More on the larger social issue of the elite/commoner divide in our societies, Wendell Krossa
The struggle for freedom from domination is fought and won most critically inside each of us. The “Hero’s quest” struggle against our real enemy- i.e. most notably or critically, the “evil triad” of inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others. This affirms Solzhenitsyn’s point that the real battle of good against evil runs through the center of every human heart. We win the great battles of life by first taking care of what is wrong inside each of us. Not “sinfulness”, but residual things from our animal past.
And at some level of consciousness most of us feel these things naturally, i.e. the desire to be free of what we sense is subhuman- those animal impulses inside us- and to experience what it feels like to be truly human, fully human. We get this at some level of consciousness, what we call the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
Honing a bit more the focus to the real nature of the human struggle for freedom…
The real battle of good against evil takes place at the most fundamental of levels, as a battle against the bad religious ideas (religious ideas as ultimate ideals) that have from the beginning validated our worst impulses. Some call them “archetypes”. And they tell us that the archetypes reside in the human subconscious and emanate their influence from there. Hence, the 95% of human behavior that is subconsciously initiated. So they say.
Moving along… Probing or looking past the societal level of our daily lives. (“Societal level”? The struggles between varied groups in public- i.e. society-level battles over differing ideologies, beliefs, policies, etc.)
Classic Liberal principles, laws, and representative institutions play the critical role to counter the impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of others, at the societal level. What we observe daily played out in the great public battles of groups of people versus other groups of people.
But as “the military guy” urged (responding to the 2014 eruption of ISIS in Syria), we need to go further, or deeper, to the ultimate factors that drive the expression of these destructive impulses at the societal level. Or we have not properly solved the problem of commoner enslavement to elites for the long-term future.
The good news for a new year is that we were long ago given the potent weapon to slay the inner monster (the real enemy of us all) and win the battle of good against evil. But that weapon has long been buried by well-meaning religious types.
My point? The weapon to slay the real monster (the evil triad inside us) is the central theme of Historical Jesus (the non-Christian, non-religious Jesus), a theme that has been entombed by Paul’s Christ myth for two millennia. That is the conclusion of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy.
The great human struggle for freedom, is a struggle for the most profound liberation of all, not just physical freedom in human society, but freedom from the mental/emotional enslavement of mind and spirit to the “threat theology” that has been passed down from mythology to world religions, and is now replicated in the “secular” ideologies of the modern ear (i.e. deity as tribal, dominating, and punitively destroying).
“Threat theology” is my all-encompassing term for the full complex of primitive myths- i.e. “lost paradise, pissed deity punishing early humanity with a loss of paradise and life declining toward something worse, toward final apocalyptic destruction, with the divine demand for sacrifice/payment and divine demand to purge evil from life, to engage a quest to destroy enemies, and then the promise of communal paradise as reward”.
This complex is centered by, dominated by, energized by the myth of deity as tribal (include true believers, exclude unbelievers), deity as a dominating Lord/King ruling with a “rod of iron” (humanity created to serve deity, eternally), and deity as meting out punitive destruction of enemies. These worst features of primitive theology, long revered as ultimate ideals, have also long validated the similarly framed evil triad of impulses in us.
This relationship of human behavior to the features of threat theology can also be understood in terms of the “behavior based on validating belief” bond. We humans have always sought divine approval for our behavior and lives. We always have.
Weaving right along…
The ultimate liberation struggle of humanity, the struggle for mental/emotional liberation deep inside our psyches, supersedes all other social liberation movements across history. And we are not there yet in fully engaging this ultimate battle of commoners against elites, as in freeing humanity from the elites of the religious traditions. Meaning- “elites” as the theological ideas, the primitive ideas of the nature and character of God, ideas/features that have always been viewed as the ultimate ideals to guide human life.
Theological elitism, as the long-term human projection of bad features onto God, enslaves populations, mentally and emotionally, with bad religious ideas. That is the worst form of enslavement.
Summarizing: Ultimate freedom is liberation from the personality-deforming religious themes that validate the worst of our impulses. Again, this is not my argument alone. As posted repeatedly here, psychologists like Harold Ellens, Zenon Lotufo, and historians like Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others, have through their detailed research revealed the outcomes of bad religious ideas on human personality and society.
Weaving back to my point…
Jesus made the critical theological breakthrough for ultimate human liberation, like nothing ever before, or since. A breakthrough insight that overturned entirely the enslaving theologies of all previous religions. He rejected the threat theology at the core of human systems of belief entirely and stated that God- and here is that “weapon to slay the monster” referred to above- he stated that God was no conditions love, transcendently so.
Get the full ramifications/conclusions of his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God”:
Meaning that there was no deity pissed at an imperfect world and imperfect humanity. There was no divine demand for sacrifice or payment. No demand to engage a tribal battle of righteous ones against enemies (Zoroastrian cosmic dualism). No demand to demonize others as irredeemable enemies to be purged from life. No demand for human subservience to deity or any other elite authority. And no ultimate collectivist utopia promised for true believers.
There was no such reality as threat theology. There never had been a God like that. Such threat theology was always the creation of primitive human minds still existing within a more animal-like existence.
But then, in what has to be considered the greatest violation of truth in history, Paul- the early CE authority on which the New Testament was constructed- buried that liberating breakthrough insight of Jesus with his Christ myth, thereby re-establishing human enslavement to threat theology, an enslavement that was infinitely worse than his advice to slaves to submit to their masters (Ephesians 6: 5-9).
Insert: But, as scholars claim, Paul didn’t write Ephesians. No matter, its in the Christian canon in relation to Paul and his fully Hellenized religion.
Christianity has never properly represented Jesus. It has long deformed him and his central message entirely with Paul’s Christology, the New Testament myth that is framed by the themes of religious tribalism (true believers included, unbelievers excluded), the condition of sacrifice (demands to be met for acceptance), the feature of domination (Lord Christ exhibiting religious domination and control through religious leadership), and threats of retaliatory punishment (apocalypse and hell). “Christ-ianity” has never properly presented who Jesus actually was and what he actually taught- i.e. his critical anti-sacrifice message and protest, better known as “Jesus-ianity”.
Its time to inaugurate the tradition of celebrating “Historical Jesus-mas” (Sheesh, that is clumsy, eh. Ignore the facetious or waggish tone in this). But honor the man for who he really was and what he actually taught.
More on the contradiction between Paul and Jesus:
The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Note: Others have explained the mistake of Paul as “turning a Jewish prophet into a Gentile God”, a Hellenized deity entirely contrary to Jesus and his message, meaning “Jesus” as the Historical Jesus who was a Jewish prophet protesting against sacrifice. See for example, Maurice Casey’s “From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology”.
Or better, check out Bob Brinsmead’s good material on Historical Jesus… https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
Suggestion: Change your narrative themes and that will work back down into the “archetypes” to effect fundamental change there. That will then produce a new emanating influence on your thinking, feeling, motivation, and response/behavior.
Articles presenting these points:
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
From Retaliation to Unconditional love- the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809
Speculating with Joseph Campbell on the meaning of life– a take on the hero’s journey and conquest. The intensely inner battle to conquer the monster of inherited animal impulses, along with the mythical themes that validate such impulses, and thereby tower in stature as maturely human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8661
One of the best analyses of Justin Trudeau to date. “What roughly 80 per cent of Canadians seem to see in Trudeau now is the transparent fraud that I saw from the very moment I laid eyes on him and heard him speak.” I saw the same, Chris.
“Justin Trudeau’s political instincts were always atrocious. Some people are only noticing now: This is a man who sang Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody in the piano bar at the filthily luxurious Corinthia Hotel in London on the eve of the Queen’s funeral. Who survives that unscathed?”, Chris Selley, Dec. 20, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/justin-trudeaus-political-instincts-were-always-bad
This from one of our best analysts…
“Time’s up for Trudeau’s thin policy gruel: His entire policy record has been a green terror”, Conrad Black, Dec. 21, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-times-up-for-trudeaus-thin-policy-gruel
“The prime minister has endlessly proclaimed his nonsensical belief that Canada’s greatest challenge is climate change. This is bunk and every Canadian with an IQ in at least double figures knows it. Next to green zealotry, his greatest policy flourish is called “reconciliation” (with the aboriginal peoples)….
“The principal additional policy initiative of these nine Trudeau years has been an absurd preoccupation with gender issues. There are only two sexes and it is up to all individuals to work out their own sexuality as they wish and with complete freedom and toleration provided they do not affront reasonable standards public decency or engage in any form of coercion, especially with minors. This is pretty thin policy gruel for nine years and it has been accompanied by acute financial incontinence and swaddled in the jargon and posturing of oppressive political correctness, affirmative action, faddish wokeness, authoritarian imposition of diversity, purported equity, and inclusiveness. It was all nauseating when it was fashionable and it is rancid now that the civilized world has finally sickened of all of it. The government of Canada is an uproarious joke in the world, a favorite butt of the sophomoric attempts at witticisms by late-night American comics…”
Excellent summaries on climate science from H. Sterling Burnett’s “Climate Change Weekly #529” Dec. 20, 2024
First, “New Study: Greenhouse gases are saturated, not causing warming”.
“In a recent study published in the Journal of Sustainable Development, Michael Simpson from the University of Sheffield, points out that the goal of hitting net zero emissions is a political one, that was undemocratically adopted by the U.K. government. It is not grounded in science.
“Simpson’s study goes through the chemistry and physics of greenhouse gasses, arguing that there is no climatic reason for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero. Even if that goal is politically possible, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), are saturated in the atmosphere. As a result, per Simpson, “[a]dding to or removing these naturally occurring gases from the atmosphere will make little difference to the temperature or the climate.”
“As Simpson points out doing a brief literature review, there is no evidence that climate change is causing an increase in extreme weather events or making such events worse, more severe, of greater duration, or more powerful. In short, there is no evidence that human greenhouse case emissions are causing a dangerous climate change.”
He adds, “Additions to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from humans don’t significantly alter the amount of solar radiation that can be absorbed and retained.
“Simpson also goes through the “ideal gas law” in detail, showing mathematically why additional greenhouse gases can’t have the climatic impact attributed to them by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Based on these facts, since greenhouse gases aren’t producing runaway temperatures or worsening weather, they can’t be causing a climate crisis in need of a big government fix.
Simpson concludes: “The recommended policy is to abandon Net Zero and do nothing about so-called ‘greenhouse gases.’”
Next from Burnett- “Ocean emissions cool the climate, forests also cool”.
“Research published in the journal Nature indicates that models also fail to account for emissions from rainforests, which also tend to cool the climate.
“The research by scientists from Finland… finds that rainforests emit chemicals that form isoprene-oxygenated organic molecules, with said molecules reaching the troposphere…
“Aerosol particles are important for climate because they scatter and absorb incoming solar radiation and seed cloud droplets by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). More CCN make clouds more reflective and may increase their extent and lifetime.”
He adds this from Marc Morano of Climate Depot- “The amazon rain forests are essentially cloud machines … they’re pumping out clouds by releasing these aerosols from the forest…. Which then create more clouds, which then cool the earth.”
Burnett then concludes: “None of those factors being accounted for by climate models, which have persistently failed over the decades to accurately reflect temperatures.”
“Yack attack” prep: Wendell Krossa (All praise and glory to my wife for her creative terms)
When I talk about “elites” below I am not referring to the majority of people in government, the many who get that government exists to “serve the citizenry not dominate”. My use of “elites” is not even a reference to the majority on the Democratic side, where extremist Woke Progressive totalitarianism is coming from.
What many term “elites”, those using state agencies and bureaucracies to further their schemes, is more likely a “tyranny of the minority”. But because they do not respect democracy, and do not follow democratic processes, they can wield excessive power over others, far out of proportion to their numbers.
They have been doing that, as Gen. Wesley Clark pointed out regarding his conversation with Paul Wolfowitz, who along with others had staged a coup to turn the US military toward destabilizing and overthrowing foreign governments so the US could further that elite’s goals of dominating the world. That group, claimed Clark, re-oriented the goals of the US military without any public or democratic debate, without any input from Congressional leaders or others. So yes, those elites are likely a minority but deviously successful in establishing dominance within the US government.
Summing up the year, getting ready for the New Year’s battles for freedom and liberal democracy, Wendell Krossa
We are engaged in another great battle for human freedom, for the triumph of liberal democracy. Our battle is the latest in the never-ending history-long struggle of commoners against elites trying to meddle in, dominate, and control societies. Who knew that this would become the great struggle now in Western liberal democracies that just recently believed the “end of history” had been achieved in the triumph of liberal democracy over the Communist plague of the post-WW2 period.
And in a stunning shift that caught most of us off guard, the battle is no longer so much against threatening foreign totalitarians, though that threat remains in the background. Now the struggle is more with the “enemy within” at two important levels- i.e. with the formerly self-identified “liberals” of our societies many of whom are now agitating to push a new totalitarianism on everyone through Woke Progressivism ideology.
And then at another level there is the far more critical threat to freedom and democracy- i.e. the personal one, the deeper version of the “enemy within” that is the inherited “evil triad” inside each of us. To conquer that threat requires another approach.
Weaving to this point…
Many of the big public debates today in our liberal democracies are framed by the dualism of the two major ideological positions, notably between the Left and the Right, and over the related policies associated with these two main ideological competitors for public support. And we have several centuries of evidence of the outcomes from both viewpoints and their approaches to organizing societies.
How do we discern which is right, when both claim to be the defenders and promoters of truth, of right, of greater good, and social justice. Muddying the issues more, each side smears the other side as “wrong, evil, liars, fascists, etc.”, and “existential threats to democracy”.
The tools to evaluate the arguments and policy proposals of both sides…
Classic Liberalism gives us the principles, systems of law, and representative institutions that protect and promote the “natural freedoms and rights” of every individual, equally (i.e. “natural” as in God-given, not state-granted). You cannot get a clearer grasp on right, truth, justice, and overall good than the common or greater good of the natural rights and freedoms of every individual, equally. That is the ultimate of diversity, inclusion, and equality.
Classic Liberalism does this best, for every individual citizen, by orienting government institutions, agencies, and programs to “serving” citizens, not lording over them, not permitting elites and bureaucrats to abuse government agencies, bureaucracies, and programs to tribally propagandize, meddle in citizen’s lives, and thereby dominate and control free individuals.
Classic Liberalism offers simple guiding criteria for evaluating the ideologies that are vying for dominance in shaping our societies, for evaluating their related policies and consequent outcomes.
The critical question: Does the ideology and its policy outcomes protect and enhance the freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally? This is the ultimate “Test of facts” (Thomas Sowell).
I will not argue the evidence that collectivism in the modern world has been inevitably associated with totalitarian control of populations. The undeniable outcomes over the past century are proof enough. The inevitably totalitarian outcome is due to Marx arguing that private property was the number one evil to liberate people from, and then doing that through his collectivist approach.
(Insert on the inevitable totalitarian outcomes of collectivism/socialism: Again, Niemietz’s good point on this- “Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”)
Continuing…
While the Marxist version of collectivism was straightforward, other governing elites have followed similar principles and programs to undermine the rights and freedoms of individuals, whether intentionally or unintentionally, primarily by coercively confiscating the private property of commoners through three main mechanisms- i.e. by (1) increasing the size of government and the government institutions/agencies/bureaucracies that elites control and use to dominate and control people, (2) through increased taxation (state confiscation of the property of citizens, private property that gives individuals freedom of choice and control over their lives), and worst of all, according to Ron Moynihan, by (3) increasing state regulations that enable elites and bureaucrats to meddle in, intervene, and control the details of people’s lives.
Hence, we have today the “soft socialism, soft collectivism” of big government, big taxation, big regulation. “Soft”- Depending if you view it as something coming from people who agree with the general goals and policies of collectivism/socialism but don’t frame their approach as ideologically “socialist”. Usually, they prefer to frame their approach as simply operating for “greater or common good”. “Noble cause” framing.
However, if the push for common or greater good is coming from a more consciously declared ideological position that is socialist, and is more intentionally the outcome of that approach, then it’s not so soft, but more hardcore.
I would consider much of the contemporary moderate faction of the “liberal/Democratic” side in our liberal democracies to be soft socialism/soft collectivism because the members identifying with that grouping do not all claim allegiance to formal socialist ideology but hold to something more ideologically unformed but that shares the same general ideals and goals of socialists in claiming to seek greater or common good.
These people exhibit the fundamental principles of collectivism in their confiscation of private property from citizens, through state mechanisms like taxation, to redistribute according to their elitist vision of greater good. They share a similar arrogance to that of the “enlightened vanguards” of collectivist systems, the enlightened elites similar to Plato’s “philosopher king or noble rulers”, those who believe that they know best how to redistribute or spend the wealth of all members of a society. And they hold to the delusional view that they are running the collective “on behalf of” or “for the people”.
No matter the ideological justification, in coercively taking the income of citizens (state mandates), state elites are removing citizen’s fundamental freedom of choice, their control over their own property and lives. Again, ruling elites convince themselves that they know better than commoners what is good for the society. State elites don’t believe that average citizens will do what is best for the larger society.
What is this elite distrust of common people? Does it linger from the inherited religious myth that human beings are fundamentally “fallen, sinful, corrupt, greedy”? They therefore cannot then be trusted to do the right thing.
And denying that same fallen state applies to them, elites flatter themselves as the wiser members of societies, possessed with noble intentions for greater good, and living in denial of the proven consistent outcomes, over the past century, that their totalitarian approaches have destroyed societies, contrasted with the concurrent outcomes from the Classic Liberal approach that has protected the property, rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.
Place this within the big backdrop of what happened as liberals in Western democracies shifted to became anti-liberal/highly illiberal over the past few decades. For example, the formerly anti-war, pro-free speech sector of our societies has now flipped to become majority pro-censorship (i.e. 70% of Democrats), and prowar. I use the US situation as iconic to illustrate what is happening in other Western societies.
The shift of US liberals/Democrats to highly illiberal Woke Progressivism appears to have coincided with the recent emergence of a generation of students graduating from universities freshly propagandized by socialist principles, having studied under faculties that have, over previous decades, shifted to majority staffing by mainly leftist/socialist professors.
Niall Ferguson, Richard Lindzen, among others, have pointed out that 60s Marxists, realizing that they could not win public support for their revolution against industrial capitalist civilization through normal democratic processes, then regrouped and decided to sneak in through the back door, to infiltrate the teachers colleges and thereby shape new generations of teachers and university professors to indoctrinate new generations of young people with socialist ideology.
Over the past few decades those students have emerged to populate all sectors of society- i.e. government bureaucracies, media (news and social media), even intelligence agencies, to control public narratives. Hence, the public emergence about 10-years ago of a new totalitarianism in the collectivist crusade that is being pushed on us via the Woke Progressive banner, with fronts like DEI, ESG that are promoting a new class dualism of “victim/victimizer” (classified by skin color, Woke Racism), very much similar to the old Marxist “oppressed/oppressor” categories of “capital owners/workers”.
Add the surveys revealing that fully half of young people now favor socialism for organizing societies and this leads one to conclude this is more than just soft versions of socialism/collectivism. It’s the intentional embrace of the known ideology of hardcore socialism that then pushes to dominance in society and carries along the moderate liberals sharing the concern for “greater or common good” of a less totalitarian nature.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/young-americans-support-abstract-and-unworkable-socialism
What has emerged in our societies through “Woke Progressivism”, whether it was some original conscious intention or not, is an ever more unleashed totalitarianism. This has been evident in the spreading advocacy of the Woke few to meddle in and control all aspects of citizen’s lives down to the very words that citizens are permitted to use, or not use, backed by threats of censorship, banning, exclusion, and even criminalization for any dissent.
We are now, in our liberal democracies, confronted with agencies, NGOs, and others patrolling online for speech-crime violators to be prosecuted, censored, silenced, even arrested. This neo-totalitarianism is spreading throughout varied formerly liberal democracies in Europe (e.g. England, Germany, Ireland, etc.)
https://adfinternational.org/news/shellenberger-irish-censorship
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17577632.2022.2083870
Taibbi, Kirn, Shellenberger, Benz…
The spread of totalitarian socialism throughout Western liberal democracies also coincides with the noted shift of intelligence agencies away from their earlier post-WW2 focus on gathering intelligence on foreign authoritarian regimes, and seeking to overthrow those governments, to now focusing that intelligence gathering, and related project to overthrow, against fellow citizens now framed as the new “authoritarians”, the “domestic terrorists”, notably any who join any form of populist revolt against controlling elites. Mike Benz, and others, speak to this shift of focus from foreign to domestic notably in the focus on “populism” as the new authoritarian threat, populism now demonized as “rightwing extremism and terrorism”. Note also, the example of the FBI going after parents who were protesting just to have some part in their kid’s education.
Further, the corruption of the justice system to persecute political opponents with lawfare is more evidence that Woke Progressivism has little to do with Classic Liberalism that affirms the “habeas corpus” protection of common citizens against unjust accusation, arrest, and prosecution.
More on the battle for freedom and the claims of leftist Progressives to be fighting for freedom and democracy…
Bob Brinsmead nails the core pathology of totalitarianism with his comment that “where there is no true freedom of individuals there is no authentic love”. Love and freedom are inseparable realities. So please don’t talk about “compassion for oppressed victims” when you then enact policies to strip away the freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally. The test of true compassionate liberalism is to include even your opponents in your version of freedom and democracy (i.e. the protection of free speech that is offensive, repugnant to you). That is the critical test of the authenticity of the democracy, freedom, and compassion that you claim to promote. Does it protect and promote the rights and freedoms of all citizens, equally? You see how I keep returning to Classic Liberalism as the best that we have come up with to protect us all.
There is no true freedom, democracy, or liberalism when you shift your “liberalism” to pro-censorship, pro-war, and other highly illiberal positions (i.e. sending the children of the poorest citizens off to fight and die in your elite battles to destabilize, overthrow, and control other nations). And then to launch crusades to censor, silence, and ban fellow citizens? Criminalize opponents who disagree with you? Please cease trying to convince us that your pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-criminalize, and similar positions are necessary to “protect democracy, to save freedom and liberate the oppressed”. Those positions are better understood in terms of the “psychopathologies” of left-wing authoritarianism, left-wing narcissism and compassion.
(Insert note: Journalists Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and others have exposed the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of intelligence agencies and military complex elites intentionally deceiving citizens with tricks like “false flag” events to propagandize the domestic population and push for endless wars. Examples- Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine.)
Thanks to those probing of the psychology of today’s elites (e.g. Jordan Peterson, Christine Brophy, Michael Shellenberger, etc.), we now understand better that the above illiberal pathologies have been behind the virtue-signaling that we have seen from Woke Progressives over the past decade. I would toss in here the iconic Western exhibitionist of this Woke Progressivism over the last 9 years- i.e. Justin Trudeau of Canada as he destroyed this country with his “compassion”. “I wake up every day to work for Canadians”, he claims. Then listen, Justin, to the 80% of Canadians that want you gone, right now, before you wreak any more destruction on this country.
As noted before- What drives the totalitarian impulse of today’s elites, along with their subservient state bureaucracies, pushing to dominate and control Western liberal populations? Again, the answer lies within, the “enemy within”.
Limiting our probe to just exposing the above tendencies of Woke Progressivism and how to counter those with Classic Liberalism, while critically important, is somewhat similar to the shallow reformism of religious traditions that tinkers around the periphery of religion, and does not go after the God at the core, the ultimate influencing ideal and authority that must be overthrown and changed, entirely. True reformism goes to the ultimate root contributing factors of problems, and makes thorough changes like the revolutionary transformation that Historical Jesus engaged/promoted.
The real “enemy within”
To effectively counter the great threat to freedom and liberal democracy today, we need to understand, at the most fundamental level, what drives the neo-totalitarians. Michael Shellenberger, Jordan Peterson, Christine Brophy, and others, have all pointed to the elite narcissism, even psychopathy, behind this. But what exactly feeds these psychological elements in human makeup?
I have summarized the drivers behind the above psychopathologies in terms of our animal inheritance- the complex of anti-human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others. “Punitive” as in exterminate competition as critical to one’s “survival”.
These “evil triad” impulses deeply rooted in all of us are the real “enemy within”. Here we cease finger pointing at failing others and introspectively check ourselves for our personal responsibility in any of the social pathologies of tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others.
Understanding the deeper pathologies within ourselves enables us to better understand the same pathology at-scale, what we see publicly in elites pushing for domination in our societies, deforming our liberal democracies for their personal benefit.
The good news is that we have discovered what most potently counters and constrains our own personal impulses to tribalism, domination, and to harshly, unmercifully exhibit punitive treatment toward others. We know the Classic Liberal principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that place a healthy restraint on these impulses in all of us and orient us toward the direction of serving others.
Affirming once again- Classic Liberal systems are the best that we have come up with to fight and conquer the real “enemy within”. With Solzhenitsyn, I argue that it is critical to focus on this inner battle first, on the real enemy within, that is inside each of us. This is the real battle of life and where the real hero’s quest has to be engaged and won, if we are then to properly prepare ourselves to go forth to fight the great public struggles of life, to properly understand those battles and resolve them.
Then, again looking at the very bottom level of this issue… Here I refer to the much larger long-term background of what has long validated our impulses to tribalism, totalitarian domination, and punitive treatment of differing others- i.e. the primitive validating ideas, the inherited “archetypes” if you prefer, that powerfully influence and shape human behavior. This relates to the “behavior based on belief relationship” that has always been the expression of the primary human impulse for meaning and purpose. This behavior/belief relationship has a long history of being subjected to deformation with primitive and inhumane ideas of deity framing the belief side, deity as the ultimate guiding ideal and authority for humanity.
Overall, basing our behavior on validating beliefs, notably beliefs in the varied features of deity, is the kiddies wanting to be like Daddy/Mommy thing.
But acknowledging the critical role this behavior based on belief relationship has played in human lives across the millennia, and the pathological themes on the belief side, helps us get to the deeper contributing factors behind the more surface psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism and compassion.
The more critical archetypal themes to pay attention to are those that have a proven history of inciting and validating tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others. Such themes have to do with God as tribal deity, dominating Lord/King, and punitive Judge using violence to destroy offenders.
So do you really want to solve the problem of repeated eruptions of madness and violence as in the religious eruptions of violence (ISIS), the Marxist revolutions, Nazism, and other similar eruptions of insanity? Then listen to the military guy who urged us to go after the root ideas that have incited and validated such crusades.
Richard Landes said the same in summarizing the Nazi horrors. He said that if you don’t go after the apocalyptic millennial ideas that drove that madness then you have not understood how such religious ideas can push societies toward mass-death outcomes. You have learned nothing from the past and will only repeat the same mistakes.
This also relates very much to the narratives that feed the elite self-delusion of exercising compassion, when the policies proposed and implemented actually harm and even destroy societies.
How to deal with these root religious factors?
Plainly and simply- Change your narrative, its fundamental themes, especially the ones that we have all inherited from our religious past. The research has been done on which are the most destructive themes in that inheritance- i.e. the common themes of the “lost paradise, the subsequent decline of life, a looming apocalypse, the demand for sacrifice, the demand to purge some evil threat, the demand to engage a hero’s quest to conquer and exterminate an enemy, the promise of salvation in communal paradise”. And there are no more destructive themes than those of threat theology.
Further, the research has also been done on the new narrative themes that we need as alternatives to the inherited pathologies.
Again, the core of all psychopathology, that which towers above all other bad ideas/archetypes, is that of the God who embodies the worst features of primitivism to validate the worst impulses of primitivism- i.e. the tribal deity who accepts true believers while excluding unbelievers, the supreme Lord who dominates all with a rod of iron, and the God who is a punitive destroyer of differing others.
To focus particularly on the feature of domination: In Christianity Paul affirmed the theology of a God who demands submission and total control of lives, down to control of every thought, as in his statement, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Paul taught a deity who promotes domination like no other totalitarianism in history, and its eternal domination too. Domination to transcendent and everlasting degree. With psychologist Harold Ellens, I affirm that such an ultimate validating ideal then promotes the same in human behavior.
Psychologists Ellens and Zenon Lotufo have explained how bad religious ideas, notably those related to deity, deform human personality with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, nihilism, and lead to violence among people. Good religious themes have the opposite impact on human personality.
The especially critical themes to note in human narratives, the harmful themes that are first in line for expulsion and change, are those religious themes that drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism, climate alarmism.
Filling out this year-end summary: Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, and others have outlined the main religious themes that influence, shaped, and incited the mass-death crusades above, making such crusades profoundly religious movements.
There are no more damaging ideas/themes/myths than the apocalyptic millennial themes of Paul’s Christ myth. Take note, Hollywood.
The solution, the answer to that psychopathology?
Historical Jesus did the foundational work in challenging and then overthrowing entirely the core themes of primitive “threat theology”- i.e. the punitive deity who punished people through nature. He went directly to the ultimate core or root of the problem in human narratives- i.e. deity, or better, the primitive deformation of deity that our major world religions have inherited and continue to maintain today.
Jesus then offered, contrary to all previous historical theology, a generously loving God who “gave sun and rain to all alike with no discrimination” (i.e. his stunning new theology of deity as non-retaliatory, unconditional love). Further, with his non-retaliatory God there would be no apocalyptic destruction, no threat of afterlife harm in hell.
Jesus offered liberation like none ever presented before, going to the fundamental archetypes behind human belief systems and countering with new themes, with an entirely new theology of a God who did not threaten judgment, a God who was not tribally exclusive, wa not a dominating Lord, who did not threaten ultimate punishment. A God who was only love, stunningly inexpressible no conditions love.
Theology, as embodying ultimate ideals to influence human behavior, is the most critical element in the project of reforming narratives with new themes that effectively counter the deepest roots of our impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive harm to others.
Theology, as in the nature of deity, is the ultimate reality to change, the cohering center of narratives. And Jesus did that more radically and thoroughly than anyone before or since.
He made the final breakthrough to freedom- i.e. mental and emotional freedom, liberation at the deepest levels of the human psyche, at the level of subconscious archetypes. And then Paul, tragically for humanity, reversed the brilliant breakthrough insights of Jesus. Paul with his entirely contrary themes, re-established threat theology. His Christ myth reignited the great “enemy within” by validating the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. His Christ themes still hold dominant influence in human narratives, both religious and secular. Paul is still the most dominant influence on Western consciousness and society (See James Tabor’s quotes on Paul and the influence of his apocalyptic Christ in his “Paul and Jesus”).
And that’s my summary of critical points from this past year. With lots of “weave” as I have moved through varied comments, veering off here and there to eventually return again to whatever might be the beginning point.
Note:
Julian Simon and others have also contributed to new narratives at the level of evidence on the true state of life. He counters the decline of life fallacy in human narratives, an essential feature of apocalyptic mythology. Amassed evidence affirms that life is ever rising and improving toward something better.
Moving along… More on the new totalitarianism spreading through liberal democracies…
“Department Of Homeland Security Illegally Targeted Covid Dissent, New Documents Suggest: DHS’s cybersecurity agency went far beyond its congressional mandate in hunting wrong-think and monitoring emotions”, Alex Gutentag, Michael Shellenberger, Dec. 19, 2024
Shellenberger/Gutentag begin noting that the idea “that intelligence and security agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and others have been involved in the surveillance and censorship of the American people is a conspiracy theory, according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets.”
Their response to that- “But there was and is a Censorship Industrial Complex.”
And it did not just stop at combatting mis- and dis-informtion, but often extended to censoring political speech that Democrats did not like, even comedy. “In truth, the Biden White House “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to censor “certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire,” said Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in August.”
The censorship included Covid information that challenged government views.
So yes, there is a censorship industrial complex in government. “At the heart of the complex are politically connected progressive NGOs falsely presenting themselves as politically neutral and technocratic to demand censorship of disfavored facts and, most importantly, conservative or populist “narratives” that could increase opposition to restrictive Covid measures, mass migration, climate change alarmism, and other favored progressive policies.”
The result has been the transformation of government agencies “into highly political institutions” framed by progressive political ideology that “maintains public support for the military-industrial complex in general, and to manufacture consent for various foreign interventions in particular.”
The alarming element is that government agencies have been “repurposed” as tools of surveillance and censorship against the domestic US population. The agencies that now police public speech view themselves as “experts (who are) wiser than the society as a whole.”
RFK on the “Climate Files”, Wendell Krossa
There is a surplus of great potential presidential candidates waiting in the wings now, like RFK. But if he decides to run in 2028, I would hope that he does just as he claimed he did with vaccines and dig into the best science on the climate issue and heed that science.
My point? Sit down with the very best of climate scientists, atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer, among others, and get clear the evidence on the warming influence of CO2 and the fact that warming influence is now “saturated”. A physics term meaning that further rises in levels of atmospheric CO2 will not be able to operate in the narrow region that CO2 is limited to operating within on the infrared spectrum (around the 15 micro-meter range). That limited operating area is saturated now.
Conclusion- There is no science-based need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies and destroy them as is happening in Britain and Germany.
RFK was humbled on stage during his debate on climate issues with Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels”. RFK seemed lost on the climate file.
The saturated warming influence of CO2 is the absolute core issue to get clear. All the rest is tinkering at the periphery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q352jBT6I_k
A note to another who is waiting in the wings as an alternative to the Woke masters now in control of countries like Canada- Pierre Poilievre.
Pierre, please take a good look at Javier Milei and what he has done in Argentina. Within the first 6 months, cutting state bureaucracies/agencies in half. Decreasing the size of the public sector and getting rid of many regulations, among other radical but necessary measures. And look at the response in the Argentinian economy. Inflation collapsing, economy recovering quickly, and functioning again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLzc9kobDk
The Jon Moynihan interview with Marian Tupy in a section below said it all. We know what has to be done to create the environment that enables businesses to optimally create wealth. Cut the size of the state bureaucracy, cut taxes, cut regulations, and set your citizens free to create businesses, jobs, and wealth. Promote the principles, laws, and representative institutions of Classic Liberalism that provide the best environment in which businesses can succeed. This was Ben Carson’s repeated point during his 2016 campaign for president.
Pierre, take a good look also at Trump’s team of “disrupters” ready to set the US economy free again. It will take similar courage and drastic action from your team to pull Canada out of the mess that Trudeau has created over the past 9 years.
Pierre, I hope you have the steel spine (the “bull in a China shop” attitude) to do just as Milei did and Trump’s team will do. And to do it immediately on taking office. From all that I have heard from you, I think you do. We are all anxiously waiting.
Is DEI dying or just stepping back to regroup and mount some new assault?
“DEI is in retreat: That doesn’t mean the battle is over”, J. D. Tuccille, Dec. 18, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/j-d-tuccille-dei-is-in-retreat
Tuccille says that “DEI statements have proven to be ideological loyalty oaths that filter out dissenters from a progressive worldview.
He adds that there has now been public pushback against DEI projects and “Republicans (have) charged that DEI efforts are totalitarian and dangerously displace merit and innovation as priorities for government and private industry alike.”
He says that a great many people have “had entirely enough of being force-fed an ideology while being told the obvious lie that it’s just an effort to bring diversity to education and employment.”
“Vague or ideologically motivated DEI statement policies can too easily function as litmus tests for adherence to prevailing ideological views on DEI, penalize faculty for holding dissenting opinions on matters of public concern, and ‘cast a pall of orthodoxy’ over the campus.”
It remains to be seen if the DEI crusade is declining or if it will come back again.
National Post