“Well, there are always wonderful words to describe things that are not very wonderful”– Thomas Sowell and his “the test of facts” that expose the impacts of well-intentioned policies. Think also the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion” in this regard, also known as “the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism”, today’s “real threat to democracy”. Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others in alternative, independent media probe these threats to democracy regularly.
After the early 1990s collapse of communism, who would have thought that we would be facing the greatest threat to freedom from within our liberal democracies? That the formerly “liberal” side of our societies would reject Classic Liberalism for extreme leftist Woke Progressivism, a newly framed version of collectivism with its varied new fronts of DEI, ESG, etc.? DEI? Yes, the new tribal dualism of opposing classes of oppressor/oppressed, victimizer/victims, still embracing the old dualism of capital owners vs capital-deprived peasants/workers but now with the opposing classes also defined by race, by skin color. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King’s dream of colorblind society of equally free and uniquely differing individuals?
Warning re the outcomes of alarmism crusades, Wendell Krossa
The apocalyptic millennial scholars noted below present stunning evidence that Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism, are “profoundly religious crusades”. And more unsettling for true believers, these researchers expose the fundamental role that Christian “apocalyptic millennial” themes have played in the above mass-death movements. I take that further and argue that their histories of these themes point to the line of historical descent over the past two millennia that runs directly from Paul’s apocalyptic Christ.
My point relates to the comment below on the recent speech by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen who offers the quote from Voltaire that “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”. Lindzen warns that leftist revolutionaries have co-opted and perverted climate science and are bent on destroying Western civilization.
Lindzen is right to pushback against the absurdity of climate alarmism “science” with the better evidence of good skeptical science. But then the question- Why does that evidence change so few alarmist minds?
Kristian Niemietz offers some insight on why factual evidence changes so few minds. Niemietz explains this in relation to Socialism but it applies equally to climate alarmism, a similarly apocalyptic crusade.
From my previous summary of Niemietz: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
“Kristian Niemietz brilliantly explains the psychopathology of why people continue to embrace and affirm this failed ideology (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”), how emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. Think also “confirmation bias” in the mix.
“He bases his arguments on the research of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Add here the research on how deformed (i.e. narcissistic) versions of compassion for the oppressed result in people supporting approaches/policies that harm the very people that they claim to have compassion for.”
“We hold to beliefs, despite evidence to the contrary, because they seem true (a ring of truthiness), because they have been beaten into human consciousness across multiple millennia through endless iterations of the same old primitive mythical themes that have become deeply embedded in the human subconscious as archetypes. Things we may not even be fully aware of but that potently influence our thinking, feeling, motivations, and responses/behaviors.
“So, for example, many people hear a contemporary version of an apocalyptic narrative like climate alarmism, and it just feels “right and true” to them. It resonates. No need to rationally analyze it any further.
“My point in response to Niemietz- We give primacy to our emotional attachment to beliefs because we all live primarily by a story or a narrative, not facts, no matter how vociferously we identify as secular, ideological, and even scientific. Our stories are still shaped dominantly by mythical themes. Look at the current prominence of apocalyptic in the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade and its salvation scheme of decarbonization. There is nothing new under the sun.
Niemietz notes: “When reading the accounts of socialist pilgrims, one cannot help wondering how so many highly educated, highly intelligent, well-informed and well-meaning people can be so colossally and persistently wrong.”
“He states that Jonathan Haidt shows that a lot of our moral and political reasoning is “post-hoc” rationalization and the purpose is not to arrive at a conclusion but to justify a conclusion after it has been reached. Intuitions come first, followed by reason and, hence, we cannot change people’s minds by refuting their arguments.
“He continues, noting that “the emotional part of our mind supports a particular policy because it feels good and is based on good intentions.” So the emotional part of our minds settles on a position and then our reasoning comes up with arguments to support the emotional-based conclusion.
“Confirmation bias is the result. We hold to the evidence that affirms our beliefs and ignore or dismiss contrary evidence.”
See the full comment by Niemietz at http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=12313#more-12313
My point in repeating this has to do with Lindzen’s comments in his speech warning that belief in absurdity can lead people to embrace atrocity. That expresses well the climate alarmism crusade and its hysterically exaggerated apocalyptic scenarios that have frightened populations, arousing the survival impulse and rendering many susceptible to supporting Net Zero decarbonization as salvation even though it destroys societies to “save the world”.
Note Lindzen’s concluding comment that we had better become “woke” to the absurdity and atrocity before it is too late.
“Hopefully, we will awaken from this nightmare before it is too late.”
So yes, use good science to respond to apocalyptic crusades like climate alarmism. But then question- Why does good evidence change so few minds? Why do so many people, as Niemietz argues, let “emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominate their choice in beliefs.”
And remember once again the advice of the military guy who said that you can crush apocalyptic eruptions of violence, like ISIS, with force. So you can similarly push back against the apocalyptic climate alarmism crusade with good science. But if you don’t go to the root beliefs at the core of the alarmist narrative, then such madness will just keep erupting, and re-erupting, because the beliefs and the overall narrative is more powerfully convincing (i.e. “emotionally satisfying”).
This from one of the best atmospheric physicists on the climate change crusade…
https://clintel.org/those-who-can-make-you-believe-absurdities-can-make-you-commit-atrocities/
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”, By Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus, MIT
Introduction: “Professor Richard Lindzen recently spoke in Brussels, at the invitation of the Hungarian political think tank MCC, about the role of consensus in political movements claiming a scientific basis (as is the case nowadays with climate). Below is the full text of his speech. “Hopefully, we will awaken from this nightmare before it is too late.”
Lindzen notes that the “science” behind climate change hysteria has been co-opted and perverted by” revolutionaries intent on destroying Western society”. These people have claimed unchallengeable “consensus” as in a dogmatically religious belief system.
He says, “the claim of consensus was always propagandistic should be obvious… Science is a mode of inquiry rather than a source of authority.”
Lindzen continues, noting that the revolutionaries understood that going after energy was critical to destroying capitalist industrial civilization… “with the first Earth Day in April of 1970, the focus turned to the energy sector which, after all, is fundamental to all production… The attraction of controlling CO2 to political control freaks was obvious. It was the inevitable product of all burning of carbon-based fuels.”
The radicals understood that they had to invade and indoctrinate educational systems and scientific societies. They found fearful and compliant members afraid to stand for true science.
Lindzen adds, “the attraction of power is not the only thing motivating politicians. The ability to award trillions of dollars to reorient our energy sector means that there are recipients of these trillions of dollars.”
He concludes: “So here we are, confronted with policies that destroy western economies, impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to continued poverty and increased starvation, leave our children despairing over the alleged absence of a future, and will enrich the enemies of the West who are enjoying the spectacle of our suicide march, a march that the energy sector cowardly accepts, being too lazy to exert the modest effort needed to check what is being claimed. As Voltaire once noted, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”. Hopefully, we will awaken from this nightmare before it is too late.”
See the CLINTEL (Climate Intelligence) declaration of climate facts affirming that “there is no climate emergency.”
https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/
Notes on alternative themes for human meta-narratives: Wendell Krossa
(Jumping from climate science to personal ‘subjective’ experience may seem a bit jarring but see where I am going with this….)
Pim Van Lommel’s “Consciousness Beyond Life” is, perhaps, the best general overview of the Near-Death Experience movement. I see that movement as the latest phase in the long history of human “spirituality” and it does the best job of getting the central theme and message of historical Jesus right- i.e. that God is unconditional love to scandalous and amazing degree, inexpressibly wondrous and transcendent degree. Check out varied experiences on places like the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.
Insert qualifier: Varied research on NDEs cautions that people’s descriptions of their experience is very much communicated in terms of their belief systems. Some, for example, have the experience of passing through a darkened tunnel and feeling indescribable peace, while others find that feature frightening and describe it in terms of their beliefs in hell. I talked to the wife of an Evangelical Christian who, during an operation, had an NDE and experienced amazing light and love. But he was disappointed that he did not see the Christian Jesus in that light and love. Nonetheless, he told people afterward that it was Jesus.
Despite a percentage of such experiences classified as “hellish”, the most common features of NDEs is the overwhelming sense of unconditional love from the Light or God. That is the main discovery of the experience and that affirms the message of Historical Jesus that God was no conditions love, contrary to Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth that became Christianity. The unconditional love that is God undermines entirely the belief systems of all conditional religions.
No religion has ever communicated the actual message of Jesus that God was stunningly non-retaliatory, unconditional love.
Why does the understanding of God as no conditions love matter? Because deity (Ultimate Reality) has always served as the cohering center of human narratives. The nature and character of deity functions as the ultimate embodiment of human ideals and authority that orients all related beliefs. Our deity beliefs (or whatever we honor as ultimate reality) powerfully shape our thinking, our emotions, our motivations, our responses and behavior.
Paul’s Christ, which became the Christ-ianity that we inherited, has missed the unconditional nature of God entirely. With it’s psychopathology of divine retaliation in apocalypse and hell, it’s highly conditional atonement theology, it has distorted and buried the central theme and message of Jesus that God as unconditional love does not retaliate against enemies with apocalypse or hell, and does not demand sacrifice/payment for being imperfectly human.
Paul’s Christ has thereby short-circuited the potentially greatest liberation movement in history- the final, ultimate push for freedom at the deepest levels of human consciousness and subconscious archetypes. The insight of Jesus on unconditional reality presented the singular opportunity for the greatest-ever liberation of mind, spirit, and life from fear of ultimate threat behind reality. Jesus re-assured the people of his time that all were safe in love, ultimately safe.
Point? The apocalyptic Christ of Paul has been mainly responsible for enforcing the psychopathology of destructive apocalyptic mythology in Western consciousness, narratives, and life. And that apocalyptic pathology has been exposed as directly related to the incitement and validation of apocalyptic millennial movements like Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism as in climate apocalypse alarmism. The outcomes of that “most influential myth in history” (i.e. apocalyptic Christ) have been devastating to societies. Note the reports of outcomes of the decarbonization crusade in countries like Germany, Britain, and elsewhere (“Net Zero Watch”, “Wattsupwiththat.com”, etc.).
Lommel offers some other interesting insights, notably his quote from a neuroscientist on the absurdity of claiming that the meat in our heads produces the wonder of human mind, the human self. That absurdity has been pushed by dogmatic materialists like Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, among others. Lommel, also, in response to calculations (from a computer scientist) that show it is impossible for the human brain to store a lifetime’s memories, offers some interesting speculation on human memory being stored in nonlocal space around us (i.e. the “useless” majority of DNA as our individual bar code to our memories- Hmmm?).
He also suggests that DMT plays some role related to releasing consciousness from the material brain. Hence, the comment of those who have tried DMT that they left their bodies to enter other realms.
Insert on the absurdity of meat producing thinking mind and feeling human selves, see Terry Bisson’s “They’re made out of meat”.
https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
A lot of interesting insights to play with as we pursue, with curiosity, where our primary impulse to meaning leads us.
The project to “get to the root of what is wrong” in life and make changes/corrections at that foundational level. I do this in relation to our impulse for meaning, our primary impulse, that which motivates us more than anything else in life (Viktor Frankl). Wendell Krossa
The human impulse for meaning skidded off the rails at the very beginning when consciousness was still emerging and developing in early humans. We don’t fault them for that. It was where their minds were at that time of their existence in a still very animal-like reality. Hence, among other mythical concoctions of their day, they created gods that mirrored their own behavior and lives- i.e. gods that were tribal (favored extended clan, ingroup members, excluded differing others), dominating (the alpha male/female thing), and who destroyed enemies (eliminate competing, differing others).
Those gods (deity being developed from the beginning as humanity’s highest ideal and authority) then became the cohering centers for a supporting complex of primitive ideas, some prominent ones listed here…
The fuller complex:
(1)The myth that early humans were the corrupt destroyers of an original paradise world, and (2) that life has subsequently been declining toward something worse as punishment for human sin. This “Declinism” fallacy is followed with (3) the threat of eventual apocalyptic destruction and the ending of life as the ultimate and final punishment for human sin.
Then followed (4) the divine demand for atonement in the form of some sacrifice/payment accompanied with “suffering as redemptive” (in modern terms- redemptive suffering framed as the “moral superiority” of retreating to a primitive low-consumption lifestyle).
Salvation schemes must also involve (5) the violent purging of some evil threat from life, notably the evil of “unbelievers” who reject the “true religion”.
Here our ancestors added (6) the features of a “Hero’s Quest” in that the true believers, modelling Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism between good and evil, were obligated to engage a righteous battle against evil enemies, conquering and eliminating their enemies.
Then humanity is offered, if sufficiently repentant for having enjoyed the good life, and having purged the world of evil humans, (7) the hope of salvation in a restored paradise. The restored paradise or tribal utopia would consist of just true believers living as new communalist people, sharing all things in common. See the Christian version of this in Acts chapters 2 and 4. Communalists claim that such collectivism is true compassion/love. Hence, the sense of “moral superiority” of collectivists/socialists.
And that pretty much sums the prominent themes of primitive mythologies, subsequent belief systems of major world religions, and now in the modern era, the basic structure of “secular ideological” belief systems, and even versions of “scientism”.
It is enlightening for those of us in the Western world to recognize, particularly, the persisting domination of this great myth of “declining life and eventual apocalypse” in our meta-narratives (“The Idea of Decline In Western History”, Arthur Herman). And then probe where this comes from and why it persists as prominent in human narratives, whether religious or secular/ideological/scientific. Our probing of this will arrive at Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth as mainly responsible for affirming this myth in Western consciousness, narratives, and civilization.
Paul constructed his Christ myth as an ultimate embodiment of the earlier themes of the above complex of ideas. He took those primitive themes to new heights of supremacy in human consciousness. Paul gave cosmic significance to them as ultimate universal realities. His Christ was the savior of the entire world, the sole savior of all humanity.
With such claims, the primitive themes of apocalyptic millennialism were taken to the furthest extremes as dominating and unquestionable ultimate realities. Paul’s Christ was to be universal Lord of all, the great apocalyptic Destroyer who would bring the world to its final apocalyptic end and then in the ultimate display of discrimination, offer salvation only to chosen true believers. To hell with the rest of you free spirits. Literally.
The primitive themes listed above have dominated human thinking across the millennia, into the world religions, and then down into the modern era and transformed into “secular/ideological” systems of belief, and even embraced in “science/scientism”. Pay attention, not to the endless reframing of the old ideas with new terms, definitions, classifications, etc. But pay attention to the core theme being expressed. For example, the original wilderness world of the environmentalists is their version of original paradise as in Dilmun or Eden.
Then you will see the basic structure of a narrative with the same old “better past (original paradise- deity obsessed with perfection), paradise ruined by corrupt humans (anti-humanism), decline of life toward something worse, toward ending/apocalypse. Demand for atonement as sacrifice/payment, demand for suffering as redemptive, demand for purging of some evil threat to life, and then the subsequent promise of lost paradise restored or new utopian millennium for true believers.”
And pay special attention to the deity theory that centers this complex of themes- the ultimate reality that gives meaning to all else. Humanity’s ultimate ideal and authority has long been defined with the features of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction as “justice”.
The unfortunate element here is that these are ideas that have long validated some of our worst impulses, notably the “evil triad” of impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. For millennia, these ideas have shaped and validated human thinking, feeling, motivation, and response/behavior, thus influencing entire societies, and too often toward mass-death outcomes.
Related to the above argument to go to the root of the problem: Wendell Krossa
My beef with so much religious reformism is that it is often just peripheral tinkering around the edges and does not get to core issues to solve problems thoroughly and for the long-term future. Is this tinkering with “peripheral reformism” due to fear of being charged with the demonizing smear of “heresy”? Or perhaps due to the fear of being excluded from some group (shunning, banning)? Or maybe a “hedge my bets” just in case there is actually a retaliatory deity threatening to “toss dissenters into the big barbie down under”.
Peripheral tinkering around the edges of our belief systems is why we suffer the same outcomes repeatedly across history. That was Richard Landes’ point regarding the Nazis (“Heaven On Earth”). If we dismiss that insanity as due to just another historical madman then we have not learned the real lesson from that horror, says Landes. The lesson? How apocalyptic millennial ideas can carry a society of otherwise good people toward mass-death outcomes. The problem of our beliefs that have such powerful influence on our minds, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior.
A further note on religious reformism:
Psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo, like good surgeons, go to the core of religious systems of belief, to the ultimate ideal and authority that is the cohering center that holds the entire belief system together. They target the theology and carefully analyze and dissect that- i.e. pointing out the deformities in the deity theories of religions like Christianity, noting the subhuman/inhuman features in such “Cruel God” theology (i.e. a God who uses violence to solve problems and models that for true believers). They detail the damaging impact of such theology on human personality and then correct, excise, and change that, just as historical Jesus did. Replacing that primitive pathology with more humane understanding of deity. See “Cruel God, Kind God”.
Alternative ideas to reform narratives:
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives”, “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”:
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=12043
My interest in human mythology is a curiosity about how people have thought across history and why we persist in embracing the same basic themes in our narratives, generation following generation. Joseph Campbell again- “People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world”. Wendell Krossa
People at the beginning thought mythically, then religiously (really no different from mythical), and then entering the more rational scientific age over the past few centuries, they dragged the same old mythical themes of their past into their new ideologies and science. This can be understood in terms of the emotional attachment to beliefs that meet deeply rooted felt needs, subconsciously based “archetypal” needs and emotions.
The themes they refused to let go of:
The past was better, but early corrupted people (fallen humanity) ruined the earlier paradise world (untouched nature) and now life is becoming worse, even heading toward collapse and ending (apocalypse). So we must make a sacrifice/payment for our sins. We must suffer in order to become redeemed. Meaning- Give up the good life and return to the “moral superiority” of the simple, primitive life of our pure and noble ancestors (the “noble savage” fallacy). And further embracing the pathology of anti-humanism- We must purge evil humans (the “cancer, virus” on nature) from life (i.e. depopulate the world). And then we can restore the lost paradise, install a new communalist utopia.
I probe these themes, and their history, in order to understand what is wrong in our lives and societies at the deepest levels of conscious thinking and subconscious influences- i.e. the pathologies that are expressed in the primitive ideas that we have inherited that are the product of our ancestors fulfilling their impulse for meaning. Their explanations represented their primitive understanding of life and themselves and validated their primitive impulses and existence.
As noted above…
My curiosity about how humans have thought across history inescapably takes me to the subconscious, to subconscious “archetypes” that potently influence how we think, how we feel, what motivates us, and how we respond and behave (a friend’s comment, from his research, that some 95% of our behavior is subconsciously influenced/shaped). And, as stated above, I am most concerned about the psychopathology in all this- i.e. the bad ideas that incite and validate bad behavior.
“Archetypes” are the offspring of the original themes in the earliest human mythologies that were their explanations of reality and life, the main ideas that structured their worldviews/narratives. Those became the models, the patterns, the standards, representatives, and prime examples for the same themes that shaped subsequent human narratives and lives across history.
The ideas did not exist in isolation from human behavior and life. As Jung termed the archetypes- “beliefs and related instincts”. Or, to rephrase it, “behaviors based on beliefs”, instincts and behavior validated by similarly themed beliefs. Example: The impulse to dominate others would find validation in archetypal gods that were viewed as kings, lords, rulers. The belief would validate the impulse and behavior.
The ideas/ideals expressed in the archetypes were used to validate the inherited impulses of those early humans- notably the ideas that validated the “evil triad” impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others, impulses that shaped early human existence as a barbaric reality.
Early humans believed they were imitating, in their behavior and lives, the same features that defined ultimate reality, the deity that had created them. Later generations, unaware of how their ancestors had speculated on the invisible realm, and projected their explanations onto that realm, projected features that would define the gods, the later generations of humans just accepted the teaching of those before them as “truth revealed by the gods”. Hence, the stories of divine truth revealed to those of long ago- Moses, Paul, Buddha, Muhammad, and so on. Truth mediated to commoners from original enlightened ones, and subsequent generations of priestly elites (organized priesthoods).
I have repeatedly noted elsewhere my explanation of how early human logic functioned. Early people believed that there were forces/spirits, eventually personified as human-like (anthropomorphized), spirits that were behind all the elements of the natural world- i.e. behind thunder, lightning and storm, behind flood, behind the sun and drought, gods of animal species, gods of fish and streams, gods of trees, and so on. Hence, if the elements and events of the natural world were destructive- i.e. natural disaster, disease, accident, cruelty- then obviously, according to primitive reasoning, the gods were angry and punishing people for their sins.
And yes, this primitive logic (angry deity behind nature punishing human sin) dominates human narratives and minds even today. Listen to moderns affirming “vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback karma”. For example, in response to the 2020 West Coast wildfires, Nancy Pelosi stated, “Mother Earth is angry”. Meaning that Mother Earth was punishing us for using fossil fuels by starting wildfires. That would have had the Sumerian priests of 5000 years ago nodding vigorous assent to Nancy. They believed the angry waterworks god, Enlil, was angry at their sins and threatened to punish them with flooding. Water to fire, but the same basic logic whether ancient or modern.
Angry gods behind the natural world retaliating against imperfect humanity.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-on-wildfires-in-california-and-west-mother-earth-is-angry
The primitive belief in angry deity behind natural disasters prompted further shamanic/priestly explanations as to why the gods were angry and how to appease them in order to survive. Prehistorian John Pfeiffer suggests that the emergence of early shaman claiming to know the secrets to the invisible realm is the beginning of elites separating themselves from and elevating themselves over other tribe members (i.e. the elite/commoner divide), elevating themselves over others with claims to know the secrets of the invisible realms of the gods.
Then followed, over subsequent millennia, the salvation schemes of the developing theologies and belief systems of emerging world religions.
Naturally following their impulse for meaning (wanting to understand and explain), early people projected out onto greater invisible reality the dominant features of their own existence, primitive and barbaric as it was, and in a feedback loop manner then believed the gods actually were tribal realities (naturally favoring small band insiders and excluding outsiders), they were dominating lords, kings, rulers (early myth of humans created to serve the gods, to feed them and do their work), and that the gods used violence to punish and destroy enemies. Gods that were more animal than human. See in this regard, for example, “Alpha God” by Hector Garcia.
The result of creating gods that mirrored brutal early human existence, was ultimate ideals and authorities that have deformed human personality and societies down through subsequent history. The primitive archetypes created so long ago, became deeply lodged in human subconscious, and have continued to shape human belief systems across subsequent history. Archetypes of the divine that function as ultimate ideals and authorities. Campbell again- People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.
Our ancestors didn’t just create the first gods. They also created full complexes of myths around the “cohering center” role of deity (a central ideal that holds a larger system of beliefs together). Note for example that myths of deities “obsessed with perfection” led to myths of gods creating an original perfection, early humans becoming corrupt (fallen, imperfect) and thereby ruining the original paradise world, gods punishing human imperfection by cursing life with disease, pain, suffering and death and life subsequently declining toward a worsening state and eventually toward an apocalyptic ending.
The deities (as claimed by their priests) then burdened humanity with salvation schemes that entailed sacrifice/payment and suffering for redemption. They layered their salvation schemes with the features of the “Hero’s Quest”, the demand for people to engage a righteous battle (join the true religion or group) and conquer an enemy/monster that had to be violently purged from life (“exterminate or be exterminated”). Then the heroic conquerors would gain true believer’s utopia/heavenly kingdom, the restoration of the perfection of the lost paradise.
Moving along this trail of exploration, my curiosity then led me to probe in more detail the impact of these ideas/ideals on human personality, life, and society. And the evidence shows how destructive the baser features of deity, and related primitive themes in belief systems, have been and continue to be, even resulting in mass-death outcomes.
The devastating consequences of primitive archetypes has been well documented in sources repeatedly posted here, in the research of Harold Ellens/Zenon Lotufo (“Cruel God, Kind God”), Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”), Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”), and others. They detail the historical evidence of how the “lost paradise, apocalypse, redemption, millennial paradise” complex of themes has deformed human minds and personalities, and too often incited and validated mass-death movements.
They present stunning evidence that Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism, are “profoundly religious crusades”. And more unsettling to true believers, they expose the fundamental role that Christian “apocalyptic millennial” themes played in these mass-death movements. Their histories of these themes reveal the line of historical descent over the past two millennia directly from Paul’s Christ.
As Landes said about the Nazis- If you just dismiss that movement as due to the madness of Hitler, then you have missed the critical point of how apocalyptic millennial ideas can carry a society of otherwise good people toward mass-death outcomes. Similar to what Thomas Sowell noted regarding the economic proposals from well-intentioned people who do not think through the consequences of their “compassionate” proposals. Think- Psychopathology of left-wing compassion here.
It is all the more reprehensible that we keep falling for the same old myths and consequent destructive outcomes, inexcusable because we were long ago given the stunning new insights to overturn the inherited archetypes that have validated so much destruction across history. Most notably, we have had the central breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus for two millennia. His insight went directly to the primitive pathology of the core ideal of all narratives- the ultimate reality and ideal of deity, deformed from the beginning with subhuman/inhuman features.
Deity has always functioned as humanity’s highest ideal and authority, the cohering center of human narratives.
Historical Jesus rejected the old theologies entirely and for the first time in history explained what “God is love” really meant. He stated that God was non-retaliatory love. There was no “eye for eye” punitive justice with God. Meaning there was no subsequent demand for sacrifice or payment. No demand for suffering as redemptive. No demand for tribal division and the dualism of opposing true believers and unbelievers. And no demand for people to engage a battle against infidel enemies and purge that “evil” from the world. Further, non-retaliatory unconditional love in God meant there would be no judgment, no exclusion of anyone, no destructive apocalypse or hell. God was indeed an inexpressible unconditional love. The unconditional feature was the transcendent “glory and greatness” of God.
Historical Jesus rejected the terrorizing threat theologies that had dominated all religious belief systems over the millennia before his time. In his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson) there was no tribal deity modelling domination and submission in relationships. His new theology presented the potential for a profound liberation of mind, spirit, and life, as never before.
But within two decades, Paul rejected and buried that revolutionary breakthrough insight of Jesus and restored the old threat theology of the past. Paul short-circuited the potentially greatest liberation movement ever and reverted back to mental and emotional slavery, and the “deformity of personality” (Zenon Lotufo) under the same old threat theology of all previous history. Paul’s God/Christ was then zealously pushed to dominate the emerging Christian movement and that early stranglehold on Christian theology has continued till the present day.
Paul’s religion has shaped Western consciousness, narratives, and civilization ever since with some of the most damaging features of primitive mythologies. It’s ruinous influence has erupted repeatedly in apocalyptic movements like climate alarmism, also in resurging Marxism.
As Richard Landes warned, we appear to have learned nothing about the dangers of apocalyptic millennialism and are repeating the same old thought mistakes and real-life outcomes.
Note: As before the unconditional theology of Jesus speaks to the nature of ultimate reality, to our highest ideals and authorities. It is not prescriptive for all response in this imperfect world where violent people must be restrained/incarcerated to protect others. Holding to the ultimate ideal of unconditional is not advocacy for dogmatic pacifism in the face of evil.
Nor are the associated statements in the core message of Jesus prescriptive for business/economics. He was speaking to the mental slavery that had cursed previous millennia, that had deformed the human meaning impulse with inhumane themes. With Lindzen- Hopefully, we will wake up before its too late.