Coming soon- My take on the real “clear and present danger” to our liberal democracies.
Apoplexy- My definition: Internal rupture and hemorrhaging with irrational fury.
Countering Snowflake or Buttercup syndrome, Wendell Krossa (we used to call this “spoilt brat syndrome”, the refusal to “grow the fook up”)
The First Amendment in the US Constitution was designed to protect democracy and freedom of speech from hypersensitive “snowflakes” or “buttercups” unleashing their totalitarian impulse to deny freedom to differing others.
Snowflakes? “I am offended by your opinions and speech that differs from mine. I feel threatened by your disagreement. My opinions and speech alone should dominate public discourse and policy. You, who disagree, must be censored, silenced, banned.” As Hilary Clinton explained, when she recently argued for censorship of others who disagree with her and her party, if we can’t control public discourse with only our viewpoint and speech as permissible, then “We lose total control”. Talk about “Freudian-like slip”, eh.
Your belief in and advocacy for freedom, for free speech, is only authentic if you are willing to protect even offensive, repugnant speech (speech that upsets and pisses you off) knowing that if we start to censor other’s speech then that censorship will come back to bite us in the ass also.
And who gets to decide what speech should be banned? To decide what is “hate speech”? “Hate speech” categories have already been extended by “concept creep” to now include the differing opinions and speech of political opponents. That is totalitarianism and its is being promoted as salvationism (“save democracy”) across our liberal democracies.
The lack of awareness among Woke Progressives as to the totalitarian nature what they are doing is still stunning to many of us on the Classic Liberal side. These are colleagues/fellow citizens who just a few years ago identified as “liberals, democrats”, people who in the past fought for full inclusion of all, protected diversity of opinion and speech, equal rights for all. What happened?
Watch this brief clip from Joe Rogan interviewing former ACLU director Ira Glasser on the issues involved: “Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser on Why You Can’t Ban Hate Speech”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU
Added note:
“Snowflake and Buttercup are names given to progressives that are massively and exaggeratingly offended or put out by things they find objectionable. Non-political correctness throws them into apoplexy. They are devoid of a sense of humor. They look for reasons to be offended and are not happy if they do not feel victimized, although their victimhood is in their mind”, Mark Hyatt Tynan. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-political-things-have-snowflake-and-buttercup
The above comment affirms the good probing by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Jordan Peterson, Christine Brophy, and many others who are trying to understand the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, the left-wing deforming of the ideal of “compassion” into virtue-signaling narcissism that promotes policies and outcomes that destroy lives.
Notably, “Climate crisis” policies” that are presented as salvation schemes (to “save the world”) but are destroying societies with Net Zero decarbonization. So also, these self-identified “liberals” proclaim their compassion in fighting for victims but are advocating for policies like censorship that destroy liberal democracy and harm everyone.
Sitesplainin: Wendell Krossa
What drives this site? What motivations, intentions? This site is very much about my “hatred” of fear and fear-mongering, especially unwarranted fear, exaggerated fear, created and constructed fear to scare people, to terrorize and traumatize people in order to manipulate and control them. I am talking about totalitarian alarmists. The complex of pathologies at play in their approach are among the most disgusting features of inhumanity. Nothing of the human.
Alarmist types scare people in order to coerce them to behave in some way by deforming their consciousness with exaggerated stories of threatening evil others, or with tales of looming environmental catastrophe/”climate crisis” and the end of life. The irrational excessiveness of apocalyptic-scale panic-mongering is far beyond irresponsible into the realm of cruel insanity.
Constructing fear to manipulate others is abhorrently irresponsible. The impulse to manipulate and control is a sick perversion, if not outright psychopathic. To incite people’s survival impulse in order to coerce them to embrace salvation schemes that destroy life to “save the world… save democracy”. Alarmists dismiss entirely the “test of facts” as in the undeniably destructive outcomes to their panic-mongering.
Both sides need to stop this wherever they find it on their side. It’s driven by the totalitarian impulse which itself is the worst of psychopathologies.
Lessons from a cancelled victim, Wendell Krossa
Good advice when assaulted by the Woke mobs- Do not apologize or back down as that just feeds the predator impulse in attackers. And note the cowardly (shamefully spineless) bending of the knee by institutions, corporations, and politicians. No “Hero’s quest” there.
This article by Colin May points to the motivations of virtue-signaling narcissism- the psychopathology of Woke “compassion”. He exposes the bullying totalitarianism (tyranny of outraged, screaming minorities) that presents as “heroic activism in a righteous battle against evil forces to save some victimized group”. It’s a complete distortion of the hero’s quest.
Welcome to the psychopathology of the new totalitarianism our societies are being subjected to that is a rejection of Classic Liberalism.
Mobs of contemporary bullies are on the prowl for some misspoken word, and if finding none, will then pull words out of context and make them evil. Or intentionally ignoring context, just construct a full frontal lie out of opponent’s statements. Notable examples- Trump’s Hannibal Lector joke, his “bloodbath” comment re the auto industry, or his Charlottesville comments.
Try to understand this basement dweller mentality- constantly enraged, offended, resentful, engaging hate-filled prowling for some “evil” to attack and then frame oneself as heroic in battling the evil.
The May article:
“First rule of being cancelled- never apologize: Now even the academic literature offers handy tips about cancel culture that can help if you run afoul of the internet mob’s anger”, Collin May, Oct. 30, 2024
https://financialpost.com/opinion/first-rule-being-cancelled-never-apologize
May says that getting cancelled is “nasty business” and then shares the lessons from his own cancellation. He had long ago written a review of a book on Islam. Prowling activists searched his past and finding the review immediately framed it as “Islamophobia” and demanded an apology which he refused to give because there “was nothing to apologize for, it was simply an honest account of an erudite scholar’s book.”
He says that he misunderstood the motivations of his accusers and then notes research on people involved in cancelling. They are identified by “’political centrality identity.’ These are highly-politicized individuals driven to demonstrate their ideological bona fides. They may claim their goal is merely to rectify harm suffered by an identifiable or marginalized group, but the over-riding purpose is to display their own zeal to other members of their in-group. For this reason, it is impossible to negotiate with them.”
He adds that cancellers turn into mobs who are ignorant of issues involved but “seek to satisfy their own sense of accomplishment by achieving a cancellation.”
May says he compounded his errors by assuming a public statement would placate the mob. He notes others subjected to cancelling wrongly believe that a confession will free them from the mob’s attacks.
Then he touches on “institutional betrayal” where government agencies, professional organizations, universities, etc. contribute to cancel culture by capitulating to cancel mobs. They claim that confessions will appease the mobs but that only further incites the predatory zeal of mobs to destroy. The response of government leaders, corporate CEOs, and university administrations have all shown us the cowardly bending of the knee to tyrannical mobs.
“Collin May is a lawyer and adjunct lecturer in community health sciences at the University of Calgary. A longer version of this story first appeared at C2CJournal.ca.”
This from meteorologist Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat.com
“Wrong, Earth.com, Climate Change is actually enhancing life on Earth”, Oct.31, 2024
Watts opens with “An undated Earth.com article claims “The foundation of life is at risk from climate change.” This is false. Real-world data shows that the Earth is actually increasing its biomass in response to the mild warming over the last century combined with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
Watts quotes from the article that states “Photosynthesis forms the foundation of life on Earth, yet climate change increasingly threatens this essential process.”
Watts counters that climate change is not threatening photosynthesis but this process is actually being enhanced by the slight increase in temperature and increased concentration of atmospheric CO2. He notes the NASA evidence that the Earth has added significant green vegetation over past decades due to the above two natural factors.
He points out the logical nature of this because more warmth and more basic plant food (CO2) provide a better environment for plant growth. Kind of a huge Grade One level “Duh”, eh.
“Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.”
This also from Wattsupwiththat.com
“Put Policy Pragmatism Over Climate Obsession”, Kristen Walker, Oct. 31, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/31/put-policy-pragmatism-over-climate-obsession/
Walker says that “We are continually being told that climate change is getting worse and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and intense. Neither is true.”
She notes that the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) records and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s research do not detect a strong relationship between CO2 levels/climate change and extreme weather events.
Her conclusion: “Alarmists would do well to cease the catastrophizing and end-of-world fearmongering. Energy is the lifeblood of our economy. Pragmatism and common sense, rather than climate hysteria, should be driving energy policy.”
“Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization.”
How apocalyptic exaggeration deforms and destroys minds and lives, Wendell Krossa (This is intro to the consciousness-transforming and spirit-liberating list of new narrative themes below- revised, updated)
Observe how fear deforms minds. Example: Our liberal Democratic (now extreme leftist “Woke Progressive”) friends in the US illustrate this for us all. Yes, both sides there do it, but Progressives are illustrating it more publicly now due to their dominance on the public platforms of news media, Big Tech social media, etc. Again, the US situation demonstrates what is happening in other Western liberal democracies.
US Progressives have created a monster who is irrationally exaggerated as an apocalyptic-scale threat. The man (Trump) is demonized and dehumanized in terms of the worst evil possible- i.e. “Hitler, fascist, Nazi, dictator, racist”. They claim that he poses “the end of democracy, the rejection of the Constitution, etc.”. And with his affirmation of fossil fuels, he also poses the very end of life itself. (Again, for balance, both sides engage this exaggeration of the threat that the differing other poses.)
When you have gone irreversibly extremist in your demonization, how do you then eventually dial down the hysteria and pull back to sanity, and get along once again? After committing to such extremist hysteria, you can’t back down without abandoning credibility. And where is the taking responsibility like an adult and apologizing for getting things so wrong? The rest of us have to learn to accept and learn from the consequences of our exaggerations and lies.
The falsity of the extremist accusations, re their enemy, is obvious in the fact that over the previous 4 years of his presidency there was no lawfare and locking up of opponents, no concentration camps for The View ladies, and no Seal Team 6 death squads.
But the alarmist hysterians appear to have no conscience at all about doing this constantly, putting forth endless “end of world” scenarios backed by actual dates for the apocalypse, dates that endlessly fail. And as the end-of-days dates endlessly pass unfulfilled, the alarmists immediately twist on their heels and move on to the next apocalyptic scenario and end-times date. The level of denial in this ongoing process of generating apocalyptic-scale hysteria is mind-reeling to the rest of us.
And the scary thing is that US Democrats sincerely believe that their monster is real. They are even willing to destroy democracy in order to “save democracy” from the monster. Matt Taibbi has noted, for example, the “behind the scenes” wargaming by deep state agencies and actors for a “post-election crackdown” if Hitler wins the election. Such people have convinced themselves that they cannot let Hitler gain power. They are convinced that their heroic crusade against an evil monster is “righteous and demands desperate measures”, like the Allies engaging deception when fighting the Nazis. All is excusable when you are facing off-the-scale threat.
https://www.racket.news/p/uh-oh-new-york-times-washington-post
The “Democratic” abandonment of normal democratic processes, in order “to save democracy”, is in addition to the fact that we are already deep into ruining our societies to “save the world” with Net Zero mania.
Such is the lunacy that we embrace when we have been subjected to irrational hysteria, beaten with fear-mongering that now consistently goes apocalyptic-scale.
And, another caution here, remember how apocalyptic scale fear-mongering led an entire nation of otherwise good people into a mass-death outcome as the proposed salvation scheme under the Nazis in WW2 Germany.
The panic-mongering of alarmists deforms the hero’s quest with a perverted focus on fellow citizens/fellow humans as monsters to be vanquished, even exterminated.
Another note- We do well to heed historian Richard Landes warning that as apocalyptic movements begin to fail, the leaders may then double down and even shift to the dangerous late-stage phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”. That is when we know that we have allowed ourselves to be deceived by “history’s most violent and destructive idea”- apocalyptic.
Do we really want to go down these potentially society-destroying routes? Do we want to continue playing with these dangerous outcomes of apocalyptic hysteria?
The focus on fellow citizens as monstrous threats and enemies misses entirely that the only real monster in life is the one that resides inside all of us- i.e. the evil triad of monstrous impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.
We heroically fight the real righteous battle of life and counter our “enemy within” by remembering our fundamental oneness in the human family- i.e. that every human being on Earth today is descended from an African Eve (“Mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis). Or we embrace the fact of “quantum entanglement” that points to a profoundly fundamental oneness at the core of all reality. Or we can note the common NDE affirmation of fundamental oneness of all. Add Bob Brinsmead’s comment that what we do to others we do to ourselves also.
Conclusion- The above noted outcomes of hysteria-mongering are why apocalyptic is rightly labelled the most dangerous idea in history, inciting irrational fear and pushing people to embrace the destructive outcomes of alarmist’s salvation schemes. Apocalyptic-scale panic-mongering distorts reality, deforms minds/personalities, and even led to the mass-death outcomes of Marxism, Nazism, and now potentially the same destructive outcome through environmental alarmism.
If you need some examples of how apocalyptic insanity destroys societies get the regular Global Warming Policy Foundation newsletters “Net Zero Watch” and watch Britain destroying itself in real time due to its insane obsession with decarbonization. Add Germany and California to your examples list.
Hollywood plays a significant role in affirming this nonsense in public consciousness, endlessly pushing its obsession with apocalyptic stories. The mainstream media also contribute to the current “madness of crowds” over apocalyptic with their fundamental bent to “Creating fear” (David Altheide), notably with “climate crisis” alarmism over past decades.
More intro stuff to the list below… Wendell Krossa
Materialists/atheists got overly excited when the PEW survey came out revealing that 15% of the human population identified as “unaffiliated”. Hurrah, some claimed, we are converting the world. But the survey authors cautioned, “No, most of those unaffiliated are just ‘spiritual but not religious’”. Meaning they pray to the Universe, believe in karma, and so on.
With “karma”, true believers try to claim that it is an entirely secularized principle in nature. No, it’s the same old god behind nature punishing people for their sins, the single most traumatizing myth to have ever infected human minds, adding an extra burden of guilt, shame, and fear to already unbearable physical suffering. The same old retaliatory deity, punitive deity of all past history.
The “secularization” thing of the modern era hasn’t worked out too well because the same old mythical themes keep re-emerging to dominate human thought, beliefs, and narratives, and wreaking the same old deforming influence on human personality and society. (One source, among others: “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Arthur Herman).
With humanity you are dealing with profoundly spiritual beings dominated by their impulse for meaning and that has always pushed people toward speculation on the metaphysical- Why does this material reality exist? Why are we here? What is our purpose? You can’t just deny and shove aside the meaning impulse that has from the beginning been primal for people. The trick is to get right the speculative features that we project onto Ultimate Reality, as in what is most humane to define Ultimate Goodness, Ultimate Love. That is the point of my “New Story Alternatives” list below.
Materialists/atheists also wrestle with this meaning impulse, with God, with ultimate reality as necessary to explain what exists. But they do it in a nihilistic manner that is ultimately absurd, incoherent, and irrational. The dogmatic materialist approach then ends as the most fundamental form of denial ever.
Hence the alternatives below deal with varied religious/mythical themes because these themes continue to dominate human minds and systems of belief. You can’t out of hand just dismiss or push aside something so fundamental to being human. Better to deal with it as something essential and permanent to being human, and then as an alternative, work to fully humanize it.
The themes below are mind-transforming and liberating in the sense of getting to the very heart of the “disintegration/re-integration” process in human story, the “death to the inhumane old and rebirth to the profoundly new and humane”. They are themes from varied sources and sages from across history and they point us toward ideals that operate to promote human maturity. They are about the radical transformation of narratives that then works to transform subconscious archetypes and that changes everything downstream in human life and society.
Liberation into no conditions love, Wendell Krossa
Continuing my personal battle against the deforming and destructive impact of fear-
The list below presents some of the most important information/insight that I would pass on to a new generation. The new themes point to the most profound liberation of all- i.e. the liberation of human consciousness at the deepest levels thought, emotion, and motivation… liberation of the human spirit from the primal (and myth-based) fears that have burdened humanity across the millennia.
Contact: Wendell Krossa, wkrossa@shaw.ca
Intro to the short version of “Old Narrative Themes, Better Alternatives” (long-form version available just below this short-form list)
Joseph Campbell said that a prominent set of primitive myths has been repeated all across human history and across all the cultures of the world. The same mythical themes that have dominated human narratives across history continue to dominate human narratives and distort public consciousness today, both in religious and “secular/ideological” versions. People embracing these mythical themes in their personal worldviews are subjected to a profoundly deformed perception of reality, a warped understanding of the true state of the world.
The mythical ideas that Campbell referred to have long been the fundamental beliefs of the world religions. They are now also embraced in “secular” ideological belief systems like “Declinism” a contemporary version of apocalyptic mythology that presents the fallacy that life is on a trajectory toward becoming worse, declining toward catastrophic ending, as propagated in the ideology of Environmental alarmism/climate alarmism. These ideas have even found expression in “scientific” versions, i.e. the former belief that the Second Law of Thermodynamics dominated the cosmos and life, and thereby shaped the trajectory of the universe and life toward something worse, toward disastrous ending. Stephen Hawking waffled back and forth on this as recounted by Julian Simon in his “Ultimate Resource”. But at core the “secularized” versions of these themes are the same old primitive psychopathologies as ever before.
Note, for curiosity’s sake, that many young moderns today claim self-identities as “secular/materialist… even atheist” and yet continue to mouth the very themes of the primitive mythologies of previous millennia, no different in essential nature from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and other ancient belief systems.
You then get this cognitive dissonance outcome: People, believing that they have liberated themselves from mythical/religious ideas and have embraced more secular, materialist, even atheist belief systems, are living in profound self-delusion because a close examination of their worldviews reveals that the core themes they hold are the very same old mythical themes as those held across history by fundamentalist religious people.
Psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo has presented well the case that bad mythical ideas are seriously damaging to human life in terms of unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, depression, despair/nihilism, and violence (i.e. his point that “Cruel God” theories deform human personality- see his book “Cruel God, Kind God”).
Example: The “loss of paradise” myth sets a baseline belief that incites a sense of loss, wrong done, grievance, and the felt need to make some sacrifice/payment and to engage a righteous battle to make things right again (i.e. the urge to engage justice as punitive treatment of an enemy’s failure- the enemy blamed for ruining something pure and good- in order to make things “right” again). The actual trajectory of life reveals there was never any original paradise that has been ruined by humanity but, rather, the long-term trajectory of life evidences an ongoing rise from a worse past toward a better future.
Another (related to Lotufo’s points below): If we believe that some deity will judge, punish, exclude, and destroy our enemies (i.e. send them to Hell) then these beliefs will validate our own treatment of our opponents in the same manner (judging, condemning, excluding, punishing). We become just like the God that we believe in.
Insert before the list: These quotes just below are from psychologist Harold Ellens (quoted by Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”) on how primitive myths long embedded in human subconscious as archetypes, continue to shape human thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior today. This illustrates the common human practise of “basing behavior on similar belief”, mimicking a divine model and seeking divine validation for human behavior. This “behavior based on belief” relationship operates in both religious and “secular” environments.
Lotufo: “Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God… 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.
“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…”.
As Harold Ellens summarizes, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Continuing…
The alternative ideas offered in the list below, taken from human insight across history, speak to the profound liberation that is possible- i.e. the liberation of mind, consciousness, and spirit at the deepest levels of the human psyche.
I am speaking to a liberation that is initiated and promoted by changing the core ideas/themes that have long been embedded in the back of human minds, hardwired even in human subconscious. These deeply entrenched ideas shape how people perceive and understand the world, how they feel about things, and influence their motivations to respond/behave in certain ways in life.
The liberation of human mind occurs by reshaping consciousness/subconscious with entirely new narrative themes that then change the deeply embedded archetypes of the human subconscious, and that then ripples out to impact all of life and society because we become just like the ultimate ideals/themes that we believe in, the themes that we embrace to shape our worldviews. As we think, so we are.
The alternatives listed below are among the best available from history, according to the criterion of “most humane”, to point us in the direction of authentically humane existence. They show us how to become the heroes of our stories, how to “tower in stature as maturely human” (Joseph Campbell).
Insert note: Climate alarmism, with its apocalyptic scenarios and salvation schemes, is a contemporary example of a “profoundly religious movement” fraudulently presented as secular ideology, even science. Climate alarmism, as with all apocalyptic crusades, embraces the most fundamental of bad ideas/themes that we have inherited from primitive mythical traditions.
Note to our atheist friends regarding the varied themes below that deal with metaphysical/deity features- Suck it up. You are never going to rid humanity of the impulse to speculation on Ultimate Reality or God, to create God theories (i.e. “TOE”), because our primal impulse to meaning drives us to understand and explain why this world was created, and for what purpose. Look at materialists wrestling also with this meaning impulse in their speculations on the metaphysical- i.e. “Multi-verse, Self-Organizing Principle, etc.”
Rather than deny this primal human impulse, learn to work with it. Options- Purge inherited deity theories of the primitive mythical/religious features and reshape God theory entirely with scientific facts/natural law as the subdiscipline of “Theodicy” does, and with psychological advances, and with insights from contemporary “spiritual” movements like the NDE movement with its primary discovery that the “Light” is unconditional love of a stunningly inexpressible nature.
All religious traditions are systems of conditions- i.e. conditions of correct belief, demanded sacrifice/payment, proper rituals, adherence/loyalty to the “true” religion, and required religious lifestyle that evidences membership in the true religion.
Whether defined as “God, Light, Universe, Gaia, Universal Mind, Ultimate Consciousness, Mother Earth, karma, Self-Organizing Principle”, or other, most people continue to embrace some version of Ultimate Reality or creating Intelligence (see again the PEW Research Center’s “Global Religious Landscape” survey). God theories continue to contribute some of the most basic features to human meta-narratives and personal worldviews (both in religious and “secular/materialist” versions). Work with what we have inherited and try to make it something better, something more humane in order to function properly as ultimate human ideal and authority.
Old narrative themes, better alternatives (short version), Wendell Krossa
1. Old story myth: The idea of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality. Contemporary “secular” versions of judging, punishing deity include “Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, retributive Universe, and payback karma”.
Alternative: The new theology of deity as a stunningly no conditions reality (no conditions love). There is no threat from an unconditional God, no judgment, no exclusion of anyone, and no ultimate punishment or destruction. All are safe- in the end.
Again, this is about the nature of Ultimate Reality as ultimate Good, ultimate Love, not affirmation of pacifist response to evil in this world, though it does point to the arguments for restorative justice approaches as critical to maintaining our humanity in our battles with evil.
2. Old story myth: The idea of a perfect beginning (Eden) and a God obsessed with perfection, enraged at the loss of perfection, demanding punishment of imperfection, and atonement (sacrifice/payment) to remedy imperfection and restore the lost utopia.
Alternative: The world was purposefully created as originally imperfect in order to serve as an arena for human struggle, learning, and development. Deity has no problem with imperfection. Others include the argument that there can be no such reality as good without its opposite- i.e. evil/imperfection. Good cannot exist alone or be known and experienced without its contrasting reality.
This is not to excuse, diminish, or defend evil. From our five-senses and four-dimensional perspective we rightly feel outrage at evil and engage battles against evil. But holding some speculation on the reason for the existence of evil, in our big picture background narratives, may help us to maintain our humanity during our righteous battles against evil in this world.
As Joseph Campbell argued, we must not forget that our “enemies” are still family. And in this life we are all “actors on God’s stage” (Campbell again) engaging oppositional roles in a temporary realm to provide one another with contrasting life experiences? Yes, this is metaphysical speculation. But what might be a better alternative to explain evil? The ultimate tribal division of humanity? Eternal cosmic dualism (i.e. true believers/unbelievers forever, eternal heaven and hell) or an ultimate return to our original “oneness”?
3. Old story myth: Humanity began as a more perfect species (the myth of primitive people as pure and noble hunter gatherers, “Adam/Eve”, “noble savage” mythology). But those early people became corrupted/sinful (i.e. the myth of the “Fall of mankind”). This myth has led to persistent anti-humanism across subsequent history- persistently blaming humanity for the imperfections and suffering in the world.
Alternative: Humanity emerged from the brutality of animal reality to gradually become more humane across history (a long-term trajectory of humanity rising/improving, not “falling” into a trajectory of degeneration/decline).
4. Old story myth: The world began as an original paradise (again, the past was better) but after the “Fall” the overall trajectory of life has been declining, degenerating toward something worse.
Alternative: The long-term trajectory of life does not decline but overall rises/improves toward something ever better (i.e. more complex, organized, advanced).
5. Old story myth: The belief that natural disasters, disease, human cruelty, and death are expressions of divine punishment, and that humanity deserves punishment.
Alternative: While there are natural consequences all through life, there is no punitive, destroying deity behind the imperfections, and related natural consequences, of life.
6. Old story Myth: The belief that humanity has been rejected by the Creator and we must be reconciled via blood sacrifice/payment/suffering.
Alternative: No one has ever been rejected by the unconditional Love at the core of reality. No one has ever been separated from God. Ultimate Love does not demand appeasement/payment/atonement or suffering as punishment for sin.
Natural and social consequences for behavior in this life are a different matter and fundamental to human development.
7. Old story myth: The idea of a cosmic dualism between Good and Evil (i.e. God versus Satan, Ahura Mazda versus Angra Mainyu) now expressed in human dualisms (tribes of good people versus their enemies- the bad people). Ultimate Good versus Evil has long been used to validate the human inherited animal impulse to tribalism- to view ourselves as righteous in opposition to differing or disagreeing others who are framed as evil enemies. This is not to deny there is actual evil to be opposed, but to challenge the tendency to view differing others/fellow humans as “enemies”, when they are fundamentally fellow members of the same one human family.
Alternative: There is a fundamental Oneness at the core of all and we share that oneness. We all belong equally to the one human family and equally share the ultimate eternal Oneness that is God.
8. Old story myth: The belief in a looming apocalypse as the final judgment, the ultimate punishment of wrong, and the final destruction of all things.
Alternative: There are problems all through the world but there is no looming threat of final divine destruction and ending. Apocalypse is a great fraud and lie. There will be no apocalypse as in the religious version of divine intervention to punish humanity and destroy the world (i.e. as, for example, in the New Testament book of Revelation).
9. Old story myth: The always “imminent” element in apocalyptic demands urgent action to save something, even the use of coercive violence to effect “instantaneous transformation”. (Arthur Mendel, in “Vision and Violence”, details the difference between the approaches of totalitarian impatience for “instantaneous transformation” and the messy approach of democratic “gradualism”.)
Alternative: While unexpected mega-catastrophes could still happen, there is no “imminent end of days” on the horizon, inciting the urgency to embrace irrational salvation schemes of alarmists to “save the world”. Rather, life improves through gradual democratic processes as creative humanity cooperatively solves problems.
10. Old story myth: The demand for a salvation plan, a required sacrifice or atonement (debt payment, punishment).
Alternative: Unconditional deity does not demand sacrifice, atonement, payment, or punishment as required for appeasement. Deity loves unconditionally.
Additionally, this important comment from Bob Brinsmead (full comment in sections below “Understand the root themes of the environmental religion”):
“The area often touched on superficially and skirted around like a root out of the dry ground is the matter of the anti-sacrificial movement launched by John the Baptist and brought to a head by the very issue that led directly to the death of Jesus. This is the matter of the real nature of Jesus’ temple protest. This was always destined to become the central issue of all Jesus research. No one disputes that Jesus died. If the temple event is seen as Jesus carrying forward the anti-sacrifice mission of his cousin John, then Jesus has to be seen as utterly against the whole religious idea that a sacrifice, an act of violent blood-letting to make an atonement for sin, should ever be required for reconciliation with God or with one another.
“This would mean that the Christian religion was founded on a false interpretation of the meaning of the death of Jesus, and it was out of this grave misunderstanding, that the whole edifice of its Christology arose– the Christology of a divine, virgin born and absolutely sinless man by whom God supposedly defeats evil by an act of apocalyptic violence, first in the Christ event and finally in a holocaust at the end of the world.
“Or to put it more simply, Jesus died protesting at the temple, the place where sacrifices were offered, affirming that God requires no sacrifice (no blood-letting violence) to put us right with God; yet the Christian religion turned the death of Jesus into God’s supreme sacrifice to put us right with God. Rightly understood, point 9 resolves the issue of point 8, that is, whether the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic Jesus or a sapiential Jesus.” Bob Brinsmead
11. Old story myth: The belief that retribution or payback is true “justice” (i.e. eye for eye, hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, punishment for punishment).
Alternative: Unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs, forgives freely and without limit. And yes, there are natural consequences to bad behavior in this world, but all justice should be humanely restorative/rehabilitative in response to human failure.
Leo Tolstoy: “People think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions to not exist”. Paraphrased by others as- “There is never any circumstance when people are not to be treated with love.”
12. Old story myth: The threat of after-life judgment, exclusion, punishment, and destruction (i.e. hell). This pathology adds unnecessary sting to the natural human fear of death.
Alternative: Unconditional love does not threaten ultimate judgment, exclusion, punishment, or destruction.
13. Old story myth: The idea of a “hero” messiah who will use superior force to overthrow enemies, purge the world of wrong, and install a promised utopia.
Alternative: A God of authentic love does not intervene with overwhelming force that overrides human freedom and choice. It is up to maturing humanity to make the world a better place through long-term gradualism processes that respect the freedom of others who differ.
14. Old story myth: The fallacy of biblicism- the belief that religious holy books are more special and authoritative than ordinary human literature, and the related fallacy that people are obligated to live according to the holy book as the revealed will, law, or specially inspired word of God.
Alternative: We evaluate all human writing according to basic criteria of right and wrong, good and bad, humane or inhumane. Holy books, written by fallible people like ourselves, are not exempted from this basic process of discernment/evaluation.
15. Old story myth: The idea of God as King, Ruler, Lord, or Judge. This myth promotes the idea that God relates to humanity in domination/submission forms of relating. This is based on the primitive idea that humans were “created to serve the gods”. These mythical ideas have long been used to validate human forms of domination over others (i.e. the “divine right of kings, priesthoods”).
Alternative: There is no domination/subservience relationship of humanity to God. True greatness is to relate horizontally to all as equals. The “greatness” of God is to relate to all as free equals, not to “lord over” others.
As Jesus stated, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… Not so with you… whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”
16. Old story myth: The idea that humanity is obligated to know, serve, or have a relationship with an invisible reality (deity), that we are to give primary loyalty to something separate from and above people.
Alternative: Our primary loyalty is to love and serve real people around us. Their needs, here and now, take priority in life. Loyalty to realities placed above people (laws, institutions, or higher authorities) has always resulted in the neglect or abuse of real people.
17. Old story myth: The perception that God is silent or absent during the horrors of life (i.e. Where was God during the Holocaust?). This myth of absent deity is based on the primitive belief that God is a sky deity (dwelling in heaven above, separate from humanity), a deity that descends to intervene in life and change circumstances, and override natural law, in order to save or protect people.
Alternative: There has never been a Sky God up above in some heaven. The reality we call “God” has always been incarnated equally in all humanity and, therefore, God has always been immediately present in all human suffering and is intimately present in all human raging and struggle against evil.
God is inseparable from the human spirit in all of us and is expressed in all human action to prevent evil, to solve problems, and to improve life. We are the embodiments/incarnations of God in this world, and nothing saves us except our choices and actions to oppose wrong and to help one another, to make life better in this world.
And shifting orientation a bit…
18. Old story myth: The fallacy of “limited good” and the belief that too many people are consuming too much of Earth’s resources, and hence world resources are being exhausted.
Alternative: More people on Earth means more creative minds to solve problems. More consumption means more wealth to solve problems and enable us to make life better- i.e. enable us to improve the human condition and protect the natural world at the same time. Evidence affirms that human improvement and environmental improvement has been the outcome of more people on Earth enjoying the good life. See “Population Bombed” by Desrochers and Szurmak, “Ultimate Resource” by Julian Simon, “Humanprogress.org”, and related studies.
Further, we are not exhausting Earth’s resources. With the emergence of some apparent resource scarcity, humanity through improving technology then works to discover more reserves of those scarce resources or makes the shift to alternative resources. There is a superabundance of resources in our world. Note also the “dematerialization” trend in modern advanced societies (the ongoing trend of less material inputs per person, economies of scale with increasing urbanization, etc.).
This evidence speaks to the unlimited generosity of God as creator, sustainer of reality and life.
See also the added old story myth in the longer version below- i.e. the Holiness myth.
Add your own themes/ideas and alternatives.