Keep an eye on this: The next wave of apocalyptic panic-mongering
Alarmist prophets are trying to incite fear over AI (artificial intelligence) as the next great threat bringing on an apocalypse. How do we ensure that AI does not become another ideologically-biased tool for internet censorship? My recommendation- Build Classic Liberal principles and practises into AI. Guidelines that work to protect the freedom and rights of all individuals equally. And to prevent the totalitarian centralization of power in governing elites, as per all collectivism models- distribute power among competing individuals or among competing social institutions (checks and balances against centralizing power and control). And so on… See Daniel Hannan’s great history of Classic Liberalism in “Inventing Freedom”.
Climate alarmism is a “profoundly religious crusade”, the latest historical eruption of apocalyptic “madness of crowds” contagion. It distorts science entirely. Try to understand the archetypal themes driving such crusades. It will make many uncomfortable to realize that the defining themes of highly revered religious icons are largely responsible for inciting and validating such crusades.
Here in the link below is a good response to Bill Rees’ “limited resources” fallacy as presented in his Ecological Footprint model (“limited resources” has been long known as “limited good” in the anthropology of primitive tribal existence). Rees discounts human creativity and problem-solving abilities that overcome all resource limits.
Julian Simon in “Ultimate Resource” explained how human creativity responds to apparent resource shortages. When such a resource shortage appears somewhere then prices of that resource will rise in response to the shortage and that prompts further exploration. With improved technology (e.g. fracking) there will be the discovery of more sources of the scarce resource, or a shift to alternatives to that resource. The usual result is the discovery of ever more abundant sources and subsequently a return to decline in prices of the resource. Human intervention, as in the Biden administration blocking fossil fuel development, can severely distort this process.
https://www.humanprogress.org/reconsidering-spaceship-earth/
https://www.humanprogress.org/we-will-never-run-out-of-resources/
The fraudulent use of “ground temperatures” that is driving the current heatwave hysteria:
Note this account of current heatwave hysteria over normal warm summer days as revealing the rising desperation of climate apocalyptics. Alarmists are again trying to panic the public, because surveys reveal growing disillusionment with their endless fear-mongering (i.e. surveys showing declining support for climate alarmism salvation schemes like Net Zero decarbonization).
https://www.netzerowatch.com/heatwave-hysteria/?mc_cid=0afbec4cad&mc_eid=bbd9cad85f
Apocalyptics have long believed that they must take extreme measures to ensure the onset of the apocalypse when their prophesies of collapse and ending begin to show evidence of failure (the 100% failure rate of apocalyptic across history). Apocalyptics will take desperate measures even if it means destroying the very world that they claim to be saving. Examples of “saving the world by destroying it”: The Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-57, also the irrational and destructive decarbonization of today. Add the recent push for an Irish cattle cull and Dutch proposal to close thousands of farms. The Dutch farmers are major contributors to the world food supply.
Apocalyptic mythology distorts the true state of things, it incites the survival impulse and mind-deforming fear and this results in irrational responses in populations- i.e. the embrace of life-destroying salvation schemes as noted above.
Another on “trying to save the world by destroying it”. How does this differ from the Xhosa cattle slaughter as just another eruption of irrational apocalyptic lunacy?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/25/agri-absurdity-the-high-cost-of-saving-the-planet/
More on my challenge to Paul’s Christ myth– Wendell Krossa
I am fully aware (from long ago commitment to the Christ as a former member of Evangelical Christianity) of how offensive criticism of Paul’s Christ myth must appear to the true believer’s mind. Even blasphemous. I get the “true believer” feelings toward the Christ. And I am aware of the condemnations of those who abandon belief in the Christ- i.e. falling for the delusion and lies of Satan, giving way to demonic forces and heresy, destined for Hell, etc.
As stated before- My intention does not arise from some frivolously contrarian spirit trying to poke and upset or anger true believers. My motivation is to focus attention on the role that the Christ myth has played in keeping alive the pathology of apocalyptic in Western and world consciousness. It has arguably been the main factor re-enforcing the pathological myth of apocalyptic in human narratives over the past two millennia (apocalyptic as “the most violent and destructive idea in history” according to historian Arthur Mendel in Vision and Violence).
The darker features of Paul’s Christ epitomize, more than any other system of belief, the critical features in human narratives and consciousness that we need to challenge if we are to fully free ourselves from the curse of endless historical repeats of alarmism crusades that promote the following pathologies among people…
(1) the anti-humanism engendered by blaming humanity for ruining some imagined original paradise and causing life to subsequently decline toward something worse,
(2) the exaggeration, to apocalyptic-scale, of historically common natural world threats and the consequent fallacy of using such things to promote end-of-world apocalyptic scenarios,
(3) the incitement of animal impulses to tribally separate from and oppose others in “righteous wars against evil enemies” (all to “save the world” from the imminent end that the evil enemy is bringing to life),
(4) the incitement of the human survival impulse and subsequent pushing of frightened populations to embrace irrational and destructive salvation schemes,
(5) the incitement to solve problems with violence (“violent purging” of enemies as demanded to “save the world”- see the New Testament book of Revelation for detailed illustration of this), and more…
Our highest ideals and authorities- i.e. views of deities that embody our highest ideals- play powerful roles influencing our thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior (see again the comments of psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo below). And that “beliefs influencing behavior” role continues even in our contemporary “secular/ideological” systems of belief like the “profoundly religious” climate alarm crusade.
Endlessly rehashing primitive apocalyptic mythology will never produce good results as we are observing now in the devastating outcomes from Net Zero decarbonization (Note the consequences of Net Zero zealotry in Britain, Germany, and elsewhere- see regular reports on Net Zero Watch, the newsletter of the Global Warming Policy Forum).
Freedom from primitive archetypes, as embodied in the iconic Christ, is essential to the final stage of human liberation, the full liberation of consciousness/subconscious from enslaving ideas/themes that hinder our ability to live as fully human. Which is to say, sometimes we need to risk “blasphemy” in order to be fully free.
I argue here that the main themes of Paul’s Christ myth- the themes of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths- continue to dominate human narratives today, both religious and “secular”. And the outcomes of such archetypical themes continue to exert destructive influence on human consciousness and life.
Added note: Its not my evaluation and conclusion alone- The Christ myth of Paul, and its prominent influence, is most responsible for keeping the pathology of apocalyptic alive in Western consciousness.
Just to summarize the line of historical descent: The “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of themes can be found in scattered form throughout the earliest mythologies (Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc.). Note the myths of the paradisal city of Dilmun, subsequent ruin and loss of that paradise due to Enki’s “sin” of eating the 8 forbidden plants (the prototype of the later Adam/Eve myth). The Sumerian Flood myth as an early version of apocalyptic destruction and ending of life. Or the apocalyptic theme in Egyptian “Return to Chaos” and “Destruction of mankind” myths.
From there the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex descended, notably, down to Zoroaster’s apocalyptic that then shaped the main Western religious traditions- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And from mainly the Christian tradition, the themes of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” were reframed in the “secular” ideology of 19th Century Declinism that then birthed contemporary environmental alarmism and most notably today’s climate alarmism crusade (see historical detail on this in Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”).
Its always the same old primitivism dominating human narratives. Watch Hollywood’s fascination with these themes today in contemporary story-telling. The “flabbergasting” thing in this is to see young people today self-identifying as “secular… materialist… even atheist”, yet mouthing these very themes that render them indistinguishable from the Sumerian priests of 5,000 years ago preaching early versions of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex in the temples of that era.
A refresher…
Here’s a reposting (revised, updated) of the the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. My argument is that this complex has dominated human narratives across history and still dominates our meta-narratives today in both religious and secular versions, Wendell Krossa
I use the term “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” as a summary term for a larger complex of themes/ideas.
The fuller complex includes:
1. The myth of a better past- an original paradise or golden age, a perfect beginning to life on Earth (e.g. Dilmun, Eden).
2. The myth of human error (“original sin”), or human intention, that ruined the original paradise world. Humans purportedly became corrupt, greedy, destructive. They were rapacious invaders in an otherwise pure natural world (nature as goddess). Humanity was a “virus or cancer” on nature. Humanity did not belong here.
3. The myth that humans, in creating “nature-destroying” civilization, became responsible for causing the trajectory of life to decline toward something worse, toward collapse and ending.
4. The myth that humans were originally pure and strong (“Noble savage” mythology, original hunter/gatherers more “connected to nature”). This myth was embraced by Marxism and Nazism and more recently by environmentalism. Pure and strong early humans degenerated in civilization, especially in industrial civilization.
These ideas, in particular, re-enforce an intense anti-humanism and naturally raise questions as to how such pathological thinking impacts self-identity issues- i.e. contributing to the self-hatred, anxiety, depression, despair, nihilism that dominates modern consciousness.
5. With apocalyptic fully affirmed by these ideas of original perfection, subsequent loss of paradise, and decline toward catastrophic collapse and ending, the human survival impulse is then aroused, heightened. Then every extreme event in nature (normal and natural throughout all previous history) portends coming catastrophe, collapse, and ending. The exaggeration of catastrophism then shapes narratives. People are subsequently rendered susceptible to any promise of salvation/survival, no matter how irrational the scheme presented to them. This involves a callous, cruel playing with human hope.
It’s a simple equation used by alarmists… fear=control, the totalitarian’s favorite formula. Add also, the pathological idea that the destructive features of the natural world are expressions of some angered spirit or force behind life that is punishing people for their “sin”. This mythology intensifies the already unbearable psychic suffering from natural disasters, disease, accident, or predatory cruelty.
6. Salvation mythologies advocate a demanded atonement for sin, some sacrifice or payment, some form of suffering as redemptive. Note the recent urge to live with blackouts as one example of this myth of suffering as redemptive (part of the “de-development” movement, a return to primitivism in order to “save the world”).
https://www.foxnews.com/media/la-times-article-peak-climate-idiocy-occasional-blackout-greater-good
7. Salvation also demands “violent purging” of the thing that threatens life- some “enemy” or evil entity. Today those challenging and opposing decarbonization (“deniers… unbelievers”) are made the enemy to be purged. And CO2 has been made the chief marker of human evil and human threat (i.e. the CO2 emissions from the fossil fuels that power our “destructive civilization”).
8. Also key to apocalyptic alarmism salvation schemes is the claim that “imminence” demands urgency to embrace the salvation scheme. Apocalyptics re-enforce this imminence element by endlessly setting dates for the end-of-days, usually a few years or decades up ahead. Thus keeping people in a heightened state of alarm, keeping the survival impulse agitated.
9. Urgency then affirms the unleashing of the totalitarian impulse as “righteous…good… just”. There must be no more time allowed for democratic debate, discussion, skepticism, or dissent to the apocalyptic narrative and salvation plan. Such disagreement is demonized as “disinformation/misinformation” and is even criminalized as a dangerous threat to life. Note Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, trying to criminalize skeptical climate science in 2016.
10. Further, coercion, force, even violence is validated as necessary to solve the problem of “climate crisis”. Note again Zenon Lotufo and Harold Ellen’s comments that the ideal of “deity solving problems with violence” then sparks the same resort to violence in the adherents of such belief systems. The “belief shaping behavior” relationship is true in general of all the elements of apocalyptic belief systems.
11. And if the threat is purged from the world, then apocalyptics offer the promise of salvation to their true believers, salvation in the form of a restored paradise or newly installed millennial paradise (examples- Marxist communalism paradise, Nazi Millennial Reich).
Can you see the outline of these themes today in narratives like climate alarmism? The all-pervasive and harmful influence of the above themes is detectable widely throughout our public discourse. Pay careful attention because apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive idea in history (Arthur Mendel). This is true of the entire “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of themes.
Don’t despair. We have good alternatives to “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” mythology, alternatives that tell us the true state of the world. The alternatives tell us not to fear life as our hard work to improve our world has been successful. All the major indicators (forests, agricultural soils, land species, ocean fisheries) show improvement over the long term.
See “Inherited ‘bad myths’, and better alternatives” in sections below for a list of alternative ideas to the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex.
This good report from some of the best scientific minds working on climate today, Richard Lindzen and colleagues at co2coalition.org- “American Midwest and Climate Change: Life in America’s Breadbasket is Good and Getting Better.”
“Our report, American Midwest and Climate Change: Life in America’s Breadbasket is Good and Getting Better, was just published. In it, we provide the science that disputes the claims of ongoing and future climate catastrophes.
“We document that there is no climate crisis. In fact, we discover just the opposite. The ecosystems and agriculture in these ten Midwestern states are thriving and prospering partly because of modest warming and more CO2.
“Below is information provided by NOAA showing that maximum temperatures have declined since the Dust Bowl years of the late 1920s and 1930s and all the while CO2 was steadily increasing.
“We find that:
• High temperatures peaked 90 years ago.
• Recent temperatures are comparable to those nearly 100 years ago.
• Growing seasons are lengthening.
• Minimum winter temperatures are increasing (that is a good thing).
• There is a beneficial increase in precipitation.
• There is a decline in droughts, strongest tornadoes and heat-related deaths.
• Agricultural productivity has increased greatly.
“Further, we find that a transition to “net zero” for the Midwest would make no improvement to the environment and be prohibitively expensive.
“The cost to transition the 10 Midwestern states to so-called renewable power would cost more than $6 trillion, or $92,000 per capita. A theoretical effect of such a transition is calculated as averting 0.043⁰ C of warming by the year 2100, which translates to a cost of $14 trillion for each tenth degree of warming averted.” (see full report at link above)
This on Michael Gove’s comment to “relax the pace” of Net Zero decarbonization in The Telegraph of July 22, 2023- “Michael Gove warns against net zero ‘religious crusade’: Levelling Up Secretary calls for relaxation of green measures while cost of living crisis puts pressure on family budgets”.
These “relax the pace” calls by politicians are basically an affirmation of the alarmist narrative on climate. Ah, c’mon, seriously? My recommend for response: First get the physics of CO2 clear- the most basic issue of all in climate science. Look at the research of atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and other scientists at sites like “co2coalition.org” and “Wattsupwiththat.com”. Also, Javier Vinos and his series of reports on “Sun-Climate effect: The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” at Wattsupwiththat.com. This research reveals there is no “climate crisis” caused by human emissions of CO2. Conclusion: There is no sound scientific case to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
Enough with this waffling appeasement of climate hysteria. Get the real climate science clear, and based on that science, push back against this “madness of crowds” contagion that is seriously harming the many people who can least afford it with unnecessarily increased energy costs due to government policies that block fossil fuel development.
Stop dilly dallying with this wishy-washy molly coddling of the alarmist narrative. It smells too much of “fear-of-cancellation” kowtowing. Embrace the hero’s quest as a heresy pushback against pathological mythology, as urged in the book by Brendan O/Neill “A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable”. (Note: Gove has recently caved fully to the alarmist narrative and abandoned his recommendation to “relax the pace”. Shameful.)
Why focus on “the physics of CO2”? Wendell Krossa
Because CO2 has been demonized in apocalyptic narratives as the critical factor bringing on the apocalypse. This is framed as humans emitting too much “pollutant/poison” and that is leading to “catastrophic climate change”.
This is all unproven assumption given irrationally exaggerated status due to framing within apocalyptic mythology.
Facts: We don’t know how much humanity is actually contributing to the rise of CO2 over past centuries due to the many other major natural contributing factors that are much larger than the human input (“perturbations” in Earth’s carbon cycles that are larger than the human input). And we note that CO2 levels were much higher in the past, often averaging in the multiple-thousands of ppm and life thrived during such eras. There was no “climate crisis”. CO2 levels are still too low today as plants prefer levels in the 1000-1500 ppm range as optimal.
Further, CO2 is not the main influence on climate change as other natural factors show stronger correlations to the climate change we are witnessing. CO2 is not the “control knob of climate”.
And so far, the mild warming of the past century (1 degree C) has been beneficial to all life. We need more warming in a world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth. Remember that for most of the Phanerozoic history life, average temperatures were 3-6 degrees C warmer than today and life flourished.
Add here the “equable tropical climate” factor showing that even with much higher average temperatures on Earth, tropical temperatures did not vary by more than a few degrees C. The tropics did not ignite on fire as prophesied by climate alarmists. That fact reveals the presence of negative feedbacks that kick in to keep tropical temperatures within a range suitable to life. The excess heat coming into the tropics is convected to the polar regions to “even out” temperatures across the world, thereby benefitting all life with extended habitats.
With all this evidence, why the fear and hysteria over climate change? Oh, I know… that alarmist equation… fear=control.
Project focus: Wendell Krossa
This site probes and tries to understand the root issues behind alarmism crusades, the root factors that contribute to inciting movements like climate alarmism. This entails going to the core themes of narratives, to the deeply embedded ideas/archetypes that shape human narratives.
Public alarmism movements like climate alarmism are just the latest historical embodiment and expression of primitive apocalyptic narratives. Today’s alarmism movements are based on the same old themes from ancient mythology that have been passed along through the subsequent stages of history, from the earliest mythology, to world religions, and now more recently finding expression in “secular” versions like 19th Century Declinism ideology and its offspring- the environmental alarmism of the past century.
Its always the same old themes, just given ever-new expression for succeeding generations. Joseph Campbell again- The same primitive myths have been believed all across history and across all the cultures of the world.
Of all the embodiments of primitive archetypes, the Christ myth of Paul is the best known example of the ancient mythical complex that has dominated alarmism movements across history- the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. That narrative framework continues to dominate public consciousness today. Hollywood is obsessed with it.
More sitesplainin… Why I go after the Christ myth…. Wendell Krossa
Paul’s Christ has been the most prominent of ultimate ideals/authorities in Western thinking for two millennia, and not only in Western narratives but worldwide as well, according to historian James Tabor (in his book “Paul and Jesus”). Making this same point, Harold Ellens said, “(The) metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years”.
It’s a metaphor that idealizes and affirms retaliatory violence to solve problems.
Taking the point that “we become just like the God that we believe in”, I tackle the Christ because of the power of beliefs to influence behavior, both good and bad behavior. The beliefs related to the Christ embrace some of the best of features in human narratives (i.e. forgiveness, mercy, love) along with some of the worst of features in our narratives (i.e. tribal exclusion, domination, justice as violent destruction). The outcomes of beliefs expose the true nature of the beliefs as humane or inhumane.
Unfortunately, the better features in the Christ myth have been distorted and buried by the nastier stuff. As Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy noted- the more humane themes of Historical Jesus (universal, unconditional love, inclusion of all, non-domination, non-violence) have been buried by Paul’s Christ myth.
Note that the love advocated by the Christ myth is tribal love, not authentically universal love- i.e. it favors true believers and ultimately excludes unbelievers. The relationships advocated in the Christ myth are not the relating of equals, as in Classic Liberalism, but are oriented to domination/submission forms of relating- i.e. Christ as Lord/King/Ruler, with people submitting to that lordship/domination, domination that is mediated through priesthoods, governments (Romans 13), and other forms of powerholding. Further, the justice modelled in the Christ myth is not restorative but punitive justice, and violently destructive (i.e. punishment by apocalypse or in hell). And so on…
The varied features of Paul’s Christ have been common to all deities and mythical narratives across history.
Further detail on the narrative features advocated by Paul’s Christ: Wendell Krossa
Paul’s Christology (his Christ myth) embraces the ultimate form of tribalism. It embraces and propagates Zoroaster’s historically earlier myth of cosmic dualism- the idea of a good God versus an evil entity or force, Satan. This myth of “cosmic-scale” dualism has long validated “this-world” dualisms/tribalisms among people- i.e. true believers isolating themselves in opposition to unbelievers.
Dualism then embraces the obligation to engage a “righteous battle against evil enemies” as in the adherents of a “true religion” fighting differing others in “false religions”- “righteous heroes going forth to conquer and destroy evil and threatening enemies”. The more you demonize some differing other, the more you self-justify your opposition to that other as a “righteous” cause or battle.
The otherwise noble “hero’s quest” is deformed by such dualism/tribalism- i.e. some embracing an obligation to fight and destroy differing others as “monsters/enemies”. Further, to perpetuate the self-delusion of fighting a “just” battle, people demonize the differing other as some form of intolerable evil, and that demonization legitimizes their “righteous destruction” of the differing other.
The obligation and urgency to engage a righteous battle is intensified by depicting the enemy as “life-threatening”. That incites the survival impulse. Your quest then moves beyond some mere disagreement over social issues. Your battle then takes on the nature of a desperate survival crusade, a necessary struggle to face down evil enemies that are life- and world-threatening.
Include the feature of “imminence” in your narrative, and case closed. As the prophets of apocalypse endlessly prophesy- the end of the world is just up ahead a few years or decades (note this endless date setting and resetting in the climate alarmism crusade). Hence, there must be no time permitted for democratic processes to function. Imminence demands that we resort to force, coercion, criminalization, and even violence… all to “save the world… before its too late”. Totalitarian approaches are then validated and embraced as righteous, good, just, unquestionable.
Historical Jesus cut through this primitive thinking, and related behavior, with one worldview-demolishing statement- “Don’t retaliate with eye for eye… but instead love your enemy”. Treat all with the same forgiveness, inclusion, generous love. That was a sword-thrust to the heart of the base human passions to view differing others tribally as enemies, to feel an obligation to fight against others as “enemies”, to conquer and destroy the differing other, and to believe the ideals and authorities that validated such primitive animal impulses/passions.
He followed his stunning new non-retaliatory ethic with a stunning new take on humanity’s highest ideal and authority- i.e. that deity was non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving.
He based his urging to love enemies on the truth that God does this. How does God love enemies? God gives sun and rain to all alike- to both good and bad people. In his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” there is no discriminatory exclusion of “unbelievers”. There is no tribal opposition to differing others. There is no threat of punishment or destruction of one’s opponents.
And of course, distinguishing between that ultimate reality and this-world imperfection, I add the repeated qualifier that any common-sense love is responsible to hold all accountable/responsible for their behavior in this world as basic to human development and maturing. Meaning, the restraint of violent people who cannot or will not self-restrain their worst impulses. The statements of Historical Jesus are not advocacy for dogmatic pacifism (i.e. “turn the other cheek”) in the face of evil.
With his entirely new view of deity, Jesus then concluded his “behavior based on similar belief” coupling with- “Be unconditionally merciful just as your god is unconditionally merciful”.
He presented the most potent form of liberation ever offered, a liberation from ancient enslaving beliefs that had long validated inhuman behaviors. He did this by going directly to the core belief, the foundational idea that has shaped human meta-narratives across history more than any other- the nature of God, humanity’s highest ideal and authority. With his insights and statements, Historical Jesus radically changed the core embodiment of archetypes in human narratives, the most fundamental of ideals, beliefs.
(As noted in sections below- Jesus replaced divine retaliation with non-retaliation, divine violence with non-violence, divine conditions with unconditional. These are profound transformations at the very core of the human ideals and beliefs that shape our narratives.)
But Paul then created his Christ myth to overturn the breakthrough insights of Historical Jesus. His Christ myth was a rejection of the new theology of Jesus, a denial of Jesus’ central insights and message, and a shameful retreat to the enslavement to primitive thinking. Paul’s Christ was a rehash of the same old pathological features of all past deity theories.
The Christ of Paul continues today as a singularly prominent ideal validating the themes of our meta-narratives. Paul’s Christ has even influenced the “secular/ideological” narratives of the modern era. Note Arthur Herman’s work on Declinism that is the parent ideology of climate alarmism (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”). Herman notes two features of primitive mythology that have shaped Declinism- i.e. the myth of a past golden age that has been lost, and the necessity of violent purging of evil in order to restore the lost paradise. These myths endlessly birth new apocalyptic movements, and their destructive salvation schemes.
And this is why I go after the Christ of Paul, as another “monster deity” giving extended life to the same old primitive themes of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” worldviews that have dominated thinking from the earliest days of human mythmaking.
These “monster God” theories have always incited the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. The monster resides inside our heads in the form of deeply embedded themes in our worldviews (subconscious archetypes). I emphasize particularly the themes that relate to our highest ideal and authority- deity. From inside our heads the monster God- as humanity’s highest ideal and authority- validates our basest impulses, our animal passions.
This is what Solzhenitsyn referred to when he noted that the greatest battles take place within human hearts, not on physical terrain between opposing groups of people, but inside each of us. He was referring to the battle of our animal passions against the better angels of our human nature. He recognized that the themes that we embrace in our worldviews operate to incite our emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors.
Within our minds is where the worst forms of enslavement exist and where liberation is most needed- from bad ideas that incite and validate bad behavior.
Added notes:
The “new gods” of today are exact replicas of the same old deities that have dominated human narratives across history, always validating the same primitive features of retaliation against disagreeing/dissenting others, tribal exclusion of differing others, domination over the “enemy” other, retaliatory violence to solve problems, etc. Examples of newer versions of the same old monster gods: Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet, angry Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback karma.
Note also a powerful contemporary counterpoint to the primitive tribal view of differing others as “enemies”- i.e. the understanding that all people are intimate family (the fundamental oneness thing). This can be affirmed from the “mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis, as well as from quantum oneness discoveries.
Further note: The patterns noted above, of intense tribal division and exclusion of “enemies”, of domination, of demonization differing others as “evil”, of embracing a crusade to destroy the differing other… these patterns are playing out most prominently today in the extreme Woke Progressivism that now dominates the worldview of US Democrats who see themselves in a righteous battle against evil, meaning, all who disagree with their narrative.
This from Leighton Woodhouse posted on Public News at public@substack.com July 21, 2023
“The First Amendment in Peril”,
“Pew has a poll out showing that Americans have become far less committed to free speech over the last five years. From 2018 to today, the percentage of Americans who favor tech companies and the US government “restricting false information online” has risen from 39% to 55%.
“The 16-point increase is almost entirely attributable to Democrats: while Republicans’ support for online speech restrictions has barely budged, Democrats’ support has gone from 40% to 70% in the span of half a decade. That’s a thirty-point shift against the First Amendment.
“Since 2016, Democrats have heard almost nothing from their pundits and party leaders but constant fear-mongering about the wicked souls of their fellow citizens and how the internet is a weapon to spread their evil beliefs like the zombie fungus in The Last Of Us. “Through Russiagate, Covid, and the aftermath of the January 6 “insurrection,” they have been terrorized by dark warnings of rising fascism, and told again and again and again that mere exposure to bad ideas is enough for unsuspecting persons to be transformed overnight, into deranged extremists and white supremacists capable of political violence.
“Concurrent with that barrage of paranoid propaganda, the party’s base has shifted radically away from working class voters and toward college-educated white liberals. As the party has become beholden to urban, credentialed professionals, it has come to adopt the prejudices of that class. When today’s diehard Democrats cast their gazes upon the vast majority of the country, two-thirds of which does not have a bachelor’s degree, they see a nation of parochial bigots, each of them one Facebook post away from being brainwashed by QAnon.
“These party loyalists believe they’re resisting fascism, but they’re courting it. Every authoritarian movement has started by persuading one faction of the population that another faction, be it a minority or a majority, is a malignant threat within the body politic. In the name of neutralizing that threat, the authoritarian party demands the abridgment of rights and liberties, beginning with political pluralism. And that starts with policing the opposition’s speech.
“The Democratic Party is in a dark place. Still suffering under the illusion that it’s the party of workers, it is unable to see that its leaders and activists are waging a class war from above. Every time a Democratic leader intones gravely about “fascism,” they’re expressing the anxiety of a cloistered elite terrified of the resentments of the unwashed masses. Every time they invoke a crisis of democracy, they’re borrowing from the playbook of dictators, who always contrive a national emergency to justify their power grabs.
“From this reactionary paranoia springs the Democratic rank-and-file’s turn against free speech and its leadership’s constant calls for online censorship. Capitulating to them is the road to ruin.”
Note the good points being made by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others, on Public at Substack, that the real totalitarianism, the real imprisonment today is taking place within our minds. Its not the fear of storm troopers banging on our door and taking us away. It’s the fear created by constant messaging on social media, and news media, fear engendered by the endless smearing of disagreeing others with charges of “racist, fascist, right-winger…” etc. This incites the fear of being publicly vilified, censored, silenced, banned, and cancelled for expressing differing ideas, differing opinions from the dominant approved narrative of Woke Progressivism. Many are being rendered fearful of facing horrific consequences for exercising freedom of speech- fearful of being socially ostracized, fired, de-monetized. So now we self-censor, which some suggest was stated by George Orwell as the worst form of totalitarian censorship (1984).
Watch the contemporary justification of force, the abandonment of freedom
Classic Liberalism honored the fundamental principles to protect the freedom, rights, and equality of all- to respect the self-determination of others, and to counter the human tendency to totalitarianism by dispersing power among diverse and competing individuals, and by maintaining separated and fully independent government institutions. Add here the encouragement of the persuasion protocols of liberal democracy principles (not permitting coercion but protecting the free speech of all, open debate, not criminalizing disagreement).
When you abandon these basic principles of freedom and begin to dismiss the critical responsibility to defend them by embracing narratives of imagined heroic and righteous crusades to save the world, you can then validate removing the constraints on your own impulse to totalitarianism. You can then justify the use of coercion, force, and even violence toward differing others that you demonize as threats to democracy, to the world, to all that is good, as you have defined good in your crusade against evil.
Many are reaching dangerous levels of self-delusion today in their embrace of “heroic” battles to engage righteous crusades to conquer some evil that leads them to now justify the abandonment of liberal democracy. They now view disagreeing opponents as threats that are so great, as enemies so intolerably evil, as opponents that pose the “imminence of life-ending catastrophe”. Today’s new totalitarians believe that they should permit no delay (no time for normal democratic debate, disagreement, dissent), hence their ongoing validation for authoritarian/totalitarian approaches to “save the world”.
This is a horrific deformation of the hero’s quest and the righteous battle against evil because the outcome is the denial of freedom to others who differ, a trampling on other’s rights to equal freedoms. The outcome (“by their fruit you will know them”) exposes the crusade as not “righteous or just” but inhumane. Such “Noble cause corruption” has led many to wrongly believe that they can use anti-democratic means justified by the end of some “greater or common good”.
Rogan episode 2008 with Stephen Meyer of Intelligent Design advocacy
Meyer presents some convincing points on the evidence that infers intelligence or mind behind varied elements of life. But his presentation weakened when the discussion turned to violent religious beliefs as in the Aztec sacrifice of children to appease angry gods. Meyer said that he did not understand why some groups engaged such barbarity.
I would have pressed him to acknowledge that his own Christian religion advocated the very same themes- that of an angry deity that had to be appeased with blood sacrifice, the sacrifice of a child. In terms of core ideas, it is all the same barbarity. Christian versions of sacrifice to appease angry deity derive from the same primitive historical sources as all other versions such as the Aztec.
Particularly, all three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) acknowledge the story of Abraham called to sacrifice his son, a child, as a foundational story in their religious tradition. That archetype of deity angry at human sin, and demanding punishment/payment, determined the nature of their deity. The Old Testament priests then made atoning sacrifice central to their theology in opposition to the prophets who, holding an entirely different view of deity, stated that God did not want sacrifice. Jesus took up the prophetic tradition while Paul took up the opposite priestly theology of blood sacrifice to appease angry deity (see his letter to the Romans). Entirely different gods, entirely different religious beliefs and practises.
Blood sacrifice is the central theme of Pauline Christianity (“I determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified”, 1 Corinthians 2:2) as contrasted with the version of Christianity that Historical Jesus advocated.
Some good reporting on recent climate research
http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2023/TWTW%207-15-23.pdf
This Nobel laureate was recently censored by Facebook for not affirming the climate alarm…
“I don’t think there is a climate crisis. I think the key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by a factor of about 200.” — John Clauser, Nobel Co-Laureate, Physics, 2022, June 26, 2023
Some conclusions from paleoclimate research noted in the link above…
“The following cause Climate Change:
• Solar cycles – The sun controls the energy system; Solar cycles govern longer-term timing of climate change.
• Oceans control energy storage
• Water in all phases drives the energy cycle of Climate.
• Continental Drift has shaped major steps in climate change over the past 67 million years.
• CO2 and Temperature proxies do not correlate in paleoclimate data.
• Until recently, CO2 was produced by volcanoes and oceans, with volcanoes heavy in C-13
• Catalysts such as Clouds (Albedo) and vegetation modify cycles.
“To TWTW, if governments claim their policies address causes of climate change, then their policies must include all these factors, and then CO2 will be relegated to a bit player.
“As Gallagher states there have been two states of climate for the past 3.5 million years:
“1. The Default Condition: Dry, Dusty, Cold, and Glacial
“2. The Current Condition: Wet, Warm, Non-glacial Times when Vegetation and Civilization thrive.”
And in response to recent reporting that the warm summer days of this year are “hottest in history”…
“Those who report such nonsense have glaring deficiencies in their knowledge of human history and knowledge of climate history. As Jo Nova points out, most of the Holocene (past 11,700 years) was warmer than today with the Little Ice Age extremely cold.”
Another on recent hysteria over warm summer weather…
And more on the destructive “salvation” scheme of decarbonization…
This from Roger Pielke July 19, 2023, “What the IPCC Actually Says About Extreme Weather”
“People are going absolutely nuts these days about extreme weather. Every event, any where is now readily associated with climate change and a portent of a climate out of control, apocalyptic even. I’ve long given up hope that the actual science of climate and extreme weather will be fairly reported or discussed in policy — nowadays, climate change is just too seductive and politically expedient.
“But for those who want to know what research actually says on the relationship of extreme weather and climate change, that information is readily available. Today I’ll share the excellent work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarizing what its most recent assessment says about various types of extreme weather and climate change.
“When you read the below you will realize that the difference between what you see in the news (including statements from leading scientists) and what the IPCC has concluded could not be more different. One day PhD dissertations will be written about our current moment of apocalyptic panic….
“The IPCC has concluded that a signal of climate change has not yet emerged beyond natural variability for the following phenomena:
• River floods
• Heavy precipitation and pluvial floods
• Landslides
• Drought (all types)
• Severe wind storms
• Tropical cyclones
• Sand and dust storms
• Heavy snowfall and ice storms
• Hail
• Snow avalanche
• Coastal flooding
• Marine heat waves
“I wonder if the IPCC is next in line to be attacked by champions of the apocalyptic zeitgeist. After all, how can science like this co-exist with an end-of-times panic? Something would seem to have to give, right?”
From comment below…. Re the “belief shaping behavior” relationship… Going to the ultimate root of problems, the level of subconscious archetypes/beliefs that shape human thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior.
Why I go after Paul’s Christ myth… As psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo note below, a God who solves problems with violence has been at the center of the meta-narrative of the West for two millennia. Point? If God solves problems with violence, then so will we.
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God…. this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ….
“(this) hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image…”.
“If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
As Bob Brinsmead said, “We become just like the God that we believe in”.
A counter to alarmism over global warming (from “Net Zero Watch” newsletter of July 13, 2023)- “New study: Ten times more European deaths per year are attributed to cold weather than to hot weather”, Lancet, March 16, 2023.
“Across the 854 urban areas in Europe, we estimated an annual excess of 203,620 deaths attributed to cold and 20,173 attributed to heat”.
Contrary to warming alarmism, more global warming is needed to alleviate the far greater threat from our still too cold planet, cold compared to most of the Phanerozoic history of life when average temperatures were 3-6 degrees C warmer than today and all life flourished.
Add the fact that over the last century there has been a 95% decline in deaths due to natural disaster causes like climate.
https://www.humanprogress.org/dataset/deaths-from-natural-disasters/
Meteorologist Anthony Watts responded to the recent hysteria over warm summer days that media have claimed are the “hottest ever”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/13/opening-up-a-can-of-climate-whoop-ass-on-this-guy/
Other responses to the ongoing exaggeration, distortion, and hysteria over warm summer days... (from Jim Lakely’s “Heartland Weekly”)
https://climaterealism.com/2023/07/earth-experiencing-hottest-day-ever-is-a-deliberate-lie/
Further…
“Dr. John F. Clauser, joint recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has criticized the climate emergency narrative calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”
From H. Sterling Burnett, July 14, 2023: “Climate Change Weekly #476: New Claims of Record-Setting Temperatures Are Nothing but Hot Air”
From Glen Greenwald’s latest July 12, 2023- “US Sends Deadly Cluster Bombs to Ukraine After Years of Condemning Their Use. Plus: YouTube’s Censorship of Jordan Peterson’s Talk with RFK Jr.” (Note re the comment below that mainstream news media- variously referred to as “legacy media… corporate media… liberal media…”- play the central role as public megaphones for government, intelligence agencies, and Big Tech corporations.)
Quotes from article:
“This is the dirty secret of establishment power the Internet is being increasingly controlled and censored. If you go back and read the literature in the mid-1990s about the reason people were excited about the Internet and its advent, they viewed it as a liberatory technology or something that would emancipate individuals from the need to rely on centralized corporate and state control to communicate, to organize. It would allow individuals the freedom to disseminate use without having to rely on corporations or state power to do so. It had the potential to be the most empowering technological innovation in history.
“That’s what its proponents were heralding it as being. And instead, it has been degraded into its exact opposite by allowing the U.S. government to turn it into a tool of mass surveillance, it became the greatest tool of coercion and monitoring in human history. And now it is one of the most closed information systems and one of the most potent propaganda systems in the world – under the control of the U.S. security state, the U.S. government, exercising its power through Big Tech, with the ability to ban all dissent and all dissidents to make them disappear. And that’s what happened. And the more that happens, the more the word prison gets created in the mind. That’s how real despotism works.
“There’s a prelude, an introduction to “1984” that George Orwell wrote and that ended up being banned, I believe it was to 1984. It might have been to his essay about Catalonia. We’ll check on that. But the essay didn’t get published because the point that Orwell made was too threatening to the West right after World War II. What he was essentially saying was, we’re taught that despotism means this blunt use of force, that if you criticize the government, death squads in black costume show up at your house, point guns at your head, haul you off to a gulag, put you in prison. That is a form of despotism.
“But the much more effective form of control is to so propagandize the public so that dissent disappears in people’s minds. The prison exists in people’s minds. So that you don’t need to punish dissent because there is no dissent or there’s so little dissent that it’s easily marginalized. And you’ve just turned the population into such conformists that they believe everything the government says. That is a much more effective form of despotism. It doesn’t create a backlash. It creates the illusion of freedom.
“And that’s what the Internet is designed to do, to create the illusion that you have freedom and you have a choice when in reality everybody knows that there’s a tiny little range of freedom in which they can function and everything that falls outside the line, no matter who you are – even if you’re an heir to one of America’s most storied and powerful and political families like RFK, Jr. – if you step outside that line set by the U.S. government in collaboration with Big Tech, you will be silenced, censored and disappeared….
“What we have to understand is that this is a war on dissent.
“This is a war to cleanse the Internet of anyone who questions U.S. orthodoxy and to ensure that the Internet is banned from being what it was supposed to be – a source of free information and free expression – into what really is the most potent and most inescapable propaganda weapon ever to be developed. It’s aimed right at people’s brains and the idea is to cleanse it of the sense that the only information to which people are exposed is information that American power centers want them to think and want them to have….
“That is why I really do regard as the overarching cause the preservation of the few remaining places on the Internet devoted to free speech. Remember, Elon Musk turned into public enemy number one. He was beloved by the global public. He was the person who was going to give us electric cars and save the planet from climate catastrophe and get us to Mars. Someone who has been a success story in everything he touched. Overnight, he turned into public enemy number one because he bought Twitter based on the promise to just allow a little bit more free speech. Take away that weapon from them. That’s how valuable the censorship regime is to them. And now you have the entire U.S. security state creating vast tentacles to ensure that this happens.”
Comment sent to Matt Taibbi in response to his recent July 12, 2023 article on Substack– “Where Have All The Liberals Gone?” https://www.racket.news/p/where-have-all-the-liberals-gone
Re: Where have all the liberals gone? Wendell Krossa
I would suggest the “archetypes” thing, as in our inherited impulses (from our origins in an animal past) and the ideas/myths that our ancestors created to validate their more primitive impulses.
My point? We are battered endlessly with end-of-world narratives as in climate alarmism. That incites the human survival impulse. No one wants the world to end. No one wants to die. Especially not those 56% of young people worldwide who now believe “humanity is doomed”.
These apocalyptic narratives incite more than just the survival impulse. They resonate with the entire complex of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” myths and stir the associated impulses that complex of myths has always incited and validated.
Notably, the dominant narrative of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” incites the tribal impulse to oppose some threatening enemy (the dualism thing- myths of cosmic dualism validating many “this-world” tribal dualisms).
And “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex stirs (and deforms) the impulse to engage a “hero’s quest to conquer some monster/enemy”, to engage a righteous battle against evil (CO2 now lasered in on as the main indicator of human evil today- corrupt, greedy humans in industrial society that is destroying the former paradise of a wilderness world before humans).
Add the myth and impulse to violence in the apocalyptic millennial demand to purge some threatening evil in order to prepare the way to restore the lost paradise or install a new millennial utopia.
This stuff is as old as conscious humanity and has never been corrected at the most fundamental levels of our meta-narratives. We have just moved from primitive mythological versions to world religious traditions to the “secular ideological” versions of today as in “Declinism” ideology that dominates the modern world (Arthur Herman- The Idea of Decline in Western History). Note those surveys (Tupy and Bailey- Ten Global Trends) that show most people across the planet believe “the world is becoming worse”.
Many walk around self-identifying as “secular materialist” but sound no different in terms of the basic themes of their narratives than those ancient Sumerians who first gave written expression to these primitive myths that validated their basest impulses to tribalism, domination of weaker others, and destruction of differing others.
Campbell was spot on- the same primitive myths have been believed all across history and across all the cultures of the world. They still dominate our narratives today both in religious traditions and secular, even scientific versions.
Restore liberalism? Go to the root issues behind the surface things going on in our societies today. Like those military guys when ISIS was erupting a few years back, telling us that military force would not solve the problem for the long term. You had to go to the “ideology… ideas” behind such eruptions. Change the basic themes of our meta-narratives (the “archetype” stuff) and we transform what most powerfully influences human thinking, emotions, motivations, and response/behavior. Wendell Krossa
Added comment in response to Taibbi article:
My earlier point on the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex was that deeply embedded impulses and ideas (subconscious) overwhelm modern era Classic Liberal principles and ideas that have liberated us from our past that was governed by the primitive impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and the impulse to engage righteous wars against evil enemies (a deforming of the “hero’s quest”).
We need to recover and reaffirm Classic Liberal principles and ideas (even build them into AI) to counter the endless resurging of the old primeval stuff that is then once again validated by newer versions of the same old narrative themes that incite the same old impulses.
The old impulses, and the narrative themes that validate them, overwhelm Classic Liberalism because the old resonates with deeply embedded emotions, motivations, impulses, and validating themes that have dominated human consciousness/subconscious for millennia. Impulses and validating ideas that relate to survival and salvationism (i.e. the primal felt need to make a sacrifice, to pay for sin- as observed today in things like calls to give up the good life in industrial society for a return to the primitivism of a tribal past, to a low consumption lifestyle as “morally superior” to modern consumerism).
It is an issue of fundamental narrative themes and how those impact human thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior.
I see all these impulses and themes, no different from their primitive expressions thousands of years ago, being acted out today in the climate alarmism crusade and the response to that with destructive salvationism as in Net Zero decarbonization. Observe the features of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex being played out once again.
The battle against debilitating alarmism narratives- narratives of despair. Wendell Krossa
I am concerned by the distressing levels of anxiety and depression in our societies- notably among family, friends, and throughout the wider public realm. I think of those 56% of young people around the world, having been terrorized by extremist narratives of despair, like climate alarmism, who now believe that “humanity is doomed”. The irresponsible panic-mongering has to stop.
To the alarmists- you are traumatizing a generation of young people, deflating and destroying their hopes and dreams. Take some responsibility and acknowledge some awareness of the damage that your exaggerated and irrational alarmism is causing, especially to young minds.
This site, overall, is committed to fighting fear, to countering alarmism narratives with evidence-based hope, and with better alternatives to the pathology that is the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. We need to purge the irrational mythology that has long infected our narratives. This will involve a thoroughgoing overhaul of our belief systems, from the core on out.
Sitesplainin… Project focus– More on the reasons why its important to understand the belief/behavior relationship, how beliefs incite, guide, and validate behavior. Wendell Krossa
The comment throughout this site on the Christ myth continues my project (one of the main projects here) of going after history’s single greatest monster and enemy, a monstrous version of deity that, as humanity’s highest ideal and authority, and from its entrenched dominant position in human narratives and consciousness, has long incited and validated our worst impulses, the inherited impulses that constitute our inner enemy and monster- i.e. our inherited animal passions.
The Christ of Paul is perhaps the best-known public representative of all similarly primitive deity theories that present deity to the public as ultimate threat, deity as judge, dominating lord/king/ruler, ultimate destroyer in apocalypse and hell, etc.
Site project, Wendell Krossa
This site repeatedly points out that the alarmism movements of today- e.g. climate alarmism- are “profoundly religious” movements. Their core inciting/validating themes are no different from the narratives of the more overtly religious eruptions of apocalyptic hysteria over past history.
The core themes of climate alarmism derive directly from the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths.
This site warns of the destructive outcomes in human societies from embracing these themes. They incite and validate our worst impulses, notably (1) to tribal exclusion and opposition, (2) to domination and meddling control of others, and (3) to violent destruction of differing others. The themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” profoundly deform the “hero’s quest” and otherwise “righteous battle against evil”.
Potent alternatives to the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex are offered in “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”, reposted repeatedly below. That list goes to the very core of our narratives to offer new ideas that affirm the better angels of our nature, alternative ideas that inspire our essential goodness.
Because alarmist crusades are essentially religious movements, it helps to recognize the deeply felt needs that alarmism narratives resonate with. This will help to understand why people continue to embrace alarmism crusades- i.e. what impulses alarmism narratives appeal to (what we call “archetypes”). This has to do with subconscious things, deeply embedded things in human perception, feeling, and belief that powerfully influence our motivations and responses/behavior.
Scientific fact, as critical as that is to building more rational narratives, will not change many minds committed to apocalyptic alarmism narratives. Bare-bones empiricism, especially when marinated with a philosophical materialism tone, does not meet people’s deeper felt needs for meaning and purpose that have long been central to what it means to be human.
In response to climate alarmism, and the frustration of some skeptical scientists that their factual presentations are not gaining ground with alarmists (not changing many alarmist minds), I would paraphrase Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” with- “It’s the narrative, stupid”. Lets all become more truly “woke”, and pay attention to what is actually going on behind the public noise.
Human fascination, curiosity with God ideas.
The human curiosity and speculation regarding deity stems from our primary impulse to meaning. We curiously probe the question of our ultimate origins because it is central to understanding the reason for our conscious existence. It helps explain our purpose in this life. We just “have to know” such things. Hence, the entire history of speculation on this, from the earliest beginnings in primitive mythology, then in world religious traditions, and now in “secular/philosophical/ideological” traditions, even in “science”, often better understood as “scientism” shaped by philosophical materialism that endlessly crosses the science/philosophy boundary to speculate on the metaphysical. Just like religious people do.
Science as often similar to “spiritual” probing? Remember the search for the “God particle” (Higgs Boson)? Also “multi-verse” speculation (widely believed to be proven truth), or “Self-Organizing Principle”, or Dawkins’ “Natural Selection Is The Source Of All Enlightenment” (God Delusion), and the other diverse god theories of our era- “Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet or angry Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback Karma”, among other god theories today. (Jim Baggot in “Farewell to Reality” notes that multi-verse theory is widely accepted in the public as fact.)
The probing and speculating on ultimate origins/causes arises from the natural human desire to align life with the ultimate reason or purpose for creation. This has to do with our natural desire to fulfill the reason for which we exist.
Here’s a reposting of comments from psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo that make my point on the belief/behavior relationship in the human quest for meaning. This is from their material on the influence of bad religious ideas on human personality and society. Again, my point here is that the fundamental themes of primitive mythologies have not faded from human narratives and consciousness today but continue in the great world religions and have also been given new embodiment in so-called “secular/ideological” versions, as in the climate alarmism crusade. The same old pathological themes continue to harmfully impact our consciousness, lives, and societies.
Psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo (quoting psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens) details how images/beliefs, notably images of ultimate reality and ideals like deity, how such images influence human consciousness, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior in daily life. Both men affiliated with the Christian tradition. Ellens was a US Army chaplain.
Quotes from Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”
The Introduction states that, among others, “(Lotufo) explores the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience… (this is of the) highest urgency today when religious motivation seems to be playing an increasing role, constructively and destructively, in the arena of social ethics, national politics, and world affairs…”
Lotufo notes the dominance of ‘Cruel God Christianity’ in Western society, with its portrayal of deity as monarch and judge, the accompany fear of this deity, and the atonement theories that this image of deity affirms, all ideas that deform human personality and societies:
“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God. Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ….
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Add also that the themes of (1) tribalism (true believers favored and “saved”, versus unbelievers who are rejected and destroyed), (2) domination (deity as dominating Lord, Ruler, King), and (3) ultimate violent destruction of the differing others (apocalypse, hell)… such themes, sacralized in deity as ultimate ideals and authority, then serve to incite and validate the same features in the adherents to such belief systems.
Point from above comment? Wendell Krossa
The point is that bad ideas- bad myths that embody primitive archetypes- have always incited and validated our worst impulses. The endless promotion of these themes in our narratives, whether in historical religious traditions or today’s “secular” versions… the ongoing promotion of systems of belief that embrace these myths has always buried history’s single greatest insight that there was no monstrous threat at the core of reality. There has always and only been “no conditions love” at the core of all things. This is an insight that was first clearly stated by Historical Jesus, an insight to finally liberate us in the depths of our consciousness, an insight that would take us to new reaches of liberation in mind, consciousness, emotion, and motivation (and thereby liberating our potential to respond more humanely in life).
Speaking of “bad ideas” and their harmful influence on humanity…. The Christ myth, the most prominent “God” in the world pantheon of menacing gods today, with its embrace of monstrous threat themes from primitive mythology, is the cohering center of the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex that dominates narratives today, both religious and secular. (Christ as “threat theology”? What about the loving, kind, and gentle Jesus in the New Testament? Well yes, but that Historical Jesus is someone entirely opposite to Paul’s Christ that buries the more humane features in the Jesus material.).
Note, just for example, that the “lost paradise” feature of primitive mythology is replicated in the contemporary “noble savage myth”- i.e. the myth that hunter gatherers of the past were a more pure and strong version of humans, more connected to nature with their low consumption lifestyles. This myth dominates academia today, as detailed in sources like Steven LeBlanc’s “Constant Battles: The myth of the peaceful, noble savage”.
Add also the myth that the past wilderness world was a better, more pure world free of corrupting, defiling humanity (today’s faddish demonization of humanity as primarily defined by greed, selfishness, destruction- humanity as a “virus, cancer” on Earth, an unwelcome outsider to nature). Consequent to humans fucking everything up, now life is in decline toward something worse, toward collapse and ending.
The themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” are all related in a cause-effect progression…
Salvation is then to be found in curbing the number of humans and severely diminishing our consumption, even to the extent of violently purging our industrial civilization (e.g. Marxist revolution). By such purging we thereby restore the imagined lost paradise.
The “violent purging” feature of primitive belief systems is drawn from mythological accounts like the New Testament book of Revelation where such violence is presented as the necessary prerequisite to restoring the lost paradise (the ultimate roots of this mythology go further back to the Sumerian Flood myth (i.e. purging “too many noisy humans” that disturbed the waterworks god- Enlil). Similarly, violent purging was a central theme in Zoroaster’s theology- i.e. his apocalypse of molten metal washing across the planet to purge the evil from the world.
These ideas are all based on the foundational myth of a vengeful, violent deity. They are themes that have long incited people to fear “fallen” humanity as the threat to the world and life, as the enemy of life, as the threat to be opposed and violently purged in order to save the world and regain the lost paradise.
These myths further incite the tribal impulse to see oneself as set in irreconcilable opposition to differing others who are viewed as the threatening enemies. Add that the myth of God as dominating lord, king, ruler then validates human domination and destruction of the threatening other. These pathological ideas have always deformed the hero’s quest to fight righteous battles and conquer monsters. To save something.
Full liberation from our animal inheritance, the liberation to live as fully human, will entail the discarding of these ideas that incite our worst impulses, and replacing them with new themes that affirm our better impulses to live as human. This is a narrative “total overhaul” project, going to the very core bad ideas, such as the God theories that provide validation for entire complexes of related bad ideas.
Start by replacing all threat theology residue with the new central cohering theme of “love at the core of reality”- the ultimate definition of love as “absolutely no conditions”. That stunning new theology embedded at the core of our narratives will radiate out to change everything. It takes “God is love” to new heights of wondrous inexpressibility with the feature of “unconditional” that will fully transform and humanize everything else. Marinate a bit on this insight that a stunning new definition of “God is love” is the core of reality and feel how that liberates consciousness and emotion from ultimate threat. We are all safe… in the end, in an ultimate sense.
I would wrap up this point by applying it to climate alarmism today where we see the same old complex of myths stirring populations with fear (aroused survival impulse) to embrace another destructive salvation scheme (decarbonization) that involves a righteous war against evil (the war on fossil fuels), with violent purging of evil (purging human industrial civilization based on fossil fuels), as preparation to restore a lost paradise.
In terms of our meta-narratives across history, there has been nothing new under the sun. Joseph Campbell was right that the same primitive myths have been embraced all across history and by all the cultures of the world. Nothing changes until we thoroughly rethink and revise our basic narratives with better alternatives. There is no excuse now as we have the better themes.
Distortion of the real world with “virtual reality” modelling:
Good one on the discredited climate models that are the “factual” or “evidence” basis of the climate alarmism crusade.
The disconnect of model predictions (i.e. “running way too hot”) with real world observation of climate has been well-documented at sites like “Wattsupwiththat.com” and “co2coalition.org”.
Censorship Creep, Wendell Krossa
Who sets the limits, and how do we set limits, on censorship “mission creep”?
People have cautioned us about the dangers of “mission creep”- defined as “The gradual addition of new tasks or activities to a project so that the original purpose or idea begins to be lost”.
You similarly get “totalitarian censorship creep” when you abandon absolutist-type positions on free speech and open the door to censorship of things like “hate speech”. You then get totalitarian censorship creep- a form of mission creep as more and more things previously acknowledged and tolerated as legitimate dissent or difference of opinion are now becoming classified as dangerous or harmful hate speech.
The problem remains- Who defines such things as hate speech, or “disinformation/misinformation”. Tribally-oriented minds cannot be trusted to do this.
How do we keep such projects as protecting people from hate speech, from extending beyond real dangers and evil, to areas where now its just difference of opinion and speech that are being classified as dangerous hate speech?
Differing sides of social partisan divides will push through any opening of a crack in the door and begin to extend their definition of “hate speech” to include their opponents differing opinions and speech just because its disagreeable and makes them feel “uncomfortable/threatened”. This is consequent to the impulse to dominate and control others, with the accompanying impulse to exaggerate the dangers of others, to excessively demonize their opinions and speech, the demonization of enemies as “dangerous threats”. (Threats to what? To your control of all? To your domination of public discourse? Is that how you view and define democracy?)
Such is the outcome of abandoning absolutist positions on freedoms like free speech. As former ACLU chief Ira Glasser said- We must protect even speech that is repugnant and offensive to people. It too must be protected. In today’s hyper-sensitive atmosphere, where sensitivity to feelings (feeling “upset, uncomfortable”) has become a dominant criterion for censoring others, we are giving away basic freedoms.
We counter bad speech with better speech, duking things out in the public arena and letting people freely make up their minds in response to such robust debate. This means affirming absolutist-like positions on freedoms. That alone protects us all.
This from The Free Press, July 11, 2023- “AI Will Save the World: Artificial Intelligence won’t end civilization, argues Marc Andreesen. Just the opposite. It is quite possibly the best thing human beings have ever created”, Marc Andreesen.
“… the slippery slope is not a fallacy, it’s an inevitability. Once a framework for restricting even egregiously terrible content is in place—for example, for hate speech, a specific hurtful word, or for misinformation, obviously false claims like “the Pope is dead”—a shockingly broad range of government agencies and activist pressure groups and nongovernmental entities will kick into gear and demand ever greater levels of censorship and suppression of whatever speech they view as threatening to society and/or their own personal preferences. They will do this up to and including in ways that are nakedly felony crimes. This cycle in practice can run apparently forever, with the enthusiastic support of authoritarian hall monitors installed throughout our elite power structures. This has been cascading for a decade in social media and with only certain exceptions, continues to get more fervent all the time.
“And so this is the dynamic that has formed around “AI alignment” now. Its proponents claim the wisdom to engineer AI-generated speech and thoughts that are good for society, and to ban AI-generated speech and thoughts that are bad for society. Its opponents claim that the thought police are breathtakingly arrogant and presumptuous—and often outright criminal, at least in the U.S.—and in fact are seeking to become a new kind of fused government-corporate-academic authoritarian speech dictatorship ripped straight from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984.”
Throwing wrenches into the gears of the climate alarmism crusade, Wendell Krossa
While it is appreciated when politicians apply the brakes to Net Zero, it is disconcerting when they follow that “urging-caution” approach with pledges to still eliminate CO2 emissions eventually, in order to “do something to fight climate change”. Danielle Smith of Alberta recently stated this in her meeting with climate change fanatic Justin Trudeau. But why commit to eliminating fossil fuels? Based on what evidence do we need to control emissions? Answer these issues first before you re-affirm the alarmist narrative on fighting looming “climate change catastrophe”.
Start with the best evidence on CO2 which shows that CO2 levels are still at historical lows due to the dangerous decline of CO2 over the past millions of years, as compared to the much higher levels of most of the history of life. Patrick Moore, in “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”, explains why CO2 has been disappearing from Earth’s carbon cycles due to sequestration in carboniferous rocks via absorption by marine species… https://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/climate.html.
And there is still much indeterminacy about what is contributing to rising CO2 over the past few centuries, with the human contribution playing a minor part among other natural contributing factors (i.e. the “perturbations” in Earth’s carbon cycle are larger than the human contribution).
Note also that when CO2 was in the multiple thousands of ppm over the past there was no climate crisis and there was even the disconnect of climate cooling. And with the slight rise in CO2 over past centuries (compared to the multiple-thousands ppm levels of history) we have seen a massive greening of earth, resulting in more food for animals and increased crop production for humanity. Both huge benefits.
Add the evidence that the warming influence of CO2 has now peaked, it has reached “saturation” (in physics terms) and even the doubling of CO2 to 800 ppm that would take two centuries at the current rate of rise- 2 ppm per year- this doubling would contribute very little to any further possible warming. Maybe a degree or so. “Maybe”- because other natural factors show stronger correlations to the climate change that we are observing, contrary to the now discredited climate models.
All to say- Do not fear rising CO2 levels. There is no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. But yes, revive nuclear and explore other options, even continue with some development of unreliable solar and wind, but do so on private dime because public subsidies to solar/wind unfairly harm the poorest the most with rising energy costs and general inflation from the anti-fossil fuel crusade.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/truth-about-forest-fires-up-in-climate-change-smoke
This is what insanity looks like- “madness of crowds” levels of insanity
Apocalyptic movements generate “madness of crowds” responses in populations. Alarmists promote panic-mongering with exaggerated scenarios of “crisis…. catastrophe… existential emergency…” and thereby arouse the survival impulse in people.
Panic-mongering is never a smart approach to helping people to understand problems and to come up with rational solutions. Panic-mongering, based on exaggerated and hence distorting apocalyptic alarmism narratives, generates responses that “save the world by destroying it” as in the Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-7 and the similarly destructive Net Zero decarbonization crusade of today. Hence, my conclusion that movements like climate alarmism are a form of mass insanity.
Illustrating detail…
Where are the rational kids refusing to be carried away with crowd madness (social contagions) and willing to unembarrassedly shout out- “Mom, the emperor has no clothes” and thereby break the spell of social contagion eruptions.
What happened to traditional liberalism? (as we once understood it)
What is this widespread inability today to embrace diversity of views and speech? Why the endless search for dissenters to groupthink, the obsessive search for decades-past “sins” (i.e. the careless speech of youthful years). What is this harsh condemnation of difference of opinion and speech, with calls for merciless punishment, even destruction of careers, banning from public spaces, and the silencing of differing others entirely? What inhumane spirit is this? The busybody interference, the puritan moralizing, the obsessive-compulsive urge to dominate others- to control their speech, actions, and lifestyles.
What is going on?? Where is common love in all this, love as in the basic principles of Classic Liberalism- i.e. tolerance, inclusion of diversity, respect for others freedom and self-determination, and more? Why such perversion of “the hero’s quest and righteous battle for truth” in the tribal demonization of differing others as irreconcilable enemies? Are we now observing the ugliest outcomes of “noble cause corruption” that deforms human consciousness and basic human decency? Has this noble cause corruption been given precedence over all else- even common love, mercy, forgiveness, toleration, acceptance/inclusion, and restorative justice?
It appears that a seriously deformed understanding of the hero’s quest and righteous battle against evil has resulted in the perversion and abandonment of traditional Classic Liberalism.
Hope in pushback from ordinary people across the Earth:
Michael Shellenberger repeatedly reaffirms hope to continue the battle against the current totalitarian wave that has swept across our societies, the totalitarianism unleashed in the “Censorship Industrial Complex”, as also in the climate alarmism crusade. He notes the pushback in the farmer’s protests in Holland, the Yellow Vest protests in France, etc. I would add the pushback from ordinary people in Sri Lanka who suffered horribly from the insane policies of governing elites there. Add also the evidence of pushback from the majority of ordinary citizens in Europe, and elsewhere, reacting to the damaging costs from the war on fossil fuels (Net Zero policies).
Wealthy out-of-touch neoliberal elites like Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden and many others, have no idea of the suffering that they have caused by inflicting their irrational Net Zero policies on ordinary citizens and how that results in necessary citizen pushback just to survive. The suffering inflicted on average citizens is felt from the blocking of fossil fuel development, leading to human-caused increase in the costs of energy, and that results directly in inflationary pressure on the 6000 products that are derived from fossil fuels.
The growing revolt/reaction around the world needs, as Shellenberger says, more organization and more public voice.
On the growing resistance to Woke extremism “being pushed in our faces”.
Note particularly the section in the “public.substack” link below titled “Forever culture war”. Good on the elements of extremism that have emerged from the trans movement- i.e. the shift from gaining “equality of rights legally” to now “moral bullying” and totalitarian demands on others, with threats of cancellation for dissenters to the extremist demands. This is what people are reacting to in the “Go Woke, go broke” responses to major companies that have been embracing the extremist trans positions. The pushbacks are not mainly “transphobia” or “anti-trans” reactions, though such elements may be present in rare cases.
Most people simply want to be left alone to enjoy their favorite sport or product and not have lectures on some social issue pushed in their faces, with the understood background threat to any expression of dissenting opinion or speech.
A quote from the link below…
“Even people who are open to being persuaded, as they were over gay marriage, are resentful at being told not just how to act but what to believe (or how to speak, what terms to use).”
Note also the go-to reaction of Woke Progressive elites today– i.e. to smear all who disagree as “Right-wing nutcases” of some sort… “ULTRA MAGA White Supremacist Trump supporters.” Even though the protesters identified as liberals?!?
https://public.substack.com/p/censor-child-porn-not-citizen-speech
And this related comment from:
“Rogan said that Americans are tired of woke politics taking over their lives.
“People are sick of this shit. They’re sick of social things like that, that are controversial getting stuffed in your face, where you have to accept. People are like, ‘I don’t want to accept it,’” he said.
“Politics really shouldn’t be in someone’s beer mug,” Ice Cube added.
Good science includes the big picture context, the long-term patterns and trends:
Climate changes have been much more severe over past millennia (over the 30,000 years before our interglacial begins), with swings of up to 20 degrees C between warming and cooling periods. And that climate change was clearly caused by natural factors. Point? There is no evidence that starting around 1850, climate change of the mildest amount, has now become “human-caused” (i.e. the mild 1 degree C warming since the descent into the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial- the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715).
See the graph of climate changes over the past 50,000 years on page 33 of Professor Ian Plimer’s “Heaven And Earth” (paleoclimate history). Our interglacial warming has resulted in the significant moderation of climate change over the past 11,000 years. We can be very thankful for this now moderated climate change of our interglacial.
A “theological/spiritual” point re site project:
Exposing the great fraud of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythology.
Fraud? This historically dominant mythology distorts entirely the true story of life. And more to the point- This complex of myths is really about the great lie of “retaliatory, tribal, punitive, destroying deity” that is the cohering center of the mythology. So, slay the real monster or enemy- the God behind the myths, at the core of the lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption complex.
(Insert: Yes, I know that true believers will protest that the terms I use- i.e. retaliation, tribalism, punishment, destruction- such terms distort the features of deity that they prefer to view more positively as the divine attributes of “holiness, justice, goodness, and honor”. But my dissenting argument, backed by people like psychologist Harold Ellens, is that the religious believer’s defense of traditional views of deity is the real distortion of the true nature of what we are talking about in deity. Note how Ellens frames this issue (as quoted by psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo):
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice…”
The claim that God was exhibiting love in offering his son as a sacrifice, distorts the fact that Paul’s view on the death of Jesus was really the glorification of the barbaric act of human sacrifice, child sacrifice.
So also, Charles Templeton exposed the true believer tendency to misread and reframe mythical pathology as ultimate good that is deserving of human worship. In his comment on the Old Testament deity, Templeton said that anyone demanding constant attention, praise, and worship on threat of death for not doing so, was very much behaving just like the psychopathic dictator Idi Amin. Yet how many of us grew up believing that such “worship of God” was the apex of human honor and respect for deity.
Alex Garcia in “Alpha God” similarly exposed the real nature of what human worship of deity is all about.
Contrary to the long history of humanity creating monstrous deities, I offer this insight…
There is only and always love behind all, at the core of reality. A stunningly inexpressible “no conditions love”. That is the ultimate reality, or true nature of deity, the creating and sustaining reality- a transcendently inexpressible love and light. That takes human understanding to the pinnacle of humaneness, to the summit of love and ultimate Good.
And try to get the central point in this- the scandalous feature of “unconditional” as foundational to defining the true nature of God. Unconditional deity revolutionizes everything in human narratives and consequently in human thought, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. It overturns the entire history of mythology and religion.
Meditate on the implications of this…
You don’t need to be dependent on any higher authority
The authorities of Jesus day often asked him where his authority came from. He never answered them by referring to some holy book or religious authority. He referred to himself as the human one, one born of humans, an ordinarily human like everyone else.
Note in Matthew 5 how he dismisses the great authority of his era- the OT scriptures- by stating “you have heard it said ‘eye for eye’ but now I say to you… love your enemy”. He does not quote some verse in a holy book to affirm his stance on loving enemies. He simply says- “I say to you”. Me the human one, an ordinary human being.
His teaching was based on his sense of common humanness, what was the humane thing as he saw it. His sense of the human thing to do. We see that understanding of common humanity today in our human rights codes, our constitutions, and at its best in Classic Liberalism principles where all are included equally, all are equal under the same system of law, and government institutions exist to serve the people, and none are subjected to collectives that are run/dominated by elites who claim to know what is best for all others.
You don’t need any higher authority to tell you what is right and good, other than your personal sense of what is good and human (of course, our personal sense of things is informed by common human rights codes and constitutions…)
Saving the world by destroying it (as in de-development, better known as a retreat to primitivism)
Sites showing the outcomes of Net Zero decarbonization as “salvation” scheme. See also the regular reports on the devastating outcomes of Net Zero in Europe at “Net Zero Watch”, the newsletter of Global Warming Policy Forum.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/net-zero-impoverishment-how-lower-gdp-opportunity
“Musings on Forest Fires, Fuel Load, Dr. Ehrlich and the CO2 Fertilization Effect Upon US Forests”, by Don Healy, July 2023
“We do know empirically that increasing CO2 levels will raise temperature modestly. In lab experiments a doubling of CO2 levels from 280 ppm to 560 ppm will raise temperate about 1-degree Centigrade. The next doubling would raise temperature even less as the absorption spectra quickly becomes saturated. So the actual temperature increase due to greenhouse gases is proving to be relatively minimal.
“A far more important effect, especially from the aspect of the fuel load situation in our nation’s forests is that of the CO2 fertilization effect (CFE) on all vegetative growth, plants, crops and certainly trees. We shall delve more deeply into this aspect shortly, but a little historical perspective is necessary first. When coniferous trees evolved about 360 million years ago, CO2 levels were about 4000 ppm (parts per million), 9 times today’s levels. When deciduous trees, broadleaves evolved about 160 million years ago CO2 levels were about 2200 ppm. The thousands of botanical experiments to study the effect of elevated CO2 on crops, trees, grasses, and other vegetative forms indicate that 800 to 1000 ppm CO2 is the optimum level for most species.
“Not only does CO2 fertilization produce more growth, but it also increases the drought resistance of most plants. Additionally, since the stomata, the pores on the leaves through which the CO2 enters the leaf to allow photosynthesis to take place do not need to remain open as long to allow CO2 to enter, less transpiration of water takes place and the plants become more drought resistant. Thus, plants grow more rapidly and require less soil moisture for the same unit of growth. These two issues, CO2 fertilization and increased drought resistance are two important factors in accelerating the increase in fuel load that have yet to receive much media coverage….
“At 430 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere currently most terrestrial plants are just starting to get in their happy zone. As mentioned above, the optimum CO2 levels for most plant species is between 800 and 1000 ppm…
“Global satellite surveys have confirmed a global greening of the planet with one study published April 26, 2016 from NASA titled, “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds”.
The first two paragraphs read:
“From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide”, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25. “The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.”
The persisting dominance of declinism thinking (due to the endless beating of the apocalypse theme into public consciousness?)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01848-7
Political/social hope
Take note of the political scene today in the US- e.g. the campaign of Robert Kennedy on the Dems side, Tucker Carlson perhaps on the other side (or Vivek Ramaswamy?). And Elon Musk fronting the battle for free speech. And the excellent journalism of Michael Shellenberger, Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, among similar others. Hope in freedom springs eternal, eh.
Added note: In response to the larger emergence of Woke Progressivism and its push for renewed collectivism, one of our main projects should be the affirmation of Classic Liberalism. This generation seems unaware that this is where true social justice flows from, true progress.
Quote from https://www.humanprogress.org/erec-smith-the-human-progress-podcast-ep-41-transcript/
“Two, we need to reemphasize and make explicit classical liberal values. Classical liberalism is social justice if you do it right. There needs to be an explicit movement reemphasizing the primacy of reason, individuality, free speech, and deliberative democracy. We can’t just assume that these ideas are in the air. We have to assume that people don’t know about them and be upfront and direct about their value, especially individuality and free speech since we’re now steeped in racial essentialism and the idea that words are violence,” (Erec Smith).
More on distorting narratives
Liberals have developed a nasty habit (conservatives do the same) of portraying their opponents in terms of the positions of minority extremists on the other side. This widespread pattern in news media has itself become a form of extremism.
It is a form of collectivist thinking- to view differing others stereotypically in terms of the worst features on the other side. To extrapolate the views and statements of the nutcase few as characterizing all on the other side.
Hence the reaction to the Supreme Court decision to overturn Affirmative Action as being about racism and anti-diversity and more. Or to portray those (parents) questioning the excessive and often bullying trans-indoctrination of young children as being “anti-trans” or “anti-gay” and even as “terrorists” for dissenting.
This is the framing of some issue in the distorting terms of the worst minority extremes on the other side. Like Michael Moore stating that all who voted for Trump are racists, or Nazis.
We see this endlessly with liberals who demonize all who disagree with Woke Progressivism, even fellow liberals, as “right-wingers… racists… white supremacists…anti-vaxxers…” and more. The generalization of all dissent in terms of the worst extremes of the other side. That helps promote fear of all differing others as a great threat- you stereotype all in collectivist terms, demonize in terms of the worst extremes and then state that all who differ with you are like that.
This then locks people on both sides in tribal polarity unwilling to even countenance that there are many issues that both sides can agree on and work together on. The areas of common agreement are more prominent than the extreme differences.
Add here, the complicating factor of the refusal to understand the other’s viewpoints, to see good intentions, to grant the benefit of the doubt re motivations and misspoken comments, to give second, third, and more chances to imperfect others.
This polarizing, and extreme demonization of differing others, validates the sense that we are fighting a righteous war against intolerable evil, against enemies that must be destroyed, that have no rights to free speech to push their life-destroying positions. They are a threat too great to even tolerate. They must be vanquished entirely in order to “save democracy or save the world”.
Hope will be located in the middle majority speaking out against this extremism on both sides. Not cowed to silence, not self-censoring out of fear of cancelling. We need the children who innocently shout in the midst of crowd madness- “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes” and break the spell of crowd-insanity. Kids who refuse to join social contagions and stand free for reality.
Brilliant. Brilliant. How many times do I need to say it… Wow. Go Michael (Shellenberger), go. Go Brendan, go.
From “Public”- “The Infantilism Of Totalitarianism: Why the ‘Meta-Facebook-Threads’ effort to make language safe is so dangerous”, by Brendan O’Neill. July 8, 2023.
https://public.substack.com/p/the-infantalism-of-totalitarianism
My hope resurges when I read these contemporary heroes battling for freedom. The future does then brighten. A similar “go” to Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and their colleagues. Among the most credible of journalists today.
And then…. Skepticism over the climate alarmism narrative– i.e. the widely embraced story of “human-caused climate change that is becoming catastrophic”, life-threatening. The comment below continues the site project to counter alarmism narratives and crusades that wreak immense damage on our societies through their “salvation” schemes (“saving the world by destroying it”).
How can I be certain that the facts that I present here on climate are scientifically accurate? Wendell Krossa
Well, for starters, I exercise consistent skepticism toward the limiting and fact-distorting context of alarmism narratives that endlessly repeat such exaggerated claims as “hottest… or worst on record”. Their “on record” referring only to the last century or so of climate data and even within that limited context they distort climate facts. A proper and scientific “on record” would be the larger context that includes the longer-term trends of our entire Holocene interglacial of the past 11,000 years, and further notes the much longer paleoclimate context of climate- i.e. the entire 500-million year Phanerozoic history of life.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/24/how-to-compare-today-to-the-past/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/25/the-holocene-temperature-conundrum/
A proper “big picture” context will include the information that the “Holocene Optimum” (10,000 to 6,000 years ago) was warmer than today by a degree or more Centigrade. The complete big picture and longest-term trends that are associated with anything will get us to “the true state of things”. That is the proper context for understanding the thing that we are looking at (in this case- climate change), for putting that thing in its proper factual perspective.
So also, the Roman and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today’s Modern Warm Period. The full Holocene record shows that since the end of the Holocene Optimum we have been on a 6000 year long cooling trend with each subsequent warming period being less warm than previous ones.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/24/how-to-compare-today-to-the-past/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/25/the-holocene-temperature-conundrum/
Note the graph in this report on climate over our Holocene interglacial (similar graphs are in the above links)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/21/the-holocene-thermal-optimum/
Quote from the above link: “It is very premature to predict a disaster based on a shaky 150-year surface temperature trend.”
Include the fact that 3 centuries ago we descended into the coldest period of our interglacial- the “Little Ice Age” of 1645-1715. We have still not fully rebounded from that dangerously cold period (Northern hemisphere summers missed, starvation). A few more degrees C of warming would not be a “climate emergency or catastrophe” but would be a return to a more optimal, normal world that would benefit all life just as the warmer climate during the Holocene Optimum led to the emergence and flourishing of the great early civilizations and the development of agriculture.
The big picture context overturns climate alarmism by exposing it as a distorting apocalyptic-scale exaggeration that does not help us understand the true state of life.
The alarmist’ repetitious claim that recent heatwaves and warm years are “hottest on record” is not true as the hottest years of the last century (i.e. heatwaves with most days above 100 degrees F.) were in the 1930s, particularly in 1935 and 1936.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/07/hottest-day-evah/
My conclusion from the evidence is as always- There is no sound scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. The benefits of fossil fuels overwhelm any possible negative outcomes on life.
Also, to fill out the big picture on climate, note the dangerously low levels of CO2 during the past four glacial advances…
https://co2coalition.org/facts/water-vapor-is-the-primary-greenhouse-gas/
And another counter to the claim of “climate crisis”–
A good one from meteorologist Anthony Watts…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/08/no-cnn-climate-isnt-the-cause-of-excess-deaths-in-europe/
And…
Switching topics: This from “Public” of July 7, 2023– “We Shall Overcome… By Censoring our Enemies” by Michael Shellenberger and colleagues (and they’re just kidding)…
“The Tribunal said “the fundamental rationale of the democratic process upon which our society is founded is that when competing views, opinions and policies are publicly debated and exposed to public scrutiny, the good will over time drive out the bad and the true will prevail over the false. Only when differing views are expressed, contradicted, answered and debated will the legislature be able to obtain the fullest picture of the views held by those they represent.”
Tribalism, hatred of the differing other: Wendell Krossa–
Some comment on the all-too widespread abandonment of common love and decency for unleashed hatred of differing others.
Both sides in our societies- i.e. the “left-right” divide- have been venting their tribal spirit in unhinged hatred toward differing others over past years. This exhibits in the congenital impulse to meddle with and control others, and the outcome is a general sense that things are messed up today.
Daily (most often on partisan news media) we see examples of the eruption of intense tribalism and the related demonization of differing others as irredeemable enemies who deserve varied forms of punishment- whether censorship, silencing, banning, or outright cancelling. This is the manifestation of a seriously deformed “hero’s journey or quest”.
Tribal partisans obsessive-compulsively scan public discourse (e.g. social media) for micro-mistakes of opponents to jump on and harshly condemn, framing any misspoken words in the worst possible way as “racism… fascism… hate speech… threats to democracy or life….”. The busybody puritans of today then demand censorship, silencing, banning, or cancelling entirely.
In this wave of unleashed totalitarian tribalism and hatred, there is little to no recognition of our fundamental oneness in the human family and our responsibility to love one another, to care for one another (yes, we are our brother’s keeper). What has happened to the responsibility to exhibit love as tolerating diversity of opinion and expression, love as respecting the freedom and self-determination of others, love as the embrace of skepticism and dissent? Too many appear to have abandoned the Classic Liberalism of “live and let live”.
Further notes on our basic tribal impulse and the related impulse to demonize our “enemies: Wendell Krossa.
The tribal impulse, along with the demonization of differing others- These are two of our more destructive impulses that have incited incalculable suffering among people across history. If these impulses are not understood, countered, and restrained they may yet unleash horrific levels of damage (i.e. the potential to unleash a nuclear exchange over Ukraine). We counter these dark impulses with such things as the fact of the oneness of humanity and consequent obligation to respect differing others as equally human, as family. As someone reminded us- consequent to our fundamental oneness, the harm that we do to others we also do to ourselves.
US Democrats, in particular, have been pulled into a group-deluding narrative that has led to some ugly expression of these impulses over the past decade or so. They have come to view all dissent from their extremist Woke Progressivism as dangerous “disinformation/misinformation” that must be censored in order to protect the public. Polls now show that a majority of Democrats now believe and affirm censorship (see note below on recent Glen Greenwald report).
Free speech, formerly honored by liberals as fundamental to all other freedoms, is now considered by many Democrats as a danger to be curtailed for some “greater good” (“greater good” meaning the domination of their worldview in society, Woke Progressivism imposed on all others). This attitude illustrates how totalitarianism erupts and spreads in a population. Many US liberals no longer see that what they are doing is highly illiberal, anti-democratic. They have convinced themselves that they are on the side of sole truth and fighting a battle for democracy against a dangerous enemy that must be restrained, subjugated, silenced, and even eliminated.
All of us are susceptible to self-delusion when we embrace narratives that we are in a righteous battle against intolerable and life-threatening enemies. And we cannot compromise with such enemies because we have framed them and their differing positions/views as “dangerously life-threatening”. We convince ourselves that have no choice but to censor, silence, ban, and eliminate entirely the threat to all that is good (again- our view of “good” as societies dominated by our worldview and principles).
In the “fog” of their righteous war, Democrats have developed the habit of framing any dissent to their views in terms of the worst forms of extremism on their opponent’s side. They then use such mischaracterization to validate their overall position as a righteous battle against evil. Example: They highlight real online evils such as child pornography, pedophilia, examples of actual hate speech, episodes of incitement to violence, etc. all legitimate dangers. But they do not clarify that these are minority extremist views and practises that are not representative characteristics all others who disagree with them. Nonetheless, they repeatedly restate these real problems to legitimize their overall project to censor public media in a broad-brush manner that does not properly distinguish between the minority that are guilty of such evils and their many other opponents that are just exercising common healthy diversity of opinion and speech.
Democrats/liberals have also generalized other fringe minority pathologies- i.e. White Supremacy, racism- out to similarly mischaracterize and smear all differing viewpoints and speech of their opponents. That is sloppy mischaracterization of the many in terms of the faults of the rightfully guilty few. It is a form of collectivist thinking and categorization.
Hence, Woke Progressives now commonly argue that all disagreeing others must be censored and silenced as dangerous threats. They are pushing a narrative that all dissent from their positions should be categorized as “dangerous disinformation, misinformation, mal-information”. Differing social/political opinions are framed as “speech that is violence”, even if such expression of difference is just making others feel “uncomfortable”. Comedy that pokes fun at Woke Progressivism has also been demonized by liberals in this manner.
This is how totalitarianism emerges, develops, and spreads. The sloppy mis-categorization and demonization of all disagreeing others as dangers to be constrained and eliminated. This excessive demonization of differing opinion has even moved toward the criminalization of difference.
In terms of the big ideological background, this is the misrepresentation of all differing others in terms of a collective that is defined as generally evil in some manner. We see this in the now common practise of framing opponents as epitome evil- i.e. “Hitler-like… Nazis”. Again, both sides have done this. Hillary Clinton was called a Nazi for her health care proposals when her husband was president.
People then pose this extremist demonization in terms of the tribal dualism element- i.e. you are either with me as fellow victims of some enemy’s threat, or you are with the differing others as the oppressor class that is the dangerous threat to our life, to our democracy, to our society. Such exaggerated demonization distorts all in the opposing collective, much like Michael Moore stating that all who voted Republican in 2016 were “racists”.
Note: The practise of mischaracterizing and demonizing an opponent’s views/speech as some form of intolerable evil then grants the demonizer a sense of guiltless self-righteousness, of heroically defending some good against injustice and wrong. A healthy introspection and self-awareness of our own imperfections will counter such pathology.
Notes:
Glen Greenwald July 7, 2023– “Establishment Dems Outraged as Court Bans Biden and FBI from Coercing Big Tech Censorship: NYT Defends Illegal Domestic Surveillance”
Quote: “Almost 7 out of every 10 Democrats want the state to censor the Internet, compared to only 28% of Republicans who want that, which is still too high but look at that division. Look at this division between Democrats who want the state to censor the Internet and Republicans who do. That is why censorship really is a Democratic Party ideology. The percentage of Democrats who want tech companies to censor the Internet – so they trust tech billionaires and Big Tech firms to censor the Internet: 76% of Democrats, 3 out of every 4 Democrats want Internet censorship – they do not want the Internet to be free – versus 37% of Republicans. This gap has widened significantly. The Democratic Party is rapidly headed to overwhelmingly favoring both state and corporate censorship and uniting state and corporate power by having the government collude with Big Tech firms to censor the Internet.”
Beware the deluding power of apocalyptic millennialism mythology, how the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths can deform the otherwise noble “hero’s quest”, Wendell Krossa
The continuing embrace of the primitive apocalyptic belief system incites and intensifies our inherited sense of tribal dualism. Apocalyptic mythologies, with strong tribal features, argue for the engagement of righteous battles against enemies that must be conquered/defeated as the means to satiate one’s personal sense of heroism, to legitimate one’s personal drive to fulfill a “hero’s quest”.
Apocalyptic (in the larger context of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythology) has always posited a fundamental dualism and opposition, a cosmically-grounded conflict of good versus evil, of a great battle to overcome and purge some evil as necessary to save life or the world. Apocalyptic, with its inherent exaggeration and distortion of reality, arouses the felt need to violently purge an enemy that threatens one’s very existence. Only when the preliminary violent purging of evil has been accomplished can salvation then be achieved, and the lost paradise restored.
These elements of apocalyptic mythology have long been embraced as essential to the “hero’s quest” or the “righteous war to conquer enemies”. Note how this plays out in the climate crusade, and in general in the Democratic censorship crusade to stop dangerous speech. Its all the same old impulses and ideas- archetypes- that have governed human narratives and life since our earliest beginnings.
These primitive ideas deform the human story with the dark impulses to dehumanize differing others, to unleash the defiling impulses to vengeance and violence.
Further on deforming our consciousness and life with bad mythology: Wendell Krossa…
The self-deceptive element in all this- When we unthinkingly, unquestioningly embrace the themes of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/Redemption” mythology (and related themes), whether in their religious versions or the more recent “secular/ideological” versions, we are embracing the ideas that have long incited and validated humanity’s worst inherited drives to tribalism, domination, and even destruction of differing others. The primitive mythical complex of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” affirms archetypal impulses and ideas that have long deformed consciousness and life with vengeful violence that too many people have wrongly validated as “righteous battles against evil enemies”.
The apocalyptic complex of myths distorts and buries the true story of life and humanity. It posits a cosmic dualism of good versus evil that has been endlessly replicated in this-world dualisms of “good people” battling against “evil enemies” (first brought to religious dominance in Zoroastrian theology, which then shaped all subsequent Western religions). The myth of cosmic dualism has been a central defect in old narratives. It buries the truth of cosmic oneness, a core oneness behind all reality, a oneness that also applies to the human family.
A new narrative will reject the fallacy of cosmic dualism and embrace the now affirmed truth of ultimate oneness, a oneness that also applies to humanity (note the “mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis that affirms our common descent from an East African woman).
We are not enemies locked in an eternal cosmic dualism of good versus evil. We are one family, all together on a great venture of making this wild planet our promised land, making life in this world a safer home for all. The impediment to success in our journey is that we have emerged out of a brutal animal past and have inherited the worst impulses from that dog-eat-dog past. To fully tower in stature as maturely human we must conquer our inherited animal passions (1) to small-band tribalism (good vs bad, insider vs outsider enemy, exclusion of the different), (2) to domination of others, and (3) to destruction of differing or competing others.
Success in the human journey will involve re-orienting our sense of heroic quest and “righteous battle against evil enemies” to the real enemy of us all. Our real enemy is not the diverse, differing people that we encounter throughout life, our fellow humans. We need to re-orient our struggle to the real enemy that dwells within each of us. This was Solzhenitsyn’s point- “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”.
Our real enemy, the real monster that we must confront in our hero’s journey is the “animal passions” that we have all inherited from our past existence in animal reality. Real evil (“sin” in religious traditions) is the inherited animal inside each of us (See “Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil” by Lyall Watson).
Additionally, our re-conception of “enemy” will include rejecting the myths/ideas that humans have long embraced to incite, guide, and validate our dark and destructive animal impulses. Success in our quest will involve exchanging the old narrative themes that affirm our worst impulses and creating new narrative themes to affirm the better angels of our nature.
A new narrative will affirm our fundamental oneness in the human family and will affirm respect for the freedom and diversity of each person, for individual self-determination. Classic liberalism embodies these more humane principles and supporting ideas.
Our problem is that we keep mindlessly re-embedding the old primitive themes in new versions, moving historically from primitive mythology, to later religious traditions, to more historically recent “secular/ideological” belief systems, and even embedding primitive themes in “scientific” belief systems. Old story themes reframed in new story contexts. Its always the same old that unleashes the same old damage by stirring the inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.
Another…
All of us possess the ugly totalitarian impulse and, ideally, all of us should assist in protecting the institutions that prohibit the eruption and spread of the nasty outcomes of these impulses (i.e. prevent harm to others). Classic liberal institutions and principles have done the best to protect us all from our own inherent totalitarian impulses- impulses to meddle in other’s lives, to coerce and control others, to disregard and override the self-determination of others that is critical to human well being and development.
Example: Note how during the Covid lockdowns little dictators emerged all over- i.e. at city, municipal, state/provincial, and federal levels- to overwhelm the freedom of others, to meddle in and control other’s lives, and to fully lockdown the lives of others. And that unleashed totalitarianism was often exhibited with rank hypocrisy as governing elites at all levels would prohibit “the little people who pay taxes” (Leona Helmsly) in many ways but continue to grant themselves freedoms that they refused to grant to others.
Leaving my religion- Then what next? Wendell Krossa
I left my religion (Evangelical Christianity) in the 1970s, and on leaving, I posed a question to myself- Where to next? Where do I go now in response to my personal impulse and quest for meaning/purpose? I have been exploring the alternatives over subsequent decades. On this site I offer some results of my own exploration. And no, hardcore atheism is not a seriously coherent alternative as it contributes little to answer the fundamental human questions of ultimate meaning. Dogmatic materialism is too much the throwing out the baby with the bathwater and not taking the human meaning impulse seriously. The essential role of the “metaphysical” in the human quest for meaning has been noted repeatedly in sections below.
On the other hand, “loss of faith” in traditional religions is not something to bemoan either (the growing “unaffiliated” of “independent” sector of populations). My conclusion is that the central beliefs of religious systems are just too beyond any “due date” to be redeemable. Many of the dominant themes of such traditions are just too primitive to salvage (i.e. notably, the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption’’ complex). Many prominent religious beliefs have been beyond the pale of rationality from the beginning. Further, religious reformism, as in tinkering around the edges of religious traditions, does not solve the basic problem of the fundamental conditional nature of all religion that profoundly distorts human perception of ultimate reality.
I repeatedly isolate this one primary problem with religion across history- i.e. The conditional nature of religion has never communicated to people the unconditional nature of ultimate reality/deity that is critical to human liberation and well being. The unconditional nature of deity is basic to the full liberation of consciousness from primeval fears (i.e. the sense of ultimate security/safety needed to buttress the human spirit during its journey through the suffering of life in this world). This is about the ultimate human liberation.
Further detail: Wendell Krossa….
Liberation from what? From the reality-distorting and consciousness-deforming myths of (1) a better past that has been ruined by corrupted/sinful people (lost paradise), (2) myths of life declining toward something worse, toward looming collapse and ending (apocalypse), (3) myths of angry deity demanding violent blood sacrifice to pay for sin, (4) myths of deity demanding the violent purging of “evil/enemies” from the world, and (5) myths of restored paradise or promised new millennial kingdoms. The horrific damage on human minds, lives, and societies from these ideas has been recounted in good studies like “Cruel God, Kind God, or the research of the apocalyptic millennial scholars listed below, among many others.
We need a thorough gutting of the very core of religious traditions- a fundamental transformation of the most radical kind at the level of foundational archetypes (see, for example, the following comment on the contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth). This is basically an advocacy for a new God, if you will, meaning entirely new God theories. The project that I am advocating is for the thorough transformation of humanity’s highest ideal and authority that has always been the cohering center of our meta-narratives.
Further, Commentators repeatedly note the loss of meaning as people abandon religious traditions. OK, but then offer people more helpful alternatives. Respond to their query- Where do we go next? This site offers/suggests ideas and alternatives for our meta-narratives (i.e. evidence-based input in regard to the main physical indicators of life, along with the best of speculation on metaphysical realities in response to the ultimate questions that physical science cannot answer). See, for example, “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” in sections below.
And this on the “loss of faith” concern…
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-riots-in-france-and-the-west
New alternative narratives would embrace the fundamental truth of ultimate good behind all reality (as in the stunning new theology of God that is an inexpressibly wondrous unconditional love). Alternative narratives will also embrace the fundamental goodness and creativity of humanity as is evident in our improving life over the long term, making life so much better in every way- i.e. medical advances (doubling the human lifespan over the past century, economic progress (eliminating poverty, increasing wealth creation), political improvements (spread of liberal democracy), environmental improvement (Ecological Kuznets Curve research), social advances (spread of equality, inclusion), and more…. See “Humanprogress.org”, among other sources.
More on site project: Wendell Krossa
The climate alarmism crusade has become an apocalyptic movement that is indistinguishable, in its main themes, from all other apocalyptic movements across history. Climate apocalyptic embraces the same old monstrous myths that have incited, guided, and validated all similar eruptions of irrational end-of-days hysteria. I have summarized these pathological themes in the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex.
To fully understand and effectively counter the eruptions of irrationality in alarmism crusades, we need to further isolate out the inciting monster at the core of such crusades- the monstrous God at the heart of the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex. That is the judging, excluding, punitively destroying deity that is the cohering center of such belief systems, the God that gives validating affirmation to the rest of the primitive mythology in that complex.
That ultimate ideal and authority in human narratives across history (termed “Cruel God theology” by psychologists/psychotherapists Ellens and Lotufo) has incited the worst of human impulses across history as evident in the brutality that erupted from the early church Councils, the endless torture and burning of heretics, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the later “profoundly religious” Marxist, Nazi, and Environmental alarmism crusades (another example would be the ISIS eruption of recent years).
We properly and thoroughly solve the problem of alarmism crusades by going to the ultimate root pathology and we apply our corrective solutions there. That involves taking down the monster God that energizes and validates such destructive crusades.
Further comment on site project:
This site continues its project to confront and tackle humanity’s greatest monster and enemy- “threat theology” in the form of myths of threatening ultimate reality- meaning the threatening deity of apocalyptic mythology, the mythical deity that punishes human faults and failures through natural disaster/disease, as well as through after-life harm (i.e. deity engaging ultimate judgment, exclusion, and hell). These views of “cruel God” theology continue to dominate human narratives and belief systems today, both in religious and so-called “secular” versions.
A new cohering center for human systems of meaning: Wendell Krossa…
A major project here is to go to the very core of human meaning, to the historical quest of humanity to understand and explain reality and life, and there challenge the primitive threat theology that has dominated such quest for meaning (slay the monster) and then affirm that there is no retaliatory, punitive, destroying God. There has never been any such thing. That has always been “straw God” mythology, bad mythology that has never existed in any reality anywhere.
To the contrary, this site affirms, with the best of human insight from across history, that there is only love, inexpressibly wonderous “no conditions love” at the core of reality. This is the best of “theodicy” that affirms the true nature of ultimate Good as unconditional.
(Insert: Expect the counter-response that speculation on the metaphysical is “irrational… not scientific”. Nonetheless, we all do this- both religious and non-religious people. We all cross the philosophical/science boundary (or religion/science boundary) to speculate on diverse metaphysical things. Such speculation is natural to the human impulse for meaning, to understand and explain reality more completely. And yes, some speculations are more irrational than others. So let the debates roar on.)
The insight that an inexpressibly wondrous love is the creating, sustaining core of all reality overturns entirely the threat theology of ancient mythology, world religions, including the latest versions of threat theology in “secular ideological” versions such as “vengeful Gaia, angry planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, or payback karma”.
The two best sources that advocate for ultimate love as unconditional, that I have found, are Historical Jesus in his core message (i.e. the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel as in the Matthew 5 and Luke 6 summaries of his teaching). Also, I include the Near-Death Experience movement with its central discovery/insight that God was unconditional love and light.
Concluding thoughts…
If this insight is true- i.e. that God is stunningly unconditional love- then this insight radically transforms everything in human narratives and beliefs from across history. It means that there has never been a punitive deity behind the forces of the natural world (storm, flood, lightning, fire, earthquake, etc.) punishing people for their sins. And there is no judging, destroying God of the afterlife, populating hell with unbelievers and favoring/including only a chosen few who bowed and committed to some religious version of him. That has always been bad mythology. Untrue.
Think of the wasted emotional suffering (i.e. fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, depression) of the countless billions who endured countless millennia of torment under such ideas. And think of the wasted time and resources of the same countless billions who tried to appease the wrath of such deities with blood sacrifices and other payments that exhausted the limited resources of those already impoverished people.
Insert: This report by Willis Eschenbach- “The Myth of Replacing Fossil Fuels”– gives some sense of the incalculable waste on salvation schemes that are the inevitable outcome of apocalyptic alarmism eruptions- i.e. “destroying life to save the world”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/03/the-myth-of-replacing-fossil-fuels/
Once again, marinate on the liberating potency of this insight- There is only stunning love and light beyond the reach of our 5 senses and 4 dimensions. It changes/transforms everything.
Now:
The contradiction between the core themes of Jesus and Paul constitutes history’s single most profound and distorting difference between basic messages/ideas. The difference is between history’s potentially most valuable insight and the world-spanning gospel that subsequently buried that insight.
A pacifying qualifier (pre-empting possible outrage eruptions over the “blasphemy” of “tarnishing/dishonoring” the Christ myth of Paul), Wendell Krossa
Why do I insist that it is critically important to go after Paul’s Christ myth, even with the accompanying risk of potentially offending true believers? My intention in doing this is about re-affirming the single most profound insight ever offered to humanity, an insight presented by Historical Jesus (a person entirely opposite to Christian “Jesus Christ”). Historical Jesus offered an insight that no one had revealed before him, a discovery that was eventually buried by Paul’s gospel of the Christ. My comment here is to present the black/white contrast between the message of Historical Jesus and Paul.
My intention is to recover the best of Historical Jesus- i.e. the central message that he offered to liberate humanity from unnecessary myth-induced fear, shame, guilt, despair, and nihilism/violence. My project is to refocus the human impulse for meaning and purpose onto a stunning new view of the highest ideal/authority that humanity has ever known- deity. This involves reframing our highest human ideal- i.e. love- as unconditional.
Jesus took the belief that “God is love” to new heights of transcendence in stating that God was love that was “unconditional”. This involved broad redefining of God as non-retaliatory, non-judging, non-excluding (no favoring of believers, no damning of unbelievers), non-punitive, and non-violent (no destruction in apocalypse or hell).
So again, why I go after Paul’s Christ myth…. Paul is the “undertaker” or grave digger of Historical Jesus. (Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy back me up on this.)
Here is another post on this topic: Wendell Krossa
I am tackling the Christ myth of Paul because Paul denies, distorts entirely, and buries the single most profound insight ever offered to humanity, an insight to liberate human consciousness from uncounted millennia of slavery to threat theology- i.e. mental/emotional slavery to myths of deity threatening human imperfection with exclusion (favoring/saving only true believers while excluding unbelievers), deity meting out retaliatory punishment (God as ultimate Judge), and deity engaging ultimate violence by destroying imperfect people (apocalypse and hell myths).
Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy both made this point that Paul distorted and buried the message of Jesus- that Paul had buried the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus under his Christ myth.
What did they mean by “buried”? Paul rejected Jesus’ stunning new insight that God was a non-retaliatory reality. Jesus had said that there should be no more eye for eye retaliation toward our enemies. He stated that, instead, we should be like God who loves God’s enemies.
Paul rejected that stunning new theology and retreated to re-affirm the primitive theology of a retaliatory God. He did this by quoting an Old Testament statement (OT as ultimate Jewish authority), “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (see Romans 12:17-20). Using that appeal to the authority of the OT, Paul “buried” the non-retaliatory God of Jesus under his re-affirmation of retaliatory deity.
Worse, Paul added more layers of dirt to his already “six-feet-under” project and further buried the broader insight of Jesus that God was an unconditional deity (non-retaliation is a negative aspect of unconditional). Paul buried this wondrously liberating revelation of Jesus- i.e. God as unconditional reality as in the Father of the Prodigal parable- under the myth of ultimate divine conditions that he highlighted in his Christ myth- i.e. conditions of divinely demanded sacrifice/payment for atonement, conditions of required belief in his Christ, conditions of fulfilling Christian rituals (baptism, Lord’s Supper) and adherence to a Christian lifestyle, conditions of tribal loyalty and membership in a similarly-minded group of true believers, … conditions, conditions, and more conditions, all typical of salvation religions.
Paul’s views dominate the New Testament. The NT is a book that promotes Paul’s thinking and gospel. Christianity is Paul’s religion. The other books that were included in the NT canon were included because they affirmed Paul’s theology and Christology. Many other gospels (i.e. the gospels of James, Mary, Philip, Thomas, Peter, Judas, Marcion, Andrew, Barnabas, gospels of the Hebrews, Nazarites, Ebionites, etc.) were excluded as heretical because they did not affirm Paul’s views. Paul was an intolerant man who damned his opponents, damning even Jesus’ brother James and his lead apostle Peter to perdition for disagreeing with his Christ myth (see Galatians 1:8-9).
So, my complaints here against Paul and his Christ myth are not about engaging a destructive polemic due to an unreasonably contrarian spirit. My motivating impulse is to uncover again the inexpressible wonder of what Historical Jesus presented to humanity with his “stunning new non-retaliatory, no conditions theology”. My project is about restoring the actual message of Jesus (as in Q Wisdom Sayings gospel) to its rightful place and honoring Jesus’ actual contribution to human ideas, a contribution that Paul ignored, dismissed, and contradicted outright.
Nothing, nothing anywhere else in human thought or writing from across history has ever been presented to equal the “stunning new theology” of Jesus, a radically new view of deity that potently liberates consciousness from primal fears, anxiety, shame/guilt, despair, depression, and more. Nothing else goes to the deepest levels of human consciousness/subconscious (to the foundational archetypes in human narratives) than this insight that the ultimate reality behind all reality is love of an inexpressibly wondrous nature. A love at the core of all existence, both physical and metaphysical. This is “love is all” in the most foundational and true sense.
The Jesus insight radically reshapes and affirms an ultimate sense of safety, ultimate safety based on the truth that the core of all reality- the creating Mind/deity- is a love that is transcendently beyond our highest and best imaginations of love. This insight affirms a sense of ultimate security and safety to undergird our experiences in this world. God as stunningly unconditional love is the single best foundational idea to hold onto as we suffer through the horrors and mystery of suffering in this life.
Marinate your mind in this for a while. It is about the overthrow, the conquering of history’s greatest ever monster and enemy- threatening deity. Embracing unconditional deity points to the ultimate “hero’s quest” that we can engage against that ultimate monster/enemy.
Again, this is about going to the root of all, to the very core of human thinking, ideas, beliefs, myths, speculations, narratives, to make transformative corrections at that level. There is nothing more fundamental to change in human life and society. This is ultimate change, ultimate transformation and renewal, of the most profound kind- at the core of human perceptions and understanding of reality.
Added notes: Remember also psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s cautions that the ultimate ideal/authority that we embrace (deity ideas/beliefs) powerfully shapes our thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. If our ultimate ideal advocates threat, violence, coercion to solve problems then so we will inevitably emulate such behaviors, validated by our “God”. But if God is, as Jesus argued, no conditions love and does not, as Jesus stated, exclude, dominate, or destroy others… meaning, if true love is not threatening, coercive, violent… then that profoundly transforms how we think, feel, and act.
This gets to the root of my project here and why I go after Paul’s tribally excluding (saves only true believers), dominating (Lord Jesus, King Jesus), punitive (destroys unbelievers in Hell), and violence-advocating Christ (apocalyptic destruction of world).
We need far more humane ideals to center our narratives and thereby inspire our better angels.
To summarize once again Paul’s basic mistakes…
Paul distorts and buries the unconditional theme in Jesus with his highly conditional Christ, with supreme divine conditions (i.e. the condition of a cosmically oriented blood sacrifice to be the ultimate and universal payment for all sin across history).
Paul buries the non-retaliatory theme of Jesus with ultimate expressions of divine retaliation in the myths of apocalyptic destruction and hell.
Paul also buries the non-apocalyptic theme of Jesus (a non-retaliatory God does not retaliate with the ultimate expression of retaliation- apocalyptic punishment and destruction). Paul buried this with the ultimate myth of an apocalyptic Christ destroying the entire world in a history-ending eruption of divine violence (book of Revelation).
Paul’s Christ myth has profoundly deformed Western narratives, consciousness, and the human impulse to meaning as expressed in our endless project to understand and explain reality and life.
His Christ is the single most egregious distortion/contradiction of spiritual truth in all history because he rejected the single most profound insight to reaffirm the worst features of primitive pathologies, taking the features of primitive deities that had limited influence in tribal ingroups and giving the features of such deities ultimate expression in the Christ who would then be the cosmic, universal expression of those local features- i.e. applied to the entire world, via a monotheistic deity for all humanity.
Paul took features from local, tribal mythology and extrapolated those features out to universal, cosmic levels, making the features of local myths into cosmic universals. Sacrifice was taken from a condition for appeasing local, tribal deities to cosmic level universalism- a sacrifice to appease the God of all, an atonement for all humanity. Making features that were once local, now ultimate, supreme, cosmic realities. Monotheism extended to all, to the universe.
Paul took the single most liberating insight ever offered that would have freed human minds from threat theology fears, and he then revived the most enslaving features of past mythologies, features that have always engendered unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression, and violence.
Stirring the sh_t pot over an icon? Wendell Krossa
Some more ‘sitesplainin’ re my confronting of Paul’s Christ myth as part of the project to uncover and restore the core Jesus insight- “the single most profound and important insight in human history”. My argument is that Paul’s Christ buried that insight and denied us proper access to it over subsequent millennia.
The Jesus insight is the “Single most profound…” ever offered. Isn’t this “Exaggeration…. Hyperbole…. Overstatement….”?
No where near such. The Jesus insight (“the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” or better and “unconditionally loving God)”, his insight offered a stunning new take on the single most prominent and important reality in human narratives- i.e. the nature of the creating/originating Source of all things.
In religious traditions the creating Source has long been defined as deity or God. “Secular” or scientific traditions also probe and speculate on the origins of all things, on the creating Source of material reality (e.g. some universe-creating mechanism that births infinite universes in multi-verse theory, or a “Self-Organizing Principle” as creative Force, or something that creates and sustains “natural law”, or “quantum fields”, among varied speculations on alternative creating forces.).
But physical science is probably forever limited and will not be able to finally answer the question of ultimate creating Source because such reality is “metaphysical” reality, something to be probed and more likely answered by philosophical or spiritual traditions. Early quantum theorists understood this in concluding that Mind was the creating reality behind all else.
By its very nature such reality would be “transcendent” as in incomprehensible to minds limited by 4-dimensional existence and 5 physical senses.
“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter…we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter”, James Jeans.
Nonetheless, even in science the question of the nature of ultimate reality is the single most important thing that we all want to know- i.e. what is the nature of the creating Source of all things? Answering that has to do with the reason for reality, the purpose of reality, and that makes it profoundly important to human meaning.
Hence, an affirming “yes” to my hyperbole in defining the Jesus insight as “the single most profound insight ever in history”.
Further ‘sitesplainin’: Wendell Krossa…
This site is devoted to fighting irrational fear and promoting sound evidence-based hope. This involves probing the root themes of alarmism crusades to understand the motivating ideas of such movements and what original primitive myths those ideas are based upon.
The project here is not just another version of “religious reformism” but rather the more radical/foundational endeavor of understanding the core themes of human narratives across history and especially the “cohering center” of human systems of meaning and how such things impact our breaking into full freedom from religion to live as human, “to fully join the human race”. For instance, all religion across history has been essentially about religious conditions- i.e. conditions of right belief, required sacrifice/payment, required rituals and religious lifestyle as markers of true believers or affiliation with a religious group, etc. Conditions, conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions. An unconditional deity, as per the Jesus insight, overturns all conditional religion…. Entirely. That is liberation like none other, ever.
Moving along…
I affirm Joseph Campbell’s basic framework on human story as a “hero’s quest or adventure”- i.e. the going out into life to fulfill one’s destiny, to make a contribution to life, to embrace and engage the overall project of humanity in making life better, to help create a “promised land” out of a wilderness world. And in this quest, we confront a monster that we have to engage, struggle with, and conquer. Our monster may be a fight against physical disability and suffering, or a struggle with mental/emotional issues, or some form of political/social struggle. Monsters are diversely unique to each individual human story.
We will be wounded in our struggle with our monster, but we also gain insights and learn lessons from our struggle that we can then pass on to benefit others. Further, a wise person will give us the weapon to help us slay our monster. Example: Over decades of discussion, Bob Brinsmead helped me to get a grasp on the idea of “unconditional” as critical to redefine humanity’s highest ideal and authority- deity. Unconditional then became the potent weapon to slay the old conditional “monster” deities of religious traditions.
I’ve embraced Bob’s insights to use the authentically humane feature of “unconditional” (the highest and best definition of love) to slay the old monster deity ideas. Those traditional deity theories embrace onerous conditions such as demanded sacrifice (violence to solve problems), cosmic dualism that is expressed in righteous wars of true religions against false religions/enemies, and other primitive ideas that have always incited the worst of inherited “animal passions” in people. Unconditional slays those inherited ultimate ideals and authorities and gives humanity a new ultimate ideal and authority- unconditional love (love of enemy). (“Slays”? Yes, we are talking metaphor here, in terms of the “hero’s quest” to slay a monster.)
Campbell suggested the same in arguing that embracing “Universal love” (love that included enemies) was how we overcame our animal passions and learned to tower in stature as maturely human. I would use the broader more encompassing term- “unconditional love”- as the potent weapon that slays the old monster gods and enables us to conquer our animal passions that are incited by such primitive “monster God” mythology (i.e. Ellens and Lotufo’s argument that violence-oriented “cruel God” theology has incited the worst of human impulses to similarly solve problems with violence).
Hence my two-pronged approach to fighting monsters/enemies:
First, transform the “monster God” theology that incites our inner monster (our animal impulses). By transforming the core of human narratives- i.e. deity theories that are the cohering center of human narratives, the highest of inspiring human ideals and authorities- we then transform the historically dominant influence on human thought, emotions, motivation, and responses/behavior.
We replace the traditional conditional and violence-inciting ideal with unconditional as the authentic definition of love. This is true liberation of human consciousness/mind and life at the most foundational levels (subconscious archetypes). Wendell Krossa
Again, moving right along…
The fallacy of “presentism”: Wendell Krossa
Beware the fallacy of “presentism”… the belief that our problems are uniquely worse than any before in history, that our situation is uniquely bad and overwhelming. Presentism amplifies the sense of overall decline (i.e. life becoming worse). Declinism is a basic feature of apocalyptic thinking/narratives, and hence, when we inject the additional fallacy of presentism into the social contagion spread of general alarmism, we get the all-too-common tendency today of people concluding that we are sliding down the slippery slope to catastrophe and “the end-of-days”.
James Payne: “The fallacy of presentism: the tendency to assume that events of the present are larger, more important, or more shocking than events of the past. With regard to the use of force, presentism underlies an impulse to suppose that modern violence is worse than violence in the past… (hence the common reaction of “what is the world coming to?” in response to modern news reporting on outbreaks of violence)… (The one assuming the fallacy of presentism) assumes that the killings that loom so large in his consciousness must be worse than the killings about which he knows nothing”. (History of Force, p.8).
People also embrace the fallacy of presentism regarding many other things.
Varied indicators have now emerged that show pushback against narratives of decline, such as significant turnarounds in public perceptions of alarmist narratives (i.e. the surveys showing growing skepticism of the exaggerated alarmist scenarios- i.e. the never-ending claims of the looming end-of-days. Climate change now rates at the very bottom of lists of issues that concern people. Add also the eruptions of public outrage at declinism salvation schemes (i.e. the yellow vests in France and Canada, the Dutch farmers revolt in Holland, protests in Sri Lanka), etc. All such indicators re-affirm hope that many people are rejecting manipulation by alarmist elites and abandoning “the madness of crowds” for a return to rational common sense.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/17/peak-green-in-the-west-what-it-means-for-the-east/
“Humanprogress.org”, for one example, regularly posts good updates that counter alarmism exaggerations of looming catastrophe.
This from Jamie Sarkonak July 3, 2023 “American universities see end to affirmative action. Not so in Canada”
“Affirmative action policies atomize people into their racial categories. Advocates and practitioners of racial handicapping ultimately become racist themselves, because their entire worldview depends on seeing collective identity (and the stereotypes of a particular collective identity) before the individual.”
This point was also covered in detail in Glen Greenwald’s June 30, 2023 article “Affirmative Action Ruled Unconstitutional by US Supreme Court: Superficial versus Substantive Diversity”
Good one by Brendan O’Neill on Public News/Substack, “I’m Afraid We Have To Talk About ‘Her Penis.’ Here’s Why- totalitarianism always begins with a monstrous lie”, July 2, 2023
https://public.substack.com/p/im-afraid-we-have-to-talk-about-her
Note to Politicos: Wendell Krossa–
Stop mollycoddling the alarmist narrative, calm the CO2 hysteria. It was off-putting to see Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta, meeting with Justin Trudeau to affirm her commitment to Net Zero targets. Why did she not first do some basic homework on climate science, especially on the physics of CO2 and recognize that the warming influence of CO2 is now “saturated” in physics terms and will not contribute much more to any further warming. Most critical, good climate science shows us that there is no evidence of any looming “climate crisis” (see good sites such as co2coalition.org or Wattsupwiththat.com).
All to say that there is no good evidence that we must tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. So please cease the mollycoddling of climate alarmism mythology.
End the irresponsible panic-mongering over normal, natural warm summer weather. Its not a “Climate crisis”.
Apocalyptic-oriented news media spew endless eruptions of hysteria over warm summer spells, grotesquely exaggerated as “hottest on record heatwaves”, accompanied with maps colored with alarming dark red to signify catastrophic, apocalyptic-scale heat. Contrary to such exaggeration, we are not experiencing a “climate crisis/emergency”. We have had a mild one degree C of warming over the past century, still not enough warmth to counter the still-too-cold world that we live in, where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth (Lancet report).
We are still emerging from the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial- the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715. We could benefit from several more degrees C of warming. All life would benefit from such warming.
Go to the core issue- the physics of CO2- and listen to the best of atmospheric physicists who help us understand this most basic issue in climate science. That will put things in perspective. It gets us to the true state of climate. The outcome will be learning more, fearing less.
Again, there is no climate crisis.
Cognitive therapy? Wendell Krossa
Cognitive therapy is a powerful tool to help deal with widespread maladies like depression- the “number one illness” across the world.
This site takes a kind of “cognitive behavioral therapy” approach where changing how we think about things can transform our emotions, motivations, and behavior. Much like what Julian Simon did when he was a “clinically depressed” man (his words in his autobiography) due to his earlier acceptance of the environmental alarmism narrative of the 1960s and 70s.
In response to that alarmism of the 1960s and 70s, Simon decided to research the evidence for himself on environmental issues and he discovered that while there were problems everywhere, humanity was doing well in solving those problems and life overall was improving, according to the best data on the main indicators. He learned more and feared less. And, he added, his depression then left and never returned. He freed his mind from despair with sound evidence.
Change your beliefs, your ideas on life and the world, build a new narrative of evidence-based hope and it will transform your consciousness and life. It will liberate you from unnecessary fear, from the anxiety incited by the exaggerated apocalyptic scenarios of catastrophists. Learn more and fear less.
This site extends cognitive therapy to the meta-narrative scale- challenging prominent historical belief systems, probing the core themes of such systems, isolating pathological ideas, and then offering better alternatives as replacements.
I have found help from the good research done by historians/scientists/theologians like Arthur Herman, Bob Brinsmead, Julian Simon, Joseph Campbell, and many others, people who have provided information on the origins, development, and history of human ideas that have shaped our great public narratives. They have shown us which ideas have consistently gotten people into trouble over history and offered us the better alternatives to liberate human consciousness from all such residual, lingering pathology.
Too many of the worst ideas that we have inherited still dominate our public narratives today, both religious and secular narratives. We know better now the harmful outcomes of holding various ideas- i.e. how beliefs in the “violent purging of threat” incite violence toward enemies, or how the demand to embrace a salvation scheme results in harmful solutions to exaggerated problems, etc.
We have no excuse for continuing to hold the themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of myths.
Note: Ask yourself what the constant battering of public consciousness with climate alarmism does to people? What role does constant apocalyptic-scale alarmism play in the widespread anxiety and depression in our societies, and the drug addiction in response to these mental-emotional maladies?