Site project: Go to the roots of the problem of declinism (i.e. life declining toward something worse- “the world becoming worse”) and replace those old mythical narrative themes with a new evidence-based narrative that shows the true state of the world. Offer people a better narrative that more accurately presents the real state of life.
The true story of life shows that humanity has not been a corrupt destroyer but has been a compassionate creator and that human creativity has resulted in life improving immensely over the long-term. Life is not in decline toward disaster and ending as per the apocalypse fallacy that dominates cultic crusades like climate alarmism. Due to the essential nature of people as compassionate creators, life rises and improves toward an ever-better future.
Tell your children not to worry but to go out and enjoy the unlimited bounty that their world offers. And to do their part in furthering the great improving trajectory of life, making the world better for all. Make sure you “teach your children well” by exposing them to evidence that tells them the true state of life. Again, good researchers have given us volumes of data on the main indicators of the state of the world and it shows us there is no trajectory of decline toward disastrous collapse and ending, but to the contrary, ongoing improvement toward a better future.
See, for example, Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” and the many following studies that affirmed his basic research on the big picture and long-term trends of life- i.e. 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”, and many more.
Added notes:
Offer young people a “hero’s adventure or quest” that motivates them to fully embrace the larger human quest to create a civilization that provides a better life to all its members. Inspire your children to fully join the great venture of human civilization that, while improving the human condition, also respects and cares properly for the natural world.
Offer them a vision that does not demonize and discredit humanity as destroyers (a “cancer/virus” on Earth) but honors and respects people as essentially creators that are always learning and doing well at using the resources of the natural world while at the same time protecting the natural world. The evidence soundly affirms that we are doing well in caring for our natural world, as we continue to improve life for all.
The evidence on the human venture in this world does not support the dark apocalyptic vision of the environmental or climate alarmists- that too many people consuming too much are destroying the world and the apocalypse is imminent. The evidence overwhelming affirms an entirely different story- that for all our imperfections and mistakes, we humanity, we have done well in improving life over past centuries and caring for this planet. Evidence affirms hope that the future will be even much better. Again- note the sources listed just above.
Brief and brilliant on the fallacy of doomsaying– John Stossel on the endless honoring of Paul Ehrlich who has endlessly been wrong about the “end of the world”.
Good points here- i.e. on how often biologists view humans as just like other animal populations, as just consumers of resources till the population reaches a crash level and then collapses. Entomologist Ehrlich, like other biologists, doesn’t get that humans are profoundly different from insect and animal populations. Humans have creative minds that can solve problems and “have the capacity to innovate” (Marion Tupy of Humanprogress.org). Humanity now has a history of evidence that we are more creators than destroyers (Tupy and Julian Simon).
Also, note Tupy’s comment that more people are good for humanity and for the environment. Yes, evidence affirms this counter-intuitive view, counter-intuitive because the myth of “decline toward apocalypse” has been beaten into humanity for millennia and still dominates human narratives today, both religious and “secular/ideological”. An essential element of this fallacious mythology is the “over-population” or “population bomb” theory- that too many people consuming too much of the world’s “limited resources” is the cause of the looming apocalypse.
Further counter-evidence to over-population fallacies- i.e. that a growing population is not destroying nature but, instead, is improving nature immensely. Look at the evidence such as growing forest cover in developed countries because, due to creative human innovation, more food is grown on less and less land.
Unfortunately, doomsaying is considered deep and caring while rational optimism is considered uncaring and shallow (see also psychologist Martin Seligman’s books ‘Learned Optimism’ and ‘The Optimistic Child’).
Brilliant summary comment by Tupy- “If you let people be free, they will create more value for everyone”.
Stop ‘mollycoddling’ the climate alarm narrative. Yes, recognize that the core themes of the climate alarm narrative are not shaped by science but, to the contrary, the climate alarm themes influence, via confirmation bias, what bits of “science” will be used to affirm the alarmist exaggeration of looming “climate crisis” (“bits of ‘science’”- yes, mainly the daily media hysteria over every perturbation in weather as proof of looming “climate emergency”, whether a rainy period, a dry spell, a hot episode, a cold spell, etc.).
The core themes of climate alarmism have more to do with mythical reality (i.e. apocalyptic millennial themes) than factual reality.
Note some of the most basic climate alarm themes: (1) better past- original paradise, (2) corrupt humanity ruining paradise, (3) life now declining toward disaster and ending/apocalypse, (4) the demand for human sacrifice/suffering, (5) the required purging of some great evil threat to life (CO2 demonized as that threat), (6) a heroic engagement of a righteous battle against evil enemies, and (7) salvation found in restoring the lost paradise or installing a new utopia in a post-industrial world.
The climate alarm crusade, fueled by irrational mythology, is ruining societies with Net Zero decarbonization policies. Keep an eye on the disastrous outcomes of decarbonization in Germany and Britain, among other places that are rushing into Net Zero utopia.
The conclusion of this site- The best climate science shows there is no “climate crisis” and, hence, no need to tax carbon, no need to embrace the suicidal policies of decarbonization that are ruining our societies.
This site, among many others, presents the good climate science now available from the research of atmospheric physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others. Also, visit “Wattsupwiththat.com”, “co2coalition.org”, “co2science.org”, “netzerowatch.com”, “thegwpf.org”, among other good sites presenting the best science on climate.
More on climate alarmism
I emphasize here the core themes of the dominant public narrative today- the meta-narrative of “Declinism” that historian Arthur Herman said is the single most dominant and influential narrative theme in the world today. And I repeatedly present the mythical nature and roots of the full complex of Declinism themes (the “apocalyptic millennial” or “lost paradise/redemption” complex).
I further recognize that most people live primarily by story and not by scientific fact. Daily media screaming endless alarmism should help anyone see that primary orientation of many people to mythical themes. Add Joseph Campbell’s point that the same primitive mythical themes have been embraced all across history and across all the cultures of the world, whether in religious traditions or in “secular/ideological” systems of belief.
We need to fully liberate human consciousness from ongoing enslavement to the old narratives of life in decline toward disaster. And I would offer- Be aware of the horrific outcomes of those Declinism narrative themes in creating unnecessary fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, fatalism, resignation/depression, nihilism, and even violence among populations.
Good science does not show any evidence to affirm claims of a “climate crisis”. Good climate science does not affirm any of the basic assumptions of the climate alarm crusade. There is no rational scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. Note especially the evidence below that is presented by atmospheric physicists like Richard Lindzen and William Happer, among others, on the physics of CO2, the single most fundamental element to the climate change issue.
This quote by historian Richard Landes from his book “The End of Time: Apocalypticism, Messianism, and Utopianism through the Ages”…
“Movements that pursue the millennium, the perfect society on earth, that seek to bring heaven to earth, mobilize great and infectious enthusiasms; they inspire visionary social experimentation. And yet, they consistently end in disgrace if not, disaster. Nothing, ironically, is at once more powerful and more ridiculous, than the ‘true believers’ seized with the conviction that they are cosmic agents charged with the task of world transformation.
“Viewed from the present before failure, looking forward into a beckoning future of promise, however, millennial movements look creative, dynamic, energetic: they feed on hope, the more outrageous, the better. They can galvanize cosmic warriors to fight with every fiber of their being for the one True Cause. They can create intimate, immensely intense, communities that ‘live’ in a magical world of intense intimacy. Indeed, millennial promises enthrall their believers so, that despite how many times ‘God has tarried’, true believers find ways of resurrecting the hope, recalculating, reformulating, relaunching it.
“Indeed, despite how painful the disappointment in so many cases- the more intense the faith, the more painful the failure- there will always be another crop of seekers, looking for the apocalyptic memeplex, new prophets, new identity entrepreneurs, to lead new True Believers. ‘Sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the stomach’ (Rev. 10:9).”
My added points:
Does this remind you of endlessly failing apocalyptic prophet Paul Ehrlich, recently prophesying- once again- the “end-of-days”? Or the many climate apocalyptics endlessly resetting the end-of-days dates further and further out into the future as the end never arrives, but their hope never dies for some great collapse and ending- i.e. an apocalypse that is a great purging of the “evil threat to life” (in the climate alarm narrative the evil threat is civilization based on fossil fuels), a purging that then leads to the restoration of some lost paradise or the installation of a new millennial utopia (i.e. Net Zero or renewables-based civilization).
An ‘apocalypse’ is basic to the alarmist narrative as it incites the necessary panic in populations, rendering them susceptible to the apocalyptic’s salvation scheme- i.e. salvation schemes with (1) the demand to tribally engage a great battle against some evil enemy (i.e. the common consumers enjoying the good life and using too much energy), (2) the demand to purge some great threat to life (i.e. modern societies based on fossil fuels), and (3) the demand to suffer some sacrifice that is required to appease a threating Force or deity (suffering as redemptive- giving up the good life for a return to “morally superior” primitivism).
With conditions met: Then the wealthy elitists- clearly not embracing the suffering of a return to primitivism- will grant salvation to the masses.
And Oh, those elites. They self-identify as the enlightened vanguard who know what is best for all others. Watch them hypocritically flying their private jets to a gathering (WEF- Davos) where they then scold the rest of us for using abundant energy to survive and enhance our well-being in a still too cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth.
H. L. Mencken quotes:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” (In Defense of Women)
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos”.
The battle against “creeping totalitarianism” continues throughout Western liberal democracies.
As always, with regard to the ideas and narratives that we hold- note carefully these “cause-outcome relationships”. Wendell Krossa
The apocalyptic-scale alarmism of the climate crusade incites the survival impulse in frightened populations. That renders people susceptible to irrational thinking due to their instinctual and natural desperation to live. Alarmed people are susceptible to irrational salvation schemes like decarbonization (Net Zero) to “save the world” that is believed to be under constant threat of collapse and ending.
Past apocalyptic-millennial salvation schemes have destroyed societies and millions of lives. Examples of the irrational response to alarmist scenarios- e.g. the Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856, and on a much greater scale- Marxism, Nazism…
Yes, Marxism and Nazism were “apocalyptic-millennial” mass-death movements, “profoundly religious movements”. Note again the research of historians Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, among others cited in articles and sections below.
People caught up in “madness of crowds” episodes will embrace policies that, to many others still possessed of common sense, are so evidently suicidal. But the alarmed people have been led to believe that such policies are absolutely necessary to save themselves and to save the world (fear-inspired policies that “destroy the world to save the world”). We are living through such an episode now with climate alarmism and its decarbonization salvation scheme.
Point in this comment? Be careful about what you state in public that might alarm people and what might be the outcomes of such panic-mongering. Example: Rachel Carson was no doubt a well-intentioned person but her irresponsible panic-mongering over DDT (i.e. the unscientific anecdotal reasoning in “Silent Spring”) influenced subsequent bans on that life-saving chemical and the result was the needless deaths of many millions of people over following decades, including many children. See “The Excellent Powder: DDT’s Political and Scientific History” by Donald Roberts.
This from Ross Clark of the “Mail on Sunday” Jan. 22, 2023, “The Govt’s fantasy of achieving net zero by 2050 will leave us all poorer, colder, and hungrier”.
“Bravely challenging the Establishment consensus, ROSS CLARK has written a new book (“Net Zero”) arguing that hysteria and doom-mongering surrounding the climate change debate risk doing more harm than the rise in temperatures itself might ever cause.
“Here, in the second extract, he explains the folly of politicians’ rush to net zero . . .
“Jon Snow, anchor on Channel 4 News, was on the train, en route to COP26, the UN climate summit in Glasgow in October 2021, when, lashed by a Halloween storm, a tree fell across the line and blocked it.
“But these days, a storm is no longer simply a storm; it is a portent of global doom. The ever politically correct and self-righteous Snow tweeted: ‘Trees and branches affected by climate change have slowed our rail journey. What an irony! What a message! We MUST change! Dare we hope that we shall?’
“No matter that the data shows that wind speeds in the Northern Hemisphere have been falling in recent decades, as have the number of intense storms in the North Atlantic. Not to mention that the reason branches fall on railway lines more than they used to is that trees have been allowed to grow up beside the track to help with biodiversity.
“Network Rail even promoted the six million trees that line railways in Britain as having a role in ‘much-needed carbon capture’. But details like this contravene the accepted narrative, and so they get lost in the hyperbole and the hysteria about the world heating up.
“There is virtually no ill in the world for which climate change has not been blamed – from ending white Christmases (according to a BBC report, citing the Met Office), to shrinking the human frame (University of Cambridge), to wiping out six billion people (emeritus professor at the University of British Columbia). Even worse, it could mean the end of tomato ketchup, as tomato yields decline in the US, China and Italy (Aarhus University), cause kidney stones (according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) and increase obesity in children (Israeli research cited in a Guardian article).
“Last summer’s heatwave, which set a new high-temperature record in Britain and sparked wildfires in south-western France, became a ‘heat apocalypse’. A Norfolk garden where a fire broke out became a scene ‘like Armageddon’.
“An eight-year-old climate activist proclaimed that ‘the planet is dying’, and that 320 million people face starvation by 2030.
“COP26 was similarly full of emotive language. To UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we are all ‘digging our own graves’ by failing to cut carbon emissions. The Archbishop of Canterbury likened the failure to address climate change to ‘genocide’. Alok Sharma, the president of the event, described flooding in the UK as a ‘sober reminder’ of the desperate need to cut carbon emissions.
“The then prime minister, Boris Johnson, told delegates that the world was ‘a minute to midnight’, in his quest to convince the rest of the world to follow Britain’s unilateral example and commit to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that deadline and that target are ludicrous, and it is a scandal that there was never a proper national debate in this country before they were imposed. Here was a piece of legislation that would impact each and every one of us – changing our lives catastrophically, making us poorer – but its far-reaching consequences were not even discussed, let alone analysed.”
See Clark’s book for more detail.
Speaking more of irresponsible panic-mongering in public
Media, obsessively oriented to “Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis” (David Altheide), present every weather event- whether heatwaves, cold spells, rainy episodes, dry spells, etc.- as further portents of “human-caused” looming climate apocalypse. Confirmation bias media refuse to present the larger context that would give some sense of the true state of things. Media refuse to present the larger paleoclimate context that shows the big picture and long-term trends of climate.
That paleoclimate context shows that our current era has been exceptionally mild in terms of climate shifts, whether cooling or warming. Note the graph in Professor Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth” that shows the climate shifts over the past 50,000 years. From 50-30,000 years ago, at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, before our Holocene interglacial began, there were much more severe shifts in climate between cold and warm periods. Climate change then moderated significantly within our interglacial, with comparably mild shifts between cold and warm periods.
Paleoclimate evidence also shows that the much warmer past world, with much higher levels of CO2, was a “paradise” world for all life.
Stop ‘mollycoddling’ the alarmist crusade against fossil fuels. Wendell Krossa
Many on the skeptical side of the climate issue continue to affirm (“mollycoddle”) the climate alarmism narrative, cautioning that while decarbonization is rushed, we should still do something about ending our “addiction to fossil fuels”. Meaning- embrace the great Net Zero shift to renewables.
My response (aside from “Huh” or “WTF”)- While other energy options should be explored as part of human progress, currently, we do not need to “do something to end our fossil fuel dependence”. While humanity will probably engage a shift to some new energy source in the future, for now, there is no sound scientific reason to abandon fossil fuels.
“No sound, scientific reason”? Yes. Because the physics of CO2 shows that CO2 is not the “control knob” for climate change (i.e. the “main influence on climate”). And climate change has not become and will not become “a crisis/emergency” if it rises a few more degrees C.
The best evidence affirms that climate change is not “mainly human-caused” but is due more to other natural factors that have a more prominent influence on climate. And that means “adaptation” is our more reasonable response to natural climate change, not “mitigation” as in decarbonization.
Added notes: Futurist Arthur C. Clarke predicted that we would, in this century, discover what dark energy is and every home would then have a black box connected to this truly infinite supply of energy. And if dark matter is something to do with anti-gravity (i.e. the universe expanding within this matter) then maybe those 1950s “Popular Mechanics” dreams of every family having a “flying car” that zips to work above traffic may finally come true.
Now some basic homework…
Before agreeing with the climate alarm narrative that we must do something about ending our addiction to fossil fuels, answer with evidence-based certainty some of the central issues related to climate. These questions/issues are central to the climate debate, even though there has been no real public “debate” as only the alarmist narrative is allowed public exposure in mainstream media.
Tell us how to accurately detect the human contribution to CO2 levels, among the many other much larger sources that contribute to Earth’s carbon/CO2 cycles (e.g. land biomass- absorption/emission, ocean absorption and expulsion, submarine volcanic eruptions, etc.). And give evidence for your answer.
Explain how you detect the small human input among the perturbations in the carbon cycle (exchange fluxes) that are larger than the human contribution. Tell us how the human contribution can be accurately detected with certainty among those larger perturbations (And no, the ocean and land mass carbon exchanges are not in “perfect equilibrium”).
Note the comments at the bottom of this linked article on Earth’s carbon cycles and exchange fluxes: The author challenges the IPCC report conclusions that states, “With a very high level of confidence, the increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and those arising from land use change are the dominant cause of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
And explain the disconnect between human emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels during Covid lockdowns when human emissions declined some 7% worldwide but CO2 levels continued to rise as before. A rise that began before industrialization.
Further on the major disconnect of CO2 with climate change, note the Vostok ice core research that shows this series of causal relationships- i.e. climate warmed first, and warming climate then warmed the oceans which then outgassed CO2, which then rose in the atmosphere centuries later. The evidence points to the fact that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere followed climate warming and did not cause the warming of climate.
Add the paleoclimate evidence showing that when paleoclimate CO2 levels were very high (multiple thousands of ppm) temperatures were cold. And vice versa, when temperatures were very high, CO2 levels were very low.
Also tell us how the atmospheric physicists are wrong in claiming that CO2 has reached “saturation” in terms of its warming influence. Again, provide the evidence of where they are wrong. “Saturation” in physics terms describes CO2’s ability to absorb and instantly re-emit infrared radiation that constitutes the CO2 contribution to warming.
And tell us how it is a bad thing that the increasing levels of more basic plant food in the atmosphere, an increase that has greened the planet some 15% since 1980 (15% more green vegetation across the Earth)- How is that a threat to life? How is that a “climate crisis”?
Tell us how a mild 1 degree C of warming in the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial is a “climate emergency”. Especially when 10 times more people still die every year from cold than die from warmth. We have not yet fully recovered from the dangerous cold of the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715. We have not yet regained the more optimal warmth of the Holocene Optimum of some 10,000-6,000 years ago (3 degrees C warmer than today) when the great civilizations emerged and agriculture was developed across the world.
These and other questions must be answered by climate alarmists with evidence-based certainty if their narrative is to have any credibility at all. The climate models that are the basis of the climate alamism narrative have been soundly discredited by good evidence to the contrary.
The pathology of panic-mongering, Wendell Krossa
What kind of pathological mentality would endlessly terrorize populations with end-of-life scenarios? Look at the outcome from panic-mongering, notably, in a generation of children now fearful of growing up in a world that, they believe, will end soon. This is what Congresswoman AOC’s prophesy has contributed to- i.e. that the world would end by 2030. Apocalyptic prophet Al Gore similarly makes repeated prophecies of the end of days. The pathology of apocalyptic prophesying is arguably the most dangerous pandemic humanity is now experiencing and the destructive outcomes of this mental/emotional virus will exceed any physical virus.
What kind of mindset irresponsibly terrorizes populations? I would suggest that the alarmist has embraced a story that terrifies himself also, and he then projects his irrational fears out to others.
There is a cultic element to alarmism eruptions in societies. The alarmist has embraced a “profoundly religious” story, essentially primitive mythology in terms of its central themes/ideas.
The alarmist denies that his story is fallacious mythology and tries to sanctify it- pedestalling his story beyond question, challenge, dissent- by claiming that it is “science”. And the alarmist narrative does embrace a smattering of science, with even some great scientific minds affirming it. Stephen Hawking affirmed environmental apocalypse over the last two years of his life. But not Freeman Dyson or James Lovelock, or the almost 32,000 scientists that signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine “Protest Petition”.
Those tens of thousands of skeptical scientists stated well:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
What kind of science do alarmists embrace to buttress their narrative on climate? It is science that is shaped by confirmation bias- where people carefully select only the anecdotes that support the apocalyptic theme in the alarmist story. Note how media illustrate this anecdotal science on a daily basis with every hiccup in weather- i.e. claiming that any perturbation in some weather pattern (warmer, cooler, dryer, wetter) is the “worst on record”, and therefore more evidence of looming disaster, a worsening world, and the imminent apocalypse.
Alarmists do this while ignoring entirely the larger paleoclimate context of climate that shows our modern climate era to be notably quiescent- i.e. our Holocene interglacial that has experienced only mild shifts in climate compared to the major climate swings and weather events of previous history.
The alarmist climate narrative is “profoundly anti-science” in its dogmatic denial of an ever-growing body of evidence showing that varied natural factors are the main influences on the climate change that we are observing today. See, for example, “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” reports below. Also, reports from atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others.
Further contributing to the alarmist mindset, the alarmist, undoubtedly subconsciously, also vents the Hero’s impulse to fight a righteous battle against evil enemies. Those evil enemies are the unbelievers and deniers that do not join his salvation crusade- i.e. the great battle to “save the world” from the evil of fossil fuels, and from industrial civilization in general. How can the skeptics be so thick-skulled as to not believe the alarmist’s story of looming apocalypse? I mean, look at Hollywood pumping out an ever-increasing flood of apocalyptic movies. Apocalypse must be true because news media and Hollywood tell us so.
Insert note: In the early 90s I took all of Bill Rees’ courses in a Masters program at the University of British Columbia’s “School of Community and Regional Planning”. Bill Rees is the father of the “Ecological Footprint” model, a modern update on Malthusian fallacies that there are too many people consuming too much of Earth’s very limited resources and hence the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Years later, having come to my senses after reading Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, I engaged Rees in an online discussion. I told Rees that his ideas were not science but were more apocalyptic mythology. He replied, “Well, apocalyptic is true, isn’t it”. And he claims to be a scientist. But many other so-called scientists also similarly promote the apocalyptic themes of “paradise lost/redemption” mythologies.
Environmentalists have also taken up last century’s Marxist crusade against industrial capitalist society, revealing that today’s alarmists have also embraced ideological elements to support their religious terror crusade.
If the climate alarmist would take a look at the growing body of evidence amassed by physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others, then he might be able to calm his agitated spirit with evidence that, far from portending apocalypse, shows the immense benefits of more CO2 and warming temperatures. Notably, the paleoclimate evidence that shows, with CO2 at multiple-thousands of ppm and temperatures averaging 3-6 degrees C warmer than today (and even up to 10 degrees C higher than today), with that much higher CO2 and much warmer temperatures, Earth was a paradise for all life (a “golden age for mammals”, Paul MacRae).
See article (also posted below) “Back to the Future: Paradise Lost, or Paradise Regained?”, by Paul MacRae at…
Our current “ice-age era” is abnormal and sub-optimal for life and has existed for less than 10% of the 500 million-year Phanerozoic history of life.
Conclusion: An alarmist who terrorizes populations with apocalyptic scenarios is a true believer in a mythically-based cult, a “profoundly religious” belief system. The alarmist exhibits a religious-like fanaticism regarding his “save the world” crusade. This becomes especially evident when the alarmist tries to silence dissenters as “deniers/unbelievers” with calls to censor, ban, and even criminalize skeptics, just as Pres. Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, tried to do in 2016. Others have tried the same.
When you add the elements of ideological dogmatism and fanaticism to the mix, then alarmism becomes a dangerous crusade. Climate alarmism has incited the survival impulse in populations and that has rendered people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes like decarbonization. We are watching the outcomes of that panic-mongering in the energy crisis mess that has been ruining countries like Germany and Britain (See the regular Net Zero Watch newsletters from Global Warming Policy Forum).
Added notes on the uncertainty regarding basic alarmist claims on climate (repeat from above comments):
We don’t know that the rise in CO2 over the past two centuries is “mainly from human industrialization” and how much is natural. Note that during the Covid lockdowns, with a roughly 7% reduction in human emissions worldwide, CO2 continued to rise at the same rate as before. That disconnect raises legitimate doubt as to the human impact on rising CO2 levels across time.
Earth’s carbon/CO2 cycles, and the natural fluctuations within those cycles (exchange fluxes), are significant and the human contribution to the mix is smaller in comparison.
Further, CO2 levels today are still dangerously low (we are still in a “CO2 starvation era”) compared to the more healthy and optimal levels of paleoclimate history. Plants prefer levels in the 1000-1500 ppm range. See evidence at sites like “co2science.org” or “co2coalition.org”, among others.
Understanding the resurgence today of Marxist collectivism. Also known as extreme leftist “Woke Progressivism”. Wendell Krossa
One explanation for the resurgence of Marxist collectivism today is that those committed to collectivist ideology sincerely believe that their collectivist approach is “morally superior” to any other approach for organizing human society. Collectivists believe that their socialist approach better honors the great human ideal of love because it emphasizes the “greater or common good” of humanity. Remember the “love” of early Christians in Acts chapter 2 who “were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to everyone who had need”. How can real love be anything other than a collectivist-type existence? The Bible tells us so. And WEF adds that “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”. Because the collectivist elites tell us so.
Collectivism, according to true believers, also better does justice to irrefutably basic human ideals such as equality.
And to heighten the sense of moral superiority, collectivists contrast their views on such things with a distorted presentation of the Classic Liberal approach that protects the rights and freedoms of individuals. Collectivists focus on the aberrational excesses in free markets to push a narrative that the market system is about “selfish, greedy individualism”. How can anyone not see this stark difference? The collectivist ideal as real love, contrasted with obviously evil individualism.
Add to the current resurgence of Marxist collectivism, the sense of apocalyptic emergency that is affirmed by the contemporary collectivist embrace of the climate alarmism crusade. The climate alarm crusade further affirms the collectivist narrative and urgency to overturn industrial capitalist society that is based on the fossil fuels that many are claiming is now destroying life. The apocalypse is again imminent, and action must be taken now to end the capitalist industrial society that is purportedly threatening the world.
Again, I find it helpful to understand the issues involved in the collectivism/individualism discussion by framing the debate in terms of basic Classic Liberal principles as contrasted with basic collectivist principles. Go to the root ideas and principles behind the creation of both approaches.
Classic Liberalism liberated humanity from servitude and enslavement to powerholding elites by creating institutions that operated to protect equally the rights and freedoms of all individuals- whether kings or commoners. All would be treated equally under the same institutions and systems of law. Classic Liberalism did this with the creation of a more truly representative parliament and Common Law, where power was dispersed among the individuals and institutions of society.
The basic principles of Classic Liberalism/liberal democracy have to do with the protection of the equal freedoms and rights of all individuals in a society, whether kings or commoners. This protected freedom then unleashes human motivation to improve oneself and one’s family by creatively solving problems or human needs with products and services that bring reward to the creators and benefits to many others.
Is this selfish? I would argue that the motivation to improve one’s life and family is the most basic of human responsibilities and hence the most basic form of love. And it is not up to busybody types to set limits for others on how much improvement they can engage. As long as the creators of wealth are following the same laws that all others are subject to, then the inevitable inequality of outcomes is not a wrong for envious others to rectify through coercive state redistribution policies.
It should mainly be up to the creators of wealth as to how they may choose to redistribute their fairly gained wealth. And of course, add to the mix, the “social contract” policies that most of us agree to where we let states tax some of our income as our contribution to shared infrastructure and to meet the needs of others who, for a wide variety of reasons, cannot survive on their own in our societies.
And in this comment I am not defending the aberrations in free markets where people lie, cheat, and find ways around the common laws that most others responsibly follow. I would argue that such pathologies are aberrations to the basic principles of Classic Liberalism.
This is contrasted with collectivist approaches that have repeatedly and inevitably resulted in the subjection and enslavement of populations to collectivist elites. The eruption of totalitarian control of populations is the natural outcome of centralizing power in collectivist elites, based on the principle that someone has to run the collective for all others. And collectivist elites have repeatedly insisted that they know what is best for all others and will busy-bodily intervene to control others, in all the details of their lives. Add here the collectivist impulse to stifle all dissent to their “morally superior” system.
Add the failure of collectivists to understand human motivation to better oneself and that reward for such endeavor is not “evil greed and selfishness” but rather a creative force that generates outcomes that benefit others. Note in this regard, Steve Jobs’ gaining immense wealth from creating products that all of us freely paid for and appreciate.
Further to understanding the resurgence of Marxist collectivism is to note the Marxist embrace of the larger complex of “paradise lost/redemption” mythology. This mythology prevents awareness and understanding of real-world evidence. The themes of paradise lost/redemption mythology produce an irrationality that has repeatedly infected the consciousness and worldviews of populations resulting in “madness of crowds” outbreaks. It works like this- panic mongering over the purported decline of life and a looming apocalypse incites fear and the survival response and that results in mass irrationality as people become desperate to survive, to live- i.e. to save themselves from the looming end of all things.
Alarmed people are then rendered susceptible to irrational salvation schemes, even if such “save the world” schemes operate to destroy their societies. We saw this in the Xhosa cattle movement of 1856. I witnessed this personally in Manobo tribal movements in Mindanao in the 1970s/80s (“pagano”) where villagers would abandon their crops and slaughter their domestic animals while they waited in villages for the end of the world.
We are observing this today as entire nations commit to decarbonization (purge the great threat of industrial capitalist society) to “save the world”, even as it destroys their societies, as in Germany and Britain.
Note: Kristian Niemietz in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies” provides an interesting take on the endless revival and then repeated failure of socialist approaches to organizing society.
Amazon blurb on this book,
“Socialism is strangely impervious to refutation by real-world experience.
“Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure.
“But, according to socialism’s adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were “real socialism”.
“This book documents the history of this, by now, standard response.
“It shows how the claim of fake socialism is only ever made after the event. As long as a socialist project is in its prime, almost nobody claims that it is not real socialism.
“On the contrary, virtually every socialist project in history has gone through a honeymoon period, during which it was enthusiastically praised by prominent Western intellectuals.
“It was only when their failures became too obvious to deny that they got retroactively reclassified as “not real socialism”.”
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Tell your children the true story of life and affirm their hope in a better future
We all live primarily by story- “Paradise lost/redemption”, Wendell Krossa
A complex of mythical themes still dominates public consciousness today. These themes/ideas constitute the main narrative of religious traditions and have similarly infected “secular” ideologies, notably in the Western world but also across all the cultures of our world.
The comment just below probes the deeply embedded ideas and the core impulses that these ideas incite and validate (some refer to our inherited impulses and related validating ideas as “archetypes”). The ideas noted below have to do with things like the basic impulse to survive and the fear of threats to survival and how people respond to such threats.
Intro notes and quotes:
A core theme in the complex of mythical themes is one of history’s most persistent myths- i.e. the myth of life declining toward disaster and ending. A YouGov survey has shown that a majority of the world population still believes that “the world is getting worse” (“Ten Global Trends”, Bailey and Tupy). The myth of life declining toward something worse, toward disaster and ending has incited endless unnecessary fear, anxiety, despair, nihilism, and violence. Early humans created a complex of myths to explain and respond to this primitive fear of decline.
Historian Arthur Herman states that the myth of “life declining toward disaster”, and even ending, is arguably the “single most dominant and influential theme in culture and politics today” (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”).
Once again, Joseph Campbell- “The same mythical themes have been believed all across history and across all the cultures of the world”.
On to the main topic: “It’s the narrative, stupid”, (paraphrase of Bill Clinton’s comment on the economy)
This site has repeatedly detailed the basic features/elements of the “paradise lost/redemption” narrative that dominates both major religious traditions and the main secular ideologies of our modern era. Our great narratives shape our lives and societies more influentially than anything else. Our stories are even more influential than scientific fact because “we all live primarily by story”. (Insert: “We all live primarily by story”? Note the narratives of those self-identifying as “materialist/atheist” and claiming to hold to rational scientific views, yet also embracing apocalyptic narratives like the climate alarm story with its themes of original wilderness paradise lost, blame “sinful” humanity for life declining toward disaster and ending, hope in a salvation scheme that purges the evil threat, and then the restoration of the lost paradise. How do such themes, couched in worldviews that the adherents claim are “rational scientific”- how do such themes differ from the same old primitive ideas of past mythologies and religions? Just asking.)
The dominating narrative of human history- “paradise lost/redemption”- has consistently embraced the following complex of basic themes/ideas:
(1) There was an original paradise world. This myth of a better past is the foundational fallacy in the paradise lost/redemption complex of myths. This fallacy sets the baseline to reasonably argue that everything has been declining since the perfect beginning. The myth of better or “perfect/paradise” past creates an irrefutable basis to argue that the obviously imperfect present world proves that life has been declining toward something worse. Hence: Declinists 1, Rational Optimists 0. The scoring is right if primitive myth is the basis of reasoning.
(2) Paradise has been ruined by corrupted, sinful humanity, resulting in paradise lost.
(3) To repeat- The trajectory of life is subsequently declining toward disaster and ending/apocalypse.
(4) We need to make a sacrifice/payment for our sins.
(5) Suffering/sacrifice is redemptive.
(6) Essential to the redemption scheme is to give up the good life and to embrace a return to primitivism (framed as the “morally superior simple life”, or forsaking “sinful materialism” for a more “spiritual” low-consumption lifestyle). A further re-enforcement for restoring primitivism as the superior state is the “noble savage” myth that claims that primitive tribal people were more “pure and strong”, more “connected to nature”, before humanity began degenerating in corrupting civilization.
(7) Further, human story is about engaging a hero’s quest, the “righteous battle against evil enemies/monsters”. This feature is often framed to suppress the human impulse to universalism (viewing and treating humanity as one family) and, instead, is used to incite the tribal impulse that views people in terms of dualisms between good and evil- i.e. me and my group as good, versus differing others as “evil enemies”, or views people in terms of tribal divides like that between “true believers and unbelievers”.
(8) Add here, the requirement to conquer a monster or violently purge an evil threat to life. (Psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo note how violence has always been central to the biblical God’s approach to solving problems- i.e. as in demanding a blood sacrifice to atone for wrong and using violence to finally destroy the corrupted world. See the New Testament book of Revelation for a graphic presentation of the final explosion of divine violence in the apocalypse.)
(9) With the above conditions met, among others, then there is the possible restoration of the lost paradise, or the installation of a new utopia. This is the element of hope in the old mythical narrative. But it is a perverted “hope” that is based on the destruction of the world and eternal punishment of most of humanity.
The elements of this “paradise lost/redemption” narrative are found scattered throughout the earliest human mythology, are later formalized in Zoroastrianism (for our Western tradition), and even later are adopted by the great world religions of the West (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The basic complex of mythical themes still dominates the world religions, and those themes/ideas are also now also traceable throughout contemporary “secular ideologies” like environmental alarmism, and related climate alarmism.
The main world religions are largely responsible for maintaining these themes in human narratives and consciousness with all the harmful outcomes that have been inevitable from holding such ideas in humanity’s guiding narratives (Our meta-narratives embody our highest ideals, ethical standards, and potently influence our responses and behaviors.). The long-standing belief that these ideas express some “spiritual” truth has given them “the validation of the sacred” (i.e. truth that is not to be challenged, questioned, or altered).
The meta-narrative themes noted above have been horrifically destructive across human history in that they have incited the worst impulses of people to tribally exclude differing others, to dominate others, and to violently destroy differing others as “enemies” (again, the engagement of “righteous battles against evil”). Note once more that believing in a deity that uses violence to solve problems has then often validated human use of violence to solve problems. We become just like the God or the narrative themes that we believe in.
Examples of destructive outcomes:
The narrative themes listed above shaped last century’s Marxist crusade to overturn the great enemy and purported threat that was “industrial capitalist society”. Marxism embraced the myth of a better past (primitive tribal communal existence) that had been ruined by industrial capitalist civilization and, the Marxists claimed, subsequently capitalist societies were declining toward disastrous ending. Violently purging that purported threat would enable humanity to restore the lost communal paradise.
These ideas also shaped the Nazi crusade to overthrow the threatening enemy that was Jewish Bolsheviks (i.e. Communists). And after purging that threat to the world, the Nazis would install the millennial Reich as the restoration of the lost paradise of the “originally pure and strong German spirit and culture”.
Evidence that the above primitive religious themes shaped Marxism and Nazism? See the research of historians such as 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), among others.
And today, having won bloody wars against those mass-death crusades, we still have not fully tackled and defeated the very ideas/myths that incited those “profoundly religious” and destructive crusades in the first place. So we face the same narrative themes and the same inevitably destructive outcomes once again. Notably in the environmental alarmism movement, and now particularly in climate alarmism with its decarbonization salvation scheme (i.e. purging the great “evil threat” of fossil fuels in order to “save the world”). Varied commentators have correctly stated that climate alarmism is a “profoundly religious movement” and its decarbonization salvation scheme may yet match the mass-death outcomes of last century’s two great apocalyptic-millennial crusades- Marxism and Nazism.
We detect similar themes in the broader resurgence of the collectivism that has found a home in environmental alarmism, a collectivism which, once again, is attacking the Classic Liberal approach that is oriented to protecting free individual rights and freedoms. The Classic Liberal approach has done exceptionally well in protecting humanity from collectivist totalitarianism over the past two centuries.
Summarizing point?
The same old narrative themes of all past history have now re-emerged and been reframed in new versions today, new versions that embrace the same old myths of (1) original paradise (a former wilderness world in the environmental version), (2) a paradise now corrupted by human civilization that is purportedly destroying the natural world. That paradise has been lost and (3) life is now declining toward disastrous ending/apocalypse, according to Declinists. (4) A sacrifice must be made in order to “save the world”. Humanity must cease enjoying the good life and (5, 6) embrace suffering as redemptive in a retreat to the “morally superior simple life”- a return to a more primitive existence. The hero’s quest today is still framed as a (7) dualist opposition to some differing other (a differing ideology) that is the “enemy” in a “righteous battle against evil”. Add the demand to (8) purge the great threat and enemy of life- i.e. now purportedly industrial civilization based on fossil fuels where CO2- the food of all life- is demonized as the great threat to life. With humanity drastically reduced in size, and human civilization radically diminished, then (9) we can recover the lost paradise of a more wilderness world.
This mythical meta-narrative of life declining toward disaster and apocalypse has endlessly incited fear, anxiety, despair, depression, fatalism/resignation, nihilism, and even violence toward “enemy others”- i.e. those “deniers/unbelievers” that do not believe the apocalyptic narrative. Short of violence, unbelievers to the old narrative today are censored, banned, de-platformed, cancelled, criminalized, and more- lives and careers often destroyed for not affirming the apocalyptic millennial narrative.
But there is another story…
An entirely opposite narrative, with strikingly different features, tells us the true state of life, the true state of our world. It tells us that there never was a better past, an original paradise. It tells us that life is not declining but, to the contrary, it has been improving across the millennia and notably over past centuries. It states that humanity was never some originally pure species (“noble savage” mythology) that has subsequently “fallen into sinfulness”. And we are not now a species that is degenerating in civilization but, to the contrary, across history we have become notably less violent and ever-more humane, in many ways. Any comparison with life a century or so ago, shows the stunning improvements that we have made on all the basic metrics/indicators of life. See good sources like Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, etc. Also Humanprogress.org.
Most critical to a new narrative is the theological insight that deity is “non-retaliatory” (e.g. James Robinson). This goes to the core themes of the old narrative and overturns entirely the most fundamental ideas/myths that people have long believed. It means that no sacrifice or suffering is demanded to appease some ultimate threat. We are not a corrupted species that has degenerated from a more pure past. We do not need to embrace a “salvation” scheme. The only salvation that we need to engage is to creatively solve problems in our world and work to make life ever better for everyone. This entails using the abundant and unlimited resources of our planet to create the good life for all.
As with most of the features of the old meta-narrative, there are alternative themes that outline an entirely new understanding of reality and life. And the evidence is good that the alternative themes are solidly evidence-based.
A project for the New Year? Re-evaluate the basic themes of your own narrative and then consider the features of a new narrative, evidence-based features that counter all the basic themes/myths of the old meta-narrative. The new narrative is a story of hope that inspires our best impulses to keep on improving life and the world.
Note: Some features of a new narrative will of necessity involve speculation because they are related to ultimate reality (“spirituality”) and ultimate ideals. Varied narrative features are inseparable from the primal human concerns with ultimate meaning and purpose.
Post from Bob Brinsmead to discussion group (on Social media censorship, climate alarm, etc.):
“Who would have thought in the age of the Internet that the social media giants would become instruments to suppress free speech and dissent from conventional wisdom and government policy?
“What is paramount in the contest of thought and ideas is always the narrative. Whether it is ordinary people, the intellectuals, or the ruling elite, what matters and rules in the imagination is the narrative. To re-word the famous saying of Bill Clinton about the economy- “It is the narrative, Stupid”.
“The masses are converted to a narrative of how the world works. The whole movement of climate change alarmism has been determined by a narrative. Everything becomes determined, judged, and put in the context of the prevailing narrative. The battle for the mind is not just a battle over some facts; it is a battle over a narrative. Just ask, for starters, does a certain narrative mediate despair and fear, or does it mediate hope of the world becoming a better place?
“In a very perceptive book- “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”- Yuval Noah Harari shows that where human tribalism differs from animal tribalism is in the capacity of a narrative to live in the imagination of millions of people, holding them together in a nation or an international movement formed by the bond of a common imagination that is founded on a common narrative.
“One cannot change a belief system – which is a religion – by just appealing to the facts, because even the facts are selected or interpreted by the narrative rather than shaping the narrative. Changing a belief system depends on changing the narrative. Most narratives, by which humankind lives, are nothing more than myths that live in the imagination. When Socrates undermined the prevailing myths of his civilization, the ruling elites decreed that he had to be eliminated.
“The facts cannot prevail over the old damaging myths unless they are put into the context of a better narrative, or as Jesus would say, into the better wineskins. Its no good putting the new facts about climate or anything else, back into the old wineskins – i.e. the old narrative (of life declining toward apocalypse).”
A background qualifier:
As always, when talking about human belief systems and ideals, practical reality (human responsibility) requires some steel-spine enforcing of natural consequences as in the restraint/imprisonment of violent people (criminal offenders) and popular resistance to authoritarian state intrusion into citizen’s lives (notably, as in just wars to stop aggressors such as in WW2). Such is life in an imperfect world.
Further quotes from comment below:
“There is interesting psychological research on the importance of self-control to human well-being (i.e. self-control as in free personal choice, self-determination in one’s life and destiny)…
“Research shows, for example, that people in the higher positions of hierarchies have more opportunity for personal choice and that enhances their well-being, whereas lower hierarchical positions grant people less personal choice and that undermines the well-being those in the lower positions. The argument is not to eliminate hierarchies in human societies but more about how we treat one another within such inevitable bureaucratic relationships; how we relate to one another in “superiors/subordinates” relationships. Think “bosses from hell”, as contrasted with supervisors that treat subordinates more humanely.
“This relates to Frederik Hayek’s concern that the growth of the state, as in excessive government control and intervention (i.e. “big government”- excessive government regulation and taxation)- such excessive state involvement and control over citizens lives will produce populations that lose their independence and their ability to self-determine their personal lives and destinies.
“This also relates to issues of “learned helplessness”- where personal choice and personal control are taken away, or given away…
“The above research adds good input on how to practise the principles of liberal democracy, how Classic Liberalism approaches should operate at all levels of society. This is about liberal democracies implementing their values of equality, inclusion, fairness, and the primacy of individual rights and freedoms.
“Someone said the worst dictators are not those in power centers far away but are the “bosses from hell” that exist in workplaces and offices all over nations. Add those little dictators in private homes- i.e. over-controlling parents from hell.”
The true story of “paradise lost”.
Read the evidence Paul MacRae presents in the link below and then tell us again that there is a “climate emergency” with the small rise in CO2 over the past few centuries. “Small” compared to the multi-thousands of ppm over paleoclimate history. And tell us again that there is an “existential crisis” with the mild 1 degree C warming over the past century. “Mild” as compared, again, to the major paleoclimate shifts in temperatures.
“Nonsense” is the only sensible response to the alarmism fairy tales, regarding our modern era climate change, that are presented in terms of endless ‘apocalyptic-scale’ exaggeration.
A sampling of the latest unhinged apocalyptic-scale hysteria from leading climate crusade prophet Al Gore (his recent rant at the WEF gathering in Davos, Jan. 2023):
“We’re still putting 162 million tons (of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere) every single day and the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth.
“That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees!”
Sheesh, eh.
MacRae’s information overturns the climate alarm narrative entirely.
The article by MacRae affirms my repeated point here that the paleoclimate world- with much higher levels of CO2 (multiple thousands of ppm) and much warmer temperatures (up to 10 degrees C higher than today’s 14.5 C average)- was a world in which all life emerged, developed, and flourished. As MacRae affirms, it was a “paradise” world. There was no “climate crisis” with the much higher CO2 and much warmer temperatures that dominated most of the Phaneroic era (past roughly 500 million years).
The lush, tropical past of life was a paradise for all life- notably the “Eocene” period of the paleoclimate era (some 55-33 million years ago). We lost that paradise with the subsequent descent of the world into the ice-age era that we have been in for the past millions of years. See also “The Chilling Stars” for Henrik Svensmark’s theory on why we are in this current ice-age era.
The evidence that a world with much higher CO2 and much higher temperatures is a paradise world, overturns the climate alarm narrative, entirely. Common sense awareness should have clued climate alarmists into this true story of life- i.e. the fact that their vacations during winter to the warmer parts of the planet reveals their own survival preference for that lost paradise of a much warmer world.
MacRae’s article, an oldie but goodie from 2012, states well my persistent point that there is nothing to fear from, once again, a much warmer world with much higher levels of CO2. This will help many skeptics to stop ‘mollycoddling’ the basic assumptions of the climate alarm narrative- i.e. their affirmation that while decarbonization is rushed, there is still a “climate crisis” and we must doing something about it, mainly cease using fossil fuels.
Again- “Nonsense”. There is no good evidence to support the alarmist assumptions of “climate emergency” and looming apocalyptic end to life. And that means there is no rational reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
Full article “Back to the Future: Paradise Lost, or Paradise Regained?”, by Paul MacRae at…
“A NASA climate study announced that the warm middle Miocene era, about 16 million years ago, had carbon dioxide levels of 400 to 600 parts per million. The coasts of Antarctica were ice-free in summer, with summer temperatures 11° Celsius warmer than today. The study concluded that today’s CO2 level of 393 ppm was the highest, therefore, in millions of years, and could go to Miocene levels by the end of the century. It was implied, although not directly stated, that readers should react with horror.
“A UCLA team, writing in Science, had already pushed the Miocene button in 2009, claiming: “The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today [15 million years ago, again the mid-Miocene]—and were sustained at those levels—global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit [2.7-5.5°C] higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland.” Back to the Miocene! Scary!
“James Hansen, the alarmist head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), regularly refers to past eras as a warning of the climate catastrophes that could occur today. For example, in 2011 Hansen warned: “[An increase of] two degrees Celsius is guaranteed disaster…. It is equivalent to the early Pliocene epoch [between 5.5 and 2.5 million years ago] when the sea level was 25m (75 feet) higher.” Back to the early Pliocene! Horror!
“And, in testimony to the U.S. government: “The Earth was much warmer than today in the early Cenozoic [which began 65 million years ago]. In fact, it was so warm that there were no ice sheets on the planet and sea level was about 75 meters (250 feet) higher.” Heavens! The planet could revert to the age of dinosaurs! (Hansen didn’t mention that sea levels today are 120 metres—almost 400 feet—higher than they were a mere 15,000 years ago, without creating a catastrophe.)
“If we don’t curb our carbon-emitting ways, the alarmists warn, we face “increasingly radical temperature changes, a worldwide upsurge in violent weather events, widespread drought, flooding, wildfires, famine, species extinction, rising sea levels, mass migration, and epidemic disease that will leave no country untouched.” The only catastrophe not mentioned here is “acidification” (i.e., a slight decrease in alkalinity) of the oceans.
“If a warmer, more CO2-rich world would be hell in the future, it logically must have been hell in the past, too, when global temperatures were much warmer and carbon dioxide levels much higher. How could anything live, for example, in those “acidified” oceans of the Miocene? At least, this is what alarmist climate scientists like Hansen want the public to believe.
“An Eocene ‘paradise’
“Curiously, while alarmists warn about the horrors of returning to the climate of millions of years ago, paleoclimatologists tell a different story. They more often see our earlier planet as a “paradise,” even “paradise lost.”
“In fact, “paradise lost” is the subtitle of a 1994 book on our planet 33 million years ago by veteran paleo-climatologist Donald A. Prothero—The Eocene-Oligocene Transition: Paradise Lost. The Eocene (55-33 million years ago) began what is sometimes called the Golden Age of Mammals. This geological age was at least 10°C warmer than today, free of ice caps, and with CO2 levels, Prothero suggests, of up to 3,000 parts per million, which is almost eight times today’s level of about 400 ppm. Yet Prothero calls the Eocene a “lush, tropical world.”
“At the end of the still very warm Oligocene (33-23 mya), Prothero puts CO2 levels at 1,600 ppm, or four times today’s levels…
“For Prothero, the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene was “paradise lost” because it was then, about 33 million years ago, that the planet began its slide from a “lush, tropical world” into its current ice age conditions (see Figure 1), with glaciations every 85,000 years interspersed with brief, 15,000-year warm interglacials.
“In fact, the planet is currently its coldest in almost 300 million years. Yet, for Hansen and others in the alarmist camp, our ice-age world is in danger of getting too hot—maybe even as hot as the Pliocene, or the Miocene, or the Oligocene, or even, heaven forbid, the Eocene.
“Many other writers on paleoclimate also use the term “paradise” to describe climate in the distant past. For example, in a history of evolution for younger readers, science writer Sara Stein paints the Eocene of 50 million years ago as follows:
“’The world that all the little brown furry things [mammals] inherited from the dinosaurs was paradise. [emphasis added] The climate was so mild that redwoods, unable now to live much further north than California’s pleasant coast, grew in Alaska, Greenland, Sweden, and Siberia. There was no ice in the Arctic. Palm trees grew as far north as 50 degrees latitude, roughly the boundary between the United States and Canada. Below that subtropical zone—that was similar to Florida’s landscape today—was a broad band of tropical rain forest.’
“Sounds grim, doesn’t it?…
“One of the most prominent climate alarmists, Tim Flannery writes:
“‘When Earth is warm (in greenhouse mode)—as it was around 50 million years ago—North America is a verdant and productive land. [emphasis added] Almost all of its 24 million square kilometers, from Ellesmere Island in the north to Panama in the south, is covered in luxuriant vegetation’.
“Flannery titled the section of the book that deals with the “verdant and productive” Eocene as: “In Which America Becomes a Tropical Paradise.” Yet this was a time, it should be remembered, when temperatures and CO2 levels were much higher than today’s. Unfortunately, trapped in his alarmism, Flannery doesn’t see the irony.
“British paleontologist Richard Fortey describes the landscape of Australia 20-35 million years ago, during the Oligocene and Miocene, as being “as rich as Amazonia, green and moist, with trees and ferns in profusion.” Today much of Australia, an area the size of the continental United States, is desert and bush and supports only 22 million people compared to 300 million in the U.S.
“As recently as 125,000 years ago, the peak of the last interglacial, our planet was 3-5°C warmer than today at the poles according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself, with sea levels 4-6 metres (12-20 feet) higher than today’s interglacial so far. Even Britain was semi-tropical, with hippopotami gamboling in the Thames, apparently untroubled by extreme weather events, extreme droughts, extreme flooding, etc.
“A mere 7,000 years ago, during the Holocene Optimum period that was at least 1°C warmer than today, much of the Sahara Desert was green, as were many other regions that today are desert. Why? Because warmer temperatures mean less polar ice, making more water available for precipitation, and therefore promoting a greener planet.
“So, millions of years ago, during geological eras much warmer than ours, with much higher levels of carbon dioxide, the planet faced the same environmental hazards as today—volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like. But it was not plagued by the extreme weather events, extreme droughts, extreme flooding, mass extinctions, or even the ocean “acidification” claimed by climate alarmists for the world of the future.
“Sea level ‘disaster’?
“On only one point have the alarmists got it right: during these warmer times of the geological past sea levels were higher, sometimes many metres higher—a point Hansen mentions again and again in his presentations.
“For example, Hansen notes that while only two per cent of the Earth’s land surface is within 10 metres of sea level, this two per cent also has 10 per cent (more than 630 million) of the world’s population. Hansen says a five-metre (15 foot) rise would, without costly dikes or other measures, inundate many large cities, including New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. This sea level increase, he concludes, would be “disastrous.” Hansen even seriously predicts five metres (15 feet) of sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century under a Business As Usual carbon scenario.
“However, most climate scientists—even alarmist scientists—know that Hansen’s predictions are hallucinations and accept that a sea level rise of this magnitude could only take place over centuries and millennia, just as sea levels today have taken 15,000 years to rise 120 metres (400 feet)…
“In other words, in the real world (as opposed to Hansen’s world), sea-level rise of any magnitude will take centuries and even millennia. The current rate of sea-level increase is just over 2 mm a year, or about 20 cm per century. At this rate—and at the moment the rate shows no signs of increasing—sea levels would take 2,500 years to reach Hansen’s five metres. Based on several interglacials over the past 600,000 years, which at their peak had sea levels several metres higher than today’s levels according to the IPCC, the seas would rise five metres or more even if human beings didn’t emit carbon.
“Coping with sea-level rise
“Can humanity cope with rising sea levels, whatever those levels may be? If climate alarmists don’t cripple our carbon-based economy, even the IPCC predicts that both developed and developing countries will have all the prosperity they need to cope with rising sea levels, be it seawalls, landfill, or relocations to desert and polar areas that, thanks to warmer temperatures and greater precipitation, are now fit for settlement…
“And, again, a warmer, wetter planet would “green” many of the world’s desert regions, including the Sahara and Australia, just as warming did in ages past. Meanwhile, thousands of square miles of land currently under ice or Arctic scrub would be open to settlement.
“A wetter, greener world
“And this still doesn’t take into account the positive effect of higher levels of CO2 in fertilizing plants. Physicist and biologist Sherwood B. Idso, who has specialized in charting the relationship between CO2 and plants, notes:
“‘A simple 330 to 660 ppm doubling of the air’s CO2 content will raise the productivity of all plants, in the mean, by about one-third. … As atmospheric CO2 concentrations more than double, plant water-use efficiencies more than double, with significant improvements occurring all the way out to CO2 concentrations of a thousand ppm or more’.
“Think of what such a biological transformation will mean to the world of the future. Grasslands will flourish where deserts now lie barren. Shrubs will grow where only grasses grew before. And forests will make a dramatic comeback to reclaim many areas presently sustaining only brush and scattered shrubs.
“Sound utopian? Even the IPCC acknowledges that doubled CO2 levels can produce increases of up to 33 per cent in plant growth, while also making plants more drought resistant.
“Millions of years ago our planet was much warmer and wetter than today, with much higher levels of CO2. Alarmists like Hansen say a return to those temperatures and CO2 levels would be catastrophic. “Yet our planet in earlier geological ages is almost always described as a tropical paradise, not a blasted, carbon-choked hell. Sea levels were higher, but a prosperous humanity can cope with higher sea levels…
“But if, as alarmists warn, we return to the Pliocene, or even the Miocene, would that be paradise lost? Or paradise regained?”
“Paul MacRae is a former journalist who now teaches writing at the University of Victoria. He is the author of False Alarm: Global Warming—Facts Versus Fears (Spring Bay Press, 2010). His website is paulmacrae.com. The book is available at springbaypress.com.”
Understanding what drives the alarmism movements of today– i.e. climate alarmism.
What narrative themes incite alarmism crusades and what counter-themes (i.e. what evidence-based indicators of “the true state of the world”) would potently overturn the mythical ideas that endlessly incite alarmism movements, both religious and “secular/ideological” alarmism movements?
A quote from “We all live primarily by story- ‘Paradise lost/redemption’”, further below…
“The elements of this “Paradise lost/redemption” narrative were scattered throughout the earliest human mythology, were later formalized in Zoroastrianism (for our Western tradition), and even later were adopted by the great world religions of the West (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The basic complex of “Paradise lost/redemption” mythical themes still dominates the world religions, and those themes/ideas are also now also traceable throughout contemporary “secular ideologies” like environmental alarmism, and related climate alarmism.”
See below a more detailed list of the core themes/ideas of the “Paradise lost/redemption” mythology.
Important news bulletin:
Good evidence shows that CO2 is not “mainly responsible for climate change” (meaning- climate change is not “human-caused” but more natural). CO2 is only a bit player in the complex of factors that influence climate, a bit player that repeatedly gets lost among the other natural factors and their correlations to the climate change that we have seen over past decades and centuries.
Further, climate change is not becoming “catastrophic”. It is not a looming “crisis”. So relax, enjoy life and the many benefits that fossil fuels grant us.
Take-away point? There is no sound, rational scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. None.
Sources and details below in the varied reports from atmospheric physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and many other scientists well-versed on the complexities of climate science and related issues.
A peek inside the mind of a climate apocalypse prophet. Climate czar John Kerry at WEF annual conference this week,
“And when you stop and think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we select group of human beings … are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.
“I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about “saving the planet.”
“If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy tree hugging lefty, liberal, you know, do gooder or whatever, and there’s no relationship. But really, that’s where we are.”
This linked article (Wall Street Journal) explains why so many people believe the climate alarm hysteria that media pump out daily regarding every hiccup in weather- i.e. the endless mantra of “worst on record” to buttress the alarmist narrative of “blame human use of fossil fuels as the great evil of today’s world”. (Hiccup? Every more extreme perturbation to normal/average weather patterns.)
“Mr. Ehrlich is a purveyor of “doom porn” at a time when the world has never been more prosperous. Developed countries are astonishingly rich, and even in developing nations the share of the population in absolute poverty has fallen to single digits. Mr. Ehrlich in 1968 predicted mass starvation; instead, obesity is rising, even in Africa. So why don’t people ignore him? Ignorance is no excuse when we carry the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets.
“The answer is that humans have evolved to prioritize bad news. “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman, “have a better chance to survive and reproduce.”
“As Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler explain in “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think,” our brains have limited bandwidth and need to focus when a threat arises. Most information is first sifted through the amygdala, a part of the brain that is “responsible for primal emotions like rage, hate, and fear,” Messrs. Diamandis and Kotler write. “The amygdala is always looking for something to fear.”
“That is a very powerful impulse that can deceive even the most dispassionate and rational observers. A study by Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka found that even when people expressly say they are interested in more good news, eye-tracking experiments show they are in fact much more interested in bad news.”
My point in response: Does the irrational instinct, contrary to evidence, to “always look for something to fear”- does this help explain the persistence of the apocalypse myth in modern consciousness and narratives, even in so-called rational “secular/ideological/scientific” belief systems?
“The assumptions that variations in water vapor, clouds and so on act to amplify rather than oppose the impact of CO2, in other words, they are assumed to be positive rather than negative feedbacks. It is on the egregiousness of these assumptions rather than on the greenhouse effect itself, that most skeptics (including myself) have focused…
“Earth has, in fact, many climate regimes at present. Moreover, there have been profound changes in the temperature difference between the tropics and polar regions over millennia, but at the same time the temperature of the tropical regions has remained little changed… The stability of tropical temperatures in the face of strongly varying heat fluxes out from those latitudes points to the existence of strong negative feedbacks in the radiative-convective response of the tropics…
“(Today’s climate alarmism) is accompanied by so-called ‘solutions’ that deal with something, namely decarbonization, that is, in fact, largely irrelevant to climate change, while imposing great and pointless pain…
“It is essential- to Western civilization itself- that the harm associated with this totally unwarranted alarm be ended, however difficult the task.”
Point? Over the history of life (Phanerozoic era- past 500 million years) average world temperatures were often 3-6 degrees C warmer than today and even up to 10 degrees C warmer than today’s 14.5 degrees C average. With those much warmer temperatures, warm regions of the Earth did not “fry”. Instead, the colder polar areas warmed which then meant extended habitats for more diverse life forms. The world was ice-free for over 80% of the history of life. An ice-free world is a more natural and optimal world for all life.
Why then all this irrational media hysteria today over melting ice? Some cold region species may suffer, others will adapt, and many more will benefit from an ice-free world. Note also that polar bears have been around for at least 300,000 years, meaning they have survived much warmer temperatures over the past. Some estimates of the previous interglacial- the Eemian- state that it was 3-5 degrees C warmer than our current Holocene interglacial. Let the ice melt, let the climate warm more, and lets celebrate the return to a more normal and optimal climate for all life.
Another on the recent Paul Ehrlich interview on CBS (late 2022). There is no species holocaust occurring.
This comment just below is to counter the well-intentioned but too… what’s the word- too “kowtowingish” affirmation by some skeptics of the basic assumptions of the alarmist narrative. In the case below- skeptics correctly challenge the alarmist’s assumption, based on discredited models, that climate will warm to 3-6 degrees more. But they do not challenge the more basic fact that even if climate warmed that much it would not be dangerous for life.
Skeptics too often do this: They will counter that while decarbonization is too rushed, yet we still need to do something about rising CO2 and rising temperatures. Why do we need to do something? Ask yourself- What scientific evidence shows that there is a life-ending threat from rising CO2 or rising temperatures?
Aside from adapting to changing climate, just as we have always done, the best advice is do nothing about CO2 rising. And further to the contrary, instead of demonizing CO2 as a pollutant and threat, note its immense benefits to all life such as in the 15% added green vegetation to our world over the past half century. More basic plant food in the atmosphere means more food for animals, and increased crop production for humanity. What’s to fear in that?
Added note on my peeve–
Be very clear on what you are challenging and what you are still affirming, especially as this relates to the climate alarm narrative and crusade. The single most critical element in the mix of climate science has to do with “the physics of CO2” and so far there is no good evidence that rising atmospheric CO2 is any threat to life. To the contrary, there is much evidence that rising CO2 levels are an immense benefit to life (e.g. the 15% increase in green vegetation across the Earth over the past half century).
The larger paleoclimate context shows that we are still in a “CO2 starvation era” compared to past history when CO2 was in the multiple-thousands of ppm (compared to our roughly 420 ppm today). During those times there was no “climate emergency” but instead life flourished with more of its basic food. Those much higher levels of CO2 did not cause runaway climate warming. An obvious conclusion is that CO2 is not mainly responsible for climate change. Scientists continue to uncover varied other natural factors that show stronger correlations to climate change.
The rational conclusion as always- There is no good evidence that we need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. To the contrary, we ought to celebrate the return of CO2 to healthier, more optimal levels for life to flourish again.
Be careful about affirming the assumptions of the climate alarm narrative that CO2 poses some threat to life and must be fought through the decarbonization crusade (a “profoundly religious crusade”). Be clear on what the science of CO2 tells us.
Here is a good illustration of commitment to an ideology, or better- commitment to a mythology, a commitment so irrationally dogmatic (in the face of a failing alarmist narrative) that it denies plain reality and common sense… by meteorologist Anthony Watts, Jan. 15, 2023- “Wrong, Washington Post, ‘Less Warming’, Won’t Result in Greater Climate Disasters.”
And while some skeptics cheer the apparent slowing in warming- i.e. the emerging evidence that further warming may not approach the 1.5-2.0 threat limit or “tipping point” of the alarmist narrative, I would go even further to challenge the IPCC’s worst-case scenario that 3.2-5.4 degrees C more warming will be catastrophic for life- “dire for the future of the planet”. Even if that further warming occurred, would it really be a threat to life?
Paleo-climate evidence shows that for most of the history of life (over 80% of the 500-million year Phanerozoic era) average temperatures were 3-6 degrees C warmer than today (averaging 18 degrees C compared to today’s world average of 14.5 degrees C). And during that much warmer time the world was not “aflame or frying”. Already warm areas like the tropics did not ignite or become much hotter but average tropical temperatures only fluctuated by a few degrees while the polar regions warmed by much more.
Again, let me insert atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen’s comments on this (from above), “There have been profound changes in the temperature difference between the tropics and polar regions over millennia, but at the same time the temperature of the tropical regions has remained little changed… The stability of tropical temperatures in the face of strongly varying heat fluxes out from those latitudes points to the existence of strong negative feedbacks in the radiative-convective response of the tropics…”
That “equable climate” (i.e. stable tropical temperatures), even when overall average world temperatures increased up to 10 degrees C higher than today (up to 25 degrees C versus today’s 14.5 degrees C), that stable tropical climate undermines the global warming narrative. It shows that there are strong negative feedbacks that keep temperatures in the already warmest regions within a range suitable for life.
More heat energy does not inflame tropical temperatures to nonsurvivable heights, but that energy is distributed via atmospheric and oceanic convection currents to the colder regions of Earth. (Source- See the “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” reports in sections below on the main influence on climate change- “meridional transport”.)
What happens with much higher average temperatures is that cold regions warm more, cold seasons warm more, and colder times of day warm more (i.e. night). Result? Temperatures even out across the world. The result is net beneficial to all life with extended habitats for more diverse life forms, as evident in the fossils of tropical plants and animals that have been discovered in both polar regions over past years.
And this does not include other evidence showing that CO2 is just a bit player in climate change and is not “mainly responsible” for warming. Varied other natural factors show stronger correlations to the climate change that have observed over past decades, centuries, and millennia.
As always, there is no good evidence to fear rising CO2 or further warming and hence no good evidence to tax carbon or to embrace the ruinous Net Zero policies to decarbonize our societies. Wendell Krossa
Added note on the fact that in the during the Eocene era some 55-33 million years ago, average temperatures were 10 degrees C warmer than today (25 degrees C average versus todays world average of 14.5 degrees C) and that was the “Golden Age of mammals” when our ancestors flourished.
An initial phase in eruptions of totalitarianism– the silencing of dissent or differing opinion and speech, Wendell Krossa
This is particularly worrisome when populations embrace “self-censorship” out of fear of retaliatory punishment for disagreeing with threatening powerholders. As the Jordan Peterson episode shows, this is happening now in countries like Canada and other nations that are supposedly liberal democracies.
From the National Post, Jan. 8, 2023, this article by Rupa Subramanya, “Jordan Peterson is being punished for daring to contradict leftist orthodoxy: What we have here is a regulatory body wanting to ‘re-educate’ a member who disagrees with a set of ‘correct’ opinions.”
Note in this article how widespread the threat of punishment for dissent/disagreement has become. While both sides of the ideological divide need to guard against the urge to vent their totalitarian impulses, today, that threat comes mainly from the “left/liberal” side of society, what some call “Woke Progressivism” gone extreme leftist, and even, in varied places, outright Marxist/collectivist again.
Others have commented on self-censorship, noting that with self-censorship you don’t need a threatening, centrally-established dictator to be present everywhere to terrorize and control everyone in a society. You just need to instill the fear of retaliation throughout all areas of the society and that then incites self-censorship among populations, what George Orwell called “intellectual cowardice”.
Self-censorship is just what we are seeing with the widespread fear of cancellation for expressing opinions that differ from the Woke Progressive narrative that dominates the main forums of society- i.e. conservatives fearful of expressing their views in the main story-telling forum of Hollywood (now a “one party state”), the fear throughout academia of expressing opinion that is contrary to Woke Progressivism, and the domination of Woke Progressivism across mainstream media, in areas of science, and on the “liberal” side of politics.
Quotes from the National Post article above
“What we have here is a professional regulatory body that wants to “re-educate” someone within its ranks for failing to comply with the establishment’s ideological set of “correct” opinions, which in Canada are on the far left of the political spectrum. It’s downright Orwellian…
“The action against Peterson and similar actions by other professional bodies are clearly intended to have a chilling effect, preventing those who don’t share the establishment’s views from airing their dissenting opinions. Even in Canada’s universities, where professors — in theory — have a protected right of academic freedom, many may choose to self-censor, for fear of running afoul of administrators, funding agencies and others who will attempt to cancel them in one way or another.
“The idea of re-educating a professional simply for holding views that differ from the current ruling ideology sounds bizarre in a place like Canada, but has always been standard operating procedure in authoritarian countries, whether on the far left or the far right…
“Those who wish to silence free speech in liberal democracies such as Canada don’t have the total power of the Soviet state, but nor do they need it. All you have to do to silence people is discredit them professionally, thereby preventing them from working and earning a living and likely causing grievous psychological harm…
“In such a climate of fear, how many rank-and-file professionals such as doctors, lawyers, professors and teachers will be able to speak honestly to their clients, students or in the public square, now that they’ve been put on notice that it’s simply unacceptable to question official political orthodoxy?”
My added notes:
I am quite flabbergasted, flummoxed, and filibustered (OCD demands triads that don’t always make sense) by the apparent widespread lack of understanding of the critical role of free speech for all, especially the lack of awareness on the left side of our societies, the “liberal” side that we once associated with things like inclusion, full equality for all, tolerance of diversity, and other highly valued principles of liberal society (Classic Liberal, that is).
Today, if you are in a position of power, you may reason yourself into the perspective of feeling entitled to censor the other that disagrees with your ideology. But tomorrow, when the differing other gains power, or perhaps even if the extremists on your side gain power, then your refusal to protect equally the free speech for all, that will come back to hit you also with censorship. Someone remind Sam Harris about this. (See Glen Greenwald’s post- “The Elitist Corporate Media Attacks Populism” where he quotes Sam Harris defending the Twitter censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop. Harris was once a free speech advocate, but now hedges that support.)
And be careful even about going after what is termed- “hate speech”. Who defines this? You or the other side? Too often we are seeing the hate speech category extended to include even disagreeing/dissenting speech from differing others. Claims are too often being made that the speech of disagreeing others is now “hate speech… speech that causes violence… speech that threatens the safety of others…”, etc. Some even include jokes as speech that threatens their sense of safety. Such claims confuse actual threats to physical safety with offended/hurt feelings and the easily-offended touchiness that refuses to take a joke, or refuses to thoughtfully consider the intentions behind the speech of the differing other.
The malicious and careless use of smears to discredit and demonize differing others has become too widely acceptable today. Some of the more common demonizing smears: “Nazi/Hitler… racist…. Fascist…. Misinformation/disinformation… threat to democracy…. Hate speech…” and more, are all flung around irresponsibly by those believing that they are heroes in a righteous battle against intolerable evil on the other side, against “enemies” that do not deserve recognition, respect, or toleration today.
This has all become dangerously authoritarian, even totalitarian today. Time to become truly “woke” and realize what is happening. Wendell Krossa
Private property rights- critical to dispersed power, to protect against totalitarianism, Wendell Krossa
Added note to comment further below on the two main approaches to organizing human societies and the outcomes of each approach- i.e. collectivism versus free individuals.
Private property is a critical element to dispersed, decentralized power and protection against the ever-creeping impulse to totalitarian power and control. Ownership and control of the resources of a society has been vital to the centralizing of power in totalitarian regimes (e.g. the “nationalization” of sectors of the economy). Centralizing control of property/resources re-enforces the power of collectivist elites.
Hence, collectivist regimes have consistently rejected private property rights with arguments that private property is the marker of “selfish, greedy” individualism that is contrary to the collectivist ideal of the communally oriented man- the “morally superior” human who is oriented to the “greater or common good”. Collectivists understand well that control of a society’s material resources ensures the collectivist control of the society. Central control of resources grants more power to the ruling elites who claim to know what is best for all others.
We have repeatedly observed the disasters (i.e. mass-death) that resulted from collectivizing resources and power. Previous examples: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-un, and others. The death tolls from these collectivist experiments are in the multiple-tens of millions, even hundreds of millions.
Note: Some added comment regarding previous articles on the two main approaches to organizing human societies- i.e. giving primacy to individual rights and freedoms versus giving primacy to collectivism principles. Wendell Krossa
The critical importance of “Self-determination” in the individual approach to organizing societies (Understanding the benefits of protecting individual rights and freedoms).
There is interesting psychological research on the importance of self-control to human well-being (self-control as in personal choice, self-determination). Some research notes how the varied positions in societal hierarchies will either enhance or undermine self-control, and hence, enhance or undermine human well-being.
Research shows that people in the higher positions of hierarchies have more opportunity for personal choice and that enhances their well-being, whereas lower hierarchical positions grant people less personal choice and that undermines the well-being those in the lower positions. The argument is not to eliminate hierarchies in human societies but more about how we treat one another within such inevitable bureaucratic relationships; how we relate to one another in such relationships (i.e. the superiors/subordinates relationship). Think “bosses from hell”, as compared to supervisors that treat subordinates more humanely.
This also relates to Frederik Hayek’s concern that the growth of the state, as in excessive government control and intervention (i.e. “big government”- excessive government regulation and taxation)- such excessive state involvement and control over citizens lives will produce populations that lose their independence and their ability to self-determine their personal lives and destinies.
This also relates to issues of “learned helplessness”- where personal choice and personal control are taken away, or given away.
Again, its not about eliminating traditional relationships like boss/worker, teacher/student, commander/grunt soldier, etc.. It is about embracing ways of treating one another more humanely within such relationships. Its about understanding how critical personal control is to human well-being and how the sense of having some power over one’s destiny will enhance the programs/projects of the institutions or organizations that we all engage.
Further notes on self-determination or personal control, Wendell Krossa
“Personal control refers to “the perceived ability to significantly alter events” (Burger 1989). A high personal control corresponds to a belief that one can change the course of events, whereas a low personal control represents the lack of such belief.”
One suggestion regarding relating in hierarchies- Regard/treat all employees as “independent contractors” who have independently agreed to employment contracts with organizations. Those in higher-up supervisory roles could also embrace the same stance that politicians once claimed to advocate- i.e. to authentically “serve the people”. Supervisory or administrative roles would not then be engaged as opportunities to “lord over others”, but would function more as fulfilling the administrative responsibilities that enable workers to perform their varied jobs.
Bottom-up democracy advocates offer interesting input regarding decisions made by administrative personnel that affect subordinates. They suggest that such decisions should include, as much as possible, the input of the subordinate workers, as the effort to consult others will result in workers feeling more inclined to “buy into” the decisions that impact them. Workers will be more willing to support the decisions that they feel they had a part in making (i.e. the belief that one has some control over one’s destiny).
Whereas, when subordinates are excluded from decision making, or subjected to decisions that are then handed down accompanied by threats of punishment for failure to comply, decisions that are implemented coercively, that heavy-handed approach then tends to result in worker resentment, bitterness, and the consequent undermining of support for organization programs (i.e. employees dragging their feet in carrying out orders). Or it results in higher turnover of employees with the consequent costly training of new replacements, the loss of people with skills and wisdom that were built over long-time periods.
The above research adds good input on how to practise the principles of liberal democracy, how Classic Liberalism approaches should operate at all levels of society. This is about liberal democracies implementing their values of equality, inclusion, fairness, and the primacy of individual rights and freedoms.
Someone said the worst dictators are not those in power centers far away but are the “bosses from hell” that exist in workplaces and offices all over nations. Add those little dictators in private homes- i.e. over-controlling parents from hell.
And this good summary from Sterling Burnett on the sun’s dominant role in climate change, Jan. 13, 2023:
“Climate Change Weekly #458: Bad Climate Assumptions, Worse Climate Predictions”
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” So begins Elizabeth Barret Browning’s famous Sonnet 43. What does that have to do with climate change, you ask? Browning’s poem has parallels to our understanding of the myriad physical mechanisms that drive climate change. “What affects the climate? Let me count the factors. …” Some people just don’t want to do that.
“Recent research published in the International Journal of Climatology, a peer-reviewed scientific publication of the Royal Meteorological Society, suggests cycles of warming and cooling and associated climate phenomena are driven in large part by periodic solar and ocean oscillations. The well-funded researchers for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consistently underappreciate or ignore these factors in fashioning the climate models they use to represent the world.
“Examining extended tree-ring data of the Scots pine of northern Finnish Lapland, stretching to the year 5,634 B.C, the researchers found multiple and sometimes overlapping natural cycles of various durations throughout the record, tracking temperature shifts on short, medium, and longer-term time scales. Among the most direct and profound drivers of temperature shifts on short time scales are large, powerful volcanic eruptions.
“Other natural cycles that drive climate shifts of various durations, regionally and sometimes globally, are oceanic circulation patterns, including La Niña and El Niño cycles, and over longer time periods the Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations. Though these forcing mechanisms are not the focus of the paper, they are well-established in the literature. No Tricks Zone provides links to dozens, possibly hundreds of journal articles published over the past decade that suggest oceanic cycles do not just correspond to climate changes but have driven them in many instances.
“The paper focuses instead on the role solar cycles of various lengths play in changing temperatures and climate. In the paper’s abstract the authors write,
“The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60–90-year period. The objective of this study is to show that these temperature oscillations are real and not artifacts and that these oscillations have different external cosmic origins. The authors have studied how well the variations of astronomical harmonic resonances (AHR) could explain the 60-year temperature variations, which are based on instrumental records. …
“The similarities between the temperatures of the tree-ring trend and the AHR trend are easy to observe even by the naked eye. The statistical analysis shows that these two signals are statistically related. The analyses also show that the well-known Gleissberg cycle of 88 years is the dominating cycle caused by the Suns’ [sic] activity changes but the observed 60-year cycle can be connected to the AHR cyclicity.
“The Finnish scholars are by no means the first to recognize that the Sun, the single greatest power source in our solar system, has a significant and perhaps dominant influence on climate shifts. Scholars such as Nir Shaviv, Willie Soon, the late Eigil Friis-Christensen, Sallie Baliunas, and Hans Svensmark, among many others, have spent large portions of their academic careers studying, analyzing, and describing the various ways solar activity drives periodic climate changes on Earth.
“Also, rarely does the public hear anything about water vapor, which makes up 97 to 98 percent of atmospheric greenhouse gases or clouds, which, depending on the type, can have either a cooling or warming effect. This virtual media blackout happens even though hundreds of journal articles and even the IPCC attest clouds affect the climate.
“Other known factors that drive major climate changes on long- and medium-term time scales are the changes in the Earth’s tilt and orbit and, over eons, continental drift. These and probably myriad other factors result in climate changes on local, regional, continental, and global scales over various time periods.
“Despite all this evidence, you would not know anything other than human greenhouse gas emissions drives temperatures on the Earth and changes in the climate, if you heard only reports from the mainstream media or read the IPCC’s massive Assessment Reports. The causal mechanism behind climate change should be the strongest part of the IPCC’s reports, yet it is in fact the weakest. Although the IPCC downplays the prominent benefits humanity has been blessed with because of climate change over the past century or so, its descriptions of climate change’s impact on weather are largely sound, describing facts on the ground. The explanations for why these changes take place, however, are woefully inadequate because the IPCC has placed all its explanatory eggs in one basket: greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activities.
“Interestingly, over the course of its six assessment reports the IPCC has produced multiple graphics describing a range of forcing factors, or physical mechanisms natural and anthropogenic, that influence climate. These factors have changed from report to report, with some factors being dropped from one report to the next, other factors being combined, and still others being added. Yet the only climate influences the IPCC claims to understand well, and the only mechanisms put into their climate models as forcing factors, are human greenhouse gas emissions. Natural forcing factors are either assumed to have minimal, poorly understood effects on temperatures and climate or, as with oceanic oscillations, treated as if they have no effect at all.
“In contrast to natural factors that affect climate that are ignored or downplayed in the models, the models incorporate various sets of “feedback” mechanisms as temperature and climate change multipliers, enhancing the assumed warming and changes caused directly by additional CO2, methane, and other trace gases humans are adding to the atmosphere. These feedback forcings, and how they supposedly function, are based purely on speculation, assumptions built into the models, not observed behavior of the environmental mechanisms involved or data accumulated over time describing how these factors have acted in the past in response to environmental perturbations such as temperature changes.
“This is emblematic of the topsy-turvy world of climate science. Scientists use climate models they know downplay or fail to account for myriad physical factors that are known to alter temperatures and climate, because they are little-understood or difficult to model, while they incorporate forcings from feedback mechanisms based purely on the assumptions of the modelers. Theory trumps fact in climate models. The outcome is assumed—carbon dioxide equals dangerous warming—with the data and assumptions forced to fit the predetermined conclusion.
“This may account for why, after thirty years and six sets of assessment reports, the IPCC’s range of possible temperature outcomes has not improved and the temperature outcomes of the present iteration of models, CMIP6, are even worse than the previous generation of models at tracking actual temperature trends. Models have persistently projected warmer temperatures and steeper temperature trends than have been measured, with CMIP6 models producing hotter temperature projections than any before them. If the IPCC can’t account well for the factors that drive temperatures and climate change, and for some factors it doesn’t even try, it is no wonder the models’ projections consistently fail to match reality.
“It’s like trying to build a functioning car without installing hoses or wiring. Yes, the engine, transmission, and tires are important, but so are many other systems. It ain’t going to work, and by and large climate models don’t. They produce elegant representations of a climate that does not exist anywhere but on the fictional Earth the models describe.
“Climate scolds foolishly try to defend their models by saying when they run them without including human greenhouse gas emissions they don’t produce the warming the analysts expect. Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Their expectations are based on an incomplete understanding of the range and direction of effects of various forcing factors. Their models, focusing only on human greenhouse gases, may match their expectations of warming, but they don’t correspond to reality. What about that do the IPCC and the mainstream media not understand? In science, it is data and observation, not theory and models, that determine the state of knowledge.
“To sum up: Are human greenhouse gas emissions affecting the climate? Almost certainly. How could they not do so to some degree? Are they the only factors that drive temperatures and climate change? Absolutely not. Do we know for certain that human greenhouse gases are solely or even primarily responsible for the recent changes in climate? We do not. Only those who trust the flawed models instead of hard evidence can truly believe we do. Is climate change having disastrous consequences, producing more extreme weather more frequently? The data say no.
“When making energy and climate policy, these are the premises we should proceed upon. We need more knowledge, not rash actions based on flawed representations of the climate.
“SOURCES: Climate Change Dispatch; International Journal of Climatology; No Tricks Zone”
Note in this article below, as with the statements of many others, there are elements of something other than “science” or “evidence” that are motivating the prophets of doom and apocalypse… Just sayin…
Ralph Schoellhammer: “Climate activism isn’t about the planet. It’s about the boredom of the bourgeoisie”, Newsweek, Jan. 15, 2023
Full article at…
“The downfall of capitalism will not come from the uprising of an impoverished working class but from the sabotage of a bored upper class.
“This was the view of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter believed that at some point in the future, an educated elite would have nothing left to struggle for and will instead start to struggle against the very system that they themselves live in.
“Nothing makes me think Schumpeter was right like the contemporary climate movement and its acolytes. The Green movement is not a reflection of planetary crisis as so many in media and culture like to depict it, but rather, a crisis of meaning for the affluent.
“Take for example a recent interview with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Ehrlich is most famous for his career as a professional doom monger. His first major book, The Population Bomb, gave us timelessly wrong predictions, including that by the 1980s, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death and it went downhill from there. Ehrlich assured us that England would no longer exist in the year 2000, that even modern fertilizers would not enable us to feed the world, and that thermonuclear power was just around the corner.
“Ehrlich, who recently turned 90, is in the lucky position to have witnessed the complete failure of all his predictions—only to double down on them in his 60 Minutes interview. Ehrlich has been wrong on every public policy issue he pontificated on for almost 60 years, yet the mainstream media still treat him like a modern oracle.
“Why?
“The best answer to this question comes courtesy of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2019 famously said that, “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right.” In other words, no matter what nonsense one spews, as long as it is “morally right,” it does not matter what the facts show.
“Like the prophet of any religion, Ehrlich is not there to explain the world but to reinforce the upper class’s favorite worldview of the imminent end of the world, something that can only be prevented if we fundamentally change the way we live. Of course, by “we,” they actually mean “you.” It’s not the Tesla driving AOC or the jet-setting Stanford professor Ehrlich who will adapt their lifestyles, but the rubes of the working- and middle-class who supposedly eat too much meat, drive too many miles on gas-guzzling cars, or even book the occasional flight to go on vacation.
“This was perfectly embodied by climate czar and millionaire John Kerry who took his family’s private jet to attend a climate change conference in Iceland in 2019. Asked by journalists how to square his climate activism with the use of private planes, he seemed befuddled; after all, Kerry explained, “it is the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle” against climate change….
“Just like Kerry, Ehrlich, and these other groups are not really interested in solving the problem of climate change…. Instead, they wish to elevate their struggle to an ersatz-religion that allows them to simultaneously enjoy their wealth and lecture the rest of the world from a position of moral superiority… they enjoy lecturing the rest of society just as much as Ehrlich and his acolytes.
“This isn’t about the planet. It’s about the boredom of the bourgeoisie.”
Ralph Schoellhammer is an assistant professor in economics and political science at Webster University Vienna.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Humanity’s most dominant story across history- “Paradise lost/redemption”
See just below- Two entirely different gods and gospels- Christology and anti-Christology
Keep an eye on what the “College of Psychologists” are trying to do to Jordan Peterson and his rights to free speech, to his freedom in general. This from National Post, Jan. 4, 2023, “I will risk my license to escape social media re-education: This should concern everyone”
Over past years Peterson has been a singularly clear voice warning us about what is happening in our societies- i.e. the “creeping totalitarianism” that has been emerging from the extremist Woke Progressivism movement, more generally the left/liberal side of society. And it is no longer “creeping”.
The dominant threat to freedom today:
What is this shift of US/Canadian liberals toward extreme Woke Progressive culture? What is this resurgence of collectivism throughout academia, and notably through the climate alarm crusade? It is the continuation of last century’s “anti-industrial civilization” movement- i.e. specifically, the Marxist crusade against “the protection of individual rights and freedoms in Classic Liberalism”, a crusade that has been taken up by the environmental movement and climate alarm movement.
(Note- Both Left and Right sides of our societies give vent to the totalitarian impulse, to “creeping totalitarianism”. The Right tends to do so on social issues, and the Left tends to do so on economic issues. Both sides need to respect what freedom means in all areas of life- as argued, for example, by David Boaz in “Libertarianism”. And no, I am not taking up a banner to promote Libertarianism in particular. My own position is more Classic Liberal/Independent as in protecting individual rights and freedoms.)
Why should we be concerned about all this? Well, what is the real nature of liberal democracy and what are its core values/principles? What is the nature of the freedom that is critical to the well being of all people? What are fairness, equality, inclusion, liberty/independence, self-determination, and the other Classic Liberal values/principles?
The human battle for freedom has never ended and is at another critical juncture today… It ought to concern all of us.
Here’s a good summary of what the Twitter files have uncovered. It relates to issues of basic Political Science definitions of “Fascism”- “government and corporate power are… merged to control the population”. Democratic Senator Frank Church warned us about this many decades ago.
This is what the “madness of crowds” looks like. We are living through another major historical episode of crowd madness today. From Patrick West, Spiked, Dec. 30, 2022, “The rise of the eco-cult: Extreme environmentalists plumbed new depths of madness in 2022”
How apocalyptic panic-mongering incites violence- The Washington Times, Jan. 1, 2023, “When the power fails, lives can be threatened by policy and criminality”
The relationship of fear to violence: You threaten populations with apocalyptic scenarios like “climate change becoming catastrophic and purportedly ending the world”. Then with their survival impulse incited to hysterical levels of panic, people desperate to survive will engage extremist behavior, even violence, to stop the perceived threat to their existence and to save themselves or “save the world”.
H. L. Mencken’s insightful statement still applies today: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”, (In Defense of Women).
This from statistician Bjorn Lomborg- “Dramatic decline of deaths from climate-related weather extremes: Fewer and fewer people die from climate-related natural disasters”
Two entirely different gods and gospels- Christology and anti-Christology, Wendell Krossa
(Insert note: Christology? Yes, turning a normal historical person into a Christ figure, divinizing an ordinary human being.)
Why potentially agitate and outrage true believers with this Jesus versus Christ comment?
I put this “anti-Christ” commentary up repeatedly (a “cut the taproot” approach) as part of my project to counter more thoroughly the apocalyptic narratives of despair that incite widespread fear, anxiety, unhinged hysteria, fatalism/resignation, depression, embrace of suicidal “salvation” policies, and yes- even violence among populations/societies. Media, politicians, and academics/scientists today all promote the destructive narrative of Declinism that has been embraced by the modern environmental alarmism movement.
“Life declining toward something worse” is a fundamental feature of apocalyptic mythology, and it is also an essential element in Paul’s Christ myth.
Add the fact that alarmist narratives, like climate alarmism, are now tightly related to the Woke Progressivism/extreme leftism that dominates public arenas like Hollywood, academia/higher education, mainstream media, etc.
Anti-Christ? Yes, Historical Jesus- the “real deal Jesus”- presented a message that is quite entirely against the Christology of Paul, a Christology that is affirmed by the rest of the New Testament writers. This was Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s point that the “diamonds/pearls” of Historical Jesus were buried in the New Testament mythology of Paul’s Christ- “the work of lesser minds”. (I won’t list the other terms that they used to describe the larger New Testament context of Paul’s writings in which the core teaching of Jesus was “buried”. Why needlessly piss people off?)
There is no more profound element to the anti-Christ stance of Historical Jesus than the fact that he died because of his protest against the sacrifice industry, for protesting the belief/practise that a blood sacrifice was required before God would forgive and love people (John 2:13-16, Matthew 21:12-13, and other gospels). Bob Brinsmead has done some interesting work on this recently, research that challenges the common Christian interpretation that Jesus’ outburst at the temple was nothing more than his disgust with the money-changer’s greed. A common Evangelical interpretation stated that his outburst was simply about greedy money-changers making profit in a holy place. Not much more than- “You turn my father’s house into a den of thieves”.
Bob Brinsmead adds this clarification: “The complaint of Jesus was that the temple traders, trading animals, was robbery. It was impractical for Passover visitors to all bring an animal to be sacrificed, especially ones that had to be without fault, according to priestly requirements. Jesus saw it all as robbing the people because it was the same in principle as buying indulgences (forgiveness) in the time of Luther. People were paying out their precious little resources to purchase favour with God.
“On the other hand, since Jesus’ gospel was about announcing the grand Jubilee of all debts forgiven by divine amnesty, the temple cult was robbing God of the glory of his free banquet. The temple animal trade was all about buying indulgences and it infuriated Jesus to the point that he did what appears to be beyond prudent. His protest, which under the circumstances of Passover, was beyond the risk of life and limb.” Meaning- he was put to death for that protest against the sacrifice industry in Judaism.
Continuing…
Paul then rejected Jesus’ fundamental opposition to sacrifice, and his death for that protest against sacrifice, and then turned Jesus into the ultimate sacrifice, the divine cosmic sacrifice of a godman as the demanded condition before God could forgive and accept imperfect people. The gospel writers all supported Paul’s mythology of the Christ as the ultimate divine sacrifice.
So yes, Jesus is indeed the real anti-Christ, as his message and life are entirely against the sacrifice Christology of Paul.
Add also, other interesting “anti-Christ” tidbits: Such as that Jesus taught that true greatness was to serve others, not to lord over them. He identified himself as “one who serves” and that, he stated, was true greatness (Luke 22:24-34). But Paul turned Jesus’ stance of identity with common humanity, and his refusal to lord over others, into the myth that Jesus was the Lord Christ, the ultimate King who would dominate all forever (Romans 14:11, Philippians 2:10-11- both borrowed perhaps from Isaiah 45:23? See also Revelation for graphic detail on the New Testament Christology of domination.).
My other anti-Christ comments further below, point to the fundamental contradiction between the insight of Jesus that God was an unconditional deity (i.e. no conditions required for forgiveness and acceptance by God- see also the Prodigal Father story), as contrasted with the highly conditional God of Paul (i.e. demanding a sacrifice to appease wrath, demanding the condition of faith in Paul’s Christ myth, and requiring the conditions of fulfilling correct rituals and living a religious lifestyle as identity markers of being a true believer). Conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions.
There can be no merging of the unconditional theology of Jesus with the highly conditional theology of Paul. They are two entirely different gods and gospels.
And again- I post this material as part of my project to go to root causal ideas that affirm the pathology of apocalyptic in human narratives and society. This pathology of apocalyptic thinking continues to wreak damage in human consciousness and life today, nowhere more potently harmful than in such movements as the “profoundly religious” climate cult.
Added note on this comment above- “Add the fact that alarmist narratives, like climate alarmism, are now tightly related to the Woke Progressivism/extreme leftism that dominates public arenas like Hollywood, academia/higher education, mainstream media, etc.”.
The Right also has its issues with exaggerated alarmism over differing others and their positions (i.e. the apocalyptic scenarios of the Right), and the Right is also susceptible to authoritarian responses, notably on social issues.
Moving along…
Argument: Protecting the equal freedom and rights of every individual is the safest way to organize human societies and to protect against totalitarianism emerging from either side of political divides (i.e. left or right).
Principles for organizing human societies- what works best? Wendell Krossa
It was the genius of Classic Liberalism to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals as primary in organizing human societies. This was accomplished by creating such institutions as a representative parliament that would no longer serve mainly the interests of elites (kings, lords) but was transformed into an institution that existed to protect all citizens equally. Add the genius of a system of law that made all citizens equal under such law- whether kings or commoners. This began with such innovations as Magna Carta and progressed to Common Law systems, along with human rights codes and similar constitutions. (See, for example, Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom” for a history of these developing institutions.)
Most fundamental to the protected equality of liberal democracy was the institution of protected “private property”. Private property rights became foundational to distributing power among competing individuals and that decentralization of power was critical to preventing the centralizing of power that has inevitably resulted in unleashing varied forms of totalitarianism.
The institutions and law systems of classic liberalism, or liberal democracy, are oriented to placing individual rights as primary above collectivist elements that inevitably centralize power and unleash the totalitarian impulse that threatens individual rights and freedoms. Distributing power among individuals and among competing institutions best prevents such centralizing of power. Again, individual property rights and protections are critical here.
But what about the collectivist concern that individual private property is all about affirming selfishness and greed that is counter to greater or common good?
Organizing societies around the primary status of individual rights and freedoms does not mean the neglect of greater or common good but simply argues that greater or common good is actually better advanced by organizing societies around the fundamental protection of individual rights and freedoms. Contribution to common or greater good should be more a voluntarily-engaged option of free and self-determining individuals. That uncoerced freedom of choice best protects the individual freedom and self-determination that are critical to human well-being.
And yes, in the liberal democracy mix, citizens of most modern societies agree to some “social contract” redistribution of property/income to assist less fortunate citizens and to cover shared infrastructure, etc. But the tug-of-war should continue over how large a portion of the GDP that redistribution should be (see the comment in William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty” re the size of government and government programs that best provides “the most good for the most people”).
Caution in science vs dogmatic finality, Wendell Krossa
Joseph Campbell once noted a scientist who stated that the greatest scientists have always admitted that “we don’t really know what anything is”. We have discovered more about how the material realm functions, how its laws behave. But we have no idea what material reality is, even after a century of quantum mechanics. (See, for example, Jim Baggott’s “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields”.)
Manjit Kumar in “Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, And the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality” traces the emergence and development of quantum mechanics over the last century and notes the varied contributors to that science. Over the century of the development of quantum mechanics, varied contributing scientists would state at different times- “I have just made some discovery, and my discovery is the final piece of the puzzle, so the rest of you can now shut down the shop. Its over”. But then another scientist would come along and poke holes in the “final discovery” of such scientists and show that much more remained to be discovered.
Dogmatism over finality in science is unbecoming because in any area of reality because there is always more to discover, more to add to what is known, and hence, ongoing skepticism/questioning/challenge are healthy and vital to further understanding and progress.
Examples of dogmatism/finality in science:
Years ago, consciousness researcher Stuart Hameroff stated a bit too dogmatically (in my evaluation) in a YouTube video clip that the research on microtubules in relation to consciousness was the right way to go and that the final answers would be found in that area. We are almost there, he said.
Much like hardcore materialist Daniel Dennett claiming that because we understand the brain down to the level of molecules and atoms, so we will eventually explain consciousness solely in material terms. Sitting beside Dennett during the seminar where Dennett made that claim, physicist Freeman Dyson smiled and replied, “I don’t think so”. Ha.
Hameroff’s fellow consciousness researcher, Roger Penrose, in an interview on Joe Rogan, peppered his responses on microtubule research with a bit more caution- “Well, we don’t really know that yet… I am not really sure about that…” etc. And yes, Penrose did acknowledge that Hameroff was open to some alternative input on the subject.
Susan Blackmore, another consciousness researcher, also expressed a dogmatism similar to Hameroff in stating with finality on a YouTube video- “Dualism is dead”. Really, Susan? A great neuroscientist, and Nobel Laureate John Eccles, would disagree that dualism is dead. His evidence and arguments showed the dualism hypothesis to be very much alive still (i.e. the mind interacting tightly with the material brain, not “produced by” the material brain).
More growing uncertainty in another area of science, Wendell Krossa
Dogmatic materialists like to argue that the emergence and development of life can be explained quite entirely in terms of natural law, natural selection, natural forces, etc. But note that when Francis Crick discovered DNA and saw the amazing complexity of the genome, he turned to “panspermia” mythology to explain the emergence and development of DNA. He suggested that some other higher intelligence was the only logical, rational explanation for such organized complexity appearing in the world so early in the history of life. Traditional Darwinism (i.e. mutations gradually and randomly accumulating in an organism) and related materialist/naturalist theories could not account for DNA’s early appearance on Earth, nor account for the subsequent development of life into complex multi-cellular organisms. The “conductor” of such emergence and developing complexity has still not been discovered.
Crick: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
My question here: How is panspermia speculation- i.e. that some greater intelligence (i.e. aliens) is involved in starting and developing life- how is such speculation really any different than religious speculations that “God created or started life”? God as the “higher intelligence”.
I fail to see much essential difference between the materialist and religious explanations. On the materialist side there is a fundamental revulsion to irrational “religious” explanations. And yes, I understand and agree with materialists on their overall rejection of irrational religious mythologies and theologies.
But there is some more nuance to all this.
For example, the debates between evolutionary theorists and Intelligent Design (ID) theorists are interesting here, notably works like Stephen Meyer’s “The Return of the God Hypothesis”. And no, I am not taking up a defence of Intelligent Design but just suggesting that such material offers some interesting input to the debates over the emergence and development of life.
I would also offer here the skepticism of contemporary evolutionary theory by noted evolutionists like Franklin Harold- “The Way of the Cell”, Lynn Margulis- “Acquiring Genomes”, Evelyn Kellor- “The Century of the Gene”, and materialist Thomas Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos: Why the materialist Neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false”, etc. These evolutionary theorists are not abandoning some form of evolution but just arguing that the “Post-WW2 Neo-Darwinian theory” (based in part on the theory of mutations accumulating on the genome) has largely been discredited by more recent discoveries re the human genome.
I would suggest some term other than “evolution” to explain the development of life, as evolution has become inextricably tied to the now discredited theory of “mutations accumulating on the genome that result in new features or new species”. How about something like the more broadly encompassing- “long-term development of life”. This accommodates the input discoveries of all sides.
Note that both evolutionists and IDers agree that life began billions of years ago, and that there is a shared heritage of life via DNA, and this shared heritage affirms that humanity arose from an animal background, etc. But there is ongoing disagreement between these theories over the mechanisms of life’s beginning and development.
Conclusions: There is room still for questioning how life began, its mechanism of development over long-time frames, and what life actually is. These are not settled issues despite the dogmatism of many traditional evolutionists. Franklin Harold and Lynn Margulis both detail the unscientific dogmatism of their evolutionary colleagues.
Note: Considering the ID input does not automatically mean also embracing religious theology or a religious God to explain the emergence and development of life. The more reasonable IDers state this- i.e. that claiming it is rational to see intelligence of some kind involved in the development of life does not mean accepting the Christian God as involved or responsible, though Meyers does lean that way near the end of his book.
Also, see Michael Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution” for an exploration of how far Natural Selection could possibly be involved to explain developing life.
Point in this comment? Science rarely reaches some final consensus on anything but must remain ever open to skepticism, questioning, further challenging input from all sources, and new alternative explanations that move our understanding of reality and life forward in new directions.
Moving along…
Further below in this section I have posted another summary article on “The stunning contradiction at the heart of Christianity… The central message of Historical Jesus contrasted with Paul’s Christ myth”
That article below is my latest summary on the contradiction between the central message of Historical Jesus and Paul’s entirely contrary Christ myth. My point is to focus again on the core myths/themes behind contemporary alarmism movements like the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade. I would emphasize once again that the apocalyptic Christ myth of Paul has been mainly responsible for keeping the pathology of apocalyptic alive in Western and world consciousness.
The outcome of continuing human embrace of apocalyptic mythology? The apocalyptic millennial scholars- Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History), Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence), Richard Landes (Heaven On Earth), David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich)- have all warned us, in their research, of the destructive power of apocalyptic millennial ideas to incite and validate mass-death movements. They detail how apocalyptic millennial ideas/themes inflamed the mass-death movements of Marxism and Nazism, and now energize environmental alarmism crusades, and to my point- notably climate alarmism.
I tackle such ideas repeatedly- in both their religious embodiments and “secular” versions- because I lean toward the conviction that thorough problem-solving should include all the root causal factors in any issue of concern. Much like the military commentators of past years noting that the war on terror should involve more than just the direct military action against extremist groups like ISIS. It should also involve tackling the core ideas (the bad religious or ideological ideas) that drive historically repeating eruptions of such extremism.
Apocalyptic mythology continues to be the great curse/pathology that darkens human narratives and consciousness. It continues to be “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”). The outcomes of apocalyptic belief in human society have been horrific because apocalyptic panic-mongering incites and promotes the following impulses and responses:
(1) It incites exaggerated fear and the survival impulse in populations. It then (2) renders people susceptible to alarmist salvation schemes like decarbonization. It (3) arouses the tribal impulse and the associated felt need to heroically engage a righteous battle of good against evil. Apocalyptic mythology also (4) demands that people violently purge some threat to life, in order to “save the world”, or to restore some lost paradise. Add to these, the felt need to embrace “suffering as redemptive”, to embrace the “sacrifice” of abandoning the good life and returning to the “morally superior simple lifestyle”, which is a return to primitivism. (The re-embrace of primitivism relates to the “noble savage” myth- still dominant in academia- that humans were stronger, more pure in the primitive past before “humanity degenerated in decadent civilization”).
Agreeing with Arthur Mendel, there are few things more destructive to human societies than apocalyptic. And Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth has been the single most influential belief that has kept apocalyptic alive in Western narratives and consciousness.
Fortunately, we have the “diamond” insight of Historical Jesus that overturns entirely Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth. Historical Jesus (a person opposite to the Christian “Jesus Christ”) said that we should not engage retaliatory behavior (i.e. no more “eye for eye”) but instead we should “love our enemies” because this is what God does. God does not retaliate but instead God loves God’s enemies and this is evident in that God sends the good gifts of life- sun and rain- to all alike, to both good and bad people (see both the Luke 6:27-36 and Matthew 5:38-48 sections). As James Robinson said, Jesus introduced the “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”.
My concluding point from the Historical Jesus material above- If God is non-retaliatory, as Jesus claimed, then God will not engage the ultimate act of retaliation that is the apocalyptic destruction of the world (to punish God’s enemies- i.e. sinful humanity). There will be no apocalypse as in Revelation. God is not an apocalyptic deity. And hence, Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet.
Getting the core message of Historical Jesus right, notably as it contrasts with Paul’s Christ myth- this is critical to overturning the central myth that has kept destructive apocalyptic mythology alive in Western narratives and consciousness- again, Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth. From the very heart of our meta-narratives, both religious and “secular” (i.e. Declinism), apocalyptic has wreaked immense damage in human lives and societies. Once again, I remind you of the research of the apocalyptic millennial scholars, listed above, on how apocalyptic played a role in the mass-death movements of the past century and is still actively playing a role in environmental alarmism today.
Some good sources for understanding the state of the world, prominent social trends, and other things in our world today. These sources are repeatedly posted on this site. They provide good evidence to inform and shape our worldviews. Wendell Krossa
(1) The dominance of Declinism ideology in today’s main public narratives- both religious and “secular” narratives (i.e. “the world becoming worse”, life declining toward apocalyptic ending). See “The Idea of Decline in Western History” by Arthur Herman.
(2) The critical importance of “the individual rights and freedoms” approach to organizing human societies. See Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, and Arthur Herman’s “The Cave and the Light”. (Affirming the protection of individual rights/freedoms is important to protect against collectivist totalitarianism.)
(3) Insight on Woke Progressive insanity- “War on the West” by Douglas Murray, “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter.
(4) Evidence on the actual trajectory of life, the “true state of the world”. See again the research of people like Julian Simon, Greg Easterbrook, Bjorn Lomborg, Matt Ridley, Indur Goklany, Ronald Bailey, Desrochers and Szurmak, Hans Gosling, Marion Tupy and Ronald Bailey, among others. The data from these sources is among the best for shaping overall worldviews, for liberating consciousness from anxiety and despair over life, and for fortifying our spirits with the motivating potency of evidence-based optimism.
And others…
This from Glen Greenwald in his Dec.31, 2022 newsletter titled “Democrats Abandon Free Speech”
“We begin this episode with an examination of how free speech has fallen from the place it had always occupied in U.S. history, a universally held value, to one that half the country now aggressively rejects. We will then speak with the independent journalist at the heart of one of this year’s most important stories, Matt Taibbi, and we will conclude the program with a specific look at a glaring and common conflict of interest and how a major journalistic outlet has been covering what it incessantly claims is Twitter’s imminent downfall….
“During… past episodes, a common theme emerged. We are immersed in one of the most radical changes in American political life in decades, if not longer. Namely, one of the most significant and powerful factions in the United States, the Democratic Party and the left-liberals who support it, the faction that dominates Washington, Hollywood, media, academia and increasingly the largest sectors of corporate power, simply no longer believes in free speech, either as a societal value or even as a constitutional doctrine.
“So many of our most recent intense political controversies are driven by their central degradation. It is the most significant dynamic driving so many of our most vitriolic debates. That is certainly what explains, for instance, the deranged, intense rage among liberal media employees over Elon Musk’s vow to restore just a modicum of greater political free expression to Twitter, and even more so, their unified indignation over the reporting done by the independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, in which, whatever else you think of them, they did what journalists are supposed to do: they brought transparency to one of the nation’s most powerful corporations by shining light on the internal censorship regime that had governed Twitter until very recently.
“Americans disagreeing with one another is nothing new. This country has always been composed of a politically polarized citizenry. That is likely an inevitable by-product of creating a democratic republic that guarantees core civil liberties by giving millions of people, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions, the freedom to express themselves, to organize, to petition their government for redress. You’re basically ensuring intense pluralism rather than uniformity of thought. The more authoritarian a society is, the more conformity there will be. Conversely, the freer it is, the more conflict of ideas and beliefs one will encounter. That’s normal and healthy to be expected. Indeed, that is the aspirational design of the United States….”
“Highly illiberal” liberalism
It is more than perplexing that the side of society- i.e. Western liberalism, the “left”- that we once associated with the ideals of inclusion, freedom, equality… has today become increasingly “illiberal” (leftist Jimmy Dore’ conclusion), even authoritarian/totalitarian. But maybe we should not be surprised given the inevitable totalitarian outcomes of when societies embrace collectivist movements.
When societies position some collective in a dominant status over individual freedom and rights, then individuals become subjected to the collective that is of necessity run by “enlightened elites” that claim to know what is best for all others. And the collectivist elites, lacking common sense self-awareness of the danger of what they are doing (centralizing power), and viewing themselves as more enlightened than average folks, have repeatedly chosen to use state force to coerce all others to submit to their policies under threat of censorship, cancelling/banning, criminalizing, and even full-on destroying dissenters to the dominant collective narrative and policies. Collectivist regimes have all descended into such totalitarian excess and subsequently destroyed economies and societies as we saw in Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Zimbabwe, more recently Venezuela, and other socialist countries.
Protecting individual rights and freedoms as the paramount organizing principle of human society, is the best protection against repeatedly resurging collectivist totalitarianism. Dispersing power amongst competing individuals best prevents the centralizing of power in collectivist elites, and best protects against the inevitable totalitarian control that results. Hence, we do well to advocate for and to protect the separation of government power and institutions, to affirm the primary role of government in protecting individual rights and freedoms (political elites truly “serving the people”, not lording over them), and to affirm systems of law that give primacy to individual property rights, individual choices/self-determination, and contracts between free and mutually agreeing individuals.
Affirming the individual as primary does not mean, as socialists claim, affirming selfishness and greed as paramount values in our societies. Embracing the individual approach to organizing societies, does not mean neglecting the “greater or common good”. It means that support of the common good should be more a voluntarily-embraced duty and not state-coerced. And yes, we all agree to some element of the “social contract” in the form of states taking some of our income to support needy people in our societies, to pay for shared infrastructure, and so on. The battles between left and right are usually over how big that state portion of redistribution should be (see William Bernstein’s “Birth of Plenty” for some interesting comment on this tug of war over the size of government as represented in percentage of GDP).
Posts from discussion group… Wendell Krossa
“___, just to continue our discussion on collectivism and the individual model from yesterday… some important distinctions…
“With the individual approach to organizing human society, individual rights and freedoms are protected as primary- things like private property and private contracts between people. Along with the separation of state institutions- independent judiciary, administrative and representative bodies- you get distribution of power among competing bodies and individuals. That is protection against totalitarianism. And individuals are free to contribute voluntarily to collective needs and so on, to contribute to common or greater good issues as they freely choose, or not.
“And yes, we all support the “social contract” part of liberal democracy where the state takes some of our income in taxes to help needy people and to pay for shared infrastructure and what not.
“The difference with Marxist collectivism was that the state was supreme over individuals, and some powerholding elite of enlightened people (enlightened vanguards) ran the collectives. They became what we have often been warned about- “the most dangerous people who believe they know what is right for all others”. And in that collectivism, private property was banned as an evil (it is the product of human greed, selfishness). Much like the WEF (World Economic Forum) trying to push the “great reset”, where “we will own nothing and we will be happy”.
“In such collectivism the individual is subject to the state. This goes back through Marx to Hegel who said the state would substitute for deity as the representative of the good of the society and all citizens would be subject to that state. Marx took that up and ran with it.
“Those approaches centralized power in the state elites, along with centralized control of resources that ignored things like market price signals for resources, and the result was environmental disaster, resource disaster, and the disaster of millions of deaths.
“Add that the controlling elites banned and criminalized all dissent from what they viewed as the “greater good… common good”, something that they would define for all others and that greater/common good turned out to be very much their interests.
“The concern today with Woke Progressivism (notably, the liberal left in US, much of the Democratic side) is that it has very much swung in the direction of resurging Marxism and a form of collectivism that censors all disagreeing opinion, and bans, cancels, criminalizes differing others (Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, trying to criminalize skeptical climate science back in 2016).” Wendell Krossa
And further…
“As Bernstein noted in The Birth of Plenty- there is an ongoing battle between the left and right over how big the state should be in our democracies. Should it exist at 20% of GDP, or 30%, or 40%? We see the size of the bureaucratic state in its percent of GDP. The state embodies the elements of regulatory burden and tax burden- and these burdens are about state intervention and control that is counter to individual interests and freedoms. State regulation and taxation (while useful in limited amounts) is a direct threat to personal freedom.
“Bernstein’s point was that if state were too big it then crushes the productive, creative sector of free individuals. Worse case scenario- we saw bloated state in Greece in its collapse under the burden of a state that gave everyone everything till the productive sector collapsed.
“But if the state is too small and not delivering enough to citizens then there is the threat of social upheaval. But does such threat exist because of the development of a “nanny state” mentality among the population- i.e. people expecting government to give them everything, to look after them. Hayek warned of the development of such a mentality that weakened the populations of states, making people dependent on their state. Losing their self-determination and hence full freedom. And of course, we get it that there are numbers of people who simply cannot support themselves and need assistance via government agencies.
“Interesting that Milton Freidman estimated that the best size of government (i.e. doing the most good for the most people) would be around 15%- that included local, state, and federal government”. Wendell Krossa
From Bryan Passifiume Dec. 23, 2022, “What the ‘Twitter Files’ reveal about the platform’s relationship with the FBI”
“Documents have also unveiled Twitter’s role in furthering the U.S. Military’s foreign propaganda operations”
Here is the critical stuff from this article on how the FBI censored the Hunter Biden story just before the 2020 election and shifted that election in favor of Biden. Subsequent polls showed that millions would not have voted for Biden if they knew about the laptop story. That would have changed the election outcome. This is corruption of a democracy and no wonder the FBI and mainstream media are trying to smear and discredit Shellenberger, Taibbi, Weiss, all liberal Democrats… with claims that they are “right wing…” The mainstream media helped with the censorship and has now also joined the crusade to smear and discredit these reporters.
Quoting this section from the full article at link above…
“On Monday, writer Michael Shellenberger added to Taibbi’s reporting on Twitter and Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
“Earlier Twitter Files releases documented active censorship of even mere mentions of the bombshell Oct. 14 2020 New York Post story.
“This week, Shellenberger detailed efforts by the intelligence community’s efforts to discredit reporting on Hunter’s foreign business affairs, before and after the story broke.
“On Oct 13, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sent a number of documents to Yoel Roth, Shellenberger alleges.
““The next day, October 14, 2020, the New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate,” he Tweeted.
““Within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.”
“Text from Roth’s Dec. 2020 sworn declaration reported “regular meetings” with intelligence officials describing a “hack-and-leak operation” by state actors targeting the 2020 presidential election.
““I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter,” Roth said.
““I also learned in these meetings that there were rumours that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”
“A video clip of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggest that platform was approached as well.
“While popular narrative suggests the Hunter Biden leaks were misinformation perpetrated out of Moscow, screenshots suggest Twitter execs told the FBI that concerning activity from Russian accounts were few and far between.
“Requests by Special Agent Chan to review mainstream news articles alleging foreign election meddling likewise came up empty, with Roth likening it to a “small-scale domestic troll effort,” and “not a significant bot or foreign angle.”
“Twitter pushed back against some of the requests, with the FBI repeatedly requesting information such as IP addresses that company officials had clearly stated wouldn’t be released without a court order.
“In July 2020, Chan proposed granting temporary top-secret clearance to Twitter executives in order to share possible threats to that fall’s election.
“As well, Shellenberger reported there were so many former FBI employees working for Twitter — including former company lawyer Jim Baker — that they “created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.”” And more….
Continuing site project: Provide the tools or “swords” to fight/slay the monsters of life, Wendell Krossa
(Yes, I am playing with Joseph Campbell’s framework on the “Hero’s journey or quest”. Meaning- I affirm the argument that we all live fundamentally by story, more than by scientific fact alone. And certainly, make sure that your story is well-informed by good scientific evidence.)
Here are three contemporary monsters to confront, fight, and conquer…
(1) Metaphysical monsters- the gods and bad mythical/religious ideas that incite fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, despair, and violence.
The weapon to slay/conquer these monsters? Offer better, more humane alternative ideas/themes to define ultimate realities, to fully humanize greater realities. Why engage speculation on the metaphysical? Because bad ideas have dominated human speculation on the “spiritual” for millennia, so at a minimum, offer better, more humane alternatives. Speculation on the metaphysical is not going away. See my essay “Old narrative themes, better alternatives” (also listed below as “Liberation into No conditions love”).
(2) Physical monsters (this-world monsters) like climate alarmism and its apocalypse myth (the incessant promotion of climate apocalypse scenarios- i.e. “end of world… final tipping point…”).
Weapon to slay this monster? Offer people the good research of climate physicists on the science of CO2- i.e. its warming effect and its very limited impact on climate change. See, for example, the good reports on the “Sun-climate effect: Winter gatekeeper hypothesis”.
(3) Declinism monster: This 19th Century ideology now dominates world consciousness (e.g. YouGov survey showing that 58% of the world population believe the “world is getting worse”). Declinism dominates the climate alarmism movement/narrative.
Weapon to conquer? Offer people the evidence on the main indicators of the true state of life on Earth and evidence on the long-term trajectory of life. This evidence potently slays the Declinism monster. Life/world is not getting worse but is improving over the long term. Again, good sources on this evidence include Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, among many others. (Yes, its now dated, but the principles set forth by Simon are timeless.)
Psychologist/psychotherapists like Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo show the damaging impacts of monsters on human consciousness, human life, and overall society. The monsters listed above darken consciousness, enslave minds, and deform personality with fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, and despair/depression.
Notably, fear undermines freedom in life.
How so? Fear mentally and emotionally enslaves people and that directly undermines their freedom. Yes. You first terrorize populations with apocalyptic scenarios, and then you tell people that you know how to bring them to salvation (you- the “enlightened elite” who claim to know what is best for all others). Your salvation scheme involves you taking control over other’s lives, in onerous detail, and telling them just what they can or can’t do in order to “save the world” that you have falsely claimed is about to end. Check this link below on what such eco-dictatorship involves…
The monsters listed above are based on mythical ideas that have no basis in reality. The pathological ideas that make up monsters are the creation of religious imaginations and continue to dominate religious traditions. Non-religious folk have embraced the very same monstrous mythical ideas to shape their “secular” belief systems. Such ideas incite fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, and cause fatalism/resignation among people. The life-deforming outcomes of such monstrous ideas include self-destruction as in people frightened by apocalyptic climate scenarios and subsequently refusing to have children, or scared populations embracing policies that lead to a retreat to low-consumption primitivism. Or the embrace of society-destroying salvationism schemes like decarbonization. That’s the biggie that will harm everyone.
Cautionary Principle? Wendell Krossa
Many today (notably, politicians on the Right) take the position of “Slow down… But yes, your overall alarmism narrative is right…”
There is a lot of cautionary public chatter that we should not rush the transition to renewables as battery storage is not yet up to snuff, and electrical grids are subject to destabilization with intermittent solar and wind, etc. But too much of the cautionary pushback against the rushed transition to renewables then usually concedes with a wimpy, kowtowing affirmation (my evaluation) of the basic climate alarmism narrative that yes, there is a “climate crisis” that we must respond to. Yes, we must eventually transition away from fossil fuels. Just slow things down a bit, eh.
Insert note: Certainly, go ahead and develop renewables if you wish but do not do so based on an unscientific narrative that rising CO2 and more warming is a threat to life. And don’t do it based on public dime. Use your own private funds and don’t burden the public with that extra expense. People are struggling to pay for other more important things in their lives.
Continuing…
Heeding the advice of a friend to “not beat around the bush”… No, we don’t need to do a transition to renewables at all, because the basic assumptions of the climate alarmist narrative are wrong. They are not proven “consensus science”.
The dominant assumptions of climate alarmism? That (1) CO2 is “mainly responsible for climate change”, and that (2) as CO2 rises climate change is becoming “catastrophic” with worsening storms, heatwaves, droughts, floods, sea level rise, species holocaust, human suffering, etc. But these media catastrophe memes are not true. Even the IPCC acknowledges the unsettled science (uncertainty) and affirms there is no clear evidence such things as extreme weather events are becoming worse.
And then there is the assumption that, if we pass another 1.5-2.0 degrees C of warming, then we are entering the catastrophe zone, the “tipping point” into the final apocalypse. No. That is simply not true. For most of the history of life, average world temperatures were 3-6 degrees C higher than today’s 14.5 degrees C (“ice-house” conditions) and that past paleoclimate era (i.e. the Phanerozoic era) life emerged, developed, and flourished under those much warmer temperatures. There was no climate crisis.
Most critical to note is that during those much warmer temperatures, tropical average temperatures remained stable, only fluctuating a few degrees on average. That “equable climate” issue undermines the claim of climate alarmists that more warming will result in a “world on fire”. No, the extra warming energy is carried from the tropical regions to the colder polar regions by “meridional transport” (“Sun-climate effect: Winter gatekeeper hypothesis” reports). That heat energy then warms the colder regions more than the already warm areas of Earth. And that “evens out” climate across the world. The warming of cold regions consequently means extended habitats for many more diverse life forms, both plant and animal. That is beneficial to all life.
(Insert note: The fact that for hundreds of millions of years tropical temperatures have remained stable within a range that is beneficial to life- even when CO2 was in the multiple-thousands of ppm and average temperatures were 3-6 degrees C warmer and even up to 10 degrees C higher than today- this points to the fact that negative feedbacks kick in to keep the tropics from overheating.)
Warming the colder regions of Earth also means extended agricultural lands and lengthened crop seasons, all good for humanity.
The crusade to transition away from fossil fuels is based on a wrong narrative regarding CO2 and warming. So yes again, develop alternatives if you wish but not based on wrong assumptions about fossil fuels and emissions- i.e. the false narrative that CO2 is a pollutant and a threat to life (“CO2 is the main cause of warming and warming is becoming catastrophic”). And do not push renewables on the public using public money, which burdens average taxpayers.
My repeated conclusion still stands: There is no fundamentally sound scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
And once again, going to the roots of contemporary bad ideas, in both religious and “secular/ideological” systems of belief
A most stunning contradiction at the heart of Christianity… The central message of Historical Jesus contrasted with Paul’s Christ myth (see full presentation in essay “The Christian Contradiction”), Wendell Krossa
The contradiction has to do with the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that people have embraced across history.
Historical examples: The Greeks tried to create their vision of the perfect society based on their beliefs in the “invisible Ideas/Ideals” (the “Eternal Forms”).
The Hebrews based all the details of their lives on what they believed to be the word, law, or will of their God. See the Old Testament books, notably, the plans for the portable Temple in Exodus, to be built according to the divinely revealed model.
And then, the Balinese shaped their villages and even their houses according to what they believed to be the divine pattern (field research of anthropologist Clifford Geertz).
Now watch how Historical Jesus used this behavior based on similar belief pattern. (Historical Jesus? Yes, the person who is entirely opposite to Paul’s Christian Christ)
The core theme/message of Historical Jesus: Matthew 5:38-48 and Luke 6: 27-36. I argue this is his core message based on “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research (James Robinson, John Kloppenborg, Stephen Patterson, etc.).
Here is a paraphrased summary of the above New Testament sections: “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”.
In the above message, Historical Jesus used the “behavior based on similar belief” coupling to reject retaliatory behavior (“eye for eye”), and to reject the retaliatory theology behind retaliatory justice. He offered, instead, a nonretaliatory ethic based on a “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson). Jesus rejected retaliation toward offenders (i.e. eye for eye justice) and urged instead, “Love your enemies… because God does”. He offered a non-retaliatory ethic based on a similar non-retaliatory theology. A behavior based on a similar belief.
Over two decades later (circa 50s CE), Paul confronted that core theme/message of Jesus and outrightly rejected the stunning new theology of Jesus. Paul then retreated to the primitive pathology of a retaliatory God and created his Christianity based on that pathology of ultimate retaliation. This is the greatest contradiction in religious history, and it is at the heart of Christianity.
Note in Romans 12:17-20 how Paul directly confronted the “behavior based on belief” pattern used by Jesus but then replaced the new theology of Jesus with the old primitive theology of punitive, retaliatory God. There is no “love your enemy” God in Paul’s theology.
Paul initially appears to agree with Jesus in urging people to reject eye for eye response to offenders. He says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil… Do not take revenge…”. But instead of basing this behavior on a similar belief in a non-retaliatory deity, as Jesus did, Paul confusingly bases his ethic/behavior on the very opposite belief/theology. He says, “Don’t retaliate, but leave room for God’s wrath… (he then quotes an Old Testament verse) ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord’”.
To make clear that Paul believed in a retaliatory God, note that he had earlier in Romans affirmed the retaliatory wrath of God repeatedly. Paul’s God was entirely contrary to the God of Jesus.
Examples:
Romans Ch 1: 18 “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven…
Ch.2:5-8 “you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath… God will repay each person according to what they have done… for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger…
Ch.9:22 “What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath-prepared for destruction?”
And then Paul adds in the Romans 12 section above, that by not taking revenge and leaving vengeance to God, “You will heap burning coals on (your offender’s) head”. Which is to say, you will ensure your enemy’s punishment by a wrathful, retaliatory God. So even the ethic of Paul, contrary to Jesus, is retaliatory in its intention. It is entirely opposite to what Jesus advocated.
Paul’s gospel- his Christ myth- embodies the threat of ultimate divine retaliation in apocalypse and hell mythology (e.g. Thessalonians- “Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in blazing fire… to punish and destroy those who do not obey (my Christ gospel)”.
Paul’s entire salvation gospel- his Christian religion that we inherited in Western civilization- is based on a fundamental rejection of what Jesus taught. Paul’s Christ gospel is based on a retreat to primitive retaliatory, punitive deity, along with the demanded blood sacrifice to appease that threatening deity (note his repeated “wrath of God” theme in Romans, wrath that appeased only by the blood sacrifice of Jesus’ death). Paul’s entire salvation religion is based on the threat of retaliation, and the need to appease a retaliatory God who threatens punishment and destruction. Paul’s Christian gospel is all about the need to make a blood sacrifice to appease the threatening, retaliatory deity.
Paul’s retaliatory Christ, his retaliation theology, has been one of the greatest influences on Western consciousness for the past two millennia, shaping Western ethics and justice systems as retaliatory justice approaches (i.e. eye for eye justice, as in pain for pain, punishment for punishment). His retaliatory Christ has been “the most influential myth in all history” that has kept the threat of retaliatory deity alive in Western consciousness and society. The threat of divine retaliation is most notable today in the never-ending threat of apocalypse (see the New Testament book of Revelation for detail).
How entirely different things could have been if the core teaching of Jesus had been given prominence in Western religion instead of that core message being buried under Paul’s contrary gospel that dominates the New Testament. Both Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy stated this, i.e. the “diamonds/pearls of Jesus’ teaching that are buried in the dung/muck of Paul’s retaliatory gospel”. Instead of Jesus’ central message of non-retaliatory God, we received Paul’s retaliatory Christ myth. We received Christ-ianity, not Jesus-ianity. These two are entirely opposite messages/belief systems with opposite impacts on human behavior.
Jesus’ core theme of non-retaliatory behavior and belief inspires our better impulses to forgiveness, inclusion, unconditional love, while Paul’s opposite message of ultimate divine retaliation incites and validates our worst impulses to punitive retaliation, exclusion, and demand for salvation pre-conditions before love can be bestowed.
Points re-affirmed:
The Christ myth of Paul is most responsible for keeping the pathology of apocalyptic alive in Western and world consciousness. The outcome? The apocalyptic millennial scholars Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, Richard Landes, and David Redles, all noting the outcome of apocalyptic millennial themes inspiring the mass-death movements of Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism.
Further, the core message of Jesus had stated that God was unconditional reality. Jesus had stated that no conditions were needed to be fully forgiven, to be accepted fully, and loved fully by God. None. No sacrifice or payment was demanded by an unconditional God. This was the most liberating, humanizing insight ever offered. And it was buried in the context of Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth- i.e. that the cosmic sacrifice of the godman Jesus Christ had to be made to pay for all sin before God would forgive, accept, and love.
No religion has ever communicated the wonder of Jesus’ message that God is an unconditional reality. All religion buries that liberating insight under endless religious conditions.
The full central statement/message 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 people 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.)
Some New Year’s spirit: Do you want to spark a little burst of light into darkness? And contribute to an upward spiral toward better outcomes? Find someone and tell them what a good person they are and that they are appreciated. It may help to specify some positive trait that they exhibit.
Its not about ignoring the imperfections that we all suffer throughout our lives, but just an affirmation to one another of our fundamental human spirit, our true selves as fundamentally good. That statement to someone will make their day.
I have also witnessed the persistent affirmation of fundamental goodness effecting a striking transformation in a person over the longer term. The affirmation of fundamental goodness was directed to one dark, depressive person and was initially met with “No. I am not good”. But persistence in the affirmation eventually re-oriented that person toward a more positive, sunny disposition. It took a couple of years, but the transformation was notable. Others respond more immediately.
Its not really about trying to change others, but just reinforcing a basic truth about being human, about possessing the common human spirit and consciousness. As Bob Brinsmead says, “There are no really bad people. Just people embracing bad ideas and acting badly”. Affirming their fundamental goodness as human beings can re-energize in others their basic impulse and struggle to become better overall.
Affirming goodness in others also does us a world of good. It enhances our own “hero’s journey”. It can be part of our project to break retaliatory cycles (back and forth retributive responses- hurt for hurt, punishment for pain caused, humiliation for humiliation, etc.), retaliatory cycles that contribute to individuals or groups spiralling downward and degenerating into more darkening of consciousness and negative outcomes in societies. Wendell Krossa
What do you think it does to human minds, especially young minds still lacking critical discernment skills that come with life experience and ongoing education, when you batter them incessantly with apocalyptic scenarios of looming catastrophe and the end of the world? Some have rightly called today’s hysterical eco-alarmism “criminal”. It is traumatizing a generation of children now afraid to grow to adulthood. Climate alarmism has gone beyond “madness of crowds” to sheer mass insanity. And the salvation scheme? The suicide of modern economies via decarbonization. Lunacy.
My response: Offer people the alternatives of good skeptical science as in Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, the work of climate skeptics, climate physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and many others. Teach your children well- let them know there is an entirely different narrative of life as gradually improving over the long term, not declining toward disaster and ending. Help them fight the apocalyptic alarmism monster with the sword of evidence-based hope.
Dr Judith Curry, December 13, 2002, “Misperception and amplification of climate risk”
““Congratulations to all the proselytizers of climate doom, you have finally demonstrated an actual adverse impact of climate change that is actually caused by humans – psychological distress. This psychological distress is directly caused by you: the mistaken, irrational, politically motivated people that have created effective propaganda that is creating negative stress reactions particularly among children who have yet to develop a clear sense of self and lack a context for being able to filter the BS.”
“Climate activists, the media, and even scientists seized on the “extreme weather event caused by climate change” narrative as being the ideal vehicle for ramping up the alarm about human-caused global warming.
“‘Every extreme weather event is now attributed to global warming, even extreme cold outbreaks and heavy snow. Scientists who should know better just can’t resist the opportunities for media attention and enthusiastically place blame on human-caused global warming. In spite of the fact that IPCC assessment reports find very little in the way of any contribution of human-caused global warming to extreme weather events.
“‘… if you look back into paleoclimate record, you will find much worse weather and climate extremes. (eg how the ice age ended due to natural warming). No matter – never let the historical and paleoclimate data records get in the way of an alarming story that attributes the most recent disaster to fossil fuel emissions, and so amping up the pressure to eliminate fossil fuel emissions.
“‘In terms of risk perception, this amplified narrative of alarm emphasizes that these ‘climate change’ catastrophes are imposed on society by villainous fossil fuel companies.
“‘And now for the final element of manipulating risk perception: asymmetric distribution of risks, whereby children and under-developed countries are at greatest risk. Serious virtue signalling tells us we need to eliminate fossil fuel emissions for the sake of the children and the underdeveloped countries. Well, children in affluent countries are at far less risk than their great-great grandparents (not to mention children in underdeveloped countries) owing to the presence of fossil fuels in their lives that provide secure structures for their homes and schools with central heating and air conditioning, not to mention abundant electricity and also fertilizer to ensure their food supply.
“‘I can only conclude that the climate catastrophists focused on elimination of fossil fuels above all else are exploiting and damaging children and underdeveloped countries as part of their political objectives to prioritizing elimination of fossil fuels above all else. If children and developing countries are collateral damage, then so be it (oops they seem to have forgotten their original virtue signalling of eliminating fossil fuels for the sake of the children and the underdeveloped countries).’”
Potent Quotes:
“The most dangerous people in human society are those people, often well-intentioned, who believe that they know what is best for all others.” (author unknown)
“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”, C. S. Lewis.
“Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of God.” (author unknown)
“I pledge undying hostility to everything that enslaves the human mind.” (author unknown)
“Sick Gods make for sick people… sick Gods make people sick… individuals and communities of humans create themselves in the images of their gods. Sick Gods provide sick models which produce sick persons and sick communities”, psychologist Harold Ellens (further detail below).
Note “The Daily Skeptic” article further below on the false claim that weather/climate-related disasters have increased over past decades, with more people dying. To the contrary, weather-related deaths have decreased to one-twentieth of what they were two decades ago, and overall deaths from natural disasters have decreased 96% from a century ago…
Darkness shadowing across the human family, Wendell Krossa
Societies across the world have been endlessly battered with irrational and irresponsible climate alarmism over past decades. Add to that hysterical panic-mongering over every twitch in weather, the media obsession with “Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis” (David Altheide). Then further add to the mix, the intense tribalism between opposing ideological divides- Left and Right- with accompanying hatred, vilification of differing others, and notably today, the creeping totalitarianism from Woke Progressive censorship, banning, and cancelling in public forums. These public maladies contribute to the widespread fear and depression that is “the number one illness” on the planet, with growing despair/fatalism even noted among a rising generation of children that have been traumatized by the endless eco-terrorizing and other pathological hysterias coming from the adult population.
Note, for example, https://judithcurry.com/2022/12/13/misperception-and-amplification-of-climate-risk/
Evidence-based hope for the New Year
Ah, for more people to take up the project to advocate for the evidence-based hope that researchers like Julian Simon offered in his “Ultimate Resource”, my candidate for “the single best book ever written”. Many other researchers followed with similar volumes of amassed data sources on the main indicators of life, evidence on basic indicators (i.e. forests, land species, agricultural land, ocean species, etc.) that show us the “true state of life on Earth”. Their conclusion- While there are still problems everywhere that need attention and solutions, we (humanity) have done very well in solving problems and life over the long-term has been improving. And evidence affirms that this trajectory of improvement will continue into an ever-better future for all.
Other sources of evidence-based hope: Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment on the Earth”, Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”, Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”, Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”, Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”, Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness”, Szurmak and Desrochers’ “Population Bombed” (excellent follow-up volume to Simon’s Ultimate Resource), Tupy and Bailey’s “Ten Global Trends”, James Payne’s “History of Force”, Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, and more…
Build this amassed data on hope into your personal narrative and watch despair/depression lift just as Simon said his “clinical depression” left and never returned. He said this happened after he researched for himself the evidence on the true state of life. He discovered that life was not declining toward disaster and ending as environmental alarmists claimed, but rather, life overall was improving toward a better future. (Note: This is not to claim that all depression can be alleviated by countering alarmist narratives, but just to suggest that public alarmism- i.e. obessive apocalyptic panic-mongering- may be a contributing factor to much general depression and affected people may benefit from a cognitive therapy response that transforms narratives and orients thinking away from apocalyptic despair and toward hope in the improving trajectory of life. Facts/truth does matter.)
From Bella d’Albrere of the “Specator”, Dec. 21, 2022- “Museums of vandalism, doomsayers, and climate catastrophe” at…
d’Albrere notes the climate apocalypse artwork that is posted in public places and the related fear-mongering about climate change…
She says, “(the artwork was) posted on social media to specifically target younger people, most of whom already believe this nonsense anyway. With propaganda like this, it is no wonder that ‘eco-anxiety’ is a real thing among young people across the West. In a 2021 global study of 10,000 children across ten countries including Australia, researchers found that 59 per cent of respondents were worried about climate change, and that more than 50 per cent that they felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. The report also revealed that this anxiety was negatively impacting their daily lives, with 75 per cent claiming that they are frightened of the future…”
Questions
Many others are asking similar questions that this site tries to probe. Questions like: Why have so many embraced the climate alarm crusade and its society-destroying decarbonization policies that are on a trajectory toward the “suicide of civilization” and a return to primitivism?
In response to the irrationality of “madness of crowds” crusades like climate alarmism, this site regularly reposts the core myths that drive such apocalyptic cults (yes, the climate alarmism movement is a “profoundly religious” crusade). The destructive consequences of climate apocalyptic hysteria are mounting daily, notably in Europe and other places that are embracing the insanity of decarbonization.
“Blaspheme and be free”. Embracing a healthy dose of blasphemy is part of the point in my article below on “Monster Gods”. Many religious folks will recoil instinctively at the suggestion that their God beliefs may be monstrous deformities. That is just too blasphemous a thought to even consider. But read on to see the point that we should distinguish and contrast inhumane God beliefs with more humane God theories, notably God as “no conditions” reality (i.e. the “unconditional grace” in Harold Ellens’ book).
Sometimes a straightforward engagement of what religious people call “blasphemy” is necessary to break the enslaving chains of fear in one’s mind, fear long ingrained by religious threats that any questioning of religious belief or religious holy books would bring down the wrath of God upon one. An unconditionally loving God poses no threat to anyone.
But first, before tackling Monster God myths…
“Hear, hear” (think, the Royal Announcer who was recently portrayed announcing the royal wedding of Harry and Meghan on their Netflix series).
Let it be proclaimed loudly and clearly that no one denies climate change. Climate is a dynamic, complex system that is always changing and never static in some “optimal state”. We all agree on this, except for some who do believe that climate remains static in some optimal state. And yes, also “Hear, hear”- CO2 has a warming influence. Not in dispute. Never has been.
But after marinating for a few moments on this affirmation that “no one denies climate change”, then, before assuming this is also an affirmation of “human-caused climate change that is becoming a crisis”, note carefully the physics of CO2 as presented by notable climate physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and many others.
The physics of CO2 is the most fundamental, critical evidence to understand in regard to the climate debate. The above physicists tell us that CO2 has reached “saturation” in terms of its warming influence on climate. CO2’s warming influence arises from its ability to absorb and re-emit the infrared radiation that is leaving the Earth and returning to space (all incoming solar radiation changes wavelength and then radiates back out to space). CO2 absorbs some of that outgoing radiation and instantly re-emits it (Jim Steele), scattering about half back downward to contribute in a small way to warming the climate.
But that warming influence of CO2 is now declining. Physicists estimate that if CO2 rises from the current roughly 420 ppm to 800 ppm, that rise would take about 200 years at the current rate of CO2 rise that is 2 ppm per year. That increase to 800 ppm might contribute somewhere from 0.5 to 1.0 degree C more warming, according to many climate physicists. See, for example, https://notrickszone.com/50-papers-low-sensitivity/
I said, “might” contribute more to warming. Because varied other natural factors continue to show stronger correlations to the climate change that we have been observing over past decades and centuries.
Point? CO2 is not the main influence on climate change. It is not the “control knob” for climate change. CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas and its warming influence often gets lost among other more dominant natural factors that influence climate change.
Further, the climate alarm narrative does not tell the public the immense benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere in terms of aerial fertilization that has increased green vegetation across the Earth over past decades by some 15%, that is- adding green vegetation to our Earth in the amount of two times all the vegetation of the entire continental US. That benefit in greening our planet will continue if CO2 rises back to its paleoclimate averages of around the 1000-1500 ppm that plant life prefers for healthy growth. (Paleo-climate referring to the past 500 million years of the Phanerozoic era)
And there was no runaway heating or “climate crisis” during those past eras with much higher levels of CO2. To the contrary, all life thrived.
Also, note that when CO2 was high in the paleo-climate past, average temperatures were often low, and vice versa- when CO2 was low, temperatures were high. Consider this major disconnect between CO2 and climate. Similarly, scientists point out the disconnect found in the Vostok ice cores, a disconnect in terms of the claim of the alarmist narrative that rising CO2 then causes warming.
The Vostok ice cores revealed the patterns of the glaciation/interglacial cycles over the past 400,000 years. That evidence showed that climate first warmed, which then warmed the oceans over subsequent centuries. The warming oceans then outgassed CO2 that caused atmospheric levels of CO2 to rise. The lag between warming climate, warming oceans, and rising CO2 was centuries long. Rising CO2 did not cause warming climate, but followed warming climate. This overturns the climate alarm narrative entirely.
Note also the disconnect between CO2 and warming climate during the Covid lockdowns. Fossil fuel emissions dropped some 7% across the world but CO2 continued to rise as before. What the f___, huh.
Remember also that we are in an era of life with the lowest levels of CO2 and we just missed a real world apocalypse (end of life) some 20,000 years ago when CO2 levels declined to 185 ppm, barely above the 150 ppm at which all plants die. We are still in a “CO2 starvation” era.
And on warming climate…
The 1 degree C warming over the past century has also been hugely beneficial to all life as we are still rising out of the coldest time of our Holocence interglacial- the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715. But we need still more degrees of warming to return to a more optimal, healthy climate for all life. Life prefers 3-6 degrees C more warming that would restore climate to the average temperatures of the Phanerozoic era (past 500 million years) when all life emerged, developed, and flourished. There was no “climate crisis” during that much warmer world (averaging 17-20 degrees C). Our current world with its 14.5 degrees C average temperatures is still an “icehouse world”, barely above the ice-age average temperatures of 12.5 degrees C.
Remember, 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth in our ice-house world. All life suffers more in a cold world. To understand the more normal, optimal world for most of the past history of life, consider that for over 80% of the past 500 million years the entire world was ice-free. That was a normal, healthy world.
And with average temperatures some 3-6 degrees C warmer than today, the already warm areas of Earth (tropics) did not become overheated because tropical temperatures have always “remained remarkably stable” (the “equable climate” issue). Average tropical temperatures only fluctuated by a few degrees. That stability of tropical temperatures affirms the operation of negative feedbacks in climate that have always kept world temperatures stable within a range that is optimal for life.
The extra heat from climate warming does not overheat the already warm areas of Earth (tropics) but that increasing warming energy is carried by atmospheric and oceanic convection currents to the polar regions. So as happens today, the colder polar regions warm more than the tropics due to the “meridional transport” that is the main influence on climate change.
See, for example… https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/21/new-research-supports-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis/ or https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/01/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-i-the-search-for-a-solar-signal/
The warming of Earth’s colder regions results in extended habitats for more diverse life forms. Evidence that tropical climate extended to the polar regions in the past has been noted in the fossils of tropical species of plants and animals that have been found at both poles. More diverse life forms spreading all over Earth would be a benefit, just as the most diversity of life today is found in tropical regions. More warming will also add the benefit of extended agricultural regions for humanity.
A warming Earth is not to be feared as climate would “even out” across the world as cold areas warm more, cold seasons (i.e. winter) warm more, and cold times of day (i.e. night) warm more. With the mild warming of the past century, more lives have been saved (i.e. fewer people are dying from cold) than are lost due to increased warming (i.e. dying from heat). Overall, more warming offers net benefits to all life.
The public has been so traumatized with alarmism over any warming, along with climate alarmism apocalyptic scenarios, that it has become almost impossible to regain some understanding of the immense benefits to life over the past when climate was 3-6 degrees warmer on average than today’s cold world. Its time to end the irrational hysteria over melting ice/glaciers on Earth. Some species will suffer from Arctic/Antarctic warming, others will adapt, and many more will benefit.
Also, more warming means less storminess as we have seen in the decline of tornadoes over past decades. And there has been no notable increase in hurricane numbers or strength. The decline in storminess may in part be attributed to less difference between warm and cold regions (less “steepness” in the temperature gradient between regions).
Add further that with just the mild 1 degree C warming over the past century, there has been a 96% decline in climate- or weather-related deaths.
The above evidence affirms, once again, that there is no rational scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. Such responses are based on the irrational and “profoundly religious” themes of the climate alarmism cult.
Now some comment to counter fear, fear promoted by alarmist ideas and movements. The following material below goes to the very root themes of alarmist narratives across history, to the most foundational of ideas that have caused needless fear in people.
This site repeatedly notes evident cause-effect patterns related to alarmist exaggeration- i.e. that panic-mongering incites the survival impulse in people who then become susceptible to the salvation schemes of alarmists, the irrational salvation schemes that cause immense damage to societies, like the current decarbonization crusade to “save the world” from the falsely imagined threat of CO2/fossil fuels.
A refresher: The core themes of alarmist movements (and related patterns/outcomes) are as follows:
There was a better past, but bad people ruined the original paradise. Consequently, life is now declining toward disaster and ending/apocalypse. Hence, humanity must embrace a salvation plan- i.e. make some sacrifice (give up the good life and embrace suffering). We must also purge the imagined “evil threat to life”. Only then can we restore the lost paradise or install a new utopia.
We have seen these themes and patterns of apocalyptic movements play out repeatedly across past history, and we are watching these primitive themes/patterns playing out once again in climate alarmism and the salvationism of the decarbonization crusade (“save the world”). Wendell Krossa
Sample of “Monster God” quotes from below:
Psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo: “’Cruel God Theology’ is a religiosity built entirely around the assumption or basic belief- and correspondent fear- that God is cruel or even sadistic. This basic belief is not conscious and is also emphatically denied by its bearers… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is the ‘penal satisfaction’ (of Christianity).”
Lotufo adds that Cruel God religion has resulted in “wars, religious oppression, the Crusades, and the Holy Inquisition. In the psychological domain, its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities…. (God) as Monarch and unmerciful Judge, (with his) dominant characteristics exhibited in penal satisfaction doctrine… Anxiety, shame, and neurotic guilt are common consequences… the inhibition of the full development of personality…
“There is in Western world a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God. Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represent God as sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God has only two options: (Use violence to) destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ…
“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…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… it also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality”. Lotufo repeats that he is interested in the effects that certain kinds of beliefs/ideas produce in the human psyche.
Psychologist Harold Ellens: “Sick Gods make for sick people… sick Gods make people sick… individuals and communities of humans create themselves in the images of their gods. Sick Gods provide sick models which produce sick persons and sick communities”…
“If God solves all his ultimate problems by quick resort to ultimate violence, how is it possible that we can expect humans to do significantly differently? Sick Gods make sick people…”
Psychiatrist, clinical psychologist Hector Garcia: “Scripture depicts this god as one who rains fury upon his enemies and slaughters the unfaithful… Extremists, drunk on this vision, steer airplanes into buildings or obliterate themselves in crowded marketplaces. They foment sexual shame and engage in genital mutilation, acid attacks, and so-called honor killings. They start inquisitions and witch hunts, religious wars and religious conquests… They also seek to enforce a prohibition against questioning God…
“This pattern has emerged again and again across religious history as men have summoned divine legitimacy to justify their worst impulses. God himself is frequently portrayed as engaging in violent acts, thus serving to validate the destructive actions of the powerful.”
Note on the triad of features/impulses and related practises that I repeatedly post below: (1) tribal exclusion, (2) alpha domination, and (3) retaliatory punitive destruction. This triad illustrates the worst of the inherited impulses from our animal past. These three are the most primitive impulses that we can embrace, the most inhumane features of life, the most dehumanizing practices that humans engage. Our succumbing to and practise of the above three behaviors, render us petty and subhuman, no matter how we try to validate them- e.g. claiming that punitive eye for eye retaliation is “justice”.
Site project: To go after the greatest monster of all- inhumane deity theories or “Monster Gods”, Wendell Krossa
(Key point: Note below the central discovery/insight that ultimate Reality or deity is “no conditions love” or “unconditional love”. This is the single most profound insight ever made by human minds and it overturns entirely the monster God myths of historical mythologies and religious traditions. Unconditional ultimate reality liberates humanity from primal fears of divine threat that have deformed consciousness, lives, and societies across the millennia.)
Intro
Main point in the comment below: There is a monster darkening the background of human consciousness. It has dominated human narratives and threatened humanity for millennia. “Monster God” beliefs exaggerate normal human fears of disaster, suffering, and death from the natural world (i.e. the belief that there is some punitive Force/Spirit behind life- a deity that punishes people for their sins via natural disaster, disease, and predatory cruelty, whether animal or human). Monster God beliefs add needlessly to human suffering with the excessive burden of mythically-based existential fears (i.e. the fear of after-life judgment, condemnation, exclusion, and destruction in hell).
Further, the “monster gods” of mythology and religion have often incited our worst impulses (inherited animal impulses), too often prompting us to engage inhumane or “monstrous” behavior, behavior that is validated by our beliefs in monster gods.
This comment on the early human creation of deities as monsters is not my perspective alone. See, for example, Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God: How Images of God Shape Belief, Attitude, and Outlook”, Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression”, or Harold Ellens’ (editor) “The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam”. Others have also spoken to the issue of “monster gods” that deform human personality and communities with fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, and depression. Monster gods have also incited tribal violence among people and societies.
Below are some context-setting quotes from the above authors regarding the damaging influence of “monster God” beliefs on human personality, behavior, and societies. Note in these quotes the truth of Bob Brinsmead’s statement that “We become just like the God that we believe in”.
One more before going to the quotes:
My point in these presentations is that the belief in some ultimate threat, divine threat, has long been at the root of human belief systems, and continues today in modern “secular/ideological” belief systems. A comparison of ancient narrative themes with modern narrative themes affirms the continuing presence of such primitive beliefs. Primitive “threat theology” beliefs continue to deform human consciousness, personality, and life with unfounded, mythically-rooted fear.
The relationship- behavior based on similar validating beliefs
The pathological mythology of divine threat agitates/incites the survival impulse in populations which then plays on a web of related elements- i.e. the impulse to tribal dualism (to fight a human enemy that threatens), the impulse to heroically engage a “righteous battle against evil” (again, fighting threatening enemies), the felt need to embrace a salvation scheme (to save ourselves, save our world), the impulse to purge evil from the world (again, to purge one’s threatening enemies), and more.
The continuing sense of ultimate threat in modern ideologies like Declinism and climate alarmism, continues to promote fear, depression, and nihilism, as we see in the self-destructive (i.e. society-destructive) decarbonization crusade.
Consider carefully the point of the psychologists below that the belief in monster gods who employ violence to solve problems, this belief is replicated among believers in such gods who similarly then use violence to solve problems as they consciously or unconsciously replicate the nature and behavior of their gods. We see this across the history of religious violence but also in the destructive outcomes of modern crusades to fight enemies, heroically win battles against evil, to purge some evil threat, and save the world, as in the decarbonization crusade.
It is all the same old pathology, given ever new expressions for the modern era in our ideologies and related belief systems.
If we are ever going to solve the problem of the destructive impacts of alarmist movements, then we need to go to the root ideas/beliefs that continue to energize these ancient and modern movements and make the radical changes at the level of foundational ideas/beliefs, changes that are necessary to defuse the power of destructive ideas like monster god beliefs.
First, psychologist, theologian Harold Ellens (from his other book “Honest Faith for Our Time”)- “All people consciously or unconsciously want to know about God… about God’s nature and behavior… all humans… want a concretized metaphor… (hence, believers filled the nature of God with content such as) God of grace and mercy, but also God as Warrior, and threat and terror…”
Ellens continues, noting that the dominant view of God in world religions is the dualistic theology of a God who believes that he is caught in a great cosmic battle with another god/Satan who tries to “thwart, corrupt, and undo his work”. When this mental perspective of fighting invisible enemies is found in humans, it is called “insanity”. Yet the world religions- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam- hold this view of God as a Warrior deity fighting invisible opposing forces, a God that is “diagnosably ill… insane”, a “monster God”.
(Insert note: Myths of cosmic dualism feed the insanity and destructiveness of human dualisms- i.e. people abandoning the fundamental oneness of the human family, dividing themselves into tribes, and then fighting and destroying their fellow humans as “evil enemies”.)
Ellens elaborates further that a monster God demands absolute conformity from people, conformity to a set of strictly limited beliefs and behaviors, and is “so ticked off at human nature and behavior, human exploration and experimentation that he simply cannot get his head screwed back on right until he has literally killed somebody”.
Ellens offers examples of the irrational rage of a Monster deity- i.e. God drowning the entire human race at the time of Noah, drowning the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, ordering the genocide of the Canaanites during the Hebrew occupation, incinerating Sodom and Gomorrah, and many more.
After detailing many of the God-mandated atrocities noted above, Ellens says that such behavior exhibits “a pattern of consummate narcissism, chronic situation-inappropriateness, sadistic vindictiveness, impulsiveness, and obsessive compulsive disorder, depressive and irrational rage, being out of touch with reality and reacting in ways that are out of proportion to actual events… flagrant psychosis…”
He adds, “Sick Gods make for sick people… sick Gods make people sick… individuals and communities of humans create themselves in the images of their gods. Sick Gods provide sick models which produce sick persons and sick communities… If one’s God is sick, one cannot achieve wellbeing…
He continues, “What about the fact that (the “monster God’s) furor was so intense toward you and me… that he either had to exterminate us or slaughter his son…. He solves all his ultimate impasses with ultimate violence. Don’t you think that is sick? Any God is a monster if he cannot behave at least as well as the average human in his or her better moments would like to behave. Monster gods make monster people….
“The worst of all this, is that religious metaphors that we have been given in the dominant report from the Old Testament about God’s nature and behavior, produce unconscious psychological archetypes in human beings. These get acted out unsuspectingly in behavior that is justified by those metaphors. If God solves all his ultimate problems by quick resort to ultimate violence, how is it possible that we can expect humans to do significantly differently? Sick Gods make sick people…
If we believe in such a God, “Of course it is inevitable that we shall wish, unconsciously or consciously to help him out, to be on his side in the war, to undertake God’s cause against the infidel, to fight the bad guys, to exterminate our enemies, as apparently God tries to do with his enemies…
“It is the claim that the dominant report of God as psychotic, which has always been everywhere afloat, has nothing to do with God at all, but is instead the sick projection of a lot of untutored human imaginations… Such views of God are mere projections of human terrors upon the idealized mental image of the imagined mentor those people thought was God…
Ellens then notes an alternative report on God: “It claims that God is a God of unconditional grace to all humankind”.
Then psychiatrist and clinical psychologist Hector Garcia (Alpha God),
In his first chapter “Enter God the Dominant Ape”, Garcia says the following: “There is another vision of God… The majority of the world’s believers worship a god that is fearsome and male, and his portrayal demands reckoning. Scripture depicts this god as one who rains fury upon his enemies and slaughters the unfaithful… Extremists, drunk on this vision, steer airplanes into buildings or obliterate themselves in crowded marketplaces. They foment sexual shame and engage in genital mutilation, acid attacks, and so-called honor killings. They start inquisitions and witch hunts, religious wars and religious conquests… They also seek to enforce a prohibition against questioning God…
“This is a crucial moment… for us to understand the means by which religion may be used to encourage what is worst- rather than what is best- in human nature…
“(Another) key question becomes, is there something common to the vision of God behind them? (the perpetrators of the kinds of violence and oppression listed above)…
He then says, “I argue here that God was created in the image of man… (and to argue for the need) to study the dominance characteristics portrayed in God… because men of power have historically conflated themselves with God in order to secure more power and have used this power to enact further violence and oppression. This pattern has emerged again and again across religious history as men have summoned divine legitimacy to justify their worst impulses. God himself is frequently portrayed as engaging in violent acts, thus serving to validate the destructive actions of the powerful.
“This is most evident among the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), whose scriptures all too frequently depict a despotic male god… (The Abrahamic God) is by far the most globally dominant…
Then touching base again with evolutionary biology in the mix, Garcia re-affirms that “God is an alpha male, a dominant ape. In other words, depictions of the Abrahamic God… reflect the essential concerns of our primate evolutionary past- namely securing and maintaining power, and using that power to exercise control over… resources… We have projected our own psychology onto our vision of the sacred…
“Human potential is so vast, but we may have limited ourselves by the gods we created.”
Lotufo starts by outlining “Cruel God Christianity… Cruel God Theology” as a “religiosity built entirely around the assumption or basic belief- and correspondent fear- that God is cruel or even sadistic. This basic belief is not conscious and is also emphatically denied by its bearers… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is the ‘penal satisfaction’ (of Christianity).”
He says this Cruel God Theology is opposite to Kind God Theology “with its metaphors of God as good… father/mother… shepherd…and its distinctive doctrine of ‘grace’.”
Lotufo adds that Cruel God religion has resulted in “wars, religious oppression, the Crusades, and the Holy Inquisition. In the psychological domain, its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities…. (God) as Monarch and unmerciful Judge, (with his) dominant characteristics exhibited in penal satisfaction doctrine… Anxiety, shame, and neurotic guilt are common consequences… the inhibition of the full development of personality…
Lotufo then probes how beliefs exert more influence over our lives than just ideas. And our beliefs are not always consciously transparent to us. He further elaborates on how Cruel God beliefs produce negative consequences in “fanaticism and violence or anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…”
He says that our image of God is a basic belief and it is often 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’ as Harold Ellens calls him- such rejection is easily understandable. After all, as Walter Wink puts it, ‘Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion’.
“Ellens proposes a culture reason for the religious motivation to violence. With Freud’s and Jung’s ideas in mind, he suggests that, beyond the individual level, there is in Western world a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God. Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represent God as sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God has 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 and presented 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.”
Quoting Ellens further, “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 behavior”.
Lotufo’s added comment: “Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… it also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality”. Lotufo repeats that he is interested in the effects that certain kinds of beliefs/ideas produce in the human psyche.
Later in his book he says, “The fundamental principle of the God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is an obstacle and inhibitor of the autonomy of man”. Those who claim to be the representatives of this God exhibit a “predominant tendency to control and restrain the behavior of men by invoking the name of the Creator… fear, in particular, is too often behind our ideas about God and religion… fear of religion has broad and often harmful consequences for modern intellectual life”. And more…
My points on the Monster God theories of religious and “secular/ideological” traditions-
(Note: I include reference to the “secular/ideological” versions of threat theology to emphasize that the same basic themes are found in all human belief systems/traditions. In secular/ideological versions the threatening gods are- e.g. “vengeful Gaia, angry Mother Earth/Planet, punitive Universe, payback Karma”, etc. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell again- “The same primitive myths have been embraced all across human history and across all the cultures of the world”.)
Our ancestors projected varied human features onto their deities in their earliest endeavors at anthropomorphizing the invisible forces/spirits/gods that they believed were behind the natural world. That was the expression of their primal impulse to meaning- to define and explain ultimate realities. They projected onto their gods varied inhumane features that turned their gods into threatening monsters, the ultimate embodiments of features/ideals that would then serve to incite and validate their worst impulses to harm others.
And yes, a qualifying acknowledgment in the mix: Our ancestors also projected more humane features onto their gods- i.e. kinder and gentler features like love, mercy, and benevolence/beneficence. But these nicer qualities were often distorted, overwhelmed, and buried by the more prominent inhumane features in the complex of ideas that were used to define their deities. The inhumane features in the mix turned their created gods into monstrous deities.
The inhumane themes that defined early gods, creating monster gods, would include:
(1) Tribal deities who divide, separate, and exclude people (true believers separated from “unbelievers” who are to be eternally excluded, rejected).
(2) Domination of the weaker by the stronger- i.e. gods as lords, kings, beings that embody alpha domination and whose domination is affirmed by the myth of human subservience- i.e. the myth that humans were “created to serve the gods”. Divine domination is exercised via the human representatives of the gods- i.e. via earthly kings and societal leaders, and priesthoods/religious leaders.
(3) Demand for retaliatory justice (i.e. divine demand for violent blood sacrifice/payment, justice as the eye for eye punishment of sin).
(4) Themes of judgment, condemnation, and punitive destruction as in apocalypse and hell. These features of retaliatory, punitive deity then validated harshly punitive human justice systems.
These beliefs constitute the fundamental nature of monstrous deity. And from the lofty height of deity, as humanity’s highest ideal, these beliefs have exacerbated and intensified other normal human fears- fears of natural disasters, disease, and predator cruelty. The above mentioned ideas have caused immeasurable misery and harm across history in deforming human consciousness, and consequently human societies, with unnecessary additional psychic burdens of fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, depression, and even the validation of nihilist violence. These religious beliefs add to the misery of life by encouraging and validating the darker human impulses to exclusion, separation, domination, judgment/condemnation, and punishment/destruction of differing others.
Our narratives embody our ideals, our beliefs, and act to guide and inspire our ethics (how we should act and behave). Our narrative themes motivate our responses and behavior, and the god ideas (the ultimate ideals) are the most powerful ideas in our narratives- the ultimate ideals that most potently influence our outlook (how we understand and explain life), our emotions, our motivations, and our behavior. Yes, we become just like the God (ultimate ideal) that we believe in.
We know the influence of beliefs on behavior as the “behavior/belief” relationship or ethics/theology relationship- i.e. that people have always based their behavior on similar beliefs, beliefs that inspire and validate their behavior, beliefs that serve to guide their lives and societies. We see this in people trying to live according to religious holy books, or national constitutions, human rights codes, legal systems, etc.- all things that contribute input (ideas/ideals) to shape personal belief systems.
Historical examples of people basing their behaviors on their systems of belief:
The Hebrews in the Old Testament claimed that all the details of their lives were modelled according to the revealed word, law, or will of their God. The ancient Greeks tried to create societies that were modelled according to their beliefs in the “Invisible Ideals/Ideas” (their “divine” realities). So also anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in the last century, noted that the Balinese shaped their villages, and even the details of their houses, according to what they believed was the divine pattern. Contemporary people, both religious and secular, still create and hold belief systems that inspire and validate their behavior and lives.
Another contemporary example of the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship: Years ago a young rapper responded to someone who claimed that his music advocated violence. He argued, “Yes, I affirm violence, because that is what we are… we are animals”. He validated his advocacy for violent behavior on a crude belief in evolutionary biology- that we descended from an animal background, violence is part of that past existence, hence his validation of such behavior today. Behavior based on and validated by similar beliefs- i.e. we are validated in acting violently because that is what we are as animals, according to his view of evolutionary biology/psychology.
(Insert note: I appreciate the contribution of evolutionary biology to understanding our past and the ongoing presence of a residual core animal brain, and residual animal impulses as a continuing part of contemporary human psychology. But overly reductive versions of evolutionary biology distort the nature of human consciousness by defining and explaining it too entirely in terms of our animal past. Then evolutionary biology/psychology is not recognizing the human as something emerging and developing as uniquely different from the animal, and human consciousness as something that is inspiring and leading us toward an entirely different future from past animal existence, a future shaped by more humane impulses. The uniquely different trajectory of human development is notable in things like the striking decline in violence over the history of human civilization. See, for example, James Payne’s “History of Force”.)
Further context to “greatest monster… ultimate monster” and the real battle of life.
The greatest battles that we face, the greatest monsters/enemies that we fight, are the bad ideas in our narratives and heads. As a friend said in a thought-inducing statement, “There are no really bad people just people influenced and misled by bad ideas who then act badly”.
The monstrous god ideas that we have inherited in religious traditions and other narratives play on and incite the other side of the interior monster that we fight in life- our personal complex of inherited animal impulses. Taken together, our worst impulses and the monster god ideas that incite and validate them, combine to make up the overall personal monster that we must confront and conquer in life. That is the dragon that we confront and conquer in our “hero’s journey” or quest.
Again, to re-enforce my point: This is humanity’s greatest enemy- i.e. the monster gods of religious traditions that incite our worst inherited animal impulses. Monster God beliefs, and the related impulses that are incited by such beliefs, continue to cause immense damage in life. These two elements of pathology in human psyches constitute the personal monstrosities around which the greatest human battles are fought.
Jordan Peterson was right to suggest, in relation to this, that before you go out into life to change others, or to change your overall societies, make sure that you fight and win these personal battles first and foremost. Conquer personal evil before fighting society-level evils. This is what people mean when they argue that the most important change, and most critical contribution to life, is personal change and improvement.
This also relates to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s comment that the greatest battles in life were personal struggles, taking place inside the heart of every person- i.e. the battle between good and evil as an intensely personal thing. He said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but through every human heart- and through all human hearts”.
So the greatest monsters/enemies are personal and interior monsters/enemies- the one’s that reside in our minds and that promote (1) our greatest fears of behind-life harm (i.e. monster gods punishing us through natural disaster, disease, or predatory cruelty), and that promote (2) our fears of after-life harm/threat, and also (3) incite our worst inherited animal impulses.
Slaying the ultimate monster- purging narratives of the monstrous themes that have long made up the monster gods.
Joseph Campbell on the main features of the Hero’s Journey- “A wise man gives us the weapon to slay our monster”.
We win the inner battle against monsters/enemies- the most critical of all battles to fight and win, the most critical of all monsters/enemies to conquer- by rejecting the monstrously inhumane features of our narratives and replacing them with more humane ideas/beliefs.
The sword or weapon that most potently slays humanity’s greatest monster is that of ultimate Reality or deity as defined by no conditions love of an inexpressibly transcendent nature. Such love counters the worst features of monster gods with a related complex of humane features that are entirely opposite to the “Monster God” complex of bad ideas.
Unconditional love includes, at a minimum, the following basic features: It means no tribal exclusion of anyone (no separation of anyone from deity), the treatment of all others as free and self-determining equals (no domination or control of others), no demand of sacrifice/payment for human imperfection, and no ultimate judgment, condemnation, punishment, or destruction (no punitive justice or destruction in some hell). Success in the greatest battle of all- against monster God mythology- is achieved by embracing the reality of deity as unconditional love. Unconditional is the ideal of ultimate Good or love that shapes an authentically humane narrative with truly humane ideas (truly human gods). An unconditional God gives us a motivating narrative that will inspire our better impulses to inclusion, equality, forgiveness, and generous love toward all. This inspires us forward on the trajectory to a more truly humane existence.
Put unconditional love at the core of your narrative and consciousness as the ultimate good, the ultimate reality and ideal that can liberate from all the old subhuman features and reshape all elements of your narrative into a more fully or authentically humane narrative. The light of unconditional permeates and transforms all else in narratives, chasing out the darkening influence of monster God ideas. Unconditional, as fundamentally defining deity, drives out darkness, fear, and all that enslaves and darkens consciousness and deforms human emotions, motivation, and responses/behavior.
To re-emphasize the basic point again: Fully humanize your belief system. Only a fully humane belief system, especially a fully humane deity, can ensure the outcome of more humane behavior and societies. Once more- We become just like the God that we believe in. We replicate in our lives what we hold as ultimate Reality/Ideal, law, or God.
Added note- Defanging another terrifying monster, countering the millennia of bad mythology that has turned death into a monster, making death an essential part of monster God theology
Death has also been infected by monster God mythologies. Early mythologies and religions claimed that death was a punishment from God that was introduced as the divine response to human sin (i.e. “Fall of man” myths as in the “garden of Eden”). Such myths claimed that early humans were initially perfect and sinless but then committed an original sin and became corrupted, sinful beings that deserved punishment, notably death as punishment for their sin. Add to this, the myths that angry, punishing gods (monster gods) waited beyond death to ultimately punish and destroy humanity for sin. Monster gods were waiting to get us and to ultimately “right the wrongs of this life”. Scary stuff.
This after-life threat from monster gods has added extra fear to the already natural human fear of death. It has added extra psychic fear over death. Death has been turned into a terrifying monster when it is a natural part of life and should be viewed as a transition to something better, as a liberation from the suffering that we experience here into the better future or perfection that we all long for.
Unconditional deity, or ultimate Reality, takes the sting out of the fear of death, re-assuring us that just beyond death we are liberated into an inexpressibly wondrous love, peace, and overall bliss that is beyond comprehension or expression in human language. Death is simply a transition or passage into the wonder that “Near-Death Experiencers” repeatedly tell us about.
Add the point that there is no dualism beyond death- i.e. no good versus evil, no tribal division of humanity, no dominating lords, no threat of punishment or destruction, no eternal religious Heaven or fiery Hell. Alternative? A wondrous realm of love, peace, bliss, and timeless freedom and creative ongoing development. Let your imagination wander and defang the death monster.
This article “Attention Poor People, Step Away from the Fuel. It’s not for you. And stop using it anyway. Thank you” by Terry Etam at…
Etam included this: “The laziest way to create meaning in your life is to find an enemy”, Kyla Scanlon.
This quote from Etam stirred my thinking today… Victor Frankl was right that the most fundamental impulse in humanity is the impulse for meaning in life. In response to this impulse, most people seek to do something heroic in their lives, to engage some meaningful endeavor, to frame their lives as something more than just study, work, play, or socializing.
And many find meaning in terms of the “hero’s journey or quest”. They seek to engage a “righteous battle against evil (a monster or enemy)”. Unfortunately, many of today’s wannabe heroes are finding their meaning in the climate alarm crusade and its struggle to purge the world of the imagined evil threat of fossil fuel civilization that they claim is the monster/enemy that threatens life. Climate alarmism has become history’s latest great apocalyptic millennial movement. Climate crusaders believe that if they can defeat the monster/enemy of fossil fuels/CO2 (i.e. the basis of industrial, liberal democracy society) then they hope to restore the lost paradise of a pre-industrial more wilderness world.
My point: While engaging a hero’s quest is a generally admirable impulse to express, be careful what righteous battle you engage, which entity you believe to be the monster/enemy in life. Many found themselves horribly misled in joining last century’s great crusades against the imagined “evil of capitalist or liberal democracy societies” that left hundreds of millions slaughtered- i.e. the apocalyptic millennial crusades of Marxism and Nazism. Beware of being misled by the intoxicating delirium of embracing a hero’s quest, one that results in horrific outcomes for millions of others.
We are now watching the destructive outcomes of this century’s great crusade against evil in the devastation of societies from irrational decarbonization madness.
Related note:
Someone asked me what criteria I use to keep myself from engaging harmful policies in life. I responded that one central criteria that I employ to evaluate policies/movements derives from Classic Liberalism- i.e. the protection of individual rights and freedoms as primary above collectivist policies or approaches.
Collectivist approaches (Socialist, Marxist) subject individuals to some collective and that results in the centralizing of power in governing elites (someone has to run the collective) who often err in believing that they know what is best for all others and they will use state power to coerce others to submit to the collectivist program. The individual approach to organizing society, on the contrary, disperses power among competing individuals or entities and that protects all from collectivist centralization that has too often resulted in totalitarianism outcomes. Note the experiments of the last century in this regard- notably the Marxist approaches to organizing societies. See, for example, Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom” for detail.
This from Chris Morrison at The Daily Skeptic, Dec. 22, 2022- “UN Secretary-General António Guterres falsely claims weather disasters have increased 500% in 50 years”
“Last September, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres claimed climate, weather and water-related disasters had increased by 500% over the last 50 years. According to the political and environmental science writer Professor Roger Pielke this is “pure misinformation“. He goes on to suggest that “you will never find a more obvious and egregious wrong claim in public discussions from a more important institution”…
“Pielke notes there is no evidence that the number of global and climate disasters is increasing. “That means that – undeniably – there is no evidence to support another false claim by the UN…
“Preliminary estimates suggest that around 11,000 people lost their lives this year as a result of weather and climate-related disasters, a figure around the average for the last decade. The overall death rate was about 0.14 people per million, and was one of the five lowest annual death rates since data were compiled. Pielke ventures that the figure is the lowest in all recorded human history. Just two decades ago, the figure was 20 times greater at 2.9 per million. The diminishing human impact of disasters is a science and policy success that is “widely under-appreciated”….
“In fact, as the Daily Sceptic has repeatedly shown, such inconvenient facts are largely ignored in most mainstream media, as individual weather events are relentlessly catastrophised in the interest of upending society, via the Net Zero political project. Weather catastrophisation is now the main climate propaganda tool since global warming went off the boil over two decades ago. Pielke noted that he had spent 30 years working to understand trends in disasters. “Along the way, I’ve observed a concerted and successful effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow the false information to spread unchecked – and sometimes they will even help to amplify it,” he wrote…
“On September 14th, the Daily Sceptic reported that four leading Italian scientists had undertaken a major review of historical climate trends, and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ was not supported by the data…
“Pielke concludes that planet Earth is a place of extremes. Hurricanes, floods, drought, heatwaves and other types of extreme weather are normal and always have been. The ability of societies to prepare and recover from extreme events is a remarkable story of policy success – deaths related to disasters have plummet from millions per year a century ago to thousands per year over the past decade.
““Unfortunately nowadays, every weather and climate disaster becomes enlisted as a sort of ‘poster child’ for climate advocacy. Every extreme event and associated human impact is quickly turned into a symbol of something else – such as failed energy policies, rapacious fossil fuel companies, evil politicians, or callous jet-setting billionaires. It is a simple and powerful narrative, and one that is also incredibly misleading,” he concluded.”
This from journalist Glen Greenwald. What does this mean for the “liberal democracy” that we all value?
“The FBI’s Exposed Propaganda Partnership with Big Tech”
“Note From Glenn Greenwald:
“In this episode, we examine the implications of the Twitter Files reporting from Michael Shellenberger that has shed enormous light on how the FBI pressured, cajoled, and manipulated both Twitter and Facebook to censor The New York Post reporting on Joe Biden’s business activities in Ukraine and China in the two weeks leading up to the 2020 election. And we’ll speak to the journalist himself about these revelations, and what it tells us about how deeply ingrained the U.S. Security State has now become in the censorship regime of Big Tech and how devoted they now are to manipulating our politics and controlling the flow of information we receive.
“Monologue:
“We speak often about the U.S. Security State, but before World War II there was no such thing in the United States. Its creation is widely attributed to a 1947 law signed by President Harry Truman, the National Security Act, that radically transformed how the U.S. government functions. In the name of fighting the Soviet Union, with whom the U.S. had just allied to vanquished Nazi Germany, the law created a brand-new framework of highly secretive agencies that would be tasked with overseeing foreign intelligence operations and other covert paramilitary actions outside the purview of normal, transparent democratic channels. One of the agencies created by that law was the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
“As many warned would happen during the debate on that law, these agencies, especially the CIA, quickly began operating almost as a parallel government, in total secrecy and beyond the control of elective leaders. The agency’s powers expanded rapidly and aggressively under the leadership of Allen Dulles, who assumed control in 1953 under Dwight Eisenhower and ran it for the next eight years until he was fired by John Kennedy, who blamed Dulles for the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco — the failed CIA invasion of Cuba. There is no doubt that Allen Dulles, his brother John Foster Dulles, simultaneously served as secretary of state, and was one of the two or three most powerful people in Washington, a completely unelected official very few Americans knew.
“Eisenhower let him have his way for the most part while knowing that Dulles kept much of what he was doing a secret, even from the president. And the result of that……” and so on.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Two entirely different gods and gospels- Christology versus anti-Christology
(1) Climate alarmists waging psychological warfare- using fear to manipulate populations. H. L. Mencken, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” (In Defense of Women).
(2) The single best book ever written: “Ultimate Resource”- evidence on the main resources in our world show the long-term improvement of life, not decline toward collapse and ending;
(3) The single most profound insight ever offered to humanity: Ultimate Reality or deity is stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. This insight overturns entirely all the conditions of religious traditions and ends the pathological mythology of divine threat (dominant in human narratives across history, in both religious and “secular/ideological” narratives). Threat theology has long deformed human personality and society;
(4) Comment on MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying): A further step in human freedom and self-determination, not a slippery slope to a “wretched future”;
(5) How to get to the true state of life: Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource and his good science of presenting the complete big picture and longest-term trends associated with anything;
(6) Climate physicist Richard Lindzen on “the absurdity of the motivating narrative that demonizes CO2”;
(7) The real crisis facing humanity is not human-caused climate change but human-caused decarbonization and its destructive outcomes;
(8) Root ideas behind apocalyptic cults and crusades;
(9) The greatest religious contradiction ever foisted on humanity- Historical Jesus versus Christian Christ (two entirely opposite persons), and the breakthrough insight of Jesus that God was unconditional reality, contrary to Paul’s highly conditional Christ gospel;
(10) Tribal collectivism versus the common humanity of individual persons;
(11) The loss of general public support for social movements when extremists take over the movements;
(12) Tilak Doshi (Forbes) on “Turbocharged Renewables”- how high energy prices today are the result of government decarbonization policies, not the result of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(13) Illustrations of Woke Progressive over-reaction to differing speech, and their demonization of differing others with extremist smears. Both sides engage this practise but because “highly illiberal” Woke Progressivism dominates public media and institutions, the threat to liberal democracy is currently coming more from the left/liberal side of society;
And more…
Site-splainin Contact: wkrossa@shaw.ca
This site repeatedly presents the basic themes of apocalyptic mythology and its origins in the earliest human mythology (i.e. Sumerian, Egyptian), to make the point clear- this is primitive stuff from humanity’s childhood, from an infantile stage of early humanity that was shaped by irrational belief systems. Most important: Apocalyptic has no relation to reality. It gets life entirely wrong (i.e. the myth that life is declining toward something worse, toward disaster and ending).
We know better today. We have amassed evidence that life is not declining toward a worse future, but to the contrary, humanity has been improving life over the long-term, and most important, humanity itself has been improving in civilization (becoming more humane- note for example the evidence in James Payne’s “History of Force”).
We ought to grow up now, take a good look at our narratives, and abandon residual mythical ideas that have no relation to reality, that distort our understanding of the true state of life. Hint: Think environmental/climate alarmism terrorizing populations with its endless prophesies of the end-of-world. Alarmed populations, with their survival impulses incited by apocalyptic scenarios, are susceptible to political manipulation and ideological salvation schemes that destroy societies. We are watching this unfold today in the decarbonization crusade madness.
And this warning from Global Warming Policy Forum regarding fear-mongering:
“Stephen McMurray: The climate change cult and the war on the mind”
“A new paper from Net Zero Watch argues that climate alarmists are waging psychological warfare on the public.
“Author Stephen McMurray says that professional psychologists are using fear as a weapon to manipulate public behaviour. McMurray says:
“Psychologists are saying, quite openly, that telling people facts doesn’t work, and that psychological pressure should be brought to bear in other ways. Their professional bodies seem to have no interest in preventing this shameful and completely unethical behaviour.”
“McMurray says that the Government and Civil Service are also quite open about using psychological warfare against the population at large. Indeed, the view in Whitehall appears to be that fearmongering, as widely applied during the Covid pandemic, was a success, and should be seen as a model for use in the drive for Net Zero.
“Civil servants seem quite happy to treat the public as lab rats for them to experiment on as they see fit. They are out of control, and nobody in Government seems to have any interest in stopping them.”
Comment on the fear-mongering noted above- I try to understand the general practice of fear-mongering in its larger context, in relation to the primitive mythologies/theologies that have exacerbated primal human fears across history. This is a project to understand how human belief systems have deformed human consciousness, narratives, personalities, and societies with mythical themes that exaggerate threats and thereby intensify normal human fears. See, for example, Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God” for illustrative detail on the psychological impact of bad theology. The theological themes he refers to, have been “secularized” and embraced in the supposedly ideological belief systems of our contemporary world, notably by Declinism and its offspring- environmental/climate alarmism.
Tracing the problem of contemporary environmental/climate alarmism to its historical roots is a project to do proper problem-solving by understanding the origins and nature of the themes in our narratives and how such themes impact our lives and societies. The foundational themes of climate alarmism are profoundly mythical or religious themes, not scientific, even though a smattering of science is used to validate the themes/narratives of climate apocalypse.
“The single best book ever written”? (I stated this in the article below- “How to get to the true state of life”, when referring to Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”) Wendell Krossa
Yes. “Ultimate Resource”- My candidate for “single best book ever written”.
Simon offers an amassed body of evidence from the best data sources showing that, despite remaining imperfections and ongoing problems in our world, humanity has been wildly successful in working to improve life, most notably over the past few centuries. And the long-term trajectory of improvement is a sound basis for hope that the future will be ever better. As Simon said, if there is no convincing evidence that a trend will cease, then we may safely assume that it will continue. And evidence continues to affirm that assumption. Example: See “Humanprogress.org” for detail.
Simon’s research transforms our view of the world and life, orienting us away from fear and despair over life, to evidence-based hope. And, as he said about his personal experience, the evidence of our success in improving life will vanquish the depression that is often the consequence of environmental alarmism narratives. The facts on the true story of life free us to embrace a solid evidence-based hope.
Like Simon, I had formerly bought into the doom and gloom of environmental alarmism narratives- i.e. that too many people were consuming too much of Earth’s resources and we were supposedly ruining the natural world. Consequently, according to alarmists, life was declining toward disaster. This was the central message of apocalyptic prophet Bill Rees at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning in the early 90s (Rees was a co-creator of the “Ecological Footprint” model). Simon has shown that evidence on the big picture and long-term trends of life do not support the environmental doom and gloom narratives. In fact, those narratives are entirely wrong about life and its overall direction.
Simon researched the best data sources on the main indicators of life to discover for himself the “true state of life”. The main indicators of life include major world resources such as forests, land species, ocean species, soils, etc. Evidence on these indicators shows that, despite remaining problems, life is not declining toward some worse state, but due to basic human goodness, human creativity, and our growing ability to solve problems, life is improving toward a better future.
Apocalyptic gets this story of life all wrong with its myths of life declining toward something worse, toward disaster and ending. Simon’s evidence transforms our worldview to one that is oriented to hope, evidence-based hope. Simon’s research eliminated his own “clinical depression”, and as he stated, his depression never returned.
The “motivating narrative” that we embrace is critical to our own well being and our endeavors in life. The themes that we hold, and the facts they are based on, are important to properly understand and explain life. It is true that we all live by story, and it is critical that our stories are soundly evidence based.
The “single best book ever written” transforms our worldview entirely from despair to the liberating and life-affirming potency of hope. As Simon cautions- there are still many problems that need to be confronted and solved (i.e. downturns in trends, setbacks in the trajectory of life), but overall we (humanity) have done well, astoundingly well, and things are getting ever better, not worse.
A Christmas message: “The single most profound insight ever offered”, Wendell Krossa
Here is some venturing across barriers (i.e. the science/philosophy boundary) to speculate on other “metaphysical” realms, something science also does with its speculations on multi-verse theories, string theories, dark matter and dark energy, and multiple-adjacent realms (10, 11, 26, etc.). Endless speculation on unknown, invisible ultimate realities.
My point in this speculation is that we need to meet most people where they are in their understanding and outlooks, and not where we think they should be. Further, we ought to be cautious about dismissing outright the primal impulse to meaning as it has always related to the metaphysical or ultimate reality, which is to say as it relates to ultimate meaning and ideals. I refer to those invisible realities that are the apparent bulk of all reality (example- the 96% of the cosmos that we don’t see, and more-so the invisible creating Consciousness or Mind that is behind all other reality).
No one questions that scientific fact is essential to properly shape human narratives. And no one questions the importance of maintaining the boundary between science and philosophy/spirituality. But while maintaining that boundary, also recognize that the primal human impulse to meaning will always include speculation on ultimate reality/ultimate meaning.
In general, I would suggest that rather than outrightly dismiss the element of metaphysical speculation in the human venture to understand and explain reality and life, it would be more useful, and safer in terms of “the motivating power of narratives”, to focus on humanizing narratives with more humane themes, while maintaining the clear distinction between proven observed reality (science) and speculations on metaphysical realities (keeping both in their respective arenas and limited to their respective functions as much as possible, and recognizing the problems when such boundaries are crossed).
And this is not an assumption that the “spiritual” will eventually fade from humanity and we will become some form of entirely secularized or materialist human being. That is a philosophical belief, a dogmatic materialist belief. The “spiritual” will always be with us.
Continuing the Christmas message…
The single most important discovery ever made for human mental and emotional health, and overall well being.
My choice for “single most important insight” would be a metaphysical or theological insight. I argue this because across human history the elemental factor of metaphysical threat has always been foundational to human mental and emotional states (inciting fear, anxiety, despair, and depression). Metaphysical threat has long dominated human narratives and consciousness- notably in the primitive mythology of divine threat behind the nasty elements of life (i.e. the threat of harm through natural disaster, disease, and predatory cruelty- and the belief that such harm is “punishment for sin”). Add to this the magnitude greater threat of after-life harm (ultimate judgment, condemnation, and retaliatory payback/punishment in Hell).
Primitive myths of metaphysical threats continue in contemporary versions, both religious and “secular”. Myths of fundamental metaphysical threat have continued into the “secular” age, and even materialists/atheists embrace contemporary versions of metaphysical threats meted to humanity through varied forces/gods- i.e. vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma, or the cold carelessness of natural law and its random natural consequences, etc.
A further indicator of the ongoing influence of metaphysical threat: Note the prevalence of apocalyptic mythology in modern story-telling- i.e. the increasing obsession, over past decades, of Hollywood movies/TV stories focused on apocalyptic. Note this ever-increasing trend over the decades at sites like Wikipedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films. Apocalypse is the apex/pinnacle myth of divine threat to punish humanity for sin, and consequently end the world. Public consciousness is still endlessly battered with such threat, notably in its environmental versions like climate alarmism.
To the rescue… A potent counter to the age-old mythology of metaphysical threat
A modern “spiritual” movement (the Near-Death Experience- NDE) has offered a profound insight that counters the most fundamental of human fears. I refer to the unprecedented, unique, and astoundingly humane insight that deity is a stunningly inexpressible “unconditional love”. Meaning that there is no ultimate judgment of anyone, no ultimate separation or exclusion of anyone, and no ultimate punishment or destruction of anyone. All are safe in a future of no conditions love, inexpressibly wondrous bliss, peace, and beauty, and further ongoing creative development.
This insight is a re-affirmation of the old theological belief that “God is love”. However, this relatively newer NDE insight states that God is not just love as we have commonly known it, but rather, love of an exceedingly wondrous nature- “inexpressibly unconditional”. A transcendently better, more humane, form of love- beyond the best that we could ever imagine- unconditional as “absolutely no conditions. None. To infinity and beyond”. The “God is love” of religions like Christianity refers to a love that is couched in the larger context of endless religious conditions and threats.
The NDE insight on God as unconditional love overturns entirely the deities of all past mythology and religious traditions. It tells us that there has never been any reality that presents metaphysical threat. There is no such thing as tribal deities threatening exclusion and separation of anyone (i.e. “unbelievers” or outsiders excluded from a future “heavenly” realm, the realm of deity), no dominating lords/kings that must be served forever (i.e. the primitive myth that humans were “created to serve the gods”), and no threat of ultimate judgment, condemnation, punishment, or destruction (i.e. no apocalyptic destruction of the world and no after-life harm in hell).
This insight that deity is unconditional love, and of an inexpressibly wondrous and humane nature, goes to the deepest roots of primal human fears to liberate our consciousness from the primitive themes that have dominated human narratives across history, both religious and “secular”.
So yes, God as unconditional love is the single greatest insight ever offered to humanity because it counters entirely the single worst body of mythology ever created- that of threatening deity, the “monster gods” of religious traditions. Note also that God as unconditional reality was the main theme of Historical Jesus, a person whose theology was entirely opposite to the New Testament Christ- the threatening, conditional theology of Paul.
Insert note: I have previously stated here why I venture into this metaphysical or “spiritual” speculation. Because bad ideas were projected onto ultimate reality from the beginning and have plagued humanity from the very earliest emergence of human consciousness, from the earliest expressions of the human impulse to meaning- i.e. the primal impulse to understand and explain reality and life in early mythology. This impulse for meaning, notably for ultimate meaning, has not diminished in the modern secular/scientific era. This is evident in the fact that fully 85% of humanity that still affiliate with a major world religion and most of the remaining “unaffiliated” are still “spiritual but not religious”, meaning they hold beliefs such as payback karma or “punitive Universe”, etc. As Joseph Campbell has stated, the same primitive mythical themes have been believed all across history and across all the cultures of the world.
Even dogmatic materialists hold versions of metaphysical Forces that are similar to religious deities- for example, the “Self-Organizing Principle” in cosmology and biology, or Richard Dawkins’ “Natural Selection Is The Source Of All Enlightenment” (The God Delusion). And just for curiosity’s sake, Google a search of how scientists project god-like qualities onto Natural Selection in order to make sense of how life has developed. Varied scientists claim that Natural Selection “learns… wills… decides… creates… chooses…”, etc., all very godlike features necessary to explain the emergence and development of life.
My point- Most people still hold to the core themes of primitive mythologies, often subhuman ideas that distort ultimate realities with inhumane features. So at a minimum, rather than outright deny this impulse to meaning that relates to metaphysical realities, offer better, more humane alternatives.
Continuing… a few more qualifiers
Theology, or God theory, needs to re-orient itself to this new central feature of divinity- i.e. transcendently inexpressible unconditional love.
The central NDE discovery of deity as unconditional love overturns all religion, entirely. All historical religion has been most essentially about conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions. (1) Conditions of embracing the correct beliefs required to be an accepted insider (i.e. the “truth” as defined by your religion’s holy book), (2) conditions of fulfilling the proper rituals of your religion, (3) conditions of living the religious lifestyle that is the identity marker of a true believer, (4) conditions of demanded sacrifice/payment, and so on. Religion is, by its fundamental nature, about endless conditions to appease and please gods. There is no unconditional love in religious theories of deity.
Now I would suggest that deity may be re-assuring us via the personal experiences of many people today (i.e. NDEs) that the threats and burdensome conditions of conditional religions have been all wrong. There is no ultimate judgment (only the self-judgment or evaluation of the “life review”), no ultimate separation or exclusion (an unconditional God welcomes all, forgives all, includes all), no ultimate punishment or destruction (only the self-punishment for failures to live as human). No religion has ever communicated this wondrous unconditional nature of God to humanity. All religions, with their myriad conditions, distort and bury this central unconditional feature of God.
So, is the historically recent emergence of the NDE movement simply a new stage of human “spirituality” where God re-assuring us to not fear life and death? God telling us that no matter what we suffer here, we are all safe in the end. A kind of re-assurance to children to not be afraid, there are no ultimate monsters.
Again, another necessary qualifier- Unconditional in deity, as the ultimate ideal, does not diminish the obligation to be responsible for personal behavior in this world and to live by natural and social consequences of personal behavior. Hence, the existence and need for our justice and incarceration systems. What unconditional does is to prompt us to orient our justice systems to restorative justice, not punitive justice. By doing this, we maintain our own humanity in the midst of the hellishness that is too often experienced in this world. Unconditional deity presents a new ultimate ideal to potently shape human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and behavior in this world toward a more humane direction.
Further on good and evil: Is dualism, with its inevitable accompanying misery, just a feature of this space time world, the material realm? Do the opposites- i.e. good and evil- exist here to serve the purpose of providing a context of contrast for human experience and development? Philosophers have suggested that we only know good in contrast with evil (i.e. no moral good is possible without its opposite- authentic, uncoerced good only emerges/exists as a freely chosen response to evil).
Added note on the NDE
Bring all your personal criteria to evaluate NDEs. They are highly diverse experiences. And not all are good. Some appear to be quite loopy and are reframed or interpreted to affirm the experiencer’s worldview, notably those that try to affirm traditional conditional religions. I would suggest that the central discovery of the NDE is that God is unconditional love. This discovery does not affirm conditional religions (for example, the Christian condition that people must “believe in Jesus” in order to be saved from Hell, to be included, forgiven, and ultimately loved). The NDE insight on unconditional deity tells us there is no Hell, no need for salvation as there has been no separation of anyone from God, no one is “lost”, and there is no deity threatening exclusion, judgment, condemnation, or punitive destruction. There is no demand for payment/sacrifice in order to “get right with God”.
Again, the central discovery or insight of the NDE movement, that the Light/God is unconditional- that single feature overturns all religion, entirely. Think about it. If God is truly unconditional, then who needs the conditions of religion?
Merry Christmas to you all.
Keys to successful human experience and life: Wendell Krossa (Answering the question- What does it mean to be human our truly humane?)
(1) View and treat everyone as a free equal. Acknowledge the critical importance of personal/self-control and respect the self-determination of all others. Point- Understand the basic principles of the Classic Liberalism that has given us liberal democracies and all the benefits from this tradition (i.e. the protection of individual rights and freedoms as taking precedence over any collective). See for example, Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom” for the history of Classic Liberalism.
(2) Affirm human diversity- Do not just tolerate differences but celebrate complex diversity as vital to healthy human society. Develop the skill of interacting with diverse others with a toleration that treats everyone as intimate family, based on the fact that we are all equals in the one human family (i.e. the underlying oneness that many claim even quantum mechanics affirms).
(3) Forgive unconditionally the failures and offenses of imperfect others, recognizing our own imperfection and failures and our own desire for unconditional forgiveness and second/third/fourth and more chances. Remember that forgiveness often has more to do with one’s personal well-being (letting go of hate and bitterness and how that impacts others around us), whether it ever involves any contact with the offenders or not.
(4) Embrace restorative justice approaches to human failure, knowing that love is not about feeling mushy, fuzzy, or warm toward horrific offenders and their offenses, that rightly evoke outrage. Love is often the bare-bones intention to treat all humanely, while also holding all responsible for their behavior and its consequences, including incarceration for those unable or unwilling to self-control their worst impulses. The same applies to the responsibility to restrain the violence of attacking offenders, as in just wars. While appreciating the spirit and intent of pacifists, dogmatic pacifism is too often not common sense love.
The unconditional treatment of all others is primarily about maintaining our own humanity in the face of the hellishness that is too common in life.
The above features will liberate us most from the worst elements of animal existence- i.e. the impulses to tribal exclusion of differing others (small band existence), to domination of weaker others (alpha male/female), and to destruction of differing others. These above listed features get us closest to authentically human existence, to being fully humane.
This from National Post on Canada’s MAID legislation (Medical Assistance In Dying)- “Michael Higgins: Our veterans ask for help. They’re offered assisted death. The dark road we’re on is on the verge of turning pitch black”.
Michael Higgins begins his article with this exaggerated statement- “We are going down a very dark road. Just how dark and bleak and utterly wretched that road is remains to be seen, but the glimpses we are getting reveals it to be verging on the edge of pitch black….
I would counter that MAID is just another further and necessary advance in basic human freedom- the right to end your life story when and how you see best, given the proper agreed on cautions of “sober second thought” in cases of depression, etc.
Some have been pushing back against MAID with religious-like arguments that we must not “play God” but should let disease and consequent suffering play out naturally at the end of our lives. No. Medicine above all exists to alleviate human suffering, not extend it unnecessarily as it can often do today. MAID is just a further element in medicine’s arsenal to alleviate pain and suffering, especially where illness is serious and irremediable (no other solution exists).
Higgins’ alarmist language is another example of excessively exaggerated wording to distort the general policy of MAID and its outcomes.
He notes the very few cases where it appears that some have over-zealously offered MAID to suffering people. But we don’t know the full story in those incidents. Were the offering people well-intentioned but just incautious and not fully sensitive to the people that they offered MAID to? I would like to hear their side of the incidents before affirming Higgins’ views- i.e. the “dark and bleak and utterly wretched… edge of pitch black” conclusion that Higgins has made.
He then ends with “We are going down a very dark road. And we are going down it blindly.” That appears to be exaggerated panic-mongering over a few isolated incidents. Higgins appears to be trying to smear an otherwise essential element to full human freedom.
Another on living as authentically human (Again, answering the fundamental question of What does it mean to be human?):
Where do we place our primary loyalty? (a Brinsmead insight)
Never give your primary loyalty to some reality other than real people around you and their needs. Whenever primary loyalty is placed in institutions, ideologies, religions (even God), ethnic groups/nation states, then real people are often neglected and abused, even harmed. Well-known example- loyalty to a religious God who demands the punishment and destruction of “enemies”. We have illustrations of the barbaric outcomes of this perversion of human loyalty across the history of Christianity, Islam, and other religious groups. Another familiar example would be how people and their personal dreams were crushed by other’s loyalty to the institution of the monarchy as portrayed in the Netflix series on “The Crown”. Our primary loyalty ought to be given to meeting the real needs of people around us.
See the “human-caused crisis” below…
Rex Murphy at his most eloquent defending Alberta’s oil industry. Go Rex, go.
“Reasonable” Concessions to Climate Hysteria Lack Reason, by Gregory Wrightstone
“First, there is no climate emergency. Claims to the contrary are based on exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s warming effect and computer models that have proven unreliable.”
Wrightstone notes several Republican politicians who offer “solutions to reduce emissions” while still providing other energy supplies. Wrightstone correctly states that the “assumption that there is a need to decrease CO2 emissions is a delusion divorced from reality and unsubstantiated by science. This absurdity regularly is perpetuated by people wanting to sound reasonable in an atmosphere of hysteria and political chicanery.”
Wrightstone adds that he does not mean to pick on these Republican politicians but “Plenty of smart people with good intent similarly stumble only to find themselves in an awkward search of a solution for a nonexistent problem… (they wrongly) assume that the burning of fossil fuels must be balanced with the use of wind and solar to mitigate the atmospheric warming of carbon dioxide. Both are light-years from the truth. Energy sources are not equal, and carbon dioxide poses no threat to the planet.”
He states further- “Dr. William Happer, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University, has coauthored a paper that shows that the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is limited to a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum and cannot cause dangerous heating of the planet.
““Carbon dioxide is completely natural,” (Happer) says. “Plants need it to grow. We all breathe out about two pounds of it every day. When people say that we need to remove carbon dioxide from the air, I can’t imagine what they are thinking because today there is not enough carbon dioxide compared to what plants would prefer. We are living in a time of a carbon dioxide famine in the context of geological history. We need more of it not less.
““The demonization of carbon dioxide is absurd. Widely accepted data, such as those from Antarctic ice cores, show that over geologic time almost never have carbon dioxide levels been as low as today. Over most of Earth’s history, levels have been four or five times what they are now.”
Additionally, says Wrightstone, “Dr. Indur Goklany finds that coal, oil and natural gas are the most beneficial based on their efficiencies and on the salutary effects of their emissions of carbon dioxide. These fuels have fostered unprecedented prosperity and human health.
“Their CO2 emissions have contributed to an overall greening of Earth and record crop harvests.
“The green lobby’s promotion of subsidies for wind and solar is exactly backward. Reason would dictate that fossil fuels — along with nuclear power — be favored because of their unmatched effectiveness in sustaining human life…
“We understand the desire to be “even-handed” or to “reach across the aisle.” However, conceding to false claims of a crisis and promoting foolish strategies as “solutions” is dangerous. It is a packaging of “reasonableness” without regard to reason.”
How to get to “the true state of life” Wendell Krossa
When dealing with apocalyptic narratives you are dealing with mythology that gets the state of life and the trajectory of life entirely wrong. Life is not declining toward disaster, as claimed by apocalyptic mythology.
The three great emergences and trajectories of reality all show direction toward improvement, toward something better. Whether the emergence and multi-billion-year trajectory of material reality itself (the cosmos), the emergence and overall trajectory of life, or the emergence and trajectory of humanity, notably in civilization.
The emergence and trajectories of reality and life show purposeful direction toward more complexity, toward more organization, toward something more suitable for conscious humanity to grow and develop within. Then the emergence and trajectory of humanity evidences purposeful progress as the essential goodness of humanity emerges and develops across our history. We see this in humanity over history working to create something better. This urge to create something better than what exists, is the fundamental impulse of essentially good people finding expression in solving problems and working to improve life for all.
Julian Simon showed us how to get to the true state of things, how to understand the true direction of the trajectory of life- by looking at the big picture evidence and the longest-term trends. In arguably the single best book ever written- i.e. Ultimate Resource– Simon affirmed that humanity was essentially good and creative and had shown the ability to solve all problems and to make life better. He concluded, that despite ongoing problems, life was improving overall, over the long term. Life was not declining toward apocalyptic collapse and ending.
Look closely at our historical record as set forth by Simon, and similarly by many others- Greg Easterbrook in “A Moment On the Earth”, Bjorn Lomborg in “Skeptical Environmentalist”, Ronald Bailey in “The End of Doom”, Indur Goklany in “The Improving State of the World”, Matt Ridley in “Rational Optimist”, Desrocher and Szurmak in “Population Bombed”, Hans Rosling in “Factfulness”, and so on. See also sites like Humanprogress.org.
Affirming the evidence on the true state of life inspires people that their efforts to make things better actually succeed. And contrarily, the apocalyptic narrative has promoted resignation, fatalism, despair, depression, and even nihilism and destructiveness in societies. Just as we are seeing today with the suicidal crusade of decarbonization. Apocalyptic movements are infected with the belief that corrupt humanity is destroying the world with its flourishing in industrial civilization and consequently the apocalypse is now imminent. Apocalyptic deforms human consciousness and does not permit people to see the true state of things- that life is actually getting better all the time.
This report from climate physicist Richard Lindzen
“MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen rejects ‘climate change’ as a ‘quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific narrative’”
My response to Dr. Lindzen- Climate alarmism is not just “quasi-religious” but, more pointedly, it is a “profoundly religious crusade”. It cloaks itself with science, but that science is shaped to affirm a narrative that is dominated by mythical/religious themes. The main driving themes of climate alarmism include core narrative themes from the earliest primitive human mythologies, the later world religions, and those themes have now been given expression in “secular/ideological” versions like Declinism and its offspring- climate alarmism.
The themes of apocalyptic/millennial mythology that dominate contemporary alarmist narratives and “science”:
The past was better, but essentially corrupt humans have ruined that original past paradise, life is now declining toward a worsening situation, toward collapse (i.e. the primitive myth of “return to chaos”) and toward the end of the world (i.e. apocalypse). But there is hope for salvation if humanity repents and makes a sacrifice- a sacrifice that includes the element of self-inflicted suffering (the impulse to “penance”, to “pay for sin”, to suffer and pay for human imperfection). Penance would include a return to primitivism, a return to the supposedly “morally superior” simple, low-consumption lifestyle.
And salvation also demands that humanity must purge the imagined great evil threat to life. Today the thing that presumably threatens life is too many people enjoying the good life. CO2 is the indicator of this threat- i.e. too many people consuming too many resources, notably fossil fuels. Once the evil thing- i.e. fossil fuel-based industrial civilization- has been purged then we can restore the lost, ruined paradise for the true believers.
This site probes the themes, origin, and nature of apocalyptic/millennial mythology. This mythology profoundly distorts the true state of life/the world and promotes destructive outcomes in societies. We saw such outcomes with the mass-death movements of Marxism and Nazism in the last century. And yes, they were also apocalyptic/millennial movements as per the research of historians- i.e. Richard Landes in “Heaven On Earth”, Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”, David Redles in “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, and Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, among others. Wendell Krossa
Quotes from climate physicist Richard Lindzen:
“Dr. Richard Lindzen’s new paper: An Assessment of the Conventional Global Warming Narrative – Published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation – September 22, 2022: Climate change is “a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system.” – “The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO₂.”
“Unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, this is likely only to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO₂.”
“CO₂ is a particularly ridiculous choice for a ‘pollutant.’ Its primary role is as a fertiliser for plant life. Currently, almost all plants are starved of CO₂. Moreover, if we were to remove a bit more than 60% of current CO₂, the consequences would be dire: namely death by starvation for all animal life. It would not likely lead to a particularly cold world since such a reduction would only amount to a couple of percent change in the radiative budget. After all, a 30% reduction of solar radiation about 2.5 billion years ago did not lead to an Earth much colder than it is today, as we earlier noted in connection with the Early Faint Sun Paradox.
“The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO₂. For the glaciation cycles of the past 700 thousand years, the proxy data from the Vostok ice cores shows that cooling precedes decreases in CO₂ despite the very coarse temporal resolution (Jouzel et al.,1987, Gore, 2006). Higher temporal resolution is needed to show that warming preceded the increase in CO₂ as well (Caillon et al, 2003). For earlier variations, there is no suggestion of any correlation with carbon dioxide at all, as shown in Figure 9a, a commonly presented reconstruction of CO₂ levels and ‘temperature’ for the past 600 million years or so.
“This all leaves us with a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system (a process that has played a prominent role in causing current inflation), while lifting sanctions for Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, which was designed to bypass the existing pipeline through the Ukraine used to supply Germany. It has caused much of the European Union to ban exploitation of shale gas and other sources of fossil fuel, thus leaving it with much higher energy costs, increased energy poverty, and dependence on Russia, thus markedly reducing its ability to oppose Mr Putin’s aggressions. …
“Unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, this is likely only to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO₂. Changing course will be far from a simple task. As President Eisenhower noted in his farewell address in 1961: The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
And this from “Meridional Transport: the most fundamental climate variable”
Note the facts in this big picture context below- the paleoclimate context. Climate has been much warmer for most of the history of life, and the polar regions were ice-free for most of the history of life. That much warmer past was a more natural, normal, and optimal state for all life. And life emerged, developed, and flourished under those much warmer conditions. 3-6 degrees C warmer on average, and sometimes 10 degrees C warmer- and there was no “climate crisis” during that much warmer world.
Quotes from the link above:
“Using Scotese’s definitions, the present (21st century) latitudinal temperature gradient is considered a “severe icehouse,” as shown in Figure 3. In the right-hand graph, we compare the current severe icehouse temperature gradient in blue, with the Early Eocene hothouse gradient from 52 million years ago. Notice that today, Greenland and Antarctica are covered in ice, shown in blue on the lower map and the poles are ice free in the upper map. An icehouse climate is characterized by year-round ice sheets at the poles.
“The climate during the Early Eocene hothouse was quite warm by today’s standards. The average global surface temperature reached 10 degrees C warmer than today. The so-called “burst of mammalian first appearances” occurred at this time. One of the mammals that first appeared during the Early Eocene was the first primate, our distant ancestor. Primates quickly spread around the world. Besides new mammals, many new genera of turtles, lizards, and plants evolved and thrived during this time. Some deep-water foraminifera went extinct, but most organisms did well and dispersed widely.
“The existence of very different past climates on Earth creates an insurmountable problem for modern “consensus” climatology. During the last glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago, the energy received from the sun was the same as now. Not only that, but the Milankovitch orbital parameters were also nearly the same. The distribution of solar energy over the Earth was nearly identical to now, yet the climate was very different. Energy input to the climate system must have been lower because the larger ice sheets reflected more solar energy and the greenhouse effect was lower. The lower greenhouse effect was due to less atmospheric CO2 and available water. Lower temperatures made CO2 more soluble in the oceans, removing it from the air. The very large continental ice sheets in the last glacial maximum removed a lot of water and water vapor and stored it in ice, removing it from the climate system.
“A lower energy input and a larger latitudinal temperature gradient ought to have drained the tropics of heat via stronger meridional transport, but that was not the case. There is still controversy about tropical temperatures during the last glacial maximum, but it appears that they were only 1-2 degrees C colder than present. This is consistent with evidence presented by Chris Scotese and colleagues that tropical temperatures have not changed much over the course of the past 540 million years despite huge changes in the average temperature of the planet (9–30°C). You will notice in Figure 3 that the very warm Early Eocene hothouse climate has a similar temperature at the equator to the present day, but the difference at the South Pole is 44°C and it is 23°C at the North Pole. Clearly, most of the warming occurs in the higher latitudes. (Mine: This counters the alarmist claim that in a warmer world some areas of the planet will “fry”.)
“If the last glacial maximum creates a problem for how meridional transport operates during a glacial period, the equable climate of the Early Eocene results in a paradox that modern consensus climatology cannot solve. Currently the Earth is in a severe icehouse climate with a very steep latitudinal temperature gradient as the right-hand graph in Figure 3 makes very clear. Currently, temperature falls by 0.6–1°C/°latitude from the equator to the winter pole. Such a cold environment has been relatively rare during the past 540 million years, existing less than 10% of the time. The Early Eocene Earth had an average temperature estimated at 24 to 25 degrees C, that Scotese describes as hothouse conditions. The Early Eocene latitudinal temperature gradient was very shallow, at 0.25–0.45°C/°latitude, with temperatures at the North Pole above freezing all year round, as attested to by the presence of frost-intolerant biota. These hothouse conditions have been even rarer. Over 60% of the Phanerozoic Eon the Earth had an average temperature of 19-20 degrees C. The average global surface temperature of the entire Phanerozoic—the past 540 million years—is a very pleasant 18°C, about 3.5°C warmer than today.
“The climate of the Early Eocene is defined as equable. It is characterized by a warm world with a low latitudinal temperature gradient, low seasonality, and fewer mid- and high-latitude storms than today. The failure of modern consensus climate theory to explain these periods has been termed the “equable climate problem.” To reproduce the Early Eocene warm continental interior temperatures and above freezing winter polar regions, models must raise CO2 levels to 4700 ppm, use an implausible climate sensitivity to CO2, and allow tropical temperatures to exceed 35°C. However, the best CO2 estimates for the Early Eocene climatic optimum place probable CO2 levels at 500-1000 ppm, and the highest estimates are less than 2,000.
“Further, it is unlikely that tropical temperatures above 30 degrees C are possible, due to the efficiency of heat removal through evaporation and deep convection (the convection of moist air to the upper troposphere) at that temperature. Also, mammals cannot survive above a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees C, where they become unable to lose heat. Yet, fossils show us that mammals thrived in the Early Eocene. The highest wet-bulb temperature on Earth today is 30°C, and there is no reason to think it has been higher at any time in the past at places where mammal fossils are found.”
This by Linea Lueken illustrates the endless media distortion of normal weather/climate events to affirm the climate apocalypse narrative.
“Contra Yahoo News, “Weather Whiplash” is not threatening autumn weather”, by Linnea Lueken
As Lueken suggests, when the larger paleo-climate record is consulted for the complete big picture evidence, diverse weather events are shown to be entirely natural, normal, and not unprecedented. But that evidence undermines the climate alarm narrative, hence such evidence is dismissed, ignored, or discredited.
Instead, we get the endless media distortion of every out-of-norm weather event as “the worst on record” and a sign of collapse and ending.
“Presentism” also feeds this alarmist mentality- “the fallacy of presentism: the tendency to assume that events of the present are larger, more important, or more shocking than events of the past” (James Payne in History of Force).
Energy/Inflation article by Eric Worrall
From https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/12/05/claim-we-must-allow-more-inflation-to-address-climate-change/
“Claim: We must allow more inflation to address climate change”
Quotes from the above essay by Eric Worrall
“The Ukraine shock was only severe because there are not sufficient alternative sources of supply to absorb the disruption to the supply of Russian gas and petroleum. More investment in domestic fossil fuel resources could have fixed this – but that investment didn’t happen, because of European and Western regulatory hostility to fossil fuel….
“Inflation is worse than high interest rates. Inflation creates perverse incentives which can utterly wreck an economy, such as a perverse incentive to invest in unproductive assets like houses, instead of investing in productive assets like businesses. This leads to widespread economic damage, the stagnation of productive economic sectors like manufacturing, and the creation of enormous asset bubbles, which when they pop cause large scale wealth destruction.
“Of course, low interest rates and low inflation would be better than the painful stability of high interest rates, or the economic ruin of high inflation.
“Reducing the cost of energy is the path to low inflation and low interest rates. It is not just me saying the price of energy is the key. Australian Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe said last week, “One way of tackling inflation induced by supply-side shocks is to address the supply…”, though admittedly Lowe carefully steered around providing a prescription of how the government should reduce interest rates.
“The only short-term salvation for people who are struggling to hang on to their homes, or businesses struggling with energy bills, is to rapidly address the underlying problem, the cost of energy. And the only way the cost of energy can be sustainably addressed in the short term, is to unleash fossil fuel investment, by abandoning Net Zero, and massively deregulating investment in energy resources.”
Note more examples further below regarding the ongoing practice of extreme Woke Progressives/leftists to smear fellow leftists/liberals, moderate progressives, independents, as well as conservatives, with extremist labels in order to discredit them, usually for exposing corruption on the left. The smears include “far Right extremist… Right-winger/white supremacist… racist… fascist… Nazi/Hitler-like… threat to democracy… using speech that incites hate/violence…” and on and on.
Thoughtless, and too often intentionally malicious, tribal smearing is not the best way to respond to healthy human diversity of thought/opinion/speech. It is not the best way to encourage the flourishing of liberal democracy and its primary principles of full inclusion of diverse humanity (diversity of opinion/practise/lifestyles), equality of rights and freedoms (most critically equality in freedom of speech), generous forgiveness of offenses/failure (restorative justice approaches), and more that marks us as “towering in stature as maturely human” (Joseph Campbell on “the hero’s journey”).
The increasing danger here is the “creeping totalitarianism” that appears intent on silencing opposition (disagreement, dissent) with censorship, cancelling, and banning entirely from public forums. Too many (on both sides but today arguably mainly from the left, even in the opinion of many liberals/leftists) have embraced extremist tribal mindsets where they view themselves as heroes in righteous battles against intolerable “evil”, even criminal evil on the other side. Evil that must be stopped, even if with state coercion/force and other forms of violence. The “evil of the differing other” is too often something far less threatening than the exaggerated monstrosity that has been created by the extremist tribal mind (again, both sides guilty of such).
(Insert note: What happened to views of the underlying, fundamental oneness of the human family? And the primacy of that as our most basic identity marker?)
Moderates like leftist Jimmy Dore have argued well that both sides can find common ground for cooperation on important issues that they both agree on- i.e. economic prosperity for all, criminal justice reform and public safety, basic health care, etc. (And, as good as his commentary is on many issues, I am not with Jimmy on his climate alarmism.)
Gutfeld: Some of the best social commentary out there, done with humor. Even liberal/Democrat guest Harrold Ford agrees with fellow Democrat, Senator Ro Khanna, that government collaborating with social media companies to censor opposition is wrong, a serious issue for democracy…
This important new paper from climate physicist William Happer on the benefits of CO2 to all life. This is the most basic factual science on CO2 and it overturns the climate alarmism narrative entirely.
Conclusion? There is no sound scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. More CO2 and more warming are significant benefits to all life.
To all concerned about freedom, liberal democracy, Classic Liberalism, here is some good commentary from Rex Murphy on Canadian government censorship, also Canadian media censorship…
“Each year, heat kills half a million people but cold kills 4.5 million people, nine times more. Yet, most reporting focuses on heat deaths because it fits the climate alarm narrative”.
This article illustrates the exaggerated twisting of other’s positions/speech in order to demonize wholesale the differing other. Wendell Krossa
In this article link just above, note how MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi distorts things by claiming the general free speech program promoted by Elon Musk equates with “a deluge of hate speech”. There are always lunatic extremists from both sides that will spout hate on public forums (e.g. White supremacist racists, Antifa fascists). But that hate speech is not what Musk is promoting. He is restoring free speech for all. And some nut cases will insert themselves into the mix, nutcases from both sides. But to state that Musk’s restoring of free speech for all is “a sudden deluge of hate speech” shows that Velshi is irresponsibly distorting Musk’s intentions and his essential project. Velshi has shamefully resorted to thoughtless tribal smearing.
This has become too common from the left today- to mischaracterize everything that they disagree with, using all-encompassing smears such as “racism… fascism… hate speech… Nazism… violent speech… threat to democracy…” and so on. The liberal media are losing control of the narrative that they want the public to believe and in response they have resorted to the above childish demonizing/smearing of others who dissent from their views.
This is widespread today- to frame some general thing that you don’t like with the non-distinguishing generalization as being entirely “evil”, and to demonize those involved in that thing that you disagree with as being “dangerous threats to (your view of) democracy”. Such distortion and exaggeration clouds things that ought to be distinguished and clarified. The careless, even often malicious, and intentional confusion of differing things reveals a tribal mentality that wants to smear and demonize differing others, that views itself in a righteous battle against evil enemies that must be destroyed. So try to smear, demonize, and then silence them as irredeemably bad, intolerantly evil. How much of what Velshi calls “hate speech” is just the differing opinion on the other side? Just general conservative difference of views.
Remember what happened with Biden’s laptop- how it was initially censored and condemned as “Russian disinformation” and then public media forums shut down reporting on that. They refused to permit any sharing of the story when it emerged. But then later, even most liberal media admitted that it was true (after their guy was safely in office). Also, the Wuhan lab theory was initially demonized as “racism” and that legitimate story was silenced on social media. But again later, media admitted that it was a credible theory. This authoritarian censorship has been exhibited repeatedly over past years, coming mainly from the left.
Velshi’s comment:
“As it stands, social media platforms like Twitter are free to limit as much or as little free speech as they want, barring a few exceptions. Ultimately, any limits imposed will be defined by the company’s own values and the sudden deluge of dangerous hate speech on Twitter arguably reflects the values of a new owner.
Here is another example of how Woke Progressives frame the harmless speech of differing others as “speech that causes violence”. This is extremist exaggeration to demonize and silence others from voicing their differing opinions…
Here is the summary of what is detailed in the article in the link below…
First… “Lisa Desmond, manager of the local Endicott Branch Library, wrote on Facebook earlier this month that its annual Christmas tree display had apparently been canceled to prevent offending people.
Her further comment- “When I asked, I was told ‘people’ were made uncomfortable last year looking at it. I’m sorry WHAT? In my 28 years at the Dedham Public Library, I have never heard a negative comment,” Desmond continued…”
Then this from the Woke lady who was outraged at someone expressing her opinion about the Christmas tree…
“Diane Loud, who was appointed to the Human Rights Commission in Dedham, Massachusetts, by the town’s Commission on Disability, reportedly called Desmond “a selfish f—ing b—-” in a subsequent Facebook post that accused her of endangering lives by raising the issue… (Loud continues) “For a tree? For a motherf—ing tree? You have put people’s lives in a lot of danger. A LOT of danger,” Loud wrote to Desmond. Loud added, “In closing, I would like to add a F— YOU, YOU PIECES OF TRASH. I hate each and every one of you and I do wish great suffering on you. You are terrible, terrible people. And you did it all because you didn’t get your way. You are despicable,” Loud concluded.”
And another on the exaggerated demonization of the differing opinions of others as “threatening… hate speech…. speech that incites violence…” etc. Over past years we have seen the increasing trend to use exaggerated smears that characterize the expression of differing opinions as “racist… fascism…. Right-wing extremism… Nazism… using hate speech that incites violence…” and on and on.
Here is further illustration of people on the left smearing others they disagree with in order to discredit them, even though both Taibbi and Weiss are both “left of center Progressives” who have become too independent (meaning extreme leftists don’t like their abandonment of the extreme Woke Progressive narrative). Here are some key quotes outlining what the left now constantly does to silence those it disagrees with. The point of such smears is to discredit the speaker while ignoring the content of what is communicated which is often some exposure of corruption on the left.
“The Washington Post was blasted for characterizing the center-left reporters behind the viral “Twitter Files” as being “conservative journalists.”
“Taibbi, a Substack writer who used to be a scribe for Rolling Stone magazine, and Weiss, the editor of The Free Press and host of the “Honestly” podcast who used to be the opinion page editor at The New York Times, are widely seen as being left of center, although they have become thorns in the sides of traditional liberal outlets since going independent.
“Despite their progressive views on a host of issues, the Post still labeled them “conservative.”
“Calling those two ‘conservative’ is so patently ridiculous. Wacky WaPo gaslighting like crazy,” Sky News host Rita Panahi exclaimed.
“It is rather insane that news publications are ascribing political ideologies to journalists that don’t remotely fit because they want to discredit the journalism being done,” conservative writer A.G. Hamilton tweeted.
“They are not interested in actually telling the truth. Everything is spin,” National Review contributor Pradheep J. Shanker wrote.
“‘Conservative’ is just a smear to the MSM. It has no other meaning except to brand someone as unworthy. To signal to its readership that such a person can be safely ignored,” journalist and author Abigail Shrier tweeted.
“We must understand how leftists and wokesters use words. They don’t care that calling Taibbi and Weiss conservatives is a lie. WaPo uses that word to signal to its NPC readers that Taibbi/Weiss are the evil out-group and therefore everything they say should be ignored,” The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis blasted the paper.
“There’s almost a medieval quality to a lot of political discourse. If you don’t agree with every mainstream liberal opinion, then you’re a conservative? They see the world in black and white,” The Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang said.
Another illustration of excessively “Woke” reaction to differing speech- a lady criminalized (“criminal hate speech”) and threatened with 3 years in prison for stating her harmless, innocuous opinion?!? What the fuck? Who really is inciting harm/violence here? Lets end this Woke/cancel insanity. It emotes the strong whiff of harsh totalitarian intolerance.
“Common sense can no longer defuse absurd situations”, Greg Gutfeld referring to the Ontario schoolboard deferring to the shop teacher wearing grotesquely oversized fake breasts to class.
In this Norwegian situation- Common sense no longer shapes human views of differing others and their speech. Woke insanity/extremism dominates too many today.
There are those among us who believe that when a few people abuse something, then laws must be made to prohibit entirely the thing that has been abused by the few. Examples here include prohibition of alcohol in the last century, also many drugs, and “hate speech”. The prohibitions then limit the freedom of all people, even the majorities that use the prohibited things moderately and carefully, who do not abuse them at all.
The few will that abuse something will always be with us, but that is not reason to then shut down broadly and carefully used things entirely for all others. That is an illogical and irrational prohibition response. Much like alcohol prohibition in the last century for all, because a few abused that product.
Part of the prohibition response to problems is based on “slippery sliding slope” theory- that if laws are not made to criminalize things that are abused by the few then whole populations will slip downslope to hell in a handbasket.
See new comment below on “The loss of ‘general public’ support for social movements” when Woke elements pull movements toward extremist positions.
How’s this for a fact-check challenge to global warming alarmism?
The real crisis facing humanity/world, Wendell Krossa
There is a human-caused crisis spreading across the world, but it is not the supposed “climate crisis” that alarmist prophets have been terrorizing and traumatizing populations with. The human-caused crisis is the decarbonization crusade that is ruining societies and harming the poorest people the most, due to government policy (i.e. the Net Zero policies that block the development and use of fossil fuel resources). These policies are inflating energy costs, and thereby depriving many of the abundant and cheap energy that is vital to human success and flourishing.
The human-caused decarbonization crisis is driven by ideas and supporting “facts” that are not scientific but have been properly identified as being more mythological/cultic in nature, and some of the most primitive of mythical themes like apocalyptic (i.e. the endless prophecies of the looming “end of days”- “climate catastrophe… species holocaust… existential crisis…” etc.).
The “scientific facts” that are regularly used to affirm the climate crisis are the products of confirmation bias distortion. We see this in the media obsession with every severe weather event that is presented by alarmists as more proof of “catastrophic climate change” becoming worse day by day. This is the alarmist obsession with exaggerating historically common weather events to apocalyptic scale (“the worst on record”) and claiming that they are evidence of the imminent climate apocalypse. But fact-checking research, by credible climate scientists, shows that the weather events of our era are no different from the past- no worse, and no more frequent. Most weather events are more correctly attributed to natural local factors and not overall climate.
The insanity of the decarbonization crusade has now become evident in the mounting damage to societies from anti-fossil fuel policies that have resulted in energy scarcity that is causing rising energy prices and general inflation (i.e. the 6000 basic products that are derived from or dependent on fossil fuels). The consequent human suffering from decarbonization is especially egregious because there is no good evidence that human use of fossil fuels, and related CO2 emissions, causes climate change (see Senator Malcolm Roberts “Submission to Australian government” in the section below). The trace greenhouse gas CO2 is not the control knob for climate change.
Further, there is no evidence of any dangerous warming occurring. Our world has experienced only a mild and beneficial 1 degree C of warming over the past century. There is no evidence of worsening storms, floods, droughts, fires, or other supposed climate disasters from this mild warming (even the IPCC, in its more rational assessments, acknowledges this).
Basic climate science affirms that CO2 is not the main influence on climate change as other natural factors show stronger correlations to the climate change that we have seen over past decades, centuries, and millennia. Further, climate physicists (Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others) have shown that the warming effect of CO2 has already become “saturated” and is now declining logarithmically. Meaning that increasing CO2 levels will not contribute much to any possible further warming.
The fact remains- We need several more degrees of warming in our still too cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth. More warming will save far more lives from cold mortality than the possible additional lives lost to more warming. And more CO2 will continue to green the planet more, thus providing more food for animals and increased crop production for humanity. All beneficial outcomes, and not a threat to life. Further warming will mean a return to more normal and optimal conditions for all life because for over 80% of the Phanerozoic history of life (past 500 million years) climate has been 3-6 degrees warmer than today’s world. And all life flourished in that much warmer world.
Insert note: The fact that deaths from climate-related disasters have fallen 98% over the past century, and the fact that far fewer people die from heat than die from cold, shows that people can adapt and survive more warming better than we can survive cold.
The climate alarmism crusade has revealed itself as an apocalyptic cult that has embraced the same old themes of past similarly religious apocalyptic crusades. Historians have written books detailing the similarities between mythical/religious and ideological apocalyptic movements (Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, Dave Redles, among others).
This site looks at the basic themes of apocalyptic cults and their destructive outcomes. This site probes the origins and descent of the apocalyptic complex of ideas/themes down through history- beginning with the original primitive mythologies, then to the world religions, and now to “secular/ideological” movements like 19th Century Declinism that dominates today’s world.
Awareness of the root issues related to a problem is a first step to finding solutions. Note in this regard Julian Simon’s autobiographical testimony that he had formerly embraced environmental alarmism narratives and was consequently a “clinically depressed” man. Then he researched for himself the key indicators on the true state of the world and found that alarmist narratives were all wrong. Yes, there were problems everywhere that needed attention and solving, but, he discovered, humanity was doing well in solving the problems and caring for the world. He said that after finding out the true state of the world, his depression left him and never returned. Good evidence revealed that the exaggerations and distortions of environmental alarmists were wrong.
This site also recognizes that most people live more by story than by scientific fact. And the themes that shape human stories are often residual pathologies from an ancient past, an inheritance of beliefs that profoundly distort reality and life.
Julian Simon re-evaluated the apocalyptic themes that he had embraced from environmental alarmism and then changed his personal narrative with factual evidence to better express the true state of life. He rejected the doom and gloom narrative of environmental alarmism. His new narrative transformed his mind, emotions, and overall outlook on life. This site argues for the same re-evaluation of personal narratives to detect residual pathologies of apocalyptic/millennial themes and then expunge them for better ideas that get us closer to the true state of things.
The apocalyptic/millennial complex of themes that has long deformed human narratives and consciousness: Here are the main myths/themes, the basic framework of apocalyptic millennial salvationism…
(1) The world was originally a paradise, but (2) human corruption/sin ruined paradise, and (3) life then declined toward something worse, and eventually (4) will degenerate to an apocalyptic ending. The hope for salvation demands that humanity (5) must purge the “evil” threat to life (the “sin”), (6) make a sacrifice to appease some upset Force/deity, and (7) then paradise can be restored.
In contemporary environmental alarmism, these apocalyptic millennial themes are presented in the “secular/ideological” Declinist narrative which states that (1) the past wilderness world was the original paradise, (2) corrupt people in industrial civilization have ruined that paradise world, (3) now life is declining and will end in (4) environmental/climate apocalypse. Salvation demands (5) that humanity purge the thing that threatens life- i.e. today the great evil threat to life is supposedly fossil fuels/CO2. The sacrifice that humanity must make to appease the angry deities of today is (6) to abandon the good life in modern civilization and return to a simple low-consumption lifestyle, and (7) then paradise can be restored, according to the alarmist prophets.
The threat of apocalypse incites survival fear in populations and consequent irrationality. People then become susceptible to irrational salvation schemes like decarbonization, even when the salvation plan so obviously ruins society. This is the insanity of apocalyptic movements, the “madness of crowds” that embrace- “destroy the world to save it”.
Sites of interest affirming there is “no climate crisis”:
The body of evidence on climate has now become overwhelming (i.e. the “unknowns/uncertainties” and the better knowns) yet this evidence is still denied by alarmists who base their climate apocalypse narrative on discredited models (“running too hot”). This means that the charge of “climate change denier” (used constantly by climate alarmists to smear those who disagree with their apocalyptic narrative) is a case of “psychological projection”. The alarmists are the real deniers of the good science showing that there is no climate crisis, not the skeptics of their apocalyptic-scale exaggeration.
Alarmist projection is much like the Leftist/Woke Progressive claim that all their opponents are “threats to democracy” when the actual censorship on social media, the banning of dissenting opinion and speech, the distortion of dissent as “misinformation/disinformation”, and the cancelling of careers, even endeavor to criminalize dissent (e.g. Pres. Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, in 2016), etc.- all such authoritarian, anti-democratic crackdown has been mainly coming from the Woke Left over the past decade. That creeping totalitarianism from the Left has been the real threat to democracy. Yet these people claim that the other side is the threat to democracy- even claiming that Elon Musk’s advocacy for free speech is a threat. What an upside down, topsy turvy world, eh.
Some related comment from Glen Greenwald on the media hysteria over the left’s loss of censorship powers and restoration of free speech for all.
“The media’s deranged hysteria over Elon Musk’s promised restoration of free speech”, Glen Greenwald
“It was easy to predict that there would be an all-out war from Western power centers if Musk sought to mildly reduce censorship on Twitter. Still, the media outdid itself.
“It is hard to overstate how manic, primal and unhinged is the reaction of corporate media employees to the mere prospect that new Twitter owner Elon Musk may restore a modicum of greater free speech to that platform. It was easy to predict— back when Musk was merely toying with the idea of buying Twitter and loosening some of its censorship restrictions — that there would be an all-out attack from Western power centers if he tried. Online censorship has become one of the most potent propaganda weapons they possess, and there is no way they will allow anyone to dilute it even mildly without attempting to destroy them. Even with that expectation in place of what was to come, the liberal sector of the corporate media (by far the most dominant media sector) really outdid itself when it came to group-think panic, rhetorical excess, and reckless and shrill accusations.
“In unison, these media outlets decreed that not only would greater free speech on Twitter usher in the usual parade of horribles they trot out when demanding censorship — disinformation, hate speech, attacks on the “marginalized,” etc. etc. — but this time they severely escalated their rhetorical hysteria by claiming that Musk would literally cause mass murder by permitting a broader range of political opinion to be aired. The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz even warned of supernatural demons that would be unleashed by these new free speech policies, as she talked to a handful of obviously neurotic pro-censorship “experts” and then wrote about these thinly disguised therapy sessions with those neurotics under this headline: “‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts.”
“But the self-evident absurdity of this laughable meltdown and the ease of mocking it should not obscure that there are lurking within these episodes some genuinely insidious and serious dangers. These preposterous media employees are just the sideshow. But what they are doing, unwittingly or otherwise, is laying the groundwork for far less frivolous and more serious people to use the attacks on Musk to further fortify the regime of censorship they have been constructing: the limitlessly demonizing language heaped on him, the success they have already had in driving away many if not most corporate advertisers from Twitter, the threats to once again abuse the monopoly power of Google and Apple to destroy Twitter or at least cripple it if Musk does not comply with their censorship orders (as they succeeded in doing last year to the free speech site Parler when it became the most-downloaded app in the country and refused to censor on demand).
“To examine the media tactics being invoked, and to highlight the underlying conflicts among power centers at stake in this battle, we devoted our monologue to this topic as part of Friday night’s episode of the pre-launch test-runs we are airing of our new live SYSTEM UPDATE program, soon to debut nightly on Rumble.”
“Elon Musk caused a flurry on social media after the tech CEO posted a meme mocking CNN’s concerns about free speech on Twitter.
“Musk posted a picture of CNN’s Don Lemon on Monday, alongside a satirical chyron that read “Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely.””
The root ideas behind apocalyptic cults/crusades, Wendell Krossa
Here is more on this site’s project of going to root ideas to probe inhumane themes that distort human narratives and deform human consciousness and life, notably, how the themes of primitive mythologies continue to dominate contemporary “secular/ideological” narratives. This site presents the apocalyptic/millennial ideas from primitive mythologies that were passed down to world religions and then embraced by “secular” ideologies like Declinism and its offspring- climate alarmism.
Next: A summary of the core teaching of Historical Jesus, based in part on “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research. This material is critical to solving the problem of apocalyptic in today’s “secular/ideological” narratives because the Christ myth of Paul has been the main factor in keeping apocalyptic pathology alive in Western and world consciousness and narratives.
The core message of 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.)
The greatest religious contradiction ever foisted on humanity (or “My position on Historical Jesus versus the Christian Christ myth”), Wendell Krossa
I basically accept the outcomes of the now almost three-century long “search for the Historical Jesus”. The latest stage of that search has been the Jesus Seminar, organized in 1985. It is widely affirmed now that Jesus existed but what he actually taught was only a small portion of what the New Testament (NT) attributes to him. Much of what the gospels claim that he said and did contradicts entirely his central theme and message. The closest that we get to what Jesus actually taught would be the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel material presented by scholars like James Robinson and John Kloppenborg, among others.
Note, for example, Jesus’ statement recorded in Matthew 5:38-48 to “love your enemies”. A statement of supreme love. Then a few chapters later Matthew claims that Jesus stated that those hamlets that rejected his miracles and message would be damned to hell (“cast into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”). To state that unbelievers would be damned is a statement of utmost hatred for others that cannot be reconciled with the previous statement of supreme love for even enemies. Those entirely contradictory statements do not come from the same person.
My position- Historical Jesus is not the same person as the Christ of Paul that is presented all through the New Testament. The Christ myth of Paul, that dominates the rest of the New Testament, profoundly distorts the message and life of Jesus.
Additionally, I don’t “believe in Jesus”. But I do recognize and appreciate that the historical person offered an insight on theology that was unprecedented in human history.
The core teaching of Historical Jesus is the “diamonds/pearls”, that Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy referred to, that are buried in the “dung, slime, muck, garbage” that is the surrounding New Testament context. Harsh words, eh. But they express something of the stunning contradiction between Jesus’ actual core message and the other NT teaching that has been attributed to him.
Historical Jesus, in his main teaching, offered a brilliantly new and unique insight into theology, a “diamond” insight that was entirely original in the history of human mythology, religion, or spirituality. To present his new insight, Jesus employed the ancient practice of relating a human behavior to a similar theological belief. His basic argument: Do this because God is like this. He based an ethic on a similar theological insight or belief. He appealed to a particular feature of God to validate similar human behavior.
I am referring to the behavior/belief relationship that people have used all across history. Note how the Hebrews (Old Testament) did the same centuries earlier when they claimed that all the details of their lives were modelled after the divine word/will/law of God that they believed was revealed to them. They were following the divine pattern even down to details like where the 12 tribes were to be located around the temple during the camping stops on the journey from Egypt to Palestine. They validated their behavior/lives with appeal to a divine model or pattern- what they believed to be the word/law/will of God.
Jesus also used this behavior/belief relationship when he stated his core teaching (repeated again here- note especially the highlighted sections of his core message), “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.)
On Jesus’ “stunning new” breakthrough insight regarding deity:
James Robinson says that Jesus was the first to introduce the “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. No one before Jesus had ever presented such a view of deity anywhere in human history. Others had preceded Jesus in advocating for a non-retaliatory behavioral response to enemies. Like the Akkadian Father some 2200 years before Jesus who told his son, “Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy. Give food to eat, beer to drink, grant what is requested, provide for and treat with honor”.
But that Father had then added, “Make sacrifice to your god”, meaning- appease your threatening and retaliatory deity. The Akkadian Father did not base the non-retaliatory behavior on a similar non-retaliatory theology as the validation for the behavior. He still embraced the same old views of gods as retaliatory, punitive monsters that needed appeasement with blood sacrifice.
It took further millennia, until Jesus, before non-retaliatory behavior was finally based on an entirely new theology of a non-retaliatory God, an unconditionally loving God. That was the brilliant new theological discovery, the uniquely humane insight of Historical Jesus.
Flesh out fully what Jesus was actually stating in the full context of his message. He said that God does not retaliate with eye for eye justice but instead loves enemies, meaning that there is no retributive, judging, punishing God. And that means, fundamentally, that there is no need for atonement- i.e. no need for a blood sacrifice to appease an angry, retaliatory deity, and thereby gain forgiveness and acceptance. Jesus’ statement further means that there is no separation of humanity from God, a sundered relationship that needs to be reconciled. And ultimately no future punishment in hell- the ultimate form of divine retaliation.
Jesus was the first person that we know of to state this new theology. See Matthew 5 and the better version of the same message in Luke 6. Matthew, obsessed with righteousness, ends the chapter 5:38-48 section with “Be perfect as your Father is perfect” and thereby misses Jesus’ overall unconditional point. Luke expresses the unconditional spirit of Jesus better by concluding that same Jesus’ message with- “Be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful” (my paraphrase).
A God who loved enemies is a statement that argues for a love that includes all, forgives all, loves all the same. Again, take this new feature of unconditional divine love to its full conclusions: There will be no ultimate judgment by God, no ultimate exclusion of anyone, and no ultimate punitive destruction of anyone, whether in apocalypse or hell. This is an entirely new God theory- that of an unconditionally loving God. And it sets forth an entirely new ultimate ideal of how to love offenders/enemies in this world. It is an entirely new and fully humane ideal to validate similarly humane behavior and life.
Qualifiers:
An unconditional deity is not a call to abandon common sense in an imperfect world with violent people and pathologies like psychopathy. Unconditional deity is not a call to feel mushy, fuzzy, or warm toward offenders and offenses that rightly evoke rage as the normal human response. It is not a call to free violent people from incarceration, people who cannot or will not control their worst impulses to harm others. It is not a call to dogmatic pacifism- i.e. to back down (“turn the other cheek”) in the face of larger movements of aggression or violence, as in wars started by totalitarian dictators. No. It means none of that.
But it is a call to maintain one’s own humanity in the face of evil by holding the intention to treat all humanely with restorative and not punitive justice. It argues for the intention to love (as response, action), no matter how one feels about the offenders and their offenses.
The need for such common sense in a violent and imperfect world does not change the theological insight made by Jesus that God was non-retaliatory (no more eye for eye), that God was unconditional love (love even your enemy, “sun and rain given to righteous and unrighteous alike”). Keep the theology clear and grant others the freedom to respond to that ultimate ideal as they choose- i.e. the choice to give to those who will not repay, to be good to those who are not good in return, or to not choose such “love your enemy” responses. That is all part of human freedom to wrestle with a theological insight that is profoundly liberating.
Treating all people unconditionally, both good and bad, liberates us from the animal-like impulse to retaliate with eye for eye or punitive responses. It liberates us to engage the supremely human impulses that include all people equally- both believers and unbelievers, both good people and bad people. It liberates us to forgive all, knowing that there will be no ultimate separation of anyone from God, no ultimate judgment, and no ultimate punishment or destruction of anyone.
But the question remains: Why then does evil exist in this world? Some suggest that dualism- notably, the dualism between good and evil- is a reality that is limited to this physical world (Joseph Campbell, for one, made this point). But there is no ultimate metaphysical dualism as in myths of a cosmic dualism between God versus Satan. So then, we wrestle with why dualism exists here. Perhaps dualism is only a temporary element of material reality, useful for living a story here and now, something that enables us to experience the freedom to choose good from evil and thereby grow and develop as human. Perhaps dualism exists here to provide a contrast with good so that we may fully understand and experience good as contrasted with its opposite? Philosophers of evil suggest that dualism between good and evil is necessary for authentic moral good to occur. They suggest that true moral good is only known and experienced when we struggle with its opposite and freely choose for good against its opposite- evil.
Whatever our conclusions on such things, the struggle with evil here does not change the core theological insight, the ultimate ideal in that brilliant insight of Historical Jesus- i.e. that God is a non-retaliatory reality, an ultimate Reality that is unconditional love toward all, toward both good and bad people. The responsibility to use common sense in the “here and now” world does not change the nature of ultimate reality and the ultimate ideal of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God. That ultimate reality serves to inspire and validate behavior based on a similar belief- “be like this (non-retaliatory) because God is like this (non-retaliatory)”. “Love your enemy because God does”. That is the single most profound insight ever spoken and does more to liberate human consciousness and transform human existence, than anything else. There is limitless potential for an unconditional ultimate ideal to take humanity into a better future.
None of the above diminishes the need to fight evil in this life/world. It does not diminish the responsibility of all for their behavior and the consequences of behavior. Even in restorative justice approaches toward offenders there must be proper restitution to victims. All such responsibility is part of “growing the fuck up” and becoming maturely human.
Added note:
Historical Jesus was a common man just like any other human being across history. He was not specially incarnated by God in any manner that is different than the rest of us who share the common human spirit that he possessed. He was clearly imperfect as seen, for example, in his nasty treatment of his mother and siblings who arrived outside a house and just wanted to talk to him (Luke 8: 20-21). He responded to their visit and concern for him with callous irresponsibility, stating that he had devoted himself to God and could not be bothered to treat his family with common human decency. That was an episode of embarrassingly petty and inhuman behavior from Jesus.
Further, scholars suggest that it was likely that Jesus was the child of a rape by Roman soldiers as noted in gospel comments made by Jesus’ detractors- i.e. “Who is his father?” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-verhoeven-idUSN2334241120080423
But nonetheless, the man offered this great insight on non-retaliatory, unconditional theology, and his stunning insight has been widely affirmed by the NDE movement- i.e. that God is an inexpressibly wondrous unconditional love. Meaning, as some NDErs conclude: “My Christian beliefs are all wrong. There is no angry God, no judgment, no hell, only a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love and light”.
And they add the further discovery/insight that we are all one with that ultimate reality. As the Hindus say, “We (atman- human selves) are that (Brahman or deity- the greater “All”)”.
Further Note:
Jesus died protesting sacrifice and the need for atonement. Paul ignored that central point of Jesus message and life and perverted Jesus entirely by claiming that he represented an ultimate cosmic sacrifice and the need for blood atonement made to God. Paul’s Christ myth is simply the greatest contradiction in all history- the greatest perversion of a historical figure to claim that the person represented the very opposite of what he had taught.
And this site repeatedly notes that the Christ myth has been mainly responsible for keeping pathologies like apocalyptic alive in Western consciousness over subsequent millennia. Look at the ongoing damage from such mythology even today in climate apocalyptic and decarbonization. Historians have traced out the historical shifts from ancient mythology to contemporary “secular ideology” and the consequent damaging influence from continuing to embrace primitive myths like apocalyptic, the consequent mass-death that is the outcome of apocalyptic movements like Marxism, Nazism, and alarmist environmentalism.
Mendel- “apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive idea in history”. Nuff said, eh.
And another note:
I would add my own point to arguments over whether Jesus was apocalyptic or not, affirming that Jesus was not apocalyptic because he clearly stated that he rejected the idea of a retaliatory God in his Math.5 and Luke 6 comments (both versions are the same message but just given different settings by different authors). Jesus rejected eye for eye retaliatory justice based on his view of a God that did not retaliate against offenders but instead loved enemies.
If, as Jesus claimed, God did not retaliate against enemies but instead loved God’s enemies, then God was not apocalyptic because apocalyptic is the ultimate act of retaliation against enemies, the supreme and final destruction and punishment of enemies.
In the central part of his message (i.e. the first version of Q Wisdom Sayings gospel), Jesus presents nothing that would lead us to conclude that he believed in a retaliatory God using violence to destroy the world and punish enemies (i.e. apocalyptic destruction). Later versions of the Q Wisdom Sayings gospel were apparently edited to include an apocalyptic element that changed entirely the original message of Jesus.
Paul took the opposite stance to Jesus and embraced a retaliatory God that would destroy God’s enemies. Paul states his retaliatory theology in Romans 12, quoting an Old Testament statement, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord”. His embrace of an apocalyptic deity is also expressed in his retaliatory/apocalyptic Christ myth presented in his Thessalonian letters. He states that “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus”.
Paul’s retaliatory Christ myth, and his retaliatory theology/God, is entirely contrary to the non-retaliatory theology of Jesus. Paul’s apocalyptic theology is entirely contrary to the non-apocalyptic message of Jesus.
This site is all about an adventure, a quest.
This site goes after monsters with the dream of conquering, slaying those monsters (perhaps a bit like Don Quixote? Or John Lennon?). This site argues that the greatest monsters are embedded in human narratives from where they have wreaked incalculable destruction across history- mental, emotional, motivational, behavioral damage. I refer, notably, to the theological monsters/gods that are the most dominant ideas that validate all other features of our narratives.
The reasoning for this quest to bring down monstrous ideas is that the ideas/ideals of our narratives incite/inspire human thought, perception, emotion, motivation, and consequent response/behavior. Human god theories play the dominant role here. We become just like the God (the ultimate ideal) that we believe in. Monstrous gods have always incited and validated monstrous behavior by the followers of such gods.
While the earliest monster gods were created at the very beginning, little has changed across subsequent history, except the forms of expression. The earliest gods had already been fully shaped by our ancestors who projected onto them features that were subhuman, inhuman, more animal-like than human.
I have repeatedly summarized those base features in the triad of- (1) tribal exclusion, (2) domination, and (3) punitive destruction of differing others. If you engage and practise these three, they will identify you as more animal-like than human. And engaging/practising the opposites of these three will take you to authentically human existence- i.e. (1) including all as free equals (embracing and celebrating human diversity), (2) non-dominating relating (again, respect and treatment of all as free equals), and (3) non-punitive justice (holding all responsible for behavior, restraining the worst behavior but treating offenders with restorative justice).
The earliest monster deities became the prototypes, archetypes for many prominent human ideals that followed down through history. Those early deities were embraced by the great world religions, and then in the modern era they were embraced by “secular/ideological” systems, even scientific thinking. I have suggested before that there was an element of apocalyptic belief in the formerly dominant idea that the 2nd Law of thermodynamics dominated the direction of the cosmos. A kind of declinism that is fundamental to apocalyptic mythology.
We see the old threatening monsters again today in contemporary deities like “vengeful Gaia, angry Mother Earth/Planet, punitive Universe, and payback karma”. These threatening deities have wreaked incalculable psychic misery on billions of people across history by stating that the physical suffering people experienced through natural disaster, disease, and predatory cruelty was punishment from gods for human “sin/imperfection”. This added psychic burden of fear, anxiety, shame, guilt has deformed human personality and life with despair, depression, fatalism/resignation, and violence. See good treatments of how bad theology deforms human life in books like Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”, or Harold Ellens’ “The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam”.
You will never fully liberate human consciousness and transform life for the better until you go to these root monsters (monstrous ideas/themes) and purge them from our narratives, whether religious or ideological.
This site offers the feature of unconditional as a foundational theme for transforming narratives from the core on out- i.e. the “stunning new theology” of a God that is inexpressibly transcendent “no conditions love”. This feature more than any other liberates consciousness from our most primal fears of this-life harm and after-life harm. Whatever happens to us in life we can be sure there is no God behind life that is trying to punish us for our imperfections. And there will be no future judgment (only self-evaluation as in the NDE life review), no future exclusion of anyone, no eternal servitude to dominating lords, and no punitive destruction of anyone.
Projecting base animal features onto deity, was a profound distortion of deity at the very beginning that has enslaved human consciousness far too long. It is far past time to slay those monsters once and for all. And enter the real kingdom of God in this life- an existence free of mythologically-based fear of divine monsters. Unconditional deity affirms that we are surrounded and interpenetrated by a stunningly inexpressible love. We are one with the Ultimate Consciousness/Reality that is that profound love (closer than our own atoms, our breath). That love is also our essential nature, our true self. Chew on that for a while, eh. Wendell Krossa
Another post from me (Wendell Krossa) responding to a post from Bob Brinsmead to our discussion group:
There is no way you can gussy up (i.e. put lipstick on a pig) what sacrifice/atonement has been about over history and across the world. While accompanied by so much hocus pocus looney ritual features, the brutality of human sacrifice is beyond disgusting and it is all based on such primitive distortions in thought/perception- i.e. that there are angry deities threatening people with disease, disaster, death mainly via the natural world. So placate/appease the monsters with blood. Get a grip on the essential barbarity of all this and don’t waste time trying to defend it, or gussy it up as something else than what it essentially is about. And the Christian version is just the same in its basic elements. Again, I refer all to Nigel Davies’ “Human sacrifice: In history and today”.
This from Bob:
“Yes, and one has put it, “the (Christ myth) is the most compelling myth in the history of man”. It was such because Paul brought all those basic myths- i.e. combat myths, apocalyptic myths especially set out by Zarathustra, all those dying and rising divinities (i.e. Osiris in Egypt), the spilling of royal and divine blood for salvation, and shortly following Paul to his logical end, all those virgin born godmen and heroes- Paul was able to meld all of the ancient myths– yes, I nearly forgot– including the myths about sacrifice- and he brought them all together as the most compelling myth in the history of man because he wrapped up and embodied all those myths in the history of man in his one brilliant Christ myth. Greco-Roman civilization was ready to embrace such a myth because in its cultural genes it already embodied all those myths– and even Celcus, the great pagan critic of the Christian religion, as well as Justin the first great Christian apologist, recognized that all those old myths were absorbed into Christianity. No wonder the so-called Jewish Christians were appalled by the way that their Jesus had been hijacked by Paul’s Gentile version of Jesus.”
Tribal collectivism versus the common humanity of individual persons, Wendell Krossa
There is too much focus today on the peripheral identity markers of people, namely skin color. Scientists have noted that skin color is a very peripheral thing on human DNA. As one scientist said, it amounts to nothing of more importance on the genome than a “sun burn”. Actually, it is just about “active versus inactive melanocytes”- the tiny organs in our skin that produce melanin and color skin. Some people with ancestry in high sunlight areas (tropical regions) will still have active melanocytes and hence more color in their skin (the prized “well tanned” people that look healthier). Others from low sunlight areas will have inherited less active melanocytes and hence less color in their skin (the paler ones).
But again, this is all very peripheral on the human genome. Something of very little importance genetically in defining what a human person is. This is why some argue that race is more of a social construct than a biological reality. And to focus on such peripheral things as active/inactive melanocytes is to detract from the essence of being human- i.e. that we all possess human consciousness, human minds, and are unique human selves or persons.
Martin Luther King pointed to this emphasis on the individual in his Washington mall speech where he urged us to view one another in terms of our individual character or personhood, not in terms of our skin color. That is the world that we ought to be moving toward.
Others have noted that the contemporary focus on skin color (race) is part of a re-emerging collectivism and classism, as related to Marxism. The unique individual is ignored or downplayed for a focus on a collective such as all people of some skin color who are viewed as an entire group and defined by some feature that dehumanizes or demonizes that group- i.e. all whites as “oppressors”. This is the new “Woke Racism” noted by scholar John McWhorter, or Douglas Murray in “The War on the West”.
Classic Liberalism re-affirmed that the individual should take precedence over collectives. Classic Liberalism was created to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals (society organized around free individuals, not collectives). The protection of individual rights and freedoms was understood as the best preventative against the inevitable totalitarianism of collectivism. Collectivism inevitably breeds totalitarianism because it centralizes power and control in some “enlightened elite/vanguard” that must run the collective for the good of all, for what they call the “common or greater good”. Individuals are then subjected to the collective and, notably, individual property rights are banned as an evil (the outcome of “selfish/greedy” individualism). As the World Economic Forum (WEF) statement of purpose says, “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. Because we tell you so.
We have better identity markers than just active/inactive melanocytes, notably, that we are all equals in the one human family, the ultimate collective that really matters. Our oneness in that greater reality is a most basic fact that provides a more credible basis for human identity, not some peripheral tribal difference- whether skin color, or ethnic/national/ideological/religious membership.
The focus on peripheral, minor features like skin color is what tribal-oriented minds like to focus on. But that distorts our true nature as unique individual human persons that are most fundamentally the same because of we all possess common human consciousness, human mind, and a unique human personality or self. Our individual character, as Martin Luther King argued, should take prominent position in our evaluation of one another.
This link on the destructive outcomes from decarbonization, and the related “insanity and hypocrisy” of the eco-fanatics. Wendell Krossa
The world has immense supplies of fossil fuels and they would be inexpensive if it were not for the intentional policies to block their development, policies that have now limited fossil fuel supplies in an era of growing demand, and hence the consequent rise in energy prices that cause inflation across a wide range of goods (i.e. the 6000 basic products of our societies that are derived or related to fossil fuels).
As Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts states- there is no evidence to show that humanity should cease using fossil fuels. The climate physicists- Lindzen and Happer among others- add evidence from the physics of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to affirm that there is no good scientific reason to limit the human use of fossil fuels. The warming effect of CO2 has already reached “saturation” in physics terms and that warming effect is now declining “logarithmically”, and hence CO2 will add very little to any further warming.
Climate is always changing and has warmed mildly over the past century (1 degree C) and this warming has been beneficial in a world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warming. Further, rising levels of CO2 have benefitted all life with a 15% increase in green vegetation across the world since 1980 (more food for animals, increased crop production for humanity). There is no evidence of looming “climate crisis” from more warming. And hence, there is no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
The eco-hysteria created by discredited climate models drives decarbonization policies that are ruining societies by blocking fossil fuel exploration, development, and supply.
Yes, explore alternative energy supplies- nuclear, renewables, and others- but on private not public dime. The subsidies from government for renewables are an unnecessary extra tax burden on average citizens. Besides, mitigation policies (curbing human use of fossil fuels) will not work because CO2 is not mainly responsible for global warming. CO2 is not the “control knob” for climate. Other natural factors are mainly responsible for climate change and any further warming will not be catastrophic but beneficial to all life in our still abnormally cold world.
On the eruption of political/ideological tribalism
The eruption of hatred for the other side over recent years has been unsettling to watch. But then, when you demonize your opponents as “threats to democracy… Hitler or Nazis…. Fascists… racists…” and so on, then you have convinced yourself that you are in a righteous battle against intolerable evil, a “battle for democracy”, and even for survival, against a threat so terrible that it must be censored, criminalized, banned, and shut down entirely. The undisguised hatred driving this sense of righteous cause is stunning in its intensity and constancy. Fortunately, some on both sides are aware that the boundaries of common decency have been overstepped and they are trying to pull themselves back to more moderation and common decency toward opponents.
Others have noted the uninhibited hatred toward differing others (the tribalism of today) as it is expressed, for example, in late night comedy shows. In the past, comedians like Johnny Carson treated both sides equally as objects of comedic targeting. But today’s light night comedians, to the contrary, have come out as highly partisan defenders and propagandists for one side (the Left), and their comedy is often maliciously intended to humiliate and demean opponents. There is little humor in such hate-fueled dehumanization of differing others.
This is very much part of a larger phenomenon- where former liberalism in the US has become highly illiberal (no longer Classic Liberalism) and embraces more of what we know as extremist Woke Progressivism. What was once all about toleration, inclusiveness, protection of rights and freedoms- has now become highly intolerant of difference of opinion and speech (calling differing speech “hate speech… words as violence and threat”), highly exclusive (banning, cancelling differing others), and it refuses to defend the rights and freedoms of differing others but in very authoritarian ways denies those basic rights and freedoms to others. In other words- “creeping totalitarianism”.
And of course, the Right side of society has similar tribal demons to guard against and control. Wendell Krossa
Intro note to extremist takeover of social movements: While the pathology noted below happens on both sides, it is more prominent today coming from the Left, liberal, or Woke Progressive side of things. And it may be more the pathology of a tiny, but very vocal, minority on the Left. Unfortunately, such extremism gets major public attention as Woke liberal media obsessively favor it.
The loss of “general public” support for social movements: Wendell Krossa
In varied social movements that have emerged over past decades, there has often been a core concern in the movements that all citizens- i.e. the “general public”- can initially identify with and support wholeheartedly. Note, for example, the past movements and general public support for gay rights, for MeToo, for racial/Black Lives Matter (BLM) rights, for hate speech concerns, for disinformation/misinformation, for hate speech concerns, etc.
But then fringe types involved in these movements have repeatedly taken these movements toward more extremist positions and that has resulted in a loss of support from moderate “general public” majorities. We saw this with MeToo developing a more hateful anti-male tone and categorizing varied male misdemeanors across the spectrum of offenses in extremist terms as all indistinguishably part of the same unforgiveable career and life-cancelling crimes. This was evident in the loss of perspective on differing degrees of criminality and the refusal to grant due process.
Even notable female public figures spoke out against such extremist perversion- e.g. Sharon Stone, Margaret Atwood, and others.
We saw extremist distortion in BLM at times when it promoted its own version of racism with claims that all whites were “evil oppressors” (“There is no form of being white that is good”, Robin DiAngelo in White Fragility, also Doug Murray in War on the West, John McWhorter in Woke Racism). Others in the movement tended to ignore actual progress in equality rights and instead claimed that structural racism still existed everywhere.
And we have seen extremist distortion in the ongoing leftist exaggeration and demonization of the political/ideological disagreement of their opponents as “hate speech… disinformation/misinformation… threats to democracy”, etc.
The extremists reject the original goals of the movements that had wide public support and push the movements in directions that distort the original concerns/goals. The result is that many in the general public can no longer support the now “off-the-rails” directions that extremists have taken the varied movements toward.
Further, the extremists frame legitimate dissent to their positions, the dissent of those opting for more moderate views or positions, such dissent in its entirety is demonized as intolerable “evil”.
We have watched this occur in the emergence and spread of the Woke faction of contemporary US liberalism, an element that commentators on both sides say now dominates the liberal side in much of academia, politics, and news media (including Hollywood).
A notable trick of the Woke extremists is to focus on the tiny minority of actual criminal acts engaged by extremists on the other side (for example, actual incidents of extremist hate speech or violence by White Supremacists) and then make the distorting claim that all the differing positions/speech/actions on that other side are also to be similarly categorized as criminal- as threats to democracy, as hate speech, misinformation/disinformation, racism, fascism, and so on. Even the once-honored principle of free speech itself has now been included in the demonization drive of Woke extremists.
The extremists then present themselves as heroes in righteous battles against evil from which there can be no backing down. After all, as Woke extremists have framed the issue- it’s “a battle for democracy, to save democracy” from the differing other side that “will destroy democracy”.
The Woke extremism now dominating much of US liberalism/Progressivism exhibits a shocking loss of perspective, a loss of self-awareness, a loss of common-sense moderation, and a resurgence of intensely antagonistic tribalism. The hatred for differing others (the “enemies”) and the self-righteous glee in the cancellation/destruction of careers and lives is unsettling to watch in these movements like Woke Progressivism.
And again, not to ignore- similar elements of extremist distortion and tribal animosity are also evident on the other side of this social divide- the Right. But due to the dominance of the Woke Left in academia, news media, Big Tech, and Hollywood- Woke extremism poses the greater threat today to freedom.
Most confounding in the above Woke Progressive extremism is the lack of awareness of Classic Liberal principles that Western liberal democracies are founded on and that have brought such freedom and benefit to billions. What we once considered, over previous decades, as the liberal side of society has now become “highly illiberal” (Jimmy Dore). Former liberal inclusion has shifted to become antagonistic exclusion. Former liberal tolerance has become highly intolerant of diversity of opinion and speech. Former liberal advocacy for freedom has become an all-out attack on freedom.
Fortunately, moderates from both sides are pushing for a re-engagement/re-enforcement of Classic Liberal principles that have done an amazing job in protecting us all against past totalitarian infringements from collectivism, a collectivism that is now re-emerging in Woke Progressivism.
Added note: Keep an eye on the Democrat/liberal crusade against Elon Musk- the liberal effort to demonize Musk as a threat to democracy. Woke liberals are demonizing a heroic man who is restoring free speech to Twitter. This is notable public example of the left’s distortion of those trying to do good today and restore Classic Liberal principles.
Post from discussion group re a Gutfeld show on the liberal reaction to Elon Musk restoring free speech on Twitter:
“Note the video clips included here (around 4 minute mark) from MSNBC, CNN, etc. showing them demonizing Musk and the concept of freedom (“Libertarian nonsense”?!?!- which is basically saying- Classic Liberal nonsense). It is insane how authoritarian Democrats/liberals have become, that they now believe freedom for all is a threat (i.e. a threat to them and their control of public narratives).
“Leftist/Democrat Jimmy Dore was right that US liberals have become “highly illiberal”. They have abandoned the principles of Classic Liberalism that Western democracies are founded on. They appear to have no understanding of how critical free speech is to all freedom. As others have noted- they regularly demonize differing opinion/speech as “hate speech… violence-inciting…” etc.
“Gutfeld correctly notes this is what happens “when one defines disagreement as hate speech, and then as a crime. Then free speech becomes a crime for allowing disagreement.” What a twisted, distorting narrative liberals have created and locked themselves into.”
Another
“As one guest says, it is stunning how a political party in a great democracy is making their opponents and their opponent’s opinions and positions “illegal” for disagreeing. These people criminalizing differing opinions and speech claim that their opponents are “threats to democracy”, which is actually a projection of what they are doing to the other side.
“Musk and Twitter are the latest focal points in an ongoing struggle for freedom and democracy now playing out in our societies.”
Another:
“Tyrus makes a good point that instead of owning their corruption that has now been exposed, they are demonizing Musk for exposing them, notably on things like the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop that would have cost them the election if voters had known. They are demonizing Musk, says Tyrus, not because he is making Twitter a “Right or Republican” forum, but just for opening it up to all to speak freely.”
Another
“Much of what was once known as Liberalism in the US (i.e. Democratic party) appears to have been pulled increasingly toward Woke Progressive extremism, leftist extremism. And many on that side who would identify as more “moderate” may be moving now toward “independent” positions/status, no longer comfortable with the extreme Woke Progressivism that we see now in much of liberal media and politics.
“You see this shifting of moderates away from the Woke extremism in things like the surveys that have shown that most Democrats wanted the same end to political correctness that Trump voters wanted in 2016 (this was noted by Bill Maher on a Chris Cuomo interview years ago). The shift of moderates away from Woke extremism, is also seen in surveys showing that more Democrats were watching news shows like Tucker Carlson than watched CNN and other liberal media. It has also been noted in the one million Democrats who switched parties in 2021. And in Gutfeld’s rocketing to number one slot for late night comedy, surpassing all the others.
“Hopefully, the fed-up-ness with the corruption and distortion on the left will lead to further corrective abandonment by more liberals.” A healthy liberal democracy needs at least two opposing, but moderate parties to keep one another balanced.
This article expresses something of the intolerant extremism of Woke/cancel culture, also termed “outrage culture” and its totalitarian demands and retributive responses. Referring to the attack on Salmon Rushdie, the author speaks of the “unconscionable barbarism” that has terrorized many into self-censorship out of fear of voicing their beliefs and facing “a terrible online backlash of ‘ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children’s schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs’”…
“It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking. There is something honest about an authoritarianism that recognises itself to be what it is.
“Such a system is easier to challenge because the battle lines are clear. But this new social censure demands consensus while being wilfully blind to its own tyranny. I think it portends the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity”.
How do you replace the 6,000 basic products from fossil fuels?
“COP 27 has no back-up plan to replace products from oil” by Ronald Stein, Nov. 29, 2022
“Renewables cannot manufacture any of the products that come from oil, which are supporting eight billion now on this planet.”
This from Forbes by Tilak Doshi on latest IEA report pushing “Turbocharged” renewables
Just a note regarding the points made in this article below- Government decarbonization policies are an irrational response to the climate alarmism that is based on discredited climate models (“running way to hot”). Climate alarmism denies the good science on the physics of CO2 that show (1) CO2 is not the main cause of climate change (other natural factors are the main cause) and (2) show that climate change is not becoming “catastrophic… an existential crisis”. To the contrary, more CO2 and mild warming have been significant benefits to all life.
Government decarbonization policies have blocked fossil fuel exploration and development in a time of growing energy demand and the outcome has been rising energy costs. Increased energy costs directly impact general inflation as some 6,000 basic products in our societies are derived from or dependent on fossil fuels.
The consequences of these destructive anti-fossil fuel policies have been devastating to the most vulnerable/poorest people (e.g. increased mortality among the elderly facing “fuel poverty” as in Britain and elsewhere).
The article’s main theme: How high energy prices today are the result of government decarbonization policies, not the result of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Quotes (note the cause and effect linkages in this article):
”’Turbocharged’ Renewables. The IEA hawking its wares again” by Tilak Doshi, Forbes Dec. 13, 2022
“The glowing forecasts for renewable energy presented by the IEA seem free of the laws of physics and written to promote an agenda. The IEA’s descent into advocacy and shoddy analysis for the Green cause is complete.
“Along with the mainstream media, the IEA lays the blame for the energy crisis afflicting the world — the EU region in particular— on the war in Ukraine. This is myopic and dishonest. Between June 2021 and January 2022 prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine which commenced in late February, Dutch TTF natural gas prices almost quadrupled, South African coal export prices increased by 50% and Dated Brent crude oil prices by 17%. Crude oil prices had begun their ascent earlier as the global economy recovered from the covid lockdowns leading to a recovery in oil demand while supply remained constricted.
“Brent crude more than doubled in price in January this year from its $40 per barrel level in October 2020.
“Surging energy prices weren’t merely a result of the Russian invasion which accentuated the price shock. The spikes in fuel prices were a cumulative result of government policies in the West that focused exclusively on speculative model-based forecasts of the climate impacts of carbon emissions.
“These policies starved the oil, gas and coal sectors of capital investments and diverted trillions of dollars of public funds to subsidize intermittent wind and solar technologies which could not replace fossil fuels. Last month, Jeff Currie, Goldman Sachs’ Head of Commodities Research, pointed out in an interview that at end 2021, fossil fuels accounted for 81% of global energy consumption, down from 82% a decade previously. The cost for this marginal change? A cool $3.8 trillion!
“The German example is illustrative. The country’s hugely expensive Energiewende (“energy transition”) strategy was adopted in 2010, aiming for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels towards reliance on renewables for the country’s energy needs. Germany shut down most of its coal and nuclear plants in short order and expected solar and wind energy to replace its dependence on fossil fuels. What transpired in fact was that its Green Party-driven imperatives to “save the planet” by replacing fossil fuels led to an over-dependence on imports of Russian fossil fuels. On the eve of Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country imported 60% of its natural gas, 50% of its coal and 35% of its oil from Russia. One looks in vain for these facts in the IEA’s report.
“In what can only be described as a case of utter moral depravity, the EU which did all it could to force a moratorium on fossil fuel investments in Africa now calls for such investments to be encouraged provided that the fossil fuel products are exported to Europe. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni called this situation “a truly perverse twist” and “the purest hypocrisy.”
“In the UK — which leads even Germany in its zeal to replace fossil fuels — Bloomberg journalist Javier Blass tweeted two days ago that the “UK wholesale day-ahead electricity prices surge to a record high as cold, dry and calm weather cripples wind production and sends demand soaring”. While the baseload price of electricity on Monday cleared at £674 per MWh, the evening peak load cleared at a shocking price above £2,000 per MWh. As large swathes of Britain were blanketed in snow with the cold snap that descended on Monday, natural gas was producing more than half of the country’s power supply.
“Intermittent wind power failed to make an appearance in calm cold weather that Germans call the “dark doldrums”.
“In a further paradox, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak re-introduced the ban on fracking gas in the UK — which was discarded previously by the short-lived government of Liz Truss — while agreeing to import fracked gas from the US at far greater expense. The “security benefits” of renewable energy indeed….
“Intermittent sources of electricity such as wind and solar are parasitical in the true sense of the word. They impose costs on the electricity grid since they need back-up from coal or gas-generated sources whenever solar and wind power fail to deliver needed energy. The costs of integrating fluctuating sources of power into an electricity grid are substantial. By destabilizing the grid with intermittency, unreliable renewable energy imposes costs borne by ratepayers ….
“The glowing forecasts for renewable energy presented by the IEA seem free of the laws of physics and written to promote an agenda. The descent of the once leading organization — devoted to rigorous analysis of energy economics and its policy consequences for its OECD member countries — into advocacy and shoddy analysis for the Green cause is complete….
“Fixated on spurious models that allegedly link carbon dioxide emissions to apocalyptic forecasts of global warming, the IEA couldn’t care less about the intolerable financial burdens imposed on ordinary people that need affordable food, heating (or cooling), lighting and mobility. Worse still, it is intent on imposing its climate change predilections on the vast majority of the world’s population that live in developing countries. But people are connecting the dots between the West’s incoherent ideological energy policies and the adverse impacts on their livelihoods.”
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See new material at bottom of this opening section: More evidence of decarbonization destruction as people, desperate to stay warm, are deforesting areas of Europe. This destruction has been driven by intentional policies to block the human use of fossil fuels, thus creating a shortage of critical energy resources in an era of growing demand, and consequently resulting in higher prices and raging inflation. The poorest people suffer the most from this anti-fossil fuel crusade based on an apocalyptic narrative of “climate crisis”.
Also, another “The emperor has no clothes” award goes to Eric Worrall for his good response to a BBC alarmism piece claiming “millions- even billions” of people will migrate to escape global warming. To the contrary, people have always migrated to much warmer areas of the world and adapted well to much warmer climates.
Section topics:
1. The madness of crowds, MacKay;
2. Destruction as good? Comment on the irrational psychology of apocalyptic minds;
3. The destructiveness of decarbonization;
4. Exploding the myth of “climate crisis” with basic climate facts;
5. “The emperor has no clothes” award to Senator Malcolm Roberts for his Submission to the Australian government showing that “There has never been and there remains no factual, scientific basis for cutting or limiting the production of CO2 from human use of fossil fuels… There is no logical, scientific basis for government to introduce policies designed to reduce CO2 from human activity”;
6. Paleoclimate facts (the big picture, long-term context of climate);
7. More on “slay the monster”- Note the contradiction between Historical Jesus (died for protesting against the sacrifice industry) and Paul’s entirely contrary Christ myth (presented as the iconic supreme sacrifice), including posts from Bob Brinsmead on sacrifice;
8. Articles on “De-growth”, “De-development” (more on the destructiveness of decarbonization). The “return to primitivism” crusade of climate alarmism;
And more…
Quotes from “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles MacKay.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
“During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed, whether for good or evil. During the great plague, which ravaged all Europe, between the years 1345 and 1350, it was generally considered that the end of the world was at hand. Pretended prophets were to be found in all the principal cities of Germany, France, and Italy, predicting that within ten years the trump of the Archangel would sound, and the Saviour appear in the clouds to call the earth to judgment.”
“An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. “But the facts, my dear fellow,” said his friend, “the facts do not agree with your theory.” “Don’t they?” replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, “then, tant pis pour les faits— so much the worse for the facts!”
“Every age has its peculiar folly— some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation.”
Destruction as good?? Some comment on the irrational psychology of apocalyptic minds. Wendell Krossa
Understand how apocalyptic mythology works to destroy societies (A nod to Arthur Mendel’s conclusion that “apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history”- in his book “Vision and Violence”).
Apocalyptic mythology terrorizes people with the primal survival threat (“we’re all gonna die”) and that threat pushes people toward irrational thinking and the consequent embrace of insane salvation schemes that destroy societies. The salvation schemes of apocalyptic mythology often become projects of “self-fulfilling prophecy” that propel populations to embrace the destruction of their societies under the illusion of saving themselves (“destroy the world to save it”).
People panicked by apocalypse scenarios will embrace the salvation schemes offered by apocalyptic prophets because the prophets play on human hope for future survival in the restoration of some lost paradise or new utopia that supposedly emerges after the apocalypse.
Further, people are led to irrationally embrace the coming destruction from the apocalypse because they are told that the destruction of the present “corrupt” world is a necessary first stage before there can be the restoration of paradise. The apocalyptic complex of myths states that in order to achieve the salvation into the promised paradise that will be re-created in a post-apocalypse world, there must first be the great violent purging from the world of the present corrupt system, the “evil” system that threatens life (Arthur Herman notes this feature of “violent purging” in his history of Declinism ideology- “The Idea of Decline in Western History”). Read the rest of the opening comment here
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Further below: See the latest from climate physicists Lindzen and Happer on their challenge to the unscientific “Endangerment Finding” of the EPA. Understand the physics of CO2- i.e. that it has reached “saturation” in terms of its warming effect and that with increasing atmospheric levels the warming effect of CO2 now declines logarithmically. Understanding the physics of CO2 (and actual observed climate change, not the exaggerations and distortions of discredited climate models) will lead to recognizing that there is no “climate crisis” and no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
The title above refers to the need to re-evaluate and purge our meta-narratives (religious and “secular/ideological” narratives) of inhumane themes, notably to purge the inhumane ideas that have been projected onto deity or theology over past millennia. Themes that define deity are the most dominating ideas that validate other inhumane themes in our narratives. We have better, more humane alternative insights today to shape our narratives. The feature of “no conditions love” would be a primary feature for creating more humane deity theories (truly human gods). Unconditional should be among the main criteria for evaluating what is truly human or not.
Section topics:
(1) The climate crusade is “profoundly religious” (revised update): How primitive myths have been passed down through history and continue to dominate narratives today, both religious and “secular/ideological” narratives like climate alarmism.
(2) Climate physicists Schmitt and Happer on the conventional distortions re CO2.
(3) There is no need to “address climate change”- the fallacy of “control knob theory” (i.e. the discredited claim that CO2 is mainly responsible for climate change so embrace the unscientific and irrational policies of taxing carbon and decarbonizing our societies in order to “control climate change” and “limit global warming to about 1.5 degree C”.)
(4) Response to Jordan Peterson’s questions: What do belief systems express? And… How to avoid becoming caught up in “madness of crowds” episodes like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism?
(5) More on the “wonder of being human”.
(6) An Aussie story about oil.
See two new articles at the bottom of this opening section:
(1) Terrorizing, traumatizing children with climate apocalypse tales- a commentary by Judith Curry on the harmful effects of climate alarmism on children (“anti-hardiness/resilience”, learned helplessness, fatalism, despair/depression, nihilism).
(2) Comment by Eric Worrall on Senator Malcolm Roberts’ excellent submission to the Australian government to “prove with proper science that CO2 is a problem”.
Re-affirming site project- slay the monster of all monsters at the root of primal human fears:
This site engages themes from the “hero’s journey/adventure” such as the feature of engaging a great battle against monsters/enemies. The monster/enemy of this site has long been the bad ideas in human narratives from across history, notably bad theological ideas (i.e. monstrous deities). These monster gods have terrorized human consciousness from the earliest creation of human mythologies and have long remained deeply embedded in human narratives, mainly in religious narratives but have also been embraced in the “secular/ideological” narratives of more recent centuries.
One of the worst among the complex of all bad ideas is the myth that deities work through the harmful elements of the natural world (i.e. natural disaster, disease, predatory cruelty) to punish people for their sins. Note that Paul used this myth in his argument with the Corinthians- that God was punishing their sins with disease and death (1 Corinthians ch.10). Environmental alarmism has embraced this same pathological mythology with its own versions of “secular/ideological” deities punishing humanity- i.e. “vengeful Gaia, angry Mother Earth/Planet, punitive Universe, or payback karma”. This mythology adds an extra psychic burden (i.e. human suffering as punishment from deity) to already unbearable physical suffering.
These monster ideas have been protected under “the canopy of the sacred” (world religions) far too long. They re-enforce an entire complex of bad religious ideas, and notably they re-enforce the broader narrative of Declinism that dominates the consciousness of most people today (e.g. Environmental Declinism, climate alarmism).
More on “Monster gods terrorizing human consciousness since the creation of the earliest mythologies”, Wendell Krossa–
Pre-historian John Pfeiffer in “The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion” explores the origins of religion in the cave art that exploded some 30,000 years ago across southern France and northern Spain, notably in caves like those at Lascaux. He questions why people went so far into the darkness of those caves to draw the anamorphic art that they had discovered. (“Anamorphic”- i.e. the art appears to change shape or move in flickering candle light or when lamps are held at differing angles to the paintings.)
He suggests varied features of ancient thought and practice that contributed to the origins of religion as exhibited in that cave art. For instance, he suggests that those ancient people believed in the “Master or Keeper of Animals”, exalted beings who provide game and establish the rules for hunting, and punishments if the rules are broken. Such gods (like their eventual Greek offspring) were believed to be “angry and aggressive, jealous… and meddled incessantly in human affairs, punishing… and visiting all sorts of plagues upon mortals”. The Master of Animals is the prototype of all subsequent gods. (Note in regard to the animal Masters, how prominent animals are throughout the cave art.)
The intentional location of the art deep within the caves served the purpose of disorienting people and preparing them via an unpleasant experience (darkness, silence, frightening “anamorphic” art) to be receptive to what the early shaman would tell them.
Fear/terror was a basic point of the cave experience. Those early people probably believed in supernatural beings and their sense of the supernatural as frightening was intensified in the darkness and silence of the caves. The cave experience, and the art, heightened the sense of strangeness, otherworldliness, mystery, and danger.
Further, the early shaman/priests claimed to know the secrets of the invisible world (“knowledge of sacred affairs”) and that was a claim to power and control over others. It was a claim used to gain advantage over enemies/rivals. They claimed to know the secrets of how to appease and please the spirits/gods with offerings and sacrifices so as to avoid punishments (sickness, death) and to gain benefits (survival, prosperity).
The cave art and related ceremonies also suggest the origins of elites in early societies- i.e. shaman claiming special knowledge of the secrets of the invisible realms/gods, and even elevating themselves to god-like status over others. This was a claim to superiority/authority, and a demand for subservience and obedience from other lesser mortals (i.e. the earliest origin of priesthoods as “specially enlightened” and “righteously dominating” representatives of deity). Read the rest of the opening comment here
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“I hold undying enmity toward everything that enslaves the human mind” (paraphrase of unknown author).
This site continues to present evidence from varied sources affirming that there is no “climate crisis” and hence no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. Basic climate facts show there is no looming climate apocalypse. CO2 is not the “control knob” for climate change. CO2 is not the main influence on climate but is only a “bit player” among a complex of other natural factors. See, for example, the “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” reports below that show “meridional transport” is the main influence on climate change. Point? There is no need to abandon the fossil fuels that have enabled humanity to prosper as never before in history.
The real “wonder of being human”
The great wonder regarding humanity is not how far we have “fallen” since some imaginary better past (i.e. the myths of original paradise world, Eden, sinless humans, but then the “Fall of humanity into original sinfulness”, and subsequent ruin and loss of paradise). The great wonder regarding humanity is how far we have risen from our barbaric animal past (Bob Brinsmead).
Get the basics of a true narrative of life right, the actual trajectory of life (i.e. not declining, but improving over the long term). Overturn and correct the continuing mythical distortions in the story of life, whether religious or “secular/ideological” distortions. The basic themes of the old narratives are all the same, whether expressed religiously or ideologically/scientifically. Evidence overwhelmingly affirms a new narrative of life improving, based on the growing evidence of humanity solving problems, improving the human condition, and taking better care of nature.
And this critical warning from Jordan Peterson on eco-extremism…
(1) Rejecting rational science, holding a mythical perspective;
(2) Latest summary of the “Sun-climate effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis”;
(3) Counter facts to the climate alarm narrative (there is no evidence of a “climate emergency”);
(4) The climate alarmism crusade is “profoundly religious” (the complex of primitive apocalyptic themes that shape climate alarmism and environmental alarmism/declinism ideology in general);
(5) The Sun-climate effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” (“meridional transport” is the main influence on climate, not CO2);
(6) We are in the coldest time of the 600-million year history of life on Earth (cold is the far greater threat today in our world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth);
(7) Climate physics (the physics of CO2- i.e. the warming effect of CO2 is now “saturated” in physics terms, meaning it won’t contribute much more to further warming as the warming effect of CO2 now declines logarithmically);
(8) Is climate change really a “serious issue”? (taking a poke at a National Post writer);
(9) Greg Gutfeld: “Common sense can no longer defuse absurd situations” (Woke extremism);
(10) Waiting around to be offended (the deranged psychology of outrage culture);
(11) Media obsession in relating all natural weather events to the alarmism narrative of “climate crisis”;
(12) Despite media’s constant crusade to incite ongoing hysteria over all sorts of weather events, there is no evidence that storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, or other weather disasters are becoming worse (the endless mantra of “the worst on record”) and, in fact, many show trends of decline due to the mild warming of the past century. Global warming produces a decrease in gradient differences between cold and warm areas of the world means less severity and quantity of storms, fewer and less severe tornadoes, etc. This beneficial outcome is due to “meridional transport” that carries tropical warmth to the colder polar regions of Earth thereby “evening out” climate across the world and explaining the “remarkable stability of tropical temperatures” even when Earth was 10 degrees warmer over the paleoclimate past.; and more…
Get the physics of CO2 clear and that will go a long way to defusing the madness of the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade (i.e. enabling “common sense to defuse absurd situations”). Note particularly the research of climate physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, William Wijngaarden, among others. Read the rest of the opening comment here
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“I hold undying enmity against everything that enslaves the human mind” (paraphrase of unknown author).
Section topics:
(1) The most destructive pathology to have infected human consciousness- apocalyptic mythology;
(2) Subjective, personal human experience as a credible tool in the fight against primal fears;
(3) Fighting Fear: the panic-mongering of the “climate crisis” crusade (listen to the good science and scientists that contradict alarmist exaggerations);
(4) The continuing endeavors of the Left to criminalize disagreement;
(5) Basic climate facts (there is no “climate crisis”);
(6) From Retaliation to Unconditional: The narrative of human exodus from animal existence to become authentically human (our foundational story);
and more climate facts…
The most destructive pathology to have ever infected human consciousness: How apocalyptic began, where it came from, Wendell Krossa
The primal human impulse for meaning- i.e. to understand reality/life- led our early ancestors to create ideas/myths that would explain the world and how it worked. Hence, in the earliest human writing (Sumerian, Egyptian) we get, for example, the great “Sumerian Flood” myth, the Egyptian “Return to Chaos” and “Destruction of Mankind” myths, all early versions of apocalyptic mythology that told people of the coming punishing destruction of humanity. The message? Angry, threatening gods would punish bad people for their sins.
That mythology was the result of early thought-constraining logic regarding the world. The ancients believed that there were gods/spirits behind all the elements of the world- i.e. gods of storm, lightning and thunder, gods of trees and animals, sun and moon gods. It was then only logical for our ancestors to view the destructive consequences of storms/floods, drought and fire, earthquake, and disease as angry gods acting through nature to punish people for their sins. All the elements fit the constrained logic of early mythology.
Such themes then became the original models/patterns/prototypes that shaped all human consciousness and narratives that would follow down through history. As Joseph Campbell said, the same primitive myths have been embraced all across history and across all the cultures of the world. The early myths were later adopted by more formal religious traditions like Zoroastrianism that would then in turn shape the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The same myths also shaped the Eastern religious traditions. Read the rest of the opening comment here
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“Lomborg is right that the Earth is not hurtling towards apocalypse due to climate change, rather, the data shows quite the opposite is true: things are getting better.” (see links to Lomborg articles and data below)
Summary of section topics:
1-2 degrees C more warming is not a collapse into climate catastrophe. For most of the history of life, world average temperatures were 3-6 degrees C warmer than today (i.e. 17-20 degrees C on average compared to today’s 14.5 degree C average temperature). Life emerged, developed, and thrived in that much warmer world with much higher levels of CO2 (1000-1500 ppm versus the 400-plus ppm of today’s “CO2 starvation era”); The “Sun-climate relationship” reports- “meridional transport”, not CO2, is the main influence on climate change; Christianity got Jesus all wrong- summary of Bob Brinsmead’s research on Historical Jesus. Quotes from sources- Jesus was the founder of Jewish Christianity. Paul’s Gentile Christianity (based on his Christ myth) contradicted the message of Jesus entirely on all its main points; More climate facts… Read the rest of the opening comment here
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Topics below: Anti-fossil fuel crusade is devastating societies like Britain and Germany; “World Climate Declaration” (There is no climate emergency); The benefits of higher CO2 levels; Irrational panic over ice melting and “Arctic greening”; CO2 is not causing a “climate crisis”; Discussing the physics of CO2 with old friends (discussion group posts); and more…
Exaggerated panic-mongering, as with the climate crisis narrative, incites the survival impulse in populations rendering people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes. We are watching this unfold in the widespread embrace of decarbonization to “save the world” from the “end of days”. And like all apocalyptic movements, climate alarmism has become a self-destructive movement that harms the most vulnerable people the most.
The irrational embrace of self-destruction stems in part from the deeply embedded human feeling that we are bad to the bone, we have ruined an original paradise, and we now deserve punishment and must make some sacrifice or payment for our sins (i.e. the abandonment of the good life for a return to a “morally superior” simple lifestyle).
Apocalyptic prophets tell people that if they embrace the full complex of apocalyptic millennial themes and practices, then they may be able to restore the lost paradise or initiate a new millennial paradise. This is pagan mythology at its primitive worst now unfolding in climate alarmism.
We have been given the warnings for years now that Green anti-fossil fuel policies (i.e. decarbonization) will devastate our societies. We have watched countries like Germany and Britain rushing to wean themselves off fossil fuels in a panic over the discredited climate alarmism narrative (i.e. good climate science shows that there is no “climate emergency”). A series of ongoing reports by agencies like the Global Warming Policy Forum have detailed the massive harm this fear-based policy of decarbonization has wrought on these societies. Pay close attention to the unfolding catastrophe in those countries…
“If you think this couldn’t happen in America, think again. The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet that goal Britain has grown hostile to domestic energy exploration, banning shale-gas fracking and slapping windfall-profits taxes on North Sea oil and gas producers that will deter investment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hurt, but the U.K.’s policies made its citizens vulnerable to such a global shock…
“This isn’t all that different from the energy policies the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress, California and New York are imposing via the Inflation Reduction Act and myriad regulatory assaults on fossil fuels and favors for renewables. Britain’s inane innovation is a price cap that causes disastrous price increases to happen twice a year rather than continuously.
“To adapt Hemingway, net zero drives you bankrupt gradually, then suddenly. Britain’s sudden energy agony is a five-alarm warning if the climate progressives continue to have their way.”
Note: Some older but still good material on the “dualistic interaction” versus materialism issue can be found in neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles’ books- “The Wonder of Being Human”, “The Human Mystery”, “The Self and its Brain”, “Evolution of the Brain”.
A “spiritual” thought...
Our invisible conscious self is the most real thing about us, not our physical body. And consciousness may be the most real and fundamental thing in the entire cosmos, with an Ultimate Consciousness giving rise to and sustaining all material reality. Quantum mechanics tells us that we still have no idea what material reality is (see, for example, “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields” by Jim Baggott). Mind is fundamental. Matter arises from mind. Philosophical Materialism has this all backwards.
“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter”, quantum theorist James Jeans.
Another…
I accept Consciousness as the most fundamental reality, giving rise to all physical reality. But I do not view the creating/sustaining Consciousness as something neutral, such as the laws of nature. I affirm, along with others across history, that the Consciousness that gives rise to and sustains this material cosmos is most fundamentally love, and a form of love that is inexpressibly more wondrous than anything that we experience during our life journeys through this material realm. It is a stunningly transcendent “no conditions love” (non-retaliatory, non-judging, universally inclusive, not punitive or destructive). I find good expressions of this in the attempts of many in the Near-Death Experience movement (a contemporary “spiritual” movement) to tell us of the love and light that they experienced.
Example: “The very atoms of God were unconditional love; the very substance of God was unconditional love”. My conclusion from this NDE insight- If the Ultimate Reality that many call God is the most fundamental reality, the creator and sustainer of all other reality, then that makes no conditions love the most fundamental reality of all realities.
Others from past history have given us the same insight that “God is love” but often their insights were buried and distorted in religious traditions with all their endless conditions- i.e. conditions of correct belief, required sacrifice/payment, obligatory membership in the religion, proper rituals of the religion, and righteous lifestyle identifying one as a member of the given religion.
While I affirm the valued insights and help that religious traditions have given many people, no religion has ever communicated to humanity this insight that God is absolutely no conditions love. Religious traditions have buried and distorted this insight with endless conditions.
A practical outcome of this insight? “We become just like the god that we believe in”. Most people try to model in their lives what they hold as ultimate ideals and authorities.
Note: Pardon me but I have been recuperating from prostate cancer surgery and slow to put new material up.
Note on exaggeration, distortion, inciting panic in populations that leads to irrational response to problems…
From Aug. 4, 2022 Net Zero Watch newsletter (Global Warming Policy Forum):
“London, 4 August — Official data released today reveals that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in excellent health, with coral cover reaching record levels for the second consecutive year.
“The increase will be surprising to members of the public, who are regularly hit with scare stories about coral bleaching and false tales about a reef in long-term decline.
“A new note, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, explains that the data shows clearly how a handful of coral bleaching events that have affected the reef since 2016 have had very limited impact on overall coral cover. Read the rest of the opening comment here
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The list below contains some of the most important information/insight that I would pass on to a new generation. The new themes point to the most profound liberation of all- the liberation of human consciousness at the deepest levels thought, emotion, and motivation… liberation of the human spirit from the most primal fears that have burdened humanity across the millennia.
Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca
Intro to the short version of “Old Narrative Themes, Better Alternatives” (long-form version available just below this short-form list)
Joseph Campbell noted that a prominent set of primitive myths has been repeated all across human history and across all the cultures of the world. People embracing these mythical themes in their personal worldviews are subjected to a profoundly distorted perception of reality.
The same mythical themes that have dominated human narratives across history continue to dominate human narratives and distort public consciousness today. They continue to deform human perception of reality, distorting our understanding of the true state of our world.
The mythical ideas that Campbell referred to have long been the central beliefs of the world religions. They are now also embraced in “secular” ideological belief systems like “Declinism” a contemporary version of apocalyptic mythology, the fallacy that life is becoming worse and declining toward catastrophe and ending, as propagated in the ideology of Environmental alarmism/climate alarmism. These ideas have even found expression in “scientific” versions. But at core they are the same old primitive pathologies as ever before.
Note, for curiosity’s sake, that many young moderns today claim self-identities as “secular/materialist… even atheist” and yet continue to mouth the very same themes of the primitive mythologies of previous millennia, no different in substance from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and other ancient belief systems.
You then get this cognitive dissonance outcome: People, thinking that they have freed themselves from mythical/religious ideas and have embraced more secular, materialist, even atheist belief systems, are living in self-delusion because a close examination of the worldviews of such people reveals that the core themes they hold are often the very same old mythical themes as those held across history by fundamentalist religious people.
Psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo states that bad mythical ideas are seriously damaging to human life in terms of unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, depression, despair/nihilism, and violence (i.e. his point that Cruel God theories deform human personality- see his book “Cruel God, Kind God”).
Example: The “loss of paradise” myth incites a sense of loss, wrong done, grievance, and the felt need to engage a righteous battle to make things right again (i.e. the urge to engage justice as punitive treatment of an enemy’s failure- the enemy blamed for ruining something pure and good- in order to make things “right” again). The actual trajectory of life reveals there was never any original paradise that has been ruined by humanity but, rather, the long-term trajectory of life shows an ongoing rise from a worse past toward a better future. This trajectory of evolutionary progress encourages hope to continue investing in improving the world because, so far, we have done well in making life ever-better (Julian Simon, Ultimate Resource).
Another (related to Lotufo’s points): If we believe that some deity will judge, punish, exclude and destroy our enemies (i.e. send them to Hell) then we will inevitably end up treating our opponents in the same manner (judging, condemning, excluding, punishing). We become just like the God that we believe in. This “behavior based on belief” relationship operates in both religious and “secular” environments.
The alternative ideas offered, taken from human insight across history, speak to the profound liberation that is possible- i.e. liberation of mind, consciousness, and spirit at the deepest levels, a liberation initiated by radically changing the core ideas/themes that have long been embedded in back of human minds, hardwired even in human subconscious. Such ideas shape how people perceive and understand the world, how they feel about things, and influence their motivations to respond/behave in life.
The liberation of human mind by reshaping consciousness with entirely new themes then ripples out to impact all of life and society because we become just like the ultimate ideals/themes that we believe in, the themes that we embrace to shape our worldviews. The alternatives listed below point us in the direction of authentically humane existence. They show us how to become the heroes of our stories, how to “tower in stature as maturely human” (Joseph Campbell).
Insert note: Climate alarmism, with its apocalyptic scenarios and salvation schemes, is a contemporary example of a profoundly religious movement fraudulently presented as secular ideology, even science. Climate alarmism embraces the worst of bad ideas/themes from mythical traditions.
Note to our atheist friends regarding the varied themes below that deal with deity features- Suck it up. You are never going to rid humanity of the impulse to God speculation, to create God theories, so rather than deny this primal human impulse, learn to work with it. One option- Purge deity theories of all the primitive mythical/religious features and reshape God theory entirely with scientific, psychological advances, and insights from contemporary “spiritual” movements like the NDE movement with its primary discovery that the “Light” is unconditional love of a stunningly inexpressible nature. That overturns all religious mythology in one stroke. All religions are systems of conditions- i.e. conditions of correct belief, demanded sacrifice, membership in the “true” religion, and required religious lifestyle that evidences membership in the true religion.
Whether defined as God, Light, Universe, Gaia, Universal Mind, Ultimate Consciousness, Mother Earth, karma, or other, most people continue to embrace some version of Ultimate Reality or creating Intelligence (see again the PEW Research Center’s “Global Religious Landscape” survey). God theories continue to contribute some of the most basic features to human meta-narratives and personal worldviews (both in religious and “secular/materialist” versions).
Old narrative themes, better alternatives (short version), Wendell Krossa
1. Old story myth: The idea of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality. Contemporary “secular” versions of judging, punishing deity include “Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, retributive Universe, and payback karma”. Read the rest of the opening comment here
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