This site probes the root contributing factors to the endless eruptions of crowd madness and violence, specifically the narrative themes that incite, guide, and validate such madness. To quote my friend Bob Brinsmead, “It’s the narrative, stupid”. We know the familiar complex of themes that panic-mongering apocalyptic prophets have used across past millennia to scare people, to incite fear that generates irrational states of mind (i.e. aroused survival impulse and longing for “saviors” bringing salvation) that then render people susceptible to manipulation and control by fear-mongering elites.
H. L. Mencken stated it as well as anyone, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
I would add- “The whole aim of practical religion”.
The myths in the list below are still the dominant themes, across the world, in our religious traditions, both Western and Eastern religions- i.e. Gods angry at people for ruining an original paradise that they created, subsequently threatening punishment, destruction, chaos, and death, and even after-life torture in hells, demanding the tribal embrace of the “true religion” to find salvation, etc. In our contemporary era, our so-imagined “secular ideologies” have embraced the very same themes. Historians have detailed this “secularization” of religious ideas with evidence on the themes that drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism, the three most dominant “madness of crowds” eruptions over the past century that have produced mass-death outcomes.
We are all responsible for the consequences of the ideas that we embrace to frame our narratives. We are responsible for the related policies that arise from and are guided by such ideas. And we are responsible for the outcomes of these ideas in our societies.
It is the most basic element in human responsibility- i.e. to make ourselves aware of our role in contributing to something harmful, to understand why something is harmful (i.e. contributing factors like beliefs that incite and validate certain behaviors), and to then cease contributing to the harm. To engage alternative narratives that contribute to good in our societies (as in inciting, guiding, and validating the better angels of human nature).
After multiple millennia of experience, and evidence of outcomes, there is no excuse for denying the influence that bad ideas have had validating bad human behavior. We should be fully aware by now of how these ancient mythical themes, listed below, deform human personality, deform thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors. It is our fundamental responsibility to inform ourselves as to why certain dominant ideas in our narratives have been so consistently and repeatedly destructive. As the military guy said after the defeat of ISIS in Syria- “You can defeat such violence with military force. But until you go after the ideas that drive such violence, you will only see repeated episodes.”
See also below Grok’s responses to my list of the “bad ideas” complex that have shaped all human narratives across history, both religious and “secular/ideological”.
The original “bad religious ideas” complex of themes that our ancestors constructed to shape their narratives, Wendell Krossa
Intro note: The ancients badly messed up theology at the beginning of human mythmaking and too many of us still hold, even today, to the psychopathology that they constructed. Paul immortalized the worst of the primitivism of our ancestors in his Christ myth and that is how the original bad ideas were brought into our Western civilization, narratives, and consciousness. Paul and his Christ myth have been an overwhelmingly prominent influence on Western minds (see James Tabor’s comments on this in “Paul and Jesus”). This is not to deny the better features in Paul’s merger of Jesus with his Christ myth, but to note that such mergers of good and bad themes tend to result in the deforming/weakening of the better features in the mix. I side with Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy that in Paul’s Christ the “diamonds of Jesus have been buried” by the darker features of the Christ.
Most important to note, Paul’s Christ has been mainly responsible for bringing the fallacy of apocalyptic into Western civilization to continue its destructive impacts on human personality and society.
The ideas/beliefs in the list below are as old as the primitive minds of our ancestors who were just emerging out of animal existence and who constructed the first mythologies. So be careful of any back-patting of yourself about being a modern liberated “secular materialist, even atheist”. You are profoundly shaped by the same “Homo-religiosus” impulse as the rest of the human family, known also as the primal impulse for meaning.
Our ancestors felt their primal urge to meaning and purpose, and in response they began to explain the world around them with myths. Their mythologies expressed the dominant impulses that shaped their primitive existence- shaped how they thought, what they felt, what motivated them, and consequently how they responded to events, how they acted. The most prominent impulses that shaped their primitive existence included the impulse to tribalism, the urge to dominate others, and the impulse to destroy differing others that they viewed as threats (i.e. exterminate competition). They even created gods (ultimate ideals and authorities) to embody such basic impulses/features.
In the list below I have included some of the more prominent ideas/myths that our ancestors constructed (Grok adds a few more in his take).
Critical to emphasize in the mix of bad ideas was the construction of early theories of ultimate ideals and authority- i.e. Ultimate Reality. The ancients created the first images of “God” to hold their complex of mythical ideas together, the cohering Center that would function as the ultimate Authority to validate all the rest. In doing that, they initiated “theology” (i.e. human ideas and images of God) to form the heart of all mythology and the eventual religions that would emerge out of their earlier mythologies.
And with deity eventually viewed as “immutable”, the original complexes of mythical ideas have persisted down through history to continue to dominate world religions today. And because few dare to question the most foundational of all ideas/beliefs- i.e. deity- hence, we find the persistence of the same old images across world religions, and even embedded in our “secular ideologies”. Psychologist Harold Ellens explained this phenomenon and its effects/outcomes on human personality and behavior.
Note Ellen’s point that few, if any, dare to question the image of God that our cultures have inherited. My argument is that Historical Jesus did exactly that- he challenged and rejected the dominant image of God that prevailed in his time and offered a stunning new image of deity as non-retaliatory, no conditions love, an image that would have transformed human belief systems entirely. But Paul emerged two decades later to confront the stunning new theology of Jesus, overturn it, and re-instate traditional theology of wrathful, vengeful deity to dominate his Christ myth and new Christian religion. Paul buried the innovative theology of Jesus in the same old mythology of all previous history.
Ellens’ quotes from Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”:
“Beliefs… generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Just a note that the ideas/myths/beliefs that have shaped Christianity predate that religion by millennia. Christianity borrowed from all that went before, just as all movements do, whether religious or “secular/ideological”. Research has revealed the influence that Zoroastrian mythology, ancient Judaism (notably Jewish apocalyptic), Hellenism, and other strains of mythology, have had on Paul’s Christ myth and religion.
The dominant themes of world religions, and subsequent contemporary “secular/ideological” belief systems, trace back to the very beginning of human curiosity and endeavors to explain reality and life. Hence, the problems of Christianity mirror the problems of all humanity and all human stories. Again, the “bad ideas” in Christianity are everywhere embedded in both in religious and secular/ideological systems of belief.
So “bad ideas inciting and validating bad behavior” is a worldwide and history-long problem. As Joseph Campbell noted- “People have believed the same primitive myths across all history and across all the cultures of the world”. The “bad ideas” pathology is not isolated to any one group as worse than others. All human narratives share variations of the same complex of common themes.
The complex of “bad religious ideas” that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning (updated, revised), Wendell Krossa
These ideas from our primitive past have framed the narratives of humanity across history, inciting endless eruptions of “madness of crowds” alarmism, consequent irrationality and hysteria that have pushed people to embrace “salvation” schemes that destroy societies as necessary to save what alarmed people believe is their threatened world. The utopian promise of “Salvation through destruction”.
Don’t dismiss these ideas below out of hand as primitive residual religious fallacies that have nothing to do with contemporary worldviews. Historians/scholars have revealed that most people continue to hold these core themes in their worldviews/narratives. These themes dominate the narratives of the major world religions that some 85% of humanity are affiliated with. They dominate the widely believed “climate crisis” narratives, just as they frame socialist/Marxist narratives (see Grok’s research on this below). And they also shape the worldviews of the remaining 15% of humanity that claim “unaffiliated” status in regard to world religions, but still hold some version of “spiritual but not religious”.
(Insert: The former PEW “World Religion Survey” showed that 85% of the world population affiliated with a major religion. Apparently, that has now declined to some 75% of the world population affiliated with a major world religion.)
The foundational plank in the complex of ideas that we have inherited from our primitive past is (1) the myth that the past was better, that it was a golden age, an original paradise world.
This most fundamental mythical fallacy promotes reminiscent longing for something that never existed. Psychology speaks to this “rosy retrospection” fallacy of recalling the past more positively than it actually was. See, for example, paleo-geological histories of the origins and development of our Earth. They expose this foundational fallacy in religious traditions that the past was better, that life started in some paradisal state like Sumerian Dilmun or Hebrew Eden, or the modern environmentalism version that the past paradise was a wilderness world with few humans to engage, corrupt and defile pure/pristine Mother Nature.
Read any geological history of Earth to see the brutally uninhabitable conditions of the early Earth. There was no paradise in the past.
Prehistorian John Pfeiffer (“Explosion: An inquiry into the origins of art and religion”) suggests that the belief in an original golden age on Earth may have emerged around 100,000 years ago. That prompted me to look at conditions on Earth around that time. I would suggest that perhaps the fallacy of original paradisal world began as our ancestors experienced the rapid ending of the Eemian interglacial of some 130-115,000 years ago. Research reveals that previous interglacial was some 8 degrees C. warmer than our current Holocene interglacial. A paradisal warm period that would have enhanced human survival.
Some studies suggest the “Eemian” interglacial may have ended abruptly, over just a few centuries, or even just decades. Our ancestors, even with their much shorter lifespans (20-30ish years) would have remembered the better past as the previous warmer climate that made survival easier.
See for example: https://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
“The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial.”
(2) The second prominent bad religious idea is the myth that early pure humans committed an original error and subsequently became corrupted and thereby ruined the imagined original paradise world. If the past was better, then what happened? Well, blame humanity.
Thus begins the long history of anti-humanism, the mythology of essential human corruption, fallenness, sinfulness. Humans are labelled as the destroyers of good, destroyers of the pristine natural world.
And we are an easy target. Our developing consciousness, even in the ancient past, left us with an intense sense of our own imperfection and that we consequently deserved blame, we deserved punishment. Any basic awareness of ourselves as imperfectly human, any basic honesty about our less-than-pristine nature as fallible humans, will open us to be the easy targets of guilt, shame, and self-blame.
(Insert: I distinguish between a healthy awareness of our imperfections and the natural accompanying guilt/shame that pushes us to engage further self-improvement. I separate that from the excessive guilt/shame that arises from the religious fallacies of, for example, angry God threatening to punish human imperfection with apocalyptic destruction of the world and eternal torment in hellfire. That perverse mythology engenders unhealthy guilt and shame that deforms human personality.)
The myth that early humans ruined the original paradise world sparked the long history of the fallacy of humanity as destroyer of nature.
Related to this, early people, feeling their own impulse to retaliate against the offenses of others, then projected that base retaliatory impulse onto deity, thereby constructing the fallacy of God as a punitive Judge who would respond harshly to human failure. These varied lines of thought would coalesce in the myth of a God who was angry with fallen humans for the offense of ruining his originally perfect creation.
It was then believed that the pissed deity punished people through the varied harmful elements of the natural world, through the world that he had created perfect but they had ruined. Consequently, humanity then had to suffer the consequences of a ruined natural world with its harsh elements of natural disasters, disease, accident, and predatory cruelty, both animal and human.
Guilty people embraced the myth that they were divinely cursed and that suffering the harsh elements of the natural world was their justly deserved fate. Our ancestors felt that they were “bad to the bone” and justly deserved the divine retribution expressed throughout early mythologies.
Further bad ideas were constructed around the myth of an original fall of humanity- i.e. that fallen people were “created to serve the gods, to do the work of the gods, to feed the gods”. Fallen humans deserved servitude. Hence, we see the demand for submission to authority- i.e. fallen, corrupted people, too darkened by sin to know what is good for them, must be dominated by gods and their elite priesthoods. They must be led by dominating elites appointed by God to lord over the ignorant commoners who don’t know what is good for themselves. Is this line of thinking perhaps behind Plato’s “philosopher kings” as the elites who, as specially enlightened and divinely blessed people, should dominate and control societies?
Continuing with the fallacy of divine punishment exhibited through the “ruined” world…
The Christian bible (in the first book- Genesis) presents the ancient Hebrew version of this mythology of human corruption and consequent punishment through the imperfections of a fallen world.
Note these initial themes in Genesis 1-3:
First, the biblical God establishes tribal hatred, jealousy, antagonism, and conflict between groups (i.e. Zoroastrian cosmic dualism replicated in human tribal oppositions)- “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.”
The biblical emphasis on conflict between groups of people illustrates how ancient mythology deforms the hero’s quest. Conflict with differing others (the “evil other”) misdirects the hero’s quest away from an inner battle with our own worst impulses as our real enemy/monster. It directs our sense of something bad, that has to be opposed and conquered, outward toward other imperfect humans as the enemies/monsters to be fought and defeated.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn challenged the long-held perception that the human struggle of good against evil was a battle between differing groups/classes of people. Paraphrasing Solzhenitsyn’s comments that the real battle of good against evil runs down the center of every human heart, I would affirm that the real battle of good against evil is a battle that must be fought inside every human heart, a battle against the “evil triad” that is inside each one of us, against our real enemy- i.e. our inheritance of animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Continuing with the Genesis affirmation of primitive mythical themes, deity then promised suffering and pain through the imperfections of a ruined world as punishment for original sin- “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food.”
Add also, the Genesis affirmation of domination in human relationships- “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So began the biblical validation of patriarchal domination. Paul (or whoever wrote Ephesians) continued that validation of domination/subservience in relationships- “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, slaves submit to your masters.” He also added the directive for all to submit to governments as appointed by God (Romans 13).
Additional notes on fallen humanity mythology:
The fallacy of an original paradise ruined by early people generates the natural felt need to correct the original wrong that humans have caused, to rebalance the consequently unbalanced scales of cosmic justice. This sense of rebalancing unbalanced justice, of correcting wrongs with retributive punishment, has long undergirded human perspective on the nature of justice.
Blaming humanity for ruining the world, based on the fallacy of original perfection, adds and intensifies the burden of unnecessary guilt and shame in addition to the general sense of shame/guilt that most people already suffer due to the awareness of their own imperfection along with the imperfections of their world.
The mythology of humanity as corrupter of perfection, is an original element in building the case for anti-humanism in human narratives, a psychopathology that has deformed human consciousness for millennia, adding to the burden of human fear, anxiety, despair, depression, nihilism, and more.
This fallacy of an original “fall into sin” became a prominent theme in the mythologies of cultures across the world- i.e. that early humans had made an original mistake, committed an error/sin that angered the gods and brought an end to a previous paradise world. We find this fallacy promoted in the Sumerian myth of Dilmun where Enki ate the 8 forbidden plants and ruined that original paradise. We see this in the Eden myth where Adam and Eve corrupted paradise and were punished by God who then cursed life with suffering through the imperfections of a subsequently ruined world.
Thus began the mythologies of fallen, sinful humanity angering the God, who as creator of perfection and upholder of justice, must then punish bad people for their sin. This psychopathology is further affirmed with associated ideas of deity behind all the elements of the natural world- i.e. gods of storm and thunder, gods of sun and drought, gods of varied animal species, gods of trees, gods of streams, and so on.
And because the varied elements of nature are often harmful and destructive- i.e. natural disasters, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty- it was then obviously logical for primitive minds to conclude that the gods were angry with people’s sins and manifesting that punitive anger through such harmful elements of nature.
That misread of the natural world as exhibiting divine vengeance and anger, then led to affirming these features in deity- i.e. wrath/anger, retaliatory/punitive justice, vengeance, etc. These features, attributed to deity, and affirmed by primitive belief in justice as naturally retaliatory/retributive, then logically resulted in the portrayal of deity as righteously demanding appeasement/atonement. The development of that “threat theology”, based on natural world imperfections, became the basis for later development of salvation schemes that demanded sacrifice, payment, payback.
I heard a version of the human ruin of paradise and consequent divine punishment from Manobo friends in Mindanao. They said that, in their mythology, an original Manobo girl was pounding rice and raised her pounding stick too high, hit heaven and thereby upset the gods, who then sealed off the formerly open door of heaven. That was the original sin that ruined paradise in Manobo mythology. Every culture across the world has its own version of bad people ruining a formerly paradise world.
No single book has more potently blown away the fallacy of a better past, and life subsequently declining, along with the fallacy of humans as corrupt destroyers of paradise, than Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. His data are now dated but his principles for determining “the true state of life” on Earth are as informative and useful as when first published. Numerous subsequent researchers have continued to affirm his ideas, principles and conclusions. See, for example, “Humanprogress.org”. Greg Easterbrook also presents some interesting comment on the human contribution to improving an originally imperfect natural world (“A Moment On The Earth”). Another good follow-up to Simon is Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”.
And to hone my point here, quoting Bob Brinsmead, the real story of humanity is not “how far we have fallen”, but how amazingly we have risen and improved across the millennia. The true story of humanity should focus on the rise of our species out of a brutal animal past to become “the wonder of being human”, the creators of an ever-improving world. Further, see the evidence of our long-term improvement as set forth in the research of James Payne’s “History of Force”, or Stephen Pinker’s follow-up to Payne’s research in “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, along with similar research. As Julian Simon concluded, the evidence on the true state of life shows that we are “more creators than destroyers”.
We have never been a fallen, corrupted species but we have always been a rising, improving, and progressing species and our inherent goodness continues to develop, grow, and express itself in the evidence of our improving all life on Earth. We don’t need reality-distorting religious versions of “salvation” because, across history, we have been learning how to save ourselves and all life on Earth.
Continuing with a bit more on the fallacy of divine anger manifested through the destructive elements of nature: And then came the pathology of “sacrifice”…
It was logically obvious to our primitive ancestors that the divine anger they believed was coming at them through the natural world must be appeased. Appeasing angry deities was critical to their survival. That fed the innovation of some early creative mind to make sacrifices, both human and animal, to appease divine anger and thereby obtain blessings/favors from the gods (i.e. offerings to the gods to obtain the benefits of sun, rain, food). The logic behind sacrifice? Some suggest that it had to do with substitution- “A life for a life, blood for blood”. Take this innocent life as payment for my guilt and thereby spare my life.
A contemporary tribal man (Manobo) explained it to me this way- “We offer the blood of the animal, and the god eats that and is then satisfied and will not eat our souls” (i.e. will not punish us via sickness or accident). Something eaten in place of us, that then functions to spare us. Built on the belief that wrongs must be made right by some form of equal retribution/retaliation. Eye for eye, pain for pain, death for death, etc.
Or perhaps the origin of sacrifice has to do with the primitive notion that humans were created to serve the gods food? The origin of sacrifice to appease angry gods may be nothing more than gods lusting for blood as a form of food? There is also the primitive idea that drinking the blood of defeated enemies was a further insult to those enemies, or it was a source of appropriated energy/power (taking the “life” of the defeated enemy).
Further, in relation to the primeval myth of humans created to feed the gods, to do the work of the gods, we find also the early sense of obligation to serve the elite representatives of gods- i.e. commoners obligated to serve the elite shaman/priests who claimed the authority to solely represent the gods. They claimed special status as those alone who knew the secrets of the invisible realms and they alone could communicate the will/word/law of the deities to the rest. That further added to the overall pathology of degrading, devaluing, dehumanizing, and demonizing common humanity. And it formed the basis for promoting the elite/commoner divide in early human societies.
From the beginning, the earliest shaman, agitating to dominate their fellow tribals, initiated the demand for domination/submission forms of relating as natural, as divinely authorized. And, claiming special insight into the mysteries of the invisible world of the gods, the shaman established themselves as the solely qualified representatives who would speak for the gods. That early shamanic tradition eventually became the dominating priesthoods of states who would claim to represent the will and rule of the gods.
That early unleashing of the inherited animal impulse to dominate others (alpha-ism), eventually expressed in the Hellenistic belief of “special people as divine in some manner”, elites divinely gifted and appointed to rule commoners- as in Plato’s “philosopher kings”, those in societies claiming to be the enlightened experts most qualified to lead populations of commoners.
Christianity, prominently shaped by that Greek mythology, eventually formulated the belief in such things as “the Divine right of kings”. The elite advocacy for domination/submission forms of relating was exemplified in the Christian belief in “Lord Christ” as the epitome embodiment of ruling authority, the archetype of domination. See also, for example, Romans 13 where Paul advocates for state domination, or Revelation where domination/submission is presented as an eternal reality- i.e. Lord Jesus as eternal Ruler with a “rod of iron”.
Note: This primitive affirmation of “alpha rule” contradicts entirely the teaching of Historical Jesus that true greatness was “to not lord over others but to serve others”.
Insert: Other researchers suggest that the human response to subserviently bow to authority is very much attributable to the continuing presence of the primitive animal impulse to alpha domination over weaker others. See, for example, Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God: The Psychology Of Religious Violence And Oppression.”
Continuing to build on the above:
(3) The myth of “Declinism” that dominates our modern era– detailed by Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline In Western History”.
The idea of decline argues that the trajectory of life declines toward a worsening state. Surveys show that a majority of people across the world believe that “the world is becoming worse” (see, for example, the YouGov survey in the Intro to “Ten Global Trends”). Herman stated that the idea of decline is “the most dominant and influential theme in the (modern world)”. Hollywood obsessively promotes this primitive myth in its public storytelling (i.e. the decline of life toward disastrous collapse and ending as an essential feature in apocalyptic mythology and narratives).
The fallacy that life and the world is becoming worse distorts reality and undermines the inspiring effect of hope that is essential to human wellbeing, flourishing, and endeavor. The myth of decline generates a sense of fatalism, resignation, giving up, and even violent nihilism in people. Look at the prominence today of depression, anxiety disorder (“eco-anxiety” widespread in children), fear of growing up, fear of having children (i.e. fear of bringing children into a world that is soon to end), etc. Again, Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” is the brilliant response/counter to the “Declinism” fallacy.
(4) Associated with the general declinism of all life: The myth that humanity is becoming worse– i.e. “Declinism” in humanity, the fallacy of “human degeneration” theory (Herman in “The Idea of Decline”). This anti-humanism element has been beaten into human consciousness across history in religious narratives of original sinfulness (i.e. Adam “fall of man” mythology, fallen from a previous perfect state). This mythology deforms human consciousness with the grand lie that humanity becomes worse over time.
The “noble savage” theory that apparently still dominates academia today (i.e. early humans as more pure, strong, noble, more connected to nature), emerged out of this myth of the fall of humanity from original perfection.
This myth also feeds into the deforming of the hero’s quest, where people view themselves in terms of Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism, as the righteous true believers on the side of the true and good religion/ideology and obligated to battle the evil enemies on the other side in some differing “false” religion/ideology, the differing others who are demonized as irredeemably corrupted, becoming ever worse, and deserving to be destroyed, exterminated, as they are framed as “existential” threats to life (i.e. responsible for causing the apocalyptic decline of life- see, for examples, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich on the imagined threat from Jewish Bolshevism.).
Contrary to this mythical fallacy of degenerating humanity, the actual improving trajectory of humanity has been covered by researchers like James Payne (“History of Force”) and Stephen Pinker (“Better Angels of Our Nature”).
Add also Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life” on how the development of commerce led to the taming of human violence, as humans discovered the mutual benefits of trade/commerce, what became known as the “moralizing influence of gentle commerce”.
The evidence shows that we have steadily, across the millennia, become something better than before (i.e. the main indicator of human improvement- i.e. less violent). Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, with amassed evidence on all the main indicators of the true state of life, affirms the same rising trajectory for humanity, as for all life, that of gradual improvement over time. Simon concludes that the evidence on the long-term trajectory of life and humanity shows that we have become “more creators than destroyers”. Our long-term improvement and progress reveals our essential human goodness emerging and developing, and it powerfully counters the fallacy of essential human corruption and degeneration.
The declining life/declining humanity theme culminates in (5) the myth of the final collapse and ending of life, the complete and final ruination of the world in “catastrophic apocalyptic destruction”. The fallacy of the apocalyptic destruction of all life is the final phase in the mythical narrative of “original paradise ruined by humanity with life subsequently declining toward something worse as divine punishment”. The threat of the retributive ending of all life incites the human survival impulse to heights of hysteria and that renders people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that involve the destruction of life and civilization- i.e. the demand to “violently purge some evil threat to life”, salvation promised through destruction as the required means to “save the world”. Religious salvation schemes often promise otherworldly salvation (utopia) that incentivizes people to abandon efforts to engage and improve this present world.
We have the extensive historical record of the outcomes of repeated apocalyptic millennial salvation crusades- i.e. the madness of revolutions that seek to destroy the existing world/civilization, to purge the “evil” of the present social order as required to prepare the way for the restoration of a lost paradise or the installation of some new millennial perfection. This was true of the Marxist and Nazi revolutions, and we are watching a repeat now in the environmental alarmist crusade against modern industrial society, viewed as the destroyer of nature (i.e. humans ruining paradise through technological civilization). Hence, modern civilization must itself be destroyed to make way for the new utopian order (i.e. the revolutionary phase of “exterminate some demonized enemy or be exterminated”).
Again, remember Arthur Mendel’s warning (“Vision And Violence”) to beware of embracing any form of salvation that is promised through death-cult destruction.
Grok’s take on Mendel: “Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.”
Insert: Varied horrific natural disasters of the past may have incited our ancestors to invent and construct apocalyptic myths. For example, evidence has been offered that some 7,500 years ago the Mediterranean Sea rose from melting glaciers and broke through the Bosphorus Straits to flood the Black Sea.
That great destructive flood may have been what informed the Sumerian Flood myth of apocalypse, as well as the biblical account of Noah’s flood, another apocalypse story. Zoroaster then later introduced the myth of apocalypse by fire, which shaped Paul’s belief in apocalypse by fire (see Thessalonians, Revelation, etc.- “Lord Jesus returning in flaming fire to destroy…”).
When you add the threat of “imminent” apocalypse, with actual endless setting of dates for the soon coming end of days, you then incite the survival impulse of populations to heights of fear, panic, and hysteria over the looming “end of the world”.
“Imminent apocalypse” fallacy clouds people’s minds with fear and renders them susceptible to irrational salvation schemes where they willingly support policies to destroy their lives and societies in order to achieve some “greater good”, as in “save the threatened world”. See Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”) for the example of the “Xhosa cattle slaughter”. Incited to hysteria over threatened apocalypse, they destroyed their main source of livelihood.
So also, we are living through the destructive madness of decarbonization in today’s climate apocalypse movement, where the very food of all life (i.e. CO2) has been demonized as the destroyer of life, and where the fossil fuels that have provided the immense improvements to the human condition over that past century have been demonized as a danger to life (add Bill Maher’s incredibly stupid comment that CO2 was a ”poisonous gas”). All part of the madness of “destroy the world/civilization to save the world.” Embracing a “promise of salvation through destruction.”
To further intensify fear with the threat of life ending, add the myth that it gets even worse, far worse, with after-life Judgment, condemnation, exclusion, and punitive destruction- i.e. the hell myth. Eternal suffering after temporal suffering here. Piling metaphysically-based fears on top of physical world fears. Sheesh, such lunacy, eh.
Having incited primal human fears, with threats of angry deity punishing people for their imperfection through the natural world, and further threatening eternal violence and destruction… what then?
The enlightened elites of the ancient world, the shaman and priests, convinced frightened people that the angry, retaliatory deities of their primitive mythologies demanded appeasement, payment, sacrifice.
Early humans then constructed the bad idea of (6) salvation as some form of sacrifice/payment, notably salvation through the slaughter of humans and animals. (Again, Mendel’s point to beware of salvation coming via destruction/death. That if you murder the right people you can achieve some greater good, you can make life better.)
Insert: A useful study of the history of human sacrifice is Nigel Davies “Human Sacrifice In History and Today”.
Today we get the scold to embrace salvationism in the pushed obligation to make a payment for our sins, to suffer for atonement, in such things as the requirement to make some contemporary sacrifice as in things like “de-growth, de-development, decarbonization”- i.e. give up the good life in modern civilization as the only way to avoid the apocalyptic ending of the world. Versions of this come at us in “Small is beautiful. Return to ‘noble primitivism’, the ‘moral superiority of the simple lifestyle’,” etc.
Is this also what all that wilderness survival stuff is catering to? Sacrifice in giving up something, self-punishment, suffering as redemptive? What priests in monasteries engage- i.e. the self-flagellation with whips, hair shirts, and celibacy.
The sense of obligation to make some sacrifice is based on the primitive view of justice as necessarily retaliatory, retributive, punitive. That derives from myth of gods who are viewed as threatening retaliation, retribution, and punishment, and who demand appeasement, atonement in traditional versions of “eye for eye” justice. Ah, it’s a dense and complex interconnection of bad ideas, eh.
Consequent to such mythology, people from the beginning have felt an obligation to make a sacrifice, to pay for sin, to suffer for redemption. This is essential to the consequent felt need to rebalance the unbalanced scales of justice at some cosmic level.
The long-ingrained retributive version of justice was overturned quite entirely by Historical Jesus in his stunning new merciful and unconditional approach to human failure that enraged people. He was rejecting the fundamental view of justice by which most of humanity had lived from the very beginning. He was “attacking” and overturning a critical element in human narratives and identity.
His stunning insights and new message notably angered religious Jews, to the point of trying to kill him. That happened after his first public speech.
He incited their anger by reading a passage from Isaiah 61 that ends with the statement “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God”. But he left off the last part- “the day of vengeance of our God”. His audience knew what he was up to, “blasphemously” denying the previously unquestioned theology of retaliatory, punishing deity. Leaving on the note of “the Lord’s favor”. He then made things a magnitude of order worse by citing Old Testament examples of God sending prophets to help outsiders to the Hebrew nation. Meaning, universal favor and inclusion of enemies. Unconditional mercy and love. Holy shitoli.
Well, to people long indoctrinated in justice as retribution, especially against hated enemies, such mercy grated on their psyches and outraged them, “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this”. They wanted an affirmation of divine vengeance and justice as punishment and destruction of their enemies, not favoring them.
So also, Jonah sulked in a pissed-off hissy fit of depression when God did not destroy Ninevah after he had prophesied such apocalyptic destruction. God took mercy even on cattle. Jonah says in the book named after him, chapter 4, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity… Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live”, because God took mercy even on “many animals.”
People angry at forgiveness, love and mercy toward others? A sad state of mind and spirit for us to descend into, eh. That’s what millennia of indoctrination with myths of angry, retaliatory Gods had done to people’s minds. Justice defined by and grounded soundly in retaliatory violence toward “enemies”.
And get this critical point that Jesus was challenging and rejecting the very God of his audience. Their fundamental image of deity. They, like most people before them, could not conceive of some other way of imaging deity. To think otherwise of immutable God would be heresy, blasphemy, unbelief, satanic, unforgivably sinful.
Jesus’ protest against the sacrifice industry was a part of his more fundamental protest against the theology at the foundation of that industry across history, the human felt obligation to appease angry gods, a felt obligation based on the fallacy of retaliatory, punitive deity (i.e. monster God theology). He was protesting the very theology that undergirded the system of justice that sustained sacrifice. It was all part of the same overall protest.
In the story of the synagogue reading, Jesus’ audience knew that he was protesting and rejecting the very God that they worshipped- i.e. the theology of wrathful punitive destroyer, Judge of all. Jesus was proposing an entirely opposite theology- i.e. the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God who promoted a stunning new form of justice as restorative- i.e. “love your enemy”.
Jesus’ message overturned and rendered meaningless all that his audience believed in. His teaching was too radical to even comprehend and countenance, as it meant a disintegration of their old worldview and identity, and reintegration around something entirely new and opposite to all that they had lived by. He was proposing a death and rebirth of radical magnitude. How people viewed their very selves as humans.
Hence, they were offended, outraged. His message incited in them a form of survival desperation. Their system of meaning was subjected to the “threat” from a divine generosity so contrary to all that they believed. Jesus’ message was experienced as an existential threat to their core identity and that stirred the survival impulse in people.
Jesus, standing in front of them, straightforwardly rejected the most basic human understanding of “justice” that had prevailed for millennia, what had always affirmed the Jew’s inherited impulses to (1) tribalism (true believers favored, unbelievers/outsiders rejected and destroyed), and to (2) punitive destruction of enemies as true justice. Jesus’ new theology of “no conditions love” overturned that deeply ingrained sense of justice, righteousness, truth, goodness, etc.
The religion of his fellow Jews was based on their view of God as the defender of their tribe against all enemies. God as the upholder of their truth, their righteous causes, the defender of goodness in general. That view of God and justice had long undergirded their very identity, and the livelihood/income of the priests involved in the sacrifice industry. It validated the religion that granted them the status of supremacy over others, as more favored by God than all others (i.e. “chosen people” mythology).
Jesus further illustrated the reaction of anger and outrage toward his new unconditional message in the parables of the anger of the older brother toward the generously forgiving and merciful father in the Prodigal story (Luke 15). He also illustrated Jewish anger at non-discriminating inclusive compassion in the anger of the all-day vineyard workers toward the generosity of the vineyard owner (Matthew 20).
Summarizing: Jesus’ protest against the sacrifice industry was also a protest against the primitive view of justice that sacrifice was based on, and most fundamentally a protest against the primitive mythology of a God that demanded payment of all debts, punishment of all wrongs. There was no free or unconditional love in those primitive views of divine justice and a God who demanded such conditions. It was all “eye for eye” retaliatory justice.
That is why in Luke 6:27-36, Jesus details what his new version of love means in practice and concludes that if we do such things then we will be just like God, “Be unconditionally merciful just like your Father is unconditionally merciful.” Show this kind of behavior and you will be showing the true character of God and the nature of authentic humanity.
Further to this list of core bad ideas– Add (7) the tendency of many to deform the “hero’s quest”, to believe there is a divine demand to heroically engage a righteous battle against evil enemies that must be purged, even exterminated as irredeemably evil, as they are too corrupted, defiled, and existentially threatening to life to allow them to continue living.
This derives from the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism myth (i.e. a Good God warring eternally against an Evil Force/Satan). This ultimate Good/Evil cosmic dualism has long functioned as an ultimate ideal that incites people to frame their differences with others in terms of being on the righteous side against the differing other as the “Evil Other”. Divine tribalism taken to extremes in varied human forms of tribalism. (The human practise of “basing behavior on similar theological beliefs”.)
Based on this cosmic dualism myth, early people believed that there was the follow-up divine demand to join the true religion of the true and good God and to fight the false religion of the false Spirit. The Zoroastrian fallacy has fueled endless tribal enmity and conflict among people across history who frame their conflicts with their opponents in such irredeemably oppositional terms.
This may be the most dangerously delusional element in this list. Especially when people convince themselves that God is on their side, that they are acting on behalf of God, they are God’s chosen people, special and favored by God above all others. Who said the worst and most dangerous people in society are those who believe that they know what is best for all others? That belief is scaled up, intensified to the highest reach, by adding divinity to the equation to validate people’s sense of being more special than all others, thereby affirming their impulse to domination and busybody meddling in and controlling other’s lives, validated in doing so because they believe they are favored and chosen by God to “do the will of God.”
Insert: This idea actually motivated Hitler who believed that Providence had chosen and protected him to be the savior of the German race. The multiple failed assassination attempts against him only solidified his thinking on this point.
And then, talking about highest reaches of extremism, we further deform the hero’s quest when we frame differing others, the disagreeing “enemies”, as especially hated and despised by God, demonized as the “children of Satan”, and so “beyond the pale” as to be deserving of eternal hellfire. Quite naturally, that type of thinking leads to similar behaving- i.e. “Let’s help them on their way to their true destination”. Let’s help God send them along to hell.
The element of framing enemies as “demonic” intensifies the sense of obligation to exterminate such enemies who are viewed as more existentially dangerous than normal infidels and unbelievers. The view of enemies as some version of especially evil being informs, for example, the Islamic hatred of the Jews as not just infidels but “demonic” infidels, more dangerous than all others and therefore deserving more intense hatred and effort to exterminate.
And if we frame our enemies as so irredeemably terrible because they threaten all life with what we claim is “existential” danger, well, then it is an even more a righteous obligation for us to move into the phase of “exterminate them or be exterminated” (the final phase of apocalyptic crusades where desperate heroes must engage “extreme measures” to save their world from existential threats).
Such tribalism, fueled by Zoroaster’s fallacy of cosmic dualism, is a denial of the fundamental truth of human oneness, whether affirmed by common human origins from the East African “Mitochondrial Eve”, or based on the ultimate Oneness that is affirmed by the oneness at the most fundamental level of reality as seen in “quantum entanglement”. Or ultimate oneness that is affirmed by NDE accounts of fundamental human oneness with deity.
Further points on the deforming of the hero’s quest with Zoroastrian tribal dualism, justice as punitive destruction of irredeemable enemies, and the fallacy of retaliatory deity that affirms tribalism and vengeful justice.
Once again that insightful summary: “Men never do worse evil than when they do it in the name of their God”.
Heroes (suffering under the burden of the “messiah complex, saviors of the world”), when engaging their righteous battles against evil, further intensify the nature of their struggle with the demand for “instantaneous purging of evil” and “coercive purification”. The demand for urgency and immediacy is based on the belief that the threat from the enemy is so existentially “immanent” (i.e. the “always soon-coming apocalypse”) that there is no time for the normal gradualism of democratic processes.
The urgency of the immediately looming “end-of-days”, demands immediate desperate measures, and legitimizes revolutionary violence against threatening enemies in order to “save the world”. See Arthur Mendel on the demand of impatient revolutionaries for “instantaneous purification/purging of evil” versus the gradualism of democracy, in his excellent “Vision and Violence”. Note how repeatedly across past decades the climate alarmism prophets have claimed that evil consumers of fossil fuels were bringing on the end of life, and that the end was only a decade, or few years, up ahead. Hence, the demand for immediate and radical action to end use of fossil fuels, no matter the destruction of our civilization, all to “save the world”.
Contrary to panic-mongering over immanence, the “end of days” has been endlessly passed due to the 100% failure rate of apocalyptic lunacy.
Then a final theme on this list: (8) The false carrot-stick hope stirred by the promise of fulfilled salvation in the restoration of a paradisal communalism/collectivism (Acts 2-4). Or salvation into a new utopia of a millennial kingdom (i.e. Nazism, Christianity). The same salvation is promised in the environmental vision of a return to the falsely imagined “strong, pure” existence of hunter-gatherers “more connected to nature” (Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline”, also “Hitler’s Millennial Reich” by David Redles).
Conclusion:
These psychopathological themes have been fiercely defended and maintained across history in our great religious traditions and are now embraced in modern era “secular ideological” belief systems and even promoted by “science”. The themes above distort entirely the “true state of life” in the world, they distort the actual long-term trajectory of life. They also distort the true nature of humanity, and consequently produce emotions, motivations, and policy responses that irrationally destroy life to save some imaginary lost world, or prevent some imaginary threatening “apocalyptic ending”.
Julian Simon countered the “madness of crowds” thinking produced by the above themes with a detailed presentation of evidence on the true state of life, the actual improving trajectory of life over the long-term. The improving trajectory of life and civilization is fueled by essential human goodness, compassion, and creativity.
The above list is the complex of the worst of bad ideas that the ancients created, which they then affirmed with a tribal, dominating, destroying God as the cohering center of the complex, rendering the complex as the “untouchable sacred”, protected from challenge and dissent with threats of “blasphemy, heresy, evil unbelief, and hellfire”.
(End of ‘bad ideas’ complex)
Below, Grok responds to my list of the most common “bad religious ideas/beliefs” across history…
I said- These basic themes have deformed human minds from the beginning of emerging human consciousness in the prehistory era. They have infected the early human expression of our primal impulse for meaning and horrifically distorted human understanding of reality and life.
Yet they still dominate the great world religions and in the modern era they continue to dominate “secular ideologies”, and even science (e.g. the “profoundly religious crusade” of climate crisis/apocalypse).
Perhaps most destructive, they deform our engagement of the hero’s quest, inciting many people to exaggerate their own righteousness as they engage battles against “evil enemies” in some self-assigned heroic endeavor to purge evil from the world.
While there are dangerous people who must be restrained, incarcerated, or killed where necessary (i.e. if refusing to surrender peacefully), we must never forget that, beyond the tribal dualisms of this life, even our enemies are ultimately family (i.e. the ultimate oneness of all humanity).
As Joseph Campbell said…
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Remember also that the real battle of good versus evil takes place inside us. It runs down the center of every human heart (Solzhenitsyn). This is the battle of our common human spirit against our common inheritance of animal drives, drives such as the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, punitive destruction of differing others. Drives that are incited and validated by the “bad religious ideas” listed above.
I asked Grok: Grok what have been the most common and prominent myths or ideas across human history, in mythologies and religions?
My list includes:
(1) The past was better. (2) We corrupt and destructive humans (i.e. inherent sinfulness) ruined that original paradise. (3) The gods/spirits are now angry with us and punishing us for our sins through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty. (4) The gods also threaten a great final ending of all things, the violent destruction of apocalypse. A return to the original destructive chaos. (5) The upset gods (as restorers of violated justice) then demand some sacrifice/payment, they demand that we should suffer for our sins as payback punishment. (6) Further, they demand that we heroically join some true religion or ideological tribe/movement to fight against evil enemies (Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism). Our enemies are threatened with this-life extermination and then eternal after-life damnation in hellfire. (7) Then, having fought and won our righteous wars to purge evil from life, we will be granted salvation in a communal paradise/utopia.
Do you see these as the most prominent ideas shaping human narratives across human history?
Grok responded:
Your list captures some of the most recurring and influential themes in human mythologies and religions, reflecting deep psychological, social, and existential concerns. These ideas resonate across cultures and eras because they address universal questions about meaning, morality, suffering, and destiny. However, their prominence varies by context, and other themes also stand out in the broader tapestry of human belief systems. Let’s evaluate your list and consider additional or complementary ideas that have shaped human narratives, keeping things concise but thorough.
Your List: Analysis and Reflection
1. The Past Was Better (Golden Age Myth)
Prominence: Extremely common. From Hesiod’s Ages of Man (Greek) to the Garden of Eden (Abrahamic traditions) to the Satya Yuga (Hinduism), the idea of a lost paradise or ideal era is near-universal. It reflects nostalgia, a sense of decline, and a yearning for simplicity or harmony.
Nuance: Some traditions, like Confucianism or certain Indigenous myths, don’t always idealize the past but emphasize cyclical renewal or present duty over nostalgia. Still, the “golden age” trope is pervasive.
2. Humans Are Destructive/Sinful, Ruining Paradise
Prominence: Dominant in many traditions, especially Abrahamic religions (original sin), but also in myths like Pandora’s box (Greek) or the fall from dharma in Hinduism/Buddhism. It frames humans as flawed, often tying morality to cosmic consequences.
Nuance: Not all systems see humans as inherently destructive. Some animistic or polytheistic traditions view human flaws as part of a balanced cosmos, not a fall from grace. Still, the “human fault” narrative is widespread.
3. Gods/Spirits Punish Us for Sins (Natural Disasters, etc.)
Prominence: Very common, especially in monotheistic and some polytheistic systems. Flood myths (e.g., Noah, Gilgamesh, Deucalion) and stories of divine wrath (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah, Kali’s destruction) link suffering to divine justice.
Nuance: In some traditions, like Buddhism or Stoicism, suffering stems from ignorance or natural processes, not divine anger. Still, the “punitive gods” idea is a major thread.
4. Threat of Apocalypse/Return to Chaos
Prominence: Strong in apocalyptic traditions like Christianity (Revelation), Islam (Qiyamah), Zoroastrianism (Frashokereti), and Norse mythology (Ragnarök). It dramatizes cosmic stakes and moral urgency.
Nuance: Not all myths emphasize a final end. Hinduism and Buddhism focus on cycles of creation/destruction (yugas, kalpas), and some Indigenous myths lack a singular “end.” But apocalypticism is a powerful motif, especially in Axial Age religions.
5. Gods Demand Sacrifice/Punishment for Sins
Prominence: Widespread, from ancient blood sacrifices
(Mesopotamian, Aztec) to penance in Christianity or karma in Dharmic traditions. It reflects a transactional view of divine-human relations.
Nuance: Some systems, like Jainism or certain mystical traditions, de-emphasize external sacrifice for internal transformation. Still, the idea of “paying for sins” is near-ubiquitous.
6. Join the True Tribe to Fight Evil (Cosmic Dualism)
Prominence: Potent in dualistic systems like Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Abrahamic faiths (God vs. Satan). It fuels crusades, jihads, and ideological wars, framing life as a moral battlefield.
Nuance: Less prominent in non-dualistic traditions (e.g., Taoism, Advaita Vedanta) that see opposites as unified. Still, “us vs. them” narratives are a major driver of conflict and identity.
7. Salvation in Paradise/Utopia After Victory
Prominence: Central to many religions— Christian heaven, Islamic Jannah, Buddhist Nirvana, or secular utopias (e.g., Marxist classless society). It offers hope and purpose.
Nuance: Some traditions (e.g., existentialist or animistic) focus on present harmony, not a future reward. But the promise of a perfect state is a widespread motivator.
Are These the Most Prominent Ideas?
Your list is remarkably comprehensive, hitting major chords in human storytelling: decline, guilt, divine justice, conflict, and redemption. These themes dominate especially in Axial Age religions (c. 800–200 BCE) and their successors (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, etc.), which shaped much of Western and Middle Eastern thought. They also appear in secular ideologies (e.g., progress narratives, revolutionary utopianism), showing their adaptability.
However, their prominence depends on how we weigh “human history.” If we focus on literate, state-based societies, your list is spot-on. But including oral traditions, Indigenous beliefs, or pre-Axial systems (e.g., early animism, shamanism) might elevate other themes. Here are a few additional or complementary ideas that rival your list in ubiquity:
Additional Prominent Themes
1. Cyclical Time and Renewal
Many traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Mesoamerican myths, Indigenous cosmologies) see time as cyclical, not linear. Creation, destruction, and rebirth repeat, unlike the linear “paradise-fall-apocalypse” arc. This view is as pervasive as apocalypticism, especially outside monotheistic traditions.
2. Ancestors and Continuity
Veneration of ancestors (African religions, Confucianism, Shinto, many Indigenous systems) ties the living to the dead, emphasizing duty and legacy over cosmic battles or utopias. This focus on kinship and lineage is arguably as universal as guilt or salvation narratives.
3. Harmony with Nature/Cosmos
Animistic and polytheistic systems (e.g., Native American, African, early Shinto) often prioritize living in balance with spirits, animals, or natural forces, rather than fighting evil or escaping sin. This contrasts with dualistic or apocalyptic frames but is equally widespread.
4. Trickster Figures and Ambiguity
Tricksters (Loki, Coyote, Anansi, Hermes) appear in countless myths, embodying chaos, creativity, and moral ambiguity. They challenge simplistic “good vs. evil” narratives, reflecting a human fascination with complexity.
5. Quest for Knowledge/Transcendence
From Gilgamesh’s search for immortality to Buddhist enlightenment or Gnostic awakening, the pursuit of wisdom or divine truth is a major motif, sometimes overshadowing sacrifice or utopia.
Synthesis
Your seven themes are among the most prominent, especially in shaping moralistic, state-supported religions and ideologies that influenced global history. They reflect a worldview where humans are flawed, gods are judgmental, and existence is a struggle toward justice or salvation. However, adding cyclical renewal, ancestor veneration, or nature harmony would round out the picture, especially for non-Western or premodern cultures. No single list can capture everything, but yours nails the core of many dominant narratives.
If you’d like, I can dig deeper into any theme, compare specific myths, or analyze how these ideas evolve in modern ideologies. What do you think?
I urged Grok– Yes, please do analyze how these ideas evolve in modern ideologies.
Grok responded:
The seven themes you identified— golden age nostalgia, human sinfulness, divine punishment, apocalyptic endings, sacrificial atonement, cosmic dualism, and utopian salvation— have deep roots in mythologies and religions. While modern ideologies (e.g., political, social, or secular movements) often claim to break from traditional religion, these ancient narrative structures persist, adapted to new contexts. Below, I’ll analyze how each theme evolves in modern ideologies, showing how they reshape old myths for contemporary purposes. I’ll keep it concise but comprehensive, drawing connections to specific ideologies where relevant.
1. The Past Was Better (Golden Age Nostalgia)
Evolution: The myth of a better past fuels many modern ideologies, often secularized as a lost ideal state.
Conservatism: Traditionalist ideologies romanticize a pre-modern era— e.g., a time of strong family values, national unity, or moral clarity— before industrialization, globalization, or cultural shifts “corrupted” society. Think MAGA’s “Make America Great Again,” implying a return to a vaguely defined golden era.
Environmentalism: Some green movements idealize pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural societies, casting them as harmonious with nature, unlike modern ecological “decline.”
Socialism/Communism: Marxist narratives frame early human societies (or “primitive communism”) as egalitarian, before class divisions ruined the communal ideal.
Shift: The “golden age” is less about divine creation and more about a socio-political or ecological benchmark. Nostalgia is weaponized to critique modernity, often ignoring historical complexities.
Example: Populist movements worldwide (e.g., Brexit) evoke a lost national sovereignty or cultural purity, adapting the myth to identity politics.
2. We Destructive Humans Ruined Paradise (Inherent Sinfulness)
Evolution: The idea of human flaw persists, but “sin” is reframed as ignorance, greed, or systemic failure.
Capitalism Critique: In leftist ideologies, humanity’s “sin” is exploitation— capitalist greed or colonialism wrecking equality or the planet. The fall is not from Eden but from fairness.
Technological Anxiety: Transhumanism or anti-tech movements (e.g., neo-Luddites) cast humans as reckless, ruining nature or ethics with unchecked innovation (AI, biotech).
Woke Ideology: Concepts like “systemic racism” or “toxic masculinity” secularize original sin, suggesting humans are inherently biased, requiring constant self-correction.
Shift: Divine judgment is replaced by social or ecological consequences. The focus moves from individual guilt to collective responsibility, though personal shame persists (e.g., “carbon footprints” or “privilege”).
Example: Climate activism often frames humanity as a destructive force, with overconsumption as the modern “fall” from ecological balance.
3. Gods Punish Us for Sins (Natural Disasters, etc.)
Evolution: Divine wrath becomes natural or social consequences in secular ideologies, but the punitive logic remains.
Environmentalism: Climate change is framed as nature’s “revenge” for human excess— floods, fires, and storms as secular analogs to biblical plagues. Activists like Greta Thunberg evoke moral urgency akin to prophetic warnings.
Progressivism: Social unrest, inequality, or cultural decay is seen as punishment for failing to address injustice (e.g., ignoring systemic racism leads to protests or division).
Conspiracy Theories: QAnon or anti-vax movements reinterpret disasters (pandemics, economic crashes) as elite-orchestrated punishments, echoing divine retribution myths.
Shift: The “gods” are replaced by impersonal forces (nature, markets, history) or shadowy cabals. The narrative still moralizes suffering as a wake-up call.
Example: Post-COVID narratives often blamed globalism or overpopulation, mirroring flood myths where calamity corrects human hubris.
4. Threat of Apocalypse/Return to Chaos
Evolution: Apocalypticism thrives in modern ideologies, projecting existential threats as climactic reckonings.
Climate Alarmism: Predictions of ecological collapse (e.g., IPCC reports, “12 years left” rhetoric) echo apocalyptic prophecy, urging repentance (lifestyle change) to avert doom.
Nuclear/Tech Fears: Cold War-era Mutually Assured Destruction or AI “singularity” fears secularize Ragnarök, imagining tech as the chaos-bringer.
Political Extremism: Both left and right envision societal collapse— e.g., Marxist “late capitalism” crumbling or far-right fears of “white genocide.” Each sees a final reckoning.
Shift: The apocalypse is less supernatural and more material (climate, tech, social breakdown), but the urgency and dualism (saved vs. damned) persist. Secular apocalypses often promise agency— humans can prevent it.
Example: Elon Musk’s warnings about AI as an “existential risk” mirror eschatological fears, with tech pioneers as modern seers.
5. Gods Demand Sacrifice/Punishment for Sins
Evolution: Sacrifice morphs into activism, policy, or personal reform, but the idea of “paying a price” endures.
Environmentalism: Carbon taxes, veganism, or reduced consumption are modern penances, sacrifices to appease an angry planet. “Degrowth” ideology demands collective suffering for sustainability.
Social Justice: Cancel culture or performative allyship acts as secular atonement— public shaming or career loss as punishment for moral failings (e.g., “problematic” speech).
Capitalist Meritocracy: Neoliberalism demands personal sacrifice (hustle culture, debt) to “earn” success, framing struggle as redemptive.
Shift: Sacrifice is less about blood or ritual and more about lifestyle, status, or resources. The punitive undertone remains, often tied to collective guilt.
Example: Reparations debates frame financial or social concessions as atonement for historical sins like slavery or colonialism.
6. Join the True Tribe to Fight Evil (Cosmic Dualism)
Evolution: Dualism fuels ideological tribalism, casting opponents as existential threats.
Political Polarization: Left vs. right, globalists vs. nationalists— modern politics thrives on “us vs. them.” Progressives demonize “fascists”; conservatives vilify “woke elites.” Each claims moral supremacy.
Culture Wars: Cancel culture or deplatforming mirrors excommunication, purging “heretics” (e.g., J.K. Rowling, Kanye West). The enemy is not just wrong but evil.
Secular Religions: Ideologies like Marxism or libertarianism offer “true” frameworks (class struggle, free markets) to defeat opposing systems, echoing Zoroastrian cosmic battles.
Shift: The “gods” are ideologies or charismatic leaders (e.g., Trump, AOC). Enemies face social annihilation (deplatforming) rather than hellfire, but eternal damnation lingers in rhetoric (e.g., “history’s dustbin”).
Example: Online echo chambers amplify dualism, with X posts framing opponents as threats to civilization, replicating crusade-like zeal.
7. Salvation in Paradise/Utopia After Victory
Evolution: Utopian promises drive modern ideologies, offering a perfected future post-struggle.
Socialism/Communism: Marxism envisions a classless society after revolution, a secular heaven where labor and inequality vanish.
Transhumanism: Tech utopias (e.g., Musk’s Mars colonies, Kurzweil’s singularity) promise transcendence through AI or space, replacing divine salvation with engineered immortality.
Progressivism: Inclusive, equitable societies are the goal— e.g., a world free of racism, sexism, or poverty— achieved through reform or upheaval.
Shift: Paradise is earthly, not divine, but requires purging evil (capitalism, bigotry, carbon). The communal focus remains, though tech utopias add individualism.
Example: Green New Deal rhetoric blends ecological salvation with social justice, promising a harmonious, equitable world post-capitalism.
Broader Patterns and Observations
Secularization: Gods and spirits are replaced by nature, history, markets, or elites, but the narrative structure— fall, punishment, redemption— stays intact. Ideologies function as religions, complete with dogma and heretics.
Moral Urgency: Modern ideologies amplify apocalyptic stakes (climate, AI, culture wars) to mobilize action, mirroring prophetic calls to repent. Fear of chaos drives commitment.
Tribalism: Dualism is supercharged by media and social platforms, making “enemies” more visible and vilified. X, for instance, amplifies outrage cycles, reinforcing “true tribe” narratives.
Adaptability: These themes persist because they tap universal fears (loss, guilt, chaos) and hopes (justice, harmony). Whether religious or secular, they frame existence as a meaningful struggle.
Critique: Some modern ideologies reject these myths. Existentialism denies utopias or cosmic justice, embracing absurdity. Postmodernism deconstructs dualism and grand narratives. Yet these are less popular, as humans crave structured meaning.
Conclusion
Your seven themes are strikingly resilient, morphing from mythic to ideological forms without losing their emotional or moral grip. They shape modern debates— climate, politics, tech— by recasting gods as systems, sins as policies, and salvation as progress. Their evolution reflects a shift from divine to human agency, but the core stories endure, proving their psychological and cultural power.
If you want, I can zoom in on a specific ideology (e.g., Marxism, environmentalism), compare their use of these themes, or explore how X reflects these trends in real-time. What’s next?
My next question:
Grok how would you respond to Arthur Mendel’s statement in “Vision and Violence” that apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive idea in history?
Grok’s answer:
Arthur Mendel’s claim in Vision and Violence that the apocalyptic idea is the most violent and destructive in history is a bold one, and it’s worth unpacking with a clear-eyed look at both sides. I’d argue it’s a strong contender, but not necessarily the unchallenged champion of destructive ideas— humans have cooked up plenty of ruinous notions over time.
On one hand, Mendel’s got a point. Apocalyptic thinking— whether rooted in religious visions of divine judgment or secular ideologies like revolutionary utopias— has fueled some serious havoc. It’s the kind of mindset that says, “Burn it all down, and paradise awaits.” You see it in the Crusades, where end-times fervor justified slaughter, or in millenarian cults that turned inward with deadly results, like Jonestown. Secular versions aren’t much better— think of the Bolsheviks or Mao’s Cultural Revolution, where the promise of a new world order came with purges and body counts in the millions. The idea’s power lies in its ability to make destruction feel righteous, even necessary. It’s like giving a moral blank check to chaos.
But let’s not crown it just yet. Other ideas have their own bloody resumes. Nationalism, for instance, has sparked wars, genocides, and ethnic cleansing with a fervor that doesn’t always need an end-of-days script— just look at the 20th century’s world wars or the Rwandan genocide. Colonialism, too, wrecked entire continents under the guise of “civilizing” missions, no apocalypse required. And don’t forget plain old greed—resource grabs and economic exploitation have killed and displaced millions without any grand narrative of cosmic renewal.
What makes the apocalyptic idea stand out, though, is its staying power and adaptability. It shapeshifts— God’s wrath becomes Reason’s triumph, then History’s march, then Nature’s revenge (hello, eco-doom). Mendel argues this chameleon-like quality keeps it dangerous across eras, unlike, say, nationalism, which is more tied to specific political structures. He’s got a case here: apocalypticism can infect any ideology, religious or not, and it thrives on crisis, real or imagined.
Still, I’d push back on “most violent and destructive” as a bit too absolute. It’s less about one idea being the ultimate villain and more about how humans wield ideas to justify what they already want— power, revenge, or a clean slate. Apocalypticism is a heavy hitter, sure, but it’s got competition. Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.
My next point:
An essential feature of apocalyptic is the idea of life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending. Arthur Herman in The Idea of Decline In Western History says that the idea of decline has become the most dominant and influential idea in modern history.
Grok’s response:
Arthur Herman’s claim in The Idea of Decline in Western History that the notion of decline is the most dominant and influential idea in modern history dovetails intriguingly with the apocalyptic mindset you’ve described, where life spirals toward collapse and an end. Let’s dig into this, keeping it sharp and focused.
Herman’s argument hinges on the idea that decline— whether cultural, moral, economic, or civilizational— has shaped modern thought more than any other lens. Since the Enlightenment, thinkers like Rousseau, Nietzsche, Spengler, and even modern environmentalists have leaned into narratives of decay, painting history as a slide from some golden age toward catastrophe. It’s a powerful story: things are getting worse, and we’re either doomed or need to act fast to stop the rot. This resonates deeply with the apocalyptic feature you mentioned— life worsening toward collapse. Decline is the setup for the apocalyptic punchline, the grim prelude to an imagined end.
Take the 19th and 20th centuries: Romantic nostalgia for a lost pastoral idyll fueled anti-industrial movements, while Marxist visions of capitalism’s inevitable breakdown fed revolutionary fever. Fast forward, and you’ve got post-World War II existentialists mourning spiritual decay, or today’s climate doomsayers warning of ecological collapse. Herman’s point is that this declinist mindset isn’t just a mood— it’s a driver. It’s pushed policies, sparked revolutions, and shaped how we see progress (or its absence). The idea that we’re on a downward slope has a way of making people either despair or double down on radical fixes, both of which can shake the world.
Now, connect that to apocalyptic thinking. Decline is the slow burn that sets the stage for the apocalyptic explosion— the belief that things aren’t just bad but headed for a final, transformative crash. Religious apocalypses, like those in Revelation, see moral decay culminating in divine judgment. Secular ones, like Marxist or eco-apocalyptic visions, swap God for History or Nature but keep the same arc: decline, then rupture, then (maybe) renewal. Herman’s decline obsession and Mendel’s apocalyptic warning from Vision and Violence feel like two sides of the same coin— decline primes the pump for apocalyptic fantasies of collapse and rebirth.
But is decline really the most dominant idea? It’s got competition. Progress, for one, has been a rival heavyweight. Enlightenment optimism, industrial revolutions, and tech-driven dreams of utopia have convinced plenty that history’s arrow points up, not down—think Silicon Valley’s gospel of innovation. Yet even progress often gets tangled with decline: every “better future” pitch implies something’s wrong now. Decline might not rule alone, but it’s sneaky— it worms into even the sunniest ideologies.
Where Herman nails it is showing how decline makes us act. It’s not just philosophy; it’s psychology. People who buy into decay— whether it’s “Western civilization is crumbling” or “the planet’s dying”— move mountains to either hasten the end or dodge it. That’s why it feels so apocalyptic: decline isn’t static; it’s a story that demands an ending. Whether that’s violent collapse (Mendel’s worry) or a desperate scramble for salvation, it’s a script we keep rewriting.
More on site project: Wendell Krossa
Make sure that you get the core theme of the “Q Wisdom Sayings” clear. That collection of sayings contains the message of Historical Jesus, a message that contrasts so entirely with Paul’s Christ myth. It presents the “diamond” that Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy referred to. Get that clear, whether in the Matt 5:38-48 version or the better Luke 6:27-36 version. Understand the “thematic coherence” in those precepts, arguments, and illustrations (i.e. “sun and rain generously given to all alike, to both good and bad people”).
His precepts and illustrations all cohere around the ideal of unconditional love. That is the “cohering center” to all that the man said and did. It is illustrated in his parable of the Prodigal father and the vineyard owner who generously gives the same amount to the late comers as to the all-day guys. Jesus also illustrated unconditional in his invitation of outcasts to community meals and in his stories of God helping outsiders/enemies inclusively as in Luke 4:25-28:
“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed— only Naaman the Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.”
Try going against the natural urge of many people to defensive tribalism (our God favors us “true believers” more than our infidel enemies) and watch how you will incite the tribal-minded to rage. Just an insert example: We are seeing the same discriminatory tribal rage illustrated today by US Democrats who become enraged at “normalizing” enemy Republicans, even liberals vilifying fellow liberals for befriending the “enemy”, for sharing Thanksgiving meals with relatives that belong to the other party, etc. And both sides are susceptible to exhibiting the same tribalism.
Jesus’ statements on such non-tribal unconditional inclusivity angered tribal-minded Jews of his day.
He later stated the same point on universal inclusion in the main summary of his message in Matthew 5 and Luke 6, that God did not exclude anyone, generously and freely giving the two most critical gifts of life for survival in agrarian society- i.e. sun and rain- to all, to both good and bad people.
Unconditional takes love to the height of heroic humaneness. It is the ultimate ideal for anyone to aspire to if they want to “tower in stature as maturely human” like a Mandela. And of course, we embrace and engage such an ideal with a healthy dose of common sense. It does not mean the pacifist treatment of violent people (i.e. de-carceration, no criminal prosecution, no cash bail, etc.) because the priority responsibility of love is to protect the innocent from harm, meaning the restraint and incarceration of violent people in order to protect the public.
Unconditional is the ideal that orients us to the best in humanity, that inspires our better impulses. Until we wrestle with this Mother of all ideals, we are missing the critical point of our existence on this planet, a central feature to the meaning and purpose of human life and story- i.e. We are here to learn what love is and how to love.
Some of best “spiritual” insight on this comes from the NDE movement accounts where people tell us that they have experienced an amazing presence of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all, as inexpressible unconditional love. That is exactly the central point in the message of Jesus, in his “stunning new theology” that was his “greatest contribution to the history of human ideas” (James Robinson).
Unconditional defines Ultimate Reality more truthfully than anything else. There is no more accurate definition of Ultimate Goodness or Love than unconditional. It is the absolute height of what human or humane means. If God is ultimate Good then God is not just love but is unconditional love. We all get this intuitively from our experience in families, with spouses and friends, etc. Nothing is more human than to treat one another unconditionally.
And because God is the creating/sustaining basis of all reality, then that love defines the fundamental nature of an authentic TOE. And therefore unconditional is the central feature to wrestle with in response to our primal impulse to meaning and purpose.
Unconditional better than any ideal we have discovered shows us how to maintain our humanity in the face of offenses from others, in the face of evil in life, showing us how to do the least harm and the most good as we navigate our stories throughout our lives in this world.
Further, to the contrary, try to engage the evidence presented by the historians that I repeatedly reference here (Herman, Landes, Mendel Redles, etc.) that the apocalyptic millennial ideas epitomized in Paul’s Christ, ideas that have long been the dominant archetypes in human subconsciousness, ideas that have shaped belief systems across history, ideas that still dominate in our world religions and modern-era secular ideologies even today, these apocalyptic millennial ideas were behind the mass-death crusades of the past century- notably Marxism/Socialism and Nazism.
They are ideas that incite our worst impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others (salvation/millennial utopia achieved through revolutionary destruction of the “corrupt” society/civilization that exists).
I have repeatedly noted how such ideas work in human minds, quoting these excellent statements of psychologists like Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo, as posted in “Cruel God, Kind God”:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
This affirms Bob Brinsmead’s point that “We become just like the God that we believe in”. If your God uses violence, then so may you. This expresses well how the common “behavior based on similar belief” coupling has worked across human history. That coupling arises from our impulse to meaning and purpose, an impulse that drives us to find ideas/ideals/beliefs that validate how we think, feel, are motivated, and then act. We all want to know and feel that we are fulfilling the reason for our existence on this planet. That we are acting just like our Creator intended. So, inspired by our meaning impulse to understand and explain, we project out ideas to define the ultimate reality that is our Source, and too often we project subhuman features that then operate in return to incite and validate the subhuman in us.
I relate these points to the pathological image of deity that Paul embraced and presented in his Christ myth- the image of a God who is (1) tribal (favoring true believers, damning/destroying unbelievers), (2) a God who embodies domination (deity as “Lord, King, Ruler” with humans created to serve deity, a serving mediated through subservience to priesthoods claiming to be divinely appointed representatives of God), and (3) a God who metes out punitive destruction as “justice” (i.e. salvation through the destruction of apocalypse and hell).
Such an archetypal image of deity incites and validates the inherited and similar impulses in people to (1) tribalism (framed around Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism of good versus evil, true religion versus false religion), to (2) domination (elites divinely appointed to rule and control commoners), and to (3) justice as punitive destruction through endless “eye for eye” cycles, and more. (I use my “evil triad” to summarize whatever complex of bad impulses/ideas that others might include.)
Fortunately, we have alternative ideas/beliefs to counter this pathology of inherited animal impulses and related bad ideas, alternatives that orient us toward trajectories that take us to a more humane future. We have ideals that bring out the best in us- i.e. ideals of non-discriminatory inclusion of all, non-domination in relationships, and restorative justice treatment of offenders/enemies.
These ideals are best expressed and protected in liberal democracies where the principles, systems of law, and representative institutions of Classic Liberalism exist to protect the freedoms and rights of all citizens, equally.
More to come on this….
Some recent Brinsmead quotes from his Substack…
“Man in God’s image: The Hebrew Man made in God’s image versus the Hellenist God made in Man’s image”, Robert Brinsmead, Aug. 26, 2025
“The very first chapter in the Hebrew scriptures declared that God made man – both male and female – in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-7).
“This amazing statement existed at the heart of the Hebrew faith. It means that every human person is infinitely precious, created equal and able to reflect a likeness to the God the Father of all mankind.
“The statement that mankind bears the image of God also implies that the prime locus of divine revelation is not found in religious dogma or books.
“As Thomas Sheehan puts it, “God has disappeared into humanity and can be found nowhere else.” Elijah the prophet could not find God in an earthquake, a great fire or a mighty wind, but in a quiet human voice enquiring after his wellbeing.
“As Victor Hugo put it in his Les Miserables, “To love another person is to see the face of God”…
“Or as the poet Alexander Pope put it, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man”.
“The focus of the Jesus movement in the first twenty years was the presence of the kingdom of God in the here and now.
“The focus of the Jesus movement in the first twenty-year period (after the departure of Jesus) was on the “kingdom of God”.
“The movement gathered around the belief that Jesus, the “son of man”, the human one, preached with urgency and intensity the need to establish God’s reign on earth. This movement was a way of life and was radical in its embrace of the preaching of Jesus.
“It seems highly likely, from what scripture scholarship can ascertain, that in this twenty-year period Jesus was considered by members of the movement to be a Jewish prophetical figure.
“As in the preaching of Jesus, there is no evidence that the movement was concerned with access to the heavenly realms.
“The concern was to change the world. The focus was on the preaching a way of life that would express the Divine Presence in human living and loving…”
See full comment at “robertbrinsmead@substack.com”.
Post to discussion group:
This from below (Shrier is an expert on psychotherapy issues)- “Involvement in goal-oriented activities that lure them out of their own minds and force them to think about something, anything, other than themselves.”
The now deceased physician to the former Queen, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, used to urge depressed patients to stop focusing on their problems, stop even praying about their problems as that intensified and magnified the problems. Better, he urged, get involved in helping others solve their problems and that will lessen your own problems that depress you.
His advice wisely understood the natural impulse of love to focus on the other, to deny oneself in order to help others, to fulfil the healing function of love to serve. And that focus on helping others gave people a potent sense of purpose and fulfilment that lessened the debilitating effects of too much self-focus, especially on personal problems.
“Stop asking kids if they’re depressed: Children are wildly suggestible. Ask a kid repeatedly if she might be mentally ill— and she just might decide that she is”, Abigail Shrier
https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-stop-asking-kids-if?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Shrier begins noting a state’s law (Illinois) making annual mental-health screenings for all public school children in third to twelfth grades. She warns that this is funneling far too many American children into the mental-health pipeline who don’t have debilitating mental disorders.
She says, “I published ‘Bad Therapy’, an investigation into the surge in adolescent mental-health diagnoses and psychiatric prescription drug use. Many young people without serious mental illness nonetheless spend years languishing with a diagnosis, alternately cursing it and embracing it, believing they have a broken brain, convincing themselves that their struggles are insurmountable because of the disorder’s constraints. They meet regularly with a therapist or school counselor on whom they become increasingly reliant, losing a sense of efficacy, unable to navigate on their own even minor setbacks and interpersonal conflicts. They begin courses of antidepressants that carry all kinds of side effects—suppressed libido, fatigue, the muffling of all emotion, and even an increase in depression. Antianxiety drugs and the stimulants given to kids diagnosed with ADHD are both addictive and ubiquitously abused.”
And this tragic outcome, she says, often begins with “a simple mental health survey.”
“Kids are wildly suggestible, especially where psychiatric symptoms are concerned. Ask a kid repeatedly if he might be depressed— how about now? Are you sure? And he just might decide that he is.”
She notes the social contagion effect that many children are susceptible to:
“Introduce ‘gender dysphoria’ into a peer group, and a swath of seventh grade girls are likely to decide they were born in the wrong body. Introduce ‘testing anxiety’ or ‘social phobia,’ or ‘suicidality’ to them, and many teens are likely to decide: I have that, too. There is a reason clinicians keep anorexia patients from socializing unsupervised in a hospital ward; anorexia is profoundly socially contagious… Most kids who screen positive will have transient problems, not mental disorder. Mislabeling stigmatizes and subjects them to unnecessary treatments…”
“A certain amount of anxiety and low mood is not only a normal part of every life, they are almost a signal feature of adolescence… Handing a mental diagnosis to a child or teen— even if accurate— is an enormously consequential event. It can change the way a young person sees himself, create limitations for what he believes he can achieve, encourage treatment dependency on a therapist, and empty out his sense of agency— that he can, on his own, achieve his goals and improve his life.”
Shrier concludes that adolescent mental health “has leaped off a cliff… The nonstop diagnosis and treatment of American kids hasn’t made a dent in the prevalence of mental illness; the two have risen in parallel…
“The vast majority of our kids and teens are not mentally ill. But they are lonely, worried, scared, and bummed out. Schools ought to supply them with reliable bolsters to the human spirit: high expectations. Greater independence and responsibility. Far, far less screen time. More recess. Exercise. Art. Music. Involvement in goal-oriented activities that lure them out of their own minds and force them to think about something, anything, other than themselves.”
Note: This site takes the position, somewhat noted by Brinsmead above, that all of humanity has been incarnated by God, a deity that is profoundly unconditional love, inexpressibly and transcendently so. And that indwelling, present God is inseparable from our human spirit, our human self (the “oneness” thing). Meaning that our most essential nature as human is to love. We are love in our essential self or human spirit. Embracing behavior that is authentically loving is then how we fulfill our purpose and find meaning in life. That is the powerful antidote to pathologies like depression. This is not to deny forms of mental illness that benefit from good psychotherapy or medical treatment, but to add this potently healing factor of self-denying love to the mix of treatments.
By the way also: This gets to the essence of liberal democracy principles and institutions. State elites and bureaucrats should function to serve free and equal citizens, not dominate and control them (such as via excessive taxation and regulations). Where there is no such protected freedom and individual rights, there is no love. The inseparable relationship of love and freedom. Hence (a touch more theology here), if “God is love” then God does not dominate and control others. There is God/Christ as “Lord, King, Ruler” and still God/Christ as love.
Charles Templeton (Billy Graham’s former colleague) weighed in on this issue in his illustration of someone demanding to be the center of attention, demanding constant praise of his greatness, and demanding full control in all situations. That, said Templeton, is an “Idi Amin” monster.