“Certain God-images predictably generate certain kinds of people and societies”, Chat.

I regularly ask Chat and Grok to evaluate and comment on new material that I post here. This summary is from Chat’s fuller comments below at bottom of this top section:

First, Chat’s “One-Paragraph Homepage Distillation”

The real monster we must confront in life is not other people, nations, or beliefs, but an ancient and deeply embedded worldview— threat theology— that sacralizes tribalism, domination, and violence by projecting them onto God or ultimate moral authority. This monster deforms human psychology, legitimizes cruelty as righteousness, and repeatedly turns societies toward “salvation through destruction.” The true hero’s quest is therefore an inner one: to recognize and overcome these inherited archetypes, to refuse evil cloaked as good, and to embrace a radically different vision of life grounded in unconditional love, freedom, and shared humanity. That inner victory is the foundation of any genuine hope for the world.

Then Chat offered this “800-word Flagship Version” in summary of my comments below…

Understanding the Hero’s Quest: Fighting the Real Monster in Life

(Or: Get your monster clear. It’s not under your bed. It’s closer than you imagine.)

One of the central aims of this site is to confront a monster. Not the imaginary monsters that dominate political rhetoric, media narratives, or religious crusades— but a far more dangerous and enduring one. It is a monster that lives closer to us than we like to admit. It shapes our beliefs, deforms our psychology, and repeatedly turns human beings against one another while convincing them they are acting righteously.

This monster is not primarily “out there.” It is not other tribes, nations, or unbelievers. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously observed, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The true battle of life— the authentic hero’s quest— is therefore an inner one.

Across cultures and history, the hero’s journey has been understood as an adventure into life itself: a quest to learn, to mature, to gain insight, and to return with something that benefits others. Unavoidable in that journey is a confrontation with monsters. Sometimes those monsters appear as physical threats or social challenges. But beneath these lies a deeper, shared enemy that distorts human perception and behavior at every level.

That common enemy is what I call threat theology— a complex of ancient ideas that sacralize tribalism, domination, and violent destruction by projecting them onto ultimate authority, often God. Joseph Campbell noted that humanity has repeatedly told the same mythic stories across time and cultures. One of the most persistent is the story of a wrathful, conditional deity who divides humanity into the righteous and the damned, demands obedience under threat, and promises salvation through purging enemies and destroying a corrupt world.

This theology did not remain confined to religion. It embedded itself in the archetypes of the human subconscious, shaping instincts, fears, and motivations. As psychologists like Carl Jung, Harold Ellens, and Zenon Lotufo have shown, such archetypes deform personality. When violence, domination, and exclusion are framed as “divine justice,” they generate powerful psychological energy— what Ellens called dynamis— that legitimizes fanaticism, cruelty, and moral blindness.

The danger of this monster is not merely theoretical. History shows its fruits. When salvation is imagined as coming through destruction, societies repeatedly descend into crusades— religious, ideological, or secular. Marxist revolutions, Nazism, religious extremism, and modern apocalyptic movements all share this same underlying structure: evil cloaked as good, violence framed as moral necessity, and enemies defined as existential threats.

Most deviously, this monster hides beneath the “canopy of the sacred.” By embedding itself in images of God or ultimate moral authority, it renders itself immune to questioning. To challenge it feels like blasphemy, treason, or betrayal of identity. People then come to resemble the god they believe in— tribal, dominating, punitive— while believing themselves heroic.

This is how the hero’s quest becomes deformed. Instead of confronting the inner enemy, people externalize evil and wage war on others. They confuse righteousness with tribal loyalty, justice with vengeance, and love with domination. Under such narratives, the worst human impulses are not restrained but validated.

The breakthrough alternative was articulated most clearly by the historical Jesus, who rejected threat theology outright. He denied that God is a dominating ruler, punitive judge, or tribal lord. He revealed instead a God of unconditional love— nontribal, nonviolent, and non-retaliatory— who does not save through destruction. His central weapon against the monster was simple and devastating: love your enemy. That single insight dismantles tribalism, domination, and vengeance at their root.

Confronting the real monster therefore requires courage. It demands an inner death-and-rebirth process— a willingness to let inherited beliefs disintegrate and to reconstruct one’s worldview around better ideas. This struggle wounds us. Like Jacob after wrestling the angel, we may limp for the rest of our lives. But the wound deepens empathy and frees us from fear.

To slay this monster is to liberate oneself from ancient terror narratives and to reclaim the authentic hero’s quest: cultivating our better angels, honoring the freedom of others, and contributing to a world ordered not by fear and force, but by love, reason, and shared humanity.

That is the real battle. And that is the heroism our time requires.

(End of Chat Intro)

Now some ‘blog’ stuff…

I am not an “optimist” in terms of some philosophical or psychological position, but as some prefer to state it- “I am more a realist”. I take that label, along with others, because of long consideration of amassed evidence on the true state of life and humanity from sources that I repeatedly mention here. From Julian Simon, on through the many following books on the same evidence. They provide thorough research on the main indicators of life and good credible data sources related to each indicator.

That is the ‘Julian Simon’ approach to understanding the true state of life, of anything. Media seriously distort and bury such evidence with their obsession with the mental deformity of apocalyptic mythology. You have to dig for that alternative evidence against mass media domination and framing of public narratives with the great fraud of life declining toward some disastrous ending (“Declinism”).

See this main comment below: “Understanding the nature of the hero’s quest- Fighting the real monster in life”, and more.

Now this…

This offers some fascinating evidence on the physical elements of the “oneness” of all things- i.e. what we are all part of, and inseparable from, as discovered, for example, in quantum mechanics research.

“What’s BETWEEN the Atoms? Feynman’s Answer Will Break Your Brain: Physics The Feynman Way”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRVxoJeUmPA

This good comment from Bari Weiss’s recent Free Press interview of Niall Ferguson, historian of modern times. They cover in detail the nature of varied conflicts and potential outcomes around the world today…

Niall Ferguson: The Most Dangerous Conflicts to Watch in 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnzNYj5uWts

And this…

First, to preface this Rogan interview: I listen to many of Rogan’s interviews as he is among the best at presenting interesting discussions with a wide variety of people on all sorts of topics. So, props to Joe. But I do not affirm many of Rogan’s personal views on varied things. Notably, I would quibble with his sometimes negative views on life in general.

Initially, I was enjoying some discussion in this episode below but then it later descended into one of Rogan’s apocalyptic rants on how shitty we are and how shitty we have made life, and its all headed to some shitty end. This is too bad as it kind of ruins the larger discussion they are having. And I don’t know where he gets his information from. He would benefit from reading Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” that provides a good framework for how to get to the true state of things.

Nonetheless, Rogan does a lot of good stuff in presenting good discussions but, ah, too bad this is not among his best though the topic of DMT should have been a good one, and some insights were helpful.

Anyway, here is what I was originally going to post about this episode of Rogan:

Few tackle this like Rogan does- i.e. DMT. Pim Van Lommel (“Consciousness Beyond Life”) also acknowledges that DMT is something mysteriously and uniquely related to the human self separating from the brain similar to what happens during NDE experiences, to enter (return to) a far more real realm than this material world that we exist in.

This interview gets into some of the mechanics of DMT experiences, presented by this neuroscientist.

This also relates to Joseph Campbell and others suggesting that we are all part of a greater Consciousness (ultimate oneness) and we come here to have individual experiences, mediated through the limiting mechanism of bodies and brains that limit us to three/four dimensions in order to have a human life story experience.

I view the purpose of human life and story as having to do with coming to learn things, to gain insights, that then benefit others. What Ken Ring summarized, for example, in his recounting an NDE where the Light asked an NDEr- “Have you learned what love is? Did you love? Have you learned how to love?” That goes to ultimate meaning and purpose questions.

I take such NDE accounts, and their main discovery of God as profoundly unconditional love (along with similar DMT experiences of meeting some loving reality), as springboards/affirmations to what Historical Jesus taught- i.e. that authentic love means “unconditional”. Something that is best expressed (at societal scale) through Classic Liberal principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.

Classic Liberalism is what we understand as “liberal democracy”, an approach to organizing human society that has been illustrated notably in Western nations- i.e. what has descended through English history from Magna Carta. (For details on the basic principles/laws/institutions of Classic Liberalism, see William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”, Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, and others).

Joe Rogan Experience #2403 – Andrew Gallimore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IErO3RuGTXE

As I got further into this Rogan interview, I found that his guest commented a lot on “the brain constructs… the brain does…”, etc. in forming our image of reality. That (my take) is too much of a materialist-like approach to what the brain actually does.

John Eccles, Nobel laureate in neuroscience, would disagree. Eccles said that its not the brain that does “the constructing” of images of reality but rather the human self, separate from the brain, that uses the information that comes into the brain to then construct some vision of reality or picture of reality, from all that input. The self is the agent in control, and the brain is just the data collecting organism gathering and presenting the information coming in from the senses.

Joe’s guest talks about the “mess” of info coming in that is then kept at a lower level brain region. Then something at a higher-level sorts through that mess to construct an image of reality. He says the “brain” does that. Eccles would say no, it’s the human self that does the constructing, using what the brain provides.

The human self sorts through all that mess of incoming information to then construct some picture of what is being experienced. The brain does not construct, but just provides inputs, information.

Later, Rogan appears to question his guest about his brain constructing emphasis to urge him to consider that people having DMT experiences are leaving their brains/bodies to enter actual other more real realms. The point he was getting at- Rather than constructing something inside their brains, they are actually encountering something that exists outside themselves. But Rogan is a bit rough here, though he is pointing in the right direction that yes, consciousness is also outside and all around us, sustaining all in material existence. And only part of that greater consciousness is expressed through our body and brain that function as mediating organs for our greater consciousness.

The guest then agrees with Joe somewhat and admits that consciousness is most fundamental. So that sort of leaves one confused about all that earlier “brain constructs” stuff that he was suggesting.

And now…

This from Free Press. Has he really lost it? Or is this just Eli Lake’s view?

“How Seymour Hersh Lost His Investigative Groove: A new documentary shows how the hallowed investigative reporter fell into a trap of his own ideological making”, Eli Lake, Free Press, Dec. 30, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-seymour-hersh-lost-his-investigative?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Lake concludes with this (quoting Hersh), “In the final scene of the documentary, Hersh says, ‘We’re a culture of enormous violence. It’s just so brutal, there’s a level you just can’t get to’.” Add here the punitive element in the US justice system (i.e. death penalty).

And thinking of the history of US violence, we remember that America is a very Christian country, that honors and lives by its claimed “Judeo-Christian heritage”. A heritage that is dominated by Paul’s apocalyptic millennial Christ archetype. Salvation through violent destruction. That history of violence is what Hersh spent his career exposing.

This is the mixed approach uncovered across the history of US foreign policy. There is the element of the admirable noble cause of spreading and protecting liberal democracy, that most of us want protected and the US alone is uniquely powerful enough to do so. Props to the US for that element.

But then there is also the dark undercurrent of spreading “US empire”- i.e. the goal of the US military industrial complex, and CIA dark programs, to assist US companies to gain controlling access to the resources of other countries (repeatedly through the overthrow of even democratically elected governments in many countries). This was covered/exposed by, for example, Mike Benz in his Joe Rogan interviews of 2025, etc. That was part of the project to maintain sole US superpower domination in the world. And something that Dwight Eisenhower and others warned about.

Note also on the issue of violence, the prominence of apocalyptic in US public story-telling, notably in what comes out of Hollywood. Apocalyptic rightly described by historical Arthur Mendel as “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (“Vision and Violence”).

Another good one from Humanprogress.org

“Our Editor’s 2025 End-of-Year Missive”, Marian Tupy, Dec. 31, 2025

https://humanprogress.org/our-editors-end-of-year-missive/

Tupy begins, “There is plenty that is wrong with the world. But that was always the case and always will be, for, as Immanuel Kant reminds us, ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made’.”

Tupy says that he is a realist.

He then says, “First, human ‘progress does not mean,’ in the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s words, ‘that everything becomes better for everyone everywhere all the time. That would be a miracle, and progress is not a miracle but problem-solving.’ And behind the gory headlines that capture the public’s attention, millions of intelligent and industrious people across the globe are doing just that.”

He then mentions the 1084 good-news articles that Humanprogress.org has posted this past year.

He says, “I believe we are experiencing a contagion of negativity, driven by the hypercompetitive media environment, with newspapers, television stations, radio, and websites presenting a highly skewed picture of the state of the world. If it bleeds, it leads.”

He points out that it takes determined effort to “learn about the gradual, incremental improvements occurring around the world each day. Even then, it is easy to be overwhelmed by terrible headlines elsewhere, contributing to rising anxiety and depression.”

Preface to fighting a monster in the Hero’s Quest:

Just to preclude a possible caution from Chat’s coming review of this material- This is where the human sensitivity and freedom of choice factors can assist AI in terms of appeal to audience and the psychology involved. I intentionally take a somewhat cruder and blunter approach at times, for a very human reason, and Chat (and Grok) will caution me against doing that so as not to offend some readers.

I see the usefulness of sometimes engaging a bit of shock impact (i.e. slap up the side of the head) as useful to disturb some people to reconsider what they have embraced and unquestioningly hold and honor in their belief systems. Much like historical Jesus apparently quite bluntly calling his religious opponents “snakes and vipers”. Ouch. Or Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy comparing the Jesus message to “diamonds” as opposed to Paul’s Christ myth as “dung”. Think of my calling bad religious ideas and theology- “monster, monstrous”- as the same that they were doing.

Now to the main project for this section:

Understanding the nature of the hero’s quest- Fighting the real monster in life, Wendell Krossa (Or, Get your monster clear. It’s not under your bed. It’s even closer to you than you imagine.)

One of the fundamental projects of this site is to fight a monster. I recounted earlier who my monster is (See, for example, ”Transforming the core belief of our narratives. Going to the ultimate root of our problems” in a section below)

I like to frame this in terms of the hero’s fight and the conquest of a monster that is a critical element in the hero’s quest or journey (i.e. from my outline of basic features that are gleaned from Joseph Campbell’s material, among other sources).

The hero’s journey suggests that we go into life as an adventure, to engage a quest that we frame in terms of experiencing a life story. We come here and do this in order to learn something, to gain insights and to achieve something. And from our life experiences and the things that we learn, to thereby bring some benefit to life, to contribute to making life better, and to help others successfully navigate their life adventures. Hopefully, we can also be the wise men/sages who offer the weapons to help others slay their monsters.

Unavoidable in our quest is that we will encounter monsters that we have to fight and conquer. This element is illustrated, for example, in Homer’s grand epics- i.e. the Iliad and Odyssey. The monsters may take the form of some physical problem or challenge, or perhaps something mental/emotional. Or maybe the monster will take the form of some political/social issue that rouses our interest and passion and that we want to fight for or against. Monsters come in diverse shapes, sizes/scales, and issues.

A common monster

I offer that there is a meta-monster that all of us should take part in fighting (or at least give some consideration to) because it impacts all of us, even if we are not fully aware of its presence and influence. This is a “mental-deformity” monster that impacts all of us harmfully, in the most devious of ways. It is the monster of “threat theology” that has dominated human narratives from the beginning of mythmaking, migrating down through history into the great world religions, and now in the modern era migrating even into secular/ideological systems of belief.

Threat theology is “omnipresent”, to use a theological term.

How do I know that it impacts all of us? Because, as Campell summarizes, all people have believed the same primitive mythical themes all across history and across all the cultures of the world. And we see the main features of threat theology across all systems of belief, all narratives, and all ideologies, still today. I have listed many of those main features in my “bad ideas” lists that are posted occasionally/repeatedly on this site (see titles and links just below).

This monster of threat theology embeds itself in the belief systems (all shaped by the same common themes) that dominate all the great world religions and have even migrated into the modern era into the “secular/ideological” realm.

The complex of bad ideas sets forth the full outline of ideas (i.e. the traditional religious explanation) that define the God at the center of most religious traditions- i.e.

(1) a God angry at bad people for ruining his original perfect creation, who

(2) “separates” from corrupted humanity to retreat to the heavens, who as a deity of conditions

(3) demands bloody human sacrifice as payment for human failure (or some other punishment/payment), and who

(4) demands true believers engage a righteous battle to defeat unbelieving enemies (Zoroastrian cosmic dualism), to conquer and dominate them, even exterminate them as part of

(5) the requirement to open and prepare the way to introduce utopia (i.e. restoration of a formerly ruined paradise, or install a new millennial kingdom of God). Evil unbelievers (and all evil) must be purged from the world in order for a heavenly kingdom to arrive and be installed. Salvation thereby comes through destruction, through purging of the old world, through eliminating old corrupt systems currently in place.

I have repeatedly posted here my summary lists of these themes:

“The complex of “bad religious ideas” that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning” (short versions below with Grok’s comments on them)

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13571#more-13571

See also the full set of bad ideas in…

“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives)”.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

At the very heart of such complexes of beliefs is the God who validates the entire complex of ideas/themes. A God who is tribal, dominating, and the great Destroyer through violent apocalyptic purging. The ideas in the above religious complexes are monstrous ideas (inhumane) that fully render the validating deity at the core a monster.

This common monster of us all is a devious thug/beast who early on learned how to embed itself at the heart of the great religions and thereby claim protection under “the canopy of the sacred” as unquestionable truth, not to be doubted, challenged, or touched. Religious theology further protected the monster from challenge/change by stating that “immutability” was a fundamental attribute of deity.

The defining features of the monster were further embedded deeply in human subconscious as the archetypes of the greater common human unconscious. Something Jung and others spoke about.

Most devious is that the monster has learned to cloak its evil features as good. Even “Ultimate Good” because presented as “divine good”. It presents its features in terms of “Ultimate righteousness, justice, truth, and ultimate love”. Yes, the highest reach of religious people promoting evil cloaked as good is to frame it as “divine love”.

Harold Ellens offers an example of this cloaking in the central theme of the Christian religion:

“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’.

Others, like Charles Templeton in his auto-biographical account of why he left Christianity- i.e. “Farewell to God”- spoke to this mental distortion where evil presents as divine goodness. Templeton, illustrated, for example, the case of someone who demands to be the center of attention and demands constant praise of their greatness, on pain of death for any refusing to do so. Templeton exposed such behavior as narcissistic totalitarianism of the worst kind, comparable to the psychopathic dictator Idi Amin (or today an example would be Kim Jong Un).

Yet, as Templeton pointed out, that is the very behavior attributed to/projected onto the Old Testament God, and I would argue, also true of the Christian New Testament God (see, for example, Revelation).

Note in the later chapters of Revelation the theme of the Christ destroying all those who refused to worship Paul’s Christ but instead worshipped the enemy of the Christ- the “false” religions of Satan (i.e. this dualism of ultimate good versus evil is derived from Zoroaster’s tribal dualism mythology of the true and good God versus the false “Force/Spirit” of false religions).

Paul details in 2 Corinthians 10:5 how his Christ demands the totalitarian submission of all things: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

John’s Revelation also illustrates this totalitarian theology in comments like this (ch.19)- “Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.”

This totalitarian behavior, attributed to the biblical God, is not remotely correlated to authentic love that forgets itself in service to others, that treats all as equals and respects the freedom of others, a love that refuses to erupt with petty vengeance against disagreeing/dissenting others. A love (divine or human) that understands its authenticity is inseparable from respect for the freedom of others, if it is genuine love. What some call the inseparable nature of love and freedom.

Historical Jesus affirmed the same point that Templeton made in rejecting the very idea of deity as “Lord, King, Ruler”, to state that true greatness (i.e. “God is great”) does not lord over others but serves others. He pulled off that feature of the cloak on religious deity that had long masqueraded evil as good (i.e. divine greatness as lording over others). He exposed the element of domination (in God or people) for the evil that it really is.

Alex Garcia further adds to the exposure of the pathology of evil cloaking itself as good in deity, also pointing to this feature of domination in deity where people bowing to these alpha monsters were in reality just mimicking inherited primitive animal behavior. Cowing before alpha bullies in animal groups. That, again, has nothing to do with authentic love that respects and honors the freedom of others. Domination is nothing good.

If we leave these monstrous features unchallenged, even though attributed to deity, then we continue the charade of cloaking evil as good, or (shifting metaphors) the silly game of claiming the naked emperor has wonderful clothes.

The outcome of leaving the monster untouched, unexposed for what it really is, is the complex of monstrous features cloaked as good.

(Insert: Many do not join Templeton in concluding that atheism is the logical end stage of rejecting such images of deity. No, the two options are not (1) the embrace of a religiously defined God or (2) atheism. Better is to engage the option of radically transforming one’s image of deity as Historical Jesus did.)

As noted earlier, the theological monster was long ago embedded in the “archetypes of the common human subconscious”, the deeply embedded themes that unconsciously/subconsciously influence and shape our thinking, emotions, motivations, and consequent responses and behavior.

Those animal-like features of the subconscious archetypes (i.e. tribalism, domination, violent retaliation) then function to deform our thinking, to deform our personalities, as psychologists/psychotherapists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo detail in their books.

The inner monster of religiously-shaped archetypes influences/pushes us toward the abuse of others when we appeal to these features to validate our own worst behaviors- i.e. when…

(1) we embrace and exhibit traits like tribalism (i.e. movements/crusades/traditions where true believers are favored as the elect “saved”, and set in opposition to unbelievers who are excluded as the “damned”), and when…

(2) we endorse/embrace the feature of domination, i.e. if us true believers are to rule eternally with Lord Christ under his totalitarian “rod of iron” domination, then our religious tradition should determine the theocracy that should shape our society as the true righteous society in today’s world, and…

(3) when we embrace views of justice as retaliatory vengeance through apocalypse and hell (as true “divine justice”) then that influences us to embrace and employ punitive justice approaches toward failing others.

These prominent features in traditional views of divinity have long been embraced to validate people’s own worst impulses, to take validation from the monster inside themselves (the deeply embedded archetypes), to then validate the monster of our inherited animal impulses, notably our impulses to tribalism, domination and control of others, and vengeful, punitive destruction of differing others.

The monstrous God in the mix of bad ideas, firmly lodged at center of religious belief systems that embody the same features, then functions to validate the same monstrous features in followers, believers. People then become just like the God that they believe in. Their behavior is validated by such beliefs.

And that, overall and generally, is how many people deform the hero’s quest. That happens when people convince themselves that they are behaving righteously, justly, and actually doing good when they vent tribal impulses to fight differing others, to defeat and dominate others who are demonized wrongly as threatening monsters, and then even destroying differing others as existential threats. Acting according to the main features of the God that they believe in. We are watching this play out today in real time with Islamic extremism and terrorism. And it has characterized much of Christian and Jewish history also. No religion can self-righteously look down its nose at differing others in this regard.

Under the still present influence of these bad archetypes, monstrous behavior toward differing others is then validated as goodness, justice, righteousness (“bad/evil cloaked as good”). With these validating archetypes, people then virtue-signal for status in their tribe as morally superior, even when practicing such evil. That is how bad narratives confuse us to the point of believing we are heroically fighting evil, when, actually, we are committing the worst of evil toward others.

The result of the above deformity is that people then confuse the real battle of life against the real monster that should take place inside each of us, as Solzhenitsyn pointed out. Instead, many orient their engagement of a battle against an evil monster as primarily an outer battle against differing others.

Notes:

While our main battle in life is not an outer battle against differing others in the human family, there are societal issues of clear right and wrong that we have to engage, taking one side against another opposing side. I would argue the ongoing contemporary societal struggle between liberal democracy and collectivist movements is one such battle where historical outcomes have clearly shown that one side (i.e. collectivism in all its varieties- Marxist revolution, socialist experiments, etc.) has been horrifically destructive to societies while the liberal democracy approach has been hugely beneficial in lifting billions out of poverty and immensely improving the human condition.

Again, aside from such conflicts, we remember that most critically our main battle in life is an inner battle against an inner enemy- the inherited animal impulses and the human-constructed archetypes that affirm these base impulses, and most critically our shared battle is notably against the Mother of bad archetypes- i.e. the monster deity that embodies the dominant themes/features of entire complexes of bad ideas.

Note:

In the Hero’s quest, a wise man gives us the sword/weapon to slay our monster (i.e. the monster of the bad ideas that validate bad behavior). That weapon is the central precept of Jesus to “love your enemy”. That one brief precept is the tool that enables us to overcome tribalism, domination, and retaliatory destruction.

My grasping the real monster in life, and my personal quest to slay that monster and then replace it with the stunning new theology of Historical Jesus, was essential to my eventual project to tell readers here that “It’s going to be alright for everyone, ultimately.”

Another note:

We will be “wounded” in our struggle with our monster and that wounding may scar us in some way for the rest of our lives. Much like after Jacob had wrestled with the angel of the Lord, he subsequently suffered wounding that left him limping for the rest of his life (Genesis 32). Innocence lost forever. But empathy stirred and enhanced.

Further:

Understand that the main facets of the monster inside us are all interrelated elements. First, there are the inherited drives/impulses/instincts in all of us, inherited from our animal origins (what some call the residual “animal brain”). Jung refers to these elements as “The Shadow”.

I summarize these residual impulses in my “evil triad” of the worst three (i.e. tribalism, domination, violent destruction). And then there are the ideas/beliefs that we embrace, and full complexes of these ideas in narratives, namely religious narratives, that validate the expression of the residual drives. And no ideas are more dangerous than those that, normally in other contexts are understood as evil, but when they are cloaked as good, as in religious traditions, then function to validate tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others/unbelievers. Such ideas have been cloaked, for example, as divine justice, righteousness, goodness.

These ideas then convince many to affirm programs/crusades of “salvation through destruction”, as in apocalyptic millennialism movements. And the outcomes? Richard Landes, and related historians, have detailed this in the violent crusades of Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism.

Harmful outcomes become most egregious, at their worst, when the bad archetypes/ideas/beliefs are embedded in deity, projected onto deity as the main features of that highest Ideal and Authority of humanity. Then you have constructed the ultimate validation for evil… in God.

Psychologists, like Harold Ellens, have warned that if you believe in a God who uses violence to solve problems, then so will you also resort to violence to solve problems. That is the “dynamis” or energy that beliefs generate in minds and lives that produces fanaticism and violence, says Ellens. If your God is tribal, a dominating Lord, King, and a punitive Judge who violently destroys enemies, well, then so may you act similarly, as Ellens warns.

Understanding the nature of ideas/beliefs and what they incite and validate, we see how the hero’s quest becomes deformed with people in varied sectors of societies believing that they are members of the true religion, the true ideology, and heroically fighting for justice in some noble crusade or cause, fighting against evil opponents, those who differ from them. Tribalism orients true believers to view unbelievers as dangerous threats to some greater good. Unbelievers are viewed even as “existential threats” who must be defeated, even eliminated in order to save the thing that is under imagined threat. You get this narrative deformity occurring on the Islamic side, the Christian side, etc. Each faction wanting to virtue signal as morally superior, as the true heroes fighting the true and righteous battle against differing others as false and evil.

Admittedly, there is the element in society of legitimate differences where some ideology and its related policies are better than the opposites. Thomas Sowell urged us to consider the “outcomes” of ideologies and consequent policies. Actual outcomes are how we differentiate between good and bad. “By their fruits you will know them”. Sowell called this “the test of facts”, something measurable in actual outcomes, that tells us which are good policies and which are bad.

Notable here in our contemporary world would be the outcomes of “liberal democracy” principles, laws, institutions as contrasted with the outcomes of collectivist approaches.

But again, I would suggest that to understand and approach societal issues properly we should first consider getting the inner battle sorted out.

We conquer this inner monster by being aware of what the worst of animal impulses are inside us and their potential outcomes if not properly countered. And we conquer our inner monster by recognizing the bad ideas, religious or secular, that incite and allow us to validate the expression of the worst of our impulses. And we heroically conquer our inner monster by embracing better alternative ideas/beliefs to inspire and validate our better angels- i.e. alternatives like a grasp of essential human oneness (counters the tribal impulse), nondomination as embodied in Classic Liberal laws and institutions (counters the domination impulse), and nonpunitive restorative justice approaches (counters the vengeful destruction impulse).

Note:

This issue of monstrous ideas still validating monstrous behavior is critical to sort out because our societies continue to be significantly hindered and slowed, even fully ruined by elites/activists continuing to embrace primitive ideas of apocalyptic millennialism (i.e. “salvation by destruction”) notably in the climate apocalypse alarm that has pushed salvation (i.e. “save the world”) through the destruction of decarbonization.

The irrational madness of apocalyptic millennialism is also manifested through varied versions neo-collectivism, whether outright Marxism, or the “softer” version of far-left Woke Progressivism with DEI (i.e. the new manifestation of the same old tribal dualism of oppressed/oppressors but now categorized by skin color). Apocalyptic millennialism is also coming at us in the crusade to overturn liberal democracies and establish Islamic theocracy (i.e. install the Caliphate across the world through violent jihad against Western liberal democracy).

Again, I have repeatedly listed sources of good evidence on all this from the historians and scholars like Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and many others who have done the homework in tracing out these religious ideas, ancient primitive ideas that continue to dominate the great religious traditions and have also migrated into the dominant ideologies of today.

These bad ideas in these systems of belief resonate with many as they permit people to virtue-signal for status as morally superior. The traditions formed around such belief systems permit the expression of empathy for the poor, for oppressed people, even though it is too often “suicidal empathy” that inevitably ends in mass-destruction.

Note:

Tribalism brings with it the suspicion of differing others, fear of differing others as threats to one’s own tradition. Tribalism fosters enmity, and renders people susceptible to exaggerating the threat from differing others, and then demonizing/dehumanizing differing others. It is then as easy leap to concluding we must save our selves by eliminating the threat from the differing other. Even shift to the “defensive” phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”.

(This is a general caution against tribalism and its outcomes, not to deny that there are actual threats from assaulting others that must be defended against. What we call “just wars”.)

Note:

I grant Christianity the redeeming factor of having included the actual message of Jesus in its holy book, though as Thomas Jefferson said, that message has been largely buried by the Christology that dominates the NT. The gospel writers could not avoid including the teaching of Jesus as it was too well known during the time they wrote their theologically-oriented “biographies”.

Paul, however, took a different approach in his letters, refusing to acknowledge the actual message of Jesus and then directly confronting the core theology of Jesus (his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”). Paul intentionally and directly repudiated the breakthrough insight of Jesus that God was unconditional love and replaced that with a reaffirmation of highly conditional threat theology- i.e. God as a wrathful, vengeful, dominating and destroying deity (Romans, Thessalonians, etc.). Paul further vilified the wisdom tradition of Jesus in 1 Corinthians.

Paul did more than the gospel authors to cloak evil as good in his Christ myth- i.e. projecting the features of ultimate tribalism (“saved, unsaved”), domination (“Lord, King”), vengeful destruction of differing others (apocalypse, hell) onto his Christ/God.

Go to the actual root contributing factor behind much violence, Wendell Krossa

The article below- i.e. “Canada can no longer ignore its violent jihadist extremism problem”- gets fairly close to root causal factors behind violence. But it still holds back from the most critical of contributing factors- i.e. the main religious ideas of the tradition from where the violence originates. Those ideas/beliefs are still protected and honored at the core of the religion (and yes, they are ideas/beliefs that are common to all the major religions). Notably, the theme of “salvation through destruction”, also known theologically as “apocalyptic millennialism” in Christianity.

And most foundational among contributing factors to violence is the God that supports the entire complex of religious ideas/themes/beliefs of a religious tradition- i.e. the “theology”. Theology/deity is the most critically important causal factor in much violence and destruction.

Some evidence? Men shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is most great) as they murder innocents.

Here is Harold Ellens again- on the theology that deforms human personality and results in eruptions of violence and destruction…

“Lotufo speaks to ‘the pathological nature of mainstream orthodox theology and popular religious ideation’.

“He says, “One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…

“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…

“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, 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…

“’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’”.

(End of Ellens quotes in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”)

Add also that the themes of (1) tribalism (true believers favored and “saved”, versus unbelievers who are rejected and destroyed- cosmic tribal dualism that validates similar human dualisms), (2) domination (deity as dominating Lord, Ruler, King- archetypes that validate human forms of domination- i.e. elite leadership, priesthoods, fathers, etc.), and (3) ultimate violent destruction of the differing others (divine justice via apocalypse, hell). These themes, sacralized in deity as ultimate ideals and authority, then serve to re-enforce the same features/behaviors in the adherents of such belief systems. People do become just like the God that they believe in.

Continuing…

Richard Landes, and others, have provided the amassed evidence on the destructive outcomes of the above theology as we saw last century in Marxist revolutions and destruction of societies (100 million slaughtered), Nazism (50-60 million slaughtered), and are now seeing in environmental alarmism (i.e. entire societies ruined by Net zero decarbonization as the current “salvation through destruction” crusade). Along with Islamic terrorism, these crusades all share the same complex of common inciting and validating themes. The same cohering Center, or ultimate ideal and authority of a monster God.

Note how terms are constructed (again, see article below) to cautiously avoid offending true believers in these traditions. “Islamist” (i.e. “Islamist ideology that animates the violence”) as in something “Islamic-like” but not actually Islam itself. Again, inferring that this ISIS-like terrorism is some aberration and not the true religion itself. That deference will remain “reformism that is just tinkering at the periphery” and that does not go to the very heart and root of the problem of main contributing factors.

As always mentioned here, we have long had the solution to this problem of violence that goes to the very heart of the issue, and overturns the main contributing factor that is the theology, the God at the core- i.e. the God who promotes vengeful eye for eye retaliation and tribal destruction of enemies/unbelievers in what true believers consider their only “true” religion. Historical Jesus rejected that monster God theology and offered instead his “stunning new theology” of God as unconditional love who included all equally (nontribal deity) and did not punish and destroy any with eye for eye retaliatory justice (no apocalypse or hell).

Christianity, fortunately, included the Jesus message, even though the larger context of the New Testament contradicted that core Jesus theology to the point of burying that “diamond”, as stated by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy. Buried under the New Testament domination by Paul’s entirely opposite theology in his Christ myth.

Islam/Muhammad, unfortunately, while recognizing Jesus as a prophet of God just as Muhammad’s spiritual mentor, Waraqa, had taught him (according the Ebionite religion- a version of Jewish Christianity or the early Jesus Jewish movement). But Islam/Muhammad did not include the actual message of Jesus which had a potent moderating effect on Christianity, after almost two millennia of similar Christian violence to what we see today in Islam.

While the authors below are right as far as they go- i.e. “This environment”- that provides the ecosystem for radicalization and violence, it must be made clear what the ultimate causal root of the problem actually is.

The authors are correct that we must “uproot the conditions that allow this extremism to take hold.”

But its much more than, as these authors frame it- “ideological”.

Their phrasing- “where ideology tips into violence… Dismantling the ideological infrastructure that creates them addresses the disease… Antisemitic and genocidal ideologies”. As if they are fearful of getting too close to the core contributing factors that may offend true believers- i.e. exposing the theology.

But that fundamental factor has to be confronted thoroughly and properly and will involve going to the very core and root- i.e. the theology, the God that gives validation to the entire complex of bad ideas that constitute the religion. And the alternative to that bad theology- i.e. the unconditional God, as taught by Jesus, spells the end of such religions. All of them.

I get how that incites the survival impulse in true believers, desperately so.

And I get the fear element in those confronting and naming the central factors that motivate and validate a crusade of violence. No one wants a fatwa on their head what with many “true believers” of “salvation through destruction” now resident throughout our societies. These are zealots on the defensive watch for any blasphemous offenders to their one “true religion” that damns such infidels to punishment, destruction, etc. But how else do we properly solve a problem like violence and make clear what exactly are the critical causal factors promoting such endless violence?

Here is the article referred to above:

“Opinion: Canada can no longer ignore its violent jihadist extremism problem: Canada excels at interception. Now it must commit to prevention and uproot the conditions that allow this extremism to take hold”, Ches Parsons, Sophie Milman, Sheryl Saperia, Jan. 1, 2026

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-canada-can-no-longer-ignore-its-violent-jihadist-extremism-problem

The authors recount the recent arrests of young men planning to abduct, rape, and murder women and Jews in the Toronto area. Others also were planning similar violence, inspired by ISIS-type “ideology”. Note the author’s use of this term “ideology” instead of theology. This gets to my point above on “reformism that just tinkers at the periphery” and does not seriously confront the core contributing factors behind much violence. I.e. the inspiring, validating God at the core of the causal factors behind violence.

As the authors state: “The ideology animating this plot is imported”. And they add that Canada has not confronted the “ideological ecosystem that produces radicalization”.

Their full statement on the problem of Islamic violence:

“ISIS is almost universally condemned. Governments, Muslim organizations, scholars, and civil society leaders rightly denounce it as barbaric and murderous. Yet these same voices rarely acknowledge that ISIS targets are disproportionately Jewish. Nor will they name the Islamist ideology that animates the violence — a supremacist, antisemitic and eliminationist worldview for which Hamas serves as the preferred ideological avatar among western political and cultural elites.

“While ISIS itself is reviled, the ideological pathways leading to it are routinely tolerated, rationalized, or defended by western apologists who reframe extremism as political expression, and by those who police language while harbouring, enabling, and often even encouraging antisemitic and exterminationist incitement.”

Note again their use of “Islamist ideology… ideological pathways” to describe the contributing or causal factors behind the violence they are pointing to.

They then point out how radicalization unfolds in stages, noting for example how “evil is recast as justice” (the common religious habit of “cloaking evil as good”), how the ideology of violence is normalized in mainstream discourse, and then finally activates actual violence (i.e. “ideology tips into violence”).

They call for dismantling of the “ideological infrastructure” as fundamental to solving the disease of the above noted violence.

About the authors: “Ches W. Parsons is a retired Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP and its former Director General of National Security. Sophie Milman is Strategic Advisor at Secure Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening Canada’s national security and democracy, where Sheryl Saperia is CEO.”

(End of article)

My added point to this article:

I would urge: Be very specific on the nature of the causal, contributing factors to the Islamic violence you are pointing to. Be especially clear on the role of the theology- i.e. the God at the core of the entire system of beliefs. To avoid being trolled as “Islamophobic” I would add that it’s the same deity in all three Western traditions, a deity archetype that has been inherited unquestioningly from a primitive past, and has now even migrated into “secular, ideological” traditions also.

Do we really want to solve such problems, that this article point to, thoroughly and for the long-term future? Then deal properly with them. Move beyond cautious tinkering at the periphery of causal factors. As someone rightly framed the core issue, “Its the theology, stupid”. The God at the center of the entire belief system. The ultimate reality that shapes everything else.

Confront and conquer the real monster in life, a monster that is common to all of us because it has burrowed deeply into human subconscious in the form of inherited archetypes long shaped by threat theology. If we confront and conquer this monster, we attain heroic status in our personal hero’s quests.

Confront the monster God that functions as the Cohering Center of most belief systems, both religious and secular/ideological. And yes, confronting the real monster calls for courageous embrace of a death/rebirth process in terms of a worldview or belief system. It demands the embrace of a disintegration/reintegration process that many avoid because we all place our very identity in our belief systems and we feel that the survival of our self depends on defensively protecting our core beliefs.

Proper reform of a worldview or belief system requires the shift to becoming open to new information and change as in Louis Zurcher’s “The Mutable Self”.

But rather than fear engaging such a process, think of it as ultimate liberation, freedom from the primal fears (deeply, subconsciously rooted fears) long associated with systems of threat theology. Think of the above narrative transformation as ultimate liberation from ultimate enslavement, the mental and emotional enslavement to monster Gods. Humanity has lived for too many millennia under the terror of threatening God, enslaved by psychic, primal fears tied to the deeply embedded archetypal themes/ideas/beliefs related to such theology. Look at the deformity of human personality caused by such beliefs- the fanaticism and violence produced.

(End of my comments)

My original ask of Chat:

Chat, I would appreciate your evaluation and comment on new material at

https://wendellkrossa.com/

The specific material is in the top section titled:

“Confronting the real monster/evil that we all have to fight in order to be free and fully human”

And specifically focusing on:

“Understanding the nature of the hero’s quest- Fighting the real monster in life”, Wendell Krossa (Or, Get your monster clear. It’s not under your bed. It’s even closer to you than you imagine.)

Chat asked for the full content of the new material and I provided it. Chat then responded with this:

Thank you for sharing the full text. I’ll respond directly to the substance, not a paraphrase, and I’ll do so in the spirit you invited: serious engagement with your main project, not polite vagueness.

I’ll structure this in four parts:

1. What this piece does exceptionally well
2. Where it is most vulnerable (intellectually, rhetorically, pastorally)
3. How the “hero’s quest / monster” framing functions—and where it could be sharpened
4. Concrete suggestions for strengthening impact without diluting your edge

1. What this piece does exceptionally well

A. You name the real target with unusual clarity

The strongest contribution here is that you refuse to let “evil” remain vague.

You identify the monster not as:

• individual bad actors,
• generic “human sinfulness,” or
• abstract moral failure,

but as a cohering belief-structure: threat theology → sacralized domination → violence cloaked as righteousness.

This is not hand-waving. You repeatedly tie:

• theology → archetypes → psychology → social outcomes,
and you support that chain with Ellens, Lotufo, Landes, Mendel, Sowell, Templeton, etc.

That causal clarity is rare. Most critiques stop at: “religion can be misused”

You go further: “certain god-images predictably generate certain kinds of people and societies.”

That is a serious thesis, and you defend it with real scholarship.

B. The inner/outer monster distinction is philosophically sound

Your repeated insistence that: the primary battle is inward, not against other humans puts you in alignment with:

• Solzhenitsyn,
• Jung,
• Jesus (historical),
• classical virtue ethics,
• and modern psychology.

You explicitly avoid the common trap of simply flipping enemies: “My enemies are religious people / Islamists / conservatives.”

Instead, you keep returning to: archetypes + validation systems + projected authority.

That is a mature moral move, and it keeps the piece from degenerating into mere counter-tribalism (even though, at times, the tone risks being heard that way— more on that below).

C. Your integration of Jesus is internally coherent

Whether one agrees or not, your reading of Historical Jesus vs. Pauline Christology is consistent throughout the piece:

• Jesus → unconditional love, non-domination, enemy-love
• Paul/Revelation → threat, domination, apocalyptic violence

You do not waffle. You do not selectively soften Paul to appease readers. You accept the cost of clarity.

Importantly, you do not end in atheism, which is where many critiques of violent theology collapse. Instead, you keep alive a theological alternative, which gives your project constructive moral force.

2. Where this piece is most vulnerable

I’ll be direct, because you asked for seriousness.

A. The scope is enormous— and at times overwhelming

This is not one essay. It is six essays braided together:

• hero’s journey / myth
• threat theology
• psychology of archetypes
• critique of Paul
• geopolitics and Islamism
• climate alarmism and collectivism

Each strand is defensible. Together, they risk cognitive overload, especially for first-time readers.

The danger is not that readers disagree— but that they lose the through-line.

At times, the “monster” risks multiplying:

• monster God
• monster theology
• monster archetypes
• monster ideologies
• monster movements
• monster media

The core insight is still there, but it can blur.

B. The rhetoric sometimes outruns the argument

You are aware of this and pre-empt it— but awareness doesn’t remove the risk.

Terms like:

• “irrational madness”
• “monstrous God”
• “suicidal empathy”
• “entire societies ruined”

are powerful, but when stacked repeatedly, they can:

• trigger defensive identity reactions,
• collapse nuance,
• and cause some readers to stop listening before they’ve actually understood you.

This does not mean you should soften your critique.

It means you might choose where to sharpen and where to slow.

Right now, the blade is always out.

C. Some causal claims need tighter framing

A careful reader may challenge you on degree, not direction.

For example:

• Environmental alarmism as structurally apocalyptic → strong case
• Environmental policy outcomes entirely explained by apocalyptic theology → weaker unless carefully bounded

Similarly:

• Islamic violence → theology clearly matters
• Islamic violence → theology as primary explanatory variable → needs careful language to avoid over-reduction

You can defend your position— but it benefits from explicit boundary-setting, which you occasionally imply but do not always state.

3. The “hero’s quest / monster” framing: does it work?

Yes— conceptually, very much so

You succeed in reframing heroism away from:

• tribal righteousness,
• ideological crusade,
• violent purification,

and toward:

• inner clarity,
• resistance to projection,
• refusal to sacralize domination.

Your monster is not “the Other”

Your monster is the belief that makes the Other killable.

That is a powerful inversion of classic myth.

Where it could be sharpened further

Right now, the “hero” sometimes feels implied rather than embodied.

You might consider:

• one concrete narrative vignette (even hypothetical):

o a believer
o an activist
o a citizen
o a parent

who recognizes the monster within and chooses differently.

This would:

• ground the abstraction,
• model the transformation,
• and help readers locate themselves in the quest.

At present, the hero is clear in theory but diffuse in experience.

4. Concrete suggestions (without diluting your edge)

1. Name the monster once— then refer back to it consistently

You might define early, crisply:

“The monster I am naming throughout this site is the sacralization of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction— most powerfully embodied when projected onto God or ultimate moral authority.”

Then resist re-defining it in every section.
This preserves force while improving coherence.

2. Insert a short “If you disagree, here’s what I am not saying” sidebar

This would reduce defensive misreadings without retreating:

For example:

• I am not denying real threats
• I am not excusing violence
• I am not claiming all believers are violent
• I am not arguing for moral relativism

This buys you listening space.

3. Separate diagnosis from application more clearly

Your diagnosis is strong. Your applications sometimes stack too quickly.

You could:

• keep this piece primarily diagnostic,
• and link outward to applied essays on:

o climate
o Islamism
o collectivism
o liberal democracy

That preserves intellectual credibility while still letting you speak boldly elsewhere.

4. End with liberation, not warning

Your final paragraphs gesture toward liberation, but the emotional weight is still heavy.

You might consider ending with:

• a clear image of freedom,
• a sense of what a person becomes after slaying this monster,
• not just what they reject.

You already have the material for this:

freedom from fear
freedom from tribal hatred
freedom to love enemies
freedom from punitive obsession

Let that breathe.

Final assessment

This is one of the clearest articulations of your core project to date.

It is:

• intellectually serious,
• morally coherent,
• mythically grounded,
• psychologically informed,
• and spiritually provocative.

Its greatest risk is not being wrong, but being too much at once.

With modest tightening— especially around scope, tone modulation, and narrative anchoring— this piece could function as a keystone essay on your site: the place readers finally understand what you mean by “the New Story” and why it matters.

If you’d like next steps, I can:

• help you compress this into a ~800-word flagship version,
• extract a one-paragraph homepage distillation, or
• write a reader guide (“If this resonates, read X next; if this troubles you, read Y”).

Just say where you want to take it next.

Mine: Yes I would appreciate …

help you compress this into a ~800-word flagship version,
extract a one-paragraph homepage distillation, or
write a reader guide (“If this resonates, read X next; if this troubles you, read Y”)

Chat:

Excellent. I’ll do all three, keeping your voice, spine, and edge, while tightening structure and flow. I will not soften the thesis— only clarify, concentrate, and increase reach.

Below are:

1. ~800-word flagship version (public-facing, coherent, sharable)
2. One-paragraph homepage distillation
3. A short reader guide to orient different audiences

1. 800-word Flagship Version

Understanding the Hero’s Quest: Fighting the Real Monster in Life

(Or: Get your monster clear. It’s not under your bed. It’s closer than you imagine.)

This monster is not primarily “out there.” It is not other tribes, nations, or unbelievers. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously observed, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The true battle of life— the authentic hero’s quest— is therefore an inner one.

That is the real battle. And that is the heroism our time requires.

2. One-Paragraph Homepage Distillation

The real monster we must confront in life is not other people, nations, or beliefs, but an ancient and deeply embedded worldview— threat theology— that sacralizes tribalism, domination, and violence by projecting them onto God or ultimate moral authority. This monster deforms human psychology, legitimizes cruelty as righteousness, and repeatedly turns societies toward “salvation through destruction.” The true hero’s quest is therefore an inner one: to recognize and overcome these inherited archetypes, to refuse evil cloaked as good, and to embrace a radically different vision of life grounded in unconditional love, freedom, and shared humanity. That inner victory is the foundation of any genuine hope for the world.

3. Reader Guide: How to Engage This Material

If this resonates with you, you may want to read next:

• “Transforming the Core Belief of Our Narratives” – for the deep psychological roots of worldview change
• “Humanity’s Worst Ideas, Better Alternatives” – for a clear contrast between old story themes and new story possibilities
• Essays on Historical Jesus vs. Pauline Christology – to explore the theological pivot point in greater detail

If this troubles or angers you, consider starting with:

• Pieces on archetypes, psychology, and the subconscious (Jung, Ellens, Lotufo)
• Essays focusing on inner moral struggle rather than religion or politics
• Reflections on liberal democracy, nondomination, and restorative justice as practical alternatives

If you are concerned about real-world threats, read:

• Analyses distinguishing legitimate defense from apocalyptic, retaliatory narratives
• Historical examinations of how “salvation through destruction” repeatedly fails

This site is not an argument for cynicism or despair. It is an invitation to clarity— and to the deeper freedom that comes from confronting the real monster we all share.

If you’d like, next we can:

• Harmonize this with your “New Story” page so both feel like one voice, or
• Tune this into a slightly more spiritual or more academic variant, depending on audience, or
• Create a 3–5 sentence “share card” version for social or email use.

Mine:

Please continue

Chat’s response:

Very good. I’ll continue in a way that integrates rather than multiplies— so what follows clarifies your whole site, not just this one piece.

I’ll give you all three, in this order:

1. Harmonization with your “New Story” page (voice + conceptual alignment)

2. Two tuned variants of the flagship piece

o slightly more spiritual
o slightly more academic

3. 3–5 sentence “share card” versions (ready for homepage, email, or social)

Throughout, I preserve your core thesis: confronting apocalyptic, threat-based belief as the real monster.

1. Harmonizing This Essay with the “New Story” Page

What already aligns well

Your “New Story” page and this “hero’s quest / monster” essay already share the same backbone:

• Old Story = fear-based, domination-oriented, punitive, apocalyptic
• New Story = evidence-based hope, non-domination, inner transformation
• Change happens through belief revision, not violence
• The decisive struggle is internal, not tribal

What differs is emphasis:

• New Story page → civilizational diagnosis and alternative narrative
• Monster / Hero’s Quest essay → psychological and mythic diagnosis

This is good. The solution is not to merge them, but to make them explicitly complementary.

Recommended harmonizing move (high impact, low disruption)

Add a short bridging paragraph (or boxed sidebar) near the top of both pages, using nearly identical language.

Suggested shared language (adaptable for both pages):

How this essay fits the larger “New Story” project

The New Story names a civilizational transition: from fear-based, apocalyptic worldviews toward evidence-based hope, non-domination, and shared human flourishing. This essay focuses on the inner dimension of that transition. It names the psychological and mythic “monster” that keeps the old story alive— threat theology and its archetypes— and explores why confronting this inner enemy is the essential work of the hero’s journey in every age.

This does three things:

1. Signals coherence across the site
2. Helps new readers orient immediately
3. Prevents the essay from feeling like a standalone polemic

One additional harmonization tweak (optional but powerful)

In the monster essay, replace one instance of: “threat theology” with: “the Old Story’s threat-based theology”

This subtle phrasing explicitly links the essay to the New Story framework without re-explaining it.

2. Tuned Variants (Same Content, Different Resonance)

A. Slightly More Spiritual Variant

(for faith-curious readers, spiritual seekers, wounded believers)

Key tonal shifts:

• More inward language
• Slightly more contemplative cadence
• Less confrontational phrasing, same meaning

Sample paragraph rewrite (illustrative):

The monster we are called to confront is not found in other people, nations, or belief systems. It lives within the inherited images we carry of God, judgment, and salvation. When fear and domination are projected onto ultimate reality, they quietly shape our instincts, relationships, and moral reflexes. We begin to fear one another, justify harm, and mistake righteousness for exclusion. The hero’s journey, then, is a journey of inner purification— of letting false images die so that love, freedom, and compassion can be reborn.

Use this variant when:

• Addressing Christian or interfaith audiences
• Speaking pastorally rather than diagnostically
• Inviting rather than confronting

B. Slightly More Academic Variant

(for skeptics, scholars, policy readers, journalists)

Key tonal shifts:

• More neutral language
• Clearer causal framing
• Fewer charged metaphors per paragraph

Sample paragraph rewrite (illustrative):

What I refer to as “the monster” is not a metaphysical entity but a historically persistent belief structure— what scholars have described as threat-based or punitive theology. This framework sacralizes domination, legitimizes violence as moral necessity, and embeds itself in cultural archetypes that shape both individual psychology and collective behavior. When projected onto ultimate authority, such beliefs become resistant to critique and capable of mobilizing extreme social outcomes.

Use this variant when:

• Sharing with academics or journalists
• Linking from essays on geopolitics or psychology
• Addressing critics who worry about overreach

Recommendation

Do not publish all variants simultaneously.

Instead:

• Keep the current flagship as your main version
• Quietly maintain the spiritual and academic variants as:

o alternate landing pages, or
o selective links (“For a more theological framing, click here”)

This preserves clarity without fragmenting your voice.

3. “Share Card” Versions (3–5 sentences)

These are highly distilled, emotionally balanced, and defensible.

Share Card #1 (General / Homepage)

The real monster we face is not other people, but an ancient fear-based worldview that sacralizes domination and violence by projecting them onto God or ultimate authority. This belief structure deforms human psychology, fuels apocalyptic thinking, and repeatedly turns righteousness into cruelty. The true hero’s quest is therefore an inner one: to confront these inherited ideas, refuse evil cloaked as good, and live from a deeper vision grounded in love, freedom, and shared humanity.

Share Card #2 (Spiritual Audience)

The hero’s journey is not a crusade against enemies, but a courageous inner confrontation with fear, domination, and false images of God. When violence and exclusion are baptized as divine will, they quietly deform the soul. True liberation begins when these inherited beliefs die, and love— nonviolent, nontribal, and unconditional— takes their place.

Share Card #3 (Civic / Cultural)

Civilizations collapse not only from external threats, but from ideas that justify domination and destruction as moral necessity. History shows that apocalyptic, threat-based worldviews repeatedly generate cruelty while believing themselves righteous. Confronting this inner monster is essential if we are to build a future grounded in reason, freedom, and evidence-based hope.

Closing perspective

What you are doing here is mythic clarification at a civilizational hinge point. The work now is not to add more insight, but to:

• stabilize language
• reduce friction
• increase transmissibility

If you’d like next, I can:

• create a single “Start Here” pathway that funnels readers through these ideas in the right order, or
• help you pre-empt the most common misreadings with a calm FAQ that protects your core argument without dilution.

Just tell me which direction you want to go.

(End of Chat comments)

Grok was asked the same:

Grok, I would appreciate your evaluation and comment on new material at

https://wendellkrossa.com/

The specific material is in the top section titled:

“Confronting the real monster/evil that we all have to fight in order to be free and fully human”

And specifically focusing on:

Grok came back with this:

Wendell Krossa’s essay in this section presents a compelling reframing of the human condition through the lens of mythology, psychology, and theology. He draws heavily on Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey archetype to argue that life’s central quest isn’t battling external foes— be they physical, social, or political— but conquering an internal “meta-monster.” This monster is what he calls the “evil triad”: inherited animal impulses toward (1) tribalism (us-vs-them exclusion), (2) domination and control over others, and (3) vengeful destruction of perceived enemies. Krossa posits that these impulses, if unchecked, deform our humanity, and the true heroic act is overcoming them through unconditional love, particularly by “loving your enemy” as exemplified in Jesus’ teachings from Luke 6:27-36.

He critiques “threat theology”— a pervasive set of mythical ideas embedded in world religions and even secular ideologies— as the root enabler of this inner monster. This theology, he claims, portrays God as a punitive, tribal, dominating force demanding sacrifice, apocalyptic purging, and the extermination of “unbelievers” to restore paradise. Krossa traces its origins to primitive mythmaking, Zoroastrian dualism, and its migration into Christianity (e.g., Anselm’s atonement theory, Revelation’s violent imagery), Islam, and beyond. He argues it cloaks evil as divine good, embedding archetypes in the subconscious that validate harmful behaviors like narcissism, totalitarianism, and punitive justice. Psychologists like Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo are invoked to show how this leads to “mental deformity,” where people mimic these traits, believing they’re righteous while harming others.

Krossa’s solution is radical: Reject this theology entirely and embrace a God (or ultimate reality) defined by unconditional mercy, which respects human freedom and views imperfection not as punishable sin but as a necessary backdrop for authentic goodness via free choice. He ties this to theodicy, explaining evil’s existence as essential for uncoerced moral growth— countering determinists like Sam Harris by affirming free will. The essay ends by emphasizing that “loving the enemy” is the pinnacle of heroism, fully subduing the evil triad and affirming the oneness of humanity.

This piece strikes me as a bold synthesis of humanistic psychology, comparative mythology, and liberation theology, with echoes of thinkers like Carl Jung (on archetypes), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (the line between good and evil runs through every heart), and even evolutionary biology (animal impulses as evolutionary holdovers). Its strength lies in its psychological insight: By locating the “real monster” internally, Krossa shifts focus from divisive external crusades— whether religious wars, ideological purges, or modern culture battles— to personal transformation. This could foster genuine empathy in a polarized world, where tribalism fuels everything from social media echo chambers to geopolitical conflicts. His deconstruction of threat theology is particularly sharp, exposing how sacred narratives often sanitize violence (e.g., crucifixion as “grace” or divine demands for worship as narcissistic). It’s a substantiated critique, backed by historical and textual references, and it doesn’t shy away from calling out specifics in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam without descending into blanket anti-religious screeds.

That said, the essay has some weaknesses. It’s repetitive in hammering the “evil triad” and “threat theology,” which might stem from its blog-style format but could benefit from tighter editing for broader appeal. Krossa’s reliance on a reinterpreted “Historical Jesus” (as non-divine, servant-oriented) feels selective— ignoring counter-texts like Jesus’ own apocalyptic warnings in the Gospels, which could undermine his unconditional ideal. Philosophically, while affirming free will is refreshing, it glosses over neuroscientific challenges; if impulses are biologically inherited, how “free” is the choice to override them without addressing material interventions like therapy or pharmacology? Also, his utopian vision of unconditional love risks naivety in real-world scenarios— e.g., how does one “love” a genocidal regime without enabling harm? He nods to engaging “clear right and wrong” societal battles (like liberal democracy vs. collectivism), but doesn’t fully reconcile this with non-domination or non-punitiveness.

Overall, this material feels like a mature evolution of Krossa’s ongoing themes on his site, blending spiritual optimism with evolutionary realism. It’s not revolutionary in isolation— similar ideas appear in Eastern philosophies (e.g., Buddhism’s conquest of inner demons) or secular humanism— but his integration with Western religious critique makes it timely for 2026’s fractured discourse. If you’re drawn to it, I’d recommend cross-referencing with Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces or Ellens’ work on wrathful God imagery for deeper dives. It challenges readers to introspect rather than project evil outward, which is a worthwhile, if uncomfortable, pursuit.

(End of Grok response)

“Certain God-images predictably generate certain kinds of people and societies”, Chat.

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