Site briefs:
This site notes the varied fronts that are coming at us today, the differing developments in a resurging collectivism that is very much a continuation of the same old collectivist crusade of the last century. The new fronts for collectivism are reframing the class distinction and dualism between capitalist owners and disenfranchised workers (oppressor/oppressed, victimizer/victimized). Today that dualism of oppressor/oppressed is divided more along racial lines.
Journalists like Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, among many others, keep warning us that this new elite totalitarianism poses a constant threat to our freedom.
This site especially notes what is behind the public fronts of these varied collectivist crusades, whether they present as ideological, social, philosophical, or other. The “what is behind or beneath” as in the primitive mythical/religious themes that persistently dominate human narratives both religious and “secular/ideological”. Historians have shown that primitive religious themes were behind Marxism, Nazism, and now environmentalism. Richard Landes described Marxism as “the subtle alliance of what can be recognized as a modicum of scientific truth with a salvationist religion”, just another apocalyptic millennial crusade like all before it.
He quotes another scholar who noted the resistance of Western intellectuals to acknowledge the fundamentally religious nature of Marxism, “… any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused… Everybody who dares to take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution… the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and the new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia as a medieval sect of obscure believers”, (p.347, Heaven On Earth).
Western intellectuals refused to acknowledge that their Marxist heroes were essentially religious nutcases of the extreme variety.
On the religious themes shaping these crusades:
Note particularly, the theme of cosmic dualism that validates and promotes tribal dualisms among people as in the collectivist dualism of property or capital owners versus landless, poor commoners. Or the environmental narrative dualism of destructive consumers versus a pure and noble wilderness world. Or the many other dualisms that people embrace related to race/ethnicity, nationality, religion, social classes, gender, and so on.
Ancient and deeply embedded theological ideas (archetypes of subconscious such as Zoroaster’s cosmic divine dualism) influence, shape, and validate our worst inherited impulses to tribalism and the consequent retaliatory treatment of differing others as “enemies”. Cosmic dualism mythology traces deeper roots to the animal impulse to small band mentality and opposition to other small bands as competing “enemies” to be excluded, dominated, or destroyed. Ancient peoples, as their consciousness emerged and developed, and moved by their impulse to meaning, then created ideas, projected out to and embedded in ultimate metaphysical realities, to validate their primitive existence.
This site points to better alternatives such as the insights of Historical Jesus on a stunning new theology of an unconditional deity, insights that provide a better background narrative to affirm modern insights on human oneness, insights that reject primitive tribalism and its destructive outcomes in human civilization. Insights that affirm hope, love, and validate the better responses represented in humane systems of ethics such as Classic Liberalism. Further, evidence-based hope lightens human consciousness and contributes to creating an overall environment in which love can flourish and thereby enhance human peace, creative endeavor, and prosperity.
See also the report below that there is nothing new today in terms of extreme weather events that were equally common in the past. In fact, the severest heat waves were in the 1930s and those have still not been surpassed by today’s heat waves. Consequently, the best atmospheric physicists/climatologists tell us that “there is no climate crisis”. And hence, no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
A non-religious perspective: Qualifiers on my regular references to the Jesus insights: Wendell Krossa
I don’t view Jesus as some godman deserving any more respect than any other human being. Hence, I do not acknowledge any religious requirement to “believe in Jesus”. But I do recognize that he made profound insights in relation to “spiritual” or philosophical/ethical realities.
First, I would urge that we do not take his advice on sharing material possessions as dogmatic economic or business prescriptions (i.e. “give to everyone who asks”). That does not work, and you will quickly bankrupt your business if you try to follow such advice in a commercial venture.
I view such statements as more about personal relating and how we treat others, how we maintain our humanity in the face of offense from others. Such maxims are more about inner mental and emotional states, and our intentions and responses to the insults and harm that we may suffer from others. (And again, this insert qualifier that non-retaliatory, unconditional love is not advocacy for dogmatic pacifism in the face of violence. Any form of love is responsible first and foremost to protect the innocent, meaning the restraint and incarceration of violent people.)
Jesus was not the first to advocate non-retaliatory response to offense or evil. The Akkadian father had said the very same thing to his son some 2 millennia earlier. But Jesus added something unique in all the history of human thought. He related that non-retaliatory behavior to his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson).
His new theology radically reframed the way that humanity viewed deity, overturning entirely the mythical/religious theologies from across previous millennia. He revolutionized entirely our view Ultimate Reality, and consequently, our views of ultimate meaning, ideals, and purpose and that was “his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas” (Robinson).
Contrary to all previous theology, theology that still dominates the great religious traditions of today, Jesus revolutionized completely the human understanding God, stating that there was no ultimate judge, no ultimate exclusion, punishment, or destruction. Yes, these are the reasonable and logical conclusions from “do not respond to offense with eye for eye retaliation but instead love your enemy because God does, giving sun and rain to all like, to both good and bad people”.
Meaning: With God there is only universal and unconditional love toward all. How so? Look at the natural world. God gives sun and rain to all alike, to both good and bad people. And that means no discrimination, no exclusion of anyone, no demand for sacrifice or payment, and no threat of punishment.
Critical to his insight on “sun and rain given to all”- he rejected the deeply embedded tribal impulse of people to exclude differing others/enemies.
He applied his theological insight on non-retaliatory and all-inclusive deity to how we should then view and treat differing others. “Love your enemies because God does”. Don’t view differing others as enemies but as family whom we are then responsible to love and care for, no matter their failure to live as human.
I know of few other statements that deal such a blow to the tribal impulse, overturning the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism that has validated subsequent human tribal dualisms with their endless cycles of eye for eye retaliatory violence.
Joseph Campbell stated his own version of anti-tribal inclusion (his advocacy for universal love as the marker of mature humanity), “For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Note: Matthew messes up his repeat of the core Jesus message (chapters 5-7) with his added ending- “Be perfect as God is perfect”. No. He misses the whole point that Jesus has made in the previous section that the imperfect people are also included freely. You don’t have to be perfect as no one ever has been. Matthew guts the entire point of Jesus that God is scandalously free in forgiving, including, and loving all the same. Luke does a better job with his ending- “Be unconditionally merciful as God is unconditionally merciful”. Obviously meaning that you can only be merciful to people who are imperfect. There is no need for mercy if the people that you are referring to are perfect, eh?
In a related note: The arc of history (the great long-term trajectory of life) bends toward love and we have solid evidence of that in the research of Stephen Pinker (Better Angels of Our Nature) and James Payne (History of Force) on the decline of rates of violence across history. Across our history, we have steadily and increasingly become more humane in civilization, more human and less animal.
Intro notes on topics commented on, Wendell Krossa
The single most profound statement in human history (“love your enemy because God does”) is given high priority on this site because… If you want to solve humanity’s deeply-rooted problem of tribal hatred (viewing differing others as “enemies” deserving punitive retaliation) and the consequent back and forth inhumanity and violence that has endlessly stained history, then this is a critical element for the long-term problem solving that goes to root issues in human existence, to fundamental philosophical/spiritual issues.
The Jesus insight is the best that I know of for fully and completely encompassing the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that humans have used across history to inspire, guide, and validate their ethics and lives. People have always appealed to ultimate ideals and authorities to explain and justify how they act and live. And “spiritual/metaphysical” realities have been fundamental to this project.
And though I am not Christian or religious, I recognize the contribution of Historical Jesus to this problem-solving venture. While the Jesus tradition has come to us via the Christian religion, I agree with others that he was not a religious person himself and did not intend to start another religion.
Unfortunately, he was absorbed into early Pauline Christianity and his core message was then largely distorted and buried by Paul’s Christ myth that dominates the New Testament. But enough of the original “diamonds/pearls” (Jefferson, Tolstoy) are still there to serve Jesus’ intended purpose of presenting the stunning new theology of an unconditionally loving God as the model for us to replicate in our own lives. “Love your enemy because God does”. Nothing in the history of human thought goes so directly to the root of the human problem to cut the tap root of the tribal impulse to view differing others as enemies and then to consequently demonize, dehumanize, hate, and punitively destroy the differing others.
And the Classic Liberal expression of our highest ideal– love
When we talk about love we are talking our highest ideal, what most profoundly marks us as human or humane. And Classic Liberal principles, laws, and institutions embody the best ways for us to treat one another humanely as in the full inclusion and equality of every individual, the freedom of every individual from domination and control by intervening others (especially by state bureaucrats and powerholders), and the right to fair and equal treatment under systems of common law (protection from unjust accusation, arrest, incarceration, and punitive justice).
Classic liberal approaches enable us to tower in stature maturely human in our relationships with all others in that they help us overcome the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others, the dark three of our inherited “animal passions” that summarize a larger complex of bad behaviors. Classic Liberalism constrains us on the path to proper socialization that will enable us to achieve and maintain our humanity in the face of these base impulses and related responses/behaviors that too often reduce us to petty inhumanity.
Classic liberalism urges us to include all as equals, to treat every person as a free equal, not intervening and dominating others but respecting and protecting the free individual choice and self-determination of all as in “live and let live”. Classic liberalism urges us to embrace true diversity, inclusion, and equality (not equity of outcomes). It urges us to respond to human failure with restorative justice programs that, while merciful toward human failure, also hold violent people fully responsible for their behavior (incarceration, rehabilitation).
And on that old persistent psychopathology of apocalypse:
There is nothing more irresponsible and insane than panic mongering over looming apocalypse. Traumatizing a generation of young people and pushing alarmed populations to embrace irrational and destructive salvation schemes like decarbonization. In the name of common human decency, stop it.
The cutting edge of the resurging totalitarianism/collectivism in the West today (more on patterns in alarmism movements) Wendell Krossa
Those among us who want to vent their pathological impulse to control others, the totalitarian impulse, begin by manufacturing fear of some purported “crisis/emergency”. They incite people’s survival impulse, thereby rendering people more susceptible to their “salvation” schemes (i.e. “save democracy, save society, save the world”).
H. L. Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
This madness of insanely exaggerated alarmism is beaten into our consciousness daily in media. Just note the endless stream of alarmist news titles with terms like “catastrophic…. Emergency…. Crisis…. Worst on record…” and other terms affirming apocalyptic prophesies that the ‘end-is-nigh’.
Panic mongers, driven by the narrative feature that the hero must vanquish a monster/enemy in order to save something, then in their perversion of the hero’s quest, create a monster, an enemy who they claim poses a great existential threat to life, to all. They then demonize the enemy as the worst ever, or as in their climate alarmism crusade, make the claim that natural weather changes today are “the worst on record ever”. The point in demonizing your enemy is to justify treating them inhumanely. So you first need to dehumanize as much as can- smearing with the ultimate pejoratives of evil, as “Hitler, Nazi, racist, bigot, terrorist, threat to democracy, threat to life and the world, etc.”.
Once you have alarmed people with threat, and your enemy as the greatest threat ever, now your targeted population of people will clamor for salvation. Add the element of chaos to the mix (sense of collapsing law and order, collapsing society- a favorite go-to technique of nihilist, anarchist revolutionaries whether ideological or religious).
Marxist scholar, James Lindsay, on a recent Joe Rogan podcast (episode 2119) noted that the open US southern border is contributing to the collapse of systems in US cities thereby creating an environment that the state can then use to institute strong measures such as the military now patrolling New York subways (he cautioned about “conspiracy theories” but added there was evidence to back such concerns). Chaos and collapse enable the panic-mongers to prep populations to embrace their salvation schemes with promises to lead them to salvation. Much as WEF head Klaus Schwab argued that Covid chaos and lockdowns provided the model for climate lockdowns and the opportunity to institute his “Great Reset” where market capitalism would be changed for a new economic system along the lines of the anti-democratic Chinese model that he greatly admires (also admired by Justin Trudeau and his colleague Chrystia Freeland who is on the WEF board).
Also add “imminence” to your mix of panic-mongering. Now you have created the situation where you are justified to act immediately with “coercive purification” responses. Immediacy of threat justifies rejecting the normal protocols of freedom and democracy as a dangerous block to saving the world, and those dissenting to your salvation schemes now pose a dangerous threat to all. Hence, they must be censored, silenced, banned, even criminalized as intolerable threats to all that is good. Dissenters to coercive state approaches then face smears as advocates of “Russian/foreign disinformation, proponents of hate speech, racism, domestic terrorism, threat to democracy… etc.”.
And this illustrative piece… “Governments are creating a fake hate panic to censor, interfere in elections, and imprison their political enemies: Watch what’s happening in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, and the EU”, Mar. 22, 2024, Michael Shellenberger
https://public.substack.com/p/governments-are-creating-a-fake-hate
Quotes:
“A few weeks after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, the Director of the FBI said, “Our most immediate concern is that violent extremists—individuals or small groups—will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives. That includes not just homegrown violent extremists inspired by a foreign terrorist organization but also domestic violent extremists targeting Jewish or Muslim communities.”
“And indeed, in the three months after October 7, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 3,291 anti-Jewish incidents, which was a 361-percent increase compared to the same period one year prior.
“But the terrorist attacks the FBI Director warned about never arrived, and all but 56 of those 3,291 incidents were nonviolent, consisting of hate speech, vandalism, and rallies. And ADL has inflated its recorded number of nonviolent incidents by counting certain political speech as hate speech….
“In truth, most forms of violence have been declining in Western nations for centuries, even millennia.
“To the extent governments and NGOs are recording more so-called “hate speech,” it’s because people today are far more likely to label speech “hateful” than were people just a few decades ago. By almost every measure, our tolerance of racial, sexual, and religious minorities is at an all-time high.
“And we should also be very wary of governments hyping terrorism since it leads to abuses of power. After 9/11, the hyping of terrorism fears allowed the US to invade a country we never should have invaded, occupy a country we shouldn’t have occupied, use kidnapping and torture as standard operating procedures, and violate fundamental civil liberties.
“Now, it appears that the US and other governments around the world are hyping hate in order to weaponize the government against their political enemies.
“Ever since the 2019 shooting in New Zealand, governments have been using so-called hate speech, fake news, and misinformation as justifications for censorship. In Ireland, the government is pushing hate speech legislation that would allow police to invade homes and seize phones and computers. In Canada, Justin Trudeau is pushing legislation that would allow the government to sentence individuals to life in prison for things they said….
“The focus on so-called “hatred,” “harmful content,” and “extremist content” is dangerous. What one person thinks is extreme, another person may view as common sense.
“For the government to decide what is “extreme” is a way of labeling someone as a potential terrorist threat. We saw this clearly with the Trudeau government’s outrageous suppression of the Canadian trucker protesters in Ottawa, in which people’s bank accounts were frozen simply for supporting the anti-vaccine mandate protest movement…
“There is no reliable connection between people’s beliefs and violence. Attempting to stop violence by censoring speech is totalitarian and Orwellian. It effectively criminalizes speech and creates a new category of “pre-crime,” as depicted in the dystopian film Minority Report….
“The Biden administration is trying to portray Trump supporters as violent extremists…. governments routinely abuse understandable public fears in order to take away our fundamental rights, including our ability to criticize the very people who are seeking to censor us.”
More from Shellenberger on the pathology of today’s totalitarianism
“The Narcissism and Psychopathy of Seizing Trump’s Assets: Attorney General Letitia James could freeze the Republican front-runner’s back accounts, thus interfering in the presidential election, and rattling financial markets”, Mar.23, 2024, Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag
https://public.substack.com/p/the-narcissism-and-psychopathy-of
And another- “They want to keep you afraid: Here’s the good news, it will only work if you let them”, Michael Shellenberger, Mar.19, 2024
https://public.substack.com/p/they-want-to-keep-you-afraid
And this on terrorizing and traumatizing kids with profoundly irresponsible climate alarmism. First, the adults terrorize the kids with wildly exaggerated claims of climate change and then worry about the emotional and psychological impacts of what they have promoted and propagandized children with…
“How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?: Questions from 10-14 year old kids’ Eric Worrall, Mar.21, 2024
“My question – where is the climate class action lawsuit on behalf of kids who suffered mental health damage at the hands of climate educators?…
“In Australia, research shows 43% of children aged 10 to 14 are worried about the future impact of climate change, and one in four believe the world will end before they grow up….
“How did we let this education disaster happen?
“There is zero chance anthropogenic climate change in the foreseeable future will make the world uninhabitable for humans. The proof is that our monkey ancestors thrived in a much hotter world. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned.
“If a bunch of monkey ancestors with brains the size of matchboxes could figure out how to thrive in a hothouse world, we could certainly manage.
“Having said that, it is doubtful if anthropogenic CO2 could recreate anything like the hothouse conditions of the PETM, even if we burned every scrap of recoverable fossil fuel on the planet. Not only is the CO2 band of the atmosphere almost completely saturated, which severely limits the impact of additional CO2 on global temperature, the Earth has experienced significant geological changes since the PETM such as the establishment of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current 33 million years ago, which continues to exert a substantial cooling effect on the global climate. The Earth’s current geology is currently aligned so strongly against warming, from a geological perspective we are in the middle of an ice age, the Quarternary Glaciation.
“But kids are not being taught this basic science, this unequivocal proof that even if global warming occurs, global warming is not a threat to human survival and prosperity.
“What really outraged me, a sizeable fraction of kids (1 in 4) believe the world will end before they grow up. Some of them feel guilty about “consumptive practices” they believe are wrecking the planet, which presumably includes eating meat and other high carbon, high calorie foods which kids need to develop to their maximum potential. Even worse, those children have been made to feel a deep sense of responsibility – even though, as kids, they have very little responsibility for the state of the planet.
“How many of those one in four kids who believe the world is about to end will turn to hard drugs or other self destructive behaviours, to escape the pain and guilt and feelings of responsibility, which have been inflicted on them by climate educators? Because we know climate despair is driving kids to abuse hard drugs: Leading rehab specialist Dr. Wodak testified in a government inquiry in 2019 that fear of climate change is a major motivation for kids giving up on life…
“Future generations will look on our era of “climate education” as an age of collective child abuse, and will wonder why nobody stood up to the abusers and put a stop to it. Because there will be a tomorrow, and a day of reckoning….
“This outrageous situation is just begging for a smart lawyer to launch the mother of all class actions, on behalf of drug addicts and mental health patients whose lives were ruined by climate educators.”
The facts on weather
Quotes from the “Executive summary:
“This report refutes the popular but mistaken belief that today’s weather extremes are more common and more intense because of climate change, by examining the history of extreme weather events over the past century or so. Drawing on newspaper archives, it presents multiple examples of past extremes that match or exceed anything experienced in the present day. That so many people are unaware of this fact shows that collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived.
“Heatwaves of the last few decades pale in comparison to those of the 1930s – a period whose importance is frequently downplayed by the media and environmental activists. The evidence shows that the record heat of that time was not confined to the US ‘Dust Bowl’, but extended throughout much of North America, as well as to other countries, such as France, India and Australia. US heatwaves during July 2023, falsely trumpeted by the mainstream media as the hottest month in history, failed to exceed the scorching heat of 1934.” (Full report at link above)
Why are media, hysterical over any warming events, dead silent on this global cooling? Cold is the far greater threat to life, with 10 times more people dying from cold every year than die from warming.
“Unusual Cold Plagues Both Northern, Southern Hemispheres… Arctic Sea Ice Strengthens”, P. Gosselin, Mar. 24, 2024
Quotes:
“Unexpected snow in Saudi Arabia
“In the desert of Afif, west of Riyadh, it snowed unexpectedly, both citizens and tourists were shocked….
“Last year (2023), parts of Saudi Arabia saw its first snowfall in 100 years….
“Freezing Australia
“This past week, the Australian continent saw temperature anomalies of up to 28°C below the multi-decadal norm, affecting large regions…
“–57,9°C in Greenland
“Temperatures in Greenland have fallen sharply as the thermometer in Summit showed -55.1 °C on Saturday.
“On Monday it got even colder, falling to -57.9 °C, That’s about 15 °C below the seasonal norm….
“The exceptional cold in the far north has contributed to Arctic sea ice extent to be above the average for the period 2011-2020, and is rapidly approaching the average for the period 2001-2010…
“Obviously the Arctic is surprising the experts, who warned that sea ice there was supposedly in rapid decline.
‘Unusual, record-breaking cold in India
“Intense cold persists in Indian cities like Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Chandbali, Paradeep and Baripada, which are experiencing record-breaking low temperatures. On Wednesday, many places in the eastern state of Odisha experienced the coldest March days ever. In Bhubaneswar, a maximum temperature of only 19.2 °C was recorded yesterday, breaking the previous record of 24.3 °C by a whopping 5°C!
“In northern India, snow from the north is bringing down temperatures in the lower latitudes in central and southern India. In many cities, including the eastern metropolitan cities of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Chandbali, Paradeep and Baripada, record low March temperatures were recorded, beating benchmarks from the 1970s and beyond.
“Record low in New Zealand
“In the southern hemisphere, where summer has come to an end, the temperature in Whanganui, New Zealand dropped to 4°C on Wednesday morning, the second lowest March temperature in the town’s history….
“New lows recorded in Australia
“A severe cold snap has hit southeastern Australia. In the mountains of New South Wales, there was frost in the Perisher Valley with temperatures as low as -5.7°C. This is only 1.4°C above the national record for the month of March…
“Temperature in Antarctica plummets to near -68°C
“On March 21, the seasonal minimum at Concordia dropped to -67.7°C, from -67.4°C on March 20. Antarctica is cooling, the data is clear…”
“Full report (in German) at EIKE.”
Main articles presenting critical points made on this site:
From Retaliation to Unconditional love- the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– the hero’s journey and conquest. The intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, along with the mythical themes that validate such impulses, and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661
And then some repeats of good sources and comments on this and that…
“Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’’, Climate Depot, Nov. 13, 2023
Quote:
Edward Ring: “If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game. Who cares if we have to enslave humanity? Our alternative is certain death from global boiling! You can’t win that argument. You must challenge the science…”
10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth.
The very best climate science reports and news:
Summary of Jesus’ message
How to end cycles of retaliatory violence and achieve peace in societies….
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.
Joseph Campbell
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Archetype- “model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc.”
C. S. Lewis’s warning in relation to the moralizing busybodies who believe that they alone know what is right and best for all others and will seek to coerce and control others:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals”.
The personal safeguard to the self-delusion of being solely right… Hold fast to Classic Liberal principles re the protection of individual rights and freedoms, as against the ever-creeping totalitarianism of collectivist approaches that subject individuals to some claimed “greater good or common good” that has to be managed by “enlightened elites” who believe that they alone know what is best for all other and will use coercion to control others.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the real battle of good against evil that takes place inside us, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”
Best books on the improving state of life on Earth:
Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. Simon set the standard for understanding the “true state of life on Earth” by looking at the complete big picture (all the data on any issue) and longest-term trends (not just focusing on short-term aberrations or downturns in long trends).
Many subsequent studies affirmed Simon’s basic research on the big picture and long-term trends of life-
Greg Easterbrook’s “A Moment On the Earth”,
Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”,
Ronald Bailey’s “The End of Doom”,
Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”,
Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”,
Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist”,
Tupy and Bailey’s “Ten Global Trends”, also “Superabundance”
Hans Roslings “Factfulness”, and others.