The greatest ever liberation movement is the inner freedom from our animal impulses and the mythical/religious ideas that incite and validate these impulses. Our inner animal is the real monster of life and the inner struggle to conquer that monster/enemy is the true battle of life. These animal passions are summed in the “evil triad” of (1) tribalism (“us versus them” exclusionary thinking), (2) domination of weaker others, and (3) the punitive destruction of differing others. (More below)
This important report from Michael Shellenberger…
https://public.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-all-that-stands-in-the
“Elon Musk Is All That Stands In The Way Of Totalitarianism: Brazil takes another step toward dictatorship”, Michael Shellenberger, April 8, 2024
“Last night, around 8 p.m. local time in São Paulo, Brazil, Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes announced a criminal investigation into Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, for allegedly spreading disinformation, obstructing justice, and allowing people who De Moraes had banned from social media to freely express their views. De Moraes said he would fine X twenty thousand dollars per day for every banned person Musk allows to speak.
“As such, De Moraes has taken Brazil one step closer to being a dictatorship. What’s more, the events of the last few weeks make clear that Elon Musk is the only thing standing in the way of global totalitarianism. Without free speech, there can be no democracy.
“If X goes down, we must continue to fight. We can continue to communicate through email and other social media platforms, such as Facebook.
“But email is no substitute for social media platforms’ capacity to share information with millions of people. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, abandoned his principled free speech position in 2020 after three years of relentless pressure from activist NGOs, Democrats, and corporate advertisers. Today, Facebook actively represses the spread of news.
“The mainstream corporate news media have never been more corrupt and totalitarian. With few exceptions, they spread government propaganda as a matter of policy. Nobody demands censorship more than the corporate media, which benefit from governments shutting down their competitors.
“Governments are either not protecting free speech or actively participating in the war upon it.
“Last month, the US Supreme Court held a hearing where justices made clear that they were fine with the US government pressuring social media companies to censor. Last week, the Scottish government implemented a law to crack down on so-called hate speech, including jokes by comedians. In Ireland, the government wants the power to send police into people’s homes to search computers and phones for hate speech. In Canada, the governing Liberal party wants the power to send people to prison for life for things they’ve said. And the European Union has empowered a tiny group of bureaucrats to decide what is true and false and engage in mass censorship.
“All of this is happening at the very same moment that my colleagues and I have revealed that government intelligence organizations are working through NGOs to interfere in elections by spreading disinformation about populist activists and political candidates. In other words, governments are demanding censorship in order to protect their ability to spread disinformation.
“Making matters worse, governments are directly financing corporate news media. The current Brazilian government is spending 30 times more than the previous government on media advertising in order to spread its disinformation.
“I never in my life thought I would live to see the rise of totalitarianism in Western countries. A powerful minority of educated elites around the world are demanding the censorship, persecution, and incarceration of their political enemies. Naturally, they are doing so in the name of saving democracy. I am shocked and embarrassed that I used to call many of these totalitarians friends and allies. The only explanation is that they are in the grip of mass psychosis after years of media propaganda and government disinformation falsely claiming that populist political movements are undemocratic.
“The fact that the future of free speech rests upon the shoulders of a single individual is not something any of us should want. I do not think that this is a responsibility Elon Musk wants. He would be a far richer person had he never bought Twitter. He would also be living a more peaceful life. After Musk bought Twitter, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party declared war on him. Various government agencies filed multiple frivolous lawsuits against Musk and his companies in ways very similar to the war the Brazilian government is waging against X.
“What all of this reveals is that, until Musk bought Twitter, we didn’t really have freedom of expression. The US government felt that it controlled both the corporate news media and social media companies. We saw in the Twitter Files that the FBI orchestrated a disinformation and censorship campaign in order to protect Joe Biden.
“Starting with the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, operatives working for the US Department of Defense and the British Ministry of Defense sought to hide their censorship and disinformation efforts as “cyber security.” After that, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Stanford Internet Observatory engaged in a mass censorship effort around the 2020 elections and Covid.
“It is today clear that intelligence and security agencies have been working together around the world to gain control over social media platforms in order to discredit, prosecute, and incarcerate populist leaders. The evidence is now overwhelming that the FBI and Secret Service are covering up evidence related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot in Washington DC. And there is still much we do not know about the eerily similar riot in Brazil’s capitol on January 8, 2023.
“There is much we need to do to fight back. First, everyone around the world should download a “VPN” to their computers and phones so that they can access the Internet in case governments shut down X. Millions of Chinese use VPNs safely to learn the truth about what is happening in the world.
“Second, you should actively distrust what the corporate news media tells you. With few exceptions, the media are controlled by governments, both directly and indirectly through corporate advertisers. Seek out multiple sources of information and verify information rather than blindly believing what you are told.
“Third, please show your support for Elon Musk and encourage him to stay strong in the face of government pressure. Many governments around the world may force X out of their countries, as the Brazilian government is currently attempting to do.
“Finally, thank you to all of you who have expressed your support for me over the last few days. I decided to stay in Brazil this week to continue my investigations into the government’s extraordinary and unprecedented crackdown on free speech. I am proud to stand with all of the courageous Brazilians who refuse to let their country descend into totalitarianism without a fight.”
This from Joe Oliver’s article below- “Progressive policies are driving dystopian results”
“The prime minister’s claim we must act now to avoid extreme weather is simply misinformation… And the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change tells us that in fact extreme weather events have not increased in severity or frequency.
Conclusion: There is no good scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
Decarbonization is the irrational and destructive “salvation” scheme of the “profoundly religious crusade” that is “climate alarmism”. This latest apocalyptic movement is just another eruption in a millennia-long history of similar episodes of “madness of crowds” apocalyptic millennial crusades. Hopefully, pointing out the true nature of such crusades will give some sense of the primitiveness of the ideas involved.
Sources: Arthur Herman… Richard Landes… Arthur Mendel… David Redles….
These “social contagion” eruptions are repeatedly incited because of humanity’s refusal to abandon the primitive narrative themes that people repeatedly use to frame their belief systems. I refer to the complex of bad religious ideas known as “lost paradise/decline toward apocalypse/redemption through sacrifice”. This complex of myths continues to shape world religions and now also shapes the “secular/ideological” versions of the same mythology in our modern era. This very complex of themes shaped Marxism, Nazism, and now shapes environmental alarmism as in climate alarmism. Again, see the historians listed above to understand the patterns that unfold in these apocalyptic crusades.
The public zealots of today that continue to preach this primitive complex of themes are exhibiting the same old fringe lunacy of all apocalyptic zealots across history. To get, for example, the true nature of what a religious zealot like Justin Trudeau is doing- picture him on the sidewalk wearing a sandwich board sign printed with “Repent, the end is nigh”. That gets to the essence of his message and spirit. Integrity would urge him to speak just such words as he criss-crosses the world in his zealotry.
And yes, admittedly, he may be cluelessly unaware of how he is responding unquestioningly and uncritically to archetypes deeply rooted in his subconscious. We have all inherited the same archetypes and many of our fellow citizens find their consciousness resonates with the latest eruption of the “lost paradise/life declining toward apocalypse/redemption” complex of bad ideas, as in climate alarmism.
So also Al Gore has publicly stated that we are living through the New Testament book of Revelation today. https://www.courthousenews.com/gore-likens-climate-change-to-apocalypse-at-global-summit/
Hence, his repeated prophesying, along with many other apocalyptic prophets, of dates for the “end of days”, dates that are usually set just a few years or decades up ahead. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/al-gore-history-climate-predictions-statements-proven-false
Understand what motivates such people to do what they do, even if their salvation scheme of decarbonization destroys lives and societies. And then inform yourself of the better alternatives to the bad narrative themes that we have inherited. We have the insights to liberate ourselves from this worst form of slavery- i.e. the inner slavery of mind and spirit to harmful ideas like apocalyptic. (See the personality-deforming impacts of harmful mythologies in psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”)
Section topics:
Brinsmead summaries on Historical Jesus research
How to destroy Western liberal society
Progressive policies driving dystopia
Peterson on Meaning
Main site themes/insights
The best book- complete big picture view of the true state of the world
The underpopulation alarm
The fundamental issue in climate
“America This Week”- Taibbi and Kirn on media propagandizing. Mainstream media operate now as fronts for the totalitarianism of “deep state” agencies, entrenched government bureaucracies that are the real powerholders in societies. And yes, we get that “deep state” has been demonized as “far-right conspiracy theory”, just as “populism” has similarly been smeared as “far right”, even though it represents right, left, and centers of populations. Populism and deep state represent more the divide of commoners versus elites.
Conquer the “dark triad” with Classic Liberalism, Wendell Krossa
Humanity has a well-established history of exhibiting fundamental goodness, evident in the improvement of civilization and life in general over the millennia (notably in such trends as the decline in violence across history). But there is also, undeniably, the long bloody stain on our history from our dark impulses repeatedly erupting in societies, impulses that have to be carefully watched and guarded against, guarded on all sides of our tribal divides.
The “dark triad” of impulses that require constant oversight and constraint- (1) the impulse to tribal bias and exclusion of differing others, (2) to domination of weaker others, and (3) to punitive destruction of differing others. This triad is a summary of the entire dark nature element in humanity- the animal inheritance.
Classic Liberalism is the best that we have come up with for constraining our dark impulses and keeping us generally on the right path toward a more humane future. It does this, notably, by protecting and promoting individual freedom and rights, by dispersing power among competing individuals and institutions. Classic liberalism protects the primacy of individual freedom against the collectivist centralization of power where controlling elites have inevitably found opportunity to unleash their impulse to dominate commoners, due to the dangerous pathology of centralizing power.
My advocacy for Classic Liberalism is based on the evidence that it does best to protect us from such dark totalitarian impulses. Classic liberalism works best to ensure the better impulses of our nature are expressed and habitualized in societies, helping us to become socialized as mature humans in civilization. And that is the critical goal of human life- to “tower in stature as maturely human”, as heroes of our personal quests who have conquered our basest impulses, thereby defeating the inner monster and enemy in what is the real battle of life (Solzhenitsyn’s point that the real battle of good against evil runs down the center of all human hearts).
Classic Liberalism promotes such “angel impulses” as the inclusion of all as family (human oneness), the respect and protection of the freedom and equality of all individuals (self-determination and personal control over one’s life), and the restorative treatment of offenders (but not as in, for example, progressive “cruel compassion” as per “de-carceration, no cash bail” policies that release violent offenders to harm innocents.)
Dogmatic and extremist pacifism does not work in the face of evil. All of us must be held responsible for our behavior and its consequences. All of us must “grow the fuck up” and stop acting like animals. If we don’t, then incarceration, restitution, and other forms of rehabilitation are necessary.
In the history of the two great approaches for organizing human societies, we have abundant evidence of the outcomes of each- i.e. one unleashing the worst of impulses and consequent horrific outcomes (i.e. 100 million slaughtered last century), the other constraining the worst of impulses to promote the better side of humanity with better outcomes (i.e. billions lifted out of poverty).
Added note: The point of viewing all the diverse and differing members of humanity as family, not enemies, does not lessen the need to defend against assault and the obligation to incarcerate the violent among us. Taking more humane views of offenders is about affirming more humane approaches as we engage force to defeat opponents in war or counter domestic assaults, and after defeating/restraining offenders, how do we then treat them. It comes back to the question of how we maintain our own humanity in the face of evil.
More from Bob Brinsmead
Response to a discussion group participant who argued that the temple incident was Jesus using violence to get the money changers out of the temple. And Jesus thereby represents God.
The other participant’s comment: “God is like the Jesus that got a whip and cleared the temple? A violent Jesus?”
Bob Brinsmead’s response:
“A whip is a tool to direct animals, not to chase people violently. Read John 2. Jesus used a whip to drive all the animals out of precincts of the temple- to save the animals from a barbaric slaughter. The sacrificial rituals “for the remission of sins” disgusted him far more than Luther was disgusted at the sale of Indulgences.
“The point ought to stick out like a pikestaff. But it has become buried in the teaching that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin in a way that invested all those wretched barbaric Jewish sacrifices for hundreds of years with holy significance. When in fact he wanted to sweep the whole smelly, stinking religious institution into oblivion. But the elite churchmen who put the New Testament together tried to bury the real story under their pile of pious garbage about Jesus going up to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice for sin when he went there to protest the very notion that God could not forgive sin without a sacrifice being offered. Jesus got killed for proclaiming, whip in hand, “I WILL HAVE MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE.”
“Religion is all about gaining God’s favour, one way or another. But as Harold Ellens says in “A Faith to Live By”, God forgave us before we were conceived or born. Not even clever sinners can sin themselves out of the reach of God’s unconditional grace to bring all of God’s children home to their safe and secure destiny.
“We are not arguing with ____ or anyone else into order to get them safely home. All whom God loves will arrive safely home. It is not as if our destiny will in any way depend on what we think of God but solely on what God thinks of us. The only thing that matters is having a more joyous and perhaps more productive ride in life’s journey rather than fretting and worrying about things that are better left in the hands of Unconditional Grace.”
Added note: We inherited the pro-sacrifice message of Paul, a denial of the anti-sacrifice message of Jesus.
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
And this on the destruction of Western liberal society
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/11-ways-biden-handler-hell-bent-destroying-america
“11 ways Biden and his handlers are bent on destroying America: The path to civilizational destruction should be very familiar by now”, Victor Davis Hanson, April 4, 2024
“Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses several reported incidents of migrants committing crimes in the United States.
“Why are those controlling President Joe Biden using him to advance so much of a destructive agenda that it will likely end America as we know it?
“If someone wished to destroy America, could he do anything more catastrophic than what we currently see and hear each day?
“What would an existential enemy do that we have not already done to ourselves?
“Here are 11 now familiar steps to civilizational destruction:
“1. Wipe out a 2,000 mile border.
“Allow 10 million foreign nationals to enter unlawfully. Have no audit of any; nullify all federal immigration laws. Let in toxic drugs that kill 100,000 Americans a year. Give free support to those millions who broke the law. Smear any objectors as racists and xenophobes.
“2. Run up $35 trillion in national debt….
“3. Appease or subsidize enemies like Iran and China.
“Demonize allies like Israel. Allow terrorists to attack Americans without adequate response…
“4. In a multiracial democracy, redefine identity only as one’s tribal affiliation.
“Ensure each identity group rivals the other for victimhood…
“5. Recalibrate violent crime as understandable, cry-of-the-heart expressions of social justice.
“Ensure no bail and same-day release for arrested, repeat violent felons….
“6. Emasculate the military by using non-meritocratic standards of race, gender, and sexual orientation to determine promotion and commendation….
“7. Reinvent the justice system to indict, bankrupt, convict, jail and eliminate political opponents….
“8. Encourage the fusion of the bureaucratic state with the electronic media to form a powerful force for political audit, surveillance, censorship, and coercion….
“9. Make war on affordable gasoline and natural gas….
“10. Marry late, but preferably not at all.
“Consider males toxic…
“11. Turn world-class universities into indoctrination centers….
“Train youth to graduate despising their own culture and civilization. Recruit foreign students from hostile nations to subsidize campus commissar bloat. Replace the curriculum with therapeutic propaganda….
“Why could those controlling the president be doing all of the above?
“1. They are delusional and think their socialist and globalist agendas are working and will save us.
“2. They are raging nihilists who do not like the U.S. and deliberately want it destroyed as a service to the world. A ruined U.S. is preferable to a strong America.
“3. They are Jacobin revolutionaries who are intentionally erasing the old United States as a prerequisite for creating an entirely new America that will arise from the ashes with no trace or even memory of its past….
“There is cause for hope among this nihilist remaking of America: the people are fed up and will demand an accounting in the fall.”
Here is more on the big picture background that we should all be aware of– i.e. the resurgence of Marxist collectivism coming at us through varied new fronts like DEI, ESG, Woke Racism, etc. Coming at us masqueraded as compassion for the oppressed. But this is more “cruel compassion” that is the “psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, narcissism”, as analyzed by psychologists and others. It is the new collectivist totalitarianism…
https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness
Along this same line….
“Joe Oliver: Irrational ‘progressive’ policies are driving dystopian results: From street names to gender, criminology and climate, our institutions are in thrall to crazy wokeness. We need to get our culture back”, April 5, 2024
“Society is in the grip of irrational ideas that defy common sense and drive dystopian policies. Some inane beliefs and trends are made up out of whole cloth; others derive from ideas that have resurfaced, Zombie-like, from the crypt of historic failures. They are advanced by “progressive” activists in thrall to a post-modern woke-ism steeped in Marxist-Leninism. What makes the phenomenon so threatening is its pervasive influence in politics, academia, media, not-for-profits and big business.
“Two Finnish surveys published in March found that being woke was linked to anxiety, depression and a lack of happiness…. Or are depressed people simply prone to socially damaging notions?
“A decade or two ago people would have rejected these bizarre ideas for the nonsense they are, and their proponents as emperors with no clothes. But today they are conventional wisdom and skeptics are know-nothing deviants who must be de-platformed and punished for their heresy.
“A centrepiece of postmodern ideology is DEI which, by dividing us all into oppressor or oppressed, is neither diverse, nor equitable nor inclusive but conformist, unfair and exclusionary. It undermines excellence, productivity and competitiveness and is largely responsible for the assault on truth and inquiry at schools and universities, which have become left-wing breeding grounds for Gen Z.
“As for climate catastrophism…
“The prime minister’s claim we must act now to avoid extreme weather is simply misinformation… And the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change tells us that in fact extreme weather events have not increased in severity or frequency….
“On the criminal justice front… catch-and-release and lenient parole defy logic, put the public at risk and fuel the growing problem of urban crime.
“Males who identify as women and use women’s washrooms and compete against women in sports are hailed as avatars of progress while anyone who points out that this could put women at risk or female athletes at a disadvantage can have their career destroyed….
“Irrational, illiberal ideas are now entrenched in our most important institutions and the public is becoming habituated to them. It will require a determined effort to take the culture back and root out dysfunctional policies that undermine the economy, personal agency and our core rights and freedoms. But do we have any choice?”
“Joe Oliver was minister first of natural resources and then of finance in the Harper government.”
“The Most Important Tool In Therapy, Jordan Peterson
“We know that if you expose people to what they are afraid of but also avoid, they get better. You have to do it carefully and cautiously and with their own participation, but of all the things that clinicians have established that are credible, that is number one. The clinical experience is redemptive because it is designed to address suffering insofar as the people who are engaged in the process are both telling each other the truth. And just by talking about your problems, you have admitted that they exist now. That is a pretty good start.”
“Find Meaning In Your Life, Jordan Peterson
“What are you leaving out of your life if you are leaving out responsibility? The answer might be: meaning. If you took on all the responsibility you could take on and faced all that you needed to face, who would you be? How would the world transform around you? If you did that even a little bit and your life got a fair bit better, the next question would be: What if you did that completely? Perfection is a horizon that constantly recedes, but it is not obvious what the upper limit to that is.
“Picking up and bearing your suffering is an idea deeply rooted in the West. It is a truth. Hell is often thought to be a bottomless pit because no matter how bad things are, there is always a way to make them worse. So what do you do about that? You accept it. That is what life is like. Life is suffering. But what do you do in the face of that suffering? You start with yourself.
“Get yourself together so you can stand up solidly so that people can rely on you. Lift a load — because then you can tolerate yourself. Pick something up and carry it. Make it heavy enough so that you recognize you are capable. When you do, you will develop some self-respect. “
Another example of “the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism” or Woke bullying…
Others have called it “delusional… cruel… psychopathic compassion”. How did we get here?
“Bullying, Cowardice, And Careerism Behind BBC Disinformation On Gender: Current and former BBC journalists condemn the British media giant for corruption of language and failing to safeguard children and vulnerable adults”, Michael Shellenberger, Mar.29, 2024
https://public.substack.com/p/bullying-cowardice-and-careerism
And one on the possible multiple origins or multiple strains of humanity– Not a disproof of human oneness as our oneness in the human family is based on our common human consciousness, human mind and spirit, the common human self, realities that all humans possess as fundamental identity markers (the primary identity markers of being human).
Over past decades this site has probed and promoted the following central insights/themes/discoveries: Wendell Krossa
(1) The insight of historical Jesus that God was an unconditional reality, a stunning new theology that was entirely contrary to all past mythical and religious presentation of gods as highly conditional realities demanding conditions of correct beliefs, required sacrifices/payment, and obligated religious rituals and lifestyle as identity markers of true believers in any given religious tradition. The profound insight of Jesus on unconditional deity and the nature of authentic love, was then buried by Paul’s Christ myth that is a retreat to highly conditional deity and atonement mythology (an ultimate cosmic sacrifice as the prerequisite condition for divine forgiveness, inclusion, and love).
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
(2) This site has offered the basic themes for a new narrative- an entirely new narrative to liberate human minds from the personality-deforming impact of bad religious ideas (psychotherapist/theologian Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”). New narrative themes liberate us from the worst ideas that have dominated narratives across history- in both religious and secular narratives. This is about liberation at the deepest levels of consciousness, from subconscious archetypes.
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
(3) This site engages Joseph Campbell’s outline of the basic features common to all human life, notably the hero’s quest as living heroic stories of adventure, struggle, suffering, conquest of monsters/problems, entering righteous battles against evil to save something, the shaman’s experience of disintegration of the old and re-integration around something new, transformation, discovery and gaining insights that can then benefit others.
Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– the hero’s journey and conquest. The hero’s quest is an intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, a battle that includes overturning the mythical narratives/themes that validate such impulses. We need fully humane ideas that inspire us to pursue fully humane ideals/behaviors and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661
(4) Further, this site recounts the big picture story of humanity’s exodus and liberation from animal reality to live as human in progressing civilization. The exodus of humanity from animal existence points to the foundational purpose of conscious humanity and human experience in this world- i.e. the purpose of becoming maturely human by orienting life toward the ideals of universal, unconditional treatment of all others (i.e. as in the ultimate reach of love in “love your enemies”). This is about understanding the fundamental meaning of our lives and resolving the question of what it means to be human, embracing ideals like unconditional love as critical to the goal of our lives, as an essential criterion or ideal for successful human life.
From Retaliation to Unconditional love- the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human. This is the greatest liberation movement ever- the inner freedom from inherited animal impulses.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809
This site also explores the “evil triad” as a summary of features that contrast with the basic features of being authentically human. The evil triad illustrates the worst of our animal inheritance. This site presents the contrasting ideals and behaviors that enable us to overcome that inheritance.
The inner battle with our animal inheritance is the real struggle of life, the real battle with an enemy/monster that must be vanquished in order to live as truly human, to become the heroes of our quests.
This site further offers the “lost paradise, apocalyptic, redemption” as a summary complex of the “bad religious ideas” that have shaped all human narratives across history, all mythologies, religions, and even the “secular/ideological” belief systems of the modern era. Again, see the research of historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, and David Redles.
And finally, critical to understanding the true state of life is to recognize that life is not declining toward something worse but is improving toward something better. The evidence is overwhelming that the essential goodness and love of humanity has been expressed in the human improvement of life in this world, not just improvement for humanity but also for all other natural life. We have done well, and as Julian Simon says, we should hold a party to outdo all parties to celebrate how well we have done.
The “best book ever written”- Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, Wendell Krossa
Simon was a population specialist who dissected and overturned the alarm of overpopulation which has persisted across millennia as a dominant narrative of nihilism. The overpopulation alarm exhibits the projection of self-hatred anti-humanism onto all humanity (“humanity as a virus, cancer, intruder into the natural world”). We see early expressions of this anti-humanism in the Sumerian Flood myth, where too many people making too much noise (naturally having fun, being sociable) irked the waterworks god- Enlil. That reminds me of the anthropologist who said that formerly pagan villages that converted to Western religious traditions then became quiet, sullen places. Like the Puritans who were constantly searching for people having too much fun to then rein that enjoyment of life in and constrain all life to the “narrow way” of a religious lifestyle.
Insert: Was Enlil and early Puritan, much like the Woke Progressivism of today? Totalitarians hate humor that pokes fun at their illiberal domination and control of others. They hate the little kids that blurt out- “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes”.
Simon’s book, published in 1986, needs updating of data and many others have done that (see list below). But his basic principles are as up-to-date as ever. I consider his work (pardon my zealous hyperbole) as the “Best book ever written” because of its comprehensive look at all the basic elements of life. Simon shows us how to get to “the true state of life, the true state of the world” by looking carefully at all the evidence on the main indicators of life, taking data from the best sources available, and including the longest-term data streams related to any given element of life. That is the best approach, the best science, that gets us past any personal confirmation bias (i.e. by including even the evidence that counters our personal beliefs).
And the conclusion from the evidence is that life is not declining toward a worsening state but has been improving, till today we live in “the best time ever to be alive on Earth”. https://humanprogress.org/is-this-the-best-time-to-be-alive/
Also good for understanding the true state of our world and why majorities of populations persist in believing the fallacy that the “world is getting worse”, see Arthur Herman on the historical development of the ideology of Declinism that has become the most dominant and influential theme in the world today (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”). Declinism mythology/ideology distorts the true state of life entirely. Media propagandize this madness daily- notably in things like climate alarmism and the persistent lying that every normal twitch in weather/nature is “the worst on record”.
The Amazon blurb on Simon’s book:
“Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon led a vigorous challenge to conventional beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution of the environment, the effects of immigration, and the “perils of overpopulation.” The comprehensive data, careful quantitative research, and economic logic contained in the first edition of The Ultimate Resource questioned widely held professional judgments about the threat of overpopulation, and Simon’s celebrated bet with Paul Ehrlich about resource prices in the 1980s enhanced the public attention–both pro and con–that greeted this controversial book.
“Now Princeton University Press presents a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Resource. The new volume is thoroughly updated and provides a concise theory for the observed trends: Population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunity and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortages occurred. The book also tackles timely issues such as the supposed rate of species extinction, the “vanishing farmland crisis,” and the wastefulness of coercive recycling.
“In Simon’s view, the key factor in natural and world economic growth is our capacity for the creation of new ideas and contributions to knowledge. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. In conjunction with the size of the educated population, the key constraint on human progress is the nature of the economic-political system: talented people need economic freedom and security to bring their talents to fruition.”
Other “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 as improving…
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 Rosling’s “Factfulness”, and others.
Add here re the fact that humanity has improved across the millennia (the decline in violence)- James Payne’s “History of Force”, and the follow-up study “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by Stephen Pinker.
Other good sources- “Humanprogress.org”, and re climate- “Wattsupwiththat.com” “co2coaliition.org”.
This on population decline today: “The Age of Underpopulation is Here”, Steve Goreham, April 6, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/06/the-age-of-underpopulation-is-here/
Quotes (full article at link):
“The age of overpopulation is over. The age of underpopulation is here. After decades of warnings and fear about an overpopulation crisis, population is now rapidly declining in most of the world. The overpopulation disaster predicted by world elites did not occur.
“Total fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman. Demographers tell us that a country’s fertility rate must be at least 2.1 children per woman to sustain the current level of population.
“According to data from the United Nations, total world population still continues to rise, but population is declining in all major nations, where fertility rates have fallen below the minimum population replacement rate. Africa is the only continent where the population continues to grow. According to birth rates and without counting immigration flows, population is now falling in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, the United States, and all European nations except Monaco and the Faroe Islands.
“For the last four decades of the 20th Century, world leaders warned of a coming catastrophe from an uncontrolled rise in global population….
“The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, became a worldwide best seller. The prologue of the book stated, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” The author warned of coming famines and resource shortages and advocated for compulsory population control.
“The fear of overpopulation produced a population control movement by the early 1970s….
“The United Nations indicated that people were not intelligent enough to plan their own families….
“Convinced by the overpopulation elites, governments of the world endorsed tragic population control measures. By the 1970s, it became US government policy to grant foreign aid only if population control measures were implemented. The World Bank and the UN also established policies requiring population control in exchange for loans or aid….
“During the last decades of the 20th Century, population programs proposed by Western intellectuals and the UN were implemented in the form of anti-human policies by the governments of China, India, and dozens of other nations. The government of India established sterilization and intrauterine device insertion quotas in 1966. Over 40 million people were sterilized between 1965 and 1985, most coercively….
“The People’s Republic of China implemented population policies in 1970 and adopted a one-child policy for all families in 1979. By March 2013, the China government reported that 336 million abortions and 222 million sterilizations had been carried out since 1971. Sex-selection abortion became common and even the killing of girl babies was practiced in both China and India.
“Population control policies typically disproportionally impacted disadvantaged races or social classes….
“But the overpopulation intellectuals were wrong. Famine did not kill hundreds of millions of people as Ehrlich predicted. Instead, an agricultural revolution increased global output of corn, rice, and wheat by a factor of five from 1960 to 2023. The malnourished portion of world population declined from 30 percent in 1950 to 10 percent today and continues to fall….
“Nations moved from agricultural, to industrial, to technological societies, achieving the elimination of infectious disease, improved sanitation, improved food supply, a decline in infant mortality, and rising levels of education. Women entered the work force in larger numbers and family sizes declined.
“But despite tragic implementation of population control policies in several nations, today’s families are having fewer children, the world population is stabilizing, and the predicted overpopulation disaster did not happen….
“But the United Nations and world elites now warn of a coming climate catastrophe. They demand a costly energy transition to Net Zero emissions. They demand that we change our transportation and our home appliances, that we stop eating meat, and that we adopt hundreds of other proposed climate-saving remedies. Will we have a climate disaster, or will the global elites be wrong again?
“Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.”
This below reminded me of historian Nial Ferguson who said that 60s Marxists saw they could not win the public battle so they chose to go into the teacher’s colleges and indoctrinate new generations of teachers to then indoctrinate new generations of students. Looks like they have succeeded.
“Students Deserve to Know the Truth About Socialism” (from American Thinker), Chris Talgo, April 5, 2024
Quotes (full article at link):
“For the past few decades, American students have been taught a whitewashed version of socialism. Such is why nearly half of young Americans have a “positive” view of socialism and 70 percent of Millennials are “somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate.”
“This is a dire threat to the future of the United States considering this cohort will soon become the political, business, and societal leaders of this nation, not to mention the largest voting bloc for years to come.
“The reason that most young Americans have a distorted view of socialism is because the public school system has been derelict in its duty of properly educating students about the truth regarding socialism….
“In general, the vast majority of my former teaching colleagues both in Illinois and South Carolina harbored a positive disposition towards socialism. As far as I could tell, most of them were inundated with socialist rhetoric while they attended teacher college programs. Although most Americans are probably unaware, the overwhelming majority of higher education courses and programs designed for teachers are full of socialist propaganda….
“The reason I bring this all up is because there is a giant void in classroom materials and resources that present socialism in an honest light. In fact, most of the teachers I worked with while designing curricula for U.S. history, world history, and American government relied on the pseudo-textbook by avowed socialist Howard Zinn titled, A Young People’s History of the United States.
“To fill this void, I present Socialism At A Glance, a new book by the Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center. This book, co-written by yours truly and Jack McPherrin, provides a broad overview of socialism. Specifically, Socialism At A Glance examines the origins of socialist philosophy, which dates back to ancient times; covers the relationship between socialism and human nature; analyzes The Communist Manifesto; discusses the rise of “democratic socialism” in the late 20th century; and takes readers on an epic journey through socialist regimes beginning with the Soviet Union — the first and longest experiment with socialism on a grand scale. Readers will also learn what daily life is like under a variety of socialist governments, from Nazi Germany to modern-day China.
“Our objective in writing this book is to present the truth about socialism, which is why we rely upon original sources including speeches by prominent socialist leaders and various policy documents produced by these governments that explicitly outline the absence of freedom and private property rights that has been part and parcel to practically every socialist government that has existed to this day.
“For too long, millions of students in America have been brainwashed into believing that socialism is a preferable way of organizing society and distributing resources. But, as history shows, this is not true. In fact, history shows that socialism, even when implemented with the best of intentions, inevitably devolves into political persecution, abject poverty, mass murder, and general misery….”
“Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.”
The central issue in climate, the foundational factor to engage and understand– Wendell Krossa
The fundamental issue in climate science is “the physics of CO2” as in the actual warming effect of CO2. And the fact that warming effect has now almost reached “saturation”- meaning its ability to absorb and instantaneously re-emit infrared radiation on the infrared spectrum is now almost full. A doubling of CO2 over the next centuries (from today’s roughly 420 ppm to 800 ppm) will contribute very little to any possible further warming (we don’t know if any warming will continue). Such is the research of atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others.
Put this “saturated warming effect” in the larger climate context which shows that other natural factors have been most responsible for the climate change that we have seen over past decades, centuries, and millennia. CO2 has been shown to have had a very small role in the larger context, a role that is consistently overwhelmed by the other natural factors. See, for example, Javier Vinos’ reports on “The Sun-Climate Effect: Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis” and more at Wattsupwiththat.com and co2coalition.org, etc.
See also “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
Conclusion- There is no “climate crisis” and hence no good scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
And then add the data on the immense benefits of more CO2 in our “CO2 starvation era”. Benefits like CO2 fertilization that has added some 15% more green vegetation to the Earth just since 1980. More food for animals and increased crop production for humanity.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/10/Moore-2.pdf
Another good one- Transcript, “America This Week, April 5, 2024, ‘The Nine Billion RFK Answers Ignored’”, Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn.
“If CNN spends an hour interviewing Robert F. Kennedy and doesn’t hear his answers, did it happen? Walter and Matt discuss. Plus “The Nine Billion Names of God.”
This is another good discussion- This one on Erin Burnett’s (CNN) interview of Robert Kennedy and his now viral statement that “Biden was a greater threat to democracy than Trump”. But even more interesting is how they analyze Burnett’s treatment of Kennedy as illustrative of all that is wrong with mainstream media today- i.e. the confrontational activism, biased to one side, that does not want to hear truth or be challenged and questioned. As others have noted, these news media are no longer even pretending to do journalism but just propagandizing. As Taibbi and Kirn say- just repeating the catechism, just repeating the talking point smears that exhibit Trump Derangement Syndrome to extreme state.
This is some of the best commentary on what is happening in our societies today. Here are a few quotes before the discussion….
Quotes from discussion:
Burnett goes on and on about the evil of questioning elections…. And Kirn says this- “Now, I ask our audience to mark what I’m about to say. If we have a close election this year and Biden loses, you’re going to see all this go right down the memory hole and questioning elections will become the most patriotic thing a person can do.”
And other good points like Joy Behar’s follow-up to this CNN interview where she just smears Kennedy with a string of pejoratives. As Kirn says, “She loaded her shotgun with bad words, anti-science, conspiracy theorist, and so on, and she blew it off in front of the screen. Once again, the logical and argumentative poverty of these people is, I think, going to bite them in the ass, because she doesn’t feel any need to do anything except recite bad words.”
Kirn adds this about mainstream media today- “Walter Kirn: Well, you wonder who their audience really is. I don’t think these places pretend any more to have a broad swath of the American citizenry as their audience, nor do they even have big sections of it. They’re trying to, as I said last week, enact or model a kind of inquisitional attitude that they hope people will adopt themselves. They’re not trying to inform us. They’re not trying to open up debate or even make traditional political arguments. Both Joy Behar and Erin Burnett started with an assumption that they only consolidated and strengthened as they went on. There was no possibility that minds might open slightly as a result of these things. Their job was to close them further.
“And so, are they actually in the normal profession of letting people know more? Or are they now attempting to create by imitation a hypnotic suggestion that we don’t allow this to go any further, that we shut these people up, that this is how you should act at home? And they’re being ignored, their ratings are going down, the layoffs are rising, we have all kinds of acts in Congress and so on to limit the competition to them, which is starting to surge…
“They want to be able to teach everybody, even without them knowing it, to react negatively to ideas that are considered scary or unacceptable or unorthodox. And before you know it, we’ll lose the ability to watch an interview like that with Erin Burnett and feel anything but, “God, I can’t stand that Kennedy guy. What is he doing? Thank God for people like Erin Burnett who are saving us from the infidel.”
And just like the drone of an orthodox sermon that used to drive many of us to boredom, so mainstream media endlessly propagandize with their dogma… “And so, America’s turning it off. One of the reasons it might appear to many, to some at least, that I don’t give democratic media a lot of attention these days, is that I don’t have to. I know what they’re going to say. Why should I waste my time watching interviews like that? Why do I have to get more than two examples of these ritualistic scolding sessions to know what’s going to happen? They are telling me nothing new. And it’s not that I disdain their position as such, but I do disdain their rigidity and their repetitiveness and their predictability, which has become almost total.”
Kirn adds, “And on the great lie of Russian Collusion re Trump- Taibbi says, “even the height of McCarthyism, they didn’t quite try that one.”
“… (Such) is the actual state of the country, which no longer commands the interest of places like CNN. And in this sense, they are elitist. And in this sense, I think they are guilty as charged. They’re talking about inside politics, basically, and things like democracy, and these giant abstractions, while people stand at the gas pump watching the meter run over $100. And those kinds of things are happening really beneath the interest of the Erin Burnetts and the Joy Behars. This is a New York centric, to some extent, L.A. and Washington, D.C. centric media, all of which is pretty well off and insulated from an economy which isn’t working out for a lot of people, and they are just decided to ignore that fact, and have this internecine argument about who should be in the club and who shouldn’t be….
“… to remind people that individuals facing all sorts of difficulties and with all sorts of virtues live in the places that are just being brushed over negatively. But more than that, one thing I’ve noticed on social media, I’ve noticed with my own X account and my wife’s, is that whenever you make a critical comment about life today, about what’s going on out in the streets, out in the stores, in the airports, and so on, you are accused of helping Trump. Because negativity itself about modern American life is construed as an attack on the Democratic Party, an attack on Biden, which shows that there are people so defensive that they think that this country is now owned by them, if to criticize anything about it, is to criticize them…
“… there are all kinds… I mean, Paul Krugman is the greatest example, but there are all kinds of people in journalism and commentary who are now devoted to telling us that everything is great constantly, and to not believe our own eyes if we see contrary evidence. And they’re locked into it. Now they’re locked into it at CNN. The abiding impression I get from that long interview was that he said some rather shocking things about the vulnerability of the average American to an emergency at home, to an engine light going on, and she acted as though it was just dead air. I mean, she didn’t challenge it, she didn’t acknowledge it, she didn’t ask for more details, she didn’t want him to prove it. It just wasn’t material to her. The same Democratic Party that once said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” now wants to pretend that economic issues don’t exist.
“Matt Taibbi: Yeah. No, and you’re right. And that’s part of the catechism too, is that economic insecurity is just a code for white supremacy, Trumpism, et cetera, et cetera”.
More on the battle for free speech- “J. K. Rowling neutered Scotland’s hate speech law using only her words: Objective reality might sound hurtful to some, but they are indisputably not ‘hate’”, Amy Hamm, April 8, 2024
Quotes:
“J.K. Rowling is making headlines again: that quarrelsome, difficult woman — who just can’t for the life of her keep her mouth shut about women’s rights — has neutered new hate crime legislation that came into effect in Scotland on April 1. Using only her words! Is any further proof required that the woman is a bona fide witch?
“Scotland’s new law threatens up to seven years in prison for “stirring up hatred” against identifiable groups, including (not limited to) the religious, disabled, or transgender. Females, however, receive no protections under this new law. Critics — most notably Rowling — called hooey on its professed purpose and argued that what the law actually intends to do is to limit freedom of speech. And in particular, speech defending the sex-based rights of women. On X (formerly Twitter), Rowling was clear as a bell on this:
“In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex,” she wrote.
“Scotland’s new law did not pass in a vacuum: it is but one example of similar legislation that is being pushed across the West, including in Britain, Ireland, and Canada….
“And flout she did: Rowling posted a provocative thread with examples of Scottish transwomen who’ve done heinous things — threatened violence against women; been convicted of rape (including of minors), indecent exposure, or possession of child pornography — and then ended up in women’s prisons; bragged about stealing and wearing their sister’s underwear; and replaced women in sports or professional roles, including as head of one Scottish rape crisis centre. Rowling even made jokes along the way — such audacity — concluding with a taunt for Scottish police to arrest her: “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”…
“Facts and objective reality might sound hurtful to some, but they are indisputably not “hate.” It is essential that we can all speak to biological facts without being criminalized or imprisoned for doing so….
“Across the pond, us Canadians face the prospect of similar legislation being enacted. Like Scotland’s “hate crime” act, the Trudeau government’s Online Harms Bill — headed for a second reading in the House of Commons — also seeks to censor and possibly imprison outspoken, anti-establishment citizens.”
National Post