Three things to structure human societies in order to deliver the most good for the most people- the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, the institutions outlined by William Bernstein in “Birth of Plenty”, and the Classic Liberal principles set forth by Daniel Hannan in “Inventing Freedom”.
Go after the real monster and enemy in life. Its not differing others in the human family: A re-enforcement of the proper orientation of the hero’s quest that shapes our individual human story, Wendell Krossa
A critically important point to getting human existence right- the real focus of human struggle, achievement, and hence, the real purpose of human life and story…. Its about the inner battle with our animal inheritance, understanding the real monster and enemy in life.
What constitutes our inner monster and enemy? It’s a two-faceted reality- i.e. the inherited animal drives and the mythical themes/ideas that were created by our ancestors to explain, guide, and validate these drives.
(1) The main impulses of the animal inheritance can be summarized as the “evil triad” of drives to (a) tribal separation from differing others, (b) domination of weaker others, and (c) punitive destruction of “enemy” others.
(2) The ideas created to incite, guide, and validate such drives are best summarized as the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex of myths. See a rehearsal of these just below…
The true battle in life was affirmed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s comment that “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts”.
I would refine that further to argue that the real battle of life is the inner battle against our inherited animal drives, against the monstrous ideas that incite and validate these animal drives.
Our inner battle is the essential substance of the hero’s quest. Here again are some of the fundamental elements of this quest: We go forth to confront and struggle with our personal monster/enemy. We gain insights from our struggle and learn lessons that we can pass on to help others in their struggles. We are also wounded in our struggle, but we get help from a wise person (a weapon to slay our monster/enemy). Through our struggle we learn how to achieve human maturity, we learn how to tower in stature and become what we are supposed to be as fully human. And we find true liberation in conquering our animal passions, and thereby achieve real success in life.
The outer battles and struggles of life provide the arena in which we do our learning, and test our ever-developing ability to conquer the darker angels of our nature, the inherited animal impulses.
This most important achievement of all in life- i.e. conquering the inner animal in order to live as authentically human- is a project that is accessible and attainable by everyone equally. Success in the hero’s quest is not something dependent on wealth, advanced education, high social status, and other factors that often limit varied forms of social success to a privileged few in our hierarchically structured societies. The inner struggle against the inherited animal, and success in this struggle, levels everyone to the same equal opportunity in the most important achievement of all- becoming truly human.
And then… related
It is critically important to engage the science, ideological positions, policies, and outcomes of climate alarmism with the best alternative science, ideology, and policy (i.e. Classic Liberalism). Similarly, we seek resolutions to all the factors involved in relation to terrorist groups and the problem of terrorist violence- whether economic, political, or social factors.
But what is really most influential in the mix of such factors? I would argue that deeply embedded background religious beliefs contribute a prominent influence for most people. Such beliefs tie people to deeply embedded archetypal realities, inherited impulses, profoundly felt emotional needs, and the desires related to those impulses and their validating ideas/archetypes.
Pay close attention to the belief systems behind the public statements and claims of any notable group or movement. Note, for example, what inciting and validating beliefs are behind those shouts of “Allahu Akbar” as Hamas terrorists murdered innocents and most certainly felt validated by their God in doing that. What beliefs were behind the “Praise/glory be to God” as Calvin and associates had fellow Christian Servetus burned at the stake? And similarly what beliefs were behind Nancy Pelosi’s claim that “Mother Earth is angry with us” as she scolded us over our use of fossil fuels? These are ultimate validations in the background of our narratives and minds.
Contemporary belief systems, whether religious or secular, have been informed and shaped by the same old complex of inherited themes that originated with primitive mythologies, themes still evident even throughout the “secular/scientific” ideologies of today. I refer to the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex.
Joseph Campbell: “People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world”.
We hold our beliefs with an identity-protecting defensive grip, in to many cases even willing to die for them, because they meet powerful emotional needs, needs developed over the millennia in response to archetypal impulses and associated validating ideas.
Note particularly the widely held beliefs in an original paradise now ruined or lost, and the deeply felt guilt/shame over human badness/sinfulness for ruining that paradise, the belief that we are now being punished for our sins- i.e. punished via the natural world (natural disaster, disease, accident, predatory cruelty). Add the associated belief that life is declining toward an apocalyptic ending as the great end-stage punishment for having ruined paradise.
Hence, we face intense inner and outer social pressure to make some atoning sacrifice, in order to be saved from the looming apocalyptic punishment and the accompanying threat of after-life harm. We hold the deeply felt need to be forgiven, reconciled/restored, and “saved” because we believe (based on millennia of having such ideas beat into human consciousness) that we have become separated and alienated from our Source/God.
Note further how the widely held belief in a hero’s quest further defines the primitive mythical complex of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption”- i.e. that we must engage a righteous battle against some evil enemy/monster that threatens our world, that we must violently conquer the enemy/monster, we must punitively, even violently, purge the threat (usually differing others in the human family viewed and demonized as “enemies”) in order to “save the world” and fulfill the hope for a better future- for some utopian millennial paradise.
Add to the mix of beliefs- the fear of death and the need to be saved from that, especially saved from the threat of after-life harm that intensifies human fear of death, after-life harm as in ultimate divine condemnation, judgment, and threat of eternal exclusion and punishment (hell).
Critical to overturning the above complex of bad ideas, go to the great cohering Center of all ideas, the monster Gods that validate entire complexes of mythical fallacies in human worldviews- i.e. views of deity that affirm the myths of lost paradise, looming apocalypse, and schemes for redemption.
Further shaping the complex of inherited mythical ideas…. Zoroaster’s myth of cosmic dualism (a great Good deity locked in eternal battle against an Evil entity) that intensifies the human impulse to tribalism and the belief of many people that in joining some religion (or other “just/righteous” crusades) they put themselves on the right side of a battle against a purported existential threat, some enemy that is intolerably evil, that must be eliminated in order to “save the world”. When people affiliate with what priests tell them is the “true religion”, they then view themselves as the specially chosen righteous ones on the side of the good God, fighting God’s great war against evil. Human action in varied apocalyptic millennial movements then takes on cosmic status and such people cannot be easily reasoned out of their irrational salvation schemes.
“Monster deity” beliefs, at the core of mythical complexes of ideas, incite the monstrous impulses in humanity to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of others. The validating beliefs work in tandem with the impulses- i.e. behaviors validated by beliefs, ethics validated by theology. And you get the outcomes of endless cycles of violence, human group set against differing human group, even to mass-death outcomes such as in the “secular” versions of such pathologies- i.e. Marxism, Nazism, and now emerging in environmentalism (i.e. decarbonization). Members of each new apocalyptic millennial crusade believing that they are the elect or chosen people of God, more special than differing others that are framed as unbelievers and enemies of God, the “satanic” infidels/deniers.
Hence, my insistent argument here to go to the ultimate root of the problem that you are trying to solve- what some psychologists/theologians call the “monster God” or “Cruel God” theology that energizes and validates an entire complex of related bad religious ideas.
The hero’s quest has long been deformed by the above distortions of primitive mythology.
The fact that bad ideas are deforming the hero’s quest is evident, notably, in people demonizing differing others as “enemies”, and the in endless retaliatory responses to differences of all kinds. We miss the true battle of life where we all face the same common shared monster and enemy at the root of many of our problems- the monster God (once again- as tribal, dominating, punitively destructive) that validates our monstrous inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. These impulses and the gods we embrace to validate such impulses constitutes the monster inside us all.
Again, this is what Solzhenitsyn meant that the real battle against evil takes place inside every human heart. This is the real hero’s quest. This is where we gain insights, attain human maturity, tower in stature, and become what we are supposed to be.
Note: In defensively protecting the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” themes in our own religious traditions, as the originating sources of these themes in other “secular/ideological/scientific” versions, are we then playing some role in perpetuating a psychopathology, a destructive mind virus in public consciousness?
Here are selected quotations from “Heaven On Earth” by Richard Landes, specifically from his Ch. 9 on “Democratic Millennialism” as in the French Revolution that turned horrifically violent. Landes’ insights on the dynamics operating there are particularly helpful in understanding the emergence of authoritarianism in left-wing or progressive movements today as outlined by Christine Brophy in her research on “Narcissism Behind Left-Wing Authoritarianism: New psychological research finds that behind the progressive ‘be kind’ agenda often lies a far darker set of motivations”.
https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness
Note, in particular, the extreme danger that arises as apocalyptic millennial crusades begin to fail and the apocalyptic true believers, facing humiliation, loss of influence/power, and fearing retaliation from opponents or their own fellow believers, then become desperate to fire up zeal and keep the crusade going. This is when some turn to the violence of “coercive purification” that leads to mega-destruction and mass-death outcomes (think here of the mad push for Net Zero decarbonization).
This research (Brophy, Landes, and others) probes “the dark side of compassion”, how proclaimed compassion for victims has repeatedly turned violent and even led to mega-death outcomes as we saw with Marxist regimes over the last century that proclaimed their crusades were liberation movements for the poor and oppressed. You will get my drift of applying this to climate alarmism, and its decarbonization “salvation” scheme, that is already causing significant increased mortality among the most vulnerable, the people that leftists have long claimed they were most compassionate about- the victims they claim to fight for.
And acknowledging the element of “bothsideism”, the Right also needs to confront its own impulses to the same dark side of compassion and consequent resort to “coercive purification” responses and policies.
I would recommend, along with Landes’ book, read also Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, and Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”. All give some sense of the profoundly religious nature of the narratives that shaped Marxism and Nazism, and now shape environmental alarmism/climate alarmism. Many young “secular materialists” of today, even claiming to be “atheist”, appear to have little awareness of how profoundly religious their beliefs really are. And, as primitively mythological, how their beliefs are entirely distorting of reality and life.
Richard Landes quotes (in some of these quotations Landes is quoting others), see full chapter for much more detail:
“The tale of the French Revolution… constitutes a key story in the grand narrative of Western freedom… as one of the two inaugurating events of the modern world… a progressive demotic millennial movement- one inspired by a desire to perfect the world through egalitarian ideals. It entered apocalyptic time with an active, transformative scenario- legislate the just society in the context of widespread popular enthusiasm. But gradually, as the ‘voluntaristic’ effort failed, and with the inauguration of what they called the ‘Terror’, adopted an active cataclysmic scenario (only through merciless violence could the transformation come)….
“The close connection between the secular and religious manifestations of demotic millennialism… modern revolutionary thought is a more effective form of millennialism… How then did such non-, even anti-religious beliefs have anything to do with millennialism?… the secular turn of millennialism came… from a shift from passive to active apocalyptic scenarios, which involved a mutation in the response to the failure of apocalyptic prophecies…
Then Landes comments on the newly aroused desire in the French population for equality, the awakening of hopes for a better life and future, “A return to paradise on earth and the entry of apocalyptic discourse into public life… now is the time to fundamentally change the social order and passions swing from wild enthusiasms to paranoid panic…. and retaliation soon follows… no one dared to contradict the intoxication which swept up everyone’s spirits… the historian underestimates at his or her own peril the power of enthusiasm at such moments”…..
This is the result of the stirring of hopes in France for the new world of democratic millennialism- “The expressions of messianic joy that swept through France, flying on the wings of a suddenly potent ideology of human dignity and freedom, equality and fellowship”. This was a rebellion against the old oppressive aristocratic order….
“Millennialism doth make many hopeful fools… For the French Revolution, the millennial hope lay… in Rousseau’s theories of freedom and the general will… the desire of all… in reality, freeing the popular voice could lead to mob violence and vigilantism… the most idealistic of the revolutionaries believed that liberty went hand in hand with virtue….
“The descent of the Revolution into terror constitutes the most troubling issue for historians, particularly ones who thrill to the messianic slogan ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’… Terror was predetermined by the ideology…. Looking at the advent of the Terror as a result of millennial disappointment… The problem of the revolutionaries, as for all apocalyptic believers, arose when, inevitably, their millennial premises proved false. Apocalyptic time does not last long; millennial moments rapidly lose their ardor. And when they do, they come crashing down to earth…
“Then the revolution began to tread the path of suspicion and distrust, from betrothal to betrayal… they believe that their trajectory goes straight up it the orbit of millennial salvation, and the cognitive dissonance of finding themselves still stuck in the banal reality of human failure and corruption… fills them with fear and loathing…
(Note on revolutionary’s impatience) “Once in power… revolutionaries would see to it that all of society corresponds to their model of purity and perfection… with little or no experience in compromising pragmatically with reality or with opposing points of view and… they would have little patience with anything or anyone inconsistent with their theories. If character and biography predisposed the revolutionary rationalist to totalitarian domination, the ideological heritage guided him to it and justified the way he used it… Their response, the ominous formula: ‘They must be forced to be free’…
“Millennial movements provoke apocalyptic responses…
(Landes then comments on the megalomania of apocalytics, their belief that they are at the center of cosmic history and all history culminate in their efforts- existential- and this provokes naturally hostile reactions from others) “They do not admit that domestic problems and foreign threats are due to their errors. And even honest disagreements from opposition are now viewed by the increasingly paranoid revolutionaries as from “the malevolent will to undermine the new and glorious experiment- the work of traitors to the revolution… Their opponents were not brother exercising their newly granted freedom; they were diabolic traitors”…
“The revolutionary vanguard now passed into the most extreme form of the paranoid imperative- ‘exterminate or be exterminated’…
“In revolutionary France paranoia carried the day… the logic of the Terror followed a classic… psychological and apocalyptic dynamic. Once successful, the best of intentions and finest expressions of demotic values launch an egalitarian experiment at once immensely powerful and enthusing, and also extremely vulnerable… the fear of vengeance from the now overthrown powers becomes a major concern…
“All too often, in these experiments that come to life in bursts of megalomaniacal enthusiasm, fears of vulnerability give way to ruthless paranoia… Historians have puzzled over the seeming incongruity of the pacifist sentiments of precisely the most bloodthirsty drivers of the Reign of Terror…
“Terror… serves as the destructive force that clears away the rot of the old world… And when God fails to inflict the terror, the task falls to those who could carry out God’s millennial promises… Anxiety, paranoia, and apocalyptic bloodlust… To active transformational apocalyptic believers… disappointment brings primarily humiliation… to active cataclysmic ones… disappointment brings panic at the retaliation that will surely result from failure. (Apocalyptics) typically behave aggressively… when the expectation (of the old passing away in apocalypse) the ‘revelation’ becomes a nightmare of anticipated retribution. When this realistic fear joins with the cosmic humiliation of prophecy failed, such post-apocalyptic activists can plunge headlong into the paranoia of ‘exterminate or be exterminated’…
“Paranoic produces aggression… first fear, then aggression… exacerbated it …with both provocative rhetoric and behavior… to ask for acts of pragmatic calculation … defy the very logic of millennial ambitions…
“Rousseau’s dictum that… the general will could ‘force a man to be free’- became the driving ideological force of the Terror, or, in religious terms, ‘coercive purity’… a ruthless coercive purity that forces then to be ‘free’ in a state that uses terror to exact conformity… apocalyptic thinking… rationality… quickly cede to the imperative of sustaining the heat of apocalyptic time…
“In their disorientation, anxiety, and fear of vulnerability, the people demanded blood. It reassured them. It allowed them to project the evil and feel aggrieved; it slackened their thirst for vengeance…
“Millennial passions ride believers, digging their spurs deep into their mount’s flanks…
“The apocalyptic turn from transformative to violent even cataclysmic scenarios, from persuasion to coercive purity, had begun in earnest and brought with it a shift from demotic to imperial millennialism…
“Linguistic purity… The way in which the language question played out in the French Revolution follows closely the pattern of capacious diversity turning into dogmatic uniformity that so consistently marks the shift from demotic, voluntaristic to hierarchical, coercive apocalyptic styles….
“Revolt of the Vendee in 1793… Both sides slaughtered each other with the pitiless violence so characteristic of the earlier Christian religious wars…
“The mindset of the revolutionaries once they had shifted toward coercive purity has all the earmarks of a self-justifying paranoia. As they threaten and victimize their opponents, they bathe in a sea of self-pity and sense of their own victimization… ‘Here we are faced with a paranoic streak, a strange combination of the most intense and mystical sense of mission with a self-pity that expressed itself in an obsessive preoccupation with martyrdom, death, and even suicide’. In its worst forms, this paranoid omnipotence complex produces the apocalyptic principle of the most nihilistic of cataclysmic scenarios: ‘Destroying the world to save it’…
“And yet all the time, these agents of apocalyptic destruction insist they have nothing but the best intentions… Terrible hopes produce terrible loves. Indeed, the bloodiest crusading can present itself as an ‘act of love’…
“Historians of revolutionary France have shown little interest in understanding their Revolution in light of the dynamics of other millennial movements. The… French Revolution was such a movement, that its shift to terror was characteristic of millennial movements that take power… the psychology of messianism with its zeal, contradictions, and megalomaniac paranoia… tracked the slide of well-intentioned believers from an imminently perfect world into a nightmare of self-destructive terror…
“The phenomenon of millennialism… the link… between (exalted) ideology, (less exalted) emotions like revenge, paranoia, and rage, and (murderous) action. Perhaps one of the major blocks to recognizing the link derives from the profound attachment of progressives to those who claim to work for ‘the underdog’, sympathy for whom is ‘a psychological feature common to all humanitarian movements’…
“The history of leftist revolutions has, with terrifying regularity, gone from espousing the highest progressive values in the early stages, to mega-slaughters of their own people in subsequent stages, all to a chorus of approval and excuses from fellow travellers…
“They look at the psychological dynamics… about what circumstances… led the revolutionaries to tread so extraordinary path of betraying the very values with which they started… current dramas playout similar dynamics… this political debate about the excesses of well-intentioned leftist revolutionaries… they are the inheritors of the millennarian and apocalyptic collectivisms of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages…
“The denial that they are millennialists among both the eighteenth-century secular actors and their twentieth-century admirers at once disguises these origins and fuels the worst kind of repetition…
(quoting Nemo) “1793… is millennialism. It is a shameful religion, unconscious of itself because it presents itself as atheism, secularism, and materialism, but actually functions psychologically and sociologically as millennialism. I call this ersatz religion the ‘Left’ with a capital L, taking the word not in its parliamentary or partisan sense, but in its spiritual sense, a mysticism that will not brook discussion, resists all rational objection based on facts, and, on occasion, lifting whole mountains…
“I would like to propose a different kind of ‘millennial’ reading of the Revolution…. Let us consider the entire episode millennial, one in which we find, over the course of an apocalyptic curve, a characteristic shift from transformational demotic to cataclysmic hierarchical millennialism… the apocalyptic millennial one focuses specifically on a central paradox: the clash between perfectionist ideals and bitter disappointment…
“A sincere liberal impulse produced the ‘neo-liberals’… the more perfectionist the search for the millennium- ‘absolute freedom’- the more devastating the failure and the more violent the response to it. Nor need that failure derive from ‘pure’ motives: the base fears and desires that inform everyday decisions can mask themselves in ‘idealistic motives’ both as private and public justification….
“It is precisely the ‘good conscience’ of the totalitarian, the conviction that he does this for his victims, that he is ‘saving’ both them and others, that marks the true believer… (Communists in Russia) at the highest pitch of apocalyptic time, turned to state terror as a solution to the disappointments they faced…
“Neither external circumstances nor ideology alone make for the potent brew that leads to terror and its institutional offspring, totalitarianism. Rather, it is what happens to demotic millennialism (‘democratic political messianism’) when its millennial premises have failed, and cognitive dissonance set in precisely as the revolution feels threatened from without and within. At once fear and impatience seize hold of at least some of the actor, who believe that they alone can save the perilous situation… they turn a transformative scenario into a cataclysmic one, where they ‘up the ante’ and move from persuasion to coercive purity….
“These patterns may be powerfully compelling… it would happen again- often in even more violent forms- in Russia, China, Syria, Iraq, Cambodia, Iran. But such developments are not inevitable; it had not happened in the US in 1781, nor would it happen in Israel in 1948… the circumstances of external threat and internal dissension, militated for totalitarianism, rather than a democracy of tolerant dissent…
“(French Revolution)… 1789 was the voluntaristic transformative, and 1793, the coercive cataclysmic apocalyptic drive for demotic millennium… 1793 came as an unanticipated response to its failure whereby the same revolutionaries transgressed to many of the very values they initially upheld. And until we begin to sort out what makes some revolutions like the French and Communist ones, turn in their disappointment to coercive purity and others to retreat from that headlong dive into apocalyptic mega-violence, we cannot hope to learn how to deal with future manifestation of revolutionary millennialism, homegrown or foreign.” (End of quotes from Historian Richard Landes).
Landes then takes this into his next chapter (“Egalitarian Millennialism”) to explain and confirm that Marxism was/is an apocalyptic millennial crusade, despite Marx and Engel’s efforts to frame their ideological revolution as “secular/scientific history”. He shows how the French Revolution shaped Marxism and Nazism, and later environmentalism. Added note: Former socialist Muravchik in his history of collectivism (“Heaven On Earth”) notes that a critical difference between the French and American revolutions was the French push to include “equity” (equal outcomes) as the responsibility of states to guarantee. The American revolution would only protect “equality” as the general principle of equal status/rights/freedoms and opportunity, not equal outcomes.
H. L. Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule.”
A post from my sister: “I am listening to a novel by Thomas King where the main character, a writer, just wants to ‘get back to his armchair to get on with saving the world’”. Ha, now that’s a great life motto.
Comment from Stephen Harper on some “sort of root” issues… Go further Stephen, go further, but good on you for what you set forth.
Think here, in regard to Harper’s article, of Bill Maher’s long ago comment on his show- “Don’t be so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance”. And Harper, as many others do, gets close to nailing the root of the problem with his statements “indoctrination of a population… deconstruct the ideologies that led to aggression… continued preaching of medieval jihad…”. But, as Evangelical Christian, he won’t permit himself to go right to the root issue- the long deeply-embedded religious ideas/themes/myths at the core of this problem of endlessly erupting outbreaks of tribal hatred and coercive purging of “evil enemies”.
Again, remember Bob Brinsmead’s statement- “It’s the narrative, stupid”.
The Harper comment reminds me of the Wattsupwiththat.com article by Marc Morano and Edward Ring (just below) who stated that if you just challenge the policies of climate alarmism you are going to lose. You have to go after the science of alarmists and respond to that with the science or physics of CO2 as set forth by atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer and others (co2coalition.org). Go to the real root of these problems and solve them thoroughly and properly for the long-term future.
“Israel’s war is just, Hamas must surrender or be eliminated: It is foolish to think a two-state solution will emerge while so many Palestinians still reject the existence of a Jewish state”, Feb. 18, 2024.
And then the Morano/Ring article
“Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’’, Climate Depot, Nov. 13, 2023
Quote:
Edward Ring: “If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game. Who cares if we have to enslave humanity? Our alternative is certain death from global boiling! You can’t win that argument. You must challenge the science…”
I would apply Ring’s argument also to all these alarmism crusades and outbreaks of violence- go after what really incites such crusades of madness, the deeply embedded religious themes that are the core psychopathology, the real mind virus that deforms human consciousness and life and has done so across multiple millennia. The bad religious ideas at the core of these “madness of crowds” contagions lead to endless eruptions of religious hatred and violence, as well as the destructive madness we saw in Marxism (100 million deaths), Nazism, and are now seeing in climate alarmism hysteria (decarbonization, de-development).
There is an identifiable set of core themes behind all such eruptions. Confront those profoundly religious themes, and then avail yourself of the alternatives that overturn entirely the primitive myths that people have believed all across history and across all the cultures of the world (Joseph Campbell). I have repeatedly set forth the alternatives in essays here such as “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”…
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
And here is that list…. (a periodic reposting)
Bad ideas incite and validate bad behavior. Good ideas help inspire and affirm good behavior. People have always based their behavior on their beliefs (the tight thinking/behavior relationship). Here is a list of humanity’s worst ideas and alternatives from the best of human insights across history. These are the humane alternatives to revolutionize narratives, consciousness, and life.
This is part of an ongoing project to purge the subhuman and inhumane from our narratives, the mythical themes that harmfully shape our thinking, influence the worst of our emotions and motivations, and incite our basest impulses to behave badly. It is a project to replace the worst of psychopathology from our past with better alternatives that will inspire and affirm the better angels of our nature.
(Longer versions of this list available at this link)
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
1. Old story myth: The primitive idea of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality.
Alternative: The new theology of deity as a stunningly no conditions reality (no conditions love).
2. Old story myth: The idea of a perfect beginning (Eden) and a God obsessed with perfection.
Alternative: The world was purposefully created as originally imperfect. God has no problem with imperfection.
3. Old story myth: Humanity began as a more perfect species (the myth of primitive people as pure and noble hunter gatherers, “Adam/Eve”).
Alternative: Humanity emerged from the brutality of animal reality to gradually become more humane across history.
4. Old story myth: The world began as an original paradise (again, “the myth of a better past”) but after the “Fall” the overall trajectory of life has been declining, degenerating toward something worse.
Alternative: The long-term trajectory of life does not decline but overall rises/improves toward something ever better (i.e. more complex, organized, advanced).
5. Old story myth: The belief that natural disasters, disease, human cruelty, and death are expressions of divine punishment, and that humanity deserves punishment.
Alternative: While there are natural consequences all through life, there is no punitive, destroying deity behind the imperfections, and related natural consequences, of life.
6. Old story Myth: The belief that humanity has been rejected by the Creator and we must be reconciled via blood sacrifice and suffering as redemptive.
Alternative: No one has ever been rejected by the unconditional Love at the core of reality. No one has ever been separated from God. Ultimate Love does not demand appeasement/payment/atonement or suffering as punishment for sin.
7. Old story myth: The idea of a cosmic dualism between Good and Evil (i.e. God versus Satan) now expressed in human dualisms (tribes of good people versus their “enemies”- the demonized and dehumanized “bad” people).
Alternative: There is a fundamental Oneness at the core of all and we all share that oneness. We all belong equally to the one human family and equally share the ultimate eternal Oneness that is God.
8. Old story myth: The belief in a looming apocalypse as the final judgment, the ultimate punishment of wrong, and the final destruction of all things, the final purging of imperfection and evil from the world.
Alternative: There are problems all through the world but there is no looming threat of final divine destruction and ending. Apocalypse is a great fraud and lie.
9. Old story myth: The always “imminent” element in apocalyptic demands urgent action to save something, even the use of violence to effect “coercive purification and instantaneous transformation”.
Alternative: While unexpected catastrophes could still happen, there is no “imminent end of days” on the horizon, inciting the urgency to “save the world”.
10. Old story myth: The demand for a salvation plan, a required sacrifice or atonement (debt payment, punishment).
Alternative: Unconditional deity does not demand sacrifice, atonement, payment, or punishment as required for appeasement. God loves unconditionally. Note the parable of the Prodigal Son.
11. Old story myth: The belief that retribution or payback is true “justice” (i.e. eye for eye, hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, punishment for punishment).
Alternative: Unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs, forgives freely and without limit. Authentically humane justice is restorative.
12. Old story myth: The belief in after-life judgment, exclusion, punishment, and destruction (i.e. hell). This pathology adds unnecessary sting to the natural human fear of death.
Alternative: Unconditional love does not threaten ultimate judgment, exclusion, punishment, or destruction.
13. Old story myth: The idea of a “hero” messiah who will use superior force to overthrow enemies, purge the world of wrong, and install a promised utopia.
Alternative: A God of authentic love does not intervene with overwhelming force that overrides human freedom and choice. God is a Classic Liberal democrat. A Libertarian. (Think smiley emoticon)
14. Old story myth: The fallacy of biblicism- the belief that religious holy books are more special and authoritative than ordinary human literature, and the related fallacy that people are obligated to live according to the holy book as the revealed will, law, or specially inspired word of God.
Alternative: We evaluate all human writing according to basic criteria of right and wrong, good and bad, humane or inhumane. Holy books, written by fallible people just like ourselves, are not exempted from this basic process of discernment/evaluation.
15. Old story myth: The idea of God as King, Ruler, Lord, or Judge. This myth promotes the idea that God relates to humanity in domination/submission forms of relating.
Alternative: There is no domination/subservience relationship of humanity to God. True greatness is to relate horizontally to all as equals. The “greatness” of God is to relate to all as free equals, not to “lord over” others.
16. Old story myth: The idea that humanity is obligated to know, serve, or have a relationship with an invisible reality (deity), that we are to give primary loyalty to something separate from and above people.
Alternative: Our primary loyalty is to love and serve real people around us. Their needs, here and now, take priority in life.
17. Old story myth: The perception that God is silent or absent during the horrors of life (i.e. Where was God during the Holocaust?). This myth of absent deity is based on the primitive belief that God is a sky deity (dwelling in heaven above, separate from humanity), a deity that descends to intervene in life and change circumstances, override natural law, in order to save or protect people. (Love and freedom are inseparable realities. You cannot have one without the other.)
Alternative: There has never been a Sky God up above in some heaven. The reality we call “God” has always been incarnated equally in all humanity, inseparable from the human spirit, and God has always been immediately present in all human suffering and is intimately present in all human raging and struggle against evil.
18. Old story myth: The fallacy of “limited good” and the belief that too many people are consuming too much of Earth’s resources, and hence world resources are being exhausted.
Alternative: More people on Earth means more creative minds to solve problems. More consumption means more wealth to solve problems and enable us to make life better- i.e. enable us to improve the human condition and protect the natural world at the same time.