These quotes from below…
Love your enemy transforms the very core of human systems of meaning- i.e. our ideas of deity, as our highest ideal and authority. Love of enemy transforms that core ideal entirely.
Unfortunately, that transformed ideal has still not been embraced anywhere in world religions or other human systems of thought or belief. Unconditional deity has still not been permitted to express its consciousness-transforming influence on people. In fact, world religions have buried that great discovery under endless religious conditions.
Paul most egregiously buried it in his highly conditional Christ myth. There is no “love your enemy” God in Paul’s letters. Note, for example, the wrathful deity of Romans demanding the ultimate condition- i.e. the condition of the bloody sacrifice of a cosmic godman to pay for sin- and then threatening ultimate destruction for any who refuse to believe Paul’s Christ myth. Hence, Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s statements that the “diamonds/pearls” of Historical Jesus were buried by Paul’s Christology that dominates the New Testament (the “product of inferior minds”).
“Q Wisdom Sayings” scholar James Robinson got it right that a “love your enemy God”, a non-retaliatory, unconditional deity, was “Jesus’ greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. That was the very center and core of the teaching of Historical Jesus, his main theme or message. His gospel. As Robinson notes, it was a stunning new break-through in theology that was rejected a generation later by Paul and his Christian movement. Paul retreated back to the retaliatory, conditional deity of all previous primitive mythologies.
See Paul’s direct confrontation and rejection of Jesus’ non-retaliatory God in Romans 12:17-20. Paul retreats to a retaliatory “eye for eye” God in re-affirming his theology as- “Leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”.
In the Jesus Seminar book “The Five Gospels”, they point to this issue of a fundamental contradiction between core messages- i.e. that it is entirely contradictory to present Jesus stating “love your enemy” in Matthew 5 (the ultimate statement of love of an enemy), then a few chapters later (Ch.11) claim that he stated that those refusing his miracles and message were condemned to “outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” (i.e. hell- the ultimate statement of hatred of an enemy). That is an irreconcilable contradiction to claim the same person said such entirely contradictory things.
This contradiction in fundamental messages, between Jesus and Paul, is at the heart of Christianity. No amount of endless defensive apologetics can paper over this basic contradiction between core theologies and messages in the New Testament. Its about the contradiction between non-retaliation and retaliation, non-violence and violence, unconditional and highly conditional, anti-sacrifice and pro-sacrifice, among other issues. Detail in sections and articles below…
Section topics:
(1) “There is no climate emergency”- the conclusion of over 1600 leading climate scientists in the “World Climate Declaration”.
Quote from article summary posted below: “There’s no climate emergency. And the alarmist messaging pushed by global elites is purely political. That’s what 1,609 scientists and informed professionals stated when they signed the Global Climate Intelligence Group’s “World Climate Declaration.”
(2) Some of the highest achievements in life are ethical/moral/spiritual. “Love your enemy” embodies the single most significant human achievement of all. “Love your enemy” takes us to the very heart of what it means to be authentically human, how we achieve human maturity, how we fulfill the hero’s quest and win the inner battle against our inherited monster, our inner enemy that is those inherited impulses to tribal animosity and exclusion of differing others, to domination of others, and to vengeful, punitive destruction of differing, offending others.
“Love your enemy” is the core ethic of the unconditional spirit, the authentically human spirit. Love your enemy offers the most potent solution to end “eye for eye” cycles of vengeance, prevent violence, and shift societies toward a more peaceful future and hence promote human progress toward the better future that we all want. Love your enemy is how we overcome the evil triad of (1) tribal exclusion of differing others (by full inclusion of all), (2) domination of others (by honoring the freedom and self-determination of all others), and (3) punitive destruction of offending others (by unlimited forgiveness and restorative justice).
That this ethic actually works at a societal level- Note that Nelson Mandela’s embrace of “love of enemy” guided his struggle to overcome his African National Congress colleague’s impulse to more aggressively confront their former oppressors. The millions of young South African men who wanted Mandela to lead them in taking vengeance on their oppressors could have erupted into bloody civil war in South Africa around the same time that Serbia and Rwanda rejected love of enemy and descended into the horrific violence of eye for eye vengeance. See “Mandela’s Way” by Richard Stengel. Mandela’s response to his former oppressors was not some form of pacifist “turn the other cheek”. He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights abuses and hold offenders responsible, but also as a restorative justice response to heal the country.
(3) To embrace of the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of primitive myths is to embrace of the most destructive ideas in history. Evaluate your own worldview to see if these themes are still present and working the varied forms of psychopathology noted by psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo in articles below (see “Cruel God, Kind God” by Lotufo).
(4) Kip Hansen on the fact that cold kills 10 times more people every year than warmth does. This fact renders the alarmist crusade over the mild warming of the past century, absurdly irrational and fraudulent. Where are the news media on cold as the real threat to life? We are still in the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial and on a long-term cooling trend since the end of the Holocene Optimum some 6000 years ago. All life would benefit from the much warmer climate that was the average over the past 500 million years- i.e. 3 to 6 degrees C warmer than today.
(5) The endless repetition of the same old damaging myths. This site notes the historical descent of primitive ideas from ancient mythology, then to world religions, and now embraced in “secular ideologies”, even science.
(6) History’s single most profound insight- “Love your enemy because God does”. This “ethic based on similar theology”, or “behavior based on similar belief”, presents the best of human insight into the nature of ultimate reality- deity. “Love of enemy” takes love to its absolute height in deity as humanity’s highest ideal and authority, to then inspire, guide, and validate authentically human behavior.
(7) Another on the real battle of life- i.e. the inner struggle against the evil triad of our inherited animal impulses to tribal exclusion, domination, and destruction of differing others. This inner battle includes the battle against the inherited ideas that validate our worst impulses, ideas that still dominate our narratives. Unconditional is the potent weapon to win the battle, to slay the monster/enemy inside us. Embracing unconditional love as our highest ideal overturns the worst ideas of the old mythical, religious meta-narratives that we have inherited.
(8) “Superlatives” to get the point across- Deity as no conditions love is about transcendent reality. Something infinitely and inexpressibly better than the best that we can ever imagine with our material brains limited by 3-dimensions and informed by 5 senses.
(9) Paul’s rejection of the unconditional message of Historical Jesus, and his rejection of the unconditional God of Jesus, resulted in the single greatest dissonance in religious history. It left Christianity with the most egregious contradiction in the history of thought/belief at the very heart of the religion and its holy book- the Bible, notably in the New Testament. Paul buried the Jesus insight regarding an unconditional God under his highly conditional Christ myth and that became the highly conditional atonement gospel of Christianity as we know it, a denial of the core message of Historical Jesus. That is a great belief contradiction in the extreme that has resulted in the major cognitive dissonance/disconnect that is lodged at the heart of Christianity.
The messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christian “Jesus Christ” are two entirely different and opposite things.
(10) Jordan Peterson and Christine Brophy (different articles) on “the psychology of Left-wing authoritarianism” as compared with “Right wing authoritarianism”.
(11) Joe Rogan and Bill Maher on the pathology of Woke extremism.
(12) Incarceration, de-carceration- criminal justice issues and data facts.
(13) And some further comment on my “evil triad” of the inherited animal impulses to tribal exclusion, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others.
(14) Comment on the natural human fear of death and the human longing for continued existence, negative and positive arguments.
And much more….
Another on the psychopathology of Wokeism, alarmism- Michael Shellenberger, Peter Boghossian, Oct. 4, 2023, “Why This One Simple Chart Will End Wokeism: By describing the psychopathological characteristics of extremist movements, we will reduce their power”. And more below by Jordan Peterson and Christine Brophy on the psychopathology of Left-wing authoritarianism.
https://public.substack.com/p/why-this-one-simple-chart-will-end
Love your enemy. Further probing of humanity’s greatest discovery/insight, the ultimate attainment in love… Wendell Krossa
Do not dismiss outright this ancient and well-worn precept, as some do, making the common mistake of associating it with the dogmatic pacifism of “turn the other cheek”. Mushy, fuzzy, weak-kneed pacifism in the face of evil. Unworkable in human relationships and society.
No. That’s not what it is about. It has more to do with resolving eye for eye cycles of retaliatory vengeance and violence and that is its original context in Matthew 5:38-48 (the very same context in Luke 6:27-36). Luke offers a better version than Matthew who distorts things with his ending of “Be perfect as your father is perfect”. No Mathew, the whole point of the previous teaching is non-retaliatory unconditional love, not to be summed up with a condition that distorts the entire context. Luke got the spirit of the message right by ending with “Be unconditionally merciful as your Father is unconditional merciful” (my paraphrase to help Luke make his point).
Nothing, aside from love your enemy, more pointedly shows us how to resolve the endless cycles of retaliatory vengeance that render us all petty, and at worst, drag us into more of life’s endless rounds of violence. As the temple priestess asks Achilles about his endless violence in “Troy”- “When will it end?”
And as noted below, love your enemy works just as potently at societal level as it does at personal levels. Again, remember how Mandela prevented civil war in South Africa (Richard Stengel, “Mandela’s Way”), compared to the eye for eye approach in Rwanda and Serbia around the same time that devastated those societies.
Most critical, love your enemy points to something ultimate about being human. How we achieve the very highest experience of mature humanity, like Nelson Mandela who evoked in us a sense of how to be better persons in our relations with others, especially with our opponents or “enemies”. So also “The Railway Man”, the mothers of murdered children in “The Forgiven”, and the soldiers in “To End All Wars” gave us further examples of the best of being human. Love your enemy shows us how to attain higher levels of human existence, how to exist peacefully with differing others, and how to maintain our own humanity in response to “oppressors” or “offenders”, not descending into the ugliness of payback responses.
And at another level altogether, love your enemy presents us with something superlatively profound in relation to human meaning. It points to the real nature of ultimate reality, offering a stunning new understanding of the creating Consciousness/Mind of the cosmos- i.e. deity. The view of deity as inexpressibly wondrous and scandalous unconditional love (“scandalous” to traditional views of justice) takes us to liberation that is not presented anywhere else in human thought or discovery- liberation from millennia of bad ideas that still dominate the world religions, and dominate most other human narratives and belief systems.
The “secular” gods of varied human belief systems are just as retaliatory and conditional as the religious gods have always been- e.g. vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth punishing people through natural disaster or disease, also punitive Universe, and payback karma, or meaningless, careless, and cold “Self-Organizing Principle”, among other nasty gods.
Don’t let common distortions of “love your enemy” prevent you from marinating on this powerfully humanizing precept- how to be our best as mature humans, in forgiving, including, responding restoratively to the failures of our fellow humans, remembering that they are still intimate family and will be forever.
Love your enemy, unconditional love… Its about the best of being human… the highest and best of human ideals.
Qualifier: As always with any insights or ethical precepts that the ancients passed on to us- we evaluate their outcomes, usefulness, practicality, etc. We are rightly cautious about other elements of Jesus’ teaching and don’t take it seriously. For example, not many take his comments on giving (“give to everyone who asks you”) as serious economic or business advice. That is entirely impractical. Give to everyone who asks? It you tried that your business would go belly up within a week. There is a good reason for laws that govern the payment of debts and validate lawsuits to ensure that all businesses involved in supply chains are responsible to pay their debts on time. So also criminal justice systems exist to hold all responsible for behavior and to enforce consequences for bad behavior, including incarceration for the worst forms of behavior.
While any owner of personal property, or victim of offense, can freely choose how to respond to bad behavior or human need (i.e. the vineyard owner giving all workers the same wage, or the prodigal father dismissing any restitution), these are not across-the-board ethical demands for everyone. Common sense must always be given prominence in our choices and responses.
Further…
“Love your enemy” predates Historical Jesus by 2 millennia. The Akkadian father (circa 2000 BCE) is one of the first known persons to voice that ethic to his son. 2000 years later, Historical Jesus did something unique by applying that ethic to deity. He made the breakthrough that the Akkadian father missed.
Jesus framed his breakthrough insight within the “behavior based on similar belief” (or ethic based on similar theology) relationship and that was the breakthrough insight that no one else had made before in human history. His insight absolutely transformed the human understanding of deity that had previously been distorted by the ancients who had projected their worst features onto gods- i.e. with pathologies such as the tribal exclusion of differing others (rejection of unbelievers), domination by Lords, Kings, Rulers, and the punitive destruction of differing others (judgment, apocalypse, hell myths).
Love your enemy transforms the very core of human systems of meaning- i.e. our ideas of deity, as our highest ideal and authority. Love of enemy transforms that core ideal entirely.
Unfortunately, that transformed ideal has still not been embraced anywhere in world religions or other human systems of thought or belief. Unconditional deity has still not been permitted to express its consciousness-transforming influence on people. In fact, world religions have buried that great discovery under endless religious conditions. Paul most egregiously buried it in his highly conditional Christ myth. Hence, Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s statements that the “diamonds/pearls” of Historical Jesus were buried by Paul’s Christology in the rest of the New Testament (the “product of inferior minds”).
“Q Wisdom Sayings” scholar James Robinson got it right that a “love your enemy God”, a non-retaliatory unconditional deity, was “Jesus’ greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. That was the very center and core of the teaching of Historical Jesus, his main theme or message. His gospel. As Robinson notes, it was a stunning new break-through in theology that was rejected a generation later by Paul and his Christian movement. Paul retreated back to the retaliatory, conditional deity of all previous primitive mythologies.
Love your enemy holds the potential to transform narratives and human consciousness, to liberate consciousness at the deepest levels, even transforming the archetypes of the subconscious, like nothing else anywhere in human discovery. As Jesus presented it within the behavior based on similar belief relationship, or ethic based on similar theology, it is the single most profound insight ever presented to human consciousness (See my comment below on the use of superlatives as necessary to point to the real nature of this discovery).
Love your enemy or unconditional deity (same thing) overturns entire complexes of bad ideas, bad myths, and subhuman ideas that still dominate our narratives and systems of meaning.
Added notes:
“Love your enemy because God does”: Humanity’s single most profound discovery and insight- the absolute height of ethics and theology.
“Love your enemy”- The weapon to slay our greatest monster, the inner battle with our inherited animal impulses to tribal exclusion of differing others, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others.
“Love your enemy” or “unconditional love”- both are expressing the same thing.
Again, the usual qualifiers: Love of enemy is not about an embrace of dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek”. Its not about feeling mushy, fuzzy, or warm toward offenders, and downplaying or dismissing horrific offenses. Any common-sense grasp of love will hold all responsible for behavior and consequences and will ensure the incarceration of repeat violent offenders as well as full restitution to victims. Love will always maintain the criminal justice priority of protecting innocent people from threat and harm.
See also the discussion by Christian Gade and Tim Chapman below on “Is Restorative Justice Another Form of Punishment?” at…
https://www.euforumrj.org/en/restorative-justice-another-form-punishment
Another intro clarification: Classic Liberal principles, institutions, and practises counter the evil triad most effectively and thoroughly.
And then author Doug Murray on Canada’s descent into ignorance and illiberalism…
Thanks Doug- you nailed it. We have become the land of the stupid, of the ignorant, and we needed your “slap up the side of the head” reminder (metaphorically speaking). What is happening in Canada, representative of the same illiberal insanity metastasizing across Western societies, is what “madness of crowds” looks like. We need some children to stand up and blurt out- “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes”.
Sheesh. Murray nailed us. Others have also noted that Chrysta Freeland, of Ukrainian heritage and very knowledgeable about Ukrainian history, should have, of all people, known about the man they honored in Parliament the other day.
Again, Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others are calling out this Woke lunacy daily. It has spread everywhere, rendering entire populations idiotic, mad in the grip of delusional narratives like climate alarmism.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/douglas-murray-canadas-descent-into-ignorance-shocks-the-world
Douglas Murray: Canada’s descent into ignorance shocks the world
An unbearable stupidity has trickled down from the Liberal government, Published Oct 03, 2023
“Perhaps I should say straight away that I love Canada. Some of my best friends are Canadian. That minimal throat-clearing aside, let me say — as a friendly outsider — that Canada today looks like a nation of ignoramuses.
“The incident in Parliament the other week is just one case in point. Standing ovations are very rare things. They should be very special things. When a whole House stands to applaud someone they had better be very sure who they are applauding….
“What makes this worse is that this all comes after a period in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been perfectly happy to call decent, ordinary Canadians Nazis. To use measures like the de-banking of his critics in moves that have horrified most of the other democracies in the West… But in Canada it seems to be perfectly acceptable, because at any time the Canadian prime minister and deputy prime minister can claim that their critics are homophobes, xenophobes, racists, Nazis, misogynists and all of the rest.
“The world — especially America — has looked on in horror as the Canadian government has tried to curtail speech in the country, and looked on with ever-more horror as Canadians seem willing to go along with this….
“As someone who spends most of his time in America I can tell you that it is the American public who now wonder at what on earth is happening with our neighbour in the north.
“The most famous public intellectual in the world right now is Professor Jordan Peterson. Canada should be proud of him. Yet every week we read of him undergoing yet another trial back home in Canada. It was an Ontario court which in August ruled that the college of psychologists could order Peterson to undergo mandatory “social media training” after Tweets which people who had never been patients of Dr Peterson’s objected to. I wonder who in Canada thinks they know more about social media than Jordan Peterson? But it is the professional bodies as well as the courts of Canada that have jumped right into this idiotic place. The governing body for Ontario psychologists thinks that Peterson has committed some crime for expressing his thoughts. It is also noticed — I can assure you — that a Toronto doctor who sexually abused four of his patients was only given a six-month suspension.
“But it isn’t just double-standards, or the grotesque politicization of almost every institution in Canada that now catches the eye of the world. It is, as I mentioned at the start, the unbearable stupidity which seems to have trickled down from the top of government downwards.
“Take that bizarre moment most in 2021 that I know most Canadians would wish to forget about. The moment when the country went into a bizarre moral panic after one totally unverified report claimed to have found numerous graves near residential schools run by the Catholic Church in areas with First Nations communities. That one unverified report was based on ground penetration radar that was wholly inconclusive. Nevertheless, the country went into one of the most disturbing moral panics since Salem.
“Canadian media ran reports of the discovery of “mass graves” containing the bodies of children. How many churches were burned as a result? Some estimates say over 80, across the country….
“These are the sort of consequences you get from a society wallowing in unutterable ignorance.
“Why, at such a moment, were there not prominent figures with some guts and some knowledge of your country´s history even willing to stand in front of the mob and shout “stop”? Why was the mob not confronted by people saying “You know what — the residential schools were not in fact set up to murder Indigenous children.” Or at the very least saying “Let us wait to consider some evidence.”…
“My suspicion is that very few Canadians are aware of quite how bizarre the rest of the world now finds the country. When it thinks of it at all it sees is a country that used to be renowned for its liberalism now most noted for its proto-authoritarianism…”
Douglas Murray is the author, most recently, of “The War on the West” (Harper Collins).
Added notes:
Insert: Politicians, among others, have created a new smear for those asking for a proper investigation of the graves, to discover if they even contain bodies. In response, they have been called “denialists” and there are calls to criminalize such “denial”. This is what madness of crowds insanity looks like. Much like Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch proposing to criminalize skeptical climate science in 2016 just before they left office.
https://tnc.news/2023/06/22/questioning-graves-illegal/
Note the ‘concept creep’ in the last above link. Just commenting on or questioning, just asking for normal investigation, or trying to investigate, is now defined by some as “violence”. Much as categories like “hate speech” have been extended to cover any differing opinion or expression with calls to censor and ban such dissenting opinion. Whatever upsets or makes some people uncomfortable is now categorized as “hate speech, speech that is violence” and the uncomfortable people demand full criminalization of such differing opinion and speech.
How to describe this lunacy? Joe Rogan often, with guests, makes the comment, “What kind of crazy world are we in today?”
And another…
Excellent summary of climate alarmism, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-politics-of-climate-alarmism
“Derek H. Burney: The politics of climate alarmism, Oct. 3, 2023
“The climate debate has been hijacked by a political narrative that brooks neither dissent nor balance
“The West needs a more balanced approach to controlling emissions while sustaining economic growth.
“Damaging weather events inevitably lead to climate evangelists making apocalyptic claims of imminent disaster. UN Secretary-General António Guterres led the most recent chorus, talking about “global boiling” and raising alarmism to a fever pitch. Yet, last month, more than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel physics laureates, signed a declaration stating “There is no climate emergency.” That poses a serious political problem for any government that has been arguing to the contrary.
“When fires devastated the picturesque Hawaiian town of Lahaina in August, killing 97 people, the governor immediately blamed climate change. During his subsequent visit, President Joe Biden endorsed that judgment. On closer inspection, the evidence suggested a staggering degree of administrative incompetence, notably flawed public utility facilities that literally sparked the fires and constrained the supply of water needed to staunch the flames.
“In contrast, Florida managed to cope competently and efficiently with the deadly force of Hurricane Idalia later that same month, with minimal deaths and few outrageous allegations about climate change.
“According to a recent Lancet study, 20,000 people die in the U.S. and Canada from heat each year whereas 170,000 die from cold. Globally the study found 4.5 million annual cold deaths — nine times more than from global heat.
“Data used to “prove” links to global warming is often cherry-picked, and proposed policy responses are arbitrary. As John Murawski noted in a recent article for RealClearInvestigations, dissenters contend that “the public and government officials are getting a one-sided apocalyptic account that stokes fear, politicizes science, misuses climate modelling and shuts down debate.”…
“At a Republican primary presidential debate in August, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy brashly described the climate agenda as a “hoax.” While received warmly at the debate, Ramaswamy was pilloried by climate activists.
“Ramaswamy is not alone questioning the climate debate. Princeton’s William Happer and MIT’s Richard Lindzen have expressed skepticism about the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule to cut carbon emissions, saying they “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justified reason,” adding that, “The EPA has been constantly wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes and grossly overstating the harm from CO2 emissions while ignoring the benefits of CO2 to life on Earth.” Many people have been “brainwashed into thinking that climate change is an existential threat to the planet.”
“The problem is that the debate has been hijacked by a political narrative that brooks neither dissent nor balance and yet many industry leaders and bankers supinely “go along to get along” rather than challenge what they undoubtedly know defies common sense….
“Instead of a dogmatic, one-dimensional approach with unattainable goals that undermine economic growth, Canada needs a more balanced position with achievable goals using multiple forms of energy and technologies to sustain growth, while also responsibly controlling emissions.”
“Derek H. Burney is a former 30-year career diplomat who served as Ambassador to the United States of America from 1989-1993.”
Reposting of “The tribal bubbles that we lock ourselves within”, and the outcomes of great harm to differing others… Wendell Krossa
We should all be careful about how we think of the differing other person that we disagree with. Watch the terms, slipping across into smears, that we begin to embrace to define that other person- terms that dehumanize, demonize the differing other person. It is a dangerous slope. Note some warning examples from recent history- i.e. the Hutu in Rwanda dehumanizing the Tutsi as “vermin, cockroaches”, thereby prepping the population to cleanse society of such a defiling thing.
So also the Nazis, where many otherwise good people were caught up in the crusade to demonize differing others, and then believing that it was a just and righteous thing to cleanse their country of what their leaders presented to them as a malevolent threat. By exterminating the “vermin” they would be saving their society from a defiling, life-destroying pestilence. Ordinarily good people were then led to believe that they were fighting a righteous battle against some intolerable evil. Such was the outcome of dehumanizing differing others and exaggerating the threat from the differing other.
Remember also Joseph Campbell’s caution that when your intellect tells you that you must engage a righteous battle against some “evil”, do not forget that your purported “enemy” is still your family. We must never abandon our fundamental obligation to love our enemy. It is the most fundamental human responsibility and the defining feature of being truly human. Love of enemy is what love actually means in its highest sense.
Point below:
Below are some interesting features of primitive mythology that are at play in today’s public sphere, agitating and intensifying the great left/right oppositions and battles. Be aware of how these deeply rooted “archetypes” continue to influence our thinking, shaping how we respond to others that differ, how we treat others. and how we can unintentionally slip into the dehumanizing and demonizing of differing others. That then provides validation to harm the differing other as “true justice” and necessary to protect some purported greater good. We are watching the harmful outcomes of today’s dehumanization and demonization crusades in the punishing of “heretics” with censorship, smearing to destroy reputations with extremist pejoratives- “Nazi… racist… fascist…. Far right… threat to democracy… purveyor of disinformation/hate speech…”, and more. The harming of others extends even to full-on cancelling and validating violence against one’s “enemies”.
Some notable primitive archetypes inciting today’s destructive tribal battles:
(1) The dualism of Zoroaster that was projected onto ancient deities (circa 1500 BCE), thereby given ultimate status, and has ever-since served to incite and validate varied human expressions of dualism, consequent opposition, and even violent destruction of differing others. That primitive dualism has never been subsequently rejected as a great distortion of reality, life, and humanity. It has promoted tribalism as a cosmically-validated factor in the human meaning project, lodged in humanity’s highest ideal and authority- i.e. God/deity. Tribal dualism, and its denial of human oneness (i.e. all humanity as members of the one human family- the “mitochondrial Eve hypothesis”), persists in our meta-narratives today.
(2) Essential to Zoroaster’s dualism was the feature of Good versus Evil, and the stronger the contrast between good and evil (for example, the more intense the demonization, dehumanization of differing others as “evil”) the better to validate the battle against evil and the necessary destruction of one’s “enemies” that threaten one’s own good. Again, the dualism of good versus evil denies the oneness of the human family, and denies the ultimate oneness behind all reality. Some suggest in spiritual/philosophical traditions that dualism is a feature only located in this material realm, a “temporary” thing, a necessary feature of this world that exists as a learning arena where the contrast with bad is necessary to experience, understand, and exhibit authentic good (i.e. there is no authentic moral good without the free choice against some evil).
(3) Also at play in today’s left/right oppositions, the natural impulse to embrace a hero’s quest- to go out and engage a righteous battle against some monster/enemy and conquer/slay that enemy, to save a maiden, to save one’s world from evil threat. Cosmic dualism and the dehumanization of differing others deforms the hero’s quest, which should really be focused on the inner monster/enemy (i.e. our animal inheritance, notably the “evil triad” of the impulses to tribal exclusion, domination of others, punitive destruction of differing others). The hero’s quest should be a struggle to win the inner battle. That is the real righteous battle against evil, our most critical contribution to saving life and the world.
These three, and others, are archetypical themes in human consciousness/subconscious, shaping our thinking, feeling, motivation, and our treatment of differing others today. Pay attention to how these things are being exhibited often to harmful outcomes in our societies.
We need to find and embrace the most effective weapons to fight these base impulses and there is nothing more effective than the ideals in our narratives that serve to influence our thinking, feeling, motivations, responses, behavior- ideals like the non-retaliatory, unconditional treatment of all. That is where we can sharpen our defenses against the residual animal inside us all.
This is about the ideas, beliefs, themes… the archetypes that shape our narratives and worldviews. Choose wisely among options available to ensure your system of ideas/ideals is producing the most humane outcomes for others. Some helpful criteria for evaluating ideas are located in our better constitutions, human rights codes, and ethical systems. Also valuable for evaluating ideas/ideals are Classic Liberal principles and practises.
And then we should find good models- people who have exhibited the best of human ideals and behaviors, like Nelson Mandela, or the Railway man, or the mothers of murdered children at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and many other individuals who exhibited unconditional treatment of all, even after enduring malicious violence and the worst forms of suffering. Many of us will be tested in regard to these issues, whether in the ordinary of daily life, or in things more consequential to a wider sphere of influence.
Another intro comment re the article just below…
Racism and collectivism both ignore individuals, individual characteristics, individual complexity and diversity to characterize everyone in some despised group according to the same subhuman features, notably characterizing dissenting others as some form of a demonized and dehumanized whole, which then distorts reality entirely.
Repost on how the Left is validating the censorship of differing others today, notably US Democrats/liberals– i.e. demonizing all members of their opponent’s group in terms of the minority extremists among their opponents. The practise of demonizing all with the opinions and characteristics of the extremist few provides the demonizers with the self-justifying reason to validate their censorship of all on the other side, all opinion and speech that dissents from the demonizer’s ideology/narrative. And beyond censoring, banning, cancelling… demonizing with extremist minority positions provides validation for violence toward all differing others. This all-too-common practise today is based on an irresponsibly and intentionally sloppy mischaracterizing of disagreeing other’s views and positions. Wendell Krossa
US liberals/Democrats (and yes, conservatives also engage the same irresponsible behavior) have resorted, notably over the past few years, to intentionally portraying their opponents (i.e. conservatives, moderates, centrists, even moderate liberals/leftists) in terms of the positions of the minority extremists on their opponent’s side. This now widespread practise of distorting the positions of an entire group of others as an indistinguishable whole, characterized by the worst forms of extremism on the other side, has become a form of extremism itself. Highly biased and partisan news media daily propagandize such distortion to demonize and discredit all ideological opponents.
This childishly irresponsible tribalism distorts the complexity of viewpoints and positions that people hold and the fact that the majority on both sides are moderates, not extremists.
Demonizing majorities with minority extremism positions is a collectivism-type approach that engages the primitive dualism of good versus evil (the simplistic and reductive view of populations as consisting of only two classes of opposing and polarized people) and then resorts to the dehumanization/demonization of the other side as justification to fight, conquer, and even destroy the differing others. This demonization is necessary to affirm one’s personal sense of self-righteously and heroically fighting a righteous battle against evil, of fighting to save something, doing something noble, grand, and world-saving.
Again, we see the element of dehumanization/demonization in the framing and stereotyping of all differing others in terms of the worst features on the other side. The demonizer focuses on the views and statements of the fringe few on the opponent’s side, exaggerates the extent of such views (i.e. common, widespread), and then extrapolates such views out to the collective whole on the other side, thereby characterizing all on the other side in terms of the views of the extremist few.
Illustrations from the US…
US liberals/Democrats reacted to the 2023 Supreme Court decision to overturn Affirmative Action, claiming that it was about “racism” and “anti-diversity”- the extremist positions of only a minority few on the fringe. They have also portrayed the parents who questioned the excessive and often bullying trans-indoctrination of young children as being “anti-trans” or “anti-gay” and even smearing those parents as “terrorists” for dissenting from such indoctrination, all for wanting to be involved in their children’s education. See Julia Malott’s article just below- “Nope, parents are not ‘fascists’ for being skeptical of gender politics”.
It has been, notably, US liberals/Democrats engaging this practise obsessively over past years- framing issues in the distorting terms of the worst minority extremes on the other side. Like Michael Moore stating that all who voted for Trump were “racists”, or Nazis. Justin “always virtue-signalling” Trudeau did this with the trucker’s protest, characterizing the entire movement against vaccine mandates, a position supported at the time by 70% of Canadians, as a protest of “Nazis and racists” due to one person showing up with a US Confederate flag and a few others using the Nazi swastika as a criticism of Trudeau’s authoritarian practises. Media ignored the fact that the person carrying the Confederate flag was quickly ushered out of the protest by the truckers.
We see this endlessly where today’s liberals demonize all who disagree with extremist Woke Progressivism, smearing even fellow liberals, as “right-wingers… racists… white supremacists…anti-vaxxers…threats to democracy… purveyors of disinformation…”, and more. Even dissenting Blacks are demonized as the “face of White supremacy, or Uncle Toms”. They are generalizing all dissenters from Woke Progressivism in terms of the worst extremes of the dissenting side.
The distorting generalization of all others in terms of extremist positions then promotes fear of the differing others as a great threat. You stereotype all disagreeing others in collectivist terms, demonize them in terms of the worst of extremist positions on their side, and then you claim that all who differ with you are dangerous extremists who are threatening the entire society- i.e. “threats to democracy, threats to life itself”.
Such generalization then validates your claim that you need to censor the disagreeing others in order to “protect the public from harm, to prevent violence, to save democracy”, and so on. You delude yourself with the belief that you are fighting for the “greater or common good” (“greater or common good” as defined in terms of your ideology, your positions and your tribe). Once you have convinced yourself that the differing other is a threat to democracy, a threat to your society, even to your very life, then all measures to “defend” yourself are now legitimate in your estimation. I mean, its now about “saving the world” from apocalyptic ending. Desperate times now demand desperate measures.
This practice of distorting all difference or dissent as dangerous extremism then locks people on both sides into an intensified tribal polarity where people are unwilling to even countenance the fact that there are many issues that both sides can agree on and work together on. The areas of common agreement are far more prominent than the extremist differences.
Add here, the complicating factor of the ideologically-reenforced dogmatism and stubbornness that refuses to understand the other’s viewpoints, that refuses to see good intentions in differing others, that refuses to grant the benefit of the doubt re motivations and misspoken comments, to give second, third, and more chances to imperfect others. Add further the spirit of harsh intolerance and vengeance, tantamount to hatred of differing others, and you have a dangerous descent into irreconcilable tribal polarization that we see daily in the mutual vilifying of differing others. Much “comedy” has sunk to this now unfunny level.
The demonization of differing others with extremist terms, validates the bubble-encased delusion of today’s liberals that they are fighting a righteous war against intolerable evil, against enemies that must be eliminated, even destroyed in varied ways, opponents that have no rights to free speech to push their “dangerously life-threatening disinformation/misinformation”. The differing and dissenting others are a threat too great to even tolerate. Such opponents must be vanquished entirely in order to “save democracy… or to save the world”.
The eruption of this intense tribalism, fear, and the hatred of what is purported to be a life-threatening “enemy”, and the refusal to return to ‘liberal democracy’ sanity (Classic Liberalism), is the real threat to democracy today.
The essential nature of racism and collectivism- to view populations in terms of dual opposing classes- i.e. oppressors versus oppressed, victimizers as opposed to victims. All in one class are viewed as indiscriminately evil, all in the other class are undoubtedly righteous. Individual characteristics are ignored, dismissed, rendered meaningless in the face of the collective identity that is projected by those wanting to demonize and dehumanize their opponents in order to validate the elimination of all such opponents.
The hope for a return to common decency and liberal democracy cooperation is located with the moderate majorities of people on both sides courageously speaking out against such extremism. Moderates who are not cowed into silence, not self-censoring out of fear of cancelling. We need more of the spirit of the children who innocently blurt out in the midst of crowd madness- “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes” and break the spell of hysterical crowd-insanity that fogs so many. Youth who refuse to join social contagions and will stand free for common sense, common decency.
Glen Greenwald, among others, regularly points to this demonizing of all opponents with collectivist characterizations, in his podcasts and articles. As he notes, this practise is mainly employed today by US liberals/Democrats.
This illustration of demonizing differing others: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/principals-death-is-a-stain-on-the-conscience-of-this-nation
Another example of extremist demonization of your opponents that then becomes validation for your own anti-democratic, even “criminal-like”, responses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_6lha8jO0
Sam Harris has argued in other forums that its OK to publicly lie, to corrupt democracy and justice, all to deny the Hunter Biden laptop that the FBI knew was true, back in 2019. Harris states that it was OK to push the lie that it was “Russian disinformation” because the evil that he believed the US faced from Trump made it OK. He had convinced himself, as many Democrats also have, that the threat from opponents like Trump was so great that any action to prevent such evil was legitimate.
Harris has rejected Classic Liberalism for authoritarianism, for censorship, and he appears oblivious to the fact that he is embracing the slippery road to totalitarianism and what he is doing is not about any “righteous battle against evil”. It is the rejection of the fundamentals of liberal democracy.
Added note:
The three fundamentals that are essential to truly human existence, to authentically mature human life- three humane ideals that are critical to inspiring, guiding, and validating the better impulses of our human spirit: (1) the inclusion of all as full equals (recognition and respect for the oneness of humanity), (2) the embrace and practise of non-dominating forms of relating (respecting the freedom and self-determination of all others), (3) the embrace of non-punitive approaches to offending or differing others (restorative justice approaches).
Related material:
Here Jordan Peterson analyzes and explains the psychology of “Left Wing Authoritarianism” and illustrates this with Justin Trudeau- “a narcissist who has never spoken an authentic word”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNIfIe0wgE
And a related similar article by Christine Brophy on the psychology of Left Wing Authoritarianism…
https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness#details
And a potent weapon to pop the ideological bubbles that lock us into these distorting tribal narratives
The weapon to slay the real monster within each of us, is the singularly humane ethic, the absolute height of the human ideal of love, the feature that most clearly defines us as maturely human- i.e. “love your enemy”. Take this famous precept seriously. Don’t dismiss it as too mushy, too weak in the face of evil, as dogmatic “turn the other cheek” pacifism. Wendell Krossa
Qualifiers: Those embracing the ideal of “love your enemy” will hold offenders responsible and will restrain the violent. They will even engage the rare “just war”. But they will do so, as a Chinese sage (Laotzi?) said, only to defend against their attackers. And then when the attackers have been resisted and subdued, the one seeking to practise love of enemy will immediately seek to reconcile with the enemy after defeating them. Those loving their enemy will not humiliate their aggressors and will not engage in post-defeat triumphalism. They will seek restoration with the attackers as the Allies did with post-WW2 Japan and Germany. So also, those loving their enemies will respond similarly to criminal offenders.
Those practising love of enemy will maintain a view of the differing others as family to be treated with full inclusion as equals, no matter their failure to live as human. Love of enemy will maintain respect for the freedom and self-determination of the differing others and will seek full restoration after failure, not punitive destruction for offences and differences.
Love of enemy cautions us to restrain our natural impulses to vengeance when offended, to overcome the impulse to hatred of the offending other, and love of enemy urges us to remember that ultimately we are one family and responsible to one another as members of the same family.
Remember also that love your enemy is part of a larger “behavior based on similar belief” relationship. Meaning that “love of enemy” also defines Ultimate Reality (i.e. God) as unconditional love. Love of enemy tells us the real nature of the ultimate ideal and authority that is deity, our creating Source. No religion has ever communicated this to humanity. The historically recent “Near Death Experience” movement, the latest stage in human spirituality, is now communicating the unconditional nature of deity.
Love your enemy, meaning unconditional love, and especially the recognition of deity as such love, defines why we are created, why we are here on Earth living out a life story, and why we are enduring the varied experiences that we suffer in life. Love your enemy answers our primary impulse for meaning- taking us right to the core of it all, the very purpose of existence and life.
Love of enemy should be our “religion”, central to our narratives, central to our worldviews, our systems of belief and ethics. Love of enemy takes “love is all” to its ultimate definition as universal, non-tribal (re-affirms oneness in the human family), non-discriminatory, non-dominating (respecting the freedom and self-determination of others), non-punitive (restorative justice approaches), all-forgiving, generous, non-violent/destructive, and more.
Love of enemy is fundamental to why we exist in this temporary material realm of dualism- to experience the opposites of good, to be tested, and to learn how to react as more truly human by resisting our natural animal impulses to view differing others tribally as enemies, threats, to want to dominate the differing others, and to destroy the differing others.
In our battles with these base inherited impulses, we learn what the hero’s quest is really about- to fight and conquer this inner monster that is in all of us, to learn to forgive the other, to include as family, to treat restoratively. Then we can tower in stature as maturely human, like a Mandela. We then fulfill the purpose of our existence, of our life stories, and attain the greatest human achievement of all.
“Love your enemy”- The weapon to slay our greatest monster, the inner battle with the inherited impulses- the “evil triad” of tribal exclusion of differing others, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Again, Love of enemy is humanity’s single most profound discovery and insight- the absolute height of ethics and theology.
An example of excessive dehumanization/demonization of differing others in the Canadian situation, distorting the actual positions of dissenting others.
Julia Malott: Nope, parents are not ‘fascists’ for being skeptical of gender politics
The core issue at hand is preserving their agency and autonomy over the ideological content of their children’s education, Published Sep 18, 2023
This illustrates the tribal distortion, demonization of differing others that is disrupting our societies… the endless use of the smear of “Right-wing” to automatically dismiss differing opinions…
Note this from below…
“As parents’ voices grow louder, there’s a perception in the progressive left that all of these emerging movements are rooted and inspired by “far-right” extremism. Many in leftist circles suggest that parental rights advocacy is a dog-whistle: a veiled attempt to advance anti-transgender policies. A recently leaked video from an Ontario Federation of Labour meeting offers a glimpse into how some of the province’s most influential union members perceive these protests. As one member notably stated during the meeting: “The fascists are organizing in the streets … . This is far more than a far-right transphobic protest. They’re fundamentally racist, they’re fundamentally anti-union, they are fundamentally transphobic, and it’s just a matter of time before they come for us.”
“Such language of a growing fascist movement, evoking images of 1933 Berlin, is more than a little unhinged, particularly when all they are discussing is parents uniting together to demand involvement in their children’s education. As a covert spectator in the union meeting, there was an undeniable sentiment among participants that if not for them democracy would surely collapse…
“For many parents, the core issue at hand is preserving their agency and autonomy over the ideological content of their children’s education. They want transparency about what is being taught, the option to excuse their child from content they believe doesn’t align with their values, and the discretion to determine age-appropriateness for activities, such as certain reading material or events like drag queen performances at schools. Perhaps least surprisingly, parents want to be involved in the key decisions of their own child undergoing a social transition in the classroom.”
And then from National Post on “Trudeau’s malignant naricissim”
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/stephen-moore-the-malignant-narcissism-of-justin-trudeau
This further illustrates the above points on tribalism, dehumanization/demonization of differing others in order to discredit, dismiss, and even destroy the other (censoring, cancellation, banning, even criminalizing of dissent).
Stephen Moore: The malignant narcissism of Justin Trudeau, Published Oct 01, 2023
Moore begins noting the recent Canadian parliament honoring a Nazi as a war hero and Trudeau subsequently trying to blame Russians for potentially using the episode for disinformation.
“Trudeau called it “deeply embarrassing.” Trudeau then warned against “Russian propaganda and Russian disinformation.”
“Trudeau’s non-apology and lecturing about “Russian disinformation,” even though it was the Canadian Parliament that celebrated a Nazi, thereby giving a boost to this so-called “disinformation,” is amusing, given his repeated denunciation of the Freedom Convoy as a Nazi-linked movement.
“About the truckers, Trudeau said, “We are seeing activity that is a threat to our democracy, and that is undermining the public’s trust in our institutions.” Trudeau, one day later, compared the truckers to Nazis and American racial segregationists. “Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas,” he said. “They can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag.”
“It should not have to be said, but it does: Trudeau had zero evidence then, and none today, that the truckers were racists or Nazis. The swastikas printed on flags at the convoy were not hate symbols — they were intended as criticism of the government’s overreach through a comparison of Trudeau’s government to Nazi Germany. Yet Trudeau condemned a Jewish member of parliament for being sympathetic to the convoy and for supporting “people who wave swastikas.”
“Trudeau’s colleagues participated in his conspiracy theory. One Liberal MP said that truckers’ “Honk, Honk” slogan was a coded message for “Heil Hitler.” There was never any evidence for any of this then or now.
“As such, Trudeau was spreading disinformation. Naturally, Trudeau has, for the last three years, been accusing others of spreading disinformation and demanding that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter censor the people he disagrees with…
“Trudeau has just been engaging in the usual progressive rhetoric of accusing his opponents of being Nazis…
“What he’s doing in Canada should terrify everyone in the Western world who cares about being free from government tyranny, censorship, and disinformation. That’s because Trudeau is pioneering a new way for governments to take control over the information environment — spreading disinformation and demanding censorship — that is similar but different to efforts we are seeing in places like California, Australia, and New Zealand.
“People across the Western world were rightly alarmed when Trudeau last year invoked, for the first time in Canadian history, the Emergencies Act (though its predecessor the War Measures Act had been previously used) and froze bank accounts of people associated with the Truckers’ cause. It was brazen thuggery that Trudeau justified by calling ordinary Canadians Nazis and racists.
“Trudeau’s crackdown on the Freedom Convoy protestors was followed by efforts to regulate and control the internet. His Online Streaming Act and Online News Act, gave the government expansive new powers to regulate online media. Coming legislation addressing “online harms” could see the government claim wide-ranging censorship powers.
“The atmosphere created by Trudeau and his party is completely upending Canadian society, leading to the persecution of his detractors and limiting speech and expression.
“The College of Psychologists of Ontario recently ordered conservative psychologist Jordan Peterson to undergo social media training because they believed his tweets and opinions were problematic. An Ontario court then upheld the College’s decision.
“And now, Trudeau is attacking parents who believe they should have to consent to whether their children under the age of 16 can change their sexual identity. Once again, he did so by accusing his political opponents of truly awful things.
““Far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people,” Trudeau said of parents. “Well, trans kids need to feel safe, not targeted by politicians.”…
“What’s clear is that what’s going on in Canada is anything but dull. It’s terrifying. In looking to defend minorities and promote culture, Trudeau’s Liberals are everything they once feared. They are authoritarian, anti-democratic, and illiberal. And what’s happening in Canada is not separate from what’s happening in the US, the UK, Europe, and Brazil, but intimately connected to those nations. “Trudeau isn’t so different from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom, and most other Democrats in the U.S….
“Narcissism, Wokeism, And Authoritarianism
“According to Justin Trudeau and his Liberal party supporters, he and their party are the party of compassion for vulnerable people, freedom, and Canadian culture. Liberals care, in their view, while conservatives don’t care….
“But a government cannot claim to care about the vulnerable or about freedom while freezing bank accounts that made it harder for some families to buy groceries or make car payments, as Trudeau’s government did. Nor can the government claim to care about the vulnerable or freedom, while trying to regulate speech on the internet, which could conveniently help to stifle criticism of the government….
“The government defends the crackdown on expression and speech by appealing to Canadians’ innate sense of kindness. Our leaders tell us we must protect our culture, protect the vulnerable, and care for our communities. They argue that limiting expression and criminalizing dissent is a means to that end. But censorship has always been used to hurt and marginalize minorities and has never helped them. Rights were won for African Americans, gays, and lesbians by ensuring they had the ability to express themselves freely….
“Another part of the problem is the heavy influence of activists in the mold of the World Economic Forum, whose founder pointed to Trudeau and his advisors as his protege. “I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of his cabinet, or even more than half of his cabinet, are actually Young Global Leaders,” said WEF founder Klaus Schwab. Schwab famously called for a “Great Reset” to rapidly transition the world away from fossil fuels, and Trudeau used the term “reset” to describe his COVID policy at the UN in November 2020….
“Trudeau’s actions aren’t about social progress, they’re about power and control. Trudeau embodies many of the traits of left-wing authoritarians. All authoritarians support censorship and submission. They tend to believe this is necessary because, in their minds, the population is naive and cannot be trusted.
“Trudeau constantly splits the population into Liberal angels and Conservative devils. You either believe in Liberal climate policy or are a climate denier, according to Trudeau. You either mask up and vax up or are putting lives at risk. You either support the radical demands of trans activists or you hate sexual minorities.
“This is known as “splitting;” it, along with entitlement and grandiosity, which Trudeau exhibits in spades, are signs of narcissism. Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), according to new research, is virtually identical, psychologically, to narcissism. Trudeau has manipulated the “nice Canadians” by mesmerizing them with woke spiritual beliefs and rituals and, when that doesn’t work, bullying them.
“There is also something deeply anti-social about Trudeau’s behaviors. To falsely accuse your opponents of Nazism and racism; to cut off the bank accounts of people who criticize you; and to demonize parents who don’t want to let school teachers parent their children — these are cruel and callous behaviors. The combination of these two behaviors, antisocial personality and narcissism, is known as malignant narcissism, a condition that, as Trudeau shows, is as awful as it sounds.
“The Fall Of Trudeau…
“Trudeau is appealing to something very real in Canadian culture. There is a grassroots demand for wokeism. Trudeau’s positions on COVID, race relations, climate change, trans rights, and others are about reinforcing a narrative and belief system that makes it easier for his supporters to understand the world in terms of good vs. evil.
“Trudeau, his ministers, and the activists aligned with them are fuelled by a sense of grandiosity and entitlement found throughout the woke movement….
“Increasingly, we see the Liberal Party playing the victim. Even while trying to apologize for applauding a Nazi, they still try to label their political opposition as evil….
“Canadian critics of Trudeau’s plans aren’t exclusively academics or conservatives. Famed novelist Margaret Atwood told the Globe and Mail bluntly, “It is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to create.” And a well-respected Canadian Senator, David Adams Richards, a winner of the prestigious Governor-General’s Award and Giller Prize and a member of the Order of Canada, said, “The idea of any hierarchical politico deciding what a man or woman is allowed to write to fit a proscribed national agenda is a horrid thing.”…
“Canadians can harness kindness to allow for openness and ensure our freedoms are protected. Only by doing this can we protect our democracy. Few Canadians see either Trudeau or Canadian truckers as Nazis. What needs to change now is for more of us to get angry when we see our leaders label our fellow citizens as such.
“Stephen Moore is a pollster, and was political staffer in the office of former Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil. His research has been featured by New Republic, Globe and Mail, CBC, & others.”
My conclusion?????:
All more to bolster my argument that the evil triad of tribal exclusion, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others is the real monster/enemy of us all, and that the the real righteous battle against evil takes place against this triad of impulses in each of us. Unconditional view of all and approach to failing, offending others is the best way forward (do least harm, most good, attain the peace we all want). Like Mandela. It ends the endless cycles of eye for eye retaliation that ruin lives and societies.
From Michael Shellenberger’s Public site at Substack, Sept. 30, 2023: “Michael Rectenwald: WEF Is A ‘Megalomaniacal Control Scheme’, Author of ‘The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty’ on why the Left became psychopathological”
Here is more analysis of Leftist psychopathology- more warning from the best of journalists today on the spread of leftist totalitarianism… comment on the inner workings of this re-emerging totalitarianism, its main actors, its goals, its driving psychology, and the outcomes for us “little people who pay taxes”.
https://public.substack.com/p/michael-rectenwald-wef-is-a-megalomaniacal#details
Quotes from the article:
“Rectenwald is a former Marxist and professor of liberal studies. So why did he leave the Left and become a prominent critic of woke excess? And why did he write a book about the WEF and the threat of the transhumanist agenda?
“In 2016, Rectenwald watched as Leftists increasingly went “off the rails,” appearing to transform overnight from champions of free speech to censorial scolds…
“He’d never really liked the Democrats, their hypocrisy “and worse,” but when that deep disdain for the “vast majority of American people” revealed itself, Rectenwald walked away….
“Rectenwald said he became the center of a frenzied cancellation hysteria.
““And then I realized just how totalitarian the left was, and they all started canceling me at once, not just inside, but outside the university. This communist group I was a member of, they basically put me on a show trial and were trying to accuse me of all these infractions…
“Rectenwald has since become impervious to the onslaught of well-worn insults: Nazi, devil, sexist, racist, alt-right. But the experience traumatized him. “The kind of nastiness, the vituperation, the language they used on me… I just said I want nothing further to do with these people ever again.”…
“Totalitarian ideology operates simultaneously on these two levels. Some people are simply true believers, but some are pathocrats, a small minority of psychopaths and narcissists who rise to power in an otherwise normal population, which they leverage for their own ends. This dynamic is also a theme in Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski’s “Political Ponerology,” which Rectenwald discovered in his deep dive into the history of Leftist authoritarianism….
“Where true believers take ideology at face value, Rectenwald says, “the pathocrats who end up in charge of these regimes don’t believe [the ideology] at all. They just use it and it means something else to them.” In the current context, this might sound like, “we’re gonna save the planet from climate change.’ To them it means, ‘we’re gonna lock you down and we’re going to take away your meat and we’re going to reduce your population. And we’re going to also control your oil consumption, and we’re going to have greater control over your every move because we’re going to institute these dicta to mitigate climate change.’”
“Whether elites believe in climate change or whether they tell themselves they believe it, matters little, Rectenwald says. “They know what it signifies for them – which is power and control. The rulers… cynically embrace the ideologies they purvey…
“You’d think Rectenwald’s critiques of woke capitalism and corporate fascism would appeal to more leftists, who remarkably refuse to consider how state and corporate power have increasingly aligned toward authoritarian ends in recent years.”
And much more in full article at link above.
Climate facts that overturn warming alarmism:
10 times more people die from cold every year than die from warming (Lancet study).
CO2 has reached “saturation” regarding its warming effect. A doubling to 800 ppm will contribute very little to further warming- atmospheric physicists Lindzen and Happer (co2coalition.org).
There is 15% more green vegetation on Earth since 1980 due to more basic plant food in the atmosphere- i.e. CO2.
During the Eocene “paradise for mammals” (55-33 million years ago) average temperatures were 3-10 C warmer than today. The oceans did not boil, the world did not ignite on fire. All life flourished.
Tropical heat was carried to the cooler polar regions, “tropical temperatures remained remarkably stable” (the “equable climate” fact that points to strong negative feedbacks in the tropics that maintain temperatures in a range suitable to life). The fossils of tropical plants and animals have been discovered in both polar regions.
All life benefitted with extended habitats (the highest diversity of plant and animal life is in warmer regions).
For over 80% of Phanerozoic history of life, temperatures were 3-6 C warmer and there was no ice on Earth. That is normal, optimal climate that benefits all life.
For most of the history of life, CO2 has been in the multiple-thousands of ppm with no “climate crisis”.
Cold is the greatest threat to life.
We are in the coldest period of our Holocene interglacial. It was several degrees C warmer 10,000 to 6,000 years ago during the Holocene Optimum and that resulted in the emergence of the great civilizations and agriculture.
All life prefers more warming and plant life needs much higher CO2 levels to thrive, preferably in the 1000 t0 1500 ppm range.
And much more evidence that overturns warming alarmism…
From the above evidence, and more, there is no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
Helpful sources: Javier Vinos’ and Andy May, “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis”, a series of reports posted at Wattsupwiththat.com (some 11 reports in total). Also, the research of climate physicists like Richard Lindzen and William Happer posted at co2coalition.org, among other sources.
https://co2coalition.org/news/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-parts-i-ii/
Now some comment on the natural human fear of death and the human longing to continue to exist, and the desire for something far better in the future… Wendell Krossa
Intro note:
The background to this speculation below is the recognition that we are here and now in this world so we ought to live fully in the here and now and make some contribution to improving life in this world. Our focus ought to be on the here and now as the main point of life. We should fully embrace the fact that our being here is to contribute something to make life better for the range of people that we are involved with during our life stories. So in some sense I agree with the spirit of the pissed atheist who angrily stated that we should “get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit”, especially if it degrades our ability to live fully useful here and now lives.
But taking positions like dogmatic atheism can then push us to the other extreme that tries to ignore the bigger picture that we are all aware is there and has something critically important to do with the meaning of our living here and now.
My argument in support of some recognition of the metaphysical (human speculation on the metaphysical as it relates to “spirituality”), is that the recognition, for example, of the “stunning new theology of an unconditional deity” liberates us from the metaphysically-incited fears that have always hindered many people from living full here and now lives, because their consciousness and lives were deformed by unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression, fatalism, even nihilism and violence, that were the outcomes of the metaphysical threats so common to conditional mythologies and religions across history (see comment on “monster god” theologies below).
Also, the projection of unconditional onto deity, as the long-standing embodiment of humanity’s highest ideals and authority, provides ultimate inspiration, ethical guidance, and validation for human belief and behavior. At the least, we ought to engage such metaphysical speculation to ensure that we are pursuing the most humane of ideals or, if not, then we are ceding ground to the subhuman ideals that we have inherited.
So rather than outright denial of the metaphysical it seems better to understand its function in the human quest for meaning, and then humanize it fully with features like unconditional, and thereby enable it to better fulfill its role in the human endeavor for meaning and purpose in life.
Finding ways to resolve or cope with our personal fear of death is how we achieve the ability to function better in life, not crippled, as many are, by excessive obsession with death fears. Note also that some have argued that fear of “after-life” harm, as per primitive myths of after-life judgment and punishment (i.e. the belief in hell), such fear of after-life harm is “the primal human fear”. Take this speculation below as some “daddy re-assurance” that its going to be alright, ultimately. There are no ultimate monsters. Fear of after-life harm is the real sting of death.
One more… This site affirms the separation of state and religion, and the separation of science and spirituality/philosophy. I also affirm the caution of Alexander Pope- “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man”. All good background balance to speculation on metaphysical realities.
Now the Piers Morgan interview of UFC boss Dana White:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhknTTq7bM
At one point Morgan asked White- “Do you believe there is life after death?”. White rambled a bit and then concluded- “I don’t know”. That’s a reasonable enough answer given our inability to see past the veil of death.
Nonetheless, I would respond to this question with some speculation regarding varied insights on the negative and positive aspects of this death issue.
First on the negative side:
There is not a shred of credible evidence that the meat in our heads produces human mind or the wonder of the human self, though there is good research on how the mind interacts with the brain (notably in the books of Nobel laureate and neuroscientist John Eccles). There is no credible evidence of meat creating mind despite the dogmatic arguments of materialists like Daniel Dennett (“Consciousness Explained”). Dennett claims that we know the brain down to level of molecules and atoms, so we are almost there in proving that the material brain produces mind. That is known as “promissory materialism”. We will soon have the answer and the answer must be a confirmation of philosophical materialism. Oh, really?
Once, during a round table discussion with a panel of experts that included Stephen Jay Gould, Rupert Sheldrake, Oliver Sachs, Freeman Dyson, and Dennett, among others, Dennett gave his usual spiel on meat creating mind and when he finished, Freeman Dyson, sitting beside him and smiling, piped in with a squeaky response of “I don’t think so”. https://www.sheldrake.org/videos/a-glorious-accident-full-roundtable-discussion
The absence of evidence to support the “absurd” claim (another neuroscientist’s conclusion) that meat creates mind, undercuts the mythical speculation that is common to the modern era’s nihilism that the self dies with the death of the material brain.
Seriously. I would think that quantum mechanics itself would stir some caution in the minds of dogmatic materialists. We don’t have a clue what material reality is. Its not what we thought in the past- i.e. hard little atoms existing on their own (Note Einstein’s series of debates with Neils Bohr over this in Manjit Kumar’s “Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, And The Great Debate About The Nature of Reality”).
The understanding that some form of “material reality” exists on its own aside from conscious observers has been, in my opinion, pretty much discredited. So where are we now on what material reality might be? “Quantum fields” is the latest proposal from physics (see Jim Baggot’s “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields”).
As the early quantum theorists concluded- the “material” universe appears to be more mind or consciousness than material. Mind appears to be the most fundamental reality of all, the creating reality that gives rise to all the rest. Note quantum theorist James Jeans’ comments on this:
“I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe… In general, the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine…
“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter…
“This brings us very near to those philosophical systems which regard the universe as a thought in the mind of its Creator, thereby reducing all discussion of material creation to futility.”
And then on positive side re this death issue:
I take seriously human subjective experience as, for example, in the Near-Death Experience movement (NDE). Now I don’t affirm all such experiences. Each of us bring our own personal criteria to evaluate other’s experiences and claims. There are always questionable experiences in the mix. Nonetheless, most of the NDEs are pointing to some interesting features like “hyper-lucidity”- i.e. people encountering realms that are far more real than this material realm. NDErs state that this material realm is like a foggy dream state, in comparison to the surrounding metaphysical realms they encountered.
And most critical from the NDE movement is the discovery that the “Light” encountered beyond death (i.e. God) is most fundamentally a stunningly inexpressible “unconditional” love. That is the central discovery of the NDE movement.
My response to that? I reason from the fact that love is the most true thing that we know here in our existence. Love is the singularly highest human ideal, that which makes us most authentically and truly human. Meaning that love is then the most true thing that we know. As many affirm, love is the one and only thing that lasts forever. So I reason that it is the most fundamentally real thing in the cosmos and life.
And if people consistently claim that they have experienced love beyond love, unconditional love of a stunningly inexpressible nature, well, then my ears perk up because that rings true. Love is self-validating as good and true and basic to defining a conscious human person. Inexpressibly wondrous unconditional love then extends this basic validating feature of love (validates the meaning of authentic humanity) to the transcendent realm of deity as ultimate good, ultimate truth and reality.
In the final analysis, it does not matter if the NDE occurs in the brain or outside of the brain. The unconditional love that is encountered by NDErs is self-validating as the most true thing that we know. Hence, I would argue that it is also the most real. And no, my argument and “reasoning” is not about some form of “physics envy” that was once common to the social sciences- i.e. trying to present an argument as scientifically “empirical” or philosophically rational in some manner. I am just making a basic appeal to some common-sense “spiritual” insights from across history.
I view the NDE movement as the latest phase in the long history of human spirituality and it has gone further than all past versions of spirituality (i.e. ancient mythology, world religions) because it gets the unconditional love feature right. No religion has ever communicated this insight or truth to humanity- i.e. that God was no conditions love. All religion across history has been highly conditional in varied ways- i.e. insisting on conditions of right belief, demanded sacrifices/payments (atonement), required rituals as religious identity markers, and obligatory religious lifestyle as the identity marker of being a true believer in some religion. Conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions. All based on the highly conditional deities at the core of the religious traditions, gods who demand that all kinds of religious conditions must be met by people in order to be included, forgiven, “saved”, or whatever else that the religions promise.
There is nothing of authentic unconditional love in religious versions of God. Why not? Because an unconditional God would spell the very end of all religion and undercut all religious authority over people, authority that is based on demanding and enforcing religious conditions and based on claims of religious elites to hold the keys to varied spiritual goods that are promised to only those meeting the religious conditions. (Insert: An unconditional God immediately present to all means there is no more need for the mediating role of religion.)
The NDE movement advances far beyond the spirituality of religious traditions to get our highest defining feature of love right, and to infinite degree. Further, the unconditional feature discovered in NDEs was the main theme of historical Jesus as contrasted with Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth, the myth that buried the unconditional God of Jesus.
The NDE is the one area of human spiritual experience and insight that gets Historical Jesus right and God right. Hence, it affirms the single most profound insight ever offered as to what is ultimately true, the Jesus statement in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 that God was an unconditional reality- i.e. “Love your enemy because God does”.
And the NDE movement also affirms the separation of the mind from the body (a fundamental dualism), meaning that the self does not die with the death of the brain. As NDErs state their discovery- Death is just a separation from the material body and transition back to our originating Oneness in inexpressible Love and Light. Further, the life beyond death is a realm without the limits of time and 3-dimensional space and the rest of the features of material reality such as the material dualism between good and evil. Consciousness liberated from the material is about peace and bliss that are beyond imagination or expression.
NDErs also state consistently that following their experiences they “lose all fear of death”. I have personally heard people that had NDEs state this.
So yes, based on the above negatives and positives, I conclude that we continue to exist beyond death. The death of the material brain is not the end of our lives. The human self does not die with the death of the material brain. There is not a shred of evidence to support such conclusions. And certainly, there is enough contrary human experience to raise uncertainty about the claims of dogmatic materialism.
And consider, as others have noted, that if our Creator has given us this amazing consciousness with its intense awareness of existing, of beauty, love, human companionship, and longing for more life, for more perfect life, then why would a God of love abandon us in the end and frustrate such hope for something far better? No. A God of love will never forsake those whom God loves. God will never forget us or abandon us, or deny the central desires of our consciousness.
Further, most people across history have intuitively concluded that there is far more to this world than what we see- i.e. the material world. Netflix has a new documentary on an early line of human-like people who also buried their dead, meaning they appear to have also believed that there was ongoing life after death (see “Unknown: Cave of bones”). So also, the Neanderthals buried their dead with items for an after-life existence.
All conscious people have intuitively understood across history that there was more to reality than what was visible to the eye. And that automatically led them to conclude that life continued in other realms after physical death. Modern science also concludes there is far more to reality than what we see. And even what we see is mysterious beyond our comprehension (quantum mechanics).
I affirm the belief and conclusion of most of humanity across history that the greater creating reality (surrounding, interpenetrating invisible reality) is something of the nature of Mind, Consciousness, Intelligence, Spirit, and hence logically possesses Personhood or Self, though to transcendent degree as is true of all features related to deity. Ultimate Reality, creating reality, is more than just mindless energy, force, or fields. And hence such Ultimate Reality has something to do with why we are created and why we exist temporarily here in this material realm. It has to do with the purpose for our existence and our life stories. We do well to explore and try to understand all this. It has always been critical to the human primal impulse to meaning.
However, I part with most of humanity over past history in what they projected out to explain and define their perceptions of greater reality- i.e. mythical and religious beliefs of God as tribally favoring some while excluding others, God as dominating King, Lord, Ruler, and God as Judge that punishes and destroys imperfect people.
But my points are speculation? Of course. I would argue, though, that such speculation on metaphysical reality is not to be ignored or dismissed out of hand as such speculation has always been central to the human impulse to meaning. We long to know something of why we are here, why we have been created, what is our purpose. Hence, we all speculate on the nature of what has always been humanity’s highest ideal and authority- deity, or whatever we consider Ultimate Reality, creating reality.
Even hardcore materialists speculate on metaphysical realities, appealing to the materialist “gods” of their belief systems for explanations of what its all about. And naturally, they like to virtue signal as more “rational” by claiming their gods are truly scientific, referring to materialist “creating forces” like “natural law… quantum fields… multi-verses… String theory… or Self-Organizing Principle, etc.”, all granted deity-like powers in philosophical materialism belief systems (also known as “scientism”).
Note that the materialist theorizing on such things is still also very much speculation on metaphysical realities, nonetheless. Unproven realities. Sabine Hossenfelder in “Lost In Math” noted the common tendency of theoretical physicists to cross the science/philosophy boundary to speculate in their grand theories. Much like many religious/spiritual types commonly cross the science/religion boundary. Even the most hardcore materialist understands the need to speculate on unprovable creating forces located in surrounding or interpenetrating invisible realms in order to explain more fully what exists in the visible realm.
But as Jim Baggot states in “Farewell to Reality”, the theory of “multi-verse”, while widely accepted by the public as true, is not a proven reality. So also Lee Smolin in “The Trouble with Physics” states that string theory is widely promoted in physics as proven dogma but has never been verified by any experiment.
Just to note that a lot of speculation, necessarily goes on in all areas of knowledge. Its what we curious, “have-to-know” humans do. But dogmatism in any direction regarding our speculations does not become us.
Added notes…
Jordan Peterson: “I learned from Carl Jung that whatever is at the top of your hierarchy of assumptions functions as God for you, whether or not you are religious. Maybe you have multiple things at the top, which just means that you are confused.” (From his Sept.25, 2023 “Mondays of Meaning” post)
And then, later in the Piers Morgan interview Dana White expressed something else in his response to Morgan, something very human- i.e. that his life was fundamentally about his being a father, loving and caring for his children, and in response receiving the love and respect of his children. This was the motivating center of his life, the great achievement of his life, not his achievements or success in his business ventures. Good interview Dana.
This site encourages the thorough re-evaluation and reframing of worldviews, narratives, life stories– Wendell Krossa
This site urges the rethinking and reframing entirely of the way that we view reality, the world, and life with a proper set of themes to construct a way of looking at things that produce more humane outcomes, and that are also more true to reality. We are still too influenced by inherited themes of past meta-narratives (mythical, religious ideas) that distort our way of perceiving reality and life as well as stir our worst impulses.
Julian Simon (“Ultimate Resource”) is one excellent place to start informing our views on life with evidence from the best sources. If we then add insights from the best of philosophical/spiritual traditions, we gain a more complete set of tools for reframing narratives.
The re-evaluating, rethinking, and reframing of our worldviews should be an ongoing process. It helps if we remain open to change as “selves in process” not immutably fixed on “objects” like rigidly held versions of ideology, religion, nationality, race/ethnicity, occupation, etc. all viewed as final closed truths and immutable identity markers (Louis Zurcher’s point in “The Emerging Mutable Self”).
In the larger picture, not even the most fundamental realm of science- i.e. physics- can claim to understand the final truth about reality. We don’t even know what this “material” realm is. The profound mystery of the nature of reality and life ought to caution all of us about holding anything too tightly as some form of final truth.
A fuller summary of the term that I repeatedly use here- “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption”:
“Corrupt people have ruined an original paradise world, and now the deity behind nature threatens apocalyptic punishment of human sin through the destruction of life and the world. But deity also offers the promise of redemption if people make some atonement for their sin, such as abandoning the good life in civilization and purging evil via “a righteous war against their enemies”.
I have offered an even more complete outline of these main themes in human narratives, along with better alternatives, in “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” posted below…
These pathologies in human thought have caused immense damage across history, inciting people’s darkest impulses to tribal exclusion, domination, and destruction of “enemy” others.
This from Kip Hansen Sept. 13, 2023, “Modelling the Universe”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/13/modeling-the-universe/
Hansen: “I stumbled on a priceless bit that interested me in an article by Dennis Overbye in the Science section of the New York Times titled: “Don’t Expect a ‘Theory of Everything’ to Explain It All”.
Overby recounts:
“That was the question that occurred to me on reading an article in The Guardian by Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist at University College London who spends his days running computer simulations of black holes, stars, galaxies and the birth and growth of the universe. His point was that he and the rest of us are bound to fail.
“Even if we imagine that humanity will ultimately discover a ‘theory of everything’ covering all individual particles and forces, that theory’s explanatory value for the universe as a whole is likely to be marginal,” Dr. Pontzen wrote.”
Hansen: “Personally, I don’t expect any theory-of-everything coming out of cosmology or advanced physics to explain much at all. Science rules out far too much of the possible, starting with all religious/spiritual topics, denying them any consideration whatsoever. Even when physics stays within its artificial boundaries, it has to admit, according to NASA, that it only understands the 5% of the universe it can see and detect.”
To add to Hansen’s comment- We don’t even understand the 5% that we see. We don’t know what this material universe actually is, in its essential nature. We have discovered more of how it functions (natural laws) but not what it actually is in essence. See Jim Baggot’s “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields”.
Early quantum theorists concluded that the cosmos was more a great “thought” than some traditionally understood “material” reality (atoms existing on their own as hard little material things). Mind/consciousness appeared to be the foundational creating reality.
Added post to discussion group:
“Even the 5% of reality that we see, we have no clue what it is, as physicist Jim Baggot concluded in “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields”. No one, said Joseph Campbell quoting a scientist, knows what material reality really is. Its all mystery. Quantum fields?? And disturbances in these fields that leads to “wavefunction collapse” where the atom “as a cloud of possibilities” collapses in response to a conscious observer presenting an experiment to observe the atom as either wave or particle. No one knows what this is really all about. Just that conscious observers are inseparable from observed material reality, according to Neils Bohr. Hence, Einstein’s frustrated response to Neils Bohr that he “could not believe the moon was not there when he was not looking at it”. Yet, follow-up experiments (Bell’s Theorem, French experiments in 2007) affirmed Bohr’s position, not Einstein’s.”
This good summary of the “World Climate Declaration”, with comments from the scientists taking part… (Again, it is the argument of this site that the climate alarmism crusade is “a profoundly religious movement” that is one of history’s latest embodiments of the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of myths.)
Quotes from report:
“There’s no climate emergency. And the alarmist messaging pushed by global elites is purely political. That’s what 1,609 scientists and informed professionals stated when they signed the Global Climate Intelligence Group’s “World Climate Declaration.”
Edwin Berry, a theoretical physicist and certified consulting meteorologist, said that one of the IPCC’s central theories is that natural CO2 has stayed constant at 280 ppm since 1750 and that human CO2 is responsible for the 140 ppm increase (to current 420 ppm).
“The belief that human CO2 drives the CO2 increase may be the biggest public delusion and most costly fraud in history,” Mr. Berry said…
Mr. Berry took his research a step further and calculated the human carbon cycle using the IPCC’s own carbon cycle data.
“The prediction from the same model doesn’t give humans producing 140 ppm. It comes out closer to 30 ppm. Which essentially means the IPCC is wrong,” he said.
He said that using the IPCC’s data, nature is responsible for about 390 ppm of CO2, and humans are only responsible for about 30 ppm—not 140 ppm.
“The earth has warmed about 2 degrees F since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, but that hardly constitutes an emergency—or even a crisis—since the planet has been warmer yet over the last few millennia,” Ralph Alexander, a retired physicist and author of the website “Science Under Attack,” told The Epoch Times.
“There is plenty of evidence that average temperatures were higher during the so-called Medieval Warm Period (centered around the year 1000), the Roman Warm Period (when grapes and citrus fruits were grown in now much colder Britain), and in the early Holocene (after the last regular Ice Age ended).”
The climate emergency is “fiction,” he said unequivocally.
When asked why CO2 was singled out as the cause of the climate emergency, Mr. Alexander said it goes back to James Hansen, an astrophysicist and the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1981 to 2013, and an ardent environmentalist.
“Hansen developed one of the first computer climate models and began to make highly exaggerated predictions of future warming, none of which have come true,” Mr. Alexander said. “This included testimony he gave at a 1986 Senate hearing, testimony considered to have sparked the subsequent anthropogenic global warming narrative.”
“The chances of CO2 being the number one culprit are very slim. CO2 undoubtedly contributes, but there are several natural cycles that most likely do, too,” he said. “These include solar variability and ocean cycles, both ignored in climate models—because we don’t know how to incorporate them—or represented poorly. While climate activists will tell you otherwise, climate science is still in its infancy, and there is a great deal we don’t yet understand about our climate.”
He said one example is a recent research paper that estimated that changes in the sun’s output could explain 70 to 80 percent of global warming. Research such as that doesn’t gain much traction because the IPCC is committed to the idea that human CO2 is the cause of global warming.
Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of meteorology and the Alfred P. Sloan professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times that the argument that there’s an “existential threat” to the earth from increasing temperatures is a “purely political statement,” since even the IPCC doesn’t claim there’s an existential threat.
Instead, the IPCC references scientists and climate activists who claim there’s an existential threat, but has never made this claim itself, Mr. Lindzen said.
“The [climate] models haven’t even suggested it,” he said. “And it arises from the fact that this was originally a political issue. And the politicians involved in it worry that their hysteria isn’t catching the best. They keep shifting from the global mean temperature to extreme weather. And you know, they keep saying, ‘Get worried, get worried! Panic!’ But science never suggested that [there’s a climate emergency].”
Mr. Lindzen said that even if those in power believed that there was an existential threat to the climate, the policies they’ve adopted to mitigate such a threat don’t make sense.
“If you believe CO2 is the villain and that we’re facing an existential threat, net zero is the wrong policy. All the things done—electric cars are ridiculous. Look at how CO2 is behaving. We’ve spent trillions so far, and it hasn’t changed a bit. It’s continuing to go up at the same rate,” he said.
“The only purpose of the policies is to make the society poorer. And if you’re poorer, you’re less resilient. So if you believe CO2 is an existential threat and your policies are doing nothing to prevent it but are making you less resilient, one would have to ask, are you a pathological sadist?”
Now some “Sitesplainin”, Wendell Krossa:
In comment further below I explain my use of superlatives like “single most… greatest… most profound…. absolute height…”, etc. These superlative terms/words are necessary to point in the direction of how stunning the varied insights on “no conditions love” actually are in relation to humanity’s highest ideal and authority- deity. How revolutionary and life-changing, how consciousness-transforming, and how profoundly liberating they are at the deepest levels of human thought, consciousness, emotion, even at the level of subconscious impulses and archetypes.
I intentionally use superlatives to express something of the wonder of ultimate reality (deity) as an unconditional reality. I use superlatives, not as exaggeration and distortion, but to give some sense of the “even much better… infinitely better, unimaginably better, inexpressibly better” quality of this unconditional feature that many have commented on, the single most defining feature of deity, a feature that was taught by people like Historical Jesus (a person entirely contrary to Christian “Jesus Christ”). Unconditional love is the core nature or character of the originating Source of all, that which exists behind all visible reality as the creating Consciousness, Mind, Life, or Spirit. Unconditional infuses “transcendent” with extra potency, making such reality something infinitely better than the best that we can imagine. God as transcendent Good or Love.
The understanding of deity as unconditional love is a radical overturning of the entire history of human mythology, religion/theology, philosophy, and (critical to note) also challenges the core themes of contemporary “secular/ideological” belief systems that have all embraced the same basic themes as primitive religious traditions.
As “Q Wisdom Sayings” scholar James Robinson stated- the breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus on “the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” was “his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. It was a radical rejection of all previous mythical and religious theologies (God theories).
The revolutionizing potential, the humanizing potency of unconditional needs to be repeatedly presented and fully appreciated. Again, I wish there were a better term than “unconditional love” that did not automatically evoke ideas of something mushy, fuzzy, weak, or pacifist in the face of evil. Others have employed related words/terms such as “non-retaliatory, non-violent, universal love, restorative justice, unlimited forgiveness, non-discriminating inclusion of all as full equals… etc.”, to express something of the profoundly humane nature of unconditional love.
The insight on deity as a transcendent unconditional reality, liberates human minds from the horrific distortions that have long shaped the deeply embedded archetypes that subsequently define human narratives. The archetypes have all been shaped by the highly conditional themes of primitive mythology and religious traditions, themes that have long dominated human narratives and consciousness, often to great harm- i.e. mental/emotional and even physical harm (again, the consequences of “Cruel God” ideas on human personality that are detailed in the work of, for example, psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo).
(Insert: Just to clarify “archetypes” as- “The original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based”. Archetype as “prototype, original, representative, pattern, model, standard, ideal”. I refer to archetypes as primitive ideas that are appealed to and used as ideals to validate human impulses. The ancient and persisting human practise of basing behavior on similar beliefs or ideals.)
Comments below offer more on the stark contrasts between a range of features that relate to unconditional- such as the polar opposite contrasts of conditional versus unconditional, retaliation versus non-retaliation, apocalyptic versus non-apocalyptic, domination versus non-domination, violence versus non-violence, exclusion versus inclusion, etc. …
The polar opposite differences between these features mean everything in terms of human meaning/purpose, the impacts on human personality and development (i.e. unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, violence), and societal outcomes, etc. As the psychologists caution us- Beliefs do have a powerful impact on human personality and behavior, and consequently on entire societies.
Main themes on this site… Wendell Krossa
The highest ethical/moral/spiritual attainments/achievements in life:
To “love your enemy” is the single most important ethical achievement to reach for in life, in order to “tower in stature as maturely human”. This “love your enemy” precept takes love to its absolute height in terms of a variety of related features that flesh out the meaning of love, such as unlimited forgiveness, universal inclusiveness, generosity toward the failures of imperfect others, restorative justice, etc. We saw something of the humanizing potency of this humane precept in the inspiring life of Nelson Mandela.
The ideal that validates the “love your enemy” ethic is inseparable from the ethic. The validating ideal is the single greatest insight to wrap your mind around in life- that ultimate reality, or God, is “no conditions love” to an inexpressibly transcendent quality. Meaning at the most foundational level of belief- All of us are safe in the end. There is no punitive Force/Spirit behind the horrors of the natural world (i.e. no deity punishing people through natural disaster, disease, accident, or other). There is no angry God venting vengeful retaliation against offenders/enemies.
And perhaps even more emotionally comforting, this divine “love of enemy” extends to the after-life. There is no threat of after-life harm either. Such mythically-based threat has always added further intolerable sting to the natural human fear of death. (And yes, I can hear the angry explosions- What about justice? What about victims? See qualifier just below.)
The insight that deity is an unconditionally loving reality overturns the entire mess of bad mythological themes that have dominated human narratives across history, themes that have deformed people with unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, and violence (again, psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s analysis in “Cruel God, Kind God”).
As always, I qualify that “unconditional” defines ultimate reality or deity in an absolute sense (again, all are safe in the end). But in this world the application of the unconditional ideal (i.e. treating all people unconditionally) is not about embracing some form of dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek” in the face of violence/evil. No. Authentic love always maintains common sense in the face of inhumanity and holds offenders responsible for their behavior. And protecting the innocent is the highest priority of justice systems. Hence, common sense love will restrain violent people (incarceration) and ensure full restitution for crimes committed, etc.
Add here to “worldview-transforming” insights the recognition that life is not declining toward something worse, but over the long-term, life has been improving toward something better, due to ever-developing human compassion and creativity. Amassed evidence on all the main indicators affirms the rising trajectory of life toward a better future. Love does conquer all over the long-term and in the end. The arc of history bends toward ever-developing and strengthening love. Love is fundamental to what we are as human.
Some help for transforming worldviews into fully humane systems of ideas:
First clean out the residual bad ideas that distort the better features of worldviews, that hinder the appreciation of what the better features really mean and should express. Understand what the bad ideas are. Doing this will clear the way to fully embrace the radically humanizing influence of the better alternative ideas/features… Wendell Krossa
Are any of these destructive myths listed below part of your worldview?
If you have embraced these ideas in your own worldview, then you have embraced the most destructive ideas in all history. Be fully aware of the outcomes of the guiding, validating ideals that you embrace and hold in your personal worldview or belief system.
Summary of the most damaging ideas that people have manufactured over the millennia: Here are some contemporary expressions of these ideas…
(1) The past was better. (2) Corrupt/greedy people, consuming too much of Earth’s resources, have ruined the early wilderness paradise world. (3) Life is now becoming worse, even heading toward collapse and catastrophe. (4) Now living under some threat to our very existence, with our survival impulse incited to intense degree, we must do something to “save the world”, engage some form of penance, make some atonement. (5) We must also violently purge some evil that threatens life (heroically engage “righteous battles against evil enemies”), and (6) thereby save our world and restore the paradise that has purportedly been ruined and lost.
Pay attention to the persisting presence of these primitive themes everywhere today in human narratives, even though they are now expressed with new terms, definitions, and couched in new categories. The pathology of “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” is still prominently present in what are presented as new movements or crusades, even in so-termed “scientific” movements.
This complex of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” myths has endlessly distorted the true state of life, preventing people from seeing the long-term overall improvement of life on Earth, the progress of life toward a better future. These ideas have endlessly aroused unnecessary fear that life was under threat of catastrophic ending, and that fear has thereby rendered people susceptible to embrace what inevitably become destructive salvation schemes (notably decarbonization today), and in the worst case, even pushing people to violently oppose others as “enemies” in “righteous battles against evil”.
These pathological ideas distort the natural and universal impulse to engage the hero’s quest which involves fighting a battle against evil, conquering some monster, solving some problem. These primitive ideas often deform and degrade the hero’s quest into a tribal partisan battle against fellow members of one’s own family (the human family) who are then viewed as “enemies” to be conquered, vanquished, even destroyed (“violently purged” as purported threats to life, threats to the world).
These ideas delude people into denying and rejecting the fundamental oneness of the human family. These ideas promote the tribal mentality that causes people to view others as enemies who must be conquered and even eliminated in order “to save the world”, to save their own lives. These ideas lead people to dismiss the one central practise that enables us to achieve full human maturity- that is to “love our enemies”. That is how we maintain our humanity while engaging the messiness of life’s struggles.
Most of us have succumbed to embracing some version of these ideas, whether in religious or “secular/ideological” forms. We all have some experience of how these ideas deform human personality with fear, anxiety, shame and guilt over being imperfectly human, despair, depression, fatalism and resignation, nihilism, and violence.
What is the most potent response to counter the above complex of bad ideas? An unconditional ethic and unconditional ultimate ideal presents us with the safest way to negotiate life and do the least harm, to do the most good. Unconditional is most potent feature to counter to the worst of our inherited impulses and validating ideas, the best way to maintain our humanity in the face of evil.
Some worrisome big-picture trends to watch, Wendell Krossa
The doubling of national debts over past decade or so. Massive government spending then produces inflation, and as Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Its always and everywhere a result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money that exceeds output”. “Output” meaning the GDP rate of growth. Inflation results commonly (yes, there are other contributing factors) when the GDP growth rate is less than the increase in supply of money that is due to excessive government spending.
Add to this mix, the war against fossil fuels, which has resulted in restricting supplies which inflates the costs of “scarce energy” supplies, and that then consequently drives up the prices of the 6000 products that are “fossil fuel derivatives”. Again, the result is inflation that hurts the lower income populations the most.
Covid lockdowns notoriously resulted in massive government spending and debts doubling (e.g. Canada). Further, watch the authoritarianism that erupted with the lockdowns. The same authoritarianism is associated with the decarbonization crusade where we see increasing anti-democratic state intervention and control of populations (note, for example, the pushing of ESG practises on companies as a runaround of democratic systems).
Also, note the “de-development” ideology in the mix. The intentional degrading of our lifestyles and abundance in pursuit of collectivist ideological goals. Surveys note the re-emergence of support for collectivist approaches, programs, and outcomes (i.e. equity of outcomes). This is all red flag stuff. Meaning- warnings of bad things to come if these trends continue.
One could further add the extremism from Woke Progressivism with its censorship of dissenting opinion and speech, its use of smears and cancellation by outrage mobs, all to silence skeptics and critics. This is happening widely across social media companies.
How to effectively counter these bad trends? My suggestion as to what would be the best response- Classic Liberal principles and institutions that have a historical record of the best results in protecting freedom, ensuring prosperity for the most people, and protecting against totalitarian eruptions by dispersing power among competing individuals and institutions (systems of law and institutions affirming the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally). Historically, Classic Liberalism has a track record of working best to achieve the greater or common good- meaning the most benefits for the most people. Protecting individual rights and freedoms works best to unleash the human motivation to creatively solve problems, to create goods and services that then benefit all.
Counter the madness, Wendell Krossa
Where are the kids who are not intimidated by crowd madness and are willing to blurt out, even while the adults stand around cowed by Woke Progressivism, “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes. The alarmist narrative is exaggeration that amounts to complete distortion of the true state of things. In a word- lying at a mass-scale”.
Sometimes a sense of “What the fuck is going on” awareness overcomes us when we stand back and survey what is happening across the world, mainly throughout the Western world, as countries continue down the slope into decarbonization madness, despite widespread evidence of the damaging outcomes of this “salvation scheme” (“saving the world from the climate change emergency”).
Significant percentages of people have accepted, without much skepticism or questioning, the climate alarmism narrative that human emissions of CO2 are causing catastrophic warming (a “climate emergency”) that will bring on the apocalypse in a few years, especially if we pass a further 1.5 degree more warming. Politicians across the board, both left and right, often cowed with fear of mob reaction (the loudly-screaming extremist minorities), give virtue-signalling assent to the alarmist narrative. Some politicians weakly caution that the rush to renewables is not economically wise but then quickly spin on their heels to face the same direction as the alarmist mobs and immediately affirm the alarmist narrative. Yes, yes, we must do something about the “climate emergency”.
No public discussion or debate is permitted by the censorship industrial complex, and its media allies, over the most basic of climate facts- such as the physics of CO2 and the fact that the warming influence of CO2 has reached “saturation” (a physics term- see Richard Lindzen, William Happer at “co2coalition.org”). The atmospheric physicists note that the doubling of CO2 from 420 ppm to 800 ppm will add very little to any further warming. Further, other natural factors show much more prominent influences on climate change (Javier Vinos reports on “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” posted at Wattsupwiththat.com).
See also…
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/230824_will_new_epa_regulations_starve_millions_of
The response of atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer is that “Even at today’s relatively low levels, atmospheric CO2 is now ‘heavily saturated’, in physics terms, meaning that additional increases in atmospheric CO2 will have little warming effect”. This fact undermines entirely the crusade to decarbonize our societies. There is no sound scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
And where is there any public presentation of the fact that much more warming is needed because 10 times more people still die every year from cold than die from warmth. Our current world is at one of the coldest periods in the Phanerozoic history of life (past 500 million years). Over much of the history of life (more than 80% of the Phanerozoic) the world was warmer by 3-10 degrees C and there was no climate crisis but instead life enjoyed what paleoclimatologists call the “mammalian paradise” (see Donald Prothero’s “The Eocene-Oligocene Transition: Paradise Lost”). We are also at the coldest time of the past 11,000 years of our Holocene interglacial and have been on a long-term cooling trend since the end of the Holocene Optimum some 6,000 years ago.
So also, CO2 levels are still too low compared to most of the history of life, and plants need much more of their basic food to achieve optimal growth, preferably in the 1000-1500 ppm range. Already, with the slight rise in CO2 over past centuries we have seen a massive greening of the Earth (15% more green vegetation just since 1980) and increased crop production to feed humanity. These huge benefits are ignored by alarmist media, politicians, and scientists living in mass-denial of factual evidence.
Add here that with further warming, far more lives are saved from cold deaths than are lost to heatwave deaths. Again, net beneficial outcomes. See this important report by Bjorn Lomborg at https://financialpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-and-deaths-from-extreme-heat-and-cold
Quote from Lomborg’s report:
“A widely reported recent study found that higher temperatures are now responsible for about 100,000 of those heat deaths. But the study’s authors ignored cold deaths. A landmark study in Lancet shows that across every region climate change has brought a greater reduction in cold deaths over the past few decades than it has caused additional heat deaths. On average, it has avoided upwards of twice as many deaths, resulting in perhaps 200,000 fewer cold deaths each year.”
What about melting ice? Well, Hurrah for that positive news. May the melting continue. For over 80% of the history of life there was no ice on earth. Tropical climate conditions extended into the current polar regions, hence the recent discoveries of the fossils of tropical plants and animals in those areas. Tropical conditions in the current cold regions of our world were normal, natural, and optimal for earth- providing extended habitats for more diverse forms of life (some cold region species might suffer, but many more will benefit and you get the higher diversity of plant and animal life in the tropics- life loves warmth).
The warming of cold areas was due to fact that the extra heat coming into tropics was carried by ocean and atmospheric convection currents to colder latitudes (meridional transport of heat energy the main cause of climate change). That is natural and healthy process. There were no “boiling oceans” or “world on fire” but instead over the much warmer past there was “stable tropical temperatures” suitable for life. That points to strong negative feedbacks that kept the tropics in an “equable climate” state. Something warming alarmists have no answer for.
Ah, so many climate facts that are denied by alarmists. Why? Because factual climate evidence overturns their apocalyptic narrative. Because they are in thrall to a profoundly religious crusade, an extremist cult. Detail below…
From Wattsupwiththat.com on “Heat v. Cold- A Crucial Case” by Kip Hansen, September 12, 2023
There are myriad other climate facts that ought to calm and silence the alarmism over climate change. But this one fact in particular overturns the alarmism narrative on climate warming.
Hansen presents the factual evidence that cold kills far more people every year than heat does- see the link just below to this critically important report on cold as the real threat to humanity and life. Look at these hard climate facts and never again allow yourself to become caught up in the “madness of crowds” hysteria over warm periods or summer heatwaves. The real “denial” today is that of alarmists endlessly creating fear over mild warming while denying this evidence on cold as the real threat to life. See the graphs and sources at this link…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/12/heat-v-cold-a-crucial-case/
Hansen’s comments:
“As the planet Earth has slowly warmed, in fits and spurts over the last 3 or 4 hundred years since the end of the Little Ice Age, the worries about global average surface temperatures have ramped up. The much-denied Global Cooling Panic of the 1970s morphed into the Global Warming Panic when short-lived-cooling stopped and the most current ongoing warming spurt started.
“This new panic, the history of which I will not recount, resulted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and subsequent The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the current crop of international bureaucrats screaming about the “Climate Emergency” and “Global Boiling”. The slight and mostly beneficial general warming is propagandistically portrayed as heating and hotness.
“Heat and Hotness are thus portrayed, always, as Too Much Heat and Too Hot; then to Dangerously Hot and Deadly Heat– in the time-honored 1984-ish propaganda slippery slope.
“Now, the Climate Emergency agenda demands blood– bodies in the morgue, dead and dying grandparents and dead children, to back up its story-line of Deadly Heat.
“Thus, we have the mainstream mass media repeating endlessly that the warming we are experiencing and the summers we have in the Northern Hemisphere are killing us.
“There is a bug in that ointment: Cold and low temperatures have always resulted in the deaths of far many more humans than warmth and high temperatures….
“To discover the truth about Heat v. Cold Deaths, it is necessary to look to the scientific literature on the topic… Typical findings are:
“Results: In UK regions, cold-related mortality currently accounts for more than one order of magnitude more deaths than heat-related mortality (around 61 and 3 deaths per 100,000 population per year, respectively). In Australian cities, approximately 33 and 2 deaths per 100,000 population are associated every year with cold and heat, respectively”…
“Results: Between 2000 and 2010, 3.9% [CI 95% 3.2:4.6] of the total mortality was attributed to cold, and 1.2% [1.1:1.2] to heat.”…
“Results: ….” Cold effects on mortality appeared higher than heat effects in this subtropical city with moderate climatic conditions.” (São Paulo, Brazil)…
(Hansen interjects that he wrote seven years ago: “Surprising Results From Study: Moderate Cold Kills More People Than Extreme Heat”. That essay related the findings of the then ‘latest’ study on heat and cold deaths: Gasparrini et al. (2015) in Lancet 2015; 386: 369–75…
“The title told it all. This chart from Gasparini gives the details:
(Chart is available at link included above)
“Interestingly, as the title declares, moderate cold kills far more than extreme cold or moderate or extreme heat in this multi-country, multi-continent study.
“….9.43% (95% CI 7.58–11.07) of all deaths (8.52% [6.19–10·47] were cold-related and 0.91% [0.56–1.36] were heat-related. There were 74 temperature-related excess deaths per 100 000 residents (95% CI 60–87). The mortality burden varied geographically.”
“That is: non-optimal cold ambient temperatures cause ten times the number of deaths worldwide than non-optimal warm temperatures.
“Bottom Line:
“The question of which causes more human deaths worldwide, higher or lower temperatures, heat or cold, is not controversial. It is well understood and the findings of many studies are quite clear.
“Cold, low ambient temperature, leads to the death of far more human beings than Heat…
“Any report to the contrary, claiming that heat kills more people than cold, is either made form total ignorance of the facts, or is intentional disinformation.
“Author’s Comment:
“It is one of the sillier aspects of the Climate Wars that this issue is bandied about, with major journals, such as the Scientific American publishing such nonsense as “These heat waves pose a major risk to public health. “In an average year in the U.S., heat kills more people than any other type of extreme weather,” says Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.”
“This type of misinformation is dangerous– the Gasparini chart in the essay shows that even in the U.S. extreme cold kills more people than extreme heat, but the real killer (well, leading cause of illness leading to death) is Moderate Cold.
“I won’t say that the science is settled…but the evidence is in regarding Heat v. Cold. Cold is the killer.”
Point in the following article:
Note carefully the core themes behind the words, terms, definitions, and expressions of ideas in any system of thought or beliefs, in any movement. The core themes that make up the narratives of movements is where you will see that “people continue to believe the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world”. It is always the same old complex of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” myths that keep re-appearing in what are claimed to be new belief systems and movements across history. They are not new. What we get in the “new” is always the same old complex of deeply embedded archetypes, that have been subconsciously embedded over multiple millennia and find new expression repeatedly across history in both religious and so-called “secular” movements and systems of ideas or ideologies.
Awareness of what has happened, where things went wrong in the first place, and what have been the outcomes of the past psychopathology, is a first step toward confronting and then solving one of humanity’s greatest problems- the ongoing problem of basing bad behavior on bad ideas. The correct response is to actually change the core themes of human narratives, to overhaul and replace the most fundamental ideas with better alternatives.
I repeatedly use the term- “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” to define the core complex of myths that have shaped human narratives across history, both religious and “secular/ideological” narratives.
A fuller summary of the above complex:
Corrupt people have ruined an original paradise world, and now the deity behind nature threatens apocalyptic punishment of human sin through the destruction of life and the world. But the deity also offers the promise of redemption if people make some atonement for their sin, such as abandoning the good life in civilization and purging evil via a righteous war against their enemies.
Apparent change at a surface level, but at core really just endlessly repeating the same old… Wendell Krossa
Across history from generation to generation, and from movement to movement, the terms used to describe beliefs and ideas change, the expression of ideas is couched in ever new versions (new definitions, words, statements) but note carefully the core themes behind any given expression of an idea, the core themes behind the terms, words and definitions. That is where you can see the same old outline of “paradise lost, apocalyptic threat, redemption” themes.
Its always the same old repeating itself because it’s the same old influence from deeply embedded archetypes, which are the myths/ideas used to explain and validate our deepest inherited impulses. These old myths/ideas are hard to root out because they resonate with our deeply felt impulses and emotions, and they have long served to validate our most basic instincts. Its especially hard today to detect the persisting presence of those old themes when they are couched in what are claimed to be “secular, modern, materialist, ideological, and even scientific” versions. But take a close look, observe carefully, and you see the same old themes still shaping the core of contemporary narratives. As Solomon said, there is not much new under the sun.
The modern era’s latest version of the primitive “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex-
There was a better past before humans corrupted life and ruined the original paradise wilderness world with their civilization. Now life is declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending (surveys affirm the widespread extent of this belief in declinism). Hence, we must engage some atonement scheme (“de-development, especially decarbonization”) to pay for our sin and “save the world” from apocalyptic decline and ending. If we embrace the salvation scheme, then we may restore the lost paradise or install a new utopia (i.e. “save the world”).
Humanity’s single most profound insight: (grounded in the ancient human practise of basing behavior on a similar belief, validating human action and life with related beliefs/ideas) Wendell Krossa
The insight: “(Behavior)- Love your enemy… (Belief)- because God does.”
This is the single most critical insight to center new human meta-narratives, pointing the way to properly humanize thinking, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior. The ethic of “love your enemy” and the ideal of a “God who loves enemies”, constitutes the insight that most potently liberates us from our worst inherited impulses and from the primitive myths that have long validated such impulses. It is liberation at the core of human consciousness/subconscious as nothing else can liberate, liberation from primitive bad mythology and subsequent bad religious ideas- notably at the level of “archetypes”.
“Love your enemy” revolutionizes everything, and profoundly so.
“Love your enemy” takes us to the very height of what love means- i.e. absolutely no conditions as in love that is universal, inclusive, all-forgiving, non-judging, non-retaliatory, non-punitive, non-violent, etc. “Love your enemy” gives us insight into the true nature of the metaphysical creating Mind, Consciousness, Intelligence, or Spirit that humanity has long understood and referred to as “deity or God”. That reality is unconditional love to inexpressibly transcendent nature and scale.
This insight is about going to the core of human mental life to effect the most profound transformation at the very foundation of thought and belief… transforming the single most important reality of all- deity- that has long served as the highest and most influential ideal to influence behavior. And the single most important feature in deity to change- conditional for unconditional. That will revolutionize human consciousness, life, and societies as nothing else can.
Further, “love of enemy”, also known as unconditional love, offers the best way to maintain our own humanity when engaging the messy business of responding to the offenses and evil of life, when fighting righteous battles with others. It is during such struggles that it is most critical to restrain our own impulses to nasty vengeance and remember that our opponents are still family, equal members of the one human family. Holding unconditional as a dominant ethical and belief ideal in our personal narrative will help us do the least harm to others. Nothing else approaches the potency of unconditional to transform life for the better.
See “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” for a full list of better alternative ideas to shape a narrative.
Humanity’s greatest “battle against evil”– Wendell Krossa
Taking some insights from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Campbell and others, my argument is that our greatest battle, against “our worst enemy”, has to do with something that is inside each of us. It is not an outer physical battle with other people who we may consider “enemies” due to differing nationality, ideology, religion, or whatever else that we use to tribally separate ourselves from one another and fight over (today the features that people employ to separate and war over include color, gender, pronouns, and more).
The fight to conquer our worst enemy- the inner enemy- encompasses two things- (1 ) the inherited animal impulses still present in our brain that were bequeathed to us from our ancient past in animal existence, notably (here is my simplifying triad to make a summary point)… (a) the impulses to tribalism (small band mentality that favors a limited range of family, friends, and community but excludes other outsiders as opponents/enemies), (b) the urge to alpha domination of others, and (c) the impulse to destroy the excluded and competing “enemy” others.
The second element in our battle against our “inner” enemy… (2) our ancestors projected their basest features onto their gods thereby creating Monster gods, gods that eventually became the deities of world religions- (a) gods that tribally favor their true believers and exclude unbelievers, (b) gods that are dominating Lords, Kings, rulers, and (c) gods that are ultimate Judges that condemn and destroy outsiders (e.g. unbelievers cast into religious Hells).
The point here is that people have always engaged the ancient practise of basing their behavior on related beliefs. Across past history, our ancestors projected their most primitive and barbaric features onto their gods, thereby creating ultimate ideals and authorities (i.e. “monster gods”). They then appealed to the gods they had created as ultimate ideals and authorities to inspire, guide, and validate their behavior and societies, to validate their basest animal impulses. Consequently, they committed some of the worst of evils against others in the name of their gods and many continue to do so even today. People have always used their gods to incite some of the worst of inherited animal impulses to tribally exclude others, to dominate others, and to destroy differing others.
This human practise of basing of behavior on similar beliefs arises from our primal impulse for meaning- the basic impulse to know what ultimate reality is, what creates all things, why it creates reality and especially why it creates us. And hence most critical, what is the meaning and purpose of our lives? We want to attain some sense that we are fulfilling the purpose for which we exist here. We want to feel that we are living our lives in accordance with the purpose for which we were created, fulfilling the will or plan of a creator. Hence, we appeal to greater metaphysical realities to validate our lives, and we embody our understanding of such greater reality in our deities (i.e. our god theories) as our highest ideals and authorities.
The practise of basing of human behavior on beliefs in higher realities was perverted from the beginning due to the primitive nature of early human existence and consciousness. Early people emerged from within the brutality of animal reality and had not yet developed an understanding of what it meant to be fully and truly human.
Unfortunately, the features of their primitive existence were projected onto their ancient deities that became fixed (immutable) realities that were later embraced by the world religions that still embody the more barbaric features of ancient life. We see this even in secular/ideological versions of deities created for the modern world. Note, for example, Nancy Pelosi’s “angry Mother Earth” that she claims is punishing people for their sins through nature (i.e. the wildfires in California). That is the same old “wrathful, destroying God” of all primitive mythology and religion.
This site repeatedly highlights this point that the ancients projected some of their most primitive features out to define ultimate realities and those features were later embraced by the world religions and such features have now been embraced by modern systems of belief considered “secular/ideological” and even scientific. The point is that the core themes behind ever-changing public ideas, definitions, and terms are often just more of the same old, same old.
To further hone my point… Wendell Krossa (“Monster gods” below is a reference to Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo’s point that the God of Christianity who demands atonement via the murder of his son is indeed a “Monster God”)
We all engage the “hero’s quest” during our experience of a life story. Essential to such a quest is to go forth and fight a righteous battle against some evil, against a monster. In that battle we will gain insights and learn lessons that we can then bring back to benefit others. And we will also be wounded in our struggle with our monster/enemy. But a wise man will give us a weapon to slay our monster.
This site argues that the feature of “unconditional” is the potent weapon to slay the old “monster gods” that have played the central role in human narratives across history- embodying the highest ideals of people, including their worst features. Unconditional, in one all-encompassing application, overturns all the basest features that were projected onto those ultimate realities/deities and that have then functioned as ultimate ideals and authorities to validate human thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior.
The monster gods created by our ancestors, still serve as humanity’s dominant ideals and authorities today. They still embody some of the worst of primitive themes that incite our worst impulses and that is the real battle of life- to fight this root of all evil that still resides inside each of us. This was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s statement that the real battle of good against evil ran down the center of every human heart. There is a monster inside us- the animal inheritance- that is incited and validated by the monstrous features of our highest ideals and authorities, our “monster” gods.
Insert: Again, the “monster” element that I am commenting on consists mainly of the triad of (1) tribal exclusion of differing others, (2) domination of weaker others, and (3) the punitive destruction of differing others. This triad is embodied in gods that embrace and exhibit these features and then function, as ultimate ideals and authorities, to validate this triad of worst inherited animal impulses in people.
Our real battle against evil is to conquer this monstrosity that resides inside each of us. That is the greatest battle of life and during this battle is where we learn the most important lessons of life.
Monster gods have long been the highest embodiment of humanity’s ideals and authorities that incite our inner monster- our inheritance of animal impulses. And to those who claim no affiliation with any religious tradition- i.e. identifying as some version of contemporary “secular, materialist, atheist”- I would caution that the core ideas of religious traditions have also been embraced in most modern “secular/ideological” belief systems with little change at the level of core themes. This is the result of the “secularization” of primitive mythology noted by historians such as Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, “Decline” being the most dominant and influential theme in today’s world.
Also noting that the same themes have been re-embraced repeatedly across history, remember Joseph Campbell’s statement that all people have believed the same primitive myths from the beginning of conscious human existence, and that embrace of the same common mythical themes (archetypes) spread across all the cultures of the world. The deeply embedded archetypal themes, lodged in human subconscious and in the “collective unconscious” of all humanity (Jung), have endlessly re-emerged in new belief systems and ideologies, in new movements both religious and secular.
The single most profound insight ever offered is the potent weapon to slay the monster- i.e. the narrative-transforming insight that deity is a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. This insight overturns millennia of bad theology, the pathological mythology of monster gods. Nothing counters the impulses to tribal exclusion, domination of others, and punitive destruction of offending others, and nothing slays the monstrous deities that validate such impulses, than unconditional love.
Unconditional deity is absolutely the greatest breakthrough in human history, the single greatest transformation in consciousness ever, a stunning insight to liberate us from primitive thinking and associated primal fears, impulses, ideas- liberating, healing, and pointing us toward a more humane future inspired by more humane ideals and authorities.
To those dismissing theology as just “irrational metaphysical woo-woo stuff”, like the pissed atheist who said- “Lets get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit”, I would remind them that the metaphysical is always been central to human meaning and human narratives, always has been, always will be.
Watch the self-identifying materialists who claim to reject all this metaphysical stuff, then constantly appealing to some ultimate metaphysical reality as the creating Source, the ultimate source of meaning for them also, whether the multiverse, Self-Organizing Principle, or Natural Selection at some cosmic scale (“Source of All Enlightenment”, Richard Dawkins in “The God Delusion”). Materialists appeal endlessly to metaphysical realities that create, sustain, drive life, and give ultimate meaning to life. In doing that, the materialists are doing the same as religious people have done across history- i.e. try to explain material reality as the result of some creating force/spirit, something more than just law, force, or energy. The appeal to some metaphysical greater reality is necessary to make any sense of visible physical reality, to understand and explain our existence. We “have to” speculate on metaphysical realities as essential to understand and explain what exists.
Further, across history deities have been the ultimate embodiment of human ideals that are employed to inspire, guide, motivate, and validate our behavior and life. Gods today in so-called secular/materialist versions are not much different in essence than mythical or religious versions.
Point- Rather than deny the influence of the metaphysical in the human meaning quest, we do better to fully humanize our perception of the metaphysical so that it can function as a fully humane ideal and authority to guide and validate life. And of course, recognize that in commenting on the metaphysical we are engaging speculation. But that has always been part of the human quest for meaning and materialist types do well to also recognize the widespread speculation in their own theorizing about reality (physicist Sabine Hossenfelder again- “Lost in Math”).
Here is some probing of the single most fundamental concern in human existence and experience, another look at the supreme human ideal of love, the thing that more than any other drives and informs our meaning impulse- i.e. the need to experience and express love as our essential nature, the essence of our self, the core of the real us. Wendell Krossa
The single most important thing ever stated about love, the statement that took love to the absolute height of profoundness- “Love your enemy because God does”, Wendell Krossa
(Note: As repeatedly stated on this site, I make a marked distinction between Historical Jesus and the Christian “Jesus Christ” as two entirely different persons/realities representing entirely different messages/ideas that are entirely contradictory.)
The single most profound statement that was ever made by any person in history… that statement took love to its ultimate height as “non-retaliatory, no conditions, all-inclusive universal” love. Historical Jesus gave love, as humanity’s highest human ideal and the feature that most defines us as truly human, he gave it an entirely new understanding in his central theme, summed in just six words- “Love your enemy because God does”.
That changes everything in human thought and life. Profoundly so.
The adjectives “non-retaliatory, no conditions, universal”, as applied to God, are pointing to something infinitely, inexpressibly, incomprehensibly beyond all terms, words, or categories. Just as Joseph Campbell noted that the term “God” points to an inexpressible God that is infinitely beyond any term or definition of deity. Something or Someone truly transcendent.
The Jesus insight that the height of love was to love enemies because God did, overturned entirely all previous human mythology that presented deity as judging, dominating, punitive and destroying reality. Gods, as ultimate arbitrators of justice, fulfilled conventional views of retaliatory justice (i.e. payback, punitive justice) and made all wrongs right again in the cosmos. All the gods of history, previous to the stunning new theology of Historical Jesus, were gods that punished bad people and rewarded good people. They were upholders of a long history of traditional understandings of justice as payback of some form.
Jesus overturned that conventional understanding of justice entirely. He stated, “No. Don’t go for the old ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, embrace the humane justice that loves enemies. Why? Because God does this. This is what God is like”. And he offered his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. Something never conceived of before in all previous history.
(Insert: Again, I would note that this stunning new unconditional insight only makes sense if framed within views of this world as a temporary learning arena, a realm of temporary dualism between good and evil that does not exist in any reality beyond where oneness in perfect love and light is the ultimate reality. More detail in articles below.)
This Jesus insight on unconditional deity will transform and reshape the human quest for meaning as nothing ever before.
How did he express the stunning new theology of non-retaliatory deity? He framed it in terms of the ancient human custom of basing behavior on similar belief. Do this because God does this, or because God is like this. He said (my elaborating paraphrase), “Love your enemies because God loves God’s enemies. How so? God gives the two most important gifts of life- sun and rain for crops- to all alike. They are given freely and generously to both good and bad people”.
In the new theology of Jesus, there was no exclusion, no discrimination, no punishment through the natural world (people’s sins punished by drought, crop failure, natural disasters, disease, etc.). The idea of divine generosity toward all had been expressed in bits and pieces across Old Testament writings but never as clearly as Jesus stated it. And such divine generosity had puzzled ancients like Job and David. With their conventional views of justice as “reward the good, punish the bad” they had naturally asked- Where was the God of traditional eye for eye “justice”- the God that punished bad people and rewarded good people? They were confounded by the conundrum of the wicked prospering, and the righteous suffering (along with all others that were subjected to the imperfections of the natural world).
In response to such traditional perceptions of justice as “eye for eye”, and God as the ultimate upholder of such payback justice, Jesus offered his stunning new insight that there was no such God. Instead, he stated, God was an inexpressibly wondrous love, no conditions love, non-retaliatory, universal love that loves all equally, both good and bad.
No one before in history had made this stunning breakthrough insight into the nature of God as unconditional love. The Akkadian father had got the humane ethic right some 2000 years earlier in telling his son to not retaliate against offenders, but instead “Befriend your enemy”. But that father had then added the demand “to make a sacrifice to your retaliatory God”, a deity who like all previous gods demanded atonement, or payment/punishment for sin. A god who upheld traditional justice as punish evil, and reward good.
The insight of Jesus goes to the very root of human mental pathology- the long-standing myth that God punishes bad behavior through the natural world (via natural disaster, disease, accident, and human/animal predation). That pathological mythology had long enforced human fear of the natural world. Many today still hold this primitive belief that we are being punished through nature for being bad. Note Nancy Pelosi’s repeated statements over past years that the wildfires in the Western US are signs that “Mother Earth is angry” and punishing us for our sins of using fossil fuels.
This pathological anti-human mythology that we deserve divine punishment has deformed human minds and personality for millennia. Religious traditions have added sting to the natural human fear of death in claiming that there will be further after-life harm as punishment for our imperfection or sins (i.e. punishment and destruction in religious hells).
Religious deities have always been presented as the ultimate executors of judgment, exclusion, punishment, and destruction. No religion has ever communicated the wonder of a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God to humanity. All religions have endlessly repeated the retaliatory, punitive, and conditional features of primitive theologies/mythologies.
Get the stunning nature of the breakthrough insight of H. Jesus. He rejected all such thinking. His argument: There was no retaliatory God, no eye for eye justice at a cosmic or ultimate level (metaphysical reality). There was only love- non-discriminating, non-excluding, scandalously generous love for all. That goes to the deepest level of human consciousness/subconscious to liberate us from the most foundational of human fears, fears related to ultimate meaning issues. This is self-help healing at the most profound level. Deeply rooted healing of the most fundamental kind- subconscious archetypal-level healing.
The Jesus insight goes directly to our most fundamental need- the profound human longing and search for love, real love, love beyond any love that we find in this life which is never perfect. The Jesus insight points to the love that we often aspire to, that we desire and dream about- perfect love. It responds to the fundamental question of- What are we really struggling with, what are we really looking for? Love in this world will always disappoint because it comes from imperfect fellow humans. It doesn’t meet our needs for something incomprehensibly beautiful, blissful, and profound. The insight of Jesus responds to that deepest of human needs and desires by pointing us to the highest and best love imaginable, infinitely beyond the best that we can imagine.
His insight on perfect divine love, absolutely transcendent love, liberates as nothing ever before in history. It offers the most fundamental of liberation- at the very depths of human consciousness/subconscious, in the realm of archetypes that shape our thought, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Liberation from our most primal fears and concerns. God as unconditional love affirms ultimate safety for everyone, a background sense of safety to bolster the human spirit through all that we suffer in this messy realm of imperfection and often hellish experiences.
But the Jesus insight is framed and distorted within the messed-up context of Matthew’s obsession with righteousness, or Luke’s larger-context affirmation of Paul’s theology and gospel. Hence, I make my own paraphrase using Jesus’ statement as a takeoff platform because it is iconic to many people. With some paraphrasing adjustments I can state the core issues better. Like leave out “turn the other cheek” as that statement automatically prompts ideas of “dogmatic pacifism in the face of evil” thereby distorting the larger unconditional message.
Any common sense understanding of love, including unconditional love, will recognize the basic responsibility of love to restrain violence and protect innocent people (i.e. the necessary incarceration of repeat offenders, and other criminal justice system consequences as restitution). But such common sense does not weaken or change the truth of God as profoundly perfect and transcendent no conditions love.
See 18 ideas- alternatives to create a new narrative, worldview, belief system.
Insert from Bob Brinsmead on retaliatory justice (post to discussion group)
“____, it was about 40 years ago that I got into the study of Justice (tsadak) in the OT. It was at the time of the Lindy Chamberlain case (https://www.famous-trials.com/dingo/457-home). Few people would know that I was the first person to launch a public protest against the conviction of the Chamberlains. Paxton at first criticized me for challenging the findings of the Darwin trial. Anyhow, it was in that historical context that I looked at the wealth of OT (mostly prophetic) passages using the words righteousness, justice, judgment etc., and found that they were not aligned to the words punish, retribution etc., but referred to the merciful action of God to rescue, restore, forgive etc.
“For example, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed…”. I found all this was taken up in the teaching of Jesus, but also this is where Paul took a new path in his doctrine of propitiatory blood atonement via a punitive action meted out on Christ. I could not harmonize Paul with the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Plain (or Mountain according to Matthew) which directs us to discard our disposition to seek atonement (retribution) for wrongs but to act like the Most High, to be the light of the world, that city set upon a hill as in Isaiah 2:1 which comes right after Isaiah 1 which is an unqualified blast against the need for the sacrificial atonement system of the priesthood.
“Jesus was against sacrifices (as was John the Baptist) because he was against retaliatory justice. He was against this sacrificial cult of the priesthood more than Luther was against Indulgences. He did not die to become the Sacrifice Supreme, but died because he acted out that God did not require any kind of sacrifice of a beast, and much less any human sacrifice. God requires no payment for wrongs done, NONE!
“But these NT scholars, many of whom have a Mennonite background, will be the last to accept the notion that “restorative justice” means that the NT message about the death of Jesus was the huge mistake of the Hellenist party within the original Jesus movement in Jerusalem, the party that Paul at first persecuted and then joined. Ellen White claimed that she was shown in her trances what happened in 1844 when Jesus moved from one apartment of the sanctuary in heaven to the other, but in reality she was only hallucinating about the theory set out by Crozier and supported by James White. Paul claimed that he was transported into the third heaven to hear about the mystery of the cross, that he never got it from any human source (certainly not from the Jerusalem apostles), but, in reality, he got it from the Hellenist faction such as the one which developed in Antioch.
“After the events of 70 CE wiped out the Jerusalem “church”, the Hellenist faction (which had been in serious tension with the mother church at Jerusalem), managed to develop a new mother church at Rome before the end of the century. The survivors of the Jerusalem congregation, included the Desposyni, or family clan of Jesus, were neither accepted by the Jews or the Christian movement- or we could say, they declined to join what became the great Christian Church. (This point is clearly made by Geza Vermes).
“According to Butz (The Secret Legacy of Jesus) the spirit of these dissenters lived on even to be manifested in the Fathers of the American nation (Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson), who like the remnants of the Jerusalem believers, refused to join the Christian Church or to consent to its cardinal doctrines, but remained believers in a different kind of Jesus and a different kind of faith.” (End of Brinsmead quote)
Intro to some “superlative” stuff (superlative as transcendent, supreme, highest, greatest): Putting unconditional Ultimate Reality/deity at the heart of our meta-narratives: Wendell Krossa
The embrace of deity as unconditional reality is the greatest shift possible, the greatest transformation in human thought and consciousness ever, and it points to the most profound liberation, to the most humane reality ever if you can wrap your mind around it. Unconditional God is a profound overturning of previous dominant ideas, themes, and myths that have always shaped human narratives, and it has the most profound consequences in humanizing life.
The adjective “unconditional” evokes the automatic understanding in many of something that is mushy, fuzzy, weak in the face of evil. To many it means “dogmatic pacifism” as in “turn other cheek in the face of evil”. I wish there were a better term- perhaps “universal, no conditions, etc.”. Nonetheless, unconditional points to the highest possible conception of the primary human ideal of love- as absolutely “no conditions”. None. It gets us to highest understanding of what good or humane means.
And no, it is not “turn the other cheek and passively stand down in face of wrong”. Any common-sense conception of love will hold offenders responsible and restrain violence to protect the innocent (restraint as in incarceration, but then employ the restorative justice treatment of offenders as the best way to maintain our own humanity in the face of evil).
Continuing with “superlatives” to make a point clear (what some call “hyperbole”), Wendell Krossa
Even the superlatives do not get to the profoundly wondrous nature of this thing of divine no conditions love that is infinitely beyond any form of love that we know in this world (again, expressing the profundity of divine love is similar to Joseph Campbell’s point that the term “God” points to a God who is infinitely and transcendently beyond the any title for deity, beyond all words, terms, categories that only limit our understanding of such reality).
Applying my point to what went wrong in alarmism movements…
This site offers varied “projects”, such as going after alarmism movements for exaggerating and distorting the true state of life and for terrorizing populations with prophesies of the end-of-days, and then offering irrational salvation schemes that try to save life by destroying it (recent notable examples- the devastation of the Sri Lankan agricultural sector, also the attempted Dutch government assault on agriculture, and the proposed Ireland cattle cull). The single most destructive environmental “salvation” scheme is the overall Net Zero decarbonization crusade that has swept across the Western world to devastating outcomes.
I expose these environmental alarmism movements for what they really are- profoundly religious crusades, simply rehashed versions of the same old primitive pathologies in thought and life that have cursed so much of human history. Then I push readers to think beyond the contemporary public manifestations of these crusades to consider the root themes/ideas behind them- the complex of ideas that drive these movements, that incite and validate the bad behavior emanating from them and the consequent horrific outcomes.
Most important, I urge people to “push on through to the other side” to the Christ myth that has been most responsible for maintaining the pathology of apocalypse in Western consciousness and society, for now over two millennia. That meta-myth has inspired and validated all the related offspring versions of apocalyptic millennialism, both religious and “secular” (i.e. Marxism, Nazism, Environmental Alarmism).
My central contention/dispute with the Christ myth of Paul- It has buried the single greatest discovery ever made (patiently tolerate my waxing a bit superlative now), a discovery that is critical for human well being and essential to human advance toward a more humane future. I speak of the “love your enemy” statement of Historical Jesus, a person entirely opposite to the Christian “Jesus Christ” of the New Testament.
Words cannot fully express the true scale of what happened, the immensity of the denial and distortion that occurred when Paul created his Christ myth to oppose the central teaching of Historical Jesus. Paul rejected and overturned the stunning breakthrough theological insight of Jesus (“his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”, James Robinson), and then Paul buried entirely Jesus’ message under his Christ gospel. We got “Christ-ianity”, not true “Jesus-ianity”. And the damage to human personality and to larger societies in general continues today (detail in “Cruel God, Kind God” by psychotherapist and theologian Zenon Lotufo).
The main points in the “burial” of Jesus under Paul’s Christ–
(1) Paul rejected the non-retaliatory God of Jesus to re-enforce the theology of ultimate retaliation (Romans 12:17-20). (2) He rejected the non-apocalyptic position of Jesus to re-enforce the myth apocalyptic in his Christ (e.g. Thessalonian letters). And (3) he rejected the anti-sacrifice theme of Jesus to re-embrace the myth of an ultimate sacrifice in his Christ (Romans). Overall, Paul (4) replaced the unconditional God of Jesus with his highly conditional Christ message (sacrifice/payment/atonement).
Paul’s Christ embodies humanity’s worst mistake, the single worst fallacy in human history, the worst distortion and greatest contradiction in any religious system of belief. Paul buried the greatest insight ever uttered by any person. All such superlatives are necessary to communicate the profundity of the wondrous insight that Jesus offered, and the incredible cost of its loss to humanity.
The insight of Jesus has to do with love- the highest of human ideals, the single feature that defines us as human more than any other feature. And he radically redefined love as expressed in the ultimate embodiment of love in God. He took an age-old ethical precept (i.e. the Akkadian Father’s advice to his son to “befriend his enemy”) and did something no one before had done. He applied that ancient ethic to God, thereby creating a stunning new theology unheard before in all history.
The outcomes of viewing God as non-retaliatory, non-punitive, non-excluding, universally loving would lead to consequent conclusions that overturned the most fundamental themes of all previous mythologies and especially theologies (ideas of divinity or God).
The reality that humanity has long understood as “God” has never been a tribal reality that favors true believers and excludes unbelievers. God is not a punishing or rewarding Judge. God is not a dominating Lord or King. All such features have distorted entirely the core reality that “God is love”, as in no conditions, universal love.
Religious theologies have always buried the real profundity of what “God is love” means.
God as love overturns entirely the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of ideas that have always dominated human thought and still do today. The insight of Jesus was his greatest contribution to human thought, that was buried by Paul’s Christ myth that once again embraced the old complex of bad ideas in “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythology.
Love is all, Wendell Krossa
Love shapes all in human life. It answers the most profound of human longings, and more than anything else it informs our primary impulse for meaning. It answers our greatest questions regarding the point of existence and our purpose in life.
The lack of love, the abandonment of love, explains the eruption of tribal hate today as we have lost sight of the singular thing that ought to define and shape our lives- love as the highest ideal that ought to guide our lives and our responses to imperfect others, especially our treatment of offending others, as in “love of enemies”.
Love is critical to human meaning and purpose. It is critical to mental and emotional health and human well being and progress. It is the single greatest ideal to inspire thought, emotion, creativity, motivation, response, and behavior.
And the breakthrough insight of Jesus on divine love, took love to its rightful height as an unconditional reality. As some have stated- if love is not unconditional then it is not authentic love.
Hence, my going after bad ideas, notably the ideas lodged in icons like Paul’s Christ myth, is about showing what blocks our perception of the true core of all reality, the true nature of love, what hinders us from grasping the full wonder of the no conditions love that is the ultimate reality at the core of all.
Love is the overarching feature that stands above all else for giving meaning to our lives- the single most profound reality of all realities.
Sample of statements on the primacy of love from people who had Near Death Experiences, as quoted in Kenneth Ring’s “Lessons From The Light”:
From the Foreword: “Reports from near-deathers indicate that upon death we are met with an indescribable sensation of unconditional love.”
Ring’s comment in Intro: “An unutterable radiant Love permeates our universe.”
From an account: “Among the few things that people can take with them when they die love is probably the most important.”
Another: “There was an indescribable feeling of love and warmth… nothing but peace and tranquility… it was as if I was searching for this place my whole life.”
Another: “I travelled to a realm of total and absolute peace…. I was enveloped by total bliss in an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance…”
Another: “I was in the most beautiful Light… I felt so loved, calm, peaceful, happy. I can’t find words to express what it was like… Such powerful love, and so much love, so much beauty… beauty, beauty, beauty… Real true love.”
Another: “There was a love so incredibly powerful and intensely deep that I was astounded and even in a state of shock as it went through me. I never knew such LOVE existed.”
Another on the Light that was encountered: “I knew it was the strongest force in existence. It was the Energy of Pure Love… I was told that everything was love, and I mean everything. I had always felt love was just a human emotion people felt from time to time, never in my wildest dreams thinking it was literally EVERYTHING. I was shown how much people are loved. It was overwhelmingly evident that the Light loved everyone equally without any conditions… We didn’t have to believe or do certain things to be loved. We already were and are, no matter what… If people could only know have much they’re loved, maybe they wouldn’t feel scared or lonely anymore.”
She added on the incomprehensible immensity of the love… “I vividly recall the light was pure, undiluted, concentrated unconditional LOVE. This love I experienced was so powerful it can’t be compared to earthly love… it was like being bathed in energy particles of pure love.”
Ring inserts: “People encounter a realm of pure, unconditional love and acceptance, a primordial womb of light blazing with beauty and glory… our true and eternal home.”
As the previous lady concludes: “We are not ever alone…The boundless light is the source of all love in the world and loves each one of us equally and infinitely.. If people could only know how much they are loved.” And so on…
One more from an NDEr: “The very substance of God, the very ‘atoms’ of God, are unconditional love.” Making that love the most fundamental and real of all realities in our cosmos.
Some further comment on the insight that love is at the core of all reality, defining the deity that creates and sustains all reality:
Meaning: There has never been a God out there or above in some religious heaven (i.e. a “sky God”), separate from humanity. No. God has always been incarnated in all humanity equally, and not just in special holy people. God is inseparable from the human spirit that is common to every person. That indwelling Love is our true core self, our true human nature (as opposed to our dark side- our inherited animal impulses).
God as love has always been closer than our own breath, our own atoms. Hence, in a most fundamental sense- “we are all That”, as in the Hindu belief that atman (the human person) is Brahman (the cosmic Soul or Consciousness). Even during our sojourn here on Earth, we maintain a fundamental oneness with God as love. The transcendently incomprehensible, inexpressible God as love is then the most common thing in our daily, mundane lives. God as love is immanently present everywhere sustaining all in existence, permeating or interpenetrating all material reality, even though most often “hidden” in that we are unaware of God’s presence and love.
Once again for emphasis- The true nature of the incarnated God and, hence, also our true core nature, is “no conditions love”. When we embrace that love and try to express it through our lives, we then discover our true selves and live out our true meaning and purpose in life.
It’s a stunning thought- The love that is God (inexpressible no conditions love) has always been at the core of our self, the very center of our being, and so often we don’t know it. We don’t recognize it because such love does not express itself in overwhelming interventions. That would be coercive and coercion is entirely against the nature of authentic love that honors the freedom and self-determination of others. Authentic love will not overwhelm, coerce, threaten, interfere, or intervene with invasive force. No, authentic love expresses itself as gentle persuasion, as the still small voice, and not in the raging storm. Divine love is the gentle urge to do the right thing.
Example: I Kings 19:11-13- “Then God said (to Elijah), ‘Go out, and stand on the mountain’. And behold, there was a great and strong wind that tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice, and God said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’“
Jesus also made this point in his response to his followers who were arguing over who would be the greatest. Luke 22:2-27,
“Now there was also a dispute among them, as to which of them should be considered the greatest. And Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves. For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves’”.
The point being that true greatness, true love, is not expressed in dominating others, lording over others coercively with force. Authentic love is expressed more in a gentle, quiet, persuasive manner, in serving others. This non-coercive love operates best in liberal democracy governed by the principles of Classic Liberalism that treat all as free equals, and protects the free choice and self-determination of all.
Added note: Classic Liberalism best counters the evil triad of inherited impulses to (1) tribal exclusion of differing others, (2) domination of weaker others, and (3) punitive destruction of “enemy” others.
How does Classic Liberalism counter the evil triad? In Classic Liberalism, or liberal democracy, all citizens live under systems of common law and representative government institutions that exist to protect and promote the rights and freedoms of all citizens, equally. All are included and respected, equally.
And in Classic Liberalism citizens are not to be dominated by state bureaucrats or “leaders” but instead should be “served” by the varied officials of states. In Classic Liberalism citizens are not subservient to some collective (greater good, common good) that is represented by governments or states and that has to be run by “enlightened elites” who believe that they know what is best for all others and, and as history shows has been the inevitable outcome, will resort to coercion to impose state agendas on citizens.
In liberal democracies, power is not centralized in state elites but is purposefully and regularly dispersed among the citizenry through varied protocols and practises. Power is maintained as the supreme prerogative of the citizen population by more than just occasional voting but also, and this is critical, through open public debates on all issues where all voices are heard, from all sides. In liberal democracy, none are to be silenced or censored, not even offensive voices.
And power is further maintained among citizens through referenda where citizens regularly express their majority choices. Also, the revealing pulse on majority opinions and choices is revealed by regular surveys of any population. And so on…
Leaving my religion. Really?? Wendell Krossa
Varied surveys show that more people are leaving religious traditions to join the growing “unaffiliated” sector of societies/populations. People leave their religions for varied reasons.
The spreading abandonment of religion may be due to the growing awareness among people that religious traditions embrace too much irrational mythology that no longer makes sense to modern minds more attuned to empirical science principles. Or the abandonment of religion may be motivated by the awareness that religious traditions too often violate modern sensibilities in regard to basic understanding of what it means to be human- i.e. the tribal nature of religious systems to favor true believers and exclude unbelievers versus the modern sense that universal inclusion of all is the truly human position to take.
Or leaving religion may be spurred by disagreement with the traditional religious promotion of male domination that conflicts with today’s embracing of the equality of sexes (no male dominance). Another spur to leave religion arises from rejection of the religious tendency to curb human freedom by demanding a religious lifestyle as the identity marker of a given religious tradition, versus honoring the free choice for diversity and self-determination of all others (embracing the differing lifestyles of all people). These are some of the areas where religious traditions conflict with contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.
But too often the leaving of religion for an unaffiliated or independent position entails merely the abandonment of the more peripheral features of religion- i.e. no longer pledging membership loyalty to some group/denomination, no longer attending the services of the group, and abandoning the grosser beliefs of the religion- beliefs in the need for atonement and salvation, beliefs in hell, etc.
It may come as a surprise, even shock to many in the growing unaffiliated sector that they may have just exchanged their religious beliefs for some secular version of the very same beliefs, even though their new belief system claims status as some form of materialist/atheist philosophy or ideology. The new is often just another version of the very same core themes of their former religion, even though the ideas in the purportedly new system are given new names, use new terms, and are described by new definitions, and explained in new categories. But it is often just another version of the very same core themes. The lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption complex has morphed into many varied secular/ideological versions that differ little in terms of core themes from the mother-ship religious versions.
Important to consider on abandoning some religion is the need to understand what core needs the old religious traditions responded to, even though those needs were distorted by religious belief and practice. Religious embodiments of primitive archetypes met deeply felt impulses, such as the impulse for meaning, for purpose, and the felt need for ideals to guide life and behavior toward the good life or “righteousness” as defined by religions.
The outcome of leaving religion ends worse for some as they then wander in the nihilist nothingness and meaninglessness of dogmatic atheism, or commit themselves to new crusades that incite similar zealotry and extremism to that of religious extremism. We see this in apocalyptic movements like climate alarmism or disease alarmism (Covidism). Many are also expressing the impulse to engage a “hero’s quest to fight a righteous battle against evil” in the resurgence of collectivism/Marxism that is emanating from Woke Progressivism and its totalitarian Censorship Industrial Complex. These contemporary “secular/ideological” crusades are shaping up to compete with the worst religious totalitarianisms of past history. All are profoundly religious movements at core just as Marxism and Nazism were religiously inspired movements that were influenced by themes of apocalyptic millennialism as detailed by historians Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, and David Redles.
The best way to navigate these great transformative shifts from religion to unaffiliated or independent status is to understand the fundamental themes of religious belief systems and what are the better alternatives to such ideas. This site offers some basic criteria for evaluating any system of belief, whether the beliefs are humane or not, and the outcomes of the beliefs. Do our beliefs inspire the better angels of our nature or the worst of our inherited impulses?
Note on the most violent and destructive idea in history- apocalyptic:
Apocalyptic eruptions over past history tended to be more local in influence and damage (e.g. the Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-7). We are experiencing today the first worldwide spread of an apocalyptic movement in the climate alarm crusade (though most notably across Western societies). The damage from its salvation scheme of decarbonization will outdo any past destruction from apocalyptic “madness of crowds” eruptions.
Here Jordan Peterson analyzes and explains the psychology of “Left Wing Authoritarianism” and illustrates this with Justin Trudeau- “a narcissist who has never spoken an authentic word”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNIfIe0wgE
And a related similar article on the psychology of Left Wing Authoritarianism…
https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness#details
Repeated important points on this site in relation to climate: Wendell Krossa
Climate change is not a “hoax”.
Climate is changing just as it always has, because it is a complex, nonlinear, and dynamic system. Further, CO2 has a warming effect that contributes to warming periods. But with only 1 degree C warming over the past century, we remain in a too-cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth. We could use much more warming and much more CO2.
With the increase in CO2 over the past century, there has been a massive greening of the Earth, with 15% more green vegetation added across the planet just since 1980. Meaning more food for animal life and increased crop production for humanity.
Further, varied other natural factors have a much stronger influence on climate change than CO2.
Conclusion from the best evidence? There is no “climate emergency” and hence no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. See CO2coalition.org, Wattsupwiththat.com, and related sites for detailed research from the best scientific minds working on climate today.
Additional note: The climate alarmism crusade evidences the themes of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythology, making it a “profoundly religious movement”. This site probes the mythical themes behind such “secular/ideological” movements and notes the harmful outcomes from these crusades (i.e. the “salvation” schemes that “save the world by destroying it”).
Posts from discussion group: Wendell Krossa
The link below illustrates the alarmist reporting on climate that functions as propaganda to affirm the “climate emergency” narrative. “Death spiral”? Glaciers have grown and retreated endlessly over the history of life. The ebb and flow of glaciers is a natural process. And the melting of ice is preferable for all life as cold is the far greater threat to life. For over 80% of the history of life (the 500 million years of the Phanerozoic era) there was no ice on earth and temperatures were 3-6 degrees warmer than today and all life flourished with no climate crisis.
In fact, during the Eocene of 55-33 million years ago, temperatures were up to 10 degrees C warmer than today and that was the “golden age for mammals”, a mammalian paradise. The Earth did not ignite on fire and the oceans did not boil. Scientists have detailed why that was true and that paradisal period confounds alarmists as to why tropical temperatures remained “remarkably stable” even with overall temperatures 10 degrees C warmer. It points to strong negative feedbacks in the tropics that keep climate within a range suitable to life- the “equable tropical climate” fact.
The hysteria over melting ice today, and mild warming, is irrationally unscientific and denies the larger context of climate- i.e. paleoclimate facts. But it is typical of distorting media reporting.
Sources: See “The Eocene-Oligocene Transition” by Donald Prothero and reports on Wattsupwiththat.com by Javier Vinos regarding the “Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis”.
Another: Condemning cowardice and celebrating courage, Wendell Krossa
Do you remember Tom Petty’s song- “I won’t back down”?
The lyrics go as follows:
“Well, I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down. No, I’ll stand my ground, won’t be turned around…”
Movements emerge that we can all support- MeToo, BLM, environmental protection, and others. But then too often fringe extremists emerge to take over and derail these movements to become authoritarian, dogmatic, bullying, fringe cult-like crusades, where extremists threaten all who disagree with their dogmatic views, threatening disagreeing others with cancellation, silencing, censorship, banning, even criminalization.
It’s embarrassing to observe when some people try to counter the extremism with common sense like Matt Damon cautioning the MeToo movement that not all male offenses were the same egregious nature. MeToo activists erupted on him. Or Jamie Fox making an innocuous point by referring to the murder of Jesus and that incited context-denying charges of “anti-semitism”. The mob ignored his intentions and went crazy on him. We see this repeatedly where someone will innocently state some opinion on an issue and the outrage extremists will unleash a cancel crusade, becoming hysterically outraged over even common-sense expressions, jokes, or just normal free speech disagreement.
Disappointingly, the above two people- i.e. Damon and Fox- then gave the knee and offered groveling apologies to the mobs. Apologizing for speaking common sense into the storm of mob hysteria? For expressing free speech rights? Ah, c’mon guys. Show some spine. You did nothing wrong.
Thankfully, other heroic figures are emerging to protest and pushback against the “madness of crowds” today on many fronts (challenging censorship, disinformation/misinformation/malinformation crusades, overall Woke Progressivism, and climate hysteria)… people like the heroic Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and colleagues, also Jordan Peterson, along with others.
Don’t back down in the face of bullying mobs. Like this lady below, Kim Russell, who just offered her view on trans women in sports, stand your ground. Show some spine in the face of mob hysteria. These quotes from the link below….
She states that she broke none of the college’s rules in her comments that biological males and females are different.
“None,” Russell replied. “There were no rules that I was breaking. I was speaking my belief, my opinion. When I took that to the college with a letter from my attorney, I said, ‘If I am breaking university policy, please tell me what that policy is. Please do so in writing. And if you’re going to fire me for breaking that policy, please do it now.’”…
Russell was told to write an apology letter to the athletics department and the team, but she didn’t do it.
She said she’s willing to have a conversation with anyone on the topic, but won’t hide her passion on the topic.
“I really believe that women should be competing against other biological females,” she said in the documentary….
Russell affirmed her opinion that “it is scientific that, biologically, males and females are different. Period. I don’t believe biological males should be in women’s locker rooms. Where’s the MeToo movement now? What happened to that?”
Then this good point from Bill Maher on a recent Joe Rogan podcast, episode 2029 on Spotify:
“I have always believed, as liberals do for example, in a colorblind society,” Maher said.
“That the goal is to not see race at all, anywhere for any reason,” Maher continued. “That’s what liberals always believed all the way through Obama, going back [to] Kennedy, everybody, Martin Luther King. That’s not what the woke believe.”
“They believe race is first and foremost the thing you should always see everywhere, which I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan,” Maher said, invoking the White supremacist hate group. “Again, you can have that position, but don’t say that’s a liberal position. You’re doing something very different.”
The point made by Maher was that his ideal, along with Martin Luther King and former Democrats, was to aim for a “colorblind” society, where race did not even enter the picture. But today, said Maher, Democrats have rejected that dream and now make everything about race, intensifying racial divisions. Maher offered other comment on where liberals today are no longer liberal. As he says, I have not changed, I am still a 90s liberal, but most other liberals today have abandoned liberalism to become woke progressives which is no longer true liberalism.
And this from Vivek Ramaswamy on identity politics and Critical Race Theory: The Woke belief is that “The remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Ramaswamy joins black scholar John McWhorter in calling this new racism “Woke racism”, no different from the old racism where entire groups are smeared negatively in some way (the collectivist way of viewing people, as admitted by Marxist and leading CRT theorist Robin DiAngelo). Entire sectors of the populace are defined in collective ways, according to their skin color. Individual differences be damned.
Another from the Rogan podcast:
Rogan and Maher discuss the “social contagion” aspect to the trans movement and Maher notes that it is geographically shaped and that raises the issue of social contagion or faddishness. He says that Hollywood people in excessively large percentages now have “trans” kids, way beyond any actual trans rate or percentage in the general population.
Maher notes that there is an actual trans thing, but it is very small, so the geographical distortion in Progressive areas speaks to the element of “social contagion” faddishness going on and that is dangerous because the physical change is permanent. And the “detrans” factor is growing, illustrated by the numerous lawsuits against the British clinic that pushed many confused young people to have sex-change operations (Tavistock Transgender clinic- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11101661/Tavistock-transgender-clinic-facing-mass-legal-action-1-000-families.html ).
Rogan also offered an interesting comment to guest Maher on that fact that decades ago public debates between opposite sides was normal and offered people a chance to hear differing opinions and arguments and then decide for themselves, such as the lively debates between William Buckley and Gore Vidal.
But now conservatives are not allowed to speak on campuses and colleges churn out grads who no longer are exposed to critical thinking and open debates, but just come out as little Woke Progressive zombies. Rogan and Maher also note the surveys showing how many younger people want another attempt at communism. Even liberal Maher sounds “old school” conservative in his response to that profoundly ignorant desire for a reboot of a profoundly destructive and murderous system (100 million deaths in the last century).
Only for those interested (post to discussion group)….
“Alex Epstein on Chris Williamson podcast. Good basic explanation from Alex Epstein (Moral Case for Fossil Fuels) that hindering supply of fossil fuels is driving up energy prices and all other prices, and more dangerously driving up costs of food for the poorest people worldwide as natural gas is essential to the Haber Bosch process for obtaining atmospheric nitrogen for fertilizer. So food prices rise and this impacts the poorest people the most. And this “moral crusade” is going worldwide to eliminate fossil fuels…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvoz31hD_k
“Start around the 3-minute mark for a few minutes of good summary of what is going on… without cheap energy all other prices rise also, as some 6000 basic products in our societies are fossil fuel derivatives… Good on ESG, climate crisis as religion, and more…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvoz31hD_k
Liberals now the party of censorship, war
It is stunning that surveys show a majority of US Democrats want more censorship. What the hell is going on with liberals who once defended freedom, inclusion of diversity, and were against censorship? Well, the leftist narrative is that there has been a rise in “hate speech” and though not true, such exaggeration of threat, then incites fear, and that prepares populations to become open way to totalitarian, coercive responses to counter the imagined threat. Others, after fact-checking trends, state that there is no detectable rise in hate speech. There is no clear evidence of any such increase but there has been more an extension of what is considered hate speech.
This is known in psychology as “Concept creep”. That speech once considered just differing opinion and therefore only “offensive” to those who disagreed, is now increasingly classified as hate speech just because it causes easily offended people discomfort, unease, and leaves them claiming that they “feel threatened”. This is a dangerous trend and it is a direct assault on freedom and dissent that is critical to liberal democracy and overall freedom. People have elevated their feelings of discomfort as a primary criterion for considering what is allowable in society, even what is criminal. They then call for the censorship, banning, cancelling, and jailing of opponents. And this is totalitarianism unleashed.
Bad ideas, Wendell Krossa
Note on what constitutes a “bad idea”- i.e. that which incites, affirms, and validates the impulses to (1) tribalism (denying the fundamental oneness of the human family to favor some and exclude differing others), the impulse to (2) domination of others (interfering in other’s lives, not protecting the freedom of personal choice and self-determination of others as full equals), and the impulse to (3) destruction of differing others as “enemies” (punitive, not restorative, responses to offenders).
Pay attention especially to the features that have been projected onto humanity’s highest ideals and authorities- i.e. deities- features that affirm the worst of our inherited impulses. Notably, Gods as tribally favoring true believers but damning unbelievers, Gods as Lords, Kings, Rulers, and Gods as judges that punish and destroy unbelievers. And yes, even our contemporaries who self-identify as “materialist… even atheist” continue to hold “secular/ideological” versions of the same ideals and authorities.
Inventing freedom, Wendell Krossa
Daniel Hannan in “Inventing Freedom” presents the historical emergence and development of Classic Liberalism, its principles, institutions, and benefits to all humanity. Classic Liberalism prioritizes the protection of the rights and freedom of all individuals above collectivist rights. The contrary approach of prioritizing collective rights over individuals leads to concentration of power in elites that claim to run the collective (i.e. state/government) on behalf of the workers or citizens.
Distributing power equally among individuals, via equal treatment of all under common law and under representative parliaments, has been the best defence against the inevitable unleashing of the totalitarian impulse that arises from concentrating power in governing elites.
And contrary to collectivist arguments, the distribution of power and protection of the rights and freedom of individuals equally has done the most to benefit the greater good of all by lifting more people out of poverty while providing the best defense against totalitarianism.
Collectivists have a hard time letting go of their repeatedly failing system due to the fact they have convinced themselves that their system is morally superior because they falsely frame it as greater good versus the evil of individualism which they demonize and distort as being about nothing more than selfishness and greed. That distorts how Classic Liberalism actually operates. And the outcome in historical evidence is overwhelming that what achieves and benefits the greater good the most is Classic Liberalism not collectivism which has failed repeatedly, and at its worst has unleashed repeated bouts of totalitarianism.
How to prevent AI from becoming misused as a partisan tool to disadvantage one’s opponents? Program it with Classic Liberal principles. Wendell Krossa
There is concern expressed that emerging AI will become part of the Censorship Industrial Complex and will be used, or is already used, by intelligence agencies, political parties, and media to censor differing/dissenting others. Some have asked how we can prevent this. My suggestion- program AI with Classic Liberal ideas and principles- to protect the freedom of all equally, to honor the free and diverse speech of all, to promote the open debate that is critical to liberal democracy, debate that includes skeptical views, diverse opinion in all areas, and does not institute bans on “hate speech” but counters bad speech/ideas with better alternatives.
Sept.2, 2023 from Public at Substack, posted on Michael Shellenberger’s site…
“Christine Brophy: Narcissism Behind Left-Wing Authoritarianism
“New psychological research finds that behind the progressive “be kind” agenda often lies a far darker set of motivations.
“We must be kinder and more altruistic, progressives say. The contemporary Left lionizes empathy above all virtues as the basis for a just and equitable society.
“But behind these pleas for selflessness can lie darker motivations of narcissism and authoritarianism, a growing body of psychological research suggests. A Swiss study published in Current Psychology earlier this year found antagonistic narcissism and psychopathic tendencies to be strong predictors of left-wing anti-hierarchical aggression. Individuals displaying these traits are drawn to social justice causes, researchers posit, not through the pull of altruism but to satisfy their own ego-focused, even antisocial needs…
“Previous research found that Left Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) powerfully predicts behavioral aggression and participation in political violence. Others found a strong correlation between Dark Triad Traits (Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy) and virtuous victim signaling, or conspicuously projecting victimhood as a moral value, which researchers say individuals use as a means of non-reciprocal resource extraction.
“The research does not suggest all progressives are narcissists nor that conservatives never are. Most psychologists will likely tell you narcissism knows no bounds, political or otherwise. A 2018 study published in the American Journal of Political Science found people on the left and right to be equally narcissistic but with varying expressions, e.g., conservatives’ penchant for feelings of entitlement and superiority when it comes to issues like immigration, and liberal tendencies toward exhibitionism in the case of climate activism….
“Given the current dominance of progressive liberalism, ostensibly driven by compassion, empathy, and the pursuit of social justice, researchers have taken an interest in how bad actors can infiltrate and leverage altruistic movements for nefarious ends – and where, in more subtle ways, well-intentioned activism can veer into authoritarianism.
“Some progressives are genuinely altruistic in non-narcissistic ways. However, the major role that narcissism plays in today’s progressive movements is well-documented and interrogates the self-perception among many on the Left that they simply care more than conservatives.
“If you, like me, are from the Left and consider yourself a highly empathetic person who values compassion, the events of the past several years and the current state of progressive politics can seem nonsensical – even absurdist. Compassion can’t begin to account for the precipitous rise of authoritarianism on the Left. So what’s going on?
“Narcissism, Not Compassion…
“Brophy set out to understand the personality of political correctness, what we now call “wokeness,” and to test if the concept itself held up to scrutiny if it could reliably be measured.
“Her research found that PC exists and has two major dimensions: “PC -Liberalism” and “PC-Authoritarianism,” best predicted by the personality trait “Agreeableness.” The core of both pieces was compassion and a kind of general sensitivity to offense or to the social sphere. A central desire for egalitarianism, meanwhile, was used toward different ends: on the liberalism side, in pursuit of greater diversity; on the authoritarian side, to increase a sense of personal stability.
“Brophy found both Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Left Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) overlap on a dimension related to censorship and authoritarian submission – “the appeal to an external authority, a desire for rules that the authority be listened to, and that any dissenting sort of views are dangerous, that they must be censored… because the population is naïve and they cannot be trusted.”
“In our current political landscape, examples of this exact behavior abound – from the COVID regime to the rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
“But where does it come from? According to Brophy, a lack of trust, and disgust sensitivity, are strongly related. On both ends of the political spectrum, a cognitive rigidity, and an inability to tolerate nuance, informs authoritarianism…
“How Right Wing Authoritarianism and Left Wing Authoritarianism differ comes down to compassion: The former will identify more with strength and the top of a hierarchy, the latter with vulnerability. But this is not just a desire to protect the vulnerable; it is also a sensitivity to the ways in which that vulnerability is demonstrated in a social environment.
““So in contrast to strength, in contrast to competition that highlights your own vulnerability, and they are hyper-aware of that… It leads [progressives] to this kind of protectiveness and identification with vulnerability,” Brophy says. “And then, on top of that, their compassion likely makes it so that they are more inclusive. They won’t just outright sort of want to kill off everything that’s unlike them, but instead, they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, sure, come in, but you must be 100% like us.’” In other words, LWAs tend to favor assimilation over rejection.
“But it all raises the question of why. Why do researchers find that narcissism correlates with authoritarianism on the Left?
“As it turns out, compassion has a dark side.
“Compassion evolved, Brophy explains, from the mother-child pair bond, as a caring emotion that helps motivate altruistic behavior and self-sacrifice. And it is specifically attuned to cues or stimuli of vulnerability, expressions of sadness or fear, but also narrative elements. This creates a response bias toward negative emotions.
““There is something about compassion that makes you not only attend to these stimuli more deeply and pay attention to them but then to also identify with groups that are portraying those types of characteristics,” Brophy said, adding that it also makes you more likely to aggress against individuals that compete with the group you’ve prioritized, creating an in-group, out-group dynamic.
“At its pathological extreme, compassion leads to overly trusting behavior and an inability to differentiate right from wrong….
“As Brophy writes, “the vulnerable are given a permanent moral high ground, while those in power are the target of maternal, protective aggression – a behavior that occurs even in the absence of provocation and injustice.”…
“This altruistic form of narcissism may look different from the more familiar aggressive type, but the core is still entitlement, the belief you are great, deserving of greatness, and of recognition for it. Where this often veers into bullying and vindictive behavior, Brophy notes, is when people don’t receive the recognition they feel they deserve – either for their virtue or for their pain – and punish others for it.
““The fact that you can’t recognize my pain and that you aren’t prioritizing that, well, there’s something very evil about you.”
“Implications For Progressives
“This is all very troubling for those of us who have considered ourselves part of the Left.
“At the same time, Brophy’s work helps us to make sense of the impetus and behavioral factors behind a progressive movement that punishes dissent, celebrates and instantiates victimhood, and infantilizes people in the name of compassion….
“While individuals within these movements believe they are fighting evil — “because that’s what happens when you really get attached to your personality, you get this sense of justice that you’re fighting the good fight” — Brophy says, it provides a perfect opening for a psychopath to leverage those feelings toward their own ends.
““A psychopath will come in and be like, ‘Oh, okay, this is a very fast way for me to be able to exert control, to climb a hierarchy, to tell other people to do what I want, to gain status.’”
“For those with more malicious Dark Triad traits, it can also offer an opportunity to punish people, either as retribution for perceived harm or just for the pleasure they feel in the expression and experience of power.
“Growing research on the psychology of Left Wing Authoritarianism offers a powerful lens for understanding and challenging the censorship and tyranny we’ve increasingly seen from the Left.”
And this from Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag, Sept.7, 2023
https://public.substack.com/p/histrionic-narcissism-behind-unequal
“Histrionic Narcissism Behind Unequal Sentences For January 6 And Black Lives Matter Protesters
“True justice must remain blind to politics and ideology”
They detail the bias in the treatment of Jan.6 protestors compared with BLM violence and destruction. Harsh sentencing of Jan.6 people, even where there was no violence, and non-prosecution of BLM rioters.
They probe the psychopathology behind this differing treatment.
“Free speech suppressed everywhere you turn” by Francis Menton of Manhattan Contrarian, Sept.4, 2023
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/04/free-speech-suppressed-everywhere-you-turn/
Free speech today is under assault from the Left everywhere and all the time. You already know about the federal government’s pervasive Censorship Industrial Complex, pressuring all the big social media companies to suppress what they deem “misinformation” about any subject important to the current dominant political narrative (Covid-19, climate change, etc.). And you already know about ex-President Trump getting indicted by both federal and Georgia prosecutors for saying the same things about the 2020 election that Al Gore said about the 2000 election and Hillary Clinton said about the 2016 election and Stacey Abrams said about the 2018 election.
But how about the Left using its widespread control of social institutions to silence dissent. Today, this is literally everywhere. Here are a couple of notable examples for today — both, as it happens, from outside the U.S.: Alimonte, et al., paper in European Physical Journal Plus
If you wonder why the climate alarm narrative seems so completely to dominate public discussion (even though it is utter nonsense), then you need to understand that there is an orthodoxy enforcement police operating behind the scenes. Most of the time the operation of this orthodoxy enforcement mechanism is invisible to the general public. Climate skeptics can’t get jobs in academia, and go into other careers; when skeptics write papers, they get rejected, and are never heard from again. But every once in a while something happens to bring aspects of the orthodoxy enforcement mechanism momentarily into the open. That has recently occurred with respect to a paper published in a European scientific journal in early 2022.
In January 2022 the European science journal called European Physical Journal Plus (part of the Springer Nature collection of journals) published a paper by Gianluca Alimonte and colleagues with the title “A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming.” The paper is essentially a review of trends in various sorts of extreme weather events since the early 20th century, including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and so forth. The bottom line from the article is that there are no noticeable trends in the frequency or severity of these extreme weather events during recent years. For example, the summary as to hurricanes is “To date, global observations do not show any significant trends in both the number and the energy accumulated by hurricanes.”…
He posts a graph and concludes: “No trends are visible there. And here are the key concluding sentences from the abstract:
None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.
That last observation seems to be the one that just could not be allowed. It appears that a group of orthodoxy enforcers from academia and journalism ganged up to go to Springer Nature to demand retraction of the Alimonte, et al. paper. There followed a lengthy back and forth, which ended with the paper being retracted on August 23, 2023….
Jordan Peterson license to practice psychology in Ontario
On August 23 judges of something called the Ontario Divisional Court upheld a ruling of the College of Psychologists of Ontario, which had ordered Jordan Peterson to undergo what Peterson calls “social media retraining” to punish him for various tweets and a Joe Rogan podcast interview that the College found unacceptable. (More detail in full report at link above)
And From H. Sterling Burnett hsburnett@heartland.org
“Climate Change Weekly #481: Droughts, Hurricanes, and Wildfires Aren’t Living Up to Alarming Climate Expectations”
“Just before the beginning of summer last year, I wrote a Climate Change Weekly article titled “It’s Climate Catastrophe Du Jour Season, Again!,” warning of what I predicted would be a coming tidal wave of stories claiming the then-extended drought and expected hurricanes and wildfires would be blamed on climate change. I was right. Hundreds if not thousands of stories were published by both the mainstream and progressive fringe media last year blaming the drought, every hurricane, and large wildfire season on climate change.
“This despite there being no evidence that long-term trends in droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires showed any increase in number or severity. Absent such upward trends, it’s hard to honestly link one or a few years of extreme weather events to climate change, but then honesty has never been a strong point for climate alarmists or at the heart of the climate change debate….
“Let’s revisit the dread three seasons—drought, hurricanes, and wildfires—and see how they went in 2023….
“The U.S. Drought monitor reports nearly 57 percent of the United States is exhibiting no drought whatsoever despite a long, admittedly hot summer. Another 16 percent is recorded as “abnormally dry,” and only 27 percent of the country is listed as being in any category of drought, from moderate to extreme (5 percent) or exceptional (1 percent). Three months ago, at the beginning of summer, 66 percent of the nation was completely drought-free, with only 16 percent of the country listed as facing moderate, severe, extreme, or exceptional drought….
“Neither the wildfire in Maui, nor those in Canada, nor the ones that scorched Greece this summer, were caused by climate change: nature combined with human error, malfeasance, or evil was behind each of these devastating fires.
“As of August 11, data showed wildfires in the United States in 2023 are the fourth-lowest in nearly 100 years of recordkeeping. Globally, over the past two decades of modest warming (but heightened fearmongering), satellite data from NASA show a 25 percent decrease in acreage lost to wildfires since 2003….
“The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change nor hard data shows any increasing trend in the number or severity of tropical cyclones. Over the past 50 and 100 years, if anything, the data indicates there has been a modest decline in the yearly number of hurricanes and major hurricanes on average, according to multiple studies.
“What’s true for the whole world is true also for the United States and Florida. From 2009 through 2017, America experienced the fewest hurricane strikes in any eight-year period in recorded history. And it was just in 2016 that Florida, America’s most vulnerable state for hurricanes, concluded an 11-year period without a landfalling hurricane, the longest such period in recorded history….
“This year’s climate disaster de jour season has been a bust so far. This is good for people but bad for those who hype the narrative that “climate change causes everything.” That is not true now, nor has it ever been.
And this on the growing list of scientists signing the CLINTEL statement…
“In 2019, the independent research institute Climate Intelligence, also known as CLINTEL, was founded.
“Among its most prominent educational efforts to date was the development and issuance of a declaration in 2022 saying, among other things, climate change is not a crisis. CLINTEL called on scientists and scholars who’ve worked on the climate issue or in climate-related fields to sign the declaration. More than 1,100 did…
“CLINTEL’s declaration says the data shows there is no “crisis” being driven by climate change and requiring a big government response to limit fossil fuel use. The letter states a variety of natural factors have influenced and driven climate change throughout history and that climate models blaming the recent shift on human greenhouse gas emissions have repeatedly failed to accurately reflect data on items such as temperatures and extreme weather.
“Among the fact-checkable, confirmable statements made in CLINTEL’s increasingly popular declaration are these:
“The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
“CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
“Because data shows extreme weather events are not increasing, temperatures are within their historical normal range, and CO2, rather than being a pollutant, is critical for life on Earth, CLINTEL’s declaration, as summed up by Cowboy State Daily, is,
“There is no climate emergency [to justify] eliminating fossil fuel usage by 2050. Instead of policies that mitigate emissions, whatever the causes of the warming trend, the declaration calls for adaptation.
“This would mean, for example, it’s better to ensure people have affordable, reliable energy to run their air conditioners when temperatures are high.”, etc.
This from Charles Rotter, “The Epistemological Crisis: A Misguided Dive into Supposed Climate Denial and the Danger of Constructed Narratives”
Charles Rotter, Sept.4, 2023
“In the vast landscape of climate discourse, few articles stand out as starkly as Susannah Crockford’s piece titled “That Which They Will Not See: Climate Denial as a Vector of Epistemological Crisis in the Contemporary United States”. At first glance, the article promises an in-depth exploration of the cultural epistemology of climate denial in the US, particularly in the southern states. However, a closer examination reveals a piece riddled with constructed narratives that seem more intent on smearing a broad group of people than offering a genuine understanding of their perspectives.
Ideas shape behavior- inciting, guiding, validating, Wendell Krossa
The ideas that we hold in our belief systems or worldviews embody how we understand life, how we feel about things, how that motivates us to respond and act, and they validate our behavior both good and bad.
The questions everyone of us has to answer
Are the ideas truly human/humane? What are the actual outcomes toward others?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24537205
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/15/untold-story-of-climates-holocene-gift-to-humanity/
Unconditional love of enemy impacts and transforms other related narrative themes, Wendell Krossa
Note that these features illustrate the main differences between the message of Historical Jesus and the Christian Christ.
Jesus taught the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God, meaning also that God was non-apocalyptic because a non-retaliatory God will not enact the ultimate act of retaliation that is apocalyptic destruction of humanity (payback for human sin).
And Jesus was anti-sacrifice. He stood with the Old Testament prophets who railed against sacrifice as necessary for forgiveness. He was against payment/atonement to obtain forgiveness. With the stunning new God of Jesus, forgiveness was free and universally granted to all.
Further, Jesus advocated unconditional love, meaning that there were no conditions to be met to make atonement.
And he preached a non-dominating God who respected the freedom and personal choice of all equally (self-determination).
More on the fundamental themes to consider in evaluating any narrative or system of belief: Wendell Krossa
Does the narrative or belief system that you embrace communicate these themes clearly, the difference between these and the consequences or outcomes related to these themes? Note that Classic Liberalism does best in promoting these ideas and principles, Wendell Krossa
Unconditional at the core of any system of ideas urges the transformation of the following related areas, things to consider in transforming a worldview to a more humane one…
(1) Universal inclusion of all as equals versus discriminatory tribalism (favoring some over others as in religious traditions that favor true believers over unbelievers),
(2) Non-dominating forms of relating contrasted with systems of coercive control of others (honoring and protecting the freedom and self-determination of all others, equally and individually versus collectivism that subjugates individuals to elite control),
(3) Restorative, non-punitive justice in the treatment of human failure versus retaliatory, punitive justice (again, holding all responsible for behavior, consequences),
(4) Non-violent response to “enemies” versus violence,
(5) Non-retaliation versus retaliation.
(6) Non-apocalyptic versus apocalyptic.
(70 Unconditional versus conditional.
(8) Sacrifice/payment versus non-sacrifice/no payment, And more…
This from Essay by Kip Hansen on how news media mindlessly propagate climate alarmism, “Why Your Local Newspaper and TV Station Get Climate Facts Wrong” Aug. 25, 2023
And this from Nobel laureate in physics John Clauser
https://archive.ph/F2Tih#selection-389.0-469.236
Nobel Prize laureate John Clauser has recently been in the spotlight for challenging prevailing climate models, which he says have ignored a key variable.
Mr. Clauser, who recently became a recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to quantum mechanics, holds degrees from Caltech and Columbia University. He served in roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, he was honored with a portion of the Wolf Prize in Physics.
Recently, Mr. Clauser joined another Nobel laureate and over 1,600 professionals in signing the World Climate Declaration (WCD) organized by Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL). This declaration asserts that there is no “climate emergency,” that climate change science is not conclusive, and that the earth’s history over thousands of years shows a consistently changing climate.
The WCD highlights the limitations of current climate models, stating they overemphasize the impact of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). “In addition, [climate models] ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial,” the WCD reads, in part.
The declaration further notes that both natural and human activities contribute to climate change and the actual warming observed is less than as predicted by the climate models, revealing our incomplete understanding of climate change….
Mr. Clauser said he believes he has identified a significant oversight in prevailing climate models.
“I believe I have the missing piece of the puzzle that has been left out in virtually all of these computer programs,” he stated. “And that is the effect of clouds.”
While many theories of anthropogenic climate change focus primarily on the impact of human-produced CO2, Mr. Clauser argues that these models overlook the significance of cloud dynamics.
He referenced the 2003 National Academy report, which, he said, “totally admitted” its lack of understanding about clouds, and made “a whole series of mistaken statements regarding the effects of clouds.”
Drawing attention to Al Gore’s film, “The Inconvenient Truth,” Mr. Clauser noted, “[Al Gore] insists on talking about a cloud-free earth … That’s a totally artificial Earth.” According to Mr. Clauser, this cloudless portrayal of the earth reflects the approach taken by many in the climate science community.
“That’s a totally artificial Earth. It is a totally artificial case for using a model, and this is pretty much what the IPCC and others use—a cloud free earth.”
Clouds play a paramount role in regulating the Earth’s temperature, serving as a “cloud-sunlight-reflectivity thermostat” that “controls the climate, controls the temperature of the earth, and stabilizes it very powerfully and very dramatically,” asserts Mr. Clauser.
With two-thirds of the Earth being oceanic, the ocean becomes instrumental in cloud formation, he said.
Minimal clouds result in heightened sunlight exposure to the ocean, triggering increased evaporation and subsequent cloud formation, resulting in more clouds. On the contrary, abundant clouds reduce this sunlight, thus curbing evaporation rates and cloud formation, resulting in fewer clouds, Mr. Clauser explains.
This balance acts like a natural thermostat for the earth’s temperature, he said.
Mr. Clauser contends that this “thermostat” mechanism has a vastly greater influence on Earth’s temperature than the effect of CO2 or methane. He presented to The Epoch Times preliminary calculations that suggest that the impact of this cloud-reflectivity mechanism might overshadow CO2’s influence by more than 100 or even 200 times.
All clouds, irrespective of their altitude or type, reflect almost 90 percent of incoming sunlight, according to Mr. Clauser. The reflectivity fraction, or the average reflectivity of sunlight, is referred to as albedo. The albedo has been inaccurately kept constant in various climate models, Mr. Clauser argues.
He finds it baffling how these significant variations, ranging from five to 95 percent cloud cover, have been overlooked.
Mr. Clauser further underscores that clouds are integral to weather dynamics, and yet, current climate models, whose authors “admit upfront that their models cannot predict weather,” have been wielded to foretell drastic climatic shifts, including “climate crisis apocalypse.”
The term “climate” refers to long-term, typically 30 years or more, weather condition averages. While reliable weather forecasts are limited to about a week with standard weather prediction models, which take into account the role of clouds, Mr. Clauser points out a contradiction noted in Mr. Koonin’s book: just a 5 percent rise in cloud cover can largely counterbalance the temperature effect of doubling atmospheric CO2. Despite such nuances, according to Mr. Clauser, the IPCC’s models persistently assume constant albedo, and bypass the vast cloud cover variations.
Mr. Clauser observed that the drive to address human-induced climate change is increasingly shaping political agendas and influencing the strategic direction of entire nations.
“The whole world is doing all of this. A lot of the pressure is actually coming from Europe, all of these various world conferences” he said, speculating much of this push might have its roots in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” which he feels has incorporated inaccurate science.
Al Gore’s film claims that humanity is triggering a dire climate crisis that necessitates global action. But Mr. Clauser contends: “‘Climate change’ is actually very dishonest disinformation that has been presented by various politicians.”
He pinpoints a 2013 Physics Today article (pdf) by Jane Lubchenco and Thomas Karl as pivotal in shaping the narrative, especially during the period when “global warming” was being rebranded as “climate change.”
“The reason that was given was ‘well, because it’s really more than just warming,'” he said. The article champions a “U.S. Climate Extremes Index,” claiming that anthropogenic climate change led to a significant increase in extreme weather events over the past three decades ending in 2012.
The index is supposedly backed by a century’s worth of data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and is said to combine various metrics including floods, hurricanes, and droughts.
Curiously, Mr. Clauser noted, the index leaves out the frequency of EF3+ tornadoes—perhaps because, as highlighted by Mr. Koonin in his book, those were on a noticeable decline. “This, in my opinion, is a rather egregious breach of honesty by the U.S. government by NOAA,” he said.
He performed an experiment with the data from the article, presenting it chronologically and also in reverse. He observed that the two plots were virtually indistinguishable, challenging the assertion of an obvious rise in the index.
“Are you really willing to bet trillions of dollars that you know which [plot] is right? … Is it really increasing? It is clearly not,” he said.
“Not only, as I understand it, are these extreme weather events not increasing, but our ability to mitigate them has increased. So they’re just not as much of an issue,” Mr. Clauser said, adding later, “This worry about CO2, the worry about methane, the worry about global warming, is all a total fabrication by shocked journalists and or dishonest politicians.”
On the contrary, Mr. Clauser agrees with the CO2 Coalition, which argues that CO2 is a beneficial gas.
“Historically, for example, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the CO2 levels were 10 times bigger than what we are experiencing right now,” he said.
“Dinosaurs couldn’t have survived on this earth with this low CO2 level [today], because you don’t grow trees fast enough and foliage fast enough to feed them.”
“Promoting CO2 as being actually a beneficial gas, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with [that],” he said. “And in particular, as I have just mentioned earlier, it is not at all significant in controlling the earth’s climate.”
Mr. Clauser criticized U.S. government efforts to reduce CO2 and methane as a colossal misuse of resources better allocated for humanitarian endeavors. Such initiatives, he argues, “should be stopped immediately.”
“[It’s] a total waste of money and time and effort. It is strangling industry,” he said.
But Mr. Clauser is not holding his breath.
“My suspicion is what I am saying here will be totally ignored because people don’t like being told that they’ve made big mistakes of this magnitude,” he said.
See the new Netflix special “Ordinary Men: The ‘Forgotten Holocaust’”.
This documentary illustrates how average, ordinary people have become caught up in movements that produce outcomes of horrific harm to others- even mass murder. Such people mindlessly succumb to and obey what elite authorities tell them to think, believe, and then do. This generally involves some narrative of looming threat from differing others who are purported to be “evil enemies” that must be fought, defeated, and even eliminated, because they pose a great threat to one’s own life and society.
As I watched this documentary, I thought of how many have fallen for the narratives of environmental alarmists that endlessly claim that too many people consuming Earth’s resources and enjoying the good life are destroying the natural world, and hence to “save the world” there must be radical reductions in populations and consumption of resources. People must embrace “de-development” or a return to more primitive lifestyles. This environmental alarmism narrative is most graphically expressed today in the climate alarmism crusade where people using fossil fuels are demonized as destroyers of life that must be stopped, even with force.
We saw how such alarmism narratives resulted in mass harm to people as the outcome of Rachel Carson’s alarmism over chemicals with the consequent ban on DDT that resulted in millions of deaths, many children.
We have also witnessed similarly how the climate alarm has resulted in mass harm in places like Britain where the Net Zero mania has led to tens of thousands of additional deaths from cold due to vulnerable people suffering fuel poverty as the outcome of blocked fossil fuel development and rising energy prices.
Unconditional, along with Classic liberal principles, offers the best way to avoid falling into such evil, not excluding any as “other” but including all as equal family, respecting the freedom of all to self-determination, not intervening or controlling others, not taking punitive approach to others but restorative… and systems of belief, law, and institutions to function with these principles…
Today environmental alarmism is carrying many along to do great harm to others- the salvation schemes are destroying life to save life.
This from Julia Malott, Sept.18, 2023 “Nope: Parents are not ‘fascists’ for being skeptical of gender politics”
This is so typical of the tribal distortion and demonization of differing others that is disrupting our societies, the endless leftist use of the smears “Right-wing, fascist, hate speech…” to automatically demonize and dismiss differing opinions. Most of those arguing caution about what their children are taught are not anti-LGBTQ or anti-trans but just want input and control over what their children are taught.
Note this from the article…
“As parents’ voices grow louder, there’s a perception in the progressive left that all of these emerging movements are rooted and inspired by “far-right” extremism. Many in leftist circles suggest that parental rights advocacy is a dog-whistle: a veiled attempt to advance anti-transgender policies. A recently leaked video from an Ontario Federation of Labour meeting offers a glimpse into how some of the province’s most influential union members perceive these protests. As one member notably stated during the meeting: “The fascists are organizing in the streets…
This is far more than a far-right transphobic protest. They’re fundamentally racist, they’re fundamentally anti-union, they are fundamentally transphobic, and it’s just a matter of time before they come for us.”
“Such language of a growing fascist movement, evoking images of 1933 Berlin, is more than a little unhinged, particularly when all they are discussing is parents uniting together to demand involvement in their children’s education. As a covert spectator in the union meeting, there was an undeniable sentiment among participants that if not for them democracy would surely collapse…
“For many parents, the core issue at hand is preserving their agency and autonomy over the ideological content of their children’s education. They want transparency about what is being taught, the option to excuse their child from content they believe doesn’t align with their values, and the discretion to determine age-appropriateness for activities, such as certain reading material or events like drag queen performances at schools. Perhaps least surprisingly, parents want to be involved in the key decisions of their own child undergoing a social transition in the classroom.”
This from Daniel Hannan Sept. 9, 2023, “Poilievre world’s ‘most impressive centre-right leader’: Daniel Hannan tells Conservatives”
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/full-text-daniel-hannans-speech-at-the-conservative-convention
My response to above article (post to discussion group):
“Good point made by Hannan on how conservative governments create wealth that is then squandered by following leftist governments over succeeding decades. Sweden used to be the socialist darling of the West and was repeatedly referred to as the example of social democracy or democratic socialism all should follow. Then a historical study was done showing that the wealth squandered by more recent socialist governments in Sweden had been built up over previous decades under more free market governments. It was the same old story repeated in so many places- voters love all the free stuff socialists promise and hand out, which eventually ruins the prosperity that has been achieved under formerly more responsibly managed governments (i.e. under more free enterprise systems) that are actually more aligned with Classic Liberal principles and practises.”
The totalitarian’s use of language, Wendell Krossa
Many have warned us of George Orwell’s 1984 caution on how totalitarians manipulate language to push their narratives of fear and control. Watch this in today’s news media. Sociologist David Altheide in “Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis” also pointed out the use of exaggerated terms to incite fear and hence manipulate populations for ideological agendas.
Note how things like strong rainfall episodes are now termed the more frightening “atmospheric rivers” meaning they pose dangerous threats of flooding, or how normal warm summer days are presented as dangerous “heatwaves” and repeatedly called “the worst on record”.
Most of what has been common all throughout climate history are now termed “extreme weather events”, and given new names that catastrophize the normal as extreme threat, which then affirms the alarmist narrative. This is done even though evidence clearly shows that extreme weather events are not getting worse. Even the IPCC acknowledges there is no evidence of extreme weather events becoming worse as apocalyptic prophets claim.
The constant use of language to incite fear- i.e. “worst on record”, the constant battering of public consciousness with such terms- “extreme weather… worst on record”, such incessant propaganda then pushes frightened populations to embrace the totalitarian’s solution- i.e. more state intervention and control of populations.
Good report on the fact that climate alarmists are destroying our societies with rushed decarbonization without a democratic vote by populations, without permitting public discussion or debate over the disagreements re climate science, and by censoring/banning any dissent to the alarmist narrative of looming apocalypse. The climate alarm has been a “madness of crowds” eruption of hysteria with a totalitarian response and salvation scheme that is destroying Western societies.
The Triad (a memory tool), Wendell Krossa
I summarize things here to make for easier digestion and remembrance- hence my “triad of evil” is not a comprehensive list of all human wrongs but it lasers in on some of the more basic and prominent baddies at the root of so much inhumanity and consequent suffering. These three are prominent sources of problems among people and always have been:
(1) Residual tribal mentality- excluding others that differ. The potent counter to this inherited impulse is to embrace an unconditional approach toward all as equal members of the one human family (a fundamental oneness that even quantum mechanics affirms- Apologies to you anti-Woo Wooers that detest drawing such conclusions from physics).
(2) And then the impulse to dominate others- the alpha male and female thing. Yes, Marija Gimbutas concluded from her research that, historically, female tribal leaders were as brutal as any patriarchs. And as for dominating women, we remember Golda Meir and Margie Thatcher, and many more. Rather than view the issue as the gentle ladies versus the violent males, it may be more accurate to understand the core issue as the fact that both genders share the animal inheritance as well as the human spirit, and that is the defining inner dualism that is shared by both sexes.
We counter the domination impulse with Classic Liberal protections of the freedom, rights, and equality of all people (systems of common law and institutions that offer equal protections to everyone alike). Notably, the protection of the right of self-determination of every individual, to not be controlled by state authorities/elites who ceaselessly try to intervene in and manipulate the lives of citizens with excessive rules, protocols, taxation, etc. Bossy, busybody types.
(3) And the impulse to punitive destruction of differing others. We counter this dehumanizing vengeance lust with restorative justice approaches that hold all responsible for behavior, meaning that we incarcerate those unwilling or unable to restrain their worst impulses to violence (just to poke at the horrifically bad policy of “de-carceration” that has been embraced in Progressive cities today). And we hold offenders responsible to make restitution to victims.
But then we are obligated to also treat offenders humanely as that is how we maintain our own humanity in the face of evil. Its not about feelings toward offenders and offenses- as outrage is the natural and healthy human response to horrific offenses/evil. But then despite such feelings, we embrace the intention to treat offenders humanely, not with hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, or pain for pain as in punitive justice systems.
This triad of evils and humane responses is just to offer some simplification for easier comprehension and remembrance. It goes directly to some of our worst problems and outcomes and how to respond in ways resolve.
This from Public on crime waves in US cities– “What’s Driving Oakland’s Crime Wave?: Fed-up residents say they will recall District Attorney” by Leighton Woodhouse, Sept. 28, 2023
https://public.substack.com/p/whats-driving-oaklands-crime-wave
I regularly argue for the unconditional treatment of all. Meaning a more restorative justice approach to offenders as in the “love your enemy” statement of Historical Jesus. What Nelson Mandela argued for in his approach to former oppressors in South Africa. But this love of enemy is something entirely different from what Progressive governments are doing in US cities with decriminalization and de-carceration policies that appear to thoughtlessly view entire groups as collectives of equals, hence the repeated freeing of repeat violent offenders, along with all others in criminal populations.
That is not what unconditional love means at all. Dogmatic forms of pacifism (“Turn the other cheek”) are not love, even though we may admire/affirm the merciful intentions of pacifists. But such approaches are seriously misguided, misinformed, and dangerous in the face of evil, simply unworkable in an imperfect world.
Any common sense understanding of love will hold offenders responsible for their behavior as basic to human development, learning, and growth. Meaning incarceration of repeat offenders to protect the public which is the first responsibility of government and criminal justice systems. Once incarcerated then yes, it is the responsibility of justice systems to treat all humanely as in restorative justice approaches (e.g. Denmark). And yes, this ought to be part of a larger project to decriminalize drugs and de-carcerate non-violent offenders as the most common-sense responses to the failed drug war and excessive incarceration in places like the US, out-of-control incarceration responses that resulted from the 1994 tough on crime legislation.
More humane response to offenders is how all maintain their humanity in the face of evil. Meaning, the intention and action to treat all humanely despite natural outrage at the inhumanity of offenders.
Note: Crime stats affirm that it is a small minority of criminal population that commit most of the violent crimes. That particular group should be the focus of incarceration and follow-up restoration programs. And where elements like psychopathy are involved it is necessary to have “dangerous offender” categories and permanent incarceration. Protection of the public is the first priority of criminal justice systems.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969807/
And these important facts on violent crime (criminal justice reform that ends excessive incarceration)
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
“state and federal laws apply the term “violent” to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don’t involve any physical harm. In some states, purse-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered violent crimes Burglary is generally considered a property crime, but an array of state and federal laws classify burglary as a violent crime in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So even if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of burglary could be punished for a violent crime and end up with a long prison sentence and “violent” record.
“The common misunderstanding of what “violent crime” really refers to — a legal distinction that often has little to do with actual or intended harm — is one of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally “violent” crimes. But almost half (47%) of people in prison and jail are there for offenses classified as “violent,” so these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. As we and many others have explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything near international norms will be impossible without changing how we respond to violent crime. To start, we have to be clearer about what that loaded term really means.”
Crime rates by country
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-crime-rates-by-country
Some helpful discussion of restorative versus punitive justice approaches
https://www.euforumrj.org/en/restorative-justice-another-form-punishment
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-73019-6_3
Another:
This site is all for humanizing belief systems as in informing narratives with the latest agreed on sensibilities of the modern era, as embodied in our national constitutions and human rights codes- such things as the full inclusion of all people, the affirmation of the equality of all people under systems of common law and representative governments (non-domination, self-determination), institutions that protect the rights and freedoms of individuals as outlined in Classic Liberalism.
This from Wattsupwiththat.com, “A new paper shows that US tornado damage and strong tornado incidence are both sharply down” by Roger Pielke Jr.
And this from Chris Morrison, The Daily Skeptic, May 30, 2023- “Media Bombshell: Shocking Outbreak of ‘Climate Disinformation’ in the Media, i.e. Journalists Asking Questions About Net Zero on GB News and Talk TV”
“Green agitators working on the climate ‘blacklist’ site DeSmog have “scoured hours of online footage” and concluded that many journalists and presenters working at GB News are a tad sceptical about claims that the ‘climate emergency’ is rapidly approaching the point of no return and only the collectivist Net Zero project holds out any hope of averting imminent catastrophe….
“DeSmog found that 16 of the station’s 31 presenters “attacked” U.K. climate policies last year, including the ‘Net Zero 2050’ target. The Guardian noted that 10 of the presenters made statements rejecting or challenging “widely accepted scientific findings” about how humans are affecting the climate, and the role the climate crisis plays in extreme weather events.
“The latter comment is interesting. Attributing individual bad weather events to long-term changes in the climate is pseudoscience, and such claims invariably rest on computer models contrasting our atmosphere with wholly imaginary ones. Any data these models spit out fail to qualify as science since they are based on opinions that cannot be tested or falsified. The former economics professor and science writer Roger Pielke is particularly scathing about the attribution of extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming, which has rushed to fill the alarmist space vacated by global warming running out of steam over 20 years ago. “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits”, he observed.
“Neil Oliver… is said to have asserted that polar bears are “doing fine”, and the ice in Antarctica is getting thicker every year. In fact, polar bears are doing fine with surveys suggesting their numbers are at recent highs …. over the last seven decades, the Antarctica sea ice area has “modestly expanded” and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. In November, Oliver criticized green policies by suggesting they were part of a “hellish potpourri of policies guaranteed to condemn hundreds of millions to death by poverty, death by starvation”….
“Nana Akua noted that: “If we [humans] only generate 3.5% of carbon dioxide and the rest of it is natural, then surely the CO2 is not the reason for the climate changing because it’s such a small proportion?” DeSmog accuses her of “challenging the science consensus”, while Lucas in the Guardian clutches pearls and states that climate denial is “deeply dangerous”. Of course, Akua is simply identifying the dubious scientific assumptions that lie at the heart of the unproven hypothesis that humans have caused all or most global warming since the mid-19th Century by burning fossil fuels….
“What is happening, of course, is that when journalists are employed on media that allows them to do what they do best – ask questions, inquire, debate – a more nuanced and interesting story often emerges. The Net Zero collectivist project is backed by decades of virtue signalling and the false claim that the science surrounding climate change is ‘settled’. As scientists learn more about the complex natural influences that have major impacts on long-term climate, attributing all or most of the recent changes to humans looks more implausible by the day.
“Some media companies are also aware that scepticism about Net Zero and the climate catastrophisation that promotes it is gaining ground in the wider population. Last month, the Daily Sceptic reported that climate scepticism was on the rise throughout the world, as populations start to grasp the effects of the looming Net Zero disaster…. Last year, a major Ipsos survey covering two thirds of the world’s population revealed that nearly four in every 10 people believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes.
“Perhaps worryingly for the BBC and the Guardian with their steadily shrinking audiences, the Chicago survey found climate scepticism increasing more rapidly in left-wing Democrat circles than among Republican. In addition, support for human-caused climate change fell by 17% among young people aged 18-29.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.