your masters” (Ephesians 6:5-9). Gandhi was similarly inspired by the teaching of Jesus, but not by Christianity overall. Another element in the larger point that there is a profound difference between the message of Historical Jesus and the Christ myth of Paul.

And an added note on ‘bothside-ism’ in abusing and deforming the Hero’s Quest: Both sides engage catastrophism that exaggerates the threat of the differing others (demonized, dehumanized) and both sides irresponsibly use panic-mongering “end of days” language to incite populations (i.e. the apocalypse is nigh, and here is my date for the end of the world). Read the rest of the opening comment here

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“Snowflake, buttercup” apoplexy

Coming soon- My take on the real “clear and present danger” to our liberal democracies.

Apoplexy- My definition: Internal rupture and hemorrhaging with irrational fury.

Countering Snowflake or Buttercup syndrome, Wendell Krossa (we used to call this “spoilt brat syndrome”, the refusal to “grow the fook up”)

The First Amendment in the US Constitution was designed to protect democracy and freedom of speech from hypersensitive “snowflakes” or “buttercups” unleashing their totalitarian impulse to deny freedom to differing others.

Snowflakes? “I am offended by your opinions and speech that differs from mine. I feel threatened by your disagreement. My opinions and speech alone should dominate public discourse and policy. You, who disagree, must be censored, silenced, banned.” As Hilary Clinton explained, when she recently argued for censorship of others who disagree with her and her party, if we can’t control public discourse with only our viewpoint and speech as permissible, then “We lose total control”. Talk about “Freudian-like slip”, eh.

Your belief in and advocacy for freedom, for free speech, is only authentic if you are willing to protect even offensive, repugnant speech (speech that upsets and pisses you off) knowing that if we start to censor other’s speech then that censorship will come back to bite us in the ass also.

And who gets to decide what speech should be banned? To decide what is “hate speech”? “Hate speech” categories have already been extended by “concept creep” to now include the differing opinions and speech of political opponents. That is totalitarianism and its is being promoted as salvationism (“save democracy”) across our liberal democracies.

The lack of awareness among Woke Progressives as to the totalitarian nature what they are doing is still stunning to many of us on the Classic Liberal side. These are colleagues/fellow citizens who just a few years ago identified as “liberals, democrats”, people who in the past fought for full inclusion of all, protected diversity of opinion and speech, equal rights for all. What happened?

Watch this brief clip from Joe Rogan interviewing former ACLU director Ira Glasser on the issues involved: “Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser on Why You Can’t Ban Hate Speech”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU

Added note:

“Snowflake and Buttercup are names given to progressives that are massively and exaggeratingly offended or put out by things they find objectionable. Non-political correctness throws them into apoplexy. They are devoid of a sense of humor. They look for reasons to be offended and are not happy if they do not feel victimized, although their victimhood is in their mind”, Mark Hyatt Tynan. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-political-things-have-snowflake-and-buttercup

The above comment affirms the good probing by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Jordan Peterson, Christine Brophy, and many others who are trying to understand the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, the left-wing deforming of the ideal of “compassion” into virtue-signaling narcissism that promotes policies and outcomes that destroy lives.

Notably, “Climate crisis” policies” that are presented as salvation schemes (to “save the world”) but are destroying societies with Net Zero decarbonization. So also, these self-identified “liberals” proclaim their compassion in fighting for victims but are advocating for policies like censorship that destroy liberal democracy and harm everyone. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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“Feelings, nothing but feelings”, Morris Albert

“Feelings, nothing more than feelings” was the Baby Boomer mantra. This will make sense later, below. Apparently, according to commentators like Christian Parenti, us Baby Boomers started this “feelings first” pathology in the modern era.

These articles from Ruy Teixeira and Charles Rotter cover a lot that is wrong today- the prominence of hyper-sensitivity to hurt or offended feelings as a new dominating standard of what is permissible or not in public discourse, the framing and deforming of the Hero’s Quest with such nonsense, and more…

First, this by Teixeira. Is the great re-orientation of our societies back to common sense coming now? Hope springs eternal, eh.

My post to a discussion group: “Free at last, free at last, thank God we are free at last”, Martin Luther King. My paraphrased take on King’s statement: Free of the curse of Woke Progressivism. Hallelujah, Wendell Krossa

Someone please pass this memo on to Justin Trudeau and David Eby (premier of BC who went total Woke Progressive and pushed that all throughout his party’s governance in BC).

Kamala Harris appears to have seen the light and is now becoming truly woke, which is why she is now embracing many of Trump’s policies. C’mon Trudeau and Eby. Time to wake up too…

“How Progressives Blew It: Defund the police. An open border. Identity politics. End the use of fossil fuels. Is it any wonder America turned against the progressive movement?”, Ruy Teixeira, Oct. 27, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/progressives-blew-it-crime-open-border-identity-politics-kamala-trump?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Teixeira opens with: “It wasn’t so long ago progressives were riding high. They had a moment; they really did. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, were hegemonic in the nation’s discourse. Building in the teens and cresting in the early ’20s with the Black Lives Matter protests and the heady early days of the Biden administration, very few of their ideas seemed off the table. Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish ICE and decriminalize the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a “Green New Deal”? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Only a bigot would resist!”

Teixeira follows, noting that these were horrible ideas, and aside from the progressive left, most others were not interested in embracing them. He states that “the progressive moment is well and truly over.” Others add that even Kamala Harris has abandoned these former positions that she held when campaigning for president in 2020.

Teixeira then lists how the progressive movement fell apart, quoting survey/polling results.

“1. Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea, and voters hate it.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

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