Other comment just below the opening essay:
(1) Two of the best on climate science- atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer (co2coalition.org). Points made: The crusade against fossil fuels will cause massive human starvation. Atmospheric CO2 is now heavily saturated and more CO2 will have little warming effect. CO2 is essential to our food and to all life on Earth. Greenhouse gases prevent our freezing to death in a world where 10 times more people die of cold every year than die from warming.
(2) Anti-humanism in dominant narratives of today and the murderous call for another mass-death crusade- to cull the human population and thereby “save the world”. Examples: Paul Ehrlich’s “Let India go down the drain” (mass starvation). Or Paul Watson’s call to cull 85% of humanity. But not himself or his family.
(3) The dangerously totalitarian project to criminalize political opponents, critics, even comedians.
(4) Michael Shellenberger on the elite war on freedom, framed as a righteous battle to “protect democracy” by demonizing and blocking “populism”- the revolt of commoners against dominating elites. Populism being real democracy. (“Populism is democracy”- Winston Marshall in Oxford Union debate with Nancy Pelosi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFmjgbdNNgw )
(5) “Misinformation, disinformation”- buzzwords of our era to distort facts, demonize opponents, and mask censorship projects.
(6) Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn- discussions of the big issues facing liberal democracies.
Some more at the bottom of this opening section... (“Please, s’more Sir”)
(7) 2022 Nobel laureate John Clauser- “There is no climate crisis”.
(8) Jordan Peterson’s interview of Patrick Moore, one of the best on paleoclimate and “celebrating CO2”. Moore states that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that CO2 is having any effect on the temperature. Theoretically it might have a little bit, he adds, but it doesn’t show in the record that it has any significant effect.
These bluntly clear statements deserve wide circulation to combat the fallacies that (1) human emissions of CO2 are the “main contributor” to rising CO2 levels, that (2) rising CO2 is the main cause of climate change, and that (3) climate change is becoming an “existential crisis”. All outrightly false, or at least unproven/uncertain with strong evidence to the contrary. I would include, for added punch to counter the climate alarmism narrative that has profoundly distorted the true state of life, that a return to the 3-6 degrees C warmer temperature of the Eocene “mammalian paradise” of 55-33 million years ago would be a more optimal, natural, and net beneficial climate. It was up to 10 degrees C warmer during the Eocene and the oceans did not “boil” and the Earth did not “ignite on fire”. In fact, tropical temperatures varied only a few degrees (Javier Vinos on the “Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis”) and that “equable tropical climate” points to strong negative feedbacks that kept tropical temperatures within a range beneficial to life.
(9) Paul’s Christ myth has been mainly responsible for re-enforcing the primitive and destructive myth of apocalypse in Western narratives and consciousness. Historical Jesus presented the “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God, his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. Pardon my simple logic- If God is non-retaliatory, then God is non-apocalyptic. God will not enact the ultimate act of retaliation against human sin in a world-destroying apocalypse.
I am just affirming the central insight of Historical Jesus that is entirely contrary to Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth.
(10) A report of research on scientific censorship: “Scientific censorship appears to be increasing. Potential explanations include expanding definitions of harm, increasing concerns about equity and inclusion in higher education…”.
(11) Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn: “The other thing that’s interesting here is that what you’re really seeing is a new Inquisition. Whatever they want to call it, what this really is, is a search for heretics and heresy… they are, I hate to say it, complete dangerous zealots, religious zealots made worse by the fact that they don’t think their religion is a religion. They file it under science….
“Walter Kirn: I guess my point is that under the cover of suppressing disinformation, they actually have created the biggest disinformation spreading machine of all time.”
(12) Jimmy Dore interviews the “Plandemic” documentarian and author- Mikki Willis.
And more…
“Death and rebirth, disintegration of the old and re-integration around the new”, Wendell Krossa
Note: I am not replicating exactly here what anthropologists and others have presented in terms of the shamanic experience as a schizophrenic-like breakdown, retreat inward, enduring terrifying experiences, then reintegrating around something new as in a rebirth. Or what others refer to as a “separation-initiation-return” process. This process has been framed by mythologists in terms of the “shamanic experience” as prototypical of human stories or quests.
Some sample commentary on this:
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/22433.pdf
https://verchot.com/the-shaman-and-the-epic-heros-journey-separation-initiation-return/
Rather, I am referencing the general element of transformation in our stories when we part ways with something wrong, harmful, a drag on our progress and then embrace something new, more helpful, and that inspires us to be the better persons that we all want to become.
What Joseph Campbell and others refer to as the “Shamanic experience” is useful to consider as essential to human experience, learning, development, growth and the ultimate achievement of mature humanity. The “death to all that is in the past and a rebirth to a new life” is an essential element of the hero’s quest to conquer a monster/enemy, learn the key lessons of life, to then tower in stature as maturely human, and to bring a boon/blessing to one’s community or to life in general.
Below is my outline of a disintegration/reintegration process that I would urge everyone to consider as vital to all our life stories or quests. This process is critical, uncomfortable as it may be, to the healthy development of human personality and a human life story. My focus in this is on the element of the fundamental themes, ideas, myths that have shaped human belief systems and worldviews across all history and across all cultures of the world. I draw attention to the powerful role in human life of the old narrative themes that have become archetypal in human subconscious.
For multiple-millennia bad ideas in the mix of human belief systems, and hence human mentality, have had a devastating impact on human beings, deforming human personality, as psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo states, and hence deforming human relationships and, at scale, deforming societies. The bad ideas deform us by inciting and validating our worst inherited impulses notably in the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
I would reframe the disintegration and reintegration process as dying to the evil triad of impulses and the ideas/beliefs that have long validated the expression of these animal impulses. The rebirth element in this is to engage fully human impulses and the themes/beliefs that validate and affirm the expression of the impulses of our truly human nature.
We know better today. We have the more humane alternatives to shape our narratives and worldviews. We know, for example, the destructive falsity of central old narratives themes like apocalyptic and millennial salvationism.
I would urge everyone to consider this disintegration/reintegration process as in re-evaluating and replacing old narrative themes with new narrative alternatives. That is the most potent transformational rebirth possible. And most critical- start with the cohering center of human belief systems and narratives- deity theory. That is what Historical Jesus did in overturning all past deity theories with his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. That “most profound insight in history” was subsequently buried by Paul’s Christ myth. The single greatest scandal in religious history. A scandalous contradiction that is still ignored by many in the Christian tradition as similar contradictions are ignored in other religious traditions.
Historical Jesus understood the dominating influence of deity theory on human thought, emotions, motivation, and life overall. He was not an advocate of “lets get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit”. He went to the root of the human problem to deal with the single greatest contributing factor in too much human fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, despair, depression, and nihilism across the centuries. That was the most effective feature in his healing endeavors. Heal the mental psychopathologies behind so much physical suffering, pathologies like “threat theology”.
Intro: A personal disclosure
Facing and engaging a disintegration/reintegration process can be traumatic but is endurable if we recognize that it can also be transforming and liberating, potentially more liberating than any other form of liberation in human life. In many cases this process involves an open-ended life-long struggle that is essential to our progress toward becoming truly human.
I went through this life-changing process after having been caught early in life in the apocalyptic worldview of Evangelical Christianity, my family’s religion. Over subsequent years, I abandoned that belief system. I eventually concluded that I had left religion entirely for a stance that is now commonly termed “spiritual but not religious”. But, to my disconcerting surprise, I later discovered that I had simply shifted into a “secular/ideological” version of the very same belief system that I had held previously- the environmental alarmism variant of the same core apocalyptic themes.
A friend (Bob Brinsmead) then pointed me to Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” which initiated the final phase to breaking entirely free of the apocalyptic worldview. Reading Simon, I realized that I had deluded myself in thinking that I had left my religious past when I had really only abandoned the peripheral trappings of religion but still held the core themes, now framed in “secular/ideological” terms. It was still the same fundamental worldview of “lost paradise/better past, corrupt humanity ruins paradise, life then declines toward worse, toward collapse and ending in apocalypse, demand for sacrifice/payment for sin (suffering as redemptive), demand for violent purging of the evil threat to life, and then the promise of restored paradise or new millennial kingdom”. The core themes of the same old, same old apocalyptic/atonement psychopathology.
This led to a more intentional and thorough re-evaluation of basic narrative themes and the consequent more complete disintegration of my old worldview. It was the beginning of a proper and full re-integration around an entirely new worldview and belief system. The themes of this new narrative or worldview are listed below in “Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives, Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”. My suggestions for guidelines to evaluate bad religious ideas in contrast with new ideas/beliefs.
Part of the transition from old to new involves what Louis Zurcher advised- i.e. that we should not place our identity too dogmatically and rigidly in the ideas or categories that shape our belief system or worldview. We should remain open to ongoing learning, change, new information, further development, growth, transformation, liberation, always remaining flexible in an open process. In the words of his title- be a “Mutable Self”.
Engaging the process of the disintegration of a worldview or belief system scares the Bejesus out of many people. Disintegration of a worldview can be a frightening endeavor to embrace because our beliefs meet deeply rooted emotional needs like the felt need for salvation. The themes of sacrifice/payment (as in atonement theories) meet the natural guilt and shame over our imperfection and the associated belief that we should be judged and punished for our sins. For millennia it has been beaten into human consciousness that punishment of wrong is only proper justice. We deserve it.
One of the hardest beliefs to let go is that deity is an ultimate judge obligated to right all wrong in this world (i.e. rebalance the cosmic scales of justice) and that God is held to human standards of justice as fully retributive, not unconditional mercy, grace, or love. The Jesus/Paul conflict in basic theology and messages epitomizes these issues and contradictions.
What helped me to embrace a disintegration process regarding my formerly religious worldview was the experience of suffering the brutal impacts of bad religious ideas like “cruel God myths” or “threat theology”- i.e. God as tribal deity favoring true believers, excluding unbelievers as well as less-than-zealous believers, God as dominating lord, king who rules all the details of human life, and God as ultimate punitive destroyer via apocalypse and hell.
Zenon Lotufo notes that divine threat deforms human personality with anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, despair, depression, even nihilism. My experience of the crushing of the human spirit by such theology helped me to be open to other alternatives, to be willing to abandon the core ideas of my old narrative for something better, anything better.
Fortunately, I had a wise mentor in Bob Brinsmead who exhibited the liberated spirit of a rebirthed personality. Bob did not decry and trash what he saw as wrong and harmful beliefs. He did not harshly condemn those who propagated bad religious ideas. He stuck to the content of ideas and did not descend to ad hominem attack. He exposed the nature of ideas/beliefs with good research on the origins of ideas, the use and outcomes of bad ideas in systems of belief, and pointed to better alternatives that highlighted the best of being human, that affirmed the human ideals of love and freedom.
Bob’s writing provided a breath of fresh air to smothered and choking human spirits.
Now my main points…
To help understand what’s wrong in our world today (i.e. why we still treat one another so badly at times) nothing is more illustrative of what drives bad human behavior than the themes/features that Paul embedded in his Christ myth, themes that summarize some of the most primitive ideas that humanity has inherited from our ancestor’s earliest speculations on the meaning of reality and life. Our ancestors were responding to their impulse for meaning- the primary human impulse.
The dominant themes that they created shaped a complex of mutually affirming beliefs, all connected in an overarching narrative, termed by some as “apocalyptic millennialism”. I have listed the fuller complex of ideas just below that includes the themes of “lost paradise, fall of man and ruin of paradise, threat of apocalypse, redemption as sacrifice and violent purging of some evil, then hope for restored paradise”.
In stating the relationship of bad ideas to bad behavior (i.e. inciting and validating bad behavior) I am referencing the research of psychologists/psychotherapists like Harold Ellens (“The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam”), Zenon Lotufo (“Cruel God, Kind God”), among others.
They detail how bad religious ideas have deformed human personality with “fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, despair, nihilism, and violence”. Its about the inciting, motivating, and validating influence of ideas/beliefs on human personality. The ideas/beliefs that we embrace, powerfully shape our thinking, emotions, motivation, and response/behavior. This becomes critically important to understand when related to our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
I set forth the dark side of Paul’s theology as a contrast for the central themes of Historical Jesus, what he actually taught. I argue that we honor him properly by presenting his potently transforming message of love and liberty, the “diamonds that have been buried in dung” (i.e. Thomas Jefferson’s evaluation of the contradiction between Jesus’ and Paul’s messages). The contrast with the bad in Paul highlights the true nature of the good in the Jesus message.
Paul’s Christ is an iconic embodiment of the central themes that humanity inherited from the primitive mythologies of our ancestors. These themes shaped the earliest versions of humanity’s project to engage the primal impulse to meaning- i.e. to understand and explain to themselves the cosmos, the world, and human life. Their response to their meaning impulse resulted in mythical explanations of the forces behind the natural world, what created and shaped the world, and what that all means to explain human life and suffering, and what human life should be about.
Here again are the main themes in the old narratives that have dominated human consciousness across history- (1) There was a better past (original golden age, a paradise without suffering and death). (2) Our ancestors committed an original error/sin and thereby ruined paradise. (3) They were punished by the gods who retaliated and punished the ancestors by introducing disease, suffering, and death. (4) Life then began declining toward something worse, toward eventual ending in the “return to chaos”- the apocalyptic destruction of life and the world. The (5) angry gods subsequently demanded a sacrifice of appeasement/atonement and (6) the purging of the evil from life. Then (7) salvation would be granted in the restoration of the lost paradise or instantaneous installation of a new utopian kingdom.
The deities around which these narratives were built were (1) highly tribal (favoring their followers- the “true believers” and punishing/destroying evil unbelievers). The gods were (2) dominating lords, kings, rulers who demanded subservient service from humans (“humans created to serve the gods”). And (3) they were ultimate judges threatening severe punishment and, again, destruction of unbelievers/free spirits. “Cruel Gods”, according to Zenon Lotufo. The gods, as the cohering centers of belief systems, existed to affirm the full complex of myths in the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” narrative.
Across the millennia other nicer features were eventually added to the gods, such as “kindness and mercy” in the Pharaohs, love in the Hebrew deity, etc. But these nicer and kinder features were distorted and overwhelmed by the larger context in religious holy books that are still dominated by the harsher attributes of religious gods- “threat theology” (the “diamonds/pearls buried in dung/muck” that was noted by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy).
The main themes that arose from the earliest human endeavors to express the meaning impulse were in scattered form in the earliest mythologies- i.e. Enki eating the 8 forbidden plants and ruining the original paradise of Dilmun, the waterworks god Enlil threatening apocalypse via a great Flood to destroy all humanity, the Egyptian apocalypse in the “Return to Chaos” and “Destruction of Humankind” myths, the apocalypse at the end of the great rise and decline cycles of Hinduism, the decline element of apocalypse in Buddhist “decreasing lifespan” mythology (Mircea Eliade), etc.
The fundamental themes of early mythologies were later formalized in Zoroastrian theology which then shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Notable contributions and outcomes from Zoroaster’s system of religious belief:
A great cosmic dualism of a good spirit (Ahura Mazda) against an evil force (Angra Mainyu). This grand cosmic dualism of good versus evil then validated human dualisms of (i.e.) true religion against false or evil religions. Zoroaster’s themes deformed the hero’s quest by validating people viewing themselves as heroically good people fighting battles against their evil enemies, conquering and destroying those evil enemies (i.e. the “monsters” to be fought and destroyed in the Hero’s Quest or journey). Zoroaster’s dualism ignored and denied the fundamental oneness of humanity.
Those themes have subsequently persisted across the millennia to shape human narratives, both in the religious versions of world religions and in the “secular/ideological” versions of the modern era, and even in “scientific” versions. The narratives have powerfully shaped human consciousness, life and behavior, societies, justice systems, etc. across our entire history. As Joseph Campbell noted, people have believed the same primitive myths across all history and across all the cultures of the world.
(Insert note: “Scientific” versions”? Yes. Others have also noted that the earlier suggestion that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was the dominant feature determining the trajectory of the cosmos and life was a form of “religious apocalyptic”. You don’t hear much about that anymore.)
People keep embracing and believing the same basic themes/ideas all across history because they resonate with deeply embedded inherited impulses, notably to the evil triad to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others. Hence, we keep embracing the same myths to validate the triad that has dominated so much human life across history. We naturally want divine validation (kids approved by Daddy) for our indulgence of these base impulses. To feel that when engaging such things we are favored by God in some heroic and righteous battle against evil enemies who deserve destruction.
The bad ideas/beliefs (psychopathologies) that we keep embracing is a largely subconscious resonance thing. The inherited myths explain how and why the imagined earlier paradise was lost. They explain to us why we are now imperfect (i.e. the myth that a “fall of humanity” resulted in the ruin of paradise by our ancestors). After all, a creating deity would have created original perfection that we fucked up. Bad religious ideas explain to us why we feel intense guilt over being imperfect, our felt sense of the need to be punished and suffer in order to make amends for our sins. We feel that we deserve suffering as punishment because we have been told for millennia that we are “bad to the bone” (i.e. inherited human “sinfulness”). And the shaman and priests have indoctrinated us, over the same time, with the logical and just “divine” demand to clean up the mess that we supposedly created. Make some atonement (suffering as redemptive). The priesthoods have also bamboozled us to submit to and fund their religious systems of control with the proffered hope of being saved, and of restoring what we ruined (a renewed millennial paradise).
(Insert note: John Pfeiffer in “Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion” has suggested that the earliest religions exhibited the first shaman terrorizing their fellow tribe members in the darkness with “anamorphic” cave art to coerce them to submit to the practises of the shaman/priests and their claims to know the secrets of the invisible realms.)
The myths that our primitive ancestors created, also validated the impulses that dominated their existence, impulses they felt were right and necessary to survive. Stephen Pinker notes, for example, the early practise of pre-emptive attacks on neighboring tribes that were done out of fear that the other tribe might attack, so attack first as pre-emptive defensive action. Hence, primitive life embraced tribal attacks, domination of weaker or defeated others, and the destruction of competing others, known in today’s mass-death versions as “exterminate or be exterminated”.
Further in the mix of primitivism, elite domination of commoners has shaped human societies from the beginning. Dominating elites known as the “big men” in anthropology, were elites that dominated by strength, intelligence, craftiness, deviousness, better skills, or other characteristics. Women were not excluded from exercising the impulse to dominate (i.e. the “big women” in the research of Marija Gimbutas). Domination/submission relationships have shaped societies from the beginning. Such behavior was believed to be necessary to survive in that brutally primitive world. Our ancestors created their mythologies with themes to explain and validate such things. We inherited their mess. (Additional point here: There has never been any such thing as “noble savages”, a more pure, strong, and “more connected to nature” early human.)
Our ancestors created metaphysical explanations and validations for their base animal impulses and most notable in the mix, the base features of early primitive existence were then projected onto their gods, gods that then functioned to validate their lifestyles. That early and since constant human impulse to “base behavior on similar belief”. This impulse has shaped the human desire for meaning from the beginning. We have, in a majority across history, believed that we have been created by some great Source of all reality. And if so, then it only makes logical sense to try to fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. So, we try to understand and project our conclusions onto that Ultimate creating Reality and then use that understanding of deity to validate what we think it means to be authentically human, like our Creator.
The themes that shaped the narratives of our ancestors were later embraced by world religions, notably monotheism, and subsequently re-enforced further in human consciousness, subconscious. That which is protected under “the canopy of the sacred” is protected from questioning or challenge. Condemnation of the primitive belief systems that we inherited has been banned as “heresy, unbelief, falsehood” and subject to severe divine disapproval and even threats of eternal damnation from those religious traditions.
And hence, those themes have continued to incite and validate our worst impulses to tribalism, hatred of differing others, the urge to conquer and dominate others, along with the impulse to destroy competing others. Prominent religious themes continue to deform the “Hero’s quest” that shapes all human stories.
The complex of inherited primitive themes has continued to wreak havoc across the millennia. Understand what those themes are and how they work on human psychology and personality, how they deform personality, as per the work of Lotufo, Ellens, and others. Consider, for example, their point that a God who uses violence to solve problems then validates his followers using similar violence to solve their problems (e.g. God excluding and violently punishing unbelievers, God solving the problem of a corrupted world by destroying the entire world in a fiery apocalypse to punish the sin of humanity, etc.).
We do well to recognize how the above factors shape our thinking and our consequent behavior if we are going to properly and thoroughly solve our worst problems and move further along the road to the better future that we all want. So, understand the basic complex of bad mythical themes and their impacts on people- i.e. lost paradise, decline to apocalypse, salvation via sacrifice and violent purging of evil, and millennial paradise. Note the research of historians like Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, among others, on how these themes have deformed human personality and societies, and how they have incited and validated mass-death movements over the past.
These primitive ideas have persistently re-emerged across history in new movements like environmental alarmism. The new movements employ new terminology, new definitions, but maintain the same basic core of themes as ever before. The “lost paradise/decline to apocalypse/salvation by violent purging/promised paradise” complex shaped Marxism and its destruction, Nazism, and its extermination horrors, and now shapes environmental alarmism/climate alarmism and its ruinous decarbonization crusade.
The apocalyptic salvation complex first alarms people with the ultimate destruction of an apocalyptic ending to life and the world. This plays on the oldest fear of humanity- i.e. the “return to chaos” and death. Once they have sufficiently alarmed a population, the shaman/priests have then offered people hope and presented their salvation scheme that involves sacrifice, suffering, and demands for violent purging of some enemy, some threat. Only then can salvation be assured for the faithful true believers who do not waver in their commitment to the religious authorities and their narrative.
As H. L. Mencken stated it: “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”, In Defense of Women.
Geet a good grip on the complete narrative of “lost paradise/decline to apocalypse/salvation” listed above, the core themes that have re-enforced endless imaginary threats across history, and kept many frightened people subservient to elite powerholders wanting to control and manipulate them. You will then be able to better detect the ongoing use of these themes/ideas in both their religious versions and now, over more recent history, in their “secular/ideological” versions, even scientific versions.
(Insert note: “Scientific versions”? The former cosmological belief in the dominance of the Second Law and consequence decline of the universe toward a worsening state, toward catastrophic ending- i.e. “heat death of the universe”. This apocalyptic-like theory of the domination of the Second Law has been applied to both cosmic scale and to decline in biological systems. Confounding/contradictory problem- the obvious purposeful improvement of biological life from single cells to complex multi-cellular life and more complex ecological systems, more complex “organization” of life. Darwin’s comment that life improves toward more “perfection”.)
Point: Do not let others alarm you and thereby manipulate you with “exaggerated apocalyptic-scale narratives” and fear about decline and catastrophic collapse and ending. That is a direct assault on your freedom and self-determination.
Then consider the alternatives that varied sages, both ancient and modern, have offered us to shape better narratives that inspire our better angels to live like the mature humans that we ought to be, to counter the evil triad that we have inherited- the real enemy/monster inside each of us in the real battle of life.
A critical historical breakthrough to counter the apocalyptic millennial pathology was the central insight of Historical Jesus that went to the very cohering center of the old apocalyptic salvation narratives to overturn the central bad mythical idea- i.e. the God that held the whole mess of “lost paradise, decline to apocalypse, redemption” together and validated it all. The great threatening deity that sat enthroned atop the religious belief systems of humanity. The God that embodied tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. That God underpinned the entire complex of “lost paradise, apocalyptic punishment and destruction, demand for violent sacrifice to pay for wrong, demand for violent purging of wrong in life, and then promise of restored paradise for true believers”.
The Jesus insight plays a critically central role in any thorough disintegration/reintegration project because it goes to the very core of any narrative or belief system. It is central to the process of dying to the old and then rising to new life. Paul completely mucked up and buried that central insight and point of Jesus. Paul, despite some good points that he made, is consequently quite useless to help with a proper and thorough disintegration of the old and reintegration around the new.
Jesus’ “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”, or to state it better in terms of the full redefinition of deity that he offered- i.e. his new theology of an unconditionally loving God as expressed in his most fundamental statement of his beliefs- “There should be no more eye for eye retaliation, but instead love your enemies because God loves God’s enemies unconditionally. How so? God grants the two most basic gifts of life- sun and rain for survival in agrarian society- to both good and bad people alike.” That is the core of a properly humane reintegration around a new reality, a new theology and ethic. That is the rebirth to a thoroughly humane narrative, to authentically human thinking and living.
That central insight in the Jesus message leads to a larger complex of conclusions re the old mythologies that we have inherited:
The God that Jesus pointed to was not obsessed with perfection. That God had never created any original paradise for humanity to ruin. That God had never been upset with human imperfection from the beginning. God had not sent life into decline toward a worsening condition as punishment for ruining the imagined original paradise. The God that Jesus revealed had never separated from and abandoned humanity but always been present among imperfect people, with them inspiring the human spirit to make life better, to love one another, to help others, to find cures to disease, to fight evil and affirm good, to make life ever better.
With the God of Jesus, there was no threat, no judgment, no demand for bloody sacrifice as payment for sin. And yes, long before Jesus the Old Testament prophets- e.g. Micah, Hosea, Isaiah- had also stated that God hated sacrifices and offerings and wanted instead mercy, kindness, love. But, contrary to the prophets, the priests had promoted the “heresy” of the sacrifice industry and buried the efforts of the Hebrew prophets to break free into a new theology. See Bob Brinsmead’s research on this at…..
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
The God that Jesus taught had never urged the violent purging of enemies in ultimate apocalyptic destruction. Pay attention to the “behavior based on similar belief” point in Matt.5 and Luke 6. Jesus stated that the past has been dominated by justice as “eye for eye retaliation”. Again, he rejects that old understanding of justice, stating, “No. Instead, I say- love your enemies because God does. How so? God does not punish or destroy enemies but shows love by indiscriminately, inclusively, unconditionally sending the two most important elements for agrarian life- sun and rain- to both good and bad people”. That new theology of unconditional love for all people is the expression of the true nature of God and ought to form the core of a new system of human ethics or behavior. That should be the essence of the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship, a defining practise of people across history.
Further, to challenge and counter the deeply embedded impulse of most people to affirm apocalyptic mythology, I would argue that a God who does not retaliate, punish, or destroy the bad guys will not enact the ultimate retaliation, punishment, and destruction that is apocalyptic destruction of the world. Clear enough? The God of Jesus is not apocalyptic and hence Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet, as many claim. To make this clear- keep in mind that the Luke 6:27-36 passage is another and better version of the core message of Jesus and exposes the falsity of so much other gospel material that was put in Jesus’ mouth by later gospel writers, material that contradicts his core message or gospel.
The God of Jesus never threatened ultimate judgment, exclusion, and destruction. HIs God was not tribally discriminating- i.e. committed to saving true believers and rejecting unbelievers. With the “God that is unconditional love” all were treated equally.
As James Robinson said, “Jesus greatest contribution to the history of human ideas was his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. Jesus’ new theology was entirely contrary to all previous deities across history- i.e. nonretaliatory, hence non-apocalyptic (ultimate eye for eye retaliation), non-destroying, non-dominating, non-tribal but rather a God of “love your enemy because God does”, meaning unconditional forgiveness, acceptance, and love, with no demand for sacrifice, no demand for the violent death of a savior, etc.
My recommendation: When re-evaluating a narrative or belief system, start with the core idea or theme, the central belief of the system. I would argue that the ultimate reality and ideal that has long functioned as the cohering center of human narratives and belief systems is “deity”. Today such a creating Source or Ultimate Reality is often framed in materialist terms- Natural Law, Self-Organizing Principle, or Dawkin’s “Natural Selection” projected to cosmic scale as “The Source Of All Enlightenment”. Add other less religious versions of deity such as “vengeful Gaia, angry Planet of Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback karma” .
Unfortunate for humanity, the brilliant insight of Jesus was subsequently buried (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy) under Paul’s Christ myth that retreated to and re-enforced the worst of primitive apocalyptic mythology. Paul’s God was a retaliatory deity that would judge, exclude, and destroy all who refused to submit and believe Paul’s Christ. Note, for example, Romans 12: 17-20, both Thessalonians letters, among other sources.
Romans 12: 17-20: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head (as in judgment and hellfire)”.
Statements from First and Second Thessalonians: “Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath…. The wrath of God has come upon them at last… destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape…. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord”.
These passages are clearly talking about apocalyptic destruction. As James Tabor said, apocalyptic shapes everything Paul said and did. His retaliatory God centers his thinking and Christ narrative. The full set of themes of the apocalyptic millennial complex shape Paul’s Christ gospel- i.e. original paradise ruined by early humans, decline of life toward worsening state and eventual apocalypse, demand for sacrifice and violent purging of evil from world, then the promise of restored paradise.
We got Paul’s Christ-ianity not Jesus-ianity. And that has been a great dishonor to Historical Jesus, a profound distortion of the actual person and his true gospel of a non-retaliatory God.
To engage a proper and thorough disintegration/reintegration process, start by recognizing the pathological nature of the above bad ideas. Be aware of exactly which ideas embody psychopathological themes and look at their impacts and outcomes in life over history, the damage and destruction they have incited and validated. Then experience “revulsion” as a useful factor that functions to generate re-evaluation, rethinking, and reforming of a worldview. Stephen Pinker noted how Christian revulsion at the violence that Christianity generated over the past two millennia has led to the modern-era moderation of the Christian religion. However, the research of Richard Landes and others suggests that there has been no such moderation, as Christian beliefs played central roles (inciting, guiding, validating) in the mass death movements of Marxism and Nazism. The same themes now play central roles in “secular/ideological” versions such as climate alarmism.
Notes:
Suggestion: Be open and willing to consciously confront, carefully evaluate, and prepare to exchange any bad ideas in your own personal worldview, whether religious or “secular/ideological”, for better alternatives. Be open and willing to engage and undergo the disintegration of a personal worldview and to embrace the process of re-integration around an entirely new narrative of reality and life.
Many people fear such a radical overhaul and defensively shrink back from any fundamental transformation of a personal belief system as too traumatizing. Why?
The potential trauma arises from the fact that most of us fix our identity inflexibly and rigidly on the ideas and beliefs that we cobble together over a lifetime to constitute our personal worldview. The degree of intensity with which we fasten our identity on a body of ideas/beliefs then shapes the degree of intensity with which we will protect our ideas/beliefs as central to the survival of our very self. Because we tie our identity too closely to the ideas/beliefs that we hold, the survival impulse kicks in as we view the failure of our beliefs as a threat to our very existence.
Again, note the comments in the Intro above on Louis Zurcher’s “The Mutable Self: A Self-concept for Social Change”. My takeaway from his book- Disintegration of a belief system can be viewed as disintegration of our very self. A threat to our very survival. That incites some nasty self-defence reactions in people, even violence as a protective response. Note in this regard the elements of violent reaction in world religions to challenges from modernism (e.g. Islamic terrorism toward infidels/enemies that point out the failures and falsities of the extremist versions of that faith). Note also the increasingly desperate and hysterical reaction of climate alarmists to increasing exposure of the falsity and failures of their alarmism. Add here the increasingly extreme and desperate measures of Woke Progressives to dissenters to their faith- i.e. their endeavors to extreme demonization of opponents (“Nazis, racists, Russian agents, purveyors of dangerous disinformation and hate speech, etc.”), and to consequently censor, ban, silence, and criminalize opponents.
To assist engagement in a disintegration/re-integration project, get a hold of the potential liberation from something harmful that holds us back and the opportunity for progress toward something more beneficially humane that will help us achieve fundamental life goals such as the most basic project to better ourselves and thereby contribute to bettering life overall.
Hold in your mind the beneficial outcomes of disintegration/re-integration, or death and rebirth processes. Remind yourself of the liberating and transforming power of embracing more humane ideals/ideas/beliefs. More humane ideals help inspire us toward a more humane existence and life. They assist us to achieve heroic status in our personal quests, to tower in stature as maturely human.
My point here is that across past millennia, many have oriented their lives around narratives of inherited ideas/beliefs that too often have incited and validated the worst of our inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. While we have gradually learned to do better, we continue to protect some of the worst of inherited themes in our great religions and have also replicated those themes in secular/ideological versions of the same basic beliefs. And we then wonder why we continue to suffer eruptions of the “evil triad” to tribalism, domination, destruction of differing others, that ruins life and societies with hatred, violence, and war.
See the potential for rebirth centered around a new narrative, new views of reality and life, a new supremely humane ideal like unconditional love to serve as the guidepost for ethics, a new insight into the nature of Ultimate Reality that answers our greatest questions about meaning, and consequently, the potential for reaching new heights of humane living, fulfilling what it really means to be truly and fully human.
I have repeatedly suggested here that nothing more potently functions as a new cohering center for a more humane narrative than the ethical/theological insight of Historical Jesus that the creating Source of all reality is most fundamentally a stunningly inexpressible “no conditions Love”. This definition of the core of reality presents the singularly and supremely humane ideal to shape the human impulse for meaning, human ethics, and justice systems.
Unconditional enables us to counter the base tribalism impulse with a new appreciation for the oneness of all humanity. It overturns the curse of domination with the understanding of the equality of all individuals (the Classic Liberal responsibility to protect and promote equal rights and freedoms), and it straightforwardly changes our understanding of justice from the punitive destruction of our fellow humans to the more humane approaches of restorative justice.
Unconditional as the defining core of our narratives and worldviews works to inspire the better angels of our nature like nothing else.
Further, unconditional love at the core of our ideals (the new guidepost for behavior, ethics) points to the safest route through life- how to do the least harm to others and how to do the most good, and to thereby best maintain your own humanity in the face of evil.
Note:
In my 18 themes posted below I suggest some alternative ideas/themes to construct a new narrative around.
Another note:
It has been extremely difficult to root out the psychopathology of apocalypse, because it has been so incessantly beaten into humanity through religious, ideological, and even scientific narratives across history. Apocalypse has been deeply rooted as archetypal in human subconscious, because it meets felts needs, emotions, and impulses that are affirmed by a complex of related bad ideas- i.e. that there was a better past paradise that we ruined by our bad behavior (the inability to accept that the world and humanity have been imperfect from the beginning), that we now deserve punishment for ruining the imagined past paradise, that we deserve divine punishment (from our creator Daddy) and that punishment is evident in life supposedly declining toward a worsening state (i.e. punishment through natural disaster, disease, accident, cruelty of others), and life is moving toward the final punishment of apocalypse- where angry deity will destroy the whole damn thing.
But oh, there is hope in the mix, the offer of salvation to appease the survival impulse. However, first we must make a sacrifice (suffering as redemptive) and purge the world of the evil threat, notably the threat of us bad people consuming too much of Earth’s resources, of enjoying the good life too much. So now we must make a sacrifice of the good life in industrial society and then we get the renewed paradise or a new utopian collective defined by equity outcomes. The mess of bad ideas are all tightly related to keep this apocalyptic pathology alive and dominating human narratives and consciousness and life.
Hollywood refuses to let go of it’s obsession with this psychopathology of apocalypse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films And the contemporary “science” of climate alarmism beats this drum daily, loudly, and ever more hysterically as it sees the climate crusade weakening in public polls on concerns of citizens.
All the scientific research and evidence around climate is critically important for an understanding of the true state of life. But as people like Roy Spencer have said, scientific fact alone doesn’t change many minds because you are dealing with something very powerful in human psyches- i.e. emotions grounded in beliefs that affirm deeply embedded/archetypal impulses, behaviors. Hence, apocalyptic narratives just “feel right” to many people. Apocalyptic stories affirm beliefs that meet emotional needs. Hence apocalyptic is constantly re-enforced in public through media like Hollywood moviemaking. Leading scientists, politicians, and other media commentators all assist in pushing the apocalyptic narrative- i.e. “the oceans will boil, the planet will ignite on fire” (the incessant hysteria over heatwaves as “the worst on record”, even though wildfires have been historically declining). The obsession with apocalypse is due to the fact that we are dealing with powerful beliefs and emotions long deeply embedded in human subconscious.
Essential to solving the problem of apocalyptic belief is to go to root contributing factors, the same themes that still dominate religions both Western and Eastern and hence continue to re-enforce such primitive pathology.
Example: Note Pope Francis repeatedly affirming climate apocalypse. The leading Christian spokesperson for Christianity, and its 2-plus billion adherents, affirming the climate alarm as did Stephn Hawking over the last two years of his life.
Another:
A great battle to win in life (suggested also by Jordan Peterson in his last speech to London conference) is to go into all our daily situations, such as contacts with others, thinking of how we might encourage others, focus on their problems, help them with their problems, and offer some praise or affirmation of their goodness. It is liberating to not think of ourselves and how others view us and what might happen to us, to not be focused on how to advance ourselves, seek praise, but instead to focus on something we can say to help lighten other’s loads, to lessen their suffering, to bring some humor, bring some brightness and hope to their day.
As good as it gets on climate science from the most qualified experts…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/13/fossil-fuels-and-greenhouse-gases-climate-science/
“Fossil Fuels and Greenhouse Gases Climate Science, posted May 13, 2024 on Wattsupwiththat.com
“Paper prepared by Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Steven Koonin and submitted April 16, 2024.
“Summary provided below and the entire paper can be accessed through a link included in the link above… (The summary below is fully quoted from above link)
“THERE WILL BE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE POOR, PEOPLE WORLDWIDE, FUTURE GENERATIONS AND THE WEST IF FOSSIL FUELS, CO2 AND OTHER GHG EMISSIONS ARE REDUCED TO “NET ZERO”
• CO2 is Essential to Our Food, and Thus to Life on Earth
• More CO2, Including CO2 from Fossil Fuels, Produces More Food.
• More CO2 Increases Food in Drought-Stricken Areas.
• Greenhouse Gases Prevent Us from Freezing to Death
• Enormous Social Benefits of Fossil Fuels
• “Net Zeroing” Fossil Fuels Will Cause Massive Human Starvation by Eliminating Nitrogen Fertilizer
“THE IPCC IS GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED AND THUS ONLY ISSUES GOVERNMENT OPINIONS, NOT SCIENCE
“SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES FOSSIL FUELS, CO2 AND OTHER GHGs WILL NOT CAUSE CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL WARMING AND EXTREME WEATHER
• Reliable Science is Based on Validating Theoretical Predictions With Observations, Not Consensus, Peer Review, Government Opinion or Cherry-Picked or Falsified Data
• The Models Predicting Catastrophic Warming and Extreme Weather Fail the Key Scientific Test: They Do Not Work, and Would Never Be Used in Science.
• 600 Million Years of CO2 and Temperature Data Contradict the Theory That High Levels of CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Global Warming.
• Atmospheric CO2 Is Now “Heavily Saturated,” Which in Physics Means More CO2 Will Have Little Warming Effect.
• The Theory Extreme Weather is Caused by Fossil Fuels, CO2 and Other GHGs is Contradicted by the Scientific Method and Thus is Scientifically Invalid
Coming soon...
“Death and rebirth, disintegration of the old and re-integration around the new”, Wendell Krossa
Now some interesting articles from here and there…
Below is what Paul Watson, the leader of the Sea Shepherd Society in BC suggested years ago– i.e. cull 85% of humanity to save the world, but not including him and his family. And this below is also what Paul Ehrlich hoped for. But again, not for themselves as “enlightened elites”, as heroic saviors of the planet who need to travel the world in private jets lecturing the rest of us to stop using fossil fuel energy and to eat bugs while they dine on the best cuts of Japanese beef, as apparently happened at a recent WEF confab of elites.
These prophets of apocalyptic expose the underlying anti-human hatred behind their alarmism crusades. They exhibit a nihilism to mass-death scale, put forth as enlightened activism to “save the world”, a righteous and heroic crusade against the great “evil” that is all those industrial society consumers who oppose their views, the “unbelievers, deniers” of apocalyptic hysteria.
“Climate Professor Thinks We Should ‘Cull’ the Human Population to Reach Emissions Targets”, By Paul Homewood, May 15, 2024
Post of the climate professor:
“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate”.
Responses:
“Ooopsie. McGuire deleted the tweet a few hours later but had no regrets. The trouble is, we just don’t understand how brilliant he is.
Further post by climate professor:
“Right, I am deleting the initial Tweet now. Not because I regret it, but because so many people out there have mistakenly or intentionally, taken it the wrong way”.
A response by Chris Martz: “No, nobody took it the wrong way. It was crystal clear. You believe that the best way to “save the planet” is to reduce the human population, but you don’t want to volunteer to go first and lead by your own example because you think your existence is superior to everyone else.
“And the folks reading this, academic institutions you send your children to for higher education are infested with dangerous people with this mentality. They hate you” (end of Martz response).
Here is another link to the full story:
There used to be a sort of widespread agreement (?) with Milton Freidman’s statement that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary issue. Government printing more money than the yearly GDP rate of expansion. The money supply, argued Freidman, should be the same rate of increase as the annual GDP rate.
This from…
https://www.racket.news/p/magic-monetary-theory-goes-primetime
“Magic Monetary Theory Goes Primetime: Modern Monetary Theory was interesting back when it was dismissed as a fringe curiosity, but more like terrifying now that it’s being taken seriously”, Matt Taibbi, May 18, 2024
The dangerously totalitarian project to criminalize opponents, critics of the climate alarmism crusade. So also, David Suzuki has called for the criminalization and imprisonment of executives of fossil fuel companies. The very people who provide us the fuel to heat our homes, drive our cars, and survive in this cold world where 10 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth. Think about such facts before mindlessly supporting the “disinformation” that is climate alarmism and its salvation scheme of ruinous decarbonization, to “save the world”.
Quotes (see full article at link above):
“Jail the Deniers? British Environmentalist Demands Criminal Sanctions”, Essay by Eric Worrall, May 14, 2024
“Its time”: Speaking on GB News, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded criminalisation of public climate denial.
“Andrew Doyle clashes with environmentalist demanding climate denial is criminalised: ‘Tyranny by stealth!’
“By Ben Chapman Published: 13/05/2024 – 09:57
“Jim Dale likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories
“Andrew Doyle became embroiled in a feisty free speech row with environmentalist Jim Dale as the latter demanded climate denial be criminalised.
“Speaking on GB News, Dale likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories, arguing they are too dangerous for public discourse.
“Andrew took a differing perspective on the matter, asking what Dale expects to achieve by silencing climate change sceptics….
“According to environmentalist Jim Dale, climate skeptics would still be allowed to talk to family and friends, “nobody would kick in the door”, but would face criminal sanctions if they “pollute” people by voicing their opinion in public.
“Asked for an example of how climate denial could be suppressed with criminal sanctions, Jim Dale suggested it would be like how racism has been driven from public discourse. Britain has harsh anti-hate speech laws.
“… environmentalist Jim Dale refused to concede the possibility that people who claim we are currently experiencing a climate crisis might be wrong.
“The reality of climate change is that the Earth is currently experiencing a very cold period by geological standards.
“We are currently living in the Quaternary ice age, a severe cold period which started two and a half million years ago, and continues to the present day.
“The Quaternary is one of only five great glaciation periods which have been detected in the geological record – the others are the Huronian (2.2 billion years ago), Cryogenian (720-635 million years ago), Andean-Saharan (460-420 million years ago), late Paleozoic (360-255 million years ago), and the Quaternary Ice Age, our current period of extreme cold.
“Think about that – during more than 2 billion years of geological history, only 5 great cold periods have been identified, and we are currently living in one of those periods. The last time the Earth was this cold for a sustained period was 255 million years ago.
“Given the geological evidence is that we are living in a geologically significant period of extreme cold, how can today’s temperatures possibly qualify as a global warming emergency?
“Yet an opinion such as I just provided, a simple statement of fact, would likely be illegal under Jim Dale’s climate denial rules. Under Dale’s proposed rules, myself or anyone who retweets this article could go to jail or lose their house, merely for suggesting that people living in the middle of an ice age should be more concerned about glaciers than beach weather.”
Another good one from Shellenberger
“Global Elites’ Fear Of Democracy Behind War On Free Speech: Beware politicians demanding censorship to ‘protect democracy’”, Michael Shellenberger, May 17, 2024
“Elites fear of democracy”-
My response to Shellenberger’s comments (Wendell Krossa)- Meaning, elites fear not getting their way, of losing the power to dominate/control all others. That is the naked totalitarian spirit. Today’s Western elites have been validating that control with the narrative they have created that they are in a righteous war against an intolerably evil enemy. Note the endless demonization of differing others with extremist smears of being “Nazis, racists, threats to democracy, purveyors of disinformation/hate speech, Russian agents, fascists…”, etc.
Hence, today’s elites are trying to revive waning zealotry for their narrative that they are in an existential battle to save democracy, to save the world, and to accomplish that they must heroically vanquish the threat of disagreeing others. This veers perilously close to the shift made by other totalitarians (when their movement starts to lose steam) toward the more dangerous stage of “exterminate or be exterminated”.
Leaders of apocalyptic millennial movements make this shift when growing disillusionment sets in with their narrative and their movement begins to fail. They then “double down” on the zealotry for their crusade and that becomes dangerous as democracy is intentionally set aside for more coercive forms of activism. Add the panic-mongering claim of the “immanence of the apocalypse” and that demands desperate measures. Richard Landes has detailed the stages of these apocalyptic millennial movements. It happened with Marxism, Nazism, and watch out if it (or as it) emerges in environmentalism.
https://public.substack.com/p/global-elites-fear-of-democracy-behind
“Misinformation, disinformation”- buzzwords of our era
“What is the most pernicious example of ‘Misinformation’ currently circulating?”, Francis Menton of Manhattan Contrarian, May 19, 2024
What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of “Misinformation” Currently Circulating?
““Misinformation” — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few years. The “misinformation” label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents. Numerous assertions that have dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false, that is, “misinformation.” Examples of such assertions that have been established as “misinformation” include the assertion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election; the assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian plant; and the assertion that the Covid virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan….
“Other serious contenders for the title of “most pernicious misinformation” could include the assertion that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to human health and welfare; or the assertion that Israel is conducting a “genocide” against Palestinians. Undoubtedly, you have other candidates to add to the list.
“So why do I say that the assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there? Here are my three reasons: (1) the assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, (2) it is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world, and (3) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone’s intelligence, yet rarely challenged….
“Try to find in any of them a serious discussion of the costs of backup, storage, or transmission upgrades to try to make an electrical grid work with these intermittent generators. You won’t….
“The problem is that the idea that wind and solar make the cheapest electricity is plain wrong…. The idea that wind and solar are cheapest fails to take account of any of the ancillary costs necessary to make a fully-functioning grid: the entire system of backup facilities to provide the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining; the transmission facilities to take the power from wherever is windy or sunny to anywhere else it may be needed on a moment’s notice; the batteries or other storage facilities to save up energy in anticipation of inevitable wind and solar droughts; and so forth. In short, the idea that wind and solar generation of electricity are the “cheapest” is classic misinformation, the endless repetition of an assertion that is clearly false and known to be false.”
“Price of Poilievre”- “New Democrats try out a sharper line of attack as Conservatives target NDP ridings”, David Thurton, May 18, 2024
My response to the NDP charge against Poilievre (Wendell Krossa):
No, the real issue that the NDP need to sharpen their focus on is their refusal to fully and properly account for price of NDP socialist policies.
NDP, like all socialists, appear to have never understood the real damaging price of their approach to managing economies. They obsessively promise all sorts of free stuff- i.e. free dental, educational, and other goodies, to buy votes. But they never explain how to create the wealth to pay for that stuff. I watched Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential run, promising all sorts of freebies, and I never heard him explain how he would promote the wealth creation to pay for his gifts.
These people just assume more deficit spending by government will cover the costs (i.e. redistributive policies). That approach, among other damage like “lost opportunity costs”, exacerbates the inflation problem.
Collectivist advocates lack basic understanding of what promotes wealth creation. Wealth creation depends largely on “productivity increases” in business which is then directly related downstream to wage increases for workers.
Promoting wealth creation in a society, means- Respect business, not government, as the creator of wealth in a society. This was the insightful admission of the leader of the Communist party in Mitterrand’s 1980 coalition in France after they tried, like all socialists, to nationalize sectors of the French economy, which tanked the economy within a year. They had the sense to back off and reverse their nationalization approach, with the Communist leader admitting- “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Speaking of true “wokeness”, eh.
To have the freedom to create wealth, businesses (small, medium, large) need protection from excessive state appropriation of resources through taxation, and excessive state/bureaucratic control through regulation, a protection that socialists do not understand with their obsession to eliminate private property ownership as the great evil in the world. Marx, and fellow Marxist theorists, stated that the number one enemy to eliminate was private property, if he were to install collectivist utopia- “the elimination of all private property… abolish private property and evil will vanish from the Earth”, (Heaven On Earth, Richard Landes).
Socialist types, with their obsession for redistribution of wealth, have repeatedly ruined economies and impoverished all citizens. Sources: “Socialism: The Failed idea that Never Dies”, also former Socialist Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven On Earth”, along with Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, and William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”.
Ben Carson, who ran for president in 2016, had a folksy way of explaining this issue of business creating wealth. He displayed a good grasp of the basics of Classic Liberalism principles. He said that government’s role was to promote an environment in which business could flourish with low regulation and low taxation. And that nails the essence of the conflict between the socialist and the free market approaches in our formerly liberal democracies- i.e. state control of economies through taxes and regulations and the battle for freedom from such assaults.
State bureaucrats and elites, oriented to collectivist approaches, believe that they know better than businesses and average people how to spend their money, so they appropriate citizen’s wealth through taxation. And then, further indulging the totalitarian impulse, they interfere, manipulate and control commoner’s lives with endless rules and regulations. That ruins economies by clogging up the ability of businesses to operate freely. And yes, some minimal basic regulation is useful to protect equal opportunity for all citizens, and to protect from corrupting influences on economies (a threat usually emanating from governing elites). Good regulation will embody and summarize the wisdom from past experience to help the wealth creators of the present avoid past mistakes, but will not function as immutable law and must be subjected to regular de-regulation mechanisms and processes to unclog business operating environments.
Protecting the freedom of individuals in free markets is about fundamentally trusting people to choose what is best for themselves (given full information on any issue), protecting their self-determination and freedom of choice. Socialists don’t trust average people to do what collectivists believe is right for all (“common or greater good” where collectivist elites dominate in defining such common good). Framing themselves as “enlightened vanguard elites” they despise commoners as the deeply religious Marx and Engels did, so also Mao. Deeply religious? Yes, see Richard Landes’ history of Marxism in “Heaven On Earth”.
Added note-
The past few centuries have shown that “greater or common good” has been better affirmed by the approach to organizing societies that promotes the freedom and rights of individuals. And greater or common good has been undermined, even devastated, by the approach that subjects individuals to collectives.
The socialist failure to not trust individuals to do what is best for all, is rooted in an elite despising of commoners that speaks, among other factors, to a deeply embedded self-hatred that is based on the primitive mythology that views of people as fundamentally corrupt or evil. This anti-humanism expressed in the earliest mythology and religion (the myth of essentially “sinful or fallen humanity”) has cursed our consciousness from the beginning. It has long incited hatred of humanity in general, as well as self-hatred. It does not appreciate the true state or story of humanity as having risen out of a barbaric past to become something ever better across time- evident in lessening violence, becoming more compassionate and creative, and thereby successfully improving life over the long term.
In this edition below, Taibbi and Kirn play a clip of Fareed Zakaria of CNN, notably his warning recently that the Biden campaign is failing badly and then they make these comments- It’s about the “denial” that Biden is voicing, claiming that he is ahead and the polls are all wrong… not facing the truth that most Americans are unhappy with his presidency. These two are good on unsettling trends/events occurring in our societies today, and the corruption of mainstream media that have repeatedly lied to us over past years about so many critical issues like Russiagate, election interference, partisan censorship, Covid, etc. Media coming out in a highly partisan, biased manner, coming out as activists, propagandists for the Woke Progressive movement that, having gone extremist left, is fronting the new collectivist totalitarianism that is the real threat to democracy today…
“America This Week: Delusion, Not Just Once A Year”, Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, May 18, 2024
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-may-66e?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
“A wild backlash against a poll underscores the never-ending cycle of mad delusions that American pop culture has become. Plus, Heinrich Böll’s my-how-relevant “Christmas Not Just Once a Year.”
(Here are some quotes from below for those who find these discussions too long. My recommend is that these two along with others like Greenwald, Shellenberger, etc. do some of the best commentary on what is wrong in our societies- touching the main features of our democracies today)
Starting with some comment on the Zakaria warning…
“Walter Kirn: And I felt it was a fairly adequate analysis of the situation. I think it may be that inside the bubble, they’re waking up to the fact that everything that they thought was going to work didn’t work, because now they’re admitting that they’re on the Biden side. They’re admitting that they’re cheerleaders, that they’re concerned about Trump getting in and so on. There’s no more beating around the bush. They in the media and CNN and so on are with the party, and the party is behind Biden at the moment. And I think they’re just waking up inside the dome and going, “Wait, these trials aren’t hurting him. Wait, the economy that on paper looks so good to us because we’re all freaking millionaires anyway. How would we know?” Really, how would they know?
“It must look like delusion to them to get in their town car at the end of the day and go to whatever Connecticut suburb they live in and then read that Americans are upset about the economy. Where? You mean those people at the news stand where I buy my paper? So I think it may be a genuine case of them feeling alarm at the fact that everything they anticipated, as Zakaria said, isn’t happening. They got it all wrong.
“Matt Taibbi: Okay, so here we come to the big headline, just basically impossible revelation of this week and maybe the theme of this show. Is it possible that these people all really thought that the trials, Biden, who can’t speak a sentence, the relentless putting of the thumb on the scale and every conceivable media platform, the censorship, everything, that they thought this was going to work with actual voters, and they’re only now waking up to the fact that it’s not working? I mean, forget-
“Walter Kirn: Yes, it’s possible, Matt, because from the inside, delusion looks like truth. And we should never underestimate the ability of people in a insular environment to lose touch with reality. And I think they did, and they’re losing it a little less now….
“Matt Taibbi: The Stormy Daniels thing is just absurd. I’m sorry, it’s absurd. The other ones, maybe we can talk about there being some reality behind it, but this one, no. So when you do that and you put it on TV every single day, that plus Russiagate, plus a million other things, there was abundant evidence that this did not work, that every time they did this kind of thing, it hurt them. Same thing with when these figures endorse somebody like Ron DeSantis publicly and he sank like a stone in the poles. They should have gotten a hint there. I mean, there have been a thousand times that when they should have been able to look at data or the real world reacting in a certain way and understood that this is how things go. It just boggles the mind that it’s taken until now to recognize that you actually have to win the election and that what they were doing before wasn’t working.
“Walter Kirn: But Matt, is it any different than what we’ve been told about the Ukraine war? Is it any different than what we’ve been told about a number of things that were supposedly on the verge of success or breakthrough and it was always tomorrow and tomorrow, and then they just fade off when the script doesn’t play out the way they anticipated? The inertia inside these groups is great too.”
(Taibbi and Kirn discuss the delusion of living in a bubble reality that denies actual reality)
“Matt Taibbi: Anyway, he goes on, but you get the point. Jonathan Karl, who’s normally, I would say, as anchor people go, he’s usually relatively in touch with reality. But his whole thing is, the problem is people just haven’t heard the bad news about Trump enough. He’s still in that place. If you don’t by now understand that the bad news about Trump is what’s actually driving him up in the polls, it’s amazing to me.
“Walter Kirn: So first of all, the Gilligan’s Island reference, which unfortunately most people now are too young to understand. But Karl is the professor and Joe is the skipper. And Joe Scarborough’s the person who gets frustrated and isn’t very smart, but whatever, puts his foot down and gets upset. Jonathan Karl is the professor. But they both agree on one thing. The problem is perception, not reality. It couldn’t possibly be reality. If you like Trump, it’s just that you haven’t seen enough bad news about him. Or if you don’t hate him enough, you just haven’t seen enough bad news about him. If you think the economy’s bad, it’s just because you don’t understand the statistics or you haven’t applied them to your real life or you’re subject to some kind of irrational attachment to ideology that won’t allow you to see how good you have it. They’re all disappearing into the other realm in which, as you say, with that brilliant comparison to the Joseph Heller play, “The map is more important than the territory.” As a certain philosopher put it.
“And they are preferring the map to the territory at this point and saying, if you’re not upset about Trump, if you don’t realize what a terrible threat he is, it’s because you have a bad map. And if you don’t realize that Joe Biden’s actually winning, not losing, and doing much better than we could expect, then you have a bad map.
“Now, the Times I think last week suggested, and we covered it on the show, that they are going to make a concerted effort to cover reality after having been maybe a little too lost in the partisan bubble. And maybe that’s what’s upsetting these people because they’re all stuck behind in the old model while the New York Times has decided it’s going to be a fearless reporter of actual news and try to make polls that reflect actuality and so on. And it’s going to ruin the game for all of us.
“Now, a lot of these people who do campaign reporting, they’ve been doing it forever. They’ve been doing it since the ‘80s, in some cases since the ‘70s in some extreme cases. And the tradition with campaign journalism is that campaign journalists had a very heavy hand in deciding who won elections…
“And the voters were really exalting in this new power they had to decide for themselves. And that came across over and over again with Bernie, with the rejection of media favorites like Beto O’Rourke and Kamala and Pete Buttigieg. They not only didn’t vote for those people, but they made sure that the numbers were one or zero in the polls. How much evidence do you need that the game is different?…
Walter Kirn: They may just be facing this time a kind of terror that, wait, we thought that was permanent. We thought we had our mojo. We thought we were back in the driver’s seat. Maybe we’re not. And what you’re seeing is a kind of chaos wave passing through the 500 as they go, are we going to do it again? Are we all on the same team again? Can we pull it off again?
“Matt Taibbi: It’s an Austin Powers movie. They lost their mojo. They’re going to have to go back in time and seize it from… Right? Okay. So yes, Joe Biden did get elected in 2020, but one thing that has been a constant is that the public reacts negatively to media pronouncements about things. I mean, it’s impossible that they cannot be aware of that phenomenon. That whenever the press hypes something up-
“Walter Kirn: The Streisand effect kind of thing or a related phenomenon.
“Matt Taibbi: Yeah.
“Walter Kirn: But it’s not impossible that they are unaware of it. First of all, their choral point about this election is that it’s an emergency. It’s the end of democracy if Trump gets elected. It’s the greatest crisis, probably civilization ending in the United States. And they must, I think, be shocked that at that level of rhetoric, they’re not moving the needle. I mean, we’re declaring that apocalypse for democracy is imminent and yet this guy’s still ahead. That must be frightening to them….
“Walter Kirn: Yeah. They’re calling him just still being alive a free ride. And here’s the problem, and I’ll just confess this to our audience. I’m not one of those who believes that the world’s going to end if Donald Trump is elected. I think this is a presidential election, not the edge of eternal damnation. So I can’t buy into that. But they really want you to, and they think America should too. And I do think they’re in actual real, sincere denial about the failure of their siren to wake outrage at the level they think it should.
“Matt Taibbi: You’re just bringing up the idea that this is just a normal presidential election. Let’s cover it like that. Instead of the continuation of democracy versus the end of the world, which is a storyline the public is not accepting, or a lot of them aren’t accepting anyway. There is a reluctance to do this because that would mean conceding on some level that it would be okay or it would be something that we could live with if Donald Trump was president. And just to give an example of how people think about this, Nancy Pelosi was approached by a reporter in the halls of Congress this week and asked about the possibility of Trump and Biden debating. And she offered her opinion that she doesn’t believe it’s a good idea. And the reason is essentially that that would give people the impression that this is normal and that it’s okay to be on the same stage with him, which it is an amazing scene.”
(Insert: Then Taibbi and Kirn play a clip of Nancy Pelosi stating Biden should not debate Trump because he has no “dignity” and should not be president because of that…)
“Walter Kirn: … brought out the saxophone or whatever, the presidency has been, to some extent, showbiz in America. And they always retreat to this dignity argument when they want to cover some other, I don’t know, bit of cowardice or something. I think she’s saying he might lose a debate so he shouldn’t do it. And in the name of dignity.
“Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I think she really believes that.
“Walter Kirn: You think she really believes that he was stalking Hillary Clinton? Remember that? When they were both standing on stage and he moved behind her? Maybe to show his stature, I am not sure. But it was treated almost like a mugging in an alley in downtown Brooklyn or something. I don’t think they’re worried about dignity at all. They have no dignity. I think they’re worried about him losing.
“Matt Taibbi: And the last thing about this though, Walter, yeah, I do believe they are worried about him losing. But the reaction that you have about, oh my God, eye rolling at the dignity of the presidency. That’s why Trump won in 2016. It’s because people think presidents are shameless whores for money and power who sit around every week guffawing over which people they’re going to drone in whatever country. They change their opinions based on what their donations are. They will suck a golf ball through a garden hose for a vote. Everybody knows this. There was a moment, I think, in time where the public realized, okay, we’ve got to stop placing all our hopes in presidents being, at the real, perfect creatures.
“And here comes Donald Trump, the vision of the imperfect human being, and he’s stomping all over the dignity of the presidential election process. And people voted for it in huge numbers. They just voted for that concept. And here’s Pelosi still not getting it and saying, “Yes, there should be separate procedures for those of us who are worthy and those of us who are not.” And if they keep that up, they’re going to elect the guy again, I think, is what’s going to happen.
“Walter Kirn: How dignified is it to have a president who’s constantly slurring and staring off into space and walking like he’s on hot lava on another planet? One could argue that the dignity of the office has been forever corrupted, even further than it might’ve been by Donald Trump, by a kind of patient, someone who’s not all there, being constantly touted as a strong leader. The presidency, whatever it was supposed to look like in 1950s movies, is not that anymore. It just isn’t. Maybe there was a chance for it with Mitt Romney. Or maybe that’s what people are most nostalgic about with Obama, that he was an elegant character who-
“Walter Kirn: I think we’ve both thought out loud, done a lot of speculating, tested hypotheses here. And what I’ve come to believe about this whole thing is that denial is real. That people tend to discover reality later than they would have otherwise when they’re in these enclosed and insular environments. And I don’t see, in any case, whether it’s Biden or the press, much incentive to rock the boat. But I did find Joe funny finally, because he was playing whistleblower. He was saying that the New York Times does clickbait and that they run 17 fake stories off each one of these polls and so on. He was playing media critic as though he was telling you from the inside how the game is played. And that’s when I knew he was a fraud in this respect. Because Joe being outraged about the wily ways of the press. Come on, that’s an act. But maybe, as I said earlier, the New York Times-
“Matt Taibbi: MSNBC, I mean, you take any tiny little detail, “Trump uses Russian dressing on salad. Conspiracy discovered.” And you would have 59 stories about that. Right?”
Adults taking charge of the kids…
“In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal , University of Florida president Ben Sasse said things that would be unthinkable on any Canadian campus, but he got right to the heart of the matter.
“At the University of Florida, we have repeatedly, patiently explained two things to protesters: We will always defend your rights to free speech and free assembly — but if you cross the line on clearly prohibited activities, you will be thrown off campus and suspended. In Gainesville, that means a three-year prohibition from campus. That’s serious. We said it. We meant it. We enforced it. We wish we didn’t have to, but the students weighed the costs, made their decisions, and will own the consequences as adults. We’re a university, not a daycare. We don’t coddle emotions, we wrestle with ideas.”
Climate Files:
Good points and conclusions from a great scientific mind- Nobel laureate John Klauser (2022 Nobel for physics- quantum entanglement)
https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2024/TWTW%205-25-2024.pdf
“The Week That Was: 2024 05-25 (May 25, 2024) Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org) The Science and Environmental Policy Project”, Ken Haapala
Summary of quotes from Haapala’s article at link above:
“John Clauser: In a zoom address to the Irish Climate Science Forum and CLINTEL, Nobel Laurate in physics John Clauser delivered the most devastating critique of the science used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…
“To show that the conclusions the IPCC reaches are not justified by the evidence presented. There is no significant carbon dioxide-caused global warming. The claim is a hoax based on a pseudo-science, a fake science that has no meaning. It lacks strict adherence to the scientific method in which all physical evidence is analyzed….
“I assert that the IPCC has not proven global warming! On the contrary, observational data are fully consistent with no global warming. Without global warming, there is no climate-change crisis!
“Their computer modeling (GISS) of the climate is unable to simulate the Earth’s surface temperature history, let alone predict its future….
“The IPCC’s observational data are wildly self-inconsistent or are fully consistent with no global warming….
“NOAA’s claims that there is an observed increase in extreme weather events are bogus. Their own published data disprove their own arguments. A 100-year history of extreme weather event frequency, plotted frontwards in time is virtually indistinguishable from the same historical data plotted backwards in time….
“The IPCC scapegoats atmospheric greenhouse gases as the cause of global warming, and further mandates that trillions of dollars must be spent to stop greenhouse gas release into the environment with a so-called ‘zero-carbon’ policy….
“I assert that the IPCC and its contributors have not proven global warming, whereupon their house of cards collapses…
“The IPCC’s basic argument is a flawed house of cards: (The following are IPCC points that undergird climate alarmism)…
“The IPCC claims with great certainty that the Earth has a (proven) net power imbalance. It claims that there is more sunlight power incident on the Earth heating it, than there is lost power cooling it. The lost power has two forms: reflected sunlight and reradiated far infrared radiation.
“More power IN than power OUT defined global warming! The IPCC claims a net warming power imbalance!
“Global warming leads to climate change.
“Climate change leads to an increased frequency of extreme weather events and other bad phenomena.
“An increased frequency of extreme weather events leads to global apocalypse and climate crisis. NOAA claims to have observed an increase (Their claims are visibly bogus.).
“The IPCC’s claimed net warming power imbalance is claimed to be caused by an atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gasses, especially of CO2.
“Trillions of dollars must therefore be spent to limit, prevent, and reverse the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gasses.
“However, given that claimed net warming power imbalance is not proven, and there is actually no global warming, then there is no crisis, and the house of cards has collapsed.
“I assert that the IPCC’s claimed net power imbalance is not proven, and that there is no crisis. The House of cards has indeed collapsed! The requested trillions of dollars are a waste.”…
Klauser refers to the NASA-CEERES website for this quote:
“Climate is controlled by the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of infrared energy emitted to space…
He then concludes: “There is no climate crisis caused by carbon dioxide. There is a political crisis caused by the IPCC and its collaborators…”
Then Haapala adds this:
“Science v. Activism: Professor of Environmental Systems Analysis, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK, Ulf Buentgen has an essay in Nature questioning the activities of climate scientists and their failure to distinguish between what is known (science) and their beliefs (activism)…
“Climate science and climate activism While this Comment is not a critique of climate activism per se, I am foremost concerned by an increasing number of climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies….
“I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicize climate and environmental change….
And finally from Haapala…
“Pernicious Myths: Francis Menton of Manhattan Contrarian asks a great question: What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of “Misinformation” Currently Circulating? TWTW’s response is simple: Perhaps the vilest of many examples is that carbon dioxide, which is essential for photosynthesis, is a pollutant. Photosynthesis is the food source for all complex life on Earth. To oppose the increase of carbon dioxide is to oppose the flourishing of life on Earth. See link under Questioning Green Elsewhere.”
Here is Jordan Peterson’s interview of Patrick Moore, one of the best on paleoclimate and “celebrating CO2”. The first minute is an ad for Peterson’s engagement of an atheist who enjoys a good debate…
Moore then opens, noting that the alarmism over 1.5 degree C warming is so “stupidly ridiculous… to claim it will be disastrous”, when it will be hugely beneficial in opening up farmland, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTBpds2dQA
Moore notes that CO2 is the most essential element for life because we are all carbon based as all life is. He states that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that CO2 is having any effect on the temperature. Theoretically it might have a little bit, he adds, but it doesn’t show in the record that it has any significant effect. There are obviously many other things that are far more important in determining the temperature of the earth.
Peterson later reviews some of the main points Moore covered- i.e. that is was much warmer in the past (notably the Eocene “mammalian paradise” where temperatures were up to 10 degrees C warmer) and life flourished. The atmosphere had far more CO2 over paleoclimate history (up to 6000 ppm) and there is very little evidence of a profound relationship between CO2 proportion and temperature. Now, over the past 2.5 million years in an ice age era where CO2 has declined to dangerously low levels, thereby starving plant life, humanity with our CO2 emissions are helping to save life by giving more CO2 to plants that are now flourishing (the 15% increase in green vegetation across the world since 1980).
Moore concludes that there is no doubt whatsoever that our CO2 emissions are the salvation of life on earth. Earth was on a path to all life dying as CO2 levels had declined some 20,000 years ago to around 180 ppm, just 30 ppm above the level at which all life dies (150 ppm).
The Peterson/Moore discussion was a master-class on the main climate issues from the best of minds. Moore presented the big picture of paleoclimate history that reveals the main factors shaping climate change.
One of Peterson’s questions to Moore- “How did the climate apocalypse thing start?”
In framing his question Peterson made reference to Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome hysteria in the 1960s re overpopulation alarmism. There may have been more historically immediate factors contributing to that 60s environmental alarmism, but the roots of all apocalyptic thinking are much deeper in the human past.
The deeper roots of apocalyptic mythology could go back to varied destructive natural events (i.e. ancient tsunamis, floods like the great Black Sea Deluge of 7600-5600 BCE that fed myths like the great Sumerian Flood story, etc.). The overpopulation element was part of the Sumerian Flood myth in that the waterworks god, Enlil, threatened to kill all humanity because there were too many people and they were too noisy.
Add factors such as the primitive belief that there were spirits/gods behind all the elements of the natural world and those gods punished people’s sins through environmental disasters or crop failures, starvation, etc. Include the repeated problem that tribal groups would exhaust local resources resulting in degradation and devastation of local environments. Hence, too many people running out of local resources was an ancient concern, the “population bomb” of the ancients, resulting in people being viewed as destroyers of paradise from the earliest times. There are so many strands that have kept this antihumanism alive across past millennia. Ehrlich and Club of Rome just revived an ancient narrative and its themes that have been around for all time.
Ehrlich just responded to something that has dominated human narratives and consciousness across history from the beginning and he ran with that as it still widely resonates with most people.
Paul’s Christianity is mainly responsible for re-enforcing the fallacy of apocalyptic in Western narratives and consciousness: Wendell Krossa
The comment below is a take off on James Tabor’s summary points (in his book “Paul and Jesus”) that “Paul has been the most influential person in history”, shaping everything in our societies today- ethics, justice, etc. And that “apocalyptic shaped everything that Paul said and did”. Others have similarly stated that Paul’s Christ myth is “the most influential myth in history”.
Note: My comments below are not intended to “trash Christianity” in particular (it is the religion I once belonged to and am most familiar with). I am just trying to get to the actual message of the person that Christianity claims to represent- What did he actually teach, as in the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel? What was his main theme, message, or point? What should we celebrate and honor him for? Where did Christianity go wrong in representing him?
I refer repetitiously to Christianity because it so iconically illustrates where all past mythology and religion went wrong in representing God to humanity. Historical religions have all embraced the worst of primitive mythology that distorts entirely the actual nature and character of deity, and they have thereby rendered God a more animal-like reality than human.
Historical Jesus was the first in history to get the true nature of deity right- as supremely, transcendently humane in terms of unconditional forgiveness, generosity, goodness, and love. The great scandal and contradiction of “Christ-ianity” is that Paul buried the core message of Jesus. He rejected and buried “Jesus-ianity”.
Christianity does not honor the man for presenting humanity with the single most profound insight ever, the best summary of the “behavior based on similar belief” model, or ethics/theology relationship.
On to my point below:
I have stated numerous times in sections below that Paul’s Christ myth has been mainly responsible for bringing the primitive and destructive myth of apocalypse into Western narratives and consciousness. Some (e.g. a Jesus Seminar scholar and Paul specialist) have suggested that I have been a bit too harsh on Paul.
Let me explain…
As I stated in a section further below- Christianity is not to be primarily blamed for promoting the horrific fallacy and destructive mythology of apocalyptic (Arthur Mendel’s comment that apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive myth in history).
Christianity simply borrowed the same old themes that predated its version of such myths by millennia. The theme of divine apocalyptic retaliation against imperfect humanity goes back to Zoroaster and then even further back to Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Egyptian versions of apocalyptic, as in the Sumerian “Flood myth”, and the Egyptian “Return to chaos” and “Destruction of mankind” myths.
But we rightly blame Paul and his Christ myth for consciously, intentionally, and egregiously denying, rejecting, and burying the brilliant insight of Historical Jesus that God was a non-retaliatory deity and hence would not enact the ultimate retaliation that is apocalypse. This insight of Jesus, repeated again and again on this site, is clearly stated in the central message of Jesus. Note that Jesus based his non-retaliatory behavior on a stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God:
“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”.
In his central message, Jesus had broken the long historical chain of the enslavement of human consciousness and narratives to primitive threat theology, myths of gods as retaliatory judges enforcing retributive justice, and punitively destroying unbelievers/enemies. Jesus, in a historical first, repudiated outright the millennia-long human slavery to such primitive mythology and its destructive outcomes (i.e. retaliatory gods validating retaliatory human behavior).
Jesus bluntly rejected that retaliatory theology and its retaliatory behavioral outcomes by stating, once again, “Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them… 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”.
Jesus overturned the entire previous history of retaliatory narratives and behaviors with his brilliant insight that God was nonretaliatory, unconditional love, his “greatest contribution to the history of human ideas” (James Robinson).
A main takeaway from his new theology- God was a non-apocalyptic deity, because a non-retaliatory God will not enact the ultimate act of retaliation that is the apocalyptic destruction of life and the world.
Paul was fully aware of what Jesus had taught. When Paul wrote his first letters to the Thessalonians 2 decades after Jesus’ death (circa 50 CE), he was familiar with the widely known oral tradition of Jesus’ wisdom sayings that dominated the original Jewish Christian movement.
Paul then directly confronted that breakthrough insight of Jesus, directly denied and rejected it, and then retreated to re-affirm apocalyptic deity. He irresponsibly retreated back to the same old primitive thinking that had dominated all past theology and ethics. He retreated to the same old slavery to threat theology that had deformed human narratives and consciousness from the beginning, deforming human personality and societies with fear, anxiety, guilt/shame, depression, despair, nihilism, and violence.
Violence? Yes, believers in retaliatory gods will subsequently have divine validation to act in violent, retaliatory ways toward others. Our ultimate ideals that embody the feature of divine retaliation then validate similar response among believers in such ideals. If your God solves problems by using violence, then so may you (see psychologists/psychotherapists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo on this behavior/belief relationship in “Cruel God, Kind God”).
Once again the insights on how our beliefs influence our behavior by psychologist Harold Ellens (quoted by Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”):
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation)…. this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
Jesus had rejected all such retaliatory response based on his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson on “Q Wisdom Sayings” research). Meaning, Jesus rejected the myth of apocalyptic destruction- the ultimate retaliation that is the apocalyptic destruction of the world.
Paul then directly confronted the Jesus “behavior based on similar belief” and re-established the ideal of supreme divine retaliation in his apocalyptic Christ mythology as stated in places like Romans 12: 17-20, and his Thessalonian letters and elsewhere. Paul distorted entirely the actual message of Jesus and then buried the early Jesus movement (the Jewish branch of early Christianity), condemning all who disagreed with his Christ myth as “accursed” (Galatians 1: 8-9). He damned the very movement that Jesus belonged to.
See Bob Brinsmead research on this at… https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
Hence, we are right to blame Paul for history’s greatest scandal, and subsequently creating a religion that embodied history’s greatest contradiction. In rejecting the central theme and message of Jesus, Paul gave us “Christ-ianity, not Jesus-ianity”. Paul executed a shameful retreat to enslavement of mind and life to the retaliatory apocalyptic threat that has persisted across history, even into the present, and has deformed more human minds and lives than anything else in history.
The destructive outcomes of the horrifically deforming apocalyptic myth? Richard Landes details this in “Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”. So also, Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”, and David Redles in “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”. Read, learn, and then consciously and intentionally reject this psychopathology of apocalyptic insanity.
Look at the irrational hysteria and damage this myth has produced in our world today in the “climate crisis” madness.
For good contemporary physical evidence on the true state of life, evidence that overturns entirely the apocalyptic distortion of life, evidence that reveals the true long-term trajectory of life as improving, see Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” and the many follow-up volumes of research that have continued to affirm Simon’s research and principles. Apocalyptic is the greatest lie and fraud ever foisted onto humanity.
The tragedy in this is that history’s single most profound insight to liberate human minds, spirits, and lives was distorted and buried. The insight of Jesus on theology went to the depths of human subconscious to overturn deeply embedded archetypes and reshape human narratives and consciousness as nothing ever before had done.
Again, James Robinson was right to state “the stunning new theology of Jesus was his greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. And Christianity has refused to honor the man for that insight, because it spells the end of all religion. If God is an inexpressibly unconditional reality, then who needs the myriad conditions of all religious traditions?
The Jesus insight on theology overturns the mentally-deforming ideas of all threat theologies. His insight transforms narratives and consciousness. It revolutionizes human thought, emotion, motivation, and response like nothing comparable anywhere. His insight rejects entirely any perception of ultimate threat behind reality or life and tells us there is only a stunningly inexpressible love at the core of all reality. And all are included safely in that love, ultimately. This goes to the deepest roots of human fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, and violence. The insight of Historical Jesus re-orients human hope to the best of ultimate ideals.
Note:
The Jesus insight on ultimate love potently counters the nihilism that is affirmed by dogmatic materialist theories on the metaphysical, most notably the “multi-verse theory”. James Baggot in “Farewell to Reality” notes that multi-verse theory is accepted widely in the public as true but as the Hadron collider experiments re the Higgs Boson concluded, it was not supported by any evidence.
Multi-verse theory claims there is some universe generating mechanism that spews forth infinite universes randomly till ours just “fell together” along infinitely fine-tuned parameters (Martin Rees’ “Just Six Numbers”) that enabled it to develop and eventually make complex life possible. And all can be explained simply in terms of natural law operating randomly and meaninglessly. Nihilism affirmed.
The Jesus insight affirms the opposite- that there has been profoundly meaningful intervention by divine Mind/Consciousness with a purpose centered on love that informs human meaning. The cosmos, world, and life is the creation of no conditions love and that shapes the meaning of all things, the intent behind all, the goal of all. That no conditions love is what we are here to learn and replicate. Love your enemy unconditionally because God does. Behavior based on similar belief.
This interesting study of scientific censorship. See the full report, with graphs and links to sources, in this link…
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301642120
“Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda”, Cory Clark, Lee Jussim, Komi Frey, William von Hippel, Oct.6, 2023
Some quotes from the report:
“Abstract
“Science is among humanity’s greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance. Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups….
“The fundamental principle of science is that evidence—not authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence, or social prestige—should triumph. This commitment makes science a radical force in society: Challenging and disrupting sacred myths, cherished beliefs, and socially desirable narratives….
“Because scientific censorship is difficult to detect and measure, it is rarely empirically studied. Here, we discuss historical and modern evidence regarding the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship. Our analysis suggests that censorship is often impelled by prosocial concerns and by scientists…
“Types of Censorship and Censors
“We define scientific censorship as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality. Censorship is distinct from discrimination, if not always clearly so. Censorship targets particular ideas (regardless of their quality), whereas discrimination targets particular people (regardless of their merit)….
“Hard vs. Soft Censorship.
“Hard censorship occurs when people exercise power to prevent idea dissemination. Governments and religious institutions have long censored science….
Soft censorship employs social punishments or threats of them (e.g., ostracism, public shaming, double standards in hirings, firings, publishing, retractions, and funding) to prevent dissemination of research.…
“The Censors.
“Worldwide, scientists have faced government suppression ranging from threats of withheld funding to job loss, prison, and even execution…
“A second class of censors includes institutions: universities, journals, and professional societies. Individuals backed by institutional power may censor unilaterally.….
“A third class exerts influence informally. Faculty members can ostracize and defame peers, pressuring them into self-censorship.…
“These three types of censors encourage scientists to self-censor their own controversial research. Self-censorship has been rising in the United States for decades, and we have little reason to expect scientists are immune to this socio-cultural trend. Nearly all US scientists report self-censoring their empirical beliefs somewhat.
“Distinguishing Scientific Rejection from Censorship
“Contemporary scientific censorship is typically the soft variety, which can be difficult to distinguish from legitimate scientific rejection. Science advances through robust criticism and rejection of ideas that have been scrutinized and contradicted by evidence… Calls for censorship may include claims that the research is inept, false, fringe, or “pseudoscience.”…
“When scholars misattribute their rejection of disfavored conclusions to quality concerns that they do not consistently apply, bias and censorship are masquerading as scientific rejection.
“Censorious reviewers may often be unaware when extra-scientific concerns affect their scientific evaluations, and even when they are aware, they are unlikely to reveal these motives. Editors, reviewers, and other gatekeepers have vast, mostly unchecked freedom to render any decision provided with plausible justification. Authors have little power to object, even when decisions appear biased or incompetent….
“Bias and Science.
“Peer reviewers evaluate research more favorably when findings support their prior beliefs, theoretical orientations, and political views…
“Peer review is intended to improve scientific knowledge by capitalizing on expertise. Yet, peer review itself is susceptible to bias. Editors and grant panels, often aware of well-known scientists’ inclinations, can select reviewers who share their own preferences….
“Most modern academics are politically left-leaning, and so certain right-leaning perspectives are likely targets for censorship…
“The Psychology of Censorship
“Censorship research typically explores dark psychological underpinnings such as intolerance, authoritarianism, dogmatism, rigidity, and extremism. Authoritarianism, on the political right and left, is associated with censoriousness, and censorship is often attributed to desires for power and authority…
“But censorship can be pro-socially motivated. Censorious scholars often worry that research may be appropriated by malevolent actors to support harmful policies and attitudes… much contemporary scientific censorship aims to protect vulnerable groups…. People are especially censorious when they view others as susceptible to potentially harmful information… Harm concerns may even cause perceptions of errors where none exist.
“Prosocial motives for censorship may explain four observations: 1) widespread public availability of scholarship coupled with expanding definitions of harm has coincided with growing academic censorship; 2) women, who are more harm-averse and more protective of the vulnerable than men, are more censorious…
“Censorship among Scientists
“Despite the challenges of detecting censorship, recent attempts to quantify the issue have concluded that censorship motivated by harm concerns is common. Hundreds of scholars have been sanctioned for expressing controversial ideas, and the rate of sanctions has increased substantially over the past 10 years…
“Many academics report willingness to discriminate against conservatives in hiring, promotions, grants, and publications, with the result that right-leaning academics self-censor more than left-leaning ones…
“In a 2023 survey of academics in New Zealand, 53% reported that they were not free to state controversial or unpopular opinions, 48% reported that they were not free to raise differing perspectives or argue against the consensus among their colleagues, and 26% reported that they were not free to engage in the research of their choice….
“Moral motives likely have long influenced scientific decision-making and contributed to systematic censorship of particular ideas, but journals are now explicitly endorsing moral concerns as legitimate reasons to suppress science… In effect, editors are granting themselves vast leeway to censor high-quality research that offends their own moral sensibilities….
“The pursuit of knowledge has a strong track record of improving the human condition…
“Consequences of Censorship
“There is at least one obvious cost of scientific censorship: the suppression of accurate information. Systematic censorship, and thus systematic misunderstandings, could emerge if a majority of scientists share particular preferences or prejudices that influence their scientific evaluations…. If social processes align to discourage particular findings regardless of their validity, subsequent understandings of reality will be distorted, increasing the likelihood of false scientific consensus and dysfunctional interventions that waste valuable time and resources for no benefit or possibly even negative consequences…
“Scientific censorship may also reduce public trust in science…. Indeed, a recent investigation found that Nature’s endorsement of Biden undermined trust both in Nature and scientists in general…
“Unresolved Questions and Future Directions
“Scientific censorship appears to be increasing. Potential explanations include expanding definitions of harm, increasing concerns about equity and inclusion in higher education…
“Clarifying Tradeoffs and Investigating Alternatives.
“Although concerns about potential future harms are a common justification for scientific censorship, few studies have examined the veracity of harm concerns… Some evidence suggests that harmful outcomes of research are systematically overestimated and helpful outcomes systematically underestimated… Is censorship the only way to minimize harm risks or are there other, potentially more effective, strategies? How often does censorship cause harm by encouraging conspiracy theories and reducing trust in science?…
“We all agree, however, that the scientific community would be better situated to resolve these debates, if—instead of arguing in circles based on conflicting intuitions—we spent our time collecting relevant data.” (Again, see full report at link above)
“America This Week, May 24, 2024: Life on Polarized Mars: Walter and I discuss the Tucker Carlson freakout, the Censorship Files, artificial ‘voids’, and Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles classic ‘Night Meeting’”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn.
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-may-41d
My post to a discussion group, encouraging them to read the Taibbi/Kirn transcripts of their discussions: Wendell Krossa
“As always (note the highlighted bits below for the jist of today’s points)- only for any interested in two of the best on current events and trends in our world. Note the McCarthyism lunacy over Tucker Carlson, the complete lack of awareness of what they are doing even after years of “Russia, Russia, Russia”. Behind every bush.
Good points below on the true nature of the “disinformation/misinformation” projects behind the censorship of today. Again, the stunner that the advocates for crusades against disinformation are purposefully, in the name of protecting democracy from disinformation, are actively promoting disinformation against their conservative opponents/enemies.
“In their very religious crusade, anything goes. Note their disregard for and assaults on real democracy, assaults on democracy that they frame as valid in their great “heroic battle of good against intolerable evil on the other side”, the evil that is the opponents they have framed as “Nazis, racists, threats to democracy, fascists, hate speech purveyors, etc.”. We are dangerously moving toward Richard Landes’ warning of the shift toward “exterminate or be exterminated” the later stage of totalitarianism insanity.
“Taibbi and Kirn discuss how the new disinformation commissions and crusades of Progressives, in concert with intelligence agencies and other state bureaucracies, are pushing for censorship of political opponents, mainly conservatives.”
Quotes of Taibbi and Kirn:
“They have this whole program for basically using the whole concept of “disinformation” as a lever to get into every conceivable realm of society, and one of the commissioners is none other than Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion. And he sends them a letter which goes through the list of all their recommendations, and it’s just hilarious. “It seems like some pretty significant mission creep for us…” He’s talking about newsroom diversity and remaking media and workplace diversity. “It seems like pretty significant mission creep for us to comment on the hiring practices of private companies when our mission is to combat misinformation. If I’m being honest, having a commission on disinformation determine acceptable levels of diversity reminds me of home. This type of approach was common practice in the USSR.”…
“And I think he’s making a very important point about all this, which is that in those kinds of societies, in the Soviet Union, they used things that were not directly on the nose or workers and peasants committees or psychiatric committees to go after other things. If you have a powerful enough committee, you can punish people for wrong think in almost any way, and he recognizes this and quits. And you can see the exchanges afterwards where they’re all like, “Well, let’s just keep this quiet.”
“Walter Kirn: They freak out. They don’t want the former USSR dissident who’s acquired all this prestige, and by the way, is an ultra liberal commentator who hates Trump, et cetera, bailing on their new American style totalitarian information regime. And what’s their answer? Their answer is their answer to everything. Let’s keep it a secret….
“So in other words, their Archimedean conceit is that you give me the ability to control information, and I can change reality itself. And they’re straining at the bit to use this in every dimension. And they actually are so freaking stupid or so lit up by a kind of manic power drive that they think they’re going to cure all the ills. They could probably solve global warming by just pretending that the temperature is lower. I don’t know.
“Matt Taibbi: No, they really believe it, which is the scary part.
“Walter Kirn: But the other thing that’s interesting here is that what you’re really seeing is a new Inquisition. Whatever they want to call it, what this really is a search for heretics and heresy. And if you transpose this effort onto, let’s say the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church during the Inquisition, it works perfectly because the church wasn’t trying to find out whether other sects had the truth about the universe. They were just trying to find out whether they departed from Catholic doctrine.
“Matt Taibbi: Right.
“Walter Kirn: And so this is a complete doctrinal, a doctrinal enforcement strategy and set of tools. And they think that if they can get everybody just spouting perfect doctrine, the world itself will change. And they are, I hate to say it, complete dangerous zealots, religious zealots made worse by the fact that they don’t think their religion is a religion. They file it under science or what realism….
“Walter Kirn: And once again, let’s remind the audience that they have no mechanism for deciding whether somebody’s generally wrong. In other words, if they rate the credibility of some organ, Gateway Pundit, or whatever it might be, it’s not because there was some actual investigation-
“Matt Taibbi: Right. Right.
“Walter Kirn: … or that they have some tool for determining that. If they had a tool for determining that, then just put up the percentages for each publication. Okay? Just post them somewhere, and we will self evict ourselves from reading those places once we see how bad they are. They’ve tried similar things, but in other words, they don’t know who’s wrong and who’s right. They don’t even have the budgets to determine that. Because even though there are these disinformation shops everywhere, and they’re at universities, and like you say, the revolving door is huge, you don’t know whether they’re an NGO, an academic organization, a governmental organization, or what, but nonetheless, when you look at how they spend their money and so on, none of it is on truth detection.
“Matt Taibbi: No. No. The detection mechanism, such as it is, is like a panel of experts, but they’re not reporting. They’re not doing surveys. They can’t. Think about the vast range of things that they’re judging from-
“Walter Kirn: Well, that’s why I call it an inquisition. In other words, the council of Priests.
“Matt Taibbi: Right.
“Walter Kirn: They’re not using any real tools except people who know what the authoritative story on things is and can raise their hand when they see it departed from. They’re doctrinal experts….
“Walter Kirn: I guess my point is that under the cover of suppressing disinformation, they actually have created the biggest disinformation spreading machine of all time.
“Matt Taibbi: Right. Right. Right.
“Walter Kirn: We found a laptop full of the president’s son’s private correspondence and videos of him naked doing stuff. Okay?
“Matt Taibbi: Smoking crack.
“Walter Kirn: Strangely, none of this is real. It’s all the product of some very sophisticated Russian disinformation campaign. Did they deep fake all the pictures of his private members? What? They took, once again, something that was overwhelmingly apparent to the normal eye. Wow. “Hey guys, this is Hunter Biden’s laptop. Look, there he is pulling a gun on a prostitute.”
“Matt Taibbi: Did he do that? I don’t even remember.
“Walter Kirn: Yeah. How did the Russians… Usually they don’t make movies with this sort of panache and creativity about Americans. How would they think?
“Matt Taibbi: They wouldn’t need to steal a Mexican soap opera if they could do that.
“Walter Kirn: Yeah. How did they think of all this? But no, we were meant to believe this was some kind of artifact of an intelligence operation. So, the real freak out for people should be that the disinformation people really just don’t want competition for their disinformation. And that’s why they’re so eager to police people’s reactions because they’re putting across these whoppers, these all time whoppers that would be quite likely to cause massive laughter. And so, they have to control the reaction to them.”
See full discussion at the link above.
This from American Thinker by Sterling Burnett, May 24, 2024
“Climate Change ‘Solutions’ Are Harming the Environment”
And another from Heartland on climate
“Pushing back against environmental scaremongering”, John Stossel, May 22, 2024
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/05/john-stossel-fighting-environmental-scaremongers/?utm
Another sample report from Heartland Weekly…
“Many of the ‘Climate Experts’ Surveyed by the Guardian in Recent Propaganda Blitz Turn Out to be Emotionally-Unstable Hysterics”, Guest Contributor Ben Pile of The Daily Sceptic, May 21, 2024
This from Anthony Watt’s site- Wattsupwiththat.com
“Claim: ‘Most people fear climate change will end the world during their lifetime’”, Eric Worrall, May 25, 2024
“Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse.
“Most people fear climate change will end the world during their lifetime”, By Sanjana Gajbhiye, Earth.com staff writer
“A recent survey has unveiled a startling statistic: nearly half (48%) fear they will witness climate change wreak havoc on Earth within their lifetime.
“The survey, conducted by Talker Research, found Hawaiians to be the most anxious, with 61% expressing this belief. Vermont and New Mexico residents followed closely behind, with 59% and 56% respectively.
“However, this widespread fear might be misplaced. “Belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology,” notes Cambridge professor Mike Hulme…”.
In response to Gajbhiye, Worral comments:
“In 2019, Dr. Alex Wodak, a renowned Aussie drug rehabilitation specialist, testified to a government commission that fear of climate change was a significant factor driving young people to become addicted to hard drugs.
Wodak said, “Unless and until young Australians feel optimistic about their future, demand for drugs will remain strong. Young people, understandably, want more certainty about their future prospects, including climate, education, jobs and housing affordability.”
Worral concludes:
“Next time you look at the horror show Fentanyl death statistics in Western nations, ask yourself how many of those people got their start in addiction because most of the authority figures in their lives told them that climate change would destroy the world – except for those authority figures who told them there was room for a little optimism, providing we all support green policies.”
Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger tirelessly report on the behind-the-scenes censorship by a political party working with intelligence agencies to pressure social and other media giants (Facebook, Twitter/X, Google, etc.) to censor the speech of political opponents, notably Democrats/liberals censoring conservatives. This censorship campaign is framed as fighting “dangerous disinformation/misinformation and hate speech”, categories that have undergone “concept creep” with fuzzy boundaries that now include contrary opinions that the censors do not approve.
This is all part of the emerging totalitarianism that has been infecting all areas of our societies, under fronts like DEI, Woke Marxism, etc.
Links to varied Taibbi reports:
“Twitter Files- CIA: Inside a secret effort by the US Intelligence Community to seize control of social media”, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Alex Gutentag, May 24, 2024
https://www.racket.news/p/introducing-the-censorship-files
https://www.racket.news/p/censorship-files-we-have-very-little
https://www.racket.news/p/censorship-files-we-will-not-be-intimidated
https://www.racket.news/p/foia-files-garry-kasparov-resigns
https://www.racket.news/p/foia-library-the-university-of-washington
More Taibbi reports:
https://www.racket.news/p/more-twitter-files-your-posts-replaced
https://public.substack.com/p/twitter-files-cia
Another:
https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-that-eerie-silence
“Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence. Getcha popcorn ready”, Matt Taibbi, May 21, 2024
“Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just de-amplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.
“If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“ No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools…
“Suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties.”
Then Jimmy Dore covers the story about Newsweek smearing Tucker Carlson over some imagined deal to be on Russian TV, something made up for which there is no evidence except that Russian TV does this often- i.e. just taking old US shows and putting them on, without permission. But Newsweek and other media saw another chance to put out a significant misinformation article and then later walk away after all the damage has been done to a reputation and any follow-up corrections are not even being listened to. This is now mainstream media common practice, with no apologies, no corrections, just moving on to the next disinformation piece… all part of today’s journalism as partisan activists… the “resistance” as if it were a noble cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYrIKZzqxDA
All the big media organizations ran with the Newsweek story, calling Carlson a “Russian propagandist… a Russian asset” (the McCarthyism thing again, gone extreme), not doing any fact-checking, nothing, just jumping on the chance to discredit opponents.
As Glen Greenwald said about this- “The whole story is bullshit- fake- but it was an irresistible McCarthyite smear”.
He then notes the Newsweek correction but after all the damage the disinformation piece did. Dore says this is all that mainstream media do now… is use McCarthyite smears, to frame opponents as traitors…
Greenwald- “Russian obsessions are more unhinged now than they were in the 1950s”.
My concluding note to a discussion group:
Please, to any of you that fell for Russiagate and other media lies, recognize that you were victims of propaganda that was off the scale crazy for years. Direct lying. Then do what Dr. Drew does now- do not believe anything that media tell you, or government.