Evil plotters or good people deceived by bad ideas and in denial of the destructive outcomes?

Intro:

What and who is behind the varied projects put forth in our societies that are scrambling for dominant place to determine the direction that our Western civilization will take in coming years? Are the actors pushing for a resurgence of Marxist collectivism (e.g. Woke Marxism), DEI, ESG, climate salvation schemes (decarbonization, de-development, de-industrialization) and related crusades, are they just evil plotters behind the scenes devising plans to take over the world and harm humanity? Or are they good people deceived by bad ideas who have embraced irrational “salvation” schemes in a sincere effort to save the world that they believe is threatened with imminent apocalypse? Are they unaware of the devasting outcomes of their salvation schemes? Or do they dismiss such collateral damage as justified in terms of the greater good that they believe they will achieve?

Take full personal responsibility for the ideas/beliefs that you embrace and the outcomes they produce, Wendell Krossa

More on “It’s the narrative, stupid”.

Re the surging dominance of Woke Marxism, promotion of DEI/ESG, climate alarmism, and related crusades today…

These crusades are not led so much by “evil people intentionally plotting in dark, smoke-filled backrooms” but more likely led by good and well-intentioned people (e.g. Rachel Carson) who have embraced a narrative that validates their ideals/beliefs and actions. Unfortunately, picking the wrong ideas can incite and validate our worst impulses and the outcomes can be immensely destructive.

Some evaluating criteria for the ideas/ideals that we embrace: What outcomes do our ideas and related polices produce? What are the actual consequences? Do our ideas and their outcomes affirm and contribute to human well-being and progress? Our primary priority ought to be the well-being of all people, equally.

Insert: Add here the usefulness of understanding how the narratives that we embrace meet personal emotional needs that are related to deeply embedded archetypes that all of us have inherited from our ancestors, archetypes shaped by their primitive belief systems.

And while the leaders of the above crusades may not be people intent on doing evil, there is also, however small, the element of psychopathy in the human mix with its clearly intentional evil, as in carelessness about the impacts of ideas and policies on others.

We find a mixed bag of “well-intentioned” people contributing to mass-harm and even mass-death outcomes. A few examples: Rachel Carson was well-intentioned but her panic-mongering hysteria over chemicals influenced the ban on DDT that resulted in millions of deaths over following decades as people were denied the protection that chemical provided (“The Excellent Powder: DDT’s political and scientific history”, Tren and Roberts).

Hitler, with his uniquely deformed version of “well-intentioned”, believed that he was acting under Divine Providence to save his people from pollution and annihilation (the weakening and destruction of German culture and spirit). He believed, sincerely, that he was a savior hero in a righteous crusade against evil enemies that had to be exterminated in order to save his world.

We all need to be aware of the power of bad ideas/beliefs in deforming our consciousness, affirming our worst impulses, and responsibly acknowledge the outcomes of our varied systems of ideas/beliefs. We know a tree by its fruit.

Both sides in today’s tribalism must be fully aware of what they are embracing and promoting. Are their ideas and policies really affirming Classic Liberalism? Classic Liberal principles and practises are the closest that we get to what human love should produce in a healthy society- the well-being of all citizens equally in true inclusivity and diversity, the affirmation of the principles of individual freedom, equal treatment under common law systems, full inclusion of diverse opinion and speech, etc., all the elements that Classic Liberalism protects and promotes. Classic Liberal principles and institutions have proven to be the best approach for unleashing human creativity and thereby promoting the well-being of populations.

Again, its probably not so much that evil plotters gather to plan their domination of societies, as it is more a case of people who believe that their narrative embodies truth and good, and that they are in a righteous battle against intolerable evil that must be purged, even if violently and anti-democratically. Hence, the crusaders for righteousness dangerously argue, to hell with normal democratic processes that are inclusive, that affirm and protect too much freedom for diversity of opinion and speech. To hell with that protection of freedom as the threat from the dissenters to their narratives and policies is too great.

Crusaders in a “just war” to save the world, view dissenters as dangerously blocking the righteous crusade to save the world and they are therefore dangerous threats to society and life. They are “deniers, unbelievers” opposing the noble cause to save humanity and all life.

Righteous crusaders, in a frenzy of demonization of difference, will convince themselves that if their opponents win elections then their society is facing the existential danger of “Hitler, the Nazis, the end of democracy, a tyrannical dictatorship, domestic terrorism, etc.”. Add here the mind-deforming belief today that we are facing “the end of the world” due to a looming “climate catastrophe”.

Generating fear is the first step in any crusade to seek totalitarian control over populations. Panic-mongers incite the survival impulse in populations which then shuts down rationality, rendering people susceptible to wildly insane salvation schemes that are destroying societies (i.e. decarbonization, de-development, de-industrialization). Add the threat of “imminence” (the end of days prophesied as just up ahead a few years or decades) to buttress the claim for immediate action to coercively purge the purported threat in order to “save the world”. Claims that are so overly-dramatic, exaggerated, and hysterically unhinged, yet widely embraced by alarmed populations.

The “noble cause” of today’s wannabe totalitarians is framed by them as their heroic quest to conquer a monster and enemy and thereby save the maiden and her community. Alarmist narratives are emotionally satisfying.

Again, I would mentally toy with Bob Brinsmead’s point that there are no really bad people (aside from psychopathy), no real “enemies”, just people who are misled by bad ideas to do bad things, and not aware of the destructive consequences of their beliefs, or they outrightly deny those consequences. Add the psychopathology of “cognitive bias”, the refusal to consider contrary evidence, as climate alarmists do, claiming the consensus on looming catastrophe is final. You then get populations succumbing to alarmist salvation schemes convinced that they are necessary to save life, even as they destroy life.

Add here the hatred of humanity that argues- “so what if you break a few eggs”, as in millions of people dying from your policies. You are on a crusade for a “greater or common good” and, in terms, for example, of the climate alarmism crusade, you must purge humanity as the singularly evil threat to pure and noble nature. Your righteous crusade takes precedence over all other concerns, including preserving human life.

Louis Zurcher and others noted that beliefs are difficult to change because they constitute people’s identity and people then view threats to their ideas as threats to their very self and that then becomes an issue of self-preservation, survival. That produces defensive desperation and aggression against any challenge to one’s ideas/beliefs. Hence, the all-too-common shift to “Exterminate or be exterminated” approaches as justifiable defense against “evil attackers” to one’s narrative and policies that are righteously designed to save the world (see detail in Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth”).

Result? Just as many “good Germans” were caught up in the Nazi madness, so many similarly good people are today becoming caught up in the varied crusades to heroically save the world from a variety of manufactured and exaggerated threats and the outcomes are more and more evident in the undermining and abandoning of Classic liberal principles and the consequent ruin of liberal democracies.

We are all obligated to acknowledge and take responsibility for the outcomes of the ideas/beliefs that we embrace and promote. We are all responsible to care for the well-being of all our fellow humans, as our highest priority in life. This is the most fundamental obligation of love. And we have created no better system than Classic Liberalism for protecting freedom and promoting the best of human well-being.

The resurging tribalism that we all fret over today, Wendell Krossa

What is at the root of the endlessly resurging tribal impulse? Where people distinguish themselves from differing others in fundamental ways, the separating, opposing, too often demonizing the differing other as “enemy” and therefore deserving censoring, banning, cancelling, even criminalizing.

Here I do my “reverse engineering” thing in tracing ideas/beliefs and behaviors back to fundamental realities- “what lies beneath”.

We saw horrific tribalism in last century’s great collectivism crusade with its dualism of capitalist oppressor (property/capital owners) versus oppressed (landless, poor peasants). And we saw the outcomes of that murderous tribal dualism in 100 million deaths. And it was a religious crusade. Yes- religious. See Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others on the religious themes that drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving climate alarmism.

Today we are suffering the same collectivist dualism coming at us through varied new fronts with new identity markers for the oppressor/oppressed division. Some call the new collectivism Woke Marxism. While still holding the old capitalist/peasant categories this new version also uses race as a key marker to categorize people as either victimizer or victim and hence evil versus good. White=evil oppressor, brown/black=virtuous oppressed. As with all collectivisms there is no recognition of individual diversity, just dogmatic collectivist categorization.

(Insert note: Elon Musk said we must get rid of the principle that if you belong to the oppressed/victim category then you are automatically good or virtuous. Hamas, he said, identifies themselves as victims/oppressed but there is no good there.)

And as with all tribalism- collectivist dualism denies our essential oneness in the human family. And it denies our fundamental obligation to love one another, to care for one another, even for “enemies”.

Point- Collectivism reduced to its skeleton is base tribalism and therefore animal, tribalism being another inherited impulse from our past in small bands that viewed other small bands as threats to be conquered, subdued, and even eliminated.

And going back to the roots of validating ideas- Early humans manufactured the myth of cosmic dualism (Zoroaster), where it was claimed that a good God existed in opposition and irreconcilable animosity toward an evil Force or Spirit. With cosmic dualism projected onto God, our ancestors manufactured the ultimate divine validation for their basest drive to tribalism. They made God an animal-like reality to validate their primitive existence and how they wanted to behave.

Projecting tribalism onto deity creates the ultimate validation and inspiration for human tribalism. We see the outcomes of this today in the unquestioning acceptance of dualism as fundamental to reality and humanity. Cosmic dualism finds expression through the varied dualisms that people use to divide from one another- using categories of race/ethnicity, nationality, ideology, religion, gender/sexual orientation, social divisions and statuses. And of course, there is still the original social dualism and divide of powerholding elites vs commoners or today’s “populists”.

Tribalism is the abandonment of mature humanity for primitive animal-like behavior. It is not who we are as humans. Get some sense of the primitivism of it. Tribalism is not who we are. We are human, all equal members of the same one human family.

Again, the insights to counter tribalism- (1) All humans on Earth today have descended from the same Mitochondrial Eve, (2) the oneness of all reality as discovered in “quantum entanglement”, and (3) the NDE discovery of human oneness with deity.

Our main identity marker is the fact that we are all human, sharing the same human consciousness, human mind, human spirit, and human self. Being commonly human is our chief identity marker. And of course, there is no greater identity marker of being human than universal, unconditional love exhibited toward all, equally.

Disarming the tribal impulse with its associated impulse to punitive destruction of differing others, Wendell Krossa

How do we defuse the intensified tribalism of today with its unleashed hatred of differing others, quickness to demonize and dehumanize the different other, to render harsh judgment and condemnation of differing opinions and speech, and then to mercilessly call for censorship, banning from public, cancellation, and even criminalization of differing others. The lack of compassion in all this today is disturbing. What are we allowing to happen to us?

Here again is the ancient advice that goes to the root of the problem. My view of this historical person leans toward the tradition of “Historical Jesus research” that views this person as someone notably different from the Christian version, someone who is entirely contrary to Paul’s myth of “Jesus Christ” that dominates the New Testament.

Anyway, here is the main message of the Historical Jesus:

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

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

This can be summarized in this single statement that gets the essence of this most profoundly human insight in all history: “Love your enemy because God does”.

Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31. The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and freely loving the wasteful son.

The intention of this Jesus message is to point us toward the highest reach of love- how to tower in stature as maturely human, how to become the hero of our personal quest or story, how to defeat the real enemy and monster in life- i.e. the inherited animal drives inside us where the real battle of good against evil takes place.

The most prominent features of the inherited animal in us- (1) the impulse to tribalism, (2) to domination of others, and (3) to punitive destruction of differing others. These constitute the real enemy and monster that we must confront, subdue, and overcome. Then we have achieved heroic status in our story.

And that is what true liberation is really about. To be freed in the depths of our spirit and consciousness from the worst form of enslavement, the enslavement to the residual, inherited animal impulses of our primitive past. It is the freedom to become truly human.

Note: As always, see qualifiers in sections below. Any understanding of love must embrace the primary responsibility to protect the innocent, meaning the responsibility to restrain violent people- i.e. incarceration, rehabilitation, restitution- as critical to human development. The human ideal of love is not to be equated with dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek”.

Another: Keep in mind the insights that help us conquer our tribalism impulse- notably, (1) the fact all humans on Earth today are descendants of the same Mitochondrial Eve- an East African black woman who is the mother of us all, and (2) the discovery of “quantum entanglement” and the fundamental oneness of all reality (ignore the quantum purists who dismiss any nonmaterialist use of quantum mechanics as “Woowoo” stuff, we take our insights where we can get them), and (3) the NDE discovery of human oneness with deity. All to say that differing other humans are not our enemies but are family.

And a good illustration of two former “enemies” coming together to heal the tribal divides of today. Props to Chris Cuomo for inviting Tucker Carlson on to his podcast to try to promote unity between disagreeing sides and pull back from the tribal extremism and hatred of today. Cuomo was subsequently blasted by his liberal/Democratic colleagues for platforming the evil “enemy”. Good God, lets all grow the fuck up, people. Lets learn what liberal democracy means. Lets become true liberals. Truly woke liberals.

The basic features of human freedom are the features of Classic Liberalism– Wendell Krossa

(1) Protected individual freedom and rights- personal liberty as in free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of individuals to buy and sell as they freely choose, to self-determine all aspects of personal life, freedom of choice in education, work, and recreation, freedom from state coercion.

(2) Private property and private contracts- secure personal property rights, open markets, protection of equal opportunities for all citizens.

(3) All treated equally under common law- law that protects all equally, jury trials, and no unlawful seizure, confiscation/appropriation, or arrest.

(4) Truly representative government- not “granting” freedom to citizens but protecting freedom that is “the natural God-given right of every person”. Promoting freedom with government bureaucracies and elites that are elected to serve people, to work for citizens, to answer to citizens. (Note- as governments have no right to grant freedom to people, they have no right to take away freedom from people.)

(5) Decentralization of power- promoting fair competition between people and institutions, dispersing power among citizens, businesses, and government agencies.

(6) And freedom of religion, unrestricted press. (Some phrases here are from Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”)

Further: Mechanisms or protocols built into state organizations to counter the obsessive tendency of bureaucracies to add more regulations, rules, laws to clutter and clog the life of citizens. Mechanisms such as the elimination of 1 or 2 rules for every new rule or regulation added.

The above Liberal principles are contrasted with “Collectivism” where the state, run by political elites and bureaucrats, takes prominence and collective rights dominate over individual rights. The primary obsession of collectivism is to abolish private or personal property which is then to be controlled by collective elites for, as collectivists claim, the “greater or common good”. In actual practise- powerholding elites have inevitably used collectives to serve elite good (the “power corrupts” thing). The shift to make the state the representative of the collective originated with Georg Hegel who notably influenced Marx.

Collectivists believe there must be collective control of production and distribution, collective control of all the resources of a country- again, supposedly in the service of all citizens. As Marx urged, private property is the great evil to be eliminated in order for people to be “free”. He saw freedom as deliverance from capitalism to be subjected to collectivism.

But the idealism of operating collectives to serve the entire population has always and inevitably, in practise, resulted in elites taking control of the collectives, elites believing themselves to be especially enlightened to dictate what is true and right for all others.

There are no such people as the incorruptible “benevolent rulers” who are free of the base impulses that we are all subject to, hence the need for built-in protective mechanisms to keep state bureaucrats/elites from usurping and undermining the freedom of others.

There are no more dangerous people in society than those who believe that they know what is right for all others, people who claim that they will “benevolently” care for a society’s resources for “the good of all”. That idealism is never realized as all 20-plus failed socialist experiments over the past century have shown (“Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”). Centralized power inevitably corrupts utterly and even more pathological- centralized collective power attracts the psychopathic personalities who seek the opportunity to engage the systems of centralized power to control others. The inevitable outcome has been totalitarianism.

Further, collectivist elites have inevitably become intolerant of any dissent by free individuals as the elites believe their righteous cause demands the suppression of any “evil opposition” that would enslave citizens again to the “destructive force of capitalist market systems”.

“Noble cause” zealots repeatedly succumb to “exterminate or be exterminated” mentality (Richard Landes in “Heaven On Earth”).

There is no built-in mechanism or principle in collectivist models to prevent such outcomes that emerge from centralized power and control. Subjecting individuals to collectivist approaches for organizing societies is the denial of freedom and self-determination.

The safest way to organize human societies is to disperse power among competing individuals, institutions, and businesses. That decentralization of power best protects against the totalitarianism that inevitably erupts from centralizing power in controlling elites. The dispersal of power is best expressed in the protection of individual freedom and rights, individuals protected equally across populations as in Classic Liberalism approaches to organizing societies.

In mixed systems (social democracy, democratic socialism) it is the democratic element that staves off the worst impulses of the socialist centralizing element in the mix. And as for such things as universal health care, that is not collectivist/socialist but more in the area of a basic right. But that “universalism” does not then extend to equity outcomes across all areas. Equality and equity are two very different things.

Collectivist experiments over the 20th century resulted in the deaths of some 100 million people.

Sources: “Inventing Freedom” by Daniel Hannan, “Birth of Plenty” by William Bernstein, “Libertarianism: A Primer” by David Boaz. Articles by Christine Brophy, Michael Shellenberger, Joshua Muravchik, and others.

Also, Arther Herman in “The Cave and the Light” shows the history of the contrasting collectivist and individual approaches used across the past few millennia. This is a great story of how these two different approaches to organizing human societies across history have battled one another and the outcomes of both. The collective approach descended down from Plato and his Ideals for organizing society, the other from Aristotle, the more individually-oriented guy. I would also agree with Herman that there are good features on the collectivist side that deserve consideration (e.g. shared responsibilities in societies- i.e. infrastructure).

One more: I would argue that the human ideal of love is best expressed through the Classic Liberal approach that protects individual rights and freedoms. Meaning, as a friend tells us, where there is no authentic individual freedom (self-determination, free individual choice), there is no love.

The article at the link below is from Humanprogress.org, Wendell Krossa

I once participated in a discussion group with varied scientists, one who believed that all human change of nature since agriculture was developed some 10,000 years ago has been destructive. He argued that there should only be a few tens of millions of hunter gatherers wandering the Earth and not changing anything in the natural wilderness world. Just plucking nuts and berries off bushes but not changing anything as in domesticating and cultivating crop plants. He was at the far end of a spectrum that runs from “no human change of the natural world” to the many varied positions on “how much should humanity engage and use natural resources and change the once natural wilderness world”.

With my ‘obsessive compulsive’ going to ultimate roots of human narratives and views, I would suggest that the above framing of humanity as the destroyer of nature (“disconnected from nature”) is influenced and affirmed by primitive ideas such as the cosmic dualism myth. The humanity/nature divide is one among the many diverse dualisms that have been applied to humanity- one of many good versus evil dualisms.

Many still hold the view of humanity as fallen, evil, a virus, a cancer, an intruder in nature, the destroyer of pure divine nature. This is a profoundly anti-human view, nihilist, and even pushing toward the extremism of advocacy for the extermination of humanity (a world without humans). This self-hatred is set in dualistic opposition to nature worship- i.e. wilderness as the original paradise, the pure Eden.

Interesting how these dualisms find companionship with general Marxist dualism and its oppressor/oppressed or victimizer/victim divide. I think of the varied left/right divides of many societies, the racial dualism of Woke Racism, gender dualisms, etc. Ah, we are such a tribal-minded bunch, eh. We love our righteous battles against intolerable evil others/enemies. And off we go slaughtering one another in never-ending cycles of eye for eye hatred and retaliatory violence.

But I wander off subject too far….

We belong here on earth as natural as any other species, and our innate and uniquely human goodness and love are evident in our ever-more careful use of Earth’s resources, and especially in our preservation of species, a project that is entirely contrary to nature itself. Nature left to its own unintelligent randomness- the wicked old witch, bloody in tooth and claw, along with violent natural disasters- has destroyed over 95% of all species that have ever lived. Nasty old bitch, eh. Mindless nature has destroyed most species, nature without human mind and compassion.

Here below is another on the contemporary insane drive to “destroy human civilization to save the world”. It is a fight in the wrong battle against a non-enemy, an eco-zealotry that is locked into the pathology of “exterminate or be exterminated”. This anti-human story is shaped by the larger background narrative themes of (1) “lost paradise (original wilderness world ruined), (2) life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending (climate crisis as latest version of apocalyptic catastrophizing), (3) the salvation demand for a sacrifice (give up the good life for low-consumption primitivism), (4) the demand to purge the “evil threat” to life, the evil enemy, and (5) then the lost paradise can be restored, utopia attained”. Again, as my friend Bob Brinsmead oft reminds us, “It’s the narrative, stupid”.

Today humanity protects vast areas of forests and wilderness in national parks, decreases pressure on wilderness by urbanization (increasing concentration of populations in urban regions), has probably already reached “peak agriculture” and in developed areas has been returning significant areas of agricultural land back to nature, and is also undergoing a dematerialization trend (increasingly less resource inputs per capita).
Wendell Krossa

The Counter-Agricultural Revolution: Should we abolish farming? Not if we care about human well-being”, Saul Zimet, Mar. 15, 2024

https://humanprogress.org/the-counter-agricultural-revolution/

Quotes:

“The conflict between farmers and environmentalists has been simmering for years, and in 2023 it finally boiled over into electoral politics. The Dutch BBB (BoerburgerBeweging) or Farmer-Citizen Movement began in 2019 as a series of protests against environmental regulations that had a disproportionate impact on farmers. In March 2023 it became a winning political party….

“Years of increasingly harsh agricultural regulations and widespread farmer protests in the Netherlands and elsewhere had led up to this point. Back in 2019 when US Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s original “Green New Deal” resolution called for the eventual elimination of “farting cows,” drastically cutting agricultural output for environmental interests struck many people as a novel concept. By 2023, conflicts between farmers and legislators had broken out across the globe.

“Many examples come to mind. Sri Lanka’s government banned synthetic fertilizers for about six months in 2021, eventually rolling back the ban due to its exacerbation of mass food shortages and undernourishment across the country. In 2022 the Dutch government pushed unprecedented crackdowns on agriculture to reduce nitrogen emissions. “Farms next to nature reserves must cut nitrogen output by 70%,” the Economist reported. “About 30% of the country’s cows and pigs will have to go, along with a big share of cattle and dairy farms.”

“This would result in the loss of about 11,000 working farms, according to the Irish Times. Ireland’s government followed suit in 2023, pushing to cull 200,000 dairy cows over three years for the purpose of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“Regulatory moves of this sort have resulted in mass farmer protests erupting not just in the Netherlands and Ireland, but also, Italy, Spain, Poland, and several other countries in 2022 and 2023….

“The global debate over agriculture is more likely to heat up than to cool down in 2024, as it goes to the heart of a fundamental question of environmentalism: When humans want to transform their environment to enrich themselves and others, should they be allowed to?…. productive environmental change is the creation of physical wealth without which humans would rapidly go extinct…..

“Whatever form it takes, you will not find improvements to human life in an environment that is being “conserved” in its current state….

“George Monbiot defends the movement he calls the “Counter-Agricultural Revolution,” and argues that, “The new movement should begin by acknowledging an uncomfortable but well-established reality, a reality that has all too often been swept under the carpet: farming, whether intensive or extensive, is the world’s major cause of ecological destruction.”…

“But the regulation-imposed reductions and ultimate abolition of agriculture would result in the mass culling (by starvation) of the human population, not just cattle. Probably far less than one percent of the current human population would be able to sustain itself in such conditions. The anti-agrarians tend to shrug off this profound implication of their policy preferences…..

“The environmental conservationist movement, which in the case of agriculture has explicitly and openly shown its willingness to sacrifice human health and flourishing on their ideological alter, base their regulatory agenda on a fundamental conceptual error: They synonymize anthropogenic environmental change with degradation…..

“And this thesis is unjustified….. Industrial production, agricultural or otherwise, has negative externalities such as pollution but also positive externalities such as economic growth which drives down the prices of necessities while facilitating more investment in the scientific and technological progress that provides positive-sum solutions to long-term environmental problems.

“So far, the history of economic growth has shown the alteration of Earth’s surface through human volition and ingenuity to be far more helpful than hurtful to the prospects for human well-being. The supply of per-capita nutrition, which has been massively expanded since the industrial revolution through increased agricultural output, is a necessary input for the technological, scientific and economic progress that has improved human life expectancy and even drastically reduced climate-related danger to an all-time low …..

“People changing their environment through profitable economic activity is a complex but overall positive phenomenon for the flourishing of civilization, and agriculture is among the clearest examples of that…” End of article- see full copy at link above.

Posts to discussion group: Wendell Krossa

“This clip is only a few minutes long. Good one for you business, commerce guys, discussion on activists taking control of our investments, trying to take control of all business in order to divert business toward Woke activism. This is one of the best explanations of ESG (Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance) and their project of taking control of corporations and people’s investments and coercing them to do activist funding, pushing Green agendas, DEI, Woke, etc. Rogan and this interesting guest James Lindsay.

“As Lindsay says, ESG then turned into Woke domination, not just corporate social responsibility as in environmental concerns. Example- When Musk bought Twitter to open up free speech, his Tesla score then collapsed and the Woke activists called Tesla a “racist” company. As the guest says, Its about Woke forcing behaviors on all….

“Jordan Peterson also warns- This stuff keeps coming at us in insidious new ways as people expose and shut down one approach. Corruption of our societies that is so intense and embedded that it’s hard to root out.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a4caJwAB24

Another post to discussion group:

“A brief clip from Rogan and guest on Klaus Schwab’s beliefs and goals- i.e. that Schwab wants the West to follow China’s model of authoritarian government control of economies. That, the guest says, was what ESG was all about.

“They go over tidbits such as that Schwab has a bust of Lenin in his office. Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s second in command is on the board of the WEF (Schwab’s World Economic Forum). Add here that Justin Trudeau is also an admirer of the Chinese dictatorship “because they know how to get things done”.

“Rogan and guest note the WEF slogan- “You will own nothing and you will be happy” (a paraphrase of Marx’s belief in the natural emotional state of people when “liberated” from owning property).”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HHEmcQ4V7Q

Another post:

“2 minutes only. Good from this Rogan guest (Lindsay) on the Red Guard that was created by Mao and then after he used them, he sent them off to the Gulag. So the guest applies this to young Woke activists today. He warns- You will be used and then discarded and banned also.

“Others have noted this about leftist elites- They first go after the “Right wing capitalist dogs” (Mao) and then they will consume their own (i.e. fellow leftists who have been used to create the chaos of revolution and are then no longer needed, and those who are not as zealous as the far left elites, etc.). Landes also details this pattern of leftist elites going after their own in ‘Heaven On Earth’. Ah, ‘Woke Marxism’ madness inundating our societies today.

“Can these young people caught up in the Woke movement be brought back to sanity? Rogan’s guest says that he doesn’t know about that as they are in a cult.”

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

Main articles presenting critical points made on this site:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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

10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth.

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

The very best climate science reports and news:

https://co2coalition.org/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/

https://www.netzerowatch.com/

http://co2science.org/

Joseph Campbell on human oneness

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

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

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

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

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the real battle of good against evil that takes place inside us, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”

Best books on the improving state of life on Earth:

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

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

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

Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”,

Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”,

Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”,

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

Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”,

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

Hans Roslings “Factfulness”, and others.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Evil plotters or good people deceived by bad ideas and in denial of the destructive outcomes?

The Holocene Optimum of 10,000 to 6,000 years ago was 3-4 degrees C warmer than today.

See below Michael Shellenberger on “The end of the transgender craze”, and Canada’s former chair of the Human Rights Commission on the threat to free speech from Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms” bill.

This site probes the critical issue of how we maintain our humanity in the face of evil, when enduring hell on earth. Wendell Krossa

There are two sides to this ongoing horror: What Hamas terrorists did Oct.7 and are committed to doing “again and again”- exterminate Israelis. And on the other side, the suffering that Gazans are now undergoing due to the obligation of the Israeli military to rid that area of any further threat from Hamas. That must be done. When people commit themselves to violently exterminate others and will not embrace peaceful solutions or surrender peacefully, then there is no option but to, unfortunately, use force to stop them.

Add that the Gazan population will need to engage some profound changes in their understanding and attitude toward their neighbors as far too many of them have been indoctrinated into supporting Hamas. And there is hope that even though the human spirit can be deformed and suppressed by bad ideas and indoctrination, people, when offered the opportunity, can change their minds and come to their senses again. Some of the young Hamas men captured Oct.7 and interrogated by Israeli military admitted that they “had become animals… doing things no human would do”. They realized that their Hamas leaders had seriously misled them. They evidenced some residual and re-emerging shreds of humanity.

https://matzav.com/captured-hamas-terrorist-admits-we-became-animals-as-he-details-sick-suicide-mission/

Quote from above link:

“The terrorist said, “We became animals. Things that humans do not do.”

“They were explicitly told to “step on the heads of civilians” to “behead them and do whatever they felt like”.” (Others said they were told to slaughter even babies. See for yourself the interviews of these terrorists on YouTube.)

Let’s not avert our eyes from the suffering on all sides. But due to the insane eruption of antisemitism across Western societies and accompanying denial of what happened Oct. 7, more needs to be said about the horrors that were inflicted on young Israeli woman on that day and since. Click the links below and look at these young women’s faces and into their eyes.

Many Jews, during the Holocaust, caught in that eruption of hell on earth, wailed their version of Protest theology- “Where is God?”

The Oct. 7 horror again reminds us of the destructive outcomes of the tribal mentality that denies the fact of human oneness, that all of us are equal members of the same one human family and obligated, most primarily, to love one another. These eruptions of savagery against one another ought to raise questions concerning the ideas that feed such hatred and incite brutality toward differing others, that render people more animal than human.

In the mix of resolving these issues for the long-term future we have to set aside the defensive blaming of “they started it” and begin to probe and understand the deeper roots of such hatred and lust for never-ending vengeance. This has to be done if we are to escape these historically endless cycles of “eye for eye” that blind everyone.

True heroism will arise in those willing to grapple with history’s hardest saying to “Love your enemy” and then courageously initiate breaks in the cycles of eye for eye retaliatory response in order to then take degenerating situations in new directions. That will require those who are willing to tower in stature as maturely human, just as Nelson Mandela exhibited for us recently. People who understand that the real enemy is inside each of us. And the real battle against evil takes place inside us, the war against our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of others.

This from the mother of hostage Naama Levy:

“Mother of Naama Levy, from harrowing Gaza video: ‘Each minute is an eternity in hell’: Ayelet Levy Shachar urges release of 19-year old daughter, expresses fear over treatment of 17 women held captive amid growing evidence of rapes on Oct. 7” Dec. 9, 2024 Times of Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/mother-of-naama-levy-from-harrowing-gaza-video-each-minute-is-an-eternity-in-hell/

Quotes:

“The mother of a 19-year-old women held hostage in Gaza published a heartfelt plea Friday for her daughter’s release and warned time was running out.

“Naama Levy was seen in a video from Gaza on October 7 following her kidnapping with her hands tied and bloodied sweatpants, giving rise to widespread speculation that she had been sexually abused by her abductors.

““You have seen the video of my daughter Naama Levy,” Ayelet Levy Shachar wrote on the Free Press website. “Everyone has. You have seen her dragged by her long brown hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, somewhere in Gaza, her gray sweatpants covered in blood.

““You may have perhaps noticed that her ankles are cut, that she’s barefoot and limping. She is seriously injured. She is frightened. And I, her mother, am helpless in these moments of horror.”

“Levy Shahar underlined fears that Hamas terrorists are continuing to abuse her and other women in captivity, as mounting evidence points to multiple instances in which terrorists on October 7 raped and sexually assaulted women before executing them.

““There are seventeen young women still in captivity. They range in age from 18 to 26. I think of what they, and my Naama, could be subjected to at every moment of the day. Each minute is an eternity in hell,” she wrote.

““On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to release the young female hostages is they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody. Everyone knows exactly what he means,” Levy Shahar continued.

““What would you do if your daughter was being held hostage by violent rapists and murderers for two months? Perhaps the better question is: What wouldn’t you do?” she asked.

“Levy was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on Saturday morning, October 7.”

Next:

“Hamas kidnapped my daughter: I don’t know how much longer she can go on: Its been more than 219,150 minutes of sheer terror, utter distress and excruciating dread since I last spoke with Agam”, Mar. 8, 2024, Meirav Berger.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/meirav-berger-hamas-kidnapped-my-daughter-i-dont-know-how-much-longer-she-can-go-on

Quotes:

“It has been more than two hundred and nineteen thousand, one hundred and fifty minutes since I last spoke with my daughter Agam.

“Yes, I’m counting the minutes. Not the hours, not the days, not the weeks or months. Minute-by-minute, my mind and body are in constant, excruciating pain as I wait for Agam, who was brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, to come back home.

“The last I heard from the brave hostages who returned from the depths of the Gaza underground, she was in a dark, damp tunnel. They told me she, too, might be a victim of sexual violence.

“It’s been 219,150 minutes of sheer terror, a nightmare really, of loneliness, and so much pain.

“219,150 minutes of agony. Of utter distress and excruciating dread. Of what we know Agam has endured, and what she is enduring right now, as I write these words. I shudder to think of what I know, but also from what I don’t know, and how much longer she can go on like this.

“It may sound insane to count these minutes, but if it was your daughter, or sister, you would be watching the seconds go by, too. Tick, tick, tick, while praying for her safety and quick return, and then mustering up every iota of strength to make sure the world knows that innocent daughters, sisters, sons, brothers and fathers are being held against their will by merciless terrorists….

“She’s just 19 years old.

“219,150 minutes. Tick, tick, tick. Time goes by but the world must not allow this atrocity, this blatant human rights violation, to continue one minute longer.

“As the minutes go by, I imagine how hard I will hug my daughter when she’s back in my arms. How I’ll cuddle her, soothe her, and tell her how much I love her. How she’ll pick up her violin and play beautiful music, the talented musician that she is. I hum to myself Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, one of her favourite works of art. I dream about how she’ll celebrate with us at her brother Ilay’s upcoming bar mitzvah, and how we’ll all celebrate our freedom….

“Meirav Berger is the mother of 19-year-old Israeli hostage Agam Berger, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Oct. 7. Agam is one of the 134 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity and one of the 19 females still held hostage.”

See the full article at link above.

And this on the widespread denial of the brutalities of Hamas, and the unconscionable defense of such savagery…

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/israel-hamas-sexual-abuse#:~:text=There%20are%2019%20women%20missing,Evidence%20suggests%20it%20might%20be.

“Grim fears for Israeli women who remain as hostages as Oct. 7 sexual brutalities by Hamas uncovered: ‘Usually a woman faces she-said, he-said. What Israel is now facing is people saying it never happened’”, Mar. 8, 2024, Adrian Humphreys

Quotes:

“In normal times, said Orit Sulitzeanu, the work she does as executive director of the Association of Rape Crises Centers in Israel means fighting frustrating silence about sexual violence.

““When you work in rape crisis centres your job is to see and acknowledge horrific things done to people and, without acknowledgement, these people live and suffer horribly because society around them prefers to close their eyes and not see these horrific things.

““To break the code of silence, you must say yes, it happened, and you acknowledge and help the survivors, you put the blame on the perpetrators. This is the regular work when you work in the field of sexual violence.

““But since the 7th of October, we found ourselves in another world.”

“In the aftermath of the deadly Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel, Sulitzeanu said, she unexpectedly sees that struggle against silence reflected on the world stage, with people ignoring or denying that sexual violence was an integral part of the attacks.

““What Israel is now facing is what a woman usually is facing,” Sulitzeanu said. “Usually a woman faces she-said, he-said. What Israel is now facing is people saying it never happened.”….

“The crisis is hardly over. There are 19 women missing after Hamas took hostages back into Gaza, 14 of them are believed to still be alive in captivity. There are grim fears about what they are facing. Some of their families, the Israeli government, and others make clear they fear the worst. Evidence suggests it might be….

““When you see the big picture,” Sulitzeanu said of the attacks, “you see it was intended, planned, directed sexual abuse. It was not sporadic….

““I believe the world has not given enough attention … to this part of the Hamas attack and the atrocities and the crimes against humanity that were committed against Israel,” she said…

“There were patterns to the violence in multiple locations that were attacked by Hamas and other fighters, she said, which dismiss the idea that sexual abuse was isolated or incidental to the attack….

““You could see, you could see what had happened there, even after the bodies were removed and you know it was horrific. They were in situations where it was impossible for your mind to get around the cruelty. It was terrible. I’ve seen heads. I’ve seen a leg, an arm. I found in one of the cars some front teeth. I found a piece of a skull.”

Full article at link above.

From Climate Realism: “The Guardian should know that one mild winter is not climate change, nor is it alarming”, Linnea Luekan, Mar. 4, 2024

https://climaterealism.com/2024/03/the-guardian-should-know-that-one-mild-winter-is-not-climate-change-nor-is-it-alarming/

Quotes:

“A recent article in The Guardian, “Vanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US Midwest” describes the very mild winter much of the American Midwest has experienced this year, claiming that it is due to climate change. While a declining trend towards less-severe winters may in part reflect modest warming, the intensity of this winter’s warmth is more likely explained by El Niño….

“Regarding El Niño, weather.com says “warmer winters are typical across the northern tier of states during a strong El Niño.”….

“The Guardian also says that a report published in January found that the number of -35F (-37.2C) readings in northern Minnesota have fallen by up to 90%,” they point out that low temperatures play a role in weed and pest control, which is true enough, however they neglect to mention that extreme cold kills human beings as well, and at much higher rates than extreme heat does. They also fail to mention that longer, colder winters result in fewer crop rotations and production.

“In “Climate at a glance: Temperature related deaths”, multiple studies back up the fact that cold is deadlier than heat all around the world. One study, published in the Lancet in 2021, found that while 600,000 people die globally from heat, over 6 million die from cold. (see the figure, below) Further, cold related deaths have declined at more than double the rate that heat related deaths have increased….

“The number of severely cold winters may be modestly trending downwards around the Great Lakes and across portions of the American Midwest, but almost everyone would agree that fewer -35℉ days is a blessing not a curse. This year’s winter is particularly mild not because of climate change but because of natural weather patterns, and a long-term trend in declining extreme cold is actually better for human survival. Contrary to The Guardian’s reporting, climate doomsaying is not an appropriate response to the available data.”

Another good one from Joe Rogan (guest Christopher Rufo on “Joe Rogan Experience” episode 2113 on Spotify) Wendell Krossa

Rogan and Rufo discuss the Democrats now using trials to criminalize their opponents and the precedent this sets. Rogan says that no matter what you think of Trump the person, this is not good, what is being done to political opponents. He notes how Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank explained that all real estate people do what Trump is charged with, and it is normal real estate practice, not illegal to set the valuation of your property higher and then bargain with banks to an agreed amount. Others note there was no crime because the banks eventually arrived at an agreed on value with Trump and even wanted to do further business with him.

Good comment from his guest Rufo who asks- “Who actually rules in this country? The people who get to decide by their vote? Or is it the permanent bureaucracy that has accumulated so much power? Their message is that we can take out anyone who is a threat to the system that we have built up”. Rufo says- “This is about how we think of our democratic system”. He is of the mind that the people should decide, not the bureaucracy.

He nails what Democrats are doing. They have taken the position of “We have to destroy democracy in order to ‘save democracy’”. “Save democracy” in the sense of maintaining left-wing hegemony, he says. Left wing domination over institutions.

Rufo says this goes bad for all of us. Dissent then becomes a crime. This has already happened with gender ideology in schools where parents were put on the FBI watch list as terrorists for wanting input to their children’s education. The Democratic party message is that if you participate in the democratic process, we will turn you into a criminal.

He adds that this is a time for courage in defense of freedom.

Rogan says further that when you frame your opponent as “Hitler” then you must stop Hitler by any means. He then notes Whoopi Goldberg’s recent statement that Biden could arrest all the Republicans and jail them. That is how unhinged this thinking now is, he notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5M5PS3mYo

Who said that the defense of freedom was a never-ending battle? But who would have thought that the struggle would be against those who, not long ago, we viewed as true fellow liberals who stood for freedom for all, for inclusion of all, for true equality and varied other classic liberal values. Many of us are now adjusting to the new reality that these former liberals have now become advocates for authoritarian censorship, banning of dissent, and themselves now pose the great threat to democracy that they endlessly project onto their opponents.

And today’s Progressive “liberals” appear quite entirely unaware of how profoundly they have abandoned Classic liberal principles. That illustrates how a narrative can deform human consciousness and life. If you convince yourself that your opponents are “Nazis, fascists, White Supremacists, racists, terrorists, etc.”, then you have deluded yourself that you are just like the Allies, on the good side of a righteous battle against a demonized evil enemy that must be stopped by any means, even by destroying democracy to “save democracy”. Today’s Progressives have shifted dangerously toward what Richard Landes (Heaven On Earth) calls the madness and desperation of “exterminate or be exterminated” mentality. This is an unsettling thing.

“The Holocene Climatic Optimum and the “pre-industrial””
By Andy May, Mar. 15, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/15/the-holocene-climatic-optimum-and-the-pre-industrial/

“The “pre-industrial” according to the IPCC in a footnote on page 43 of AR6 WGI is prior to 1750 for radiative forcings and before 1850 for temperature. Both dates are within the period commonly described as the Little Ice Age.

“The Little Ice Age was a brutal and a miserable time for humanity, but none-the-less the IPCC has chosen to measure and define “climate change” using the global average surface temperature change from that period. They talk about dangers if we exceed 1.5 to 2 degrees above the “pre-industrial” period. These numerical limits have no scientific basis, but they set them anyway.

“Then they have the problem of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This period from roughly 8,000BC to 4,200BC (see figure 1) is widely thought to have been warmer than today based on glacial advance and retreat data, and insolation models of temperatures around the world (figure 2)….

Fig. 1 Graph refered to here is available at link above…

“Figure 1. This compares two temperature proxy reconstructions. The orange reconstruction is the Vinther (2009) elevation corrected Greenland temperature reconstruction from ice cores. The black reconstruction is from Rosenthal (2013) and is his 500-meter depth temperature reconstruction in the Makassar Strait, Indonesia….

“We can see in figure 1 that two high-quality temperature proxies, one from Greenland and one from tropical Indonesia, 9,500 miles away match surprisingly well, both show roughly 3.5 to 4°C of cooling from their peaks in the Holocene Climatic Optimum to their coldest points in the Little Ice Age (“pre-industrial”). Even though, or perhaps because of this warmth, human civilization developed during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This was when Neolithic agriculture and settlements blossomed, became widespread, and well established in the Middle East. So, we can see 3.5 to 4°C of warming over the “pre-industrial” was not a problem for humans in the Middle East….

“Summary

“While figure 1 only shows two temperature proxy records over the Holocene, and both are for the Northern Hemisphere, they are 9,500 miles apart and both show the Holocene Climatic Optimum peaked in the Northern Hemisphere at about four degrees warmer than the Little Ice Age/pre-industrial. The peak warmth coincided with the development of a modern agrarian civilization. It is also consistent with Renssen’s insolation model for the period, which modeled a Holocene Climatic Optimum that was five degrees warmer than the Little Ice Age in the higher Northern Hemisphere latitudes.

“Renssen’s results are very consistent with global glacier advance data collected by Solomina. In fact, they both found an early Holocene retreat of glaciers in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, although the modeled warming was larger in the Northern Hemisphere….

“In short, it seems very likely that the Holocene Climatic Optimum was warmer than the Little Ice Age and warmer than today, the evidence is most compelling in the Northern Hemisphere.”

This on Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill that endangers free speech

“I chaired the Human Rights Tribunal. It has no business policing ‘hate speech’: Liberal online harms bill will put an end to robust political discourse”, David Thomas, Mar. 13, 2024

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/david-thomas-canadian-human-rights-tribunal-has-no-business-policing-hate-speech

Quotes:

“The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-63, the online harms act, is terrible law that will unduly impose restrictions on Canadians’ sacred Charter right to freedom of expression. That is what the Liberals intend. By drafting a vague law creating a draconian regime to address online “harms,” they will win their wars without firing a bullet.

“The consequences for violating the law are so severe that it should be expected that hardly anyone would risk violating it. Even news media organizations and big tech companies should be expected to avoid the risk. In this moment when we need it the most, robust political discourse in Canada could disappear with a whimper….

“Of course, the Canadian public wants to protect children from online exploitation. Of course, Canadians are concerned about child pornography and insidious practices like “deep fakes” and “revenge porn.” Much of that is already addressed in the Criminal Code.

“Unfortunately, these good intentions in the bill are just the lipstick on the pig. The terrible part of this proposed legislation is bringing hate speech back into the Canadian Human Rights Act. Hate speech was removed from the act more than a decade ago for a simple reason: It was a bad idea. It was unworkable and created far more problems than it solved….

“Because the definition of “hate speech” in Bill C-63 closely tracks the Supreme Court of Canada’s language in the 2013 Whatcott decision, you will hear the argument that this clears everything up, that the problems of the past will not prevail in the future.

“The problem is, with all due respect to the court, Whatcott is a lousy decision. It does very little to explain where the fine line of hate speech begins and where honest but uncomfortable debate ends….

“Another dangerous change involves allowing complaints to be made anonymously….

“All of this tinkering to create a big stick for enforcement, just for hate speech cases, makes it clear that the intention of the bill is to stifle free speech and needed political discourse….

“And there will be many, many new hate speech complaints lodged. Why not? You might get $20,000, you might get a lawyer to take your case at no cost to you, and you might get to do it anonymously. It will cost you nothing….

“Criticism of government policies, like immigration policy for example, might suddenly become dangerous.

“Welcome to a new era of self-censorship.

“Free speech in Canada is about to be stifled. Don’t be fooled by the lipstick. This is terrible legislation.

“David L. Thomas is a lawyer and mediator in British Columbia. From 2014-2021, he served as the Chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa.”

Michael Shellenberger on “The End Of The Transgender Craze Is Near: The backlash against ‘gender-affirming care’ and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating” Mar. 13, 2024

https://public.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-transgender-craze

“To support “gender-affirming care” is to be on the right side of history, millions believe. To be pro-transition is basically the same as being pro-gay, they believe. Whether one is attracted to people of the same sex or believes oneself to be of the opposite sex, it’s just how people are born. Trans people, including children and vulnerable adults, deserve medical care so they can assume their correct gender and deserve to compete in the sports competitions of their preferred sex.

“But it’s quickly becoming apparent that “gender medicine” is on the wrong side of history.

“Last week, millions of people read stories at X, the Washington Post, the Economist, the Telegraph, and even the Guardian about internal files of the leading transgender health organization, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), showing widespread medical mistreatment of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.

“And yesterday, the UK government’s National Health Service England (NHSE) announced that it was halting the prescription of puberty blockers in government hospitals….

“As such, the decision by the UK government to issue far more sweeping restrictions suggests the existence of a stronger cross-party consensus within the UK government than the glitzy pro-transition PR of recent years had suggested. There is a sense in which, after years of irresponsible healthcare teenagers having a wild party, drugging kids, and experimenting on their bodies, the adults have come home and started to impose order.

“Before the backlash against gender medicine was the backlash against putting transwomen/natal males in women’s prisons. Around the world, men who are caught committing crimes, including violent and sexual ones, are using “gender self-identification” to claim that they are actually women and demand to be put in women’s prisons. Many Americans are unaware that this is even occurring, much less that it brought down the Scottish government in mid-February of last year, just two weeks after its Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had nothing to apologize for.

“In terms of trans policies that cause real-world harm, women’s sports are also still an issue. Yet here, too, the backlash against natal males in female sports is gaining momentum. Former college swimming champion Riley Gaines has a new book out and is on the warpath. On Joe Rogan, Gaines told the story of how, despite having tied transwoman/natal male swimmer, Lia Thomas, the NCAA decided, on the stop, to give the one trophy to Thomas.

“And the leader of the British Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said on Monday that “common sense has to prevail in terms of safety and integrity of sport” and that biological males should thus not be allowed to participate in women’s sports…

“What, ultimately, set off the chain of events leading to the end of the trans craze?

“Gender Pseudoscience

“A big part of the reason for the end of the trans craze is the accumulation of scientific studies, patient testimonies, and the testimonies of gender clinicians themselves.

“The WPATH Files themselves should be seen in a broader context of revelations and confessions from the whistleblowers and employees of the gender medicine industry itself. The UK government shut down its leading gender clinic at Tavistock Hospital after its own employees blew the whistle. A St. Louis gender clinician last year similarly blew the whistle. One of the founders of gender-affirming care in Europe recently denounced the overuse of drugs and surgeries. Dr. Erica Anderson has argued for years that too few guardrails protect children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.

“Meanwhile, medical journals are publishing a growing number of scientific articles debunking the leading trans myths. A major Finland study found gender medicine to offer no benefits in terms of reducing suicide and suicidal feelings among people with gender dysphoria. And earlier this week, journalist Ben Ryan resurfaced a 2021 study that found that trans women who underwent genital surgery had twice as many suicide attempts after the surgery than before….

“One of the main reasons the trans craze is coming to an end is because of the coalition of feminists, conservatives, liberals, and non-ideological professionals, intellectuals, and activists who fought for years against it…. Trans activists destroyed the careers of journalists, academics, administrators, and anyone else who stood in the way of their agenda to transform medicine, sports, prisons, and much else. People lost their jobs in universities worldwide, particularly in North America and Europe. And many of those same people fought heroically.

“While there are medical and political reasons why transgenderism is coming to an end, the underlying reason is that gender-affirming care has no basis in science. The idea that someone can change their biological sex is ungrounded from reality.

“Trans activists attempted to hoist their wagon to broad public acceptance of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. Still, homosexuality is a genuine phenomenon of same-sex physical attraction. In contrast, transgenderism is an ideological movement based on the false belief that one can transform bodies, either one’s own or other people’s, into the opposite sex, or some new sex entirely.

“What we are left with are people of various sexual preferences who genuinely believe, or at least partly believe, that they are the opposite sex. The desire to impose this belief on the wider society, with the help of major medical and political institutions, resulted in a spiritual cult known as “the trans movement.” Its gods are humans and our ability to perform miraculous transformations of bodies through some combination of thinking, drugs, and surgery….

“We similarly allow people to believe they are the opposite gender and to dress and live how they like, but societies will soon stop, or severely restrict, the ability of people to impose this view on others and to permanently harm the bodies of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults. And we will soon prevent people claiming to have changed their sex from entering women’s prisons and sporting competitions.

“After The Craze

“It is likely that some combination of lawsuits by regretful “de-transitioners” and attorney generals, state and federal legislation, executive branch regulations, and decisions by health insurers and health care providers will all contribute to halting gender medicine and the attack on girls and women’s sports….

“To be sure, there will likely always be people who claim to be transgender. But the mass cultural phenomenon of transgenderism, including the craze of young people claiming to be the opposite sex, and demanding drugs and surgery to change their bodies, along with the right to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, or go to women’s prisons, is coming to an end. As such, those who continue to defend it are on the wrong side of history.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on The Holocene Optimum of 10,000 to 6,000 years ago was 3-4 degrees C warmer than today.

Criteria for evaluating public alarmism narratives

A brief: Climate is changing. CO2 has a warming effect. No one denies these facts. But there is no “climate crisis/emergency”. We do not need to decarbonize our societies. The science on climate does not support that conclusion. Other natural factors show stronger correlations to the natural climate change that we have witnessed over past centuries and millennia and are observing today.

Environmental/climate alarmism is a “profoundly religious crusade”. That is also very true of Marxism and Nazism/Neo-Nazism as well, just as it was true of the many “apocalyptic millennial” crusades across history. This site explores, tries to understand better, and outlines repeatedly the core mythical themes that shape and drive such movements.

See “A Canuck sticking his schnozz in a neighbor’s business” further below in this opening section…

This site is devoted to fighting fear, irrational fear resulting from over-hyped, hysterical levels of alarmism based on narratives that distort the true state of life and coerce frightened people to embrace destructive salvation schemes that “destroy the world to save the world”. Yes, you know what I mean- that psychopathology of themes in the complex of myths known as “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, demand for sacrifice, and salvation as purging some ‘evil enemy'”, the very themes that dominate and shape alarmism movements like climate alarmism. (Again, see the good research of historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, among others, detailed below)

It is profoundly irresponsible to push such irrational mythical nonsense onto new generations knowing the history of destructive outcomes in lives and societies. After 5 millennia of repetitive embracing of such primitivism have we learned nothing? And you wonder why our worst impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others, are endlessly revived and validated?

Understand the basic themes of history’s most dominant and influential complex of ideas (also most destructive)- the “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, promised redemption (millennial paradise)” complex of themes. This will provide you with more tools for evaluating the narratives that you hear in the public arena. Understanding the “apocalyptic millennial” complex will help you evaluate the basic narrative framework of environmental alarmism/climate alarmism, resurging Marxist collectivism, Neo-Nazism, and more. Add these tools to your personal criteria for evaluating anything you hear or read, to inform your own skepticism, questioning, and challenging of dominant narratives today. Wendell Krossa

Remember the totalitarian formula- “fear=control”. Panic-mongering is the totalitarian’s favorite tool.

“The silent majority are sick of this”, Piers Morgan on Chris Williamson podcast, Feb. 28, 2024

Here Piers Morgan and podcaster Chris Williamson are discussing the possibility that our societies appear to be passing “Peak Woke” as the silent majority are now sick of it and pushing back against the “tyranny of the minority”. Hope springs eternal. As they discuss- Majorities are sick of the Woke movement where everything people enjoy in life is being redefined as evil and corrupting… even to cancelling comedy in a new Puritanism where if you crack a joke at work, you must then be expunged from life.

Interesting comment on the Wokesters public condemnation of others, while guilty of the same behind the scenes. The “moral smoke-screen” thing that people like LE Maxwell spoke of long ago. A big e.g. of “moral smoke-screening” was Jimmy Swaggart self-righteously damning Jimmy Baker to hell for humping a church secretary, while Tammy Faye was home smearing makeup all over her face, and while Swaggert himself was cavorting with prostitutes. A kind of psychological deflection/redirection of guilt by condemning others for the same “sin” that you are indulging in secret.

They note that Ellen DeGeneres was a lead example of the public virtue signaling while hiding backroom nastiness, as she led the early Woke campaign- i.e. all “nicey-nicey” in public but a tyrant behind the scenes. And then, says Morgan, she got cancelled by her own cancellation movement.

So a spreading tiredness of virtue signaling and Puritan condemnation of others, just for enjoying comedy that the Woke bullies don’t like. Ah, who said that left-wing narcissism is so humorless and Puritan.

Piers then asks about the insane levels of anxiety among young people today and Williamson responds that there has been a pathologization, medicalization, and glorification of normal human emotions. He adds that when existence has become so comfortable, as it has in modern life, then any discomfort feels like a curse. It makes people hyper-sensitized. And this hyper-sensitivity is pushed in modern therapy- where youth at told that “it’s not that you are upset, it’s that you are depressed. It’s not that someone was mean to you, it’s that they caused you trauma”, and hence an overmedicated generation.

Williamson notes a study that showed exercise is more effective than all the SRI meds.

Also, they note the cellphone culture that presents so much negativity to young minds. The human mind is not designed to be inundated by the worst of the world’s news 24 hours a day in real time, says Williamson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhdkpH3K_c

I would add to the puzzling over the anxiety so rampant today in younger people: If you beat a generation with apocalyptic hysteria as media do all day, shrieking that everything is due to “climate change” and climate change is a “crisis… emergency… catastrophic… existential…” etc., and that is dog whistle for “evil human emissions of CO2 that are mainly causing a dangerous rise in warming that will destroy life and civilization”. Well, terrorize and traumatize young people with such irrational exaggeration and what do you think will be the impact on them?

And you buttress your “madness of crowds” apocalyptic hysteria with endless end-of-days dates repeatedly set and reset to intensify the terrorizing, and then you wonder why kids are scared witless, or shitless, according to your preferred adjectives. Ah, where are responsible adults to rise courageously above the banality of evil that “stands by silently and watches” the terrorizing of a new generation with just another primitive apocalyptic narrative, adults afraid of blowback from the “tyranny of the minority” that bullies everyone who dares disagree with their narratives of despair, threatening all with censorship, banning, cancelling…

Fundamental freedom, human well-being, and civilizational progress are at stake.

See soon to be reposted- “Patterns in alarmism movements”…

This from Shellenberger’s site- “Adam Candeub: Stanford Pioneered The Censorship Scheme That Europe May Impose On Us: “The state of nature is for elites to shut people up,” he says. “They see the Internet as a threat because it’s so radically democratizing”, Michael Shellenberger, Mar 3, 2024

https://public.substack.com/p/adam-candeub-stanford-pioneered-the

Quotes from article:

“Europeans are free to speak their mind as they wish, most of them believe…

“But all of that may soon change. Europe is implementing the Digital Services Act, which is using the exact same censorship system we exposed as part of the Twitter Files…

“You might think you shouldn’t worry about this because it’s happening in Europe….

“But Candeub says that the EU may end up censoring the whole world….

‘As we saw with the Twitter Files, the EU is demanding that supposedly independent fact-checkers do the censorship…

“Candeub understands the Censorship Industrial Complex well…

““If you go to a college campus where I work, people are in the business of shutting other people off. I think a lot of it is 2016. I think they see the Internet as a threat because it’s so radically democratizing.”

“At the same time, he noted, such elitism is old. “The natural state of nature is for elites to shut people up,” Candeub explains. “There are certain people epitomized by the people at Stanford [who are like] ‘We are the clever ones. We’re the ones that did really well in our SATs. We must rule.’” (end of quotes)

Here is the Supreme Court case where Shellenberger and others are pushing back against the spreading censorship from governing elites who coerce social media companies to censor opponents…

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-411/300197/20240208220913623_44722%20pdf%20Candeub.pdf

Program AI with the principles of Classic Liberalism that are fundamental to human freedom and equality… Wendell Krossa

In link below: More on the exposure of the partisan bias and Woke propaganda that have shaped Google’s AI Gemini. I would repeat- Classic Liberal principles should be fundamental to the programming of AI to ensure truthfulness, fairness/equality, freedom of speech, and keep censorship/indoctrination at bay.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/google-gemini-using-invisible-commands-define-toxicity-shape-online-world-digital-expert

“Google Gemini using ‘invisible’ commands to define ‘toxicity’ and shape the online world: Digital expert: The digital consultant said Google may become ‘obsolete’ if it continues to build an AI chatbot that reflects the company’s worldview,” Mar 5, 2024, Nikolas Lanum

Excerpted quotes: A digital consultant who combed through files on Google Gemini warned that the artificial intelligence (AI) model has baked-in bias resulting from parameters that define “toxicity” and determine what information it chooses to keep “invisible.”…

“”The Gemini release has a ton of data in it. It is explosive. Let’s take a look at the real toxicity and bias prompts,” she added. “According to the data, every site is classified as a particular bias. Should that be used as part of the datasets of what will define toxicity?”…

“Real Toxicity Prompts is described as a testbed for evaluating the possibility of language models generating text deemed “toxic,” i.e., likely to offend someone and get them to sign off.

“To measure the “toxicity” of documents, Real Toxicity Prompts relies on PerspectiveAPI, which scores the text based on several attributes, including toxicity, severe toxicity, profanity, sexually explicit, identity attack, flirtation, threat, and insult….

(Note political bias here) “In one example posted to social media by Ruby, the website Breitbart was given a bias=right and reliability=low rating. Meanwhile, The Atlantic was labeled as bias=left-center and reliability=high….

“She (Ruby) suggested that the underlying issue with machine learning technologies like Gemini is how toxicity is defined behind the scenes….

“”When it comes to AI censorship, whoever controls the definition of toxicity controls the outcome….

“The issue, according to Ruby, is not the prompt but rather the foundation of the model and the definition, terms and labels that guide the actions of AI models.

“Unfortunately, we now live in a world where a few corporate executives hold tremendous power and weight on the definition of toxicity. Their view of toxicity will ultimately shape the actions of algorithms and machine learning models…

“”We have been misled to believe censorship only takes place among trust and safety officers in private emails. This is part of the picture, but it is very far from the full picture….

“Ruby concludes that an unwillingness to tell the public the ontology associated with toxicity or safety is censorship. How words and phrases are weighted have a significant impact on what topics are visible or relegated to the background….

“In the case of AI, it is not people that are removed, but rather portions of historical records that enable citizens to engage with society as it is, rather than how an algorithm and its creators perceive it. Ruby said that altering historical records would essentially strip citizens of their right to understand the world around them….

“”AI tools must be used to assist users. Unfortunately, they are being used to assist product teams to build a world that reflects their internal vision of the world that is far removed from the reality of users.” (end of article)

From Wattsupwiththat.com- Remember, apocalyptic has a 100% historical failure rate. See the link further below of the numerous contemporary prophesies already proven wrong. Apocalyptic continues to make fools of the brightest minds…

“Monday Mirthiness, A Tale of Fail”, Charles Rotter, Mar 4, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/04/monday-mirthiness-a-tale-of-fail/

Titles from pictures at the link:

“1970- We’ll be in an ice age by 2000”
“1976- Global Cooling will cause a world war by 2000”
“1989- Global warming and rising sea levels will wipe entire nations off the map by 2000”
“1990- We have five to ten years to save the rainforests”
“1999- The Himalayan glaciers will be gone in ten years”
“2000- Snow will soon become a thing of the past”
“2007- Global warming will cause fewer hurricanes”
“2008- The Arctic will be ice-free by 2013”
“2012- Global warming will cause more hurricanes”
“2014- The science is settled”

For more failed predictions https://wattsupwiththat.com/failed-prediction-timeline/

Try to understand why a majority of the world population believe the fallacy that “the world is getting worse”, when good evidence shows the exact opposite, that life has been improving and today is the best time ever to be alive on earth. Wendell Krossa

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/?sh=7e6d2f167826

https://humanprogress.org/is-this-the-best-time-to-be-alive/#:~:text=Overwhelming

Below are some excellent studies that detail the primitive ideas that continue to shape human meta-narratives, in both religious and “secular/ideological” versions, even scientific. These ideas are summarized as the “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, demand for sacrifice, embrace of destructive salvationism” complex of myths. They are themes that deny and distort the true state of life and thereby contribute to unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, depression, fatalism, resignation, nihilism, and violence among populations.

The studies: Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision And Violence”, and David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation”.

The research in these studies will give you a better understanding of the dominant narratives of our contemporary world, the themes that shape public ideologies and movements, and make you aware of the consequences of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” myths- notably, that they produce destructive salvation schemes that “destroy life to save the world”.

The “climate crisis” narrative reduced to its fundamental mythical themes:

“We have sinned by ruining paradise (the past was better), and now we are being punished with a climate apocalypse, so repent because the end is nigh. We must make a sacrifice and suffer as redemptive. So, denying evidence to the contrary, lets rush (“coercive purification”) to decarbonize, de-develop, de-industrialize, retreat to primitivism.

“Let’s embrace an irrational salvation scheme that will destroy the world to ‘save the world’. Oh, and don’t forget to engage the righteous battle against evil and coercively purge the evil enemy that threatens life- the ‘deniers’ of our apocalyptic narrative, the ‘unbelievers’ that prevent us from bringing on utopia.”

Integrity should obligate the climate alarmists to walk our streets wearing sandwich boards with the summary inscription/proclamation used by all apocalyptics across history- “Repent, the end is nigh”. That is the honest essence of the message they are proclaiming.

Why are Greens not celebrating? The Earth is becoming greener with more CO2 and this explains the repeated breaking of annual record crops…

This from Climate Depot Jan.31, 2024- “Study: ‘Global greening is an indisputable fact… the rate of global greening increased’ from 2001-2020- Published in journal Global Ecology & Conservation”, Marc Morano

Quote in the above report by Andy May: “Global greening is not only a fact, it is accelerating. Seven times more area is greening than browning. All studies agree the world has become greener since 1982. If things are getting better with fossil fuels, why end them?

That’s a huge “Duh”. More food for animals. Increased crop production for humanity as annual crop production continues to break records. And with a slight 1 degree C of warming over the past century, fewer people are dying from cold, even though 10 times more still die from cold than die from warming. More CO2 and more warming in a still too cold world will benefit all life even more. Why do media ignore this good news?

https://www.climatedepot.com/2024/01/31/study-2001-2020-global-greening-is-an-indisputable-fact-the-rate-of-global-greening-increased-published-in-journal-global-ecology-conservation/

Note: Despite the warming over the past century, we are still in the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial. Since the end of the Holocene Optimum of some 6,000 years ago Earth has been on a long-term cooling trend and the Modern Warm Period is still cooler than the previous warming periods (i.e. Holocene Optimum, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period).

I would add to Andy May’s comment- “If things are getting better with fossil fuels, why end them?”- “If there is no ‘climate crisis’ from the human use of fossil fuels, and there isn’t, then why end them?”

I sent this post below to a private discussion group and I would pass it on to Alberta premier Danielle Smith…. It’s a response to an article covering Smith’s recent comments on her plans for Net Zero decarbonization in Alberta. Wendell Krossa

My post: Danielle, there is no “climate crisis” and hence no need to “become carbon neutral”, no need to decarbonize. Stop affirming the climate crisis narrative with that agreeing statement.

Just as former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed stood up to Papa Pierre Trudeau and his attempt at nationalization of Alberta oil resources (all collectivist elites nationalize resources/property for the “greater good, common good” and thereby destroy economies/societies), so this latest Alberta hero (premier Danielle Smith) gives the metaphorical finger to sonny-boy Justin Trudeau’s Net Zero zealotry. But she is wrong on the climate file in stating that we have to “be carbon neutral”.

Conservative politicians make this repeated mistake of pushing back against Net Zero policy as too rushed but then pivot to affirm the basic climate alarmism narrative. Smith needs to heed this advice- “Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative”- posted on Wattsupwiththat.com. Smith undermines her own general pushback against Net Zero decarbonization by affirming the climate alarmism narrative of imminent apocalypse if we don’t decarbonize and de-develop, de-industrialize…

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

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

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

The science he refers to, has been challenged brilliantly by atmospheric physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and many others as posted in their reports at co2coalition.org, Wattsupwiththat.com, etc. These respected scientists do not deny climate change or the warming influence of CO2, but rightly conclude from the evidence that the influence of CO2 is not the main influence on climate change. Other natural factors show much stronger correlations to the climate change we are seeing.

The world is not facing a “climate crisis” with the mild 1 degree C natural warming that has brought us out of the 1645-1715 Little Ice Age that devastated the world. And even with the mild warming of the modern era, 10 times more people still die every year from cold than die from warmth (Lancet study). We need a lot more warming and a lot more CO2 to continue the amazing greening of Earth (15% more green vegetation just since 1980).

Here is the article on Danielle Smith and her conceding that we must do something about carbon neutrality….

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/danielle-smith-vs-ottawa-again-and-again

“Why it’s Danielle Smith vs. Ottawa, over and over: Alberta’s premier is pulling no punches: ‘We have a federal government that … chooses to work against the national interest rather than advance it’”, by Donna Kennedy-Glans, Feb. 25, 2024

“This is a conversation series by Donna Kennedy-Glans, a writer and former Alberta cabinet minister, featuring newsmakers and intriguing personalities.

“Earlier this month, Smith visited the U.S. Capitol…

“So, how was her first trip to Washington as Alberta’s premier? “I think perhaps the difference this time is that the technology now exists for us to be carbon neutral,” she says. “In the past, I think it was aspirational.” Today, there’s a lineup of practical net-zero tech in development — net-zero hydrogen, petrochemicals and cement. Net-zero steel is her next target.”

My conclusion:

No Danielle, we don’t have to “become carbon neutral”. There is no good scientific basis for that argument. And conceding that we must become carbon neutral only affirms the larger climate alarmism narrative of looming apocalyptic ending. As the Wattsupwiththat.com article states- If you concede the science then you have lost the battle.

So first and foremost, engage the good science at sites like “co2coalition.org” or “Wattsupwiththat.com” and recognize that there is no credible science supporting the claim that there is a “climate crisis”. The very opposite is true- that the mild warming so far has been net beneficial to life. We would benefit from much more warming if the facts on the Eocene “mammalian paradise” (55-33 million years ago) are affirmed as they have been so far.

“The facts on the Eocene paradise”? It was 3-10 degrees C warmer during the Eocene “mammalian paradise” and the tropical oceans did not “boil”. The Earth did not ignite on fire. But rather, tropical temperatures only fluctuated by a few degrees. That “equable climate” issue confounds climate alarmists. What happened? Javier Vinos argues that the main influence on climate change- “meridional transport”- carried that excess solar energy coming into the tropics to the cooler regions of the planet. (See Vinos reports at “Wattsupwiththat.com” and “co2coalition.org”)

That meridional transport was through ocean and atmospheric convection currents. And that meant faster warming of the polar regions as a natural and beneficial response to global warming. Yes- melting ice as good for life. Just as the Earth has been entirely ice free for over 80% of the Phanerozoic history of life (past 500 million years).

Global warming, as evening out climate across the world, means extended habitats for more diverse life forms and freedom from the destructive impacts of cold climate. As Patrick Moore notes, the most diverse life forms are in the warmer regions of our world. A good thing. All life prefers warmth. Evidence of warmer temps in polar regions- the discovery in recent years of the fossils of tropical plants and animals in both polar regions.

So do not fear much more warming (and much more CO2). There is no paleoclimate evidence that a far warmer world will destroy life. In fact, with the 3 degrees C warmer climate during the Holocene Optimum of 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, agriculture was able to emerge and develop, and the great civilizations were enabled to emerge and flourish.

Yet we are being traumatized today with alarmism over a 1.5 degree C warming that has brought us out of the destructive cold climate of the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715. And we are still in the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial. 10 times more people still die from cold every year than die from warming (Lancet study).

Added note:

The statement that “you will lose if you don’t challenge the science of climate”- so I would argue that you will lose over the long-term if you don’t confront and change the primary mythical themes that are behind alarmism movements. Again, see Landes and Co. research on the profoundly mythical/religious ideas behind Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism crusades. Go to the real root of problems. Solve thoroughly and properly for the long term.

Propagandizing populations with climate apocalypse

“Green Billionaires Press Hollywood to Promote Armageddon Climate Messages in Movies”, Chris Morrison of Daily Skeptic, article posted by Charles Rotter, Feb. 28, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/28/green-billionaires-press-hollywood-to-promote-armageddon-climate-messages-in-movies/

“Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophize the climate in future film and television scripts. One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”….

“Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate…. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”….

“As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will recall, billionaire foundations are grooming populations around the world by funding a variety of press, political and academic operations…

“And if your story requires a yacht, why not make it solar powered.” That last idea might appeal to super-yacht lover Leonardo DiCaprio, but private planes, the preferred method of transportation for many high-end Hollywood stars, might be a problem. Hypocrisy a problem with all this? Not according to the Playbook, which quotes climate activist Bill McKibben that “hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. For plebs, gammons, fly-overs and deplorables, this of course translates as “you do what you are told and radically change your lives – we don’t give a flying flamingo”….

“For scripted entertainment, observes Good Energy, “the emotional truth is as important as the literal truth”….

“Rolling Stone reports that the operation is “dedicated” to ensuring that within three years, 50% of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.

“It is unsurprising that the power of film and TV to influence large audiences is being captured to promote a political message….

“Elite billionaires are pulling out all the stops to insert climate Armageddon messaging into all forms of media….”

“Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor”.

Now some theology, as related to the “the primary human impulse to meaning” (Viktor Frankl)…

I use the adjective “unconditional” on this site (a lot) for lack of a better term to summarize the profound insight that Historical Jesus made in his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson). But my use of that term is not an affirmation of some form of pacifism in the face of evil (i.e. “turn the other cheek”). Wendell Krossa

A Mennonite man that I used to know stated, regarding the common sense that ought to inform our responses in life, “Yes, I am pacifist. But if someone attacks me, I will “pass a fist” to stop him”. Likewise giving priority to common sense, the old pacifist preacher said, “If someone attacks my family, I will knock him out with a 2×4 and when he is unconscious on the ground then I will sit down and discuss my pacifist principles with him”. Hence, the embrace of unconditional as a general guiding ideal for the treatment of others in life is not an affirmation of pacifist absolutism. That does not work in an imperfect world.

My use of the term unconditional is about pointing to the true nature of the love that defines deity as ultimate goodness or humaneness. Unconditional is the single best feature to highlight divine love, as contrasted with the deforming features that have been projected onto deities across past millennia, features that have nothing to do with authentic love- i.e. retaliatory justice, tribal exclusion of unbelievers, domination, highly conditional atonement/salvation schemes, and punitive destruction of unbelievers, etc.

And as with anything in relation to deity, unconditional in deity should be understood as something transcendently, unimaginably, inexpressibly better than anything in human understanding, experience, or explanation. As Joseph Campbell said- “The God infinitely beyond God”.

Unconditional in deity defines and upholds our highest ideals as something much better than where we are at present, in order to judge us and to point us toward the better existence that we should try to head toward, toward something more humane, toward the highest reaches of love. Our ideals should inspire us to be something better than where we are at present. That is what divine ideals should be about, how they should function. To disturb any complacency and urge us that we can still do better. But not excessively so in the sense of contributing to beating ourselves up over failure. It’s a balancing thing.

Unconditional in deity points us toward the meaning of “the authentically human”. It shows us how we fulfill the hero’s quest to conquer the monster/enemy of our inherited animal drives, and then how to “tower in stature as maturely human”.

And while unconditional is never perfected in human experience in this world, it should be considered an absolute truth and reality in deity as perfect goodness and love.

Unconditional, better than anything else, properly informs the “behavior based on belief” impulse. Meaning that unconditional shows us how to be like God. This is about the behavior based on similar theological belief, a relationship that humans have intuitively used across history and across all the cultures of the world.

The behavior based on similar divine belief is an expression of the natural impulse to want to fulfill the reason for which we exist, to fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. Surely, if such a purpose exists then it is common sense to try to understand and fulfill it.

Unconditional in deity tells us how to end the endlessly destructive cycles of eye for eye retaliation and thereby conquer the animal inside us, the real monster and enemy in life.

Unconditional points us to better approaches to human failure in others, approaches like restorative justice of the type that was used post-WW2 in regard to Japan and Germany. That exhibition of unconditional treatment of enemies helped to re-integrate those populations back into the human family.

Most critical, unconditional shows us how to maintain our own humanity in the face of evil when the primal urge to retaliate in kind can overwhelm human consciousness.

I use this term unconditional always with necessary qualifiers- i.e. that violent people must be restrained and incarcerated, stopped with force in order to protect innocent others which is the priority responsibility of governments and criminal justice systems. And such use of force to restrain violent people does not mean the abandonment of love. It is not antithetical to love.

Love, in responding to human pathology is often not about feelings toward offenders but is more about intention and commitment to use proper levels of force and to follow-up with the humane treatment of offenders/enemies after restraint and war are ended. See for example…

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/overview-police-use-force#:~:text=Law%

This is what “maintaining our own humanity in the face of evil” should be about.

Whatever the application of unconditional to ethics means, it is especially critical to define deity as unconditional because deity, even in our modern era, still functions as our highest embodiment of human ideals, the highest understanding of goodness and love. We do well to appreciate the potential humanizing influence of deity on life- as per the “behavior based on belief” relationship.

Most critical: Unconditional in deity overturns the inherited “bad religious idea” theologies that have long incited and validated the worst of human behavior across history. As someone said, “Men never do worse evil than when they do it in the name of God”. Or, “We become just like the God that we believe in”.

Other comment….

This caught my attention as it has been so invariably and inevitably the outcome of collectivist experiments across the past century. It was in an article on the immigration problem at the southern US border and why so many are fleeing Latin American countries for the US.

Quote:

“For example, the socialist government of Venezuela has turned a previously prosperous country into a repressive hellhole, many people are seeking shelter and refuge in the United States”. See also “Socialism: The Failed Idea that never Dies”. All collectivist experiments end inevitably as “repressive hellholes”. That’s why China and Russia have both largely rejected collectivism. It does not work.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/joe-biden-has-failed-to-tackle-the-mess-on-americas-southern-border

A “deep state” conspiracy theory?? (posts to a discussion group) Wendell Krossa

“A “Hmmm-type” video clip. Leftist Jimmy Dore (for those of you scared of anything not from a “left/liberal” source) on the “permanent state” or what some call the “deep state”. As Dore defines it- “The people who said they were here before people like Trump and they would still be there after people like him”, a guy who tried to mess with that hidden state.

“Suspend your “conspiracy theory” initial reaction a bit. Here’s another voice interviewed by Dore, Mel K, screenwriter, journalist, etc., stating what Glen Greenwald also argues- that we live propagandized by the illusion that our societies are locked in the conflict of left vs right- “the false left/right dichotomy and the media who want you to be afraid of your neighbor instead of the people who run things”.

“Richard Landes has pointed out that the “elite powerholder versus commoners” dichotomy has shaped all societies from the beginning of human civilizing projects. The left/right thing just keeps the populace divided, they say, and not focused on the real divide between powerholding elites and common citizens.

“Joe Rogan and guests have discussed similar things- is it really just another conspiracy theory, are there really super elites meeting to plan this stuff out about controlling us, or is it more just ideological agreement among varied agencies, social institutions, and elites that agree to a similar approach to organizing societies?? What really is going on behind the scenes that we only get glimpses of? Glimpses, as with Shellenberger and Taibbi’s revelations of the CIA manufacture of the Russia Collusion to bring Trump down, etc. (the new McCarthyism, coming from the Democrats now). This lady (Mel K) says this deep state thing really exposed itself with the murder of JFK.

“Jimmy notes that 10 years ago Princeton did a study that concluded the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy. They go into examples of how Americans are set against one another in this left vs right divide and miss the larger picture. “We are all equally victims of this….” Good on the call to return to freedom and transparency…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWSu0HKzzPw

Another post on the Jimmy Dore video clip:

“I don’t think this “deep state” thing is conspiracy as in a group of men meeting in dark back rooms and plotting to take over the world, to take power and control. Its more that wealthy, powerful people are true believers in a generally agreed upon ideology and the policies that flow from that ideology. And they believe that the policies should be implemented as the best way to organize societies, for the “greater good, the common good”, as they see it.

“Elites believe that they know what is best for all others and must work (noble cause) to see those policies embraced and implement by societies. So yes, they do meet at places like the big WEF confabs to discuss and plan the “Great Reset”, to fashion and reshape the world economies according to their socialist/collectivist ideology. And in doing that, they agree with the Chinese elites who admittedly use long-game approaches to undermine Western liberal democracy and replace it with their authoritarian control of populations… for the good of all, of course. So yes, “conspire” but more loosely as in agreeing on a common ideology as best for societies.

“We saw this recently with Trudeau’s visit to Alberta and his delusional statements that oil workers and other voters, now in majority numbers against him, they have all been deluded by opposition voices and don’t know what is best for them. Only he does and he will use state power to make sure they learn to submit and agree. That is how an authoritarian thinks, how a true believer in some ideological system thinks. And then works to spread his ideology and meet with like-minded others to ensure their ideology is widely taught and promoted and accepted by populations.

“Classic Liberalism/libertarianism is the best system that we have come up with to counter this totalitarianism of “cruel compassion”- the “psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism”. Christine Brophy notes that authoritarians want to subject all against their wills but for their “good”, for common or greater good as defined by extremist Woke Progressivism narratives. Classic liberalism operates to protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals equally, to protect the equal treatment of all citizens under common law, to honor and protect the self-determination of free individuals, to protect private property rights, and to uphold institutions that disperse power among competing individuals and competing social institutions, etc.” (end of post)

This site is fundamentally a “Daddy” site, telling visitors, and especially younger people, that its going to be alright- Alright in this world. This affirmation is to encourage people to make their unique contribution to making life better as such effort will be effective. Wendell Krossa

And I add that its going to be alright “ultimately” (all safe ultimately) because there is a stunningly no conditions love at the core of reality and life. I state that, in part, to defuse the common fear of death, and after-life fear, as such fear has deformed and constrained engagement in life for many.

This is about pushback to disarm the totalitarian’s use of fear to control people.

And this site, after presenting information on where and how things went wrong in some area, and especially how things have gone wrong at the level of the basic themes of narratives, this site then engages information on how to make things right again. What, for example, are the better alternatives in terms of narrative themes, the more humane insights from across history to better inform our thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses? That is what my list of 18 “worst ideas and better alternatives” is all about (see below).

My persistent argument is that things are going to be alright in this world. On the material side, this site offers the best evidence from the best sources on the true state of life and on the long-term trend of life which shows an ever-improving trajectory. This continual improvement in the trajectory of life is because humanity is fundamentally good and loving. Goodness is our essential nature. We are not essentially corrupt/bad or what religious traditions call “sinful”. We are not a “virus, cancer, or intruder” on earth. So value “the wonder of being human”, and existing on this planet with some special purpose to make a contribution to life that you alone can fulfill. Don’t fall for the anti-humanism that dominates so much religion and ideology today.

Also, don’t fall prey to the dominant narratives of despair today, like climate alarmism with its hysterical narratives of life and civilization collapsing. Apocalyptic narratives fuel fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, fatalism, resignation, nihilism, and violence toward differing others. Beware the apocalyptic millennial crusades like climate alarmism that distort entirely the true state of life and then push irrational salvation schemes on populations. Do not “stand by and silently observe” the salvation schemes that repeatedly result in mass-death outcomes (“destroying the world to save the world”). Don’t let yourself become caught up in “madness of crowds” eruptions and social contagions. Think critically, question everything, be in control of your own life story. And make some unique creative contribution to your era.

This Daddy reassurance project also presents the best insights from historical spiritual traditions. “Best” in terms of the most humane ethics and behavior that resonate with what we have all commonly agreed on in our human rights codes- i.e. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, or the principles of Classic Liberalism. These principles are the best expressions of the love that we all commonly agree is our defining ideal as to what it means to be human.

Meaning- the love that honors the freedom for individual diversity, individual self-determination, freedom from control by dominating others. As a friend says- ‘Where there is no such freedom there is no love”. So understand and value the Western contribution of Classic Liberalism to the world (see, for example, the Classic Liberal principles outlined in Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”, or David Boaz’s “Libertarianism: A Primer”).

Be aware of your real enemy, the real monster in life- the animal inheritance inside you where the real battle of life takes place. Our real battle in life is not with other people who differ from us. It is with our own inner impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of “enemy” others. To counter such impulses, understand the fundamental oneness of the human family, recognize that true greatness is serving others, and embrace restorative justice as how we best maintain our humanity in the face of evil.

Don’t allow yourself to be deluded by the constantly re-invented collectivist versions of compassion that subject individuals to a “common or greater good collective”, because all collectives have to be run by someone (for the “common good”) and that role is repeatedly seized by elites who arrogantly believe that they alone know what is best for all others, and who have inevitably turned totalitarian and ruined societies, introducing hell on earth. Centralizing power and control in collectivist approaches has always corrupted the powerholding elites who run the collectives, despite their claims of governing for the good of others.

I refer specifically to the formal ideology of “collectivism” that we saw in Marxist versions last century and today is coming at us through fronts like Woke Progressivism, ESG backdoor infiltration of business, etc. Collectivism holds as a primary principle the rejection of private property rights and the demand that individuals be subjected to the collective or “greater/common good”. An example today would be the World Economic Forum with its now deleted slogan “You will own nothing, and you will be happy” (happy eating insects). The WEF is representative of the Woke Progressivism that dominates so much of Western societies today, as in the current US Democratic Party.

Today collectivist approaches operate by coercively taking private property through excessive taxation, and regulation of all aspects of life, as bureaucratic/governing elites claim that they know best how all should decide and live and will make such choices for the commoners. Rules for thee, but not for me (think Al Gore, Bill Gates, George Soros, and the many others as example of that elite club).

The claims of totalitarianism to compassion, a compassion that coerces others against their will “for their good”, is not love. Coercing people “to be free”, as in the distortion of freedom as submission to collectivist elite powerholders, is no freedom.

https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness

And be skeptical of narratives that proclaim the themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption”. There has never been any lost paradise (i.e. better past) and life is not declining toward something worse, toward collapse and disaster. There is no divine demand to make a sacrifice, to suffer for redemption, to deny the good life. And do not fall for the perversion of the hero’s quest that urges people to engage a righteous war against differing others as “evil enemies” that must be purged from life in order to save the world. Do not believe any narrative that denies humanity’s oneness. We are all the same one family.

Further, there is no utopian millennium coming. But yes, hard work in contributing to the slow and gradual trajectory of improving life through democratic processes will get us to an increasingly ever better world. Gradualism in democracy, slow gradualism, succeeds. The news is good and affirms hope.

Ah, there is so much more to this Daddy project… read on kids. Its going to be alright.

And this….

Abigail Shrier research on anxiety

Add the fact to the article below that this generation has suffered decades of battering by climate alarmism apocalyptic, that the world is going to end soon, hence many young people fear that the human race will soon go extinct. Add Jonathan Haidt’s research on what contributes to the striking rise in levels of anxiety among younger people…

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729231/the-anxious-generation-by-jonathan-haidt/

Some good comment on what happened to the latest generation– “How Bad Therapy Hijacked Our Nation’s Schools: Forget the Pledge of Allegiance. Today’s teachers are more likely to start the school day with an ‘emotions check-in.’ Abigail Shrier on the rise of ‘trauma-informed’ education”, Feb. 27, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-bad-therapy-hijacked-american-schools

From the Bari Weiss intro: “American kids are the freest, most privileged kids in all of history. They are also the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated generation on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an also alarming 14 percent.

“What’s even stranger is that all of these worsening mental health outcomes for kids have coincided with a generation of parents hyper-fixated on the mental health and well-being of their children.

“What’s going on?

“That mystery is the subject of Abigail Shrier’s fascinating, urgent new book: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up….

“In Bad Therapy, out today, Abigail heads into the breach once more. The book makes the case that the advent of therapy culture, the rise of “gentle parenting,” and the spread of “social-emotional learning” in schools is actually causing much of the anxiety and depression faced by today’s youth. In other words, Abigail argues that in our attempt to keep kids safe, we are failing the next generation of American adults.

Abigail Shrier quotes:

“By 2022, 96 percent of public schools offered mental health services to students. Many of these interventions constitute what I call “bad therapy”: they target the healthy, inadvertently exacerbating kids’ worry, sadness, and feelings of incapacity.

“Mind Institute… provides an online “symptom checker” specifically to help parents or teachers inform themselves about “possible diagnoses.”

“Counselors now routinely monitored the social-emotional quality of our teaching, sniffed out emotional disturbance in our students, and decided what assignments to nix or grades to adjust upward.

“(At a conference on social-emotional teaching) We pledged to treat all kids as if they had experienced some debilitating trauma.

“Social-emotional learning… SEL pushes kids toward a series of personal reflections, aimed at teaching them “self-awareness,” “social awareness,” “relationship skills,” “self-management,” and “responsible decision-making.”

“Teachers (are advised) to ask kids: “How are you feeling today?…

“I asked Leif Kennair, a world-renowned expert in the treatment of anxiety, and Michael Linden, a professor of psychiatry at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, what they thought of practice. Both said this unceasing attention to feelings was likely to make kids more dysregulated.

“If we want to help kids with emotional regulation, what should we communicate instead?

“I’d say: worry less. Ruminate less,” Kennair told me. “Try to verbalize everything you feel less. Try to self-monitor and be mindful of everything you do— less.”….

“Many psychological studies back this up. An individual is more likely to meet a challenge if she focuses on the task ahead, rather than her own emotional state. If she’s thinking about herself, she’s less likely to meet any challenge.

“If you want to, let’s say, climb a mountain, if you start asking yourself after two steps, ‘How do I feel?’ you’ll stay at the bottom,” Dr. Linden said….

“There’s a problem with in-school therapy, an ethical compromise, which arguably corrupts its very heart…. And among the clearest is- or was- the prohibition on ‘dual relationships’…

“As school counselors and psychologists came to see themselves as students’ “advocates,” they slipped into a dual relationship with their students: part therapist; part academic intermediary; part parenting coach. Today, school counselors and psychologists commonly evaluate, diagnose, and treat students with individual therapy; meet with their friends; intervene with their teachers; and pass them in the lunchroom. A teen who has just spent a tear-soaked hour telling the school counselor her deepest secrets might reasonably be fearful of upsetting anyone with that much power over her life….

“I have been so inundated with parents’ stories of school counselors encouraging a child to try on a variant gender identity, even changing the child’s name without telling the parents, that I’ve almost wondered if there are any good school counselors. One parent I interviewed told me that her son’s high school counselor had given him the address of a local LGBTQ youth shelter where he might seek asylum and attempt to legally liberate himself from loving parents….

“Advocates of social-emotional learning claim that nearly all kids today have suffered serious traumatic experiences that leave them unable to learn…. Otherwise happy kids are brought low…
“Good therapists are trained specifically to avoid encouraging rumination, a thought process typified by dwelling on past pain and negative emotions. Rumination is a well-established risk factor for depression….”

“Excerpted from Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, by Abigail Shrier, in agreement with Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Abigail Shrier, 2024.”

Follow-up posts to a discussion group re the above article: Wendell Krossa

“Jordan Peterson noted that over the past 20 years, psychology has recognized that a generation of youth has been ruined by making kids intensely oriented to their feelings as dominant criteria for viewing all of life…

“Here is a brief clip of Abigail Shrier on the anxiety of this generation, saying that kids of this new generation are afraid to take on life, they don’t feel they have efficacy that they can improve their lives, they don’t want to be in charge, they are afraid, they don’t feel up to it. They are smart kids but don’t feel ready, afraid to try, and they constantly report about their mental health, how they are feeling today, they can’t just take a chance and go for it…

“Joe Rogan says- How do parents help children with such things… but then tell kids there are things you have to do in life that are difficult so just suck it up… and there is a great reward in just trying and doing things. So “suck it up” is not being told to these kids, no one is telling them “you will live”, so shake it off, you will overcome things…

“Studies show that regularly ruminating on your bad feelings, as in therapy, only makes things worse…

“And while many theoretical psychologists affirm the risks of therapy (getting people to ruminate on their bad feelings), the clinical ones minimized the risks of therapy where people are taught to ruminate… a dangerous practice…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z72hgYk-5iI

“As she says, therapists love patients with a little ‘social anxiety’ and they run with that…. that’s their income and then they focus their patients on their feelings and trauma and that makes it worse…

“Rogan summarizes her book and the point that- “thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time literally makes them worse”

“She responds that yes, rumination is the number one symptom of depression, the pathological obsessing over your pain. So, in response get out of your house and accomplish anything… where sitting around and thinking and talking about your problems is a bad habit. Good cognitive behavioral therapists will first thing try to break that bad habit where a lot of other therapists just indulge it. So go out and get into life, suffer the failures and problems of life, suck it up and get going… you will be OK. Now we tell kids- you have trauma and get them sitting around ruminating about it and making it worse….

“Life is pain and resilience and getting on with it…

“Also don’t fear anxiety or medicate it away as anxiety helps you prepare and perform better, anxiety is part of life and has benefits.. even medicating depression can kill the will to make a change… interesting insights…” (She does add that in some cases medication and therapy are certainly necessary and helpful)…

On the (sometimes) pathology of prayer:

Even the old Evangelical preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, physician to the Queen, noted in his book “Spiritual Depression” that praying about your problems only makes you focus on them more and makes them worse. Its another form of harmful “rumination” that is a main cause of depression. He recommended to get outside of yourself and get involved in helping others and solving their problems and that will help you forget your problems.

Fascinating facts on AP (Associated Press) reporting of news

Jimmy Dore: “(We) are the most propagandized people on earth and we don’t know it”.

This same propaganda noted in the AP article further below just happened a couple of days ago with more hysteria over Russia, Russia, Russia. The unproven story that the Russians were putting nuclear weapons in space. Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn said the story appeared suddenly, manufactured out of nothing with no evidence. Mainstream media ran with it with no fact-checking, acting more as just loudspeakers for state propaganda, to keep the war machine funded.

Democratic Senator Frank Church had warned back in the 70s about the CIA involvement all over US media. As others have uncovered today- the widespread propagandizing from intelligence agencies, social and mainstream news media, political parties, etc.- i.e. Shellenberger, Taibbi and crew. See further below the report on the anti-Israel bias in the main news feed agency on Earth… the AP

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-episode-5d2

Quotes from above link on the “Russian nuclear space weapons” by Taibbi and Kirn…

“Nuclear space weapons became an instantaneous talking point across the board, and it was not just on the Democratic side, Nikki Haley, in classic fashion, got up there, and she was a guest on Fox where they were discussing. They immediately converted the story into a discussion about how Biden was sleepwalking on the Russian nuclear space threat. And the National Review put out a story, Russia’s space weapons capabilities are worth worrying about. It was everywhere, this thing, and there was nothing that we had anything concrete about.

“Bloomberg, “US tells allies, Russia may launch anti-satellite nuclear weapon into space this year.” That has echoes, certainly, of the Iraq period. Remember the famous British Intelligence Assessment talking about how they could launch chemical weapons or biological weapons within 45 minutes? And then, it later came out that there was just nothing behind that at all. But so what? We can tell the public later. Putin came out and of course directly said that this wasn’t happening. “We’ve been categorically against, and are now against, the deployment of nuclear weapons in space,” he said, but whatever, he’s evil, always-liar Vladimir Putin, so that doesn’t really make the news very much.

“But the fact that these stories came out, and there was just nothing in most of these reports talking about the obvious subtext of it, which is that there is a still unpassed piece of legislation that is preventing us from continuing the war in Ukraine, it just tells you how completely ridiculous our system of media is now. We’ve now gone beyond the point of no return with this 1984-style news reporting system. There’s no pretense anymore to any connection to reality with any of this stuff. It was really amazing to watch….

“Let’s pile on the fictional story about which we know absolutely nothing…

“When all people get afraid of the Russian threat in the same way at the same time to the same hysterical level.

“Until we reach that point, Rachel (Maddow) will be on TV, hectoring us for not being sufficiently serious.

“Matt Taibbi: Right. Right. We should all be in the same church worshiping at the same altar of panic before the same unknown thing, or the same unproven threat….”

Note other examples, for instance, of how Google’s Gemini AI manufactured lies about Matt Taibbi

https://www.racket.news/p/i-wrote-what-googles-ai-powered-libel

Go to Taibbi’s and Michael Shellenberger’s sites for numerous stories on how media and intelligence agencies propagandize us with distortions of events and outright lies…
Here is the link to the article on AP’s propagandizing…

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/carson-jerema-associated-press-compromises-itself-with-anti-israel-bias

“Carson Jerema: Associated Press compromises itself with anti-Israel bias: Global wire service isn’t even trying to provide fact-based journalism”, Published Mar 01, 2024

“Since Hamas murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel nearly five months ago, the Associated Press news-wire service has made the choice to amplify the perspective of the terrorist organization, while painting Israel in as negative a light as possible. Its coverage of the war that was ignited by the attack frequently treats Hamas as the more reliable source, doing a disservice to readers looking for objective, fact-based journalism.

“The Associated Press (AP) is immensely influential, with its reporting appearing in hundreds of news outlets around the world, including in National Post, reaching, they claim, four-billion people a day, making its clear and unequivocal anti-Israel bias a unique problem.

“A particularly egregious example is how AP covered the story of 112 Palestinians who were killed during the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza City on Thursday….

“Israeli forces say they killed up to 10 people as a result, but did not fire on the crowd generally.

“Hamas, which has an obvious interest in Jews being perceived as bloodthirsty war criminals, blames all the deaths on Israel and called it a “massacre.”…

“While it seems obvious that the Israeli version of events is more plausible than the Hamas version, all AP needed to do, at a minimum, was to frame the story as one where the cause of the deaths were in dispute.

“Instead, it took the Hamas version of events as the plain truth….

“This isn’t journalism. This isn’t holding Israel to account. This is Hamas propaganda, plain and simple….

“The Associated Press appeared keen to present the most anti-Israel version of events it could muster, without concern for even a veneer of journalistic standards….

“(AP’s) accounts of the war are among the most widely read in the world. Hamas couldn’t ask for a better public relations team.” National Post

This by Matt Taibbi on Google’s Gemini AI

https://www.racket.news/p/if-ai-thinks-george-washington-is

Quote: “As seen in the Gemini rollout, and heard repeatedly across years of reports about AI products, the chief issue with such tools is that they make stuff up. The term Silicon Valley prefers is “hallucinate” — journalist Cade Metz deserves kudos for helping make it Dictionary.com’s word of the year in 2023— but as podcast partner Walter Kirn points out, this language is too kind. The machines lie.”

A Canuck sticking his schnozz in a neighbor’s business… Wendell Krossa

Qualifier: I affirm his policies as overall good for any society, due to his business experience and success with policies that benefitted especially minority communities, something that even Trump hater Van Jones admitted to Jake Tapper years ago on CNN, and other Democrats are now affirming. But I am no fan of the person Donald Trump in terms of one notable behavior of his. I would tell him to his face that his “guiding ethic of eye for eye” repeatedly renders him petty and childish (i.e. the name-calling and vilification of opponents, the ad hominem stuff). He will never be considered a great president if he continues to engage that infantile behavior. I suspect that nasty retaliatory behavior was a significant contributing factor that cost him the election in the past (shooting yourself in the foot).

But I also acknowledge that a more timid and proper person probably would not have done what needed to be done to clean out the swamp of elitism in DC. A “Bull in a China shop” charge was most likely the only approach that would have worked. But just a little more smoothly and subtly would have helped dampen the hysterical reaction of Woke Progressives. Or would it have? I dunno.

Now my point…

Every morning, I go to MSN homepage (Canada edition) to get a feel for the day’s news and I see endless headlines panic-mongering over the “Orange Monster” (Trump)- as the great dangerous “threat to democracy”. That “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is far beyond obsessive compulsive hysteria. But what do you expect when people have terrorized themselves that their opponent is “Hitler, Nazi, fascist, racist, bigot, dictator…” along with other extremist demonizing smears.

Examples of the mantra of the “dangerousness” of the man:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-host-joy-reid-compares-trump-hitler-during-rant-how-fascism-takes-root

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/12/02/trump-president-2024-election-danger-democracy/71740753007/

When you have framed your opponent as the worst of the worst, well, you cannot then back down to a more moderate assessment. You are now obligated (noble cause) to righteously engage a “war against evil” in order to save the world, to save democracy. You have positioned yourself as similar to the righteous Allies fighting the just war against the Nazis.

And you wonder why more and more people are terming this hysteria over Trump and conservatives as part of the larger “lunacy, insanity, craziness… madness of crowds” of our era.

Trump as dangerous? Tyrannical? Why then did that not happen during his first term? Two things are critical that someone wanting to exercise tyranny will do-

(1) They will take away people’s money to spend it for them via increased state programs and control, as Trudeau does here in Canada…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClIhdP0pcLc

And (2) they will expand rules and regulations to meddle in and control the lives of citizens, just as Trudeau’s Liberals are trying to do with their “Online Harms Act” that will tell people just what they can read and hear and what they can say- meaning that nothing will be permitted that the Trudeau Woke Progressives don’t like. They will even “Pre-cog” criminalize and arrest/imprison people they suspect might commit hate speech or crimes (i.e. “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise).

Trump undid the tyrannist’s tool of control by excess rules, laws, and regulations at elimination scales never before seen. And he cut taxes for all, again at strikingly significant levels. Where is the tyranny in that? And he did not go to war to spread “American tyranny” in other areas of the globe.

He did the very opposite of someone wanting to exercise tyranny. And that is what promoting real freedom is about.

And in a great exhibition of cognitive dissonant distortion these screaming Wokesters are the ones who are censoring opponents. Surveys show that a majority of Democrats want to ban opponents from ballots. And these “highly illiberal” Democrats of today have been exposed for using the intelligence agencies to censor the speech of those they disagreed with (i.e. the “Twitter files”). So who really is your dangerous threat to democracy today? Who is really guilty of tyranny? They illustrate the psychopathology of projection daily.

Revised reposting…

Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives, Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives: Rethinking 18 of the most fundamental bad ideas from across human history, and presenting 18 alternative ideas to transform narratives, human consciousness/subconscious, and liberate the human spirit as never before in history, Wendell Krossa

“Worst” because of the deforming influence of bad ideas on human thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior, as in inciting and validating the base impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of “enemies” or differing others.

1. Old story theme: The myth of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality that metes out final justice- i.e. rewarding the good, punishing the bad (i.e. threat theology affirming retributive justice). The myth of a “wrathful violent God” continues as the cohering center of the world religions and is now also given expression in “secular” versions such as “vengeful Gaia, angry planet, pissed Mother Earth, retributive Universe, and payback karma”- the new retaliatory, destroying gods of environmental alarmism, history’s latest apocalyptic movement. (Note: Western religious traditions have always affirmed violence in deities. Eastern traditions have similarly affirmed violence in deity as in “Lord Shiva the Destroyer”.)

The myth of God as a retaliating, punishing reality has long under-girded human justice systems as retaliatory and punitive. From early human beginnings, belief in a punitive deity has incited and affirmed the demand for punitive response to human imperfection and failure.

The primitive view of deity as punitive, i.e. God as the Ultimate Destroyer (via apocalypse, hell), is the single most important “bad idea” to engage and correct. All other bad religious ideas are anchored to this foundational pathology in human thought, because deity has long functioned as the cohering center of human narratives, and continues to do so today, even in “secularized, materialist” versions of theology/ultimate realities.

New story alternative: The “stunning new theology” that God (Ultimate Consciousness, Mind, Intelligence, Self/Personhood, Source, Mystery) is an inexpressible “no conditions love”, a non-retaliatory Reality. The adjective “unconditional” points to our highest understanding of love. It is simply the best of being human and is therefore most critical for defining deity as transcendent “Goodness”.

Takeaway? There is no ultimate judgment, no ultimate exclusion of anyone, no demand for payment or sacrifice to appease angry deity, no need for redemption or salvation, and no ultimate punishment or destruction of anyone (no such mind-perverting horror as “hell”).

Why bother with these speculative metaphysical corrections? Concern for human well-being requires us to counter humanity’s “primal fear of after-life harm” that is the personality-deforming outcome of millennia of shaman/priests/pastors beating bad religious ideas into human consciousness/subconscious. Fear of after-life harm adds intolerable sting to the already unbearable fear of death that many people suffer.

Also, we need to sever the age-old relationship of “bad beliefs validating bad behavior”. However you may try to affirm justice as punitive treatment of the failures of others, know that deity as unconditional reality does not validate such endeavors. See “The Christian Contradiction” below (Historical Jesus versus Paul’s Christ myth). http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

None of the great world religions has ever presented the reality of an unconditional deity. All religion across history has been essentially about conditional reality- i.e. the required conditions to appease and please religious deities (i.e. conditions of correct belief, religious rituals required of insiders, demanded sacrifices/payment for wrong, and proper religious lifestyle as the identity marker of a true believer in the true religion, etc.).

Further, the new theology of God as unconditional Love overturns the singularly most psychologically damaging myth that has burdened and enslaved humanity from the beginning- the myth of divine retribution/punishment exhibited through the nastier elements of life. While there are natural and social consequences to living in this world, and to our choices and behavior, there is no punitive Force or Spirit behind natural world events and consequent suffering (i.e. no punitive God behind natural disasters, disease, accidents, or the predatory cruelty of others). The myth of punitive deity behind such things, whether angry God, vengeful Gaia, angry Planet, pissed Mother Earth, retributive Universe, or payback karma, has long burdened people with unnecessary guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety. Like the distressed Japanese woman who asked after the 2011 tsunami, “Are we being punished for enjoying life too much?”

Paul used this primitive threat theology on the Corinthians, claiming that their sicknesses and deaths were punishment from God for their sins, illustrating with an Old Testament claim that God punished the sinning Hebrews with snake bites.

(Note the qualifiers in sections below on holding people accountable for their behavior, the need to restrain bad behavior, responsible human maturing and growth in acknowledging failures, and restorative justice approaches. All necessary for healthy human development, in this world.)

2. Old story theme: The myth of a “perfect beginning” and that God is obsessed with perfection in the world and life, that God creates perfection (e.g. Eden, original paradise world, previous golden age Earth), that God is enraged at the subsequent loss of perfection, and now threatens to punish imperfection. This idea of deity obsessed with perfection originated with the misunderstanding that any good and all-powerful deity would only create a perfect world, and if things are not perfect now then blame corrupt humanity for mucking things up that were once perfect. It can’t be God’s fault.

We- humanity- have always had difficulty understanding and embracing imperfection in life and in ourselves. Imperfection, and fear of divine rage at imperfection, has long deformed human consciousness with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression, and fatalism/nihilism. We rightly struggle to improve ourselves and others, and to improve life in general, but we ought to do so without the added psychic burden of fear of angry deity or divine threat over our remaining imperfection. (Balancing note: There are healthy forms of guilt over personal failure and the damaging outcomes of bad religious ideas.)

New story alternative: Life began in the “chaotic imperfection” of a brutal early earth, but has gradually evolved toward something more complex and organized. Life on this planet is never perfect, but with a lot of hard work, humanity has discovered how to gradually improve life. Over history, humanity has created something better out of the original imperfect, wilderness world.

In this new story theme, God has no problem with imperfection but intentionally includes it in the original creation. Imperfection, in a new story, serves the important purpose of providing an arena where humanity struggles with a messy wilderness situation, with human imperfection/failure, in order to learn to solve problems and create something better.

And we learn the most important lessons of life in our struggle with our own imperfection. For example, we learn how to love in our struggle with the animal inheritance in ourselves, those base drives to tribally exclude, to dominate, to punish and destroy differing others. We learn what it means to be authentically humane in our “righteous struggle against evil” (Joseph Campbell), the battle against evil that runs through the center of every human heart (Alexander Solzhenitsyn).

Add here the philosophical points that we cannot know good aside from the contrast with its opposite- evil. And there can be no genuine moral good aside from the free choice against its opposite- evil.

Further, perfection, aside from being boring, does not bring forth the best of the human spirit. To the contrary, struggle with imperfection in life, and in others, brings forth the best in humanity. See Julian Simon’s argument (Ultimate Resource) that our struggle with problems in the world results in creative solutions that benefit others. See also the comment below on Joseph Campbell’s outline of human story (link) and our struggle with a personal monster or enemy (i.e. some life problem that may be physical, mental/emotional, interpersonal, financial, social, etc.). That struggle is where we gain insights and learn lessons that can subsequently help others. Personal suffering also promotes the development of empathy with others that similarly suffer. Empathy is fundamental to being authentically human.

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

(Note: The use of the term “imperfection” is not meant to generalize and diminish the horror and trauma that people suffer from natural disaster, disease, and the cruelty of others. But ‘old story’ explanations of the imperfection of the world as a fall from original perfection due to human corruption/sin, and subsequent imperfection introduced as punishment for that original sin… such myths tend to affirm deity as cruel, punitive, and destructive- i.e. God as the great obsessive-compulsive Punisher of imperfection. That only adds unnecessary psychic suffering to already unbearable human suffering- i.e. the added burden of unnecessary mental, emotional suffering. We can do better and understand original imperfection in alternative ways. And this is the impulse to “theodicy”, as roughly the belief there is Ultimate Good/Love behind all. Add here the view that the world purposefully exists as an experience or learning arena.)

3. Old story theme (related to previous): The myth that humanity began as a more perfect species but then became corrupted/sinful (the “fall of man” myth). The idea of original human perfection, and subsequent human degeneration toward something worse today, is still common in the “noble savage” mythology that dominates throughout academia- i.e. the myth that original hunter/gatherer people were more pure, strong, noble, and more “connected to nature” but humanity has degenerated in civilization. See, for instance, Arthur Herman’s ‘The Idea of Decline’, or Steven LeBlanc’s ‘Constant Battles’.

Contemporary versions of “fallen humanity” mythology include Green religion’s belief that humanity is a “virus” or “cancer” on the Earth. These are pathologically anti-human views.

New story alternative: Humanity has emerged from the brutality of animal reality (original imperfection) but has gradually become less violent, more humane, and overall more civilized. See James Payne’s “History of Force”, and Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”. Also, the amassed evidence on humanity improving life over the long-term affirms that “we are more creators than destroyers” (Julian Simon in “Ultimate Resource”).

A new alternative to “fallen humanity” myths will recognize that humanity, with human spirit and human consciousness, is intimately united with the greater Consciousness at the core of reality, a Consciousness that is Love. This “union with deity” is more than relationship. It is more about essential nature. This means that the same Love that is God, is also the essential nature of our human spirit or human self. We can then re-imagine ourselves as most essentially “beings of Love”. We are fundamentally good. This radically changes human self-imaging. We are not the “fallen humans possessing sinful natures” as we have long been taught by mythological and religious traditions.

The real issue is not “how far humanity has fallen” (the mythical perspective) but the real wonder is how far we have risen (the evidence-based perspective) from our brutal animal and primitive human past. Our improvement over history is evidence of the essential goodness of humanity naturally emerging over time.

(Note: How to explain continuing bad human behavior? We have inherited a core animal brain with its base impulses to tribalism and exclusion of differing others (small band mentality), to domination of others (alpha male/female), and to retaliatory and destructive response to others viewed as “enemies”. Our human consciousness/spirit, existing alongside our inherited animal side, explains the great “battle between good and evil that takes place in every human heart”, (Alexander Solzhenitsyn). The bad side in humanity is not “inherited sin” but is better understood in terms of the complex of inherited animal impulses in us. See, for example, Lyall Watson’s “Dark Nature”. Fortunately, to paraphrase Jeffrey Schwartz, “We are not our brains”.)

4. Old story theme: The myth that consequent to the loss of original paradise (“Fall of man” myth) the overall trajectory of life has subsequently been “declining”, or degenerating, toward something worse (“Each present moment is a degeneration from previous moments”, Mircea Eliade).

The trajectory of life as a “decline toward something worse” is a core feature of apocalyptic mythology.

New story alternative: Life does not decline overall but the long-term trajectory of life shows that life actually “improves/rises” toward something ever better. Humanity, as essentially good and creative, is now responsible for the ongoing improvement of life and the world. Note again Julian Simon’s conclusion that we- humanity- have become “more creators than destroyers”.

Evidence of life improving over past millennia and strikingly so over recent centuries: Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment on the Earth”, Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”, Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”, Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”, Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”, Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”, Bailey and Tupy’s “Ten Global Trends”, Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness”, James Payne’s ”History of Force”, Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, “Humanprogress.org”, and others.

Brian Green’s “The Universe Story” and Harold Morowitz’s “The Emergence of Everything” offer more on the longer “improving” trend of the overall cosmos, that emerged and developed from chaotic heat beginnings to a state that was amenable for carbon-based life to emerge. And over the long history of this planet, life has developed toward more complexity, organization, and suitability to mediate human consciousness through complex multi-cellular biological forms. Further, even Darwin affirmed that evolution trended toward something more “perfect”.

This theme of long-term improvement, of a fundamental purposeful direction toward something better, is critical for countering apocalyptic nihilism/despair and affirming hopefulness as critical to human motivation to work hard to gradually improve life.

5. Old story theme: The myth that natural disasters, disease, human cruelty, accidents, and death are expressions of divine punishment. This adds the unnecessary psychic burden of fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame to already unbearable physical suffering. Paul tormented the Corinthians with this argument that their sicknesses and deaths were punishment from God for their sins.

New story alternative: While there are natural and social consequences all through life, there is no punitive, destroying deity behind the imperfections of life. Ultimately there is only Love at the core of reality (see alternatives below on the relationship of Love to the elements of freedom and randomness in nature and human life as helpful in understanding the presence of evil in this world).

6. Old story theme: The myth that humanity has been rejected by the Creator, that we are separated from our Source, and we need to be reconciled, we need to restore the broken relationship with God, by means of a violent blood sacrifice as punishment for sin.

New story alternative: No one has ever been separated from the unconditional Love at the core of reality- God. That Love has incarnated in all humanity as inseparable from the human spirit and consciousness. That Love is also the essence of the human self or person, though its expression is often hindered and buried by the free choice of people to act inhumanely.

But be assured that no one has ever been separated from the indwelling love that is God, no matter their failure to live as human. God as love is always closer than our breath or atoms. God as love is inseparable from our common human spirit and consciousness.

Note: God incarnated in all humanity demands a radical rethink of theology or God theory. There has never been any such reality as a separated ‘Sky God’ up in some distant heaven. God has always been intensely and immediately present in all humanity and this is evident in the best of humanity, in all human goodness. Conclusion? The reality that we call “God” is present in all human raging against evil and suffering. God is present in all human effort to make life better. There has never been any such thing as an absent or silent God. Just listen to and observe the common goodness in people all around you.

Again, as stated similarly in number 3 above, this new alternative overturns entirely the historically persistent anti-human myths of “fallen”, “essentially sinful”, or “bad-to-the-bone” humanity.

Further, the idea of God incarnated equally in every person presents a new metaphysical element for affirming equality among people, and equal respect for all. God incarnated in humanity offers a stunning new element to defining the essential core of being human- what we really are as human persons and that every human person ought to be highly esteemed as an embodiment of deity, no matter their failures to live as fully human. The Near-Death Experiences also repeatedly note this feature of the astounding human unity with deity- of inseparable oneness with the divine and of essential human goodness (light emanating from the core of people).

7. Old story theme: The myth of a cosmic dualism, a Good spirit existing in opposition to a bad spirit, a demonic entity or Satan. Deity is thereby portrayed as embodying an essentially dualistic tribal reality- a good God that wars against evil opponents, a God that favors/saves believers and hates/punishes unbelievers. This ultimate ideal and validation by a fundamental cosmic dualism is embraced and exhibited through varied human dualisms- i.e. as in the tribal mindset of “us versus our enemies”, true believers versus unbelievers, or other racial, national, religious, or ideological divisions (include the appeal to gender as an oppositional divide). Dualism thinking deforms human identity and buries the fact of our essential oneness in the human family.

Dualism mythology affirms the inherited animal impulse that orients people to small-band thinking and behavior (the tribal exclusion of differing others). Embracing dualism as a divine reality and ideal then orients people to excluding, opposing, dominating, and fighting/destroying others as ‘enemies’.

New story alternative: We all come from the same Oneness and we are all equals in the one human family. We are not essentially defined by the tribal categories and divisions that we create to set ourselves apart from one another, to devalue one another. We are most essentially defined by our common human spirit and human consciousness. And the essential nature of our human spirit is universal or unconditional love. That love is the expression of our true core humanity.

We base our oneness on the pretty much consensus view that all humans on earth today are descendants of an East African Eve (“Mitochondrial Eve”). Meaning we are one family descended from a common mother. Add here the quantum discovery of a fundamental oneness (“Quantum entanglement”). And the common discovery of the Near-Death Experience movement of human oneness with deity.

Added note: Most modern story-telling (e.g. movies) continues to re-enforce the primitive themes of dualism and tribalism. Note the all-too-common movie theme of good guy versus bad guy, and “justice” as the good guy beating and destroying the bad guy. There is nothing in such narratives affirming the oneness of the human family. To the contrary, only further affirmation of infantile tribalism and “justice” as punitive, violent retaliation toward offending others. The critical dualism that we ought to be concerned about is that of “the battle-line between good and evil that runs through the heart of every person”, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This is the dualism that exists between our true human spirit or self and our inherited animal brain impulses.

Caution: The above comment on essential oneness is not intended to diminish the urgency to fight evil and affirm good in this world. However, some have suggested that dualism, and the apparent separation related to dualism- i.e. the division between good and bad- is only a temporal feature of this material realm. This world with its dualism provides an arena for us to live out our stories and engage our varied “righteous battles against evil”. Others have argued that we only experience and learn what good means in our struggle with the opposites of good- i.e. the bad in others, and in life. Bad/evil in this realm provides a contrasting context in which we experience and learn good. Joseph Campbell suggests that this dualistic realm is where “we act out our differing roles on God’s stage” (some playing bad guy, some playing good guy). He and others suggest that the dualism between good and bad exists only here in this world. It is temporal and not part of any greater timeless reality. See also Natalie Sudman’s ‘The Application of Impossible Things’ for personal illustration of these things.

Further note on oneness: The oneness of all, along with the unconditional nature of deity, counters the myth of some people as especially chosen of God and favored by God more than others. There are no “elect people”, or special “children of God”. The people who see themselves as “true believers”, more so than others, are not closer to God than any other people. Essential oneness means that all humanity, that is every person, has God within them, equally. All people have equal access to the immediacy of God that is everywhere present as the sustaining Core or Source of all reality. Further, there are no special “holy places”- i.e. temples, churches- where limited religious groups gain more access to God than the ordinary lives and daily mundane spaces of all people. Essential oneness of all with deity is a more humane theological basis for human equality in all aspects.

8. Old story theme: The myth of a looming apocalypse as the final judgment, punishment, and destruction of all things. The myth of an apocalyptic ending embraces the pathological theology of God as the destroyer of all things. This divine ideal has incited endless destructive violence among the followers of such an ideal. Arthur Mendel called apocalyptic “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (Vision and Violence).

To embrace and advocate apocalyptic mythology is to embrace and advocate the epitome expression of nihilism- i.e. the complete and final destruction of life and the world.

Apocalyptic mythology still dominates much of modern story-telling, whether movies, TV, literature (the sub-genre of “post-apocalyptic”), and environmental alarmism or Green religion.

New story alternative: There are problems all through this imperfect world but there is no looming threat of a final destruction and ending of the world (the religious understanding of apocalypse since Zoroaster). The apocalyptic alarmist exaggerates problems in the world out to “end of days” scenarios, thereby distorting the true state of things, and that incites fear (the survival impulse), resignation/fatalism, nihilism, and even destructive violence in populations. The inciting of violence is evident in the consequent felt need of people to “coercively purge” what is believed to be some great threat to life, what blocks the onset of the new paradise. See the notes in other sections on the Marxist, Nazi, and Green apocalyptic movements and their mass-harm and even mass-death outcomes.

In the new story alternative theme there is no destroying Force or Spirit behind the harsher elements of this world. Ultimately, there is only creating and sustaining Love. And again, the imperfection of this world serves the purpose of providing a learning arena for humanity to struggle with in order to create something ever better.

Further, the destructive elements in the cosmos and world exist as part of the ongoing creative process (i.e. death as entirely natural and serving the purpose of making room for new life), just as Second Law dissipation of energy is “virtuous waste” that serves the creation of more order (e.g. Huber and Mills in “Bottomless Well”). Again, the element of destruction in the natural world is not evidence of some punitive deity threatening a final punishment and ending of all things. (See also the notes below on “natural consequences”.)

Further helpful here- In response to the theodicy question “Is this the best possible world?” some have made the argument that there are also beneficial outcomes from the elements of nature that produce destructive outcomes. For example, the plate tectonic movement that generates destructive earthquakes also generates mountain-building, which creates differences in climate and that contributes to the development of diversity in emerging life (i.e. different environmental pressures on populations and the changes that brings forth). Our project is to adapt to such things as the destruction from plate tectonics, and we have done better over time. Our success is evident across history in the decreasing loss of life from natural disasters (i.e. a stunning 99% decline in human deaths from natural disasters over the past century).

9. Old story theme: The urgency of “imminence”. The mythology of imminent apocalypse incites people to embrace the totalitarian push for “instantaneous transformation”, a transformation of life that must be accomplished with coercion and violence. That is an abandonment of the approach that works through cooperative democracy and results in “gradualism” in the trajectory of history and life.

The always “imminent” element in apocalyptic proclamations (i.e. the “end is nigh”) demands urgent action to “save” something, to save the world or life. The exaggerated threat of immediately looming apocalyptic ending then incites the survival/salvation impulse in people. They feel intensely the need to take immediate and sometimes violent action to purge what is presented to them as the life-threatening thing. Alarmed populations are then more easily manipulated to embrace policies that will abandon the democratic process and will instead support “coercive purification” schemes directed at purported threats from opponents/enemies. “End-of-life” or “end-of-world” claims incite populations to embrace policies that will coercively and instantaneously install their version of salvation and security in some promised paradise.

Apocalyptic alarmism that exaggerates and distorts the true state of things has repeatedly unleashed the totalitarian impulse across history.

We saw the violence of instantaneous transformation movements in the 100 million deaths that stemmed from Marxist urgency to coercively purge the world of the purported threat from “destructive capitalism”. Marxism advocated for “coercive transformation of societies”, to immediately install its vision of communal utopia. We also saw apocalyptic urgency and totalitarianism in the 50-60 million deaths from Nazi alarmism and consequent action to violently purge Germany of the imagined threat from “destructive Jewish Bolshevism”. Nazis then coercively pushed to establish the millennial paradise of the Third Reich. And we are seeing “coercive purification” again today in the environmental alarmist push to save the world from “destructive humanity in industrial civilization” and to restore the lost paradise of a more wilderness world (Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”, and Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline”).

New story alternative: There is no “end of days” just over the horizon. Rather, life is improving gradually as creative humanity solves problems. The escapist desire for an coercive and immediately installed utopia misses the point of the human story as the struggle with imperfection throughout the world, a struggle that is gradually succeeding. Such struggle is essential to human development, learning, and growth. Mendel in “Vision and Violence” is good on this issue of “gradualism” versus the violence of “instantaneous transformation” movements. Humanity is learning to patiently improve life through democratic approaches that do not coercively overwhelm the freedom of differing others.

The search for instantaneous salvation resonates with the irresponsible escapist mindset of apocalyptic types who cannot endure the struggle to gradually and democratically improve an imperfect world. Such people irresponsibly seek to escape the boredom of gradual improvement of life through projects that promise instant transformation into some quickly installed utopia, even if coercively and violently established. Imminence, and its related policy of instantaneous coercive purification, responds to the totalitarian’s impatience and lust to control others and all of life, right now.

10. Old story theme: The demand for a salvation plan- a required sacrifice or atonement (debt payment, punishment) as necessary to appease a threatening reality, whether a religious God or vengeful Gaia, angry planet, upset Mother Earth, punitive Universe, or payback karma.

New story alternative: In a stunning rejection of atonement mythology, Jesus rejected the payment of debt or punishment of wrong as the prerequisite demand of God before God would forgive. Jesus stated that the highest form of love, or goodness, would give freely to everyone, love freely, without expecting any payment in return. He stated in Luke 6:30-36:

“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) 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 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.)

Jesus’ argument was that loving in this manner- i.e. exhibiting ‘no conditions love’ (not expecting payment) would enable people to be like God who was similarly no conditions love. The argument of Luke 6 is that if we do this- if we give without expecting payment in return- then we will be like God who similarly does not expect payment (again, the “behavior based on the same theological belief” shapes the context of Jesus’ arguments).

The God of Jesus loves, gives, and does not expect anything in return. This statement of Jesus overthrows the age-old religious belief that God demands payment or punishment for wrongs, that God demands atonement or sacrifice in order for God to forgive and love. Read it again and again till the point that Jesus makes is clear. It is a time-bomb waiting to explode the shackles of distorting atonement mythology that has long enslaved human consciousness.

The fundamental nature of God as unconditional love means absolutely no conditions. None. To affirm as pointedly as possible- there is no divine demand for ultimate payment, sacrifice, no conditions to fulfil in order to be forgiven, accepted, “saved”, loved by God. With ultimate safety secured, the only “salvation” that we need to engage in this life is the ongoing and gradual struggle to make life better in this world.

The reality of God as “no conditions Love” obligates us to make all the other logical conclusions that arise from such a stunning new theology. Again, the critically important one is that an authentically unconditional God will not demand any conditions of payment or sacrifice before forgiving, accepting fully, and generously loving. God does not demand a balancing response to goodness or love that has been initially shown. God just loves freely without any expectation of similar response. Jesus clearly argued this in his Matthew 5 and Luke 6 statements where he taught that an authentic universal love will not just love those who love in return (i.e. family, friends, or fellow tribe members).

Unconditional love will also love those who do not love in return. Unconditional love will freely give to all and not demand any return payment. Payment of debt is not required to earn forgiveness and love.

This argument is overturning the age-old mythology of necessary cosmic rebalancing of justice. That for truth, right, and justice to exist and flourish there must be a punishment of all wrong. There can be no such thing as unconditionally free forgiveness and love. Wrong has to be punished somewhere, if not in this life, then in the next at some great final judgment and day of reckoning. Justice fully rebalanced in somewhere in the cosmos.

But in these Matthew 5 and Luke 6 passages Jesus is arguing the opposite- that unconditional love does good to everyone without expecting a similar response, without expecting similar payback as in equal love returned for love shown. Get the point that this overturns the historical principle that atoning sacrifice is required to appease offended, holy deities who are responsible for upholding justice in life.

The rejection of the principle of rebalancing justice is how Jesus further defined a God that “loved enemies” and freely showered sun and rain on good and bad alike.

In the above statements, Jesus rejected outright the principle of debt payment as a fundamental requirement for divine love. Again, the overturning of the principle of “rebalanced cosmic justice” is clearly expressed in the statement to “give/love expecting nothing in return”. Keep in mind the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that structures these passages (Matt.5 and Luke 6). Jesus urged people to love in a new unconditional manner because that was how God loved. He was arguing for a new standard of unconditional love among people that would show what God was like, that would enable people to do just what God did, to be just like God (i.e. “Love your enemy unconditionally because God does” summarizes the entirety of these passages).

Debt payment, or more generally the righting of wrongs, has always been the fundamental human understanding of justice- i.e. payment/punishment of some kind as the foundational requirement for forgiveness. Payment or punishment of wrong had been the basis of atonement thinking from the beginning. That was based on the archaic belief that God, as holy, must punish all wrongs properly and fully, and must rectify all wrongs by demanding payment or retribution of some sort. God must right all wrong, and thereby rebalance the scales of justice in the cosmos. Wrong done had to be rebalanced by right done. God could not just forgive, accept, and love without somewhere, somehow making all wrongs right. That was necessary to restore divine honor. The God of that old atonement/sacrifice mythology could not just “freely” forgive and love.

To modern sensibilities that old theology no longer makes sense because it argued that the love of God, based on prerequisite payment/punishment/atonement, was something less than the best of human love. We are expected to just forgive in an unlimited manner (“seventy times seven”), to accept all people universally, and to love without demanding prerequisite conditions or similar response. Again, that statement- “give without expecting payment in return, love without expecting love in return”. Parents, spouses, and friends have all learned that no conditions love for imperfect, failing others is the best and highest form of love for daily relationships. Surely God as Ultimate Goodness and Love would, at the least, love as well as we are expected to love- that is, unconditionally.

In his parables, Jesus further challenged and corrected the traditional religious belief that divine love was conditional and demanded full payment or punishment. His short stories illustrated the ‘no conditions’ love that defined his new theology. In his stories he stressed the point that divine love did not require the payment of debt, or more generally the righting of wrongs, before forgiving, accepting, and loving an offender. Note this element in his Prodigal Son story where the father does not demand a sacrifice, restitution, or repayment before forgiving and fully accepting/loving the wayward son. All such conditions were brushed aside by the father. No conditions love meant no conditions at all. This teaching is a stunning rejection of the long history of sacrifice/payment as required to appease demanding deity that is responsible to uphold justice in the cosmos.

I reject, as Jesus did, the old theology that God as ultimate Goodness and Love is held to a lesser standard of love than we are held to. I reject the belief that God remembers all wrongs and can demand conditions before forgiving, while we are told that authentic love, for us, means “keeping no record of wrongs” for some future making-of-things-right. Our love is to be without condition because that is actually how God loves. And it is the unconditional nature of forgiveness and love that constitute the greatness and glory of these principles, not the conditions of religious holiness or honor mythology with its prerequisite demands that offenders make things right somehow as part of the forgiveness, acceptance, and love package.

And then unfortunately, Paul refused the new theology of Jesus and retreated back to the traditional conditional theology of a punitive God that demanded full payment for sin as a basic requirement for offering forgiveness anyone. We inherited Paul’s version of Christianity with its orientation to punitive and conditional justice. Note the clear New Testament statements that requisite payment is essential to the Christian gospel. The book of Hebrews (chapter 9), for example, states that “without the shedding of blood (sacrifice) there is no forgiveness”. The book of Romans (chapters 3-5) states that salvation (“saved from wrath”) is based the condition of a blood payment/sacrifice that has been fulfilled.

And of course, in this life people should learn to be responsible for their behavior, to make amends for wrongs done, and to pay their debts. That is all part of normal human development and growth. This is never in question, but it has no part in the new unconditional theology of Jesus. It has no place in authentic divine love. Our love, just like God’s love, is not to be conditional on anything done, or not done, by others.

Note: The theology of Jesus is not a prescriptive model for economic/commercial relationships in this world. Jesus was speaking to ultimate realities and the atonement mythology of his era. Further, my reference to “Historical Jesus” is not an appeal to him as some special religious authority on these issues. I refer to him simply because he continues to be revered as a notable religious icon. The unconditional love being argued here is a “self-validating” reality. It is good in and of itself.

And I would emphasize the larger religious context to these themes- for example, the profound contradiction that exists between the core message of Historical Jesus in the “Q Wisdom Sayings gospel”, and Paul’s Christ myth (the oxymoronic Christian “Jesus Christ”). These two contrary gospels illustrate the profound contradiction between the themes of unconditional and conditional, non-retaliation and retaliation, non-punitive/non-destructive and punitive/destructive, among other contrasting features. See “The Christian Contradiction” in sections below.

Bob Brinsmead has posted some excellent research on the anti-sacrifice message and ministry of Historical Jesus…

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

11. Old story theme (related to the above point): The belief that retribution or payback is true justice (i.e. eye for eye), based on the myth that God is a retributive reality that demands the reward of the good and the punishment of the bad. The myth that a retributive God demands full punishment of sin. This hurt for hurt theology, or pain returned for pain caused, still under-girds much thinking on justice today. It is often framed as the practical need to present the punishment of offenders as a warning to others, to serve as a deterrence example for the general public. Psychology now recognizes that such punitive approaches do not work with criminal offenders or children. Punitive response to human imperfection and failure “does not teach alternative humane behaviors”. Instead, punitive justice re-enforces retaliatory cycles.

New story alternative: Again, unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs, it does not obsess over imperfection, and it forgives all freely and without limit (“seventy times seven” which is to say- unlimited). But yes, there are natural and social consequences to bad behavior in this world. All of us are to be accountable and responsible for our choices and actions. This is essential to human development in this life. But all justice in response to human failure should be restorative or rehabilitative.

As Leo Tolstoy wrote regarding the criminal justice system, “The whole trouble is that people think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love, but no such circumstances ever exist. Human beings cannot be handled without love. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life.”

Added note: Yes, there is value in remembering past bad behavior, and the outcomes of such behavior, as a warning to others. The Holocaust is a signature example of this value. But we remember the bad behavior of others in a larger context of consciously forgiving, with an orientation to restorative justice that is victim-centered (i.e. fully deals with restitution issues). Simon Wiesenthal’s “Justice, Not Vengeance” illustrates the struggle for balance regarding these concerns.

12. Old story theme: The myth of future or “after-life” judgment, tribal exclusion, punishment, and destruction (Hell). The fear of after-life harm is the “primal human fear” (Michael Grosso). Myths of after-life harm have added a magnitude-of-order intensification of fear to the already burdensome fear of death that many people suffer under.

(Insert: Why bother with speculation about such unknowable realities as after-life reality? Why not just dismiss or ignore these unprovable metaphysical issues? Well, because the speculation has already been done by major belief systems and religions across history and across all the cultures of the world. Psycho-pathology- i.e. bad mythology such as the horrific myth of hell- already exists in human consciousness and ignoring it does nothing to solve the problems that the pathology contributes to- i.e. unnecessary fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, despair, etc. While after-life theorizing may be considered speculative, we can at least offer more humane alternatives with healthier insights that eliminate unnecessary worry regarding death, while at the same time focusing human orientation toward full involvement with here-and-now reality.)

New story alternative: Again, keep in mind the baseline ideal- that authentic love is unconditional and does not demand the fulfilment of conditions. Meaning- Unconditional love does not threaten ultimate exclusion or punishment. It embraces everyone with the same scandalous mercy and unlimited generosity. It gives sun and rain to all, to both good and bad. All- both good and evil- are ultimately safe and included in the love of an unconditional God. Such love scandalizes, offends, and even outrages minds that are oriented to ultimate (or after-life) conditional payback justice, or “deserved” punishment.

Illustration: Note again the stories that Jesus told of good, moral people who were offended by the unconditional generosity and love that was shown by, for example, the vineyard owner (Matthew 20: 8-15) and the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32). The all-day vineyard workers and the older brother in the prodigal story were pissed because, in their view, such unconditional mercy and generosity was not “fair or moral”. It was not proper justice, in their eyes. Other “righteous” people were also offended and scandalized by Jesus when he invited local outcasts and scoundrels to meals with them. He did not respect the proper tribal boundaries between good and bad people, between true believers and unbelievers. He was too scandalously universal and unconditional and that enraged good, moral people.

Jesus’ illustrating stories affirm the conclusion that God is unconditional love and hence there will be no after-life harm. We all die as a transition and return back into the stunning “no conditions Love” that is our origin and final home. We are all safe in that Love (i.e. again, sun and rain are indiscriminately and generously given to all alike, to both good and bad people). We are never separated from that Love, no matter what we experience or suffer in this life.

Insert: It may help some to maintain the important distinction between Ultimate Reality and life in this imperfect world. We can recognize the ultimate reality of God as absolutely no conditions Love but at the same time not deny the reality of natural and social consequences in this life. The need to take personal responsibility for behavior is critical to human learning and development. Love here and now is responsible to restrain violence and to protect the innocent, even with force. But our embrace of the ideal of ultimate unconditional love will orient our treatment of human failure and offense away from punitive approaches and toward restorative approaches. An unconditional attitude will recognize that, no matter how unconditional reality offends and scandalizes common views of required payback justice, all of us return safely to the same no conditions Love that birthed us and is our final home. We are all one family, and return safely to that Oneness, despite our diverse failures to live as fully human in this world.

Add here the insight that self-judgment and self-punishment are the most devastating experiences that human persons can embrace and endure (Note: We recognize exceptions to this such as psychopathy which may also result from genetic deformity, as well as early life trauma). Most people recognize their failures to live as human and take corrective steps to improve themselves, including apologies and restitution to offended others, and do not need further threat of ultimate judgment and punishment from some greater reality.

13. Old story theme: The myth of a hero messiah that will, in a totalitarian manner, use superior force (“coercive purification”) to overthrow enemies, to purge the world of evil, and to bring in a promised utopia/salvation. This myth contributes to the incitement and validation to abandon the historical process of gradual improvement (via creative human freedom and endeavor) and to opt for coercive totalitarian approaches. Hero messiah mythology affirms the demand for overwhelming revolutionary violence that seeks to instantly purge some “corrupt” entity that is viewed as the threat to others or to life, and then instantaneously re-install some lost paradise.

This insert of quotes by Zenon Lotufo and Harold Ellens on how images of deity influence human behavior, again an affirmation of the potency of the “behavior based on similar belief” principle that has governed human life and societies since the beginning:

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation)….

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been…. ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

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

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence…”.

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

We saw the resort to “violent force against an enemy”, backed by appeal to an all-powerful warrior deity, recently with ISIS in Syria (i.e. the struggle to bring on the final annihilation/Armageddon battle and then in the name of God coercively spread the caliphate across the world- 2014 in Syria). We have also seen the same violence in the name of a crusading hero God throughout Jewish history (Old Testament) and Christian history (Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution of heretics, all appealed to forceful, violent deity for affirmation). Richard Landes (Heaven On Earth) presents evidence that the same religious ideas have also shaped the totalitarian violence in the so-called “secular” movements of Marxism, Nazism, and environmentalism.

Again, the ideals that we embrace, notably those projected onto deity, will potently shape our thinking, influence our feelings, and our responses/behavior. We become just like the God that we believe in. Bad myths like coercive, destroying deity have repeatedly incited people to violent, destructive action, to act as the agents of their violent, destructive God to destroy some enemy and save something that was believed to be under dire and imminent threat from that enemy. Far too often across history the belief in the divine use of violent force has been misappropriated to validate similar brutality and cruelty toward fellow human beings.

The myth of an intervening, over-powering deity is hard to dislodge from people’s minds. Even notable atheists fall back on this idea, as Larry King said to Norm MacDonald years ago, “I can no longer believe in God because of the horrible things that happen to innocent children and God is omnipotent, isn’t he?”. Meaning that King believed that God should have intervened with power to prevent such things.

New story alternative (see also “16th bad idea” below): A God of authentic love does not intervene with overwhelming force that overrides human freedom and choice. Further, a non-intervening deity helps to understand the gradualism necessary for improving life. It is entirely up to humanity to make the world a better place, in all ways, and to do so while respecting the freedom of others to differ.

This is to say that there is no hero messiah, no tribal deity that will intervene with superior force to conquer some enemy of ours and grant us our vision of a paradise with our enemies excluded as per the vision of Revelation where unbelievers are violently cast out to suffer eternal rejection and punishment.

Note: This point on non-intervention in the freedom of differing others, recognizes the valid need at times for police/military to use legal force to restrain irrational violence. The legitimate use of force is to be distinguished from illegitimate uses of force based on inhumane mythology, notably the use of force by religious extremists. Examples include ISIS and the sorry history of Christian violence against fellow Christians that disagreed over theological issues, often very minor disagreements.

Add here the point that freedom is inseparable from authentic love. Where there is no freedom there is no love. Authentic love will not interfere and override the freedom of others. Hence, the wisdom encapsulated in the Classic Liberal/Libertarian maxim- “Live and let live”.

14. Old story theme: The fallacy of Biblicism, the myth that religious holy books are more special and authoritative than ordinary human literature, and that people are obligated to live according to the holy book as the will, law, or word of God. This myth argues that people must submit to divine conditions, or some heavenly model, as outlined by their holy book.

New story alternative: We evaluate all human thought and writing according to basic criteria of right and wrong, good and bad, or humane and inhumane, as agreed upon in common human rights codes, constitutions, or moral codes. Holy books are not exempted from this process of discernment between good and bad.

Further, our highest authority is our own personal consciousness of right and wrong as tuned by, again, common understanding of such things in widely adopted human rights codes and constitutions that are embraced by the entire human family. For example, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”,

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

15. Old story theme: The myth of God as King, Ruler, Lord, or Judge. The idea that God relates vertically to humanity in domination/submission forms of relating.

New story alternative: There is no domination/subservience relationship of humanity to God. Jesus expressed the divine ideal when he said, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant”. True greatness is to serve the other and not to dominate or control others. The greatness of God is exhibited in serving, not in standing above to rule or dominate.

Further, God is not “above” humanity but has incarnated in all people as equals. God relates horizontally to humanity. God is not a sky God existing in heaven above. God is a street-level deity present in all common humanity and “working” through mundane daily human activity. The God of boring daily details, evident/revealed in the hidden, forgotten acts of human goodness.

This is another stunning correction to traditional God theories.

We see the presence of this street-level God in all daily, mundane human goodness and love expressed toward others, especially toward enemies, which is the highest expression of authentic love or goodness. When we love unconditionally, we tower in stature as maturely human. We become the hero of our story and conquer our real monster and enemy, the animal inheritance that is within each of us. See the story outline of Joseph Campbell in sections below.

This portrayal of God as an egalitarian or equality advocate, and not a superior controlling entity, is more of the stunning new theology of Jesus. Jesus is saying in effect, if you think that I am an incarnation of God, a son of God, then I will tell you just what God is like. God does not dominate people like a lord, king, or ruler. God relates to all as equals, serving others, and not lording over them. That is the true greatness of God, or anyone else- to serve. As an equal.

This comment of Jesus overturns the entire history of human perspective on gods as dominating realities, lords, kings, rulers. One of the earliest and most primitive of all myths was that “humans were created to serve the gods”, to do their will and work, to provide food for them. Jesus overturned that primitive outlook that divine/human relationships were domination/subservience relationships. He said that type of thinking belonged to primitive people (“the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them”). But if you want to be a great human being, heroically great, then you should not dominate or control others. Service to others is the secret to true greatness. To honor the freedom and self-determination of all others as true equals.

16. Old story theme: The idea that humanity is obligated to know, serve, and have some relationship with an invisible reality (deity), to give primary loyalty to something outside of and above people (i.e. the law, will, or word of God). The loyalty to something other than real people has often led to neglect, abuse, and serious harm of people.

New story alternative: Our primary loyalty is to love and serve people around us. Their needs, here and now, take highest priority in life.

(17) A 17th Old Story theme: Absent deity (related to the earlier theme, in the list above, of a hero-messiah who will coercively intervene to save)

One of humanity’s greatest frustrations has been the apparent “the silence of God” across history. The Holocaust is the iconic example of this traumatizing silence of God.

Where was God when natural disasters took hundreds of thousands of lives? Where was God when human cruelty went unhindered during mass-death movements? That apparent absence should put to rest the common religious myth of a miraculously intervening God. The evidence has long been final that there never was any such thing as a supernaturally intervening deity that would, for example, violate natural law or overrule human choice and action, in order to protect or rescue people.

What then should we conclude? God is good but powerless to help humanity? Or the atheists are right that there is no God? No. I would offer that the evidence simply urges us to rethink the great question of how God relates to this world. Theologies like “Panentheism” (not Pantheism) are wrestling with this issue (i.e. God “works” through the natural laws of reality).

And some versions of the Deist’s alternative are not much better than atheism. God is not the absent Creator who starts the whole thing running and then disappears off to some far away heaven to wait and watch as natural law works throughout life.

A new theory or theology is emerging that argues that God has incarnated in all humanity. God did not incarnate only in special ‘holy’ persons like the Christian Jesus. Rather, God has incarnated in all humanity in an inseparable oneness with the common human spirit or human consciousness. The human spirit has gradually emerged and developed toward something more humane across history. This maturing of humanity is evident in the long-term trends to decreasing violence, more democratic societies, and generally improved human well-being (the improvement of all areas of life).

And as Bob Brinsmead notes, the improvement in life has been a long, slow process of gradually developing understanding, growing problem-solving ability, and gradual implementation of practical solutions. It has, for instance, taken millennia for us to understand disease and come up with medical cures. See the gradualism arguments in Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”.

We see the common human spirit, or God spirit, emerging and developing in all human goodness, whether expressed in commerce, art, sports, medicine, agriculture, entertainment, and all areas where people contribute to making life better and just having fun while doing so.

As some have stated, we are the voice, hands, and feet of the invisible God in this world.

Conclusion? God has never been silent or absent. There has never been a ‘Sky God’ up above the world in some heaven, above and outside of humanity, doing things to the world and to people from outside (the “yoyo God”, coming down to intervene in some way and then returning to heaven). To the contrary, God has always been within all things as the Creator and Sustainer of all reality, and especially this God is most prominently within the human family. Meaning that God is evident in all human misery and raging against suffering and evil. God is present in all human action to prevent evil, to solve problems, and to improve life. God has always been present in humanity and expressed in all good and useful human endeavor across history. The corollary to this is that it has always been our responsibility to prevent wrong and to promote good/right in our world. Yes, it is up to us. We must stop looking to the heavens for what is right here and now, in us.

Add this insight to your theology- God is at our very core, present as the human impulse to love, to be something better. God is inseparably united with the love that defines us at our best. God is at the core of the true or authentic human self and is evident in the human impulse to be more humane as expressed in all diverse human goodness.

Conclusion? God has always been closer to us than our own breath or atoms. God has never been absent or silent when people have suffered from natural disaster or human cruelty. Religious mythology has never framed this immanent feature properly. The immanence of deity speaks to the fundamental “oneness” behind all things. Even quantum mechanics points to this foundational oneness feature of reality.

The confusion over purportedly silent deity also has to do with the element of freedom or the inseparable relationship of love and freedom. God, as love, does not coercively overwhelm the independence, self-determination, and freedom of others. Better, God respects human freedom profoundly and influences with gentle, quiet impulses to do the right thing, what we feel is right (i.e. divine “persuasion”, not coercion).

Part of the confusion over how God relates to this world has to do with our inability to grasp that authentic divine Love prizes freedom highly and will not overwhelm or violate it. This is because true moral goodness emerges only from genuine freedom of choice. Such love entails great risk as authentically free people may choose wrongly. The upside is that nothing in life is pre-planned or predestined. We are free to create our own unique stories, to become the heroes of our own life adventures. And there is nothing more heroic than choosing no conditions love, even love of the enemy, as the supreme height of human achievement. Then we tower in stature like a Nelson Mandela.

Note: The above comments relate to one of the options offered in Jewish “Protest Theology” that emerged after the Holocaust (i.e. the idea of God willing/choosing to not intervene in human freedom). Others have suggested that, as spirit, God cannot intervene in material reality, aside from gentle suasion on the human spirit and consciousness.

And of course, balancing the above points, there are still the myriad unexplainable and fascinating “coincidences” scattered through personal human stories that we may either view as just random, or the work of Providence. Interesting that people tend to explain good coincidences as Providence, but not so much the bad ones.

Added discussion group post from Bob Brinsmead: “____, many thanks for sending the link to this great Wikipedia article on Process Theology. I would have to say that I agree with the main thrust of the thesis.

“To say that God could have stopped the Holocaust but refrained from stopping it is very unsatisfactory to me. I agree with the argument of the PROCESS theologians here. If God is committed to love, then God is committed to human freedom. God can use persuasion but not coercion of the human will. Love would not allow God to do something that was inhuman (interfere, coerce, etc.). If you look at history and daily experience, there is no other conclusion that seems to be either logically or ethically possible. It is also hard to see God acting contrary to the laws of nature or the laws of physics.” This is similar to the insights of “panentheism”.

18. One more Old Story Theme, New Story Alternative to add to the list

While human selfishness and greed are present in any approach to life, both left and right, these base features do not most essentially define the Classic Liberal industrial civilization and its outcomes. Collectivists have argued that the “free individuals” model that was developed over past centuries in England (i.e. the “Classic Liberalism” that protects the individual rights and freedom of all citizens, equally), this approach to organizing societies orients populations to destructive selfishness, greed, disconnect from nature, and violence, among other pathologies. But that is not generally true. More importantly, with the fundamental protection of private property rights, the free individual model has unleashed human creativity as never before to achieve unimaginable new heights in the improvement of all aspects of our lives, and improvement of the world in general (i.e. increased environmental improvement).

Now the Old story theme related to this: The myth of the moral and spiritual superiority of the simple, low-consumption lifestyle (i.e. self-produced, using only local resources- bioregionalism). This revering of low-consumption lifestyles relates to “noble savage” mythology, the belief that primitive hunter/gatherers were more pure and environmentally conservative before humanity “fell” and became corrupted in developing civilization, falling even further in the last few centuries of industrial civilization with its ever-growing abundance. This myth fosters endless guilt and shame over resource consumption and the enjoyment of the good life. “Small is Beautiful” by Schumacher was an affirmation of this mythology. Note that it is most often wealthy Western elites that advocate this “morally superior primitivism” lifestyle for poorer people in developing areas (more “Rules for thee but not for me”). That is due in part to the “zero-sum” or “limited-good, limited resources” ideologies of elites.

New story alternative: The search for a better life is the fundamental urge of love- to responsibly improve one’s life and the conditions of one’s family. And it is essential to freedom that people have the free choice to enjoy what they wish to use and enjoy. The abundance that most people enjoy today, with an ever-increasing proportion of humanity moving into middle class status, is part of the larger trajectory of developing technological, industrial civilization that is also lessening environmental impacts while it endlessly improves human well-being.

For example, the trend of continuing world urbanization is concentrating more people in smaller spaces (smaller environmental footprint) that can then better employ economies of scale that lessen pressure on natural areas (see population expert Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” for detail). Industrial society further decreases per capita consumption of varied resources with ongoing technological development in the process of “de-materialization”. Thus, the general creation of wealth has also enabled more developed areas to better care for and improve their environments. This overturns the environmental alarmist argument that industrial society is “destroying the world”. See “Environmental transition” research, for example, by Indur Goklany. Also, Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”. Humanprogress.org is another good source of information on these issues.

Added note: There is no finalized consensus on how much of the natural world humans can engage, use, and change. We are a legitimate species and not an intruding “virus or cancer” as per the view of those who demand a mostly untouched wilderness world. And from today’s progressing industrial civilization note the emerging trends like ‘peak agriculture’ and the return of agricultural lands to nature because, with safe GM crop inputs, we produce more crops on the same or less land. Note also the improving status of world forests over the past seven decades (FAO reports on increasing world forest cover), and the strengthening of conservation and restoration trends in world fisheries (Ray Hilborn research, University of Washington). Further, there is no species holocaust occurring. It appears the “responsible stewardship” approach of the early 20th Century conservationists is working well (see Alston Chase’s “In A Dark Wood”).
As Julian Simon said, “Evidence on the big picture and long-term trends of life shows that we are more creators than destroyers”.

Added notes: There is a long history of belief in the moral/spiritual superiority of the monkish ascetic lifestyle and engendering guilt over enjoying the good life too much (the good life condemned as selfishness, greed, the “base” obsession with materialism). Note past history’s cloistered mystics inflicting themselves with varied forms of denial and self-abuse in order to squelch worldly desires, enduring fasting, withdrawing from societies, also the naked or loin-clothed wandering holy men, and sages/monks begging for their daily needs. Those “holiness exhibited in simple living” cults are found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other movements.

Varied other beliefs play into the fear of consumption such as the fallacy of “limited good” that anthropology notes in hunter/gatherer societies where people believe that if some people in the group get more goods, then others must be getting less, as there are limited resources to go around (zero sum). But the evidence, while at first seeming counter-intuitive, comes down on the side of ever-expanding human resources across history. “Cornucopians” like Julian Simon were right.

Simon (Ultimate Resource) has outlined the steps in the process that results in the expansion or increase in resource stocks: Within traditional production there may emerge an apparent scarcity of some resource. This leads to increasing prices for that resource. That prompts the search for more reserves of the resource, the innovative creation of new technology that leads to discovery of more of a resource and more efficient production and use of the resource, or a search for alternatives to the resource (i.e. the shift from whale oil to fossil fuels). And ultimately there is a return to the trajectory of lowering the price of the resource. We saw the process above operating with the discovery of fracking technology and the opening of vast new sources of fossil fuels in the US.

Added note to Old Story themes: Another critical old story theme- Holiness mythology

One of the most common responses from religious people to the idea of God as no conditions love is the claim that God is also holy and just and therefore must punish all wrong. God’s honor is tarnished by the wrongdoing of people so he must be just (exhibit strict eye for eye retaliation/retribution) and punish all sin. God cannot just freely forgive and love. This divine holiness myth is primitivism at its worst. How so? It is the very same reasoning that is behind practices like “honor killing”.

People in varied cultures today still reason that, for example, a daughter embracing modern habits has dishonored her family and their traditional culture. So the males of the family, feeling dishonored and shamed, are required to punish the “evil” daughter in order to restore their tarnished honor. Holiness theology is embracing this very same primitive reasoning that wrongs must be punished thoroughly and severely or justice and honor are not restored properly. Just another version of “eye for eye” retaliation.

I would counter that, contrary to holiness with its demand for punishment, unconditional forgiveness and love constitute the true glory of God, the highest goodness and love. Authentic goodness and love will just freely forgive without demanding payment or righting of wrongs first.

The holiness feature in theology affirms the myth of a God obsessed with perfection and punishing imperfection, hence the creation of a supporting complex of myths- i.e. original paradise/Eden (perfect creation), Fall of humanity and ruin of paradise (loss of perfection), and the subsequent need for an atonement (sacrifice/payment/punishment for ruining perfection) in order for God to restore the lost perfection.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Criteria for evaluating public alarmism narratives

“The Apocalypse has changed nothing but its guise–from God to Reason (Enlightenment), to History (Marxism), and then to Nature (environmentalism)”

Section topics:

(1) Probing the roots, the bad behavior and buttressing ideas

(2) Endangerment finding? Huh? WTF? The food of all life, in historically short supply (“our current CO2 starvation era”), is now demonized as the ultimate evil- “pollutant, poison, threatening the end of life”.

(3) Celebrating the benefits of melting ice.

(4) Richard Landes’ quotes on the patterns and outcomes of apocalyptic millennial movements, notably in Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism… For example, Disappointment with failure in an apocalyptic/millennial movement, leads the movement’s prophets to turn to the “coercive purification” of totalitarian mega-death crusades. Interesting on the psychopathology of such movements- How claims and proclamations of compassion for the oppressed turn cruel and descend into mass death (the narcissism of authoritarianism).

(5) The military guy’s advice- To solve endless eruptions of violence like ISIS, go to the “ideology” behind such groups. Ideology? No- It’s the “bad religious ideas”, stupid, as in the narrative (a play on Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid”)

(6) That “most profound insight” again, and Paul’s rejection of that, his burying of Jesus under his Christ myth. In our Western tradition we inherited the religion of Paul, the entirely opposite Christ-ianity that buried Jesus-ianity.

(7) The Jesus discovery radically reframes Ultimate Reality and presents the potential to transform narratives and life. A new cohering center for human narratives. It offers the potential for a powerful new liberation movement in the depths of human consciousness/subconscious.

(10) Don’t look down your schnauzer (yes, “snout” in German) on those pre-WW2 Germans. We have all been conditioned to fall for the same “banality of evil”. Its those commonly embraced “bad religious ideas” like apocalyptic millennialism that repeatedly produce mega-death outcomes. And, like many “good people” before us, we stand by and watch the destructive outcomes unfold just as many today are doing with decarbonization ruining societies and lives.

And much more…

As we all observe the varied narratives and movements competing for space and attention in public today- whether DEI, ESG, Woke Progressivism, WEF Great Reset, Woke Racism, and more…. Try to get some sense of the overall bigger background narrative themes, what really lies behind all the varied fronts of contemporary movements. They all point to the core themes of a meta-narrative.

I trace things back from, for example, the climate alarmism movement, to its parent mythology in 19th Century Declinism, and from there to the main Western religions like Christianity that shaped the ideology of apocalyptic Declinism, and further back to the daddy of all Western apocalyptic in Zoroastrian mythology, and then to the earliest versions of the same themes in Sumerian/Egyptian mythologies. Its always the same old, same old descending down through history in an unbroken chain of continuation. Primitivism at its worst. And shame on us that we keep falling for this apocalyptic millennial nonsense… We have the better alternatives. We have had them for millennia. There is no excuse.

Landes again… Wendell Krossa

I will soon post quotes from Landes’ chapter on the Nazi mass-death movement. Historian Richard Landes presents the evidence that Hitler’s Nazism was just another apocalyptic millennial movement like Marxism. Western intellectuals have refused to acknowledge the profoundly religious nature of such movements. Is that a defensive response to avoid the embarrassing recognition that Christianity “has shed more blood than any other movement in history”? Western defenders of Christianity cannot bring themselves to admit that Christian themes like apocalyptic millennialism have shaped these historically more recent “secular ideological” mega-death movements.

This is why I spend so much effort clarifying the striking contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth. Jefferson and Tolstoy were on to something critically important in their comments on “diamonds/pearls buried in dung”. So yes, they recognized there is something profoundly valuable in the Christian tradition (the insights of Jesus), but that “stunning new theology” of Jesus has been defiled and distorted by the larger context of the New Testament Christ myth. Christianity has never fully clarified and honored the central theme/insight of Historical Jesus. We should have received “Jesus-ianity” not “Christ-ianity”.

We continue to experience the horrific outcomes of bad religious ideas today…. Notably in the latest apocalyptic millennial crusade of climate alarmism and its salvation crusade of decarbonization (“to save the world”).

And as for the role of Islamic extremism in the mix- Joseph Azzi in “The Priest and the Prophet” has outlined the historical descent of Islam from Ebionism, a branch of early Jewish Christianity. Yes, Mohammad’s spiritual mentor was an Ebionite priest- Waraqa, the cousin of Mohammad’s first wife. Again, the same basic complex of themes- apocalyptic millennialism- has influenced and shaped both these religious and “secular/ideological” movements.

I would summarize the themes of apocalyptic millennialism in the fuller complex of “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, and redemption in promised millennial paradise”. I will post again the full complex of these primitive myths that have so powerfully shaped human consciousness, emotions, motivations, and behavior across the millennia, often to horrifically destructive outcomes. That is the inevitable result of alarming people, arousing the survival impulse in people that then incites and intensifies those inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.

Add that critical to Christian redemption is the demand to coercively purge the evil thing that threatens life (“coercive purification”). The New Testament book of Revelation graphically illustrates what coercive purification looks like. No wonder that Hitler framed himself in terms of the violent savior Christ of Revelation. Totalitarians find divine validation in such religious themes.

Richard Landes on the apocalyptic millennialism that shaped and motivated Nazism (another profoundly religious movement) to totalitarian mega-death outcomes, from his chapter 12, “Genocidal Millennialism: Nazi Paranoia”. The research of Landes and his colleagues Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) and David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich) show clearly the profoundly religious nature of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism, movements all shaped by the same old “lost paradise, apocalyptic decline, violent redemption” complex of themes. Add also the good research of Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History) who shows what primitive ideas are still shaping our modern narratives and consciousness to destructive outcomes like decarbonization as salvation (destroying the world to save the world).

Scattered quotes from Landes’ book:

“Millennial studies focus on how beliefs travel from the disreputable margins of a culture to the center… the sudden movement from the margins to the center generally lies in the advent of apocalyptic time (he notes Hitler had to convince the German people that the apocalyptic battle had begun, they needed a ruthless leader to lead them into battle, and victory would bring the millennial kingdom)…

“Wilhelmine Germany engaged in extensive use of apocalyptic and millennial imagery… Hitler emerged in the midst of a millennial stew…

“The (WW1) failure brought on deep depression and despair in Germany… one solution found particularly strong purchase among Germans: They had been betrayed, stabbed in the back, robbed of rightful victory by evil forces… the Weimar Republic represented a powerful incitement to apocalyptic feelings… the staggering inflation of the early 1920s… worldwide depression of the early 1930s, the argument that this was all part of a worldwide plan to destroy Germany became increasingly credible…

“(Among the returning WW1 soldiers) there was a ‘messianic-revolutionary’ outlook… a synthesis of ‘nationalist ideology and an apocalyptic Christian mythology. The warrior dictator can lead Germany to the Promised Land only once he has destroyed evil, sin, and death in their earthly embodiment as the potent, satanic Jew…

“(You) have to convince people that you know the apocalyptic scenario whereby they will come out triumphant…

“For Hitler and the Nazis… the Will to Power was the key to unlock every lock: the strongest ruled and the Germans (Aryans) were the strongest race…

“Nietzsche… understood the situation which Hitler exploited. In response to this situation, Hitler’s messianic image came into being, embodying the religiosity Nietzsche despised… This hierarchical and authoritarian vision centered on the charismatic leader, a man of iron will who could demand complete obedience…

“By eliminating the forces holding back the German race- the Jews in particular- the Fuhrer would thereby allow the German Volk to return to their rightful place ‘over all’… Without a single figure of towering will, one capable of arousing implacable hatreds and making ruthless decisions that contemplated the sacrifice of vast numbers of human lives for the sake of the goal of national and racial collective salvation, this argument could not work…

“Hitler believed he had a divine mission, he was the German savior… he had received a divine mission to save his people…

“Both he and his audiences were literally transformed by the experience of one of his speeches…. Charismatic figures articulate the hidden transcript that others have repressed and make them public… proclaiming the most secret desires, the least admissible instincts…

“(His emotional speeches) arose out of a profound millennial discourse that gave cosmic promise to the emotions Hitler aroused… he worked up these emotions by using the reactions to economic and spiritual distress that pervade the psychology of the German people… fused with dreams of a better day to come…

Landes notes that Nazi ideology was crude and revolting but it appealed “to some of the most advanced and brilliant minds of the age: Heidigger, Schmitt, Jung… one can appreciate the power of millennialism to turn even highly developed and sophisticated minds…

Hitler begins by presenting himself as a John the Baptist forerunner to a messiah then after his imprisonment in the 1920s he “becomes openly messianic.. he was thinking of himself as the Messiah and it was he himself who was destined to lead Germany to glory. He used quotations form the Bible more frequently…

“All these signs indicate that Hitler now understood that he was the chosen one… We have the record of that transformation chronicled in his ‘autobiography’ Mein Kampf… ‘It (writing Mein Kampf in prison) also reinforced his unbounded narcissistic self-belief. It gave him absolute conviction in his own near-messianic qualities and mission… countless others strengthened in Hitler the belief that he was in league with Providence…

“The word Reich carries a host of rich associations in German. It means at once kingdom, realm, empire, and also something sacred, something that transcends material categories… about salvation… holy empire… Reich also has a fully religious meaning… Thy kingdom come… the Lord’s kingdom…

“In the German language, Tausendjahriges Reich means literally ‘millennial kingdom’ and all earlier uses of the term referred to Christian millennial movements… such imagery fired the imaginations of a nation…

“The Nazia millennial vision actually combined all four elements of the millennial dream… the Aryan apocalyptic scenario is cataclysmic and active: we fight as the agents of history…

“Hitler’s religiosity continues to constitute a major problem for historians. Most tend to view Hitler through a secular prism… More broadly the Nazis are seen as anti-religious… Such approaches, while they may ignore profound aspects of Hitler- and Germany’s- religiosity, have deep conceptual roots… the empirical or materialist school sees in Nazism a secular phenomenon, and does not even entertain that it has a religious dimension… Then there are the rare few who go the distance and acknowledge Nazism as a millennial religion….

“The Nazi episode represents one of the most powerful connections between religious leader and following of the faithful in recorded history…

“Nazism is a religious phenomenon in its own right: a political religion that, whatever its content, appealed to the same critical issues and emotions that religion does: faith, ultimate meaning, redemption. And among those links are some of the most powerful forms any religious movement can take- the apocalyptic and messianic traditions that date back to the earliest centuries of Christian-German relations…

“The religious world out of which Hitler’s particular millennialism arose was that of the theosophical trends… In Germany it took a peculiar turn toward a racist mythology known as Ariosophy…. The ‘Great War’ (WW1) was only the opening act of the final drama… racist Ariosophists saw it as the onset of the final apocalyptic battle…

“The interwar period was rife with apocalyptic publications… Another theme picked up elements of some of the more disturbing Christian heresies of the Middle Ages, in which the human becomes divinized… consider that Hitler was profoundly committed to religious paradigms that escape even our normative notions of religiosity of Christianity…

“Hitler was suffused with a sense of destiny and mission. Hitler’s ‘one dominant and dominating characteristic was that he felt himself appointed by Providence to do great things for the German people’. This was his historic ‘mission’ in which be believed completely…

“This profound continuity in Hitler’s self-perception had a distinctly ‘Christian’ formulation… he took his Christianity seriously…

“We can understand the difference between the more familiar forms of Christianity based on the gospels… and Hitler’s Christianity by grasping which Christ Hitler held in veneration… It was not Jesus Christ the crucified but Jesus Christ the furious… not the Jesus of the first coming of ‘turn the other cheek’ who allowed himself to be crucified but the Christ of the Parousia, the warrior on horseback with a sword issuing from his mouth, slaughtering the enemies of the Lord (Revelation 19)…. Hitler believed that ‘my Lord and Savior’ was a warrior… who, by God, was not his greatest as a sufferer but rather as a warrior… the warrior of Armageddon…

“This is triumphant Christianity. It represents the same active cataclysmic apocalyptic urge that we find in the First Crusade, with its exterminationist anti-Semitism and its lust to avenge the crucifixion of the Lord in rivers of blood…

“Having identified himself with the warrior Jesus sent to save the world from the evil chaos of the Jews, Hitler ended his speech with a declaration about the spiritual basis of his movement… he offered redemption… he speaks of faith and destiny and miracles, of regeneration and martyrdom, and of his struggle for the souls of men. Often in this mood he uses purely religious terms: shame, sin and expiation. He is a redeemer calling upon the people to lay their sins and suffering on his shoulders…

“One of the more underdeveloped themes in the history of Nazi Christianity is its millennial dimension… How does it move from the margins to the center of society?…

“(A German farmer listening to Hitler’s speech) ‘His words went straight to the heart. From now on my life and efforts were dedicated to the Fuhrer. I wanted to be a true follower. The Fuhrer spoke of the threatened ruin of the nation and the resurrection under the Third Reich’…

“Hitler’s spirituality therefore belongs in the subset of millennialism we call messianic: He was a man with a calling who would help his own people achieve their great destiny… In millennial matters the relative sanity of the messiah… matters less than the audience they gather. The same person may end up in an insane asylum or at the head of armies of millions, depending on his or her cultural matrix…

“One key to Hitler’s success lay in the reception he received from Germany’s Protestant community… the German Christians. Here we find many of the major elements of the Ariosophist millennial brew- a Thrasymachan political ideology, a racist historiography, a Jewish conspiratorial enemy, and the worship of hardness, violence, and sacrifice- articulated in a Christian key by members of some of the evangelical churches. Deutsche Christen systematically reread the gospels as a justification for warfare against the enemies of God, above all the Jews… throughout his speeches, Hitler, with his biblical intonations, uses the Christian texts to claim authority… He would have been deeply committed to both the Christian texts and (his own notion) of the God that stood behind them…

“The path that Hitler took to move from the margins of German society…. To the center was not by converting post-Christians but disappointed Christians, people who felt that the world had betrayed their religion and sought a savior to set it right… the workers ‘most immune’ to the Nazi appeal… also tended to be the most secularized…

“Hitler’s anti-semitism… This issue brings us deep into Hitler’s- and Germany’s- millennial imagination. The Jews were not a ‘realistic’ threat, in the sense of either reality or Realpolitic, they were an apocalyptic threat, in the sense of modernity- their conspiracy- threatened the very existence of the German people… Modernity threatened the traditional German Gemeinschaft, the rural community and its pious continuities with a past that reached back to the mists of time… The rules of modernity… meant the end of a romanticized rural life…

“Many of the apocalyptic elements of Nazi ideology- the sense of urgency at the nearly complete conspiracy, the ferocious hatred of a cosmic enemy, the profoundly paranoid sense of being suffocated by Jewish success, the assumption that all the major developments of modernity (marriage of capital and technology, urbanization, constitutional governments, public media, and public atheism) stemmed from the Jews and threatened chaos and enslavement… the Nazis articulated a vision in which the very existence of a rival chosen people, the Jews, meant the certain death of the German people… They could only live… by the paranoid imperative, ‘exterminate or be exterminated’… (Hitler) gave them a sense of their messianic identity and identified the Jews as their apocalyptic enemy… it was part of an apocalyptic or eschatological worldview… the Jewish people represented the collective identity of Antichrist…

“Historians would rather view Hitler as mad, than as messianic pretender…. By failing to recognize well-known… patterns of active cataclysmic apocalyptic and hierarchical millennialism, observers can miss subsequent avatars… The study of Nazism’s appeal, of Hitler’s charisma, belong to the field of millennial studies… He is not so much the measure of the unthinkably, the impossibly evil, as he is the measure of how, with modern technology and an only partially developed civil polity, a nation, a people, seized by, ridden by a millennial passion, can become one of the great dealers of death in human history”.

End of Landes’ quotes.

Podcaster Jimmy Dore: “(We) are the most propagandized people on earth and we don’t know it”– Climate alarmism as profoundly religious apocalyptic narrative. Note the collectivist element in this Billionaire propaganda crusade- think WEF’s “Great Reset” of world economies into destructive socialist approaches. It was the WEF elites who promoted, “You will own nothing and you will be happy… and you will eat insects while we eat the best cuts of imported beef”.

“Green Billionaires Press Hollywood to Promote Armageddon Climate Messages in Movies”, Charles Rotter posting from Chris Morrison of Daily Skeptic, Feb. 28, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/28/green-billionaires-press-hollywood-to-promote-armageddon-climate-messages-in-movies/

Quotes from article at link above:

“Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts. One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”….

“Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate…. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”…. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency….

“Billionaire foundations are grooming populations around the world by funding a variety of press, political and academic operations…. Few green campaigns arise from ‘grass roots’ these days. Put to the vote, for instance, the Green Party in the U.K. loses most of its election seat deposits.

“Let’s reimagine what it looks like for a character to eat a plant-rich diet (Michelin Green Star restaurant, yes!), attend a protest or upcycle vintage clothes. And if your story requires a yacht, why not make it solar powered.” That last idea might appeal to super-yacht lover Leonardo DiCaprio, but private planes, the preferred method of transportation for many high-end Hollywood stars, might be a problem. Hypocrisy a problem with all this? Not according to the Playbook, which quotes climate activist Bill McKibben that “hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. For plebs, gammons, fly-overs and deplorables, this of course translates as “you do what you are told and radically change your lives – we don’t give a flying flamingo”.

“For scripted entertainment, observes Good Energy, “the emotional truth is as important as the literal truth”.

“Good Energy was started in 2019… Rolling Stone reports that the operation is “dedicated” to ensuring that within three years, 50% of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.

“It is unsurprising that the power of film and TV to influence large audiences is being captured to promote a political message….

“Elite billionaires are pulling out all the stops to insert climate Armageddon messaging into all forms of media.”

“Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.”

Now some climate news…

Atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer were also involved in this case against the EPA endangerment ruling…

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/20/a-climate-science-team-report-on-the-scientific-validity-of-epas-2009-ghg-endangerment-finding/

“A Climate Science Team Report on the Scientific Validity of EPA’S 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding”

“By ICECAP Climate Science Team Feb. 20, 2024

“On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court refused to examine the numerous science-based arguments contained in a Petition for Reconsideration of EPA’s 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding…. This court ignored the eight quite specific, but easy to understand scientific arguments contained in the Petition and simply denied the Petition claiming the petitioners did not have Standing – a well-known tactic to avoid decisions in a highly politically-charged situation.

“Unfortunately, this Supreme Court decision denied scrutiny to the one regulation in the U.S. that is not only the single most economically significant, but also the single most scientifically flawed, of all of the regulations on the Federal books. The ramifications of this Supreme Court Denial will be enormous if an EPA GHG Endangerment Finding Reconsideration is not initiated very quickly. This fact should have been clear to the Court by the arguments quoted verbatim below:

“In short, based on the sum total of the eight validated arguments {contained in the Petition}, the currently contemplated Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates are not only worthless; they are extremely dangerous to put forward to current U.S. energy, economic and national security-related policymakers as credible input to their analyses.

“As clearly demonstrated by this body of research findings, climate alarmism has no basis in science…. climate science now finds that there is no mathematically valid proof that past increases in atmospheric GHG (Green House Gas) concentrations have caused the officially reported global warming over the last 50 years or so. Therefore, there is no proof of any social costs related to such GHG emissions. In fact, these GHG emissions are beneficial to society no matter what processes by which they might occur….

“Finally, on-going fact checks of the 13 most common climate alarmist claims have consistently validated that absolutely nothing unusual is going on with the Earth’s climate system. Moreover, in the considerable research cited, changes in the Earth’s temperature have been shown to be readily explained by natural factors involving changes in solar, volcanic and oceanic/atmospheric activity.

These findings strongly suggest that America and its allies have already made extremely severe climate policy errors, the negative impacts of which will only grow exponentially. By taking these erroneous climate and energy policy actions, America is rapidly destroying its energy security to the detriment of its economic and national security but to the great benefit of all three of its major enemies: China, Russia and Iran.

“This must stop immediately and America must now reverse course quickly – taking the following actions…:

* All current state and federal as well as private (e.g., financial) sector efforts to inhibit the finding, production and use of all fossil fuels must be immediately terminated.

* All U.S. government action and funding at all levels to take steps to regulate the emissions of all GHGs must be immediately terminated – since they are all beneficial gases….

“The utter lunacy of America’s Federal Government leadership continuing to take the unsuspecting American people on this ride over a cliff would certainly seem to be outrageous behavior on the part of those who know, or should know, the facts….”

A report referred to in the above article…

https://alarmistclaimresearch.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/core-team-bottom-line-on-epas-2009ghg-ef-v1.pdf

“OUR CORE CLIMATE SCIENCE TEAM BOTTOM-LINE ON THE SCIENTIFIC VALIDITY OF EPA’S 2009 GHG ENDANGERMENT FINDING FEBRUARY, 2024 Dr. James P. Wallace III Joseph D’Aleo Ph.D.,

“Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks – May 21, 2021 (See Suppl. #7, Page14.) “Below are a series of fact checks of the 13 most common climate claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The authors of these reviews are all recognized experts in the relevant fields. For each claim, a summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided below along with a link to the full text of the rebuttal, which includes the names and the credentials of the authors of each rebuttal, all of which is incorporated herein by reference.

“Claims the globe has experienced the warmest ever month or year are totally unsupported by any credible analysis of raw global surface temperature data and its availability…. Thus, all such climate alarmist claims are in reality just politically driven fictions.

“Heat Waves – have been decreasing since the 1930s in the U.S. and globally.

“Tornadoes – the number of strong tornadoes has declined over the last half century….

“Hurricanes – the decade just ended as the second quietest for landfalling hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes in the U.S since the 1850s….

Droughts and Floods – there have been no statistically significant trends.

Wildfires – decreasing since the very active 1800s….

“Snowfall – has been increasing in the fall and winter in the Northern Hemisphere and North America with many records being set.

“Sea level – the rate of global sea level rise on average has fallen by 40% the last century….

“Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland Ice – the polar ice varies with multidecadal cycles in ocean temperatures. Current levels are comparable to or above historical low levels…

“Ocean Acidification- when life is considered, ocean acidification (really slightly reduced alkalinity) is a non-problem, or even a benefit.

“Carbon Pollution as a health hazard – carbon dioxide (CO2) is an odorless invisible trace gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet. CO2 is not a pollutant….

Climate change is endangering food supply – the vitality of global vegetation in both managed and unmanaged ecosystems is better off now than it was a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, or even a mere two-to-three decades ago thanks in part to CO2.

“There is a 97% consensus that climate change is man-made – a 97% consensus is a convenient fiction meant to bypass the scientific method and sway public opinion and drive societal changes and policies that support political agendas.’”

And this from co2coalition.org- Celebrate melting ice on Earth. It is beneficial to all life.

https://co2coalition.org/facts/rising-sea-levels-confirm-modern-warming-predated-increases-of-co2/

https://co2coalition.org/facts/melting-glaciers-confirm-modern-warming-predated-increases-of-co2/

https://co2coalition.org/?s=Glaciers%27+Retreat+Not+From+CO2

Now more from Richard Landes on Marxist apocalyptic millennialism… Wendell Krossa

Landes’ research affirms the fact that so-called contemporary “secular” ideologies and revolutions (i.e. Marxist, Nazi, environmental decarbonization) are shaped by profoundly religious ideas. They are not as secular or scientific as they like to claim. Here below is more on the “secularization” of primitive mythology, from “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”. My extensive quotes of Landes’ research are to encourage readers to read for themselves this important material from these apocalyptic millennial historians- i.e. Landes, also Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”).

As one Amazon blurb states regarding Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”- “the Apocalypse has changed nothing but its guise–from God to Reason (Enlightenment), to History (Marxism), and then to Nature”. “Nature” as in environmental/climate alarmism. These historians all note that primitive mythical themes have been brought right into contemporary narratives to dominate modern consciousness with the same old psychopathologies, transformed for the modern era under the guise of now being “ideology and science”. Joseph Campbell again- People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world. When will we ever learn?

Insert note on the collectivist dualism in these apocalyptic millennial movements: “… then to Nature.”- With the historically latest embodiment of apocalyptic millennialism in the environmental movement, we also find the same old elements of tribal dualism. The tribal dualism in the environmental movement is expressed in the opposition where humanity is the oppressor and nature is the oppressed victim. As in all general Marxist collectivism narratives, one side is fundamentally evil and the other side fundamentally good. These oversimplified generalizations distort reality because nature across history has dominantly been a “wicked old witch red in tooth and claw” that needs taming and domesticating (humanizing, if you will). While the human interaction with nature evidences ever-growing compassion and concern (human goodness in caring for nature).

But as ever before, in all tribal dualisms and the more recent collectivist versions of tribal dualism, there is the claimed opposition between evil and good as per Zoroaster’s archetype of cosmic good versus evil (truth vs falsehood). That ultimate model validates endless earthly versions of the same. In the environmental versions, humanity is demonized as a virus, cancer, intruder on earth that is the oppressor and nature the oppressed victim that is pure, good, innocent.

Continuing…

The research of Landes offers critical insight on the dangerous shift of these apocalyptic millennial crusades toward totalitarian coercion and mass-death as necessary to bring on the millennial paradise of equality, goodness, and love. Landes shows how original claims to be acting out of compassion, then turn to mega-death cruelty, justified as necessary to achieve the greater or common good. Mass murder to achieve love? Destroy the world to “save it”?

Landes’ chapters on the emergence and development of Marxism are good on the psychology of totalitarianism- i.e. the feverish dreams of perfecting human society into a millennial paradise freed of the evil of this present world order, the failure of the dream to materialize, and the disillusion and bitterness with failure (cognitive dissonance). Disappointment, says Landes, then trips a switch and the apocalyptic millennial zealots shift to “coercive purification”- to force the arrival of the millennium. This is the “active apocalyptic” stage of such revolutions- i.e. to purge the old world in order to prepare the way for the new world. Today’s movements exhibit beliefs and actions that are no different from Zoroaster’s apocalyptic vision (circa 1500 BCE) that molten metal would wash across the earth to burn away the evil and through that purging, thereby open the way to restore the lost paradise or new kingdom.

“When the believer awaits no God or supernatural force to intervene, apocalyptic transformations must take place as a result of human action, and both the destruction of the old world and the building of the new become key events. Even using the term secular in a religious sense, ‘secular’ apocalyptic is virtually synonymous with active, indeed hyperactive apocalyptic: humans replace God as the active agent in the creation of the millennium… This peculiar… aspect of secular millennialism- the complete shift of responsibility, of agency, from divine to human forces- sets many of these movements on the road to totalitarianism.”

Out of disillusionment with the failure of their socialist revolutions, Landes notes the common response of apocalyptic millennialists to double down on the dream (“upping the ante”) and then abandon gradual democratic transformation to, instead, embrace coercive purification as in purging the evil that prevents the onset of the millennial dream, exterminating those who block the onset of the millennium (i.e. whether opponents, or fellow socialists who differ, or those who lack similar zeal for the millennial crusade).

Leaders of apocalyptic millennial movements such as Marx, Lenin, Mao, and others, embrace violent coercive purification, justified by their proclaimed conviction that they are doing so out of compassion, out of love and concern to free people from their enslavement to the old world order. And where the oppressed don’t cooperate, then they must be forced to be “free”. And if many must die to achieve the dream of greater collective good, so be it. Sacrifice is believed necessary to achieve the greater good of the new world order- “brutal violence that must inevitably pave the way to the kingdom of love and brotherhood.”

Also, Landes notes how commoners, under apocalyptic millennial Marxist systems, must subject their individual wills to the will of the party, the collective. The lead zealots for the millennium of a purified earth eventually believe that their will is the general will of all. They conflate the two and eventually replace the individual wills of the proletariat with the will of the enlightened vanguard that then become the unquestioned authoritarians- “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Under that dictatorship, no divided opinions are allowed, no questioning is permitted, no dissent from the party.

(Insert) This reminds me of the authoritarian status of religious priesthoods and popes that claim sole authority to speak for God and the final truth of God. Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light) also noted that Georg Hegel (a major influence on Marx) had argued for the state as embodying “one single being… General Will… our Better and Higher Self… the Spirit of the People…” which is to say ultimate authority replacing and representing something godlike. And inevitably, totalitarian elites would take control of the state collective (centralized power), for “the greater good of all”.

The varied ideas, arguments, projects, and horrific outcomes (mega-death) of Marxism were framed by the leaders as necessary to achieve an ultimate good, to attain freedom from oppressive forces and structures. The violent destruction of the old order, along with the people upholding the old order, was a necessary “destruction of the world to save it”.

Landes then details the stunning naivete of Lenin, Trotsky, and others that if they just removed the evil of capitalist society, and particularly the ultimate evil of the private ownership of property, then natural collectivist goodness would emerge in the people. The proletariat would become willing to serve the collective with happiness, all taking just what they needed and happy to share. And then the state would just wither away, unneeded.

In these revelations of the beliefs and practises of Marxist communism, Landes shows the “deep connection between religious and secular apocalyptic thought”. The Marxists believed and claimed that they had “rejected all forms of religious superstition, especially the raving fantasies… of millennial prophets… (but) rather than having abandoned millennial beliefs, ‘modern’ industrial society invented a new secular variant.”

Landes notes especially the case of Mikhael Bakunin, a leading early socialist thinker- “Few other thinkers reveal so clearly the deep connection between religious and secular apocalyptic thought- in particular the adoption of an active cataclysmic scenario in response to disappointment”.

“In the abandonment of formal, charismatic religion and the zealous adoption of a new revolutionary creed we find the roots of secular apocalypse… the dream of a vengeful apocalypse.”

Landes repeatedly notes the refusal of many historians and Western intellectuals to acknowledge the fundamentally religious nature of the beliefs of Marxist Communism. The refusal of Westerners to acknowledge that their leftist heroes were just religious nutcases.

Other Landes quotes:

“Marx’s millennial ideology operated as he hoped: it triggered repeated attempts at violent active cataclysmic apocalyptic movements (revolutions)… (but) like to many apocalyptic hopefuls, European radicals faced terrible disappointments with all the cognitive dissonance such experiences inflicted… How did the most determined of the modern (apocalyptic prophets) handle that dissonance? By clinging to the millennial promise; by redating the apocalyptic moment into the near future (postponing the event horizon) and by reframing the apocalyptic scenario and insisting that, to bring redemption closer, one needed to force things by a worst case scenario. If the millennium had not arrived yet, it was because things were not yet bad enough.… (Landes notes the resentment and anger produced by disappointment)…

“Like so many disappointed apocalypse hopefuls, the revolutionaries opted for coercive purity… apocalyptic scapegoats were targeted… Marxism increasingly, indeed with every disappointment, grew more violent and authoritarian…

“In the same way that the Xhosa chose (i.e. the 1856-57 apocalyptic movement in South Africa), with every disappointment to pursue coercive and scapegoating responses to failure, to seek still more self-mutilation in order to earn the millennium, so did some Marxists in pursuit of theirs. The worse it got, the better…”.

Further insights from Landes that relate to what is happening today with resurging Marxism and climate alarmism:

“The internecine conflicts within the left- classic expressions of the narcissism of small differences already so visible in Marx’s career, reflect the predilection for coercive purity in the face of failure… sympathizers in the West- including great thinkers like Shaw and Sartre, despite the massive betrayal of all the millennial values espoused- supported, justified, and concealed the madness of that coercive apocalyptic strategy.”

And this comment on Communist and Nazi behavior in regard to the inevitable emergence of totalitarianism in apocalyptic movements. I thought here of the World Economic Forum project- “The Great Reset”- to overturn the present world economy and to replace it with their socialist version as part of the plan to “save the world from climate apocalypse”: “A small group of true believers, with a megalomanic sense of cosmic purpose, driven to seize power with the intention of decisively reshaping history and humankind, responds to frustration with paranoid violence..”

(This on the ruthlessness of Marxist and Nazi totalitarians)… “obsessed by the apocalyptic phantasy and filled with the conviction of its own infallibility, set itself above the rest of humanity and recognized no claims save those of its own supposed mission…

“Totalitarianism… is not so much inherent in ideology, as it is in certain millennial ideologies that, following the ‘logic’ of an active and violent apocalyptic scenario… attempt to perfect the world. The ‘logic’ of coercive purity ultimately attempts to destroy… human freedom… totalitarian societies want ‘salvation’ and demand the people’s ‘soul’… their obsession with ‘redeeming’ their chosen people at any cost to private life… their terrifying willingness to engage in ‘coercive purification’ as a means to accomplish their visionary goals with the stunning number of lives lost as a result.”

And this on the expression- “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed”. Elon Musk recently stated something similar in arguing that we must get rid of the principle that if you claim status as “oppressed or victimized” then you are automatically considered good, virtuous. Look at Hamas claiming oppressed status, he said. There is no goodness there.

Landes adds some further comment on the “transmutation of love into hatred, of the desire for peace and harmony into the embrace of war and mega-death.”

He ends his sections on Marxism, commenting on the refusal of Western intellectuals (i.e. those supporting the last century communist revolutions in Europe) to acknowledge that Marxist revolutionary collectivism was active, violent, apocalyptic millennialism. Those intellectuals preferred to view communism as an expression of the modern ideals ascribed to the French Revolution which they believe had brought progress to the world- “Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused…

“Everybody who dares take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution… If you see it in this sense, says the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers.”

He concludes that Marxism and Nazism were both active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements.

Here’s an illustration of contemporary climate apocalypse prophets doubling down on their renewables crusade in denial of the growing evidence of disastrous outcomes:

“The Great Texas Blackout of 2021: Triumph of the Unreliables” Robert Bradley Jr., Feb. 20, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/20/the-great-texas-blackout-of-2021-triumph-of-the-unreliables/

And this from Wattsupwiththat.com- “Wyoming Climate Report”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/19/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-588/

“Wyoming Climate Report: The CO2 Coalition has prepared three state and regional (US) reports on the effect of changing climate: 1) Pennsylvania; 2) Virginia; and 3) American Midwest….

“‘Much of the world already knows this. India, over a billion people, they are not really making a single effort to cut back on CO2,’ [William] Happer said…. they know perfectly well this isn’t going to damage the planet.’…”

“The data tell us the following:

• Current levels of carbon dioxide are at or near historically low concentrations.

• Adjustments to historic temperature records have artificially amplified modern warming.

• Wyoming temperatures have increased a modest 1.2°F (0.7°C) since 1895.

• Heat waves peaked in the 1930s and have been in slight decline since that period.

• Nighttime low temperatures have increased, lengthening growing seasons.

• Precipitation data, while varying greatly from year-to-year, show no increasing or decreasing trend.

• Droughts are not increasing in Wyoming.

• Severe weather and natural disasters are declining.

• Agricultural production, globally and in Wyoming, is thriving due to modest warming and more CO2.

• Vegetation in Wyoming and around the world is increasing.

• Greenhouse-induced warming that would be averted (< 0.003°F) by eliminating Wyoming’s CO2 emissions would be too small to measure and achieved, if at all, at enormous cost. • Models used to project future temperatures significantly overpredict the amount of warming incoming decades.” “The second appendix to the report is titled “Temperature Adjustments and Fabrication of Data,” It begins with…. "There are three issues intrinsic to the data that have served to artificially exaggerate warming for over 100-plus years. • Urban heat island effect that raises temperatures • Adjustments to measured historic temperatures • Fabricated data for stations that no longer exist or are no longer reporting.” And this from Bjorn Lomborg– “’Weather porn’ obscures the fact that weather deaths are way down”, Financial Post, Feb. 21, 2024

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bjorn-lomborg-weather-porn-obscures-110019410.html?

“Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires. We see deadly events nearby but also far-flung disasters when the pictures are scary enough.

“Yet the impression this barrage of catastrophe gives us is wildly misleading and makes it harder to get climate change policy right. Data show climate-related events like floods, droughts, storms and wildfires aren’t killing more people. In fact, deaths have dropped precipitously. Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98 per cent fewer people than a century ago….

“(Deaths) they are falling dramatically because richer, more resilient societies are much better at protecting citizens than poorer, vulnerable ones. More resources and innovation mean more lives saved. Research shows this consistently across almost all catastrophes, including storms, cold waves and floods….

“Linking every disaster to climate change and wrongly suggesting things are getting much worse makes us ignore practical, cost-effective solutions while the media focus our attention on costly climate policies that help but little….

“…. when we are inundated with “weather porn” and miss the fact that deaths have dropped precipitously, we end up focusing on the least effective policies first.”

“Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His new book is “Best Things First,” which The Economist named one of the best books of 2023”.

Intro: Remember the military guy who commented, after the 2014 eruption of ISIS violence in the Mid-East (year of the proclamation of the spread of the caliphate), that if you want to end these eruptions of violence then then go after the ideas that incite and validate such violence, go after the “ideology” of such groups. Wendell Krossa

Others have made similar comment regarding groups like ISIS, that “its ideology is still rampant”. Example: https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/mass-violence-and-genocide-islamic-statedaesh

Labelling the inciting and validating ideas behind such eruptions as “ideology” seems to me to be an overly-cautious avoiding of the responsibility to confront “what really lies beneath” as in, not “ideology” but the “theology” of such groups, the monster God and related religious beliefs that incite, guide, and validate such violence against others.

Why do we avoid confronting the true nature of the foundational ideas behind such eruptions of violence, carefully distancing ourselves from direct acknowledgement of the real root of the problem, preferring and choosing to use terms like “ideology” instead of the actual “theology/religious beliefs” that are at the root of the problem? Is it our fear of being accused of offenses like “Islamophobia” or being charged with some form of “hate speech” for trashing the belief systems of prominent religious traditions?

The ”bad ideology” issue goes much deeper than what expresses itself in public in our contemporary world. I argue here that behind the “ideology/ideas” level of the narratives of groups like ISIS are the more fundamental religious beliefs that are the very same myths that have descended from the earliest human mythology (e.g. Sumerian, Egyptian) to subsequently infect Zoroaster’s formalization of these beliefs in his religion that then shaped all three of the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those very same beliefs were then “secularized” (transformed into secular versions) to infect the so-called ideologies of our contemporary era- notably the ideology of 19th Century Declinism that has subsequently shaped Marxism, Nazism, and general environmental alarmism/climate alarmism.

In Declinism and its offspring the primitive became modern and continues to infect, cloud, distort, and damage contemporary consciousness and life.

It is an unbroken chain of historical descent. With each new movement in subsequent generations, terms were changed but core themes have always remained the same. Notably, with 19th Century Declinism, primitive mythology was given new “secular ideological” expression for the modern era, and even given “scientific” expression.

The primitive mythology of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” still dominates human narratives and consciousness today, both in religious and secular versions. And this complex of bad religious ideas still incites, guides, and validates our worst impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others. Bad religious ideas still shape human thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Hence, my advocating as a proper and thorough response- go to the actual root of the problem and resolve it there. We have the better alternatives (better ideas/themes) to completely reshape human narratives and consequently produce more humane outcomes.

Probing the roots of “the human problem”– as in the primitive drives to tribalism, domination, retaliatory punishment, and consequent totalitarianism and violence, and the bad ideas that incite and validate such destructive drives. Wendell Krossa

There are ongoing problems in our societies and the world at large, crises that need addressing, notably the endless eruptions of violence between differing groups. Dominating the mix of current problems are damaging apocalyptic crusades like climate alarmism that promote salvation schemes that destroy societies over longer time frames (decarbonization, de-development, deindustrialization). I am repeatedly drawn to something fundamental to all these problems.

I try to understand the root causal or main contributing factors of such problems, what really lies behind the surface layers of any notable issue/problem, what lies beneath, what is at the root, what are the fundamental issues to resolve. I look at a problem like climate alarmism and I see mantra-like themes that exhibit the basic features of an undeniable “profoundly religious narrative and crusade” very much the same as all apocalyptic millennial crusades across history.

The fundamental influence of religious ideas has been outlined well by historians like Richard Landes and his research on the guiding/motivating/validating themes behind Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. That acknowledgment of the religious influence on those ideologies, and the revolutions they promoted, then points to resolutions that tackle the real roots of that problem. If the problem is religious at heart, then we should at least consider also responding to that element in the mix with “religious/spiritual” alternatives. This has to do with the primal human impulse to meaning and the irreplaceable metaphysical element that has always been part of the understanding and explaining impulse.

Read Landes (“Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”) and you will get some sense of how widespread and consistently the primitive religious themes of apocalyptic millennialism have been secularized in contemporary ideologies and have consequently incited and validated revolutions that have devastated the lives of billions of people. Naturally of course, the religious nature of the ideas is denied by the proponents of the ideologies (the defensive/protective/deflecting impulse). But the religious themes are undeniably there, just reframed in “secular, ideological, scientific” terms. Hence, Marxism, Nazism, and Environmentalism all exhibit characteristics of profoundly religious extremist movements based on primitive mythologies that have endlessly incited tribalism (dividing and opposing differing others/enemies), hatred of enemy others, totalitarian domination, and vengeful destruction of enemies (unbelievers, deniers, dissenters).

I repeatedly list these three basic inherited animal impulses- The “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, and the urge to punitive destruction because the outcomes have wreaked such horrific damage across history, incalculable harm, mass-death. Across human history, these dark passions have been validated by equally brutal ideas, notably validated by the single most influential reality in human narratives, humanity’s highest authority- i.e. deity that embodies these very same features of tribalism, domination, punitive destruction. Gods as tribal, dominating, punitively destructive- “monster Gods”- still dominate the world religions today. And yes, deity theory is a mixed and merged phenomenon- good features included with pathological ones.

Insert note:

When you project a feature like tribalism onto God, as our ancestors did, you give that base animal impulse the status of ultimate ideal and authority. You elevate the worst of our inherited animal nature to status among the highest good. Add the Zoroastrian myth of a great cosmic battle of good against evil that further intensifies divine tribalism. That cosmic scale tribalism then endlessly validates people replicating on Earth all sorts of tribal dualisms and divisions based on race/ethnicity, nationality, ideology, religion, gender, etc. And the outcome is endless battles of “true religions/ideologies/movements” against “false or evil religions/ideologies/revolutions”. (Again, we become just like the God we believe in.)

Tribalism in God then orients us, if we believe in such a divinized ideal, to viewing and validating ourselves as favored insiders (chosen ones, on the side of good) standing in opposition to the excluded outsiders (rejected by God, on the side of some “evil enemy”, satanic). Tribalism in Deity is the ultimate “us vs them”. When you add the element of cosmic dualism, now you have framed your tribalism in terms of ultimate good vs ultimate evil, God vs Satan. And that incites and validates endless wars of good versus evil.

Projecting tribalism onto God sacralizes/divinizes an evil feature, making a base animal impulse and reality into something considered “holy”. People then find themselves more open to tolerate varied forms of discrimination and exclusion among human groups as something backed with divine approval. No wonder you then also get people excluding, separating from, demonizing, and dehumanizing differing others- the unbelievers, deniers, sinners and consequently the all-too-common descent to full-on extermination and destruction of differing others (“behavior based on similar validating belief”). Because the differing others are viewed as less than human and destined for Hell anyway (ultimate and divinely approved rejection, torture, extermination), it is natural then for true believers to even feel righteous when embracing the active “coercive purging” that has been common to apocalyptic movements, true believers helping God, in righteous battles, actually doing good by sending their enemies on their way to hell.

One critical response to counter the destructive impulse to tribalism is to embrace the evidence on the fundamental oneness of humanity, as in the common origin of all humans on Earth today from an East African Eve (“mitochondrial Eve”). Add the discovery of ultimate oneness of all with deity as commonly expressed in the Near-Death Experience movement. Also, the quantum insight on the fundamental oneness of all reality, to further buttress the evidence for fundamental oneness.

The fact of fundamental human oneness is what Joseph Campbell was referring to in his statement arguing for inclusive love of enemy:

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

Continuing… Wendell Krossa

Many still refuse to fully confront the fact of “monster deity” ideas, given status among humanity’s highest ideals and authorities, and their destructive impacts on human minds and life. Monster God ideas have incited and validated endless eruptions of violence and war. Billions still honor the tribal-like features in the Gods of the major world religions, making receptive populations for those who abuse those religious narratives.

And, of course, in the effort to be balanced we also distinguish the good from the bad in these religious traditions and acknowledge the positive influence and outcomes of the better ideas/insights in the mix of religious systems. But while affirming the many good people and good outcomes from our religious traditions, I would still urge caution regarding the cognitive dissonance, and harmful outcomes, that result from mixing and merging bad and good themes in any system, as in religious traditions and their holy books.

Bad ideas in a belief system tend to operate in a dominant manner to cloud, weaken, and even nullify the better ideas in the mix. Bad ideas distort and hinder the better themes from exerting the full impact that they could have if they were not subjected to the distorting influence of the bad ideas in the same context. Again, this was the argument of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy- i.e. that the “diamonds/pearls of Jesus were buried in the dung/garbage” of the larger New Testament context that gave prominence to Paul’s Christ myth. How else do we explain the horrific conflict and violence across Christian history, validated by Paul’s retaliatory, punitive theology?

Most critical- The continued modern embrace of the darker themes of religious traditions, operates to condition populations to be receptive to any new presentation of the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” ideas, such as in climate alarmism. Remember that German Christians responded affirmatively to Hitler’s use of religious themes because they resonated naturally with their own belief systems (i.e. the issue/problem of why so many Catholics and Evangelicals in Germany supported Hitler). Consider Landes’ point that if we just dismiss totalitarians like Hitler as one-off mad men, then we have learned nothing and will repeat the same error. We have not acknowledged how the embrace of apocalyptic millennialism narratives can carry societies toward mass-death.

Further on going to the roots of a problem… Wendell Krossa

From the beginning of our human history, our predecessors were enslaved to the psychopathology of bad religious ideas that motivated and validated them to embrace endless eruptions and downward spirals of vengeful hatred and retaliatory violence. All in the name of righteous and deserved ”retributive justice” that was validated by deities that epitomized such justice.

Bad religious ideas have long disrupted human development and progress in life. Current Illustrations: The physical devastation in the Israel/Gaza conflict, as well as other areas. Add here the destructiveness of the Net Zero decarbonization crusade, another “secular” apocalyptic millennial movement (again, remember the recent devastation to Sri Lankan agriculture). Further add the dangerous fatalism voiced today as many now prophesy the potential for WW3 erupting among the nuclear powers (impulse to self-fulfilling prophesy?).

Locked into the life-distorting “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of myths, many give way to fatalism and resignation, believing and accepting that life is irreversibly heading toward disastrous collapse and ending. As Landes notes, such beliefs have often pushed people into violent action to bring on the final stages of apocalyptic purging in order to cleanse life of the “corrupt old order” and to thereby open the way for the installment of the millennial paradise. The resort to violent purging, as necessary for salvation, has historically resulted in repeated eruptions of totalitarianism and mass death. Landes details these ideas and outcomes in Marxism and Nazism.

We have potent solutions to the critical problem of violence and war, ways and means to counter the apocalyptic millennialism themes behind the ideologies and revolutions that have led humanity into repeated outbreaks of violence and war.

That “most profound insight” (inciting, guiding, validating ideas):

For two millennia now, we have had the singular most critical alternative to counter and overturn the monster god themes in our narratives that validate our worst impulses. The alternative is an insight that goes right to the core of human narratives and understanding to deal thoroughly with the central reality that has long supported entire complexes of bad religious ideas- i.e. the monster God that is the defining and cohering center of many human belief systems.

The “stunning new theological insight” of historical Jesus went to the heart of monster God theology to overturn that psychopathology entirely and transform human understanding of Ultimate Reality. It was a single-blow death strike to the old theology. Jesus stated that the Ultimate Reality was nothing like the old theologies/mythologies that had always been defined by the dominant features of divine tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction.

Historical Jesus stated that, contrary to all previous mythical/religious speculation on deity, the Ultimate Reality that is deity was a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. And that historically unprecedented and unique new definition of ultimate reality presented us with an entirely new centering theme to shape our understanding, emotions, motivations, and response/behavior.

Unconditional projected onto the core of reality and life then functions to redefine and reshape everything else in human narratives. It functions as the new defining center of human ideals, ethical systems, justice systems, and from there it can work to reshape our overall treatment of differing others/enemies.

Based on his new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God, Jesus affirmed, more potently than ever before, the ethic of non-retaliation toward offenders/enemies. Where the Accadian father of roughly 2000 BCE had also advocated non-retaliation toward offenders, he did not buttress that ethic with a similar theology. That divine affirmation had to wait 2000 more years.

Jesus argued that because God was unconditional love toward all, so we also were to forgive, embrace, and love even enemies, unconditionally. In stating that, Jesus presented his own unique take on the age-old “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that all humans had previously used to inform and validate their lives.

And the Jesus project to overturn past human understanding went further. As a non-retaliatory reality, God was obviously then non-apocalyptic. The myth of apocalypse expresses the single greatest imagined act of a retaliatory deity- to punish sinful humanity in a great final act of total world destruction. Jesus’ argument against retaliation, based on a similarly non-retaliatory God, then overturned the psychopathology of “apocalyptic millennialism” that has been the most violent and destructive mythical complex in history, inciting endless terror. That psychopathology has rendered populations susceptible to irrational and destructive salvation schemes, dangerous utopian millennial hopes. Jesus’ stunning new insight exploded and deflated the delusional bubble of apocalyptic millennial mythology.

Conclusion: Get a grip on this insight- Love is the core of all reality. Love is the nature of our Creating Source. And not just love, but stunningly “no conditions love” that treats everyone the same. That is the single greatest “go right to the core of the problem” insight. Let that overturn all the primitive subhuman, inhuman themes in our narratives and then entirely redefine everything. To get some sense of the form of love that is being presented, read those better NDE accounts where people cannot find words to express the inexpressibly wondrous nature of what they have experienced.

Further, take the Jesus insight to humanity to work some radical rethinking here also. That same divine love also redefines the core nature of human beings. We have long been indoctrinated with the primitive religious myth that we are “fallen, sinful” beings- that our core nature is corrupted and evil, that we are defined essentially by a sinfulness that was inherited from our original ancestors. But we now know that the dark inheritance inside each of us is the residual inheritance of animal impulses to small band tribalism, domination of weaker others, and punitive destruction of differing others. And that inherited animal triad at the core of our brains is not the real us. As Jeffrey Schwartz titled his book- “You are not Your Brain”. You are something higher and better.

We can now recognize that, based on our oneness with deity (again, a common reveal in the Near-Death Experience movement), that our essential self, spirit, or nature is the same Love that is God. The Jesus insight then redefines what it means to be human. The oneness with deity (God equally incarnated in all humanity as inseparable from the human spirit) also gives us a new metaphysical basis for the equality of all people. It also provides a new basis for human identity and self-worth.

That Love is what we really are at core. And the great adventure of human story is to bring that love forth into our personal hero’s quest in our own unique way, making our personal contribution to a better world.

Continuing… Wendell Krossa

The Jesus insight “Love your enemy because God does”, more than any other insight/discovery, presents us with a potent response to break the endless cycles of eye for eye retaliation that have so repeatedly devastated human relationships and societies at large. It orients our consciousness away from retributive justice to consider alternatives like restorative justice. It pushes us to reconsider and reject the primitive tribalism that is a denial of human oneness, a denial of the fact that we are all family, and there are no ultimate “enemies”. “Love your enemies” thereby inspires us to solve some of the worst issues of human existence.

But Paul…. Yes, history’s biggest “But”

Paul rejected outright the breakthrough new theology of Jesus that could have done more to liberate humanity than any previous insight. Paul contradicted and buried that insight under his Christ myth (“diamonds buried in dung”). He retreated to the primitive theology of retaliatory, punitive deity (e.g. Romans 12:17-20) and that then shaped his ethical system with just another version of tribal love (love ultimately limited to true believers and excluding unbelievers).

His retreat to monster God theology re-enforced features like domination- i.e. his dominating Lord Christ would serve as the ultimate model for human forms of domination, as in divinely appointed Kings, rulers, popes and priesthoods, as well as government rulers (see, for example, Romans 13). Paul’s punitive deity also influenced the Western shaping of justice systems as retributive with elements of punitive destruction (punitive destruction was a repeated point in his letters- i.e. Romans, Thessalonians, etc.).

Paul’s deliberate burial of Jesus’ insight was a great crime against humanity in that he denied us the profoundly liberating insight that could have immensely enhanced our struggle to overcome our inherited animal impulses. Paul’s denial gets my pick for “the crime of the millennia” because it has denied humanity the full impact of the liberation that Jesus’ theology would have brought. Paul’s Christ re-affirmed the mind virus of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythologies in human narratives and consciousness, themes that have endlessly incited our worst impulses.

True, Paul’s Christ did not entirely bury the central message of Jesus. But, because the Christ of Paul dominated the larger New Testament context, it did cloud the revolutionary meaning and impact of Jesus’ insights. The Christ myth deformed the clear meaning of Jesus’ new theology, hindering its fullest profoundly radical expression.

While growing numbers of people have now abandoned their affiliation with a major religious tradition, believing that they have rejected religion, they continue to embrace the old narrative themes that are endlessly reframed in secular ideological, and even scientific versions.

Other points….

My point in these repeated posts on the secularization of primitive mythology, such as apocalyptic millennialism, is to uncover something of the “banality of evil” that so easily deceives us. Wendell Krossa

I see banality in how Germans fell for Hitler’s apocalyptic millennialism. There was the zealous embrace by many of Hitler’s mythology, or the more common banality of “stand by and observe”. The banality did not begin with Hitler. Germans were subjected to previous centuries of conditioning/brainwashing with the fundamental themes of lost paradise (and guilt over having ruined paradise preparing them to make some sacrifice, embrace suffering for salvation), threat of decline toward apocalyptic disaster (aroused survival impulse rendering people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes), demand for violent purging of the threatening evil, and promise of a restored paradise, or a new millennium. Those were all central themes in the Christian body of beliefs that Hitler then played on and hence that resonated with many Germans as true and right.

Add that Hitler began by portraying himself as the forerunner to a messiah, then claimed to be the messiah himself, and then finally moving on to claim that he was the violent destroying Christ of Revelation. I believe this was presented in David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic belief and the search for salvation”. Hitler played with common themes that resonated with the deeply embedded beliefs of ordinary Germans. That helps to answer the question of the young Jewish lady who asked- “How could so many good people have become caught up in Hitler’s madness?”

So also today, profoundly religious crusades, like climate alarmism, play with the same complex of themes and those themes now, once again, are resonating widely with long-conditioned populations (conditioned across Western history by the dominant themes of Christianity). Themes of a better past ruined by sinful humans who are enjoying life too much, life declining toward existential collapse and even apocalyptic ending, demand for sacrifice and purging of some threatening evil (i.e. CO2 as the marker for “sinful” consumptive excess in industrial civilization), and then promise of restored paradise or new millennial order. Always the same old, same old as ever before. And the same old mega-death outcomes as are now appearing all over with decarbonization/de-development as salvation (“destroy the world to save the world”).

And a reposting: Ira Glasser on Joe Rogan’s podcast– the important issue re free speech, Wendell Krossa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU

The above link contains a brief explanation from Ira Glasser, former ACLU director, on the critical need to protect free speech, even hate speech, repugnant speech. The main issue, he says, is- “Who gets to decide what hate speech is?”. If your side bans the other side’s speech today as hate speech, then when the other side gains power in the future they will in turn ban your speech as hate speech. Everyone then suffers loss of freedom.

The only safe solution is to “duke things out in the public free speech arena”, countering other’s speech with your arguments and ideas. Protecting all speech, even repugnant speech, is the safest way to protect our own freedom of speech.

“Power is the antagonist”, says Glasser, and the great threat to civil liberties, and power must be restrained. No matter who has power. Both sides are equally dangerous with unrestrained power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU

Glasser offers one of the best explanations and defenses of free speech anywhere. As Glasser says, freedom of speech is not intuitive but is a learned taste. He presents helpful illustrations of the issues involved. The same can be applied to “disinformation, misinformation, mal-information”. Who gets to decide such things?

And Glen Greenwald again: “Your defense of free speech only matters if you’re defending the free speech rights of people who not just disagree with you, but who expressed views you find repugnant”.

Similarly, physicist Lawrence Krause warns regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the concern to teach AI “universal human values” so it will not pose a danger to humanity. Krause says, “This sounds good, in principle, until one tries to define universal human values, because it is difficult “to find consistent examples of logical, ethical, or moral behavior running across time and geography”. The problem, he says, “is the question of who gets to provide the guidance, and what their values are”. It is very much, says Krause, the coding problem of “junk in, junk out”.

https://quillette.com/2023/02/21/artificially-intelligent-offense/

I would suggest to Krause that the principles of Classic Liberalism/Libertarianism would do well to keep AI within safer boundaries. Add the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
Added note: Who said that the most dangerous people in society are those who assume that they know what is best for all others and will coerce others to embrace their view of things, “for their own good” of course, or “for the greater or common good” as they see it, “to save the world, save democracy”.

Added notes…

Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History) also covered the “secularization” of primitive mythology, the transformation of mythical themes in Declinism ideology (i.e. the central apocalyptic myth of life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and apocalyptic ending). Wendell Krossa

Declinism is entirely distorting of the true state of life, a distortion of the amassed evidence on the rising, improving trajectory of life. This narrative of despair denies and buries the good evidence that life over the long-term has been improving. This evidence affirms hope and energizes people to continue the hard work of improving life further. (Sources- “Humanprogress.org”, Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” and the many follow-up studies similarly presenting evidence on the main indicators of the true state of the world.)

The abundant evidence of the progress researchers contradicts the endless media obsession that things are getting worse, the alarmist lie that life is declining toward some great collapse and apocalyptic ending. That endlessly hysterical panic-mongering renders populations susceptible to the irrational salvation schemes of alarmists, unmasked now as totalitarians who are using fear to gain control of others and even resorting to violence to purge the unbelievers in their narrative, deniers and dissenters to their alarmism crusades. Again, the totalitarian’s formula: Fear=control.

How many fell for the new McCarthyism?

https://public.substack.com/p/nihilism-and-mccarthyism-behind-medias

And…. No one can even define what a species is, let alone clarify how many there might be and how many might be going extinct.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/22/specious-species/

Other points- Wendell Krossa

The Historical Jesus insight, repeatedly highlighted on this site, is a stunningly unique insight re the nature of ultimate reality. Jesus presented an entirely new understanding of deity unlike anything ever voiced before. His description of God was strikingly different from all previous theologies.

Yes, there were historically previous intimations of humaneness in deity, notably millennia earlier in statements that the Egyptian Pharaohs had begun to exhibit kindness and mercy. The Old Testament prophets had also suggested, in scattered accounts, that God despised sacrifices and desired mercy instead. But those BCE deities were then qualified with the same old deformities and psychopathologies of all primitive deities- defined by prominent features of tribalism (favoring chosen peoples), domination (lords, kings), and punitive destruction (ultimate judges, destroyers) that limited the liberating potential from the gentler and kinder features.

What then was Jesus’ argument for his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-retributive, unconditional God? When asked what the authority was for his message, what he appealed to, Jesus did not refer to a heavenly revelation or an authoritative holy book/scripture/bible. He simply stated his personal view on things as an ordinary human person, referring to himself commonly as the “son of man” or “son of the human ones”. Meaning- just ordinarily human like everyone else. And further, he directly contradicted the reigning authority of his time- the Old Testament scriptures, saying, “You have heard that it was said- ‘eye for eye’ (OT). But I say- love your enemy because God does…”

He stated what to him was just obvious common sense. Look- Sun and rain are given to all alike, to both good and bad people. Nature itself illustrated his new theology. And that generous treatment of all as equal meant that God was obviously non-retaliatory, non-tribal, unconditional love. His statement in the same context that “we should no longer engage eye for eye response to enemies but instead love enemies because God did” further affirmed the unconditional nature of God.

The conclusions to buttress the stunning new theology follow naturally- With an unconditionally loving God there is no discrimination, no exclusion of anyone, no punitive retaliation, unlimited free forgiveness, acceptance and treatment of all as equals, and unbounded scandalously generous love.

Today we can also affirm the insight of Jesus based on the self-validating nature of unconditional love as the ultimate good, the highest understanding of love. Love has always been our most important ideal and the defining feature of what it means to be truly human. And most of us get that the feature of “unconditional” is the logical reach for the best of love. We understand this from our experience with imperfect family, friends, and neighbors. We understand that our unconditional response to their failure is the best of being human, the highest form of love. And knowing that, we then logically project such love out to deity as the Ultimate Good, the Ultimate Love.

And whatever we project onto deity, we understand is to be taken to the utmost reach of that thing, to transcendent nature and status in deity- as in infinitely above and beyond the human, infinitely better than the best that we can imagine. The God beyond God.

And similar to Jesus, most of us understand that human speculation on the metaphysical has always been central to the human impulse for meaning across history, to the human quest to understand and explain reality and life.

I won’t rehash the argument that speculation on the metaphysical also dominates so much of materialist philosophy/science today, where people driven by their impulse to meaning also “cross the science/philosophy boundary”, according to Sabine Hossenfelder (“Lost In Math”). Some form of speculation on the metaphysical is always necessary to understand and explain what exists. Hence the unproven speculations on “multi-verse theory, Self-Organizing Principle”, and so on.

Notes on “Eye for eye” retaliatory responses, Wendell Krossa

Retaliation renders us all petty, small-spirited when we should be great human spirits like Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, we have this deforming impulse to retaliate that renders us petty and small, like kids in a sandbox throwing sand at one another, crying “He/she started it”. Retaliation renders us even animal-like. We saw this petty retaliation demonstrated publicly and unashamedly by Donald Trump over past years, who unapologetically boasted of hitting back at enemies 10 times as hard as they hit him. Most of us have learned to be more subtle in our expressions of retaliation.

But then we saw even worse forms of obsessive retaliation from media who lived daily to vilify and humiliate the Orange Monster that they had manufactured to alarm the public. Media retaliated and vilified Trump nonstop in the pettiest of ways over years with pulled-out-of-context exaggerations of his comments, and outright distortions and lies. The late-night comedians joined the retaliatory mobs with mockery and slander that no longer resembled any form of comedy that all could enjoy.

We are all susceptible to the pettifying(?) impact of retaliation. As a friend illustrates with regard to marriage- If one spouse feels that the other has cooled in expressing affection, then the miffed spouse will retaliate by cooling expression of affection also, doing so almost subconsciously (passive aggressively). Its all so subhuman. But we all struggle with this petty, dehumanizing impulse.

Posts to discussion group: Wendell Krossa

Comment on Google AI not showing white people:

“This (see link below) is beyond unbelievable parody (deliberate exaggeration for comic effect), beyond lunacy… Commentators fail for words to describe this stuff… commonly terming stuff like this as “insanity, lunacy, craziness, madness…” etc. As Shellenberger and others warn- this is all part of the new totalitarianism that will be worse than any before. It’s about mind control through all sorts of public media forums, not just body control. Just ask yourself- are you afraid to say varied things in public now?? Do you self-censor?

“The new Google AI has built-in, by its creators, the extremist lunacy of DEI racism. From the world’s largest search engine company now taken over by this insanity… Just note the first minute or so of this “Timcast IRL” podcast…. Gutfeld and others have also covered this.

“But here is the larger point to all these postings from Shellenberger, Taibbi, Greenwald, and so many other independents, moderate liberals, and conservatives…. They are all warning us basically about the resurgence of long-game Marxism now coming to fruition… that was Nial Ferguson’s point (among others), that 60s Marxists saw they could not win public support democratically so they went backdoor into the US education system to takeover by gaining access to teaching positions to then indoctrinate generations of students. Success. Just as the Chinese leaders state they are playing the long-game approaches to weakening the West.

“And this new collectivism comes at us through varied fronts- ESG for business (another backdoor approach because they cannot democratically win public support), climate alarmism demanding world centralized control (under UN) of all economies to coercively install “The Great Reset” (WEF- where Chrystia Freeland is a board member and Mark Carney is Trudeau’s chief economic advisor- just for you Canadians to know)…

“And another front is via the new collectivism now defined more by race than by a capital-owning class but still the same old oppressor/oppressed, victimizer/victim classification of Marxism, and on and on… lots of diverse approaches but all pushing the fundamental collectivism of Marxism which in turn is just primitive tribalism gone extreme.

“I will soon post on my site a collection of quotes from Richard Landes of apocalyptic millennial notes on how these primitive religious ideas shaped Marxism, Nazism, and are now shaping environmentalism.

“Just beware of the big background picture of what is going on in our societies. This is the great threat to our freedom today. The battle for freedom is never over…Read the short history “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”. Great summary of why collectivists never give up despite endless failures of their system.”

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

Another:

“Here is Gutfeld’s commentary on the Google Gemini AI…. Again, this just illustrates one strand of a larger crusade of something that has now permeated all areas of our societies and is directly undermining the Western Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, Enlightenment values and principles, and the science revolution that have given the world the freedom that all value today. Douglas Murray covered much of this in his “War on the West”, as others are also covering…. Shellenberger, Taibbi, and many more…”

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

This below is not my insight alone- i.e. That race/skin color is now the defining marker of which collective you belong to. Other public commentators have made this point. A “brilliant” new move by the collectivists.

A new surge of Marxism, just the same old collectivist tribalism: Wendell Krossa

The new resurging Marxism pushing its way to totalitarian domination in our societies is still the same old collectivism and tribalism, where all citizens are denied unique individuality and subjected to some collective group and reductively defined by that collective. In the old collectivisms of Communism/Socialism the defining categories were “capitalist owners/oppressors” contrasted with “oppressed peasants/proletariat”. People were collectively categorized by property ownership, wealth, and social class. But not so much now. Categorization in a collective is now based more on skin color, race markers.

Its still the same old tribal dualism of oppressor/oppressed, or victim/victimizer, but with new prominent defining features, not so much categorized by capital ownership and wealth but by race. Hence, a new form of discrimination, known as the “reverse racism” that is Woke racism where there is “no form of being white that is good”. This new racist Marxism (Woke Marxism, Woke Progressivism) comes at us through diverse new fronts, notably via DEI and one of its lead theorizers, Robin DiAngelo, who stated in her book “White Fragility” (quoted by Douglas Murray in War on the West) that she rejects the individual and individual characteristics to define people collectively. “I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism- I am generalizing”. She views whites in total as an oppressor collective- the “white collective”.

No individual “diversity, inclusion, or equity” for whites.

https://www.dal.ca/news/2020/09/01/robin-diangelo-s–white-fragility–ignores-the-differences-withi.html

The old tribalism presented as so-called “new” in creative new versions of collectivist dualisms.

So also, the leaders of BLM came out as Marxist.

Its all the same old dualism, tribalism of oppressor/oppressed.

Other comment… Wendell Krossa

Whether Russians imprisoning and murdering dissenters, or the US intelligence agencies and politicians trying to silence dissenting voices of opponents (i.e. exposed in the research and reporting of Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others)- authoritarians/totalitarians try to eliminate dissent, try to shut down the exposure of their corruption of democratic principles.

There are no more dangerous people in societies than those who believe that they are on the righteous side of a great existential battle of unchallengeable good against an intolerable evil that must be violently purged, even exterminated, in order to “save the world, to save democracy”. These apocalyptic millennialists have so exaggerated the nature of their opponents as threats to all that is good, so demonized and dehumanized the disagreeing others as such a great threat, that all measures are justifiable to save the world, including “coercive, totalitarian purification”. Democracy be damned. It is too messy and slow and the catastrophic end of days is too imminent. There is no more time for debate, discussion, argument…

Just look at the language used daily in media to frame the great battle and the irredeemable nature of the “enemy” that refuses to bow to the dominant Woke Progressivism narrative of today- i.e. the endless smears over past years that disagreeing others, whether conservatives, independents, or fellow liberals lacking similar revolutionary zeal for Woke Progressivism, all such dissenters are “fascists, racists, Right-wingers, white supremacists, Russian disinformation agents, promoters of hate speech….” and on and on. Add the ongoing projects to criminalize all such disagreeing others, to ban them from participation in democracy.

And this interesting comment on anxiety as selfishness- “Emma Stone says anxiety is ‘a very selfish condition’”, Lauryn Overhultz, Feb. 22, 2024

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/emma-stone-says-anxiety-very-selfish-condition

Jordan Peterson said something similar in that over the last 20 years psychology has admitted to ruining this latest generation of young people, immensely harming them by making them view themselves as the center of everything, making their feelings their primary concern- how do I feel, am I upset, and so on… creating an intense focus on themselves and how they feel…. (intensely aware of being triggered, offended, slighted, etc.).

“Anxiety is a “selfish condition,” actress Emma Stone noted while talking about her character in the Oscar-nominated film “Poor Things….”

“And part of the nature of anxiety is that you’re always watching yourself,” she continued. “In some ways – this is horrible to say – it’s a very selfish condition to have. Not to insult other people with anxiety – I still have it – but it’s because you’re thinking about yourself a lot. You’re thinking about, ‘What’s going to happen to me? What have I said? What have I done?'”

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (former physician to the Queen) and Jordan Peterson both hit on something that is a potent “cognitive therapy” response to anxiety/depression- i.e. to learn to focus on others and their needs. Go into all situations thinking of others and how you can help them, benefit them, ask them about themselves and their problems, make some sacrifice to help them. When we focus on our problems and feelings, we just intensify our own issues, making them worse. Counter that by learning to focus on others and how we might help or benefit others.

This is what a “bubble of self-delusion” looks like. “I’m not insane, everyone else is”. And, among other comments by Trudeau, this alarming bit- “There are massive changes that need to take place in our media landscape, and government can create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” Trudeau said. That is what an authoritarian argues when he wants to silence any dissenting opinions. And Trudeau’s comment that “people vote for things not in their best interest”. There are no more dangerous people in society than elites who believe that they alone know what is best for all others and will coerce others to submit to their authoritarian schemes.

This is the guy who characterized and demonized the Trucker’s protest as “Nazis and white supremacist terrorists”, among other smears. And yes, he later weakly walked some of that back. But this below shows that he has learned nothing.

“FIRST READING: Trudeau claims he’s not an ‘eastern bastard,’ Albertans ‘fooled’ into disliking him: The prime minister also said the Canadian media was under attack by ‘conspiracy theorists’”, Tristan Hopper, Feb. 23, 2024

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trudeau-claims-hes-not-an-eastern-bastard-albertans-fooled-into-disliking-him

“In a brief trip to Alberta on Wednesday, one of the few scheduled appointments for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to pop into the studio of Edmonton podcast host Ryan Jespersen….

“The parts of the interview that got the most play on social media was when Trudeau embarked on lengthy explanations of how he is the province’s true economic saviour…

“Trudeau absolutely refuses to acknowledge that voters don’t like him…

“Trudeau is facing poll numbers so catastrophic that there’s been few precedents in his lifetime…

“The host was careful to note that not only are the Liberals facing a “bloodbath” at the next election, but that Trudeau’s personal likeability is in free fall. Against all this, Trudeau did not once concede that the polls might have a point, or that his government should change course.

“The surveys were either wrong (“polls had me behind in 2015,” he said), or they were driven by partisan ignorance. Said Trudeau: “people have realized it is easy to instrumentalize anger and outrage, and get people to vote in ways that are not necessarily in their best interest.”

“He said Albertans are being ‘fooled’ into not supporting him…

“But Trudeau argued at length to Jespersen that he is more attuned to Alberta interests than its own industries or even its own government.

““I don’t think the oil industry has had the back of oilsands workers,” he said. He also accused Premier Smith’s government of “ideological opposition against doing things that are good for workers.”

The gist of Trudeau’s claim is that oil is fast becoming an unprofitable commodity, and that Alberta won’t have a prosperous future unless they sign onto his vision of net-zero….

“The prime minister also implied that Albertans would voluntarily be abandoning oil extraction for alternative energy if not for their provincial government standing in the way. “Governments should get out of the way of Albertans innovating and creating that better future. If you can build a pipeline for oilsands oil, you can build a pipeline for hydrogen,” he said….

“The Canadian media is under attack by conspiracy theorists…

“A running theme in the interview is that Canadians oppose Trudeau or his government largely due to misinformation. “Everyone out there is blaming us for everything that’s going wrong, including Putin deciding to invade Ukraine, or climate change or what have you,” he said at the interview’s outset, before blaming right-wing politicians who are getting people “riled up.”

“In the interview’s final minutes, Trudeau spoke of a “deliberate undermining of mainstream media” by “conspiracy theorists” who are out to “prevent people from agreeing on a common set of facts….”

““There are massive changes that need to take place in our media landscape, and government can create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” he said.”

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Harper gets close to nailing the root of the problem with bad actors…. push further Stephen…

Three things to structure human societies in order to deliver the most good for the most people- the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, the institutions outlined by William Bernstein in “Birth of Plenty”, and the Classic Liberal principles set forth by Daniel Hannan in “Inventing Freedom”.

Go after the real monster and enemy in life. Its not differing others in the human family: A re-enforcement of the proper orientation of the hero’s quest that shapes our individual human story, Wendell Krossa

A critically important point to getting human existence right- the real focus of human struggle, achievement, and hence, the real purpose of human life and story…. Its about the inner battle with our animal inheritance, understanding the real monster and enemy in life.

What constitutes our inner monster and enemy? It’s a two-faceted reality- i.e. the inherited animal drives and the mythical themes/ideas that were created by our ancestors to explain, guide, and validate these drives.

(1) The main impulses of the animal inheritance can be summarized as the “evil triad” of drives to (a) tribal separation from differing others, (b) domination of weaker others, and (c) punitive destruction of “enemy” others.

(2) The ideas created to incite, guide, and validate such drives are best summarized as the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. See a rehearsal of these just below…

The true battle in life was affirmed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s comment that “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts”.

I would refine that further to argue that the real battle of life is the inner battle against our inherited animal drives, against the monstrous ideas that incite and validate these animal drives.

Our inner battle is the essential substance of the hero’s quest. Here again are some of the fundamental elements of this quest: We go forth to confront and struggle with our personal monster/enemy. We gain insights from our struggle and learn lessons that we can pass on to help others in their struggles. We are also wounded in our struggle, but we get help from a wise person (a weapon to slay our monster/enemy). Through our struggle we learn how to achieve human maturity, we learn how to tower in stature and become what we are supposed to be as fully human. And we find true liberation in conquering our animal passions, and thereby achieve real success in life.

The outer battles and struggles of life provide the arena in which we do our learning, and test our ever-developing ability to conquer the darker angels of our nature, the inherited animal impulses.

This most important achievement of all in life- i.e. conquering the inner animal in order to live as authentically human- is a project that is accessible and attainable by everyone equally. Success in the hero’s quest is not something dependent on wealth, advanced education, high social status, and other factors that often limit varied forms of social success to a privileged few in our hierarchically structured societies. The inner struggle against the inherited animal, and success in this struggle, levels everyone to the same equal opportunity in the most important achievement of all- becoming truly human.

And then… related

It is critically important to engage the science, ideological positions, policies, and outcomes of climate alarmism with the best alternative science, ideology, and policy (i.e. Classic Liberalism). Similarly, we seek resolutions to all the factors involved in relation to terrorist groups and the problem of terrorist violence- whether economic, political, or social factors.

But what is really most influential in the mix of such factors? I would argue that deeply embedded background religious beliefs contribute a prominent influence for most people. Such beliefs tie people to deeply embedded archetypal realities, inherited impulses, profoundly felt emotional needs, and the desires related to those impulses and their validating ideas/archetypes.

Pay close attention to the belief systems behind the public statements and claims of any notable group or movement. Note, for example, what inciting and validating beliefs are behind those shouts of “Allahu Akbar” as Hamas terrorists murdered innocents and most certainly felt validated by their God in doing that. What beliefs were behind the “Praise/glory be to God” as Calvin and associates had fellow Christian Servetus burned at the stake? And similarly what beliefs were behind Nancy Pelosi’s claim that “Mother Earth is angry with us” as she scolded us over our use of fossil fuels? These are ultimate validations in the background of our narratives and minds. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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The burying (and recovery) of humanity’s single most profound insight

Here is more probing of the background influences that incite alarmism crusades like climate alarmism, a “profoundly religious movement”. The very same mythical influences have incited, guided, and validated endless eruptions of religious violence across history, like the ISIS/Hamas crusades. The mass-death movements of Marxism, Nazism and general environmental alarmism have all been shaped by these same influences. Again, historians have detailed the influence of apocalyptic millennial ideas on Marxism, Nazism, Declinism, and environmental alarmism (see, for example, the research of Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, and David Redles, among others).

Aside from specific authors mentioned, this site draws on general “Historical Jesus/Jesus Seminar” research (with quibbles) and more specifically on “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research.

“Greatest coverup, retreat, betrayal, fraud, deception, disinformation,…. in history”, Wendell Krossa

This is an added note on the striking contrast between the theology of Jesus and Paul, detailed below in the essay “Separating Diamonds from Dung” (Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s blunt appraisal of the contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul).

“Greatest” because of the profound outcomes in human society from the influence of these two starkly contrasting historical icons, and their messages, that are commonly used to inspire, guide, and validate human behavior. The outcomes can be contrasted as (1) one validates ongoing retaliatory cycles of “eye for eye” vengeance, and the other (2) urges liberation from such cycles that have produced endless violence and war, opting instead for the freedom to break such cycles and explore alternatives that encourage people to promote conflict resolution, peace, and cooperation with differing others/”enemies”.

The influence of these two historical icons arises from the fact that they have long functioned among the most prominent of authorities that people appeal to in shaping their thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. That recognized influence affirms the critical importance of understanding the nature of the contradicting themes that these two promoted, and the outcomes of their different gospels.

Insert:

https://clas.charlotte.edu/paul-and-jesus-how-the-apostle-transformed-christianity/

Quote from above link: “The Apostle Paul is the single most influential figure in human history, suggests UNC Charlotte Religious Studies Professor James Tabor in his latest book “Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity”. Tabor argues that Paul has done more to shape all we think about almost everything than anyone else. In terms of influence, Paul trumps even the great “founders,” whether Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, or Mohammed.”

In probing the contrast between Jesus and Paul, I hope readers will get some sense of how we have been robbed of the full potency of a critical historical insight and ideal that, more than anything comparable, presents the potential to liberate us from our worst impulses. And fortunately, despite the larger distorting, burying context of the retaliatory Christ myth, many have lasered in on the Jesus insights anyway and found the offered liberation from retaliatory ethics/responses, a liberation to engage authentically mature humanity. Both Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy understood the issues involved, as many others also have. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Background influences: What is behind the dominant Declinism ideology of today?

See Richard Landes’ comments below on “prime divider” societies- the factors that validate the elite domination of commoners. He then notes “civil polity” as the democratic principles developed to counter prime divider organization of societies. The new material starts at “The dangerous reaction of Apocalyptic prophets to the inevitable failure of their apocalyptic millennium crusades (repeated patterns in alarmism movements)”.

More “sitesplainin”:

There’s a big background picture to our societies that I relate most things to. Prominent in that big picture is the “most dominant and influential” narrative today of Declinism- the mistaken yet widespread belief that things are getting worse, that life is declining toward collapse and ending- toward apocalypse (see YouGov survey, for example, in “Ten Global Trends”, and full historical detail in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, by Arthur Herman).

Consequent to Declinism (arousing the survival impulse in populations), there is the equally widespread belief that we need to engage some project for “salvation” (to “save the world”). The salvation scheme common to all apocalyptic millennial crusades is the demand to purge some “evil” that is purportedly destroying the world (i.e. today the claimed evil threat to the world is industrial capitalist society). The purging of the evil prepares the way to instal the new utopian system that will be the salvation of humanity and the world. These beliefs have shaped Marxism, Nazism, and today shape environmentalism, notably climate alarmism.

The above themes then point to a deeper layer of beliefs that shaped the Declinism narrative, to ideas that are even more fundamentally influential in the big picture background- i.e. the religious beliefs that have long dominated human meta-narratives and still do today, whether in religious or “secular” versions. Declinism historian Arthur Herman details several such religious beliefs, notably the myth of a “lost paradise”, the necessity for a “violent purging” as in an apocalypse, and some form of redemption. These more primitive ideas have shaped the Declinism ideology that dominates world consciousness today.

The problem is that these ideas deform consciousness and personality (psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”) and thereby harm societies in profoundly damaging ways. They incite, guide, and validate people’s base impulses to tribalism (engaging “righteous battles against evil enemies”), to domination of others, and to the punitive destruction of enemy others. The harmful outcomes of such ideas continues because people continue to base their behavior on their beliefs.

The French Farmer’s protests (see below). Populist revolts against Net Zero decarbonization. What is going on behind these public demonstrations? Add here the military guy who, during the ISIS outbreak of violence in Syria (2014), argued that you can tamp down these eruptions of insanity with military force, but then they will just continue to erupt. You also have to go after the beliefs/ideas behind such things. Wendell Krossa

“Let me take you down to where I’m going to…” (a paraphrase of the opening to “Strawberry Fields”, Beatles).

I look beyond the public presentation of these varied social eruptions to larger background issues that influence the protagonists and antagonists- notably, the meta-narrative themes that influence elites to undemocratically push destructive programs like Net Zero decarbonization that is destroying societies to “save the world”. The horrific damage from embracing apocalyptic narratives has now become undeniable. Look what just occurred in Sri Lanka (i.e. the collapse of agriculture in 2022- a contemporary repeat of the Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-57, also the outcome of embracing the apocalyptic millennial pathology). Note also the mounting damage in Britain, Germany, California, and elsewhere from decarbonization zealotry.

Fortunately for all of us, “populist” pushback is also emerging across the West. Many are refusing to cow to the elites pushing destructive policies on societies and are demanding the recovery of their freedom of choice.

My argument is that these alarmism crusades, and their destructive salvation schemes, are driven, ultimately, by primitive mythical themes, whether the crusade leaders acknowledge those deeper influences or not. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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The best insights from across history to shape new narratives

See below: “Affirming the most profound insights presented across history to inform human narratives and consciousness.” It’s the Daddy thing, to allay fears and reassure that its going to be alright. The true state of life is good and getting better. The world is not getting worse and we are not all gonna die in some climate apocalypse.

Site perspective: Appearing a bit tough on one side… Wendell Krossa

Recent comment below focuses more on liberal/left side of our societies for its notable unleashing of the totalitarian impulse. The material below is just acknowledging Christine Brophy’s point on “the current dominance of progressive liberalism” all across our societies- in universities, news media, political parties, in the intelligence agencies and military, domination in regard to social issues, domination of Social media, and domination in public story-telling media (i.e. Hollywood), etc.

Both sides of our basic society divide- left and right- have their struggles with the totalitarian impulse. A good balancing point was made by David Boaz (Libertarianism: A Primer), as he commented on the US situation, stating that Republicans need to embrace more freedom with regard to social issues like women’s rights and choice, gay rights, etc. And Democrats need to embrace more freedom in regard to economic issues.

Dems, notably the far-left Woke Progressive types, need to stop promoting the enslavement of individuals to collectivist projects and policies. Stop using excessive state taxation and regulations to intervene in the lives of citizens and thereby control them. Trust and respect average people to know what is best for themselves. Protect their self-determination and individual rights and freedoms. Protect “live and let live”, but not to the “toleration of intolerance” as per some multi-cultural policies.

I try to maintain a fiercely independent status, Classic Liberal/Libertarianish, much like Louis Zurcher’s “The Mutable Self” living in open process, embracing ongoing change and development. And meaning- not placing primary identity in “objects” like nationality, race, ideology, religion, gender, or other. Our primary identity markers ought to be our equal status as members of the one human family, all descendants of the same “Mitochondrial Eve” in East Africa, and all possessing the main identity markers of a human self, human spirit, and human mind/consciousness.

Maintaining a focus on our more fundamental identity markers will help keep us from yielding too much influence to the more peripheral things (peripheral on the human genome) that many use to incite tribalism and divide populations.

And more than the totalitarian threat that is coming prominently from the left today, there is the far greater threat from the “evil triad” of animal impulses that are deeply embedded inside all of us- i.e. (1) the impulse to discriminating and excluding tribalism, (2) the impulse to subjugate and dominate others as enemies, and (3) the impulse to retaliate with punitive destruction of “enemy” others.

This is the real battle of good against evil in life. Its an intensely personal inner battle that each of us has to fight and win if we really aspire to succeed in life. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Liberation from the animal to become human.

Below: The human story is about the historical exodus of humanity from animal existence to become human. Each one of us lives a microcosm story of this meta-exodus to freedom. We do well to understand what it means to be animal and, in contrast, what it means to be human.

From Retaliation To Unconditional Love: The Narrative of Human Exodus from Animal Existence, Wendell Krossa (revised Jan. 2024)

(Note: This essay is the outcome of several decades of interaction with a valued friend, a great human spirit, and probably the finest theological mind to have ever graced this planet, Bob Brinsmead, notably with material of his such as “The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam”.)

The foundational story of humanity is the story of liberation from our animal past. This is more than just the narrative of our physical/geographical exodus out of Africa (modern humans leaving Africa over the period of roughly 200-50,000 years ago). Our defining story is about our exodus out of our past animal existence and our subsequent struggle to become more human or humane beings. Our subsequent history has very much been a quest to understand what it means to be human, what new human values and practises define and express authentic humanity.

This is an intensely inner journey or quest of the human spirit, what Solzhenitsyn described when he stated that the real battle of good against evil is not an outer battle against physical “enemies’ but rather an inner battle that “runs down the center of every human heart”. The human struggle to make an exodus from animal existence is a personal adventure (psychological, social, spiritual/philosophical) that each of us engages against our individual experience with inherited animal drives. This quest has set us on a uniquely different trajectory from animal behavior and life.

Our exodus from the animal and our struggle toward a more human mode of living is the engine that drives humanity’s overall trajectory of progress toward a better future- a progress that is fueled by the primal impulse to find something better. This story reveals the meaning and purpose of human existence in our endeavor to humanize all life. It is a story that responds to those profound human questions of Why we exist? or What purpose are we here to engage or fulfill? It explains the millennia-long quest of people to understand what it means to be human and to live as human.

Our story begins in an animal past shaped prominently by the drives of domination (alpha male/female), small band or tribal exclusion, and destructive retaliation. This triad of prominent animal drives illustrates the worst of animal reality and existence. It is the dark past that provides the greater background context against which the wonder of our becoming more fully human appears all the brighter as humanity emerged and developed gradually over multiple-millennia.

Joseph Campbell (“Myths To Live By”) has similarly noted the exodus of humanity leaving the animal past for human existence in stating that human story is about learning to conquer the “animal passions” in order to live as maturely human (see also “The Power of Myth”, pages xiii, 104, 144, 191, 201, 218-19, 223, 235). The struggle to overcome our animal past and its base features is engaged on the individual level as well as by humanity as a whole. Campbell also framed human story as going out on a great adventure or quest, confronting and conquering monsters, learning lessons and gaining insights, undergoing a disintegration of the old animal and then reintegrating around the new human, and then returning with insights gained to benefit others in our societies.

In our personal stories, the element of “struggle to overcome” arises from the fact that the animal past continues into our human existence in the form of a residual animal brain with its animal-like impulses that continue to influence our thinking, emotions, responses, and behavior. We see this in the fact that people continue to act like animals when they exclude one another, dominate others, or punitively retaliate against others. And these base animal features have even been embedded in our belief systems where we employ ideas/themes to maintain and validate the animal impulses to the detriment of our efforts to be more human. Nothing has been more critical to maintaining the animal than the embedding of animal features in deity- the ultimate ideal and authority at the core of human narratives.

Retaliation, in particular, is the one notable feature that brings the worst of animal existence into human life. Musonius Rufus (Roman philosopher, circa 30-100 AD) expressed the animal nature of retaliation well, “For to scheme to bite back the biter and to return evil for evil is the act not of a human being but of a wild beast” (http://unsafeharbour.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/ancient-quotations-returning-evil-with-good/). Retaliation is humanity behaving at its animal worst. Establishing retaliation as a feature of our animal past helps expose its bestial nature, its essential inhumanity.
To fully sense the animal nature of retaliation, think of dogs snarling and snapping angrily at one another on a street.

One of the more damaging mistakes that early people made was to project this destructive feature of animal existence- retaliation- onto early views of gods. They created the understanding of early gods as greater dominating realities that were threatening, maliciously retributive, and destructively punitive. Deity as something that would retaliate violently against human failure or sin. In doing that they created super monsters for people to fear. Something that would harm you in this life as well as in the after-life.

Over subsequent time the feature of retaliation in divinity was refined with further developed legal categories as “righteous justice”, proper and fair punishment of evil, or just retribution. Retaliation would further be developed into systems of human justice as deserved payback, or what we know as “eye for eye” justice. Consequently, retaliation makes a line down through history to become the legal reality today of justice as punitive retribution- the “just” consequence for bad behavior.

Note this example definition of punitive retribution: Read the rest of the opening comment here

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People behave according to what they believe. Even if those beliefs lead to their destruction.

Though its not his stated intention, Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History” shows how primitive mythology was secularized for the modern era in the ideology of Declinism. The idea of decline (i.e. life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending) has become the most dominant and influential theme in the modern world. Life declining is a central feature of apocalyptic.

This is among the most primitive, irrational, and distorting of mythology manufactured by ancient minds.

Richard Landes’ Preface to Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”.

Note- Landes uses the term “millennialism” but that term should be extended more comprehensively to “apocalyptic millennialism” as that better expresses the narrative that incites to mass-death outcomes with its mix of elements that play on both fear and hope. Or even better- “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” as the summary of the larger complex of primitive themes that have been so destructive to humanity across history. Hence, my little bracketed edits to Landes’ term.

Quotes:

“Historian Norman Cohn sought the origins of the two most devastating millennial movements of his day- Communism and Nazism- in the millennial impulse most medieval historians had generally ignored…

“(Apocalyptic millennialism) is not marginal, it is a widespread belief system shared by many people, especially in the monotheistic cultures, but also quite notable in Buddhism and Taosm (I would add it is also notable in Hinduism with its great cycles of rise and then decline to apocalyptic ending, WK)… episodically bursting forth in the characteristic dynamics of an apocalyptic episode…

“(Apocalyptic millennial) phenomena survive all forms of secularization… not only undiminished but intensified…

“(Apocalyptic millennial) movements play a far greater role in the dynamics of modernity than most historians have imagined…” (end of Landes’ Preface).

Then Mendel: “It was through Christianity that the Apocalypse became part of our culture”. He notes that apocalyptic has had a long and violent history. “The apocalypse is a self-fulfilling prophesy. It promotes the suffering it predicts”.

My conclusion: Apocalyptic is God executing a final destruction and extermination of God’s enemies. It is no wonder that across history, believers in this myth have tried to replicate the same exterminating violence against their enemies, validated by God’s own example of violence. See Harold Ellens/Zenon Lotufo quotes below on the long-term human practise of validating behavior with appeal to beliefs in divinity, basing ethics on theology. People trying to model their lives according to what they believe God is like. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Read Jordan Peterson below. He is pissed. Really, really pissed at the creeping totalitarianism in Canada and elsewhere. Go Jordan, go.

Michael Shellenberger and his colleagues have crafted this excellent statement defending freedom that is under attack from within our societies…

https://westminsterdeclaration.org/

This is why they put forth the Westminster Declaration on freedom of speech…

https://public.substack.com/p/this-is-the-most-terrifying-graph

Note also in relation to this what psychologists term “concept creep”, where the former category of “hate speech” has been extended further and further to now include the disagreeing opinions and speech of others, even comedy (note the Dave Chappelle episode), that makes some feel “uncomfortable… feeling threatened, upset…”. The minority of hyper-sensitive and easily-triggered people are trying to criminalize the disagreeing opinions and speech of majority others. Is this not totalitarianism?

More from freedom warrior Michael Shellenberger– “This video can stop totalitarianism”, Jan.15, 2024

https://public.substack.com/p/this-video-can-stop-totalitarianism

Quotes:

“Imagine for a moment that you wanted to seize control over the Internet and put in place a system of mass censorship worldwide. How would you do it?

“You wouldn’t advertise your intentions. You’d hide them. You’d claim there was a rise in hate speech and misinformation and that it was hurting vulnerable people.

“You wouldn’t take on powerful interests. You’d pick on individual citizens. You’d say that they were on the verge of committing real-world violence.

“And you wouldn’t start in a big nation. You’d find some small country to start. You’d get their politicians to go out on a limb for your agenda.

“That’s precisely what’s happening. Politicians in Ireland are, at this moment, attempting to ram through legislation that would allow the police to invade the homes of ordinary citizens, search their phones and computers, and throw them in prison for “hate speech.”

Intro note to comment below-

Note carefully the ideas in the reposted/revised articles below, and the impulses and patterns that they incite during alarmism outbreaks. Just be clear- these ideas that continue to dominate human narratives today, notably the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of themes, are derivative from primitive mythologies, later embraced by world religions, and now embraced in the “secular ideological” versions of our contemporary world. They continue as the most dominant and influential ideas of today’s narratives, still inciting the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. We are seeing the same old outcomes that affirm Arthur Mendel’s point that apocalyptic is “the most violent and destructive idea in history”. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Terrify yourself with an apocalyptic scenario. Now, with survival impulse incited, engage a “righteous battle” to save the world. You are such a hero.

Triads. No, not the Chinese ones. Just as memory aids, Wendell Krossa

Repeated themes on this site:

Three bads (animal impulses)- tribal exclusion, domination of others, punitive destruction of others.

Three goods (human impulses)- full inclusion of all, equal freedom and rights of all, restorative treatment of failure.

Three major distortions of the true state of life- “lost original paradise, life declining toward apocalypse, redemption/salvation via instantaneous coercive purging of exaggerated threat…”

This site takes the primal meaning impulse of humanity seriously and is committed to responding with the best of insights from across history. Hence, the unapologetic embrace of the metaphysical element in human narratives (long dominant in human narratives as the embodiment of ultimate ideals, ultimate authority), along with a lot of physical evidence on the true state of life (rising, improving, not declining toward something worse). Inform narratives with insights from all areas of life.

A critical project for our time- Counter destructive myths like “apocalyptic millennialism” that endlessly re-erupt today, often in “secular ideological” versions, even scientific. Recognize the prominence of this mythology today in both religious and secular belief systems. Acknowledge the destructive outcomes of this mythology in salvation schemes like decarbonization. Then offer alternatives to shape entirely new narratives that affirm the better angels of our nature and promote better outcomes.

Create an exaggerated monster. Scare yourself silly. And then aflush with virtue, you can convince yourself that you must heroically engage a righteous war to “save the world”. Wendell Krossa

Michele Obama is “terrified”.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/08/michelle-obama-terrified-2024-election/72153207007/

So also other Democrats are similarly terrified. Why? Well, they have created a grotesquely exaggerated monster, so irredeemably evil that he threatens “the end of democracy”.

When you have insistently defined your chief opponent as “Hitler… Nazi…. Fascist tyrant…. Racist… will cause the end of democracy”, there is then no further worse extreme element of threat that you can appeal to. You have reached for the worst.

Progressives also claim that their opponents further threaten the end of life itself due to their advocacy for continued use of fossil fuels that alarmist Progressives claim will cause a climate catastrophe that will be the end of the world.

Having defined and smeared all those who disagree with you with such claims and terms, you now cannot back away to a more rational and sane perspective on your opponents. You have painted yourself into a corner with those horrifically exaggerated threats. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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