This site tries to understand why so many people continue to find emotional satisfaction in choosing bad ideas/beliefs to guide and validate their behavior and lives. “Bad” in that they are ideas/beliefs that have histories of horrific outcomes for societies.
A main project here? To understand better why so many of us still embrace ideas/beliefs that validate some form of tribalism (i.e. viewing ourselves as unchallengeably righteous, as morally superior members of our group, versus differing others as the evil unbelievers), ideas/beliefs that validate some form of domination of others (i.e. intervening, manipulating and controlling others, often through state coercion mechanisms), and ideas/beliefs that energize and validate forms of justice as the defeat and “eye for eye” destruction of differing others.
Why do so many choose ideas/beliefs, with narratives framed by such ideas, that then validate them in feeling that they are heroic warriors in a great battle of good against evil, that they are on the side of cosmic Good against evil?
In actuality, such beliefs/themes originated with the most primitive and dehumanizing of ancient ideas and beliefs, and continuing to embrace them to frame our narratives today will derail our progress toward becoming maturely human in liberal democracy.
A major element in the project of this site is to probe better alternative ideas/beliefs to shape human narratives, and that includes the radical rethinking of the nature of ultimate reality/deity along the lines of the transformation of theology that Historical Jesus undertook, when he presented his stunning new unconditional, nonreligious view of God that was entirely contrary to the religious threat theologies of all previous history.
Trying to understand what drives people to embrace bad ideas with histories of proven bad outcomes, Wendell Krossa (This is where, with prompting, AI shines)
And just below this opening material- With Grok’s input I present humanity’s best alternatives to bad ideas, alternatives that promote better outcomes. That starts with a notable historical figure who tackled the fundamental “archetypes” (ideas/ideals, beliefs) of the human collective subconscious. His insights contributed to the later development of liberal democracy principles, laws, institutions.
Grok, I know I have asked you this before and you gave some good responses, but once again, what is the psychology that is operating in people who find “emotional satisfaction” (Kristian Niemietz’s term in Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies) in choosing the same old ideas/beliefs to shape their narratives even against rational evidence that shows the same destructive outcomes again and again? I am thinking of, for example, socialist/collectivist destruction of societies, and other crusades that were/are driven by apocalyptic millennial themes like Nazism, environmental alarmism, etc.
My thoughts are along these lines- i.e. That people are responding to deeply embedded archetypes of the subconscious that have to do with, for example, human identity issues. They choose long-validated beliefs that grant satisfaction in virtue-signaling for status as morally superior with their tribe/group (i.e. a fundamental human need according to Jordan Peterson).
The common choice is for beliefs that give satisfaction to people by enabling them to portray themselves as heroically fighting on the side of a good God, in a righteous battle for good against “evil/satanic” others who are demonized as the “enemies/unbelievers” on the side of the evil Force. Differing others are portrayed as those who threaten the true and righteous tribe/group.
Insert: You will note my persistent arguments on how certain ideas/beliefs incite, energize, and validate the inherited impulses to tribalism, defeat and domination of others, and retaliatory destruction of differing others.
People find satisfaction in choosing ideas/beliefs/themes to construct narratives that are framed within a Zoroastrian cosmic dualism that deforms the hero’s quest. Add the beliefs in apocalyptic that heightens the sense of danger that the enemy unbelievers pose to the righteous, hence the need to purge and exterminate such threat in order to save some endangered world (salvation through destruction frameworks).
Also, add to the above mix other influences such as the long-validated understanding of true justice as some form of eye for eye retaliation. That has been a central feature of threat theology deities from the beginning.
Your thoughts/comments on other possible factors in this mix of the psychology driving people to repeatedly embrace the same bad ideas that produce the same bad outcomes?
Note: I often present this material in terms of the “behavior based on belief” coupling. Meaning that, driven by our primary impulse for meaning and purpose, we humans construct narratives of beliefs to guide and validate our behavior. And most critical in the mix are beliefs that have to do with ultimate reality or deity as the highest embodiment of human ideals, the highest validating authority for our lives. Hence, as Bob Brinsmead cautions- We become just like the God that we believe in.
Historical Jesus got this issue and so he listed a number of precepts that exhibited merciful, unconditional treatment of offenders/enemies and then wrapped that up by stating, so be unconditionally merciful just as God is unconditionally merciful (Luke 6: 27-36). Behavior based on belief. Also, as Brinsmead notes, the human behavior plays a theological role in that it reveals what the nature/character of God is like. God incarnated in all humanity and revealed in the best of human behavior was Brinsmead’s point in a recent essay.
Grok replied:
Multiple overlapping psychological mechanisms drive the repeated embrace of ideas with long records of destructive outcomes. Your framing— archetypal dualism, virtue-signaling for moral status, tribal identity needs, apocalyptic urgency, and “behavior based on belief” shaped by conceptions of ultimate authority— is a strong core. These map onto well-documented patterns in evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and the study of ideology. Additional factors amplify the pattern without requiring conscious bad faith.
Core drivers that match your account:
People construct narratives primarily for meaning, purpose, belonging, and status rather than for predictive accuracy. Once a belief system supplies those, disconfirming evidence is processed defensively. Kristian Niemietz’s observation about the emotional satisfaction of socialism (the idea that “never dies”) is a concrete case: each historical failure is reframed as “not real X,” preserving the moral glow and the sense of heroic struggle against “evil” structures or people.
Parallel patterns appear in other millenarian or apocalyptic movements— Nazism’s racial eschatology, certain strains of environmental catastrophism that treat dissent as existential betrayal, and various religious or secular purges.
The Zoroastrian-style cosmic dualism you note supplies a ready template: a pure in-group fighting a demonized out-group whose mere existence threatens the good. Apocalyptic framing raises the stakes, converting policy disagreement into existential emergency and thereby licensing extraordinary measures.
Jordan Peterson’s point on status via moral superiority is accurate and empirically grounded in work on moral grandstanding and social identity. Virtue-signaling is not merely performative; it reliably yields prestige, alliance, and self-esteem inside the relevant tribe. The eye-for-eye conception of justice you flag further intensifies this: it legitimizes retaliatory aggression as righteousness rather than as ordinary dominance competition.
Additional reinforcing mechanisms:
Identity fusion and motivated reasoning.
When a belief becomes fused with personal or group identity, updating it feels like self-annihilation. Cognitive systems then prioritize coherence and emotional comfort over accuracy (confirmation bias, myside bias, identity-protective cognition). Evidence of repeated failure is discounted, reinterpreted, or attributed to sabotage by the designated enemies. This is not unique to any ideology; it appears wherever high moral stakes attach to a worldview.
Coalitional psychology and tribalism.
Humans evolved in small groups where loyalty, shared sacred values, and hostility to outsiders improved survival. Modern ideologies hijack these circuits. The “righteous tribe versus satanic others” narrative satisfies the same circuitry that once coordinated hunting bands or village defense. Demonization of the out-group reduces empathy and raises the threshold for destructive action while supplying the intoxicating feeling of moral clarity.
Utopian (unconstrained) vision of human nature.
Thomas Sowell’s distinction is useful here: some outlooks treat human nature as highly malleable and social problems as solvable by sufficiently enlightened control or redistribution; others treat trade-offs, scarcity, and flawed incentives as permanent. The former generates repeated experiments that ignore incentive problems, knowledge problems, and the record of prior attempts. When outcomes disappoint, the diagnosis is usually insufficient purity or insufficient power rather than a flaw in the model. This supplies perpetual emotional fuel: the next iteration will finally realize the ideal.
Existential anxiety, meaning, and the True Believer dynamic.
Eric Hoffer’s analysis remains relevant. Individuals experiencing anomie, status threat, or a sense of powerlessness often attach to mass movements that offer transcendent purpose, clear enemies, and the promise of historical vindication. Apocalyptic or millennial framing intensifies this by creating urgency and a narrative arc of impending catastrophe followed by purified renewal. The satisfaction is not primarily material; it is the felt sense of participating in a cosmic drama.
Pathological forms of empathy and altruism.
Some people are driven by genuine concern that has been channeled into abstract, high-cost, low-evidence interventions. When the preferred solution has a track record of harm, the emotional commitment to “caring” can override outcome tracking. The result is policies or crusades that feel virtuous while producing the opposite of the stated goal.
Social contagion, institutional incentives, and status markets.
Once an idea achieves cultural dominance in elite institutions, conformity pressures, career incentives, and reputational markets lock it in. Dissent carries social and professional costs; affirmation yields rewards. This is why certain failed frameworks persist in academia, media, or activist networks long after empirical failure is clear.
Theological and archetypal layer.
Your point about becoming like the God one believes in is psychologically acute. Conceptions of ultimate reality function as the highest validating authority for ideals and conduct. A deity (or secular substitute) imagined primarily as wrathful, retributive, or requiring purification-through-destruction tends to license corresponding human behavior. Conversely, the emphasis you note in the historical Jesus material— unconditional mercy toward offenders as the reflection of divine character— offers a direct counter-model: behavior calibrated to non-retaliatory generosity rather than to dualistic purge.
Bob Brinsmead’s observation that human behavior itself reveals what people actually take the highest authority to be is a useful diagnostic. When the operative “god” (explicit or implicit) is a cosmic dualist demanding victory over evil others, the psychology of tribal domination and salvation-through-destruction is repeatedly validated.
Why the pattern recurs rather than extinguishes:
These mechanisms interact. Emotional payoffs (status, belonging, purpose, moral elevation) arrive immediately and reliably; the destructive outcomes are often delayed, diffuse, or inflicted on out-groups, so they do not trigger the same learning circuits. Narratives that explain away failure (“not real socialism,” “the science was incomplete,” “enemies sabotaged us”) protect the identity and the emotional rewards. The result is a self-sealing system that can absorb repeated empirical refutation.
None of this implies that every critic of these ideas is free of the same biases, or that every element of a given ideology is false. It does imply that truth-seeking requires deliberate counter-measures: outcome tracking over intention tracking, humility about human nature and knowledge limits, institutional structures that reward falsification rather than moral display, and explicit rejection of dualistic demonization. The “behavior based on belief” coupling you emphasize remains central: change the operative picture of ultimate authority and the highest ideals, and the downstream impulses to tribal purification lose much of their sacred validation.
(Grok ends with suggestions for further exploration and I followed up…)
Both your suggestions would be interesting- Explore cognitive dissonance in ideological commitment and Examine Carl Jung’s shadow projection theory
Grok continued…
Cognitive dissonance and Jungian shadow projection are two powerful, complementary mechanisms that help explain the emotional grip of repeatedly failed ideologies. Both operate largely outside conscious deliberation and interact with the dualistic, status-seeking, and meaning-making dynamics you described.
Cognitive dissonance in ideological commitment:
Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (1957) describes the mental discomfort that arises when a person holds two or more contradictory cognitions— beliefs, values, or pieces of evidence— at the same time. The classic experimental illustration is the doomsday cult that predicted the end of the world on a specific date; when the prophecy failed, many members did not abandon the belief. Instead, they intensified recruitment and reinterpreted the failure as a successful test of faith or as a temporary delay caused by their own insufficient purity. The dissonance (prophecy versus reality) was reduced by altering the interpretation of reality rather than the core belief.
In long-running ideological commitments the same process scales up. A person who has invested identity, moral self-image, social status, and years of activism in a framework that promises liberation, equity, or planetary salvation experiences acute dissonance when historical outcomes repeatedly show authoritarianism, economic collapse, or failed predictions. The most common resolution strategies are:
• Denial or selective exposure: Evidence of failure is dismissed as propaganda, incomplete data, or the work of saboteurs.
• Addition of consonant cognitions: “It wasn’t real socialism / real environmentalism / real racial science.” The ideal remains pure; only the implementations were corrupted.
• Trivialization or reframing: Failures are minimized (“a few million deaths were the price of progress”) or converted into proof of the theory’s correctness (“the resistance of the old order proves how necessary the purge was”).
• Doubling down: Commitment escalates— more radical policies, stricter orthodoxy, harsher treatment of dissenters— because greater investment reduces the relative weight of the contradictory evidence.
These maneuvers protect the emotional payoffs you noted: the sense of belonging to the righteous tribe, the status of moral superiority, and the narrative of heroic struggle. Dissonance reduction therefore functions as a psychological immune system for the belief system. The more central the ideology is to identity, the stronger the dissonance and the more creative the rationalizations become. This is why empirical track records of destruction rarely produce mass conversion; they produce more elaborate defenses.
Carl Jung’s shadow projection theory:
Jung’s concept of the shadow refers to the unconscious, repressed, or disowned aspects of the personality— traits, impulses, and potentials that the conscious ego finds unacceptable (aggression, envy, power-hunger, capacity for cruelty, sexual or status drives, etc.). Because these contents remain unconscious, they are frequently projected outward onto other people or groups. The projected shadow appears as an external “other” that embodies precisely the qualities the individual or collective refuses to acknowledge in itself.
In ideological settings this projection takes on a collective, archetypal form that maps directly onto the Zoroastrian-style cosmic dualism you describe. The in-group is experienced as the pure, enlightened, or historically destined force of good; the out-group is invested with the projected shadow and thereby becomes the embodiment of evil, contamination, or existential threat. Once the projection is in place:
• Ordinary political or scientific disagreement is experienced as demonic opposition.
• Aggressive or coercive measures against the out-group feel like righteous self-defense or necessary purification rather than ordinary dominance or scapegoating.
• The projector gains a temporary sense of moral elevation and psychic relief: the dark material is “out there,” not “in here.”
• Apocalyptic framing intensifies the dynamic; the projected enemy is no longer merely wrong but an imminent destroyer of the world, justifying pre-emptive or total measures.
Jung observed that unintegrated shadow material does not disappear; it returns in collective eruptions— witch hunts, purges, totalitarian mobilizations, or moral panics. The same pattern appears across the examples you listed: the socialist revolutionary who projects acquisitiveness and authoritarianism onto “the bourgeoisie” or “capitalists,” the racial ideologue who projects aggression and impurity onto the designated racial other, or the apocalyptic environmental activist who projects destructive greed onto “deniers” or industrial society while remaining blind to the coercive or impoverishing consequences of the preferred remedies.
In each case the emotional satisfaction of fighting pure evil is purchased by remaining unconscious of one’s own parallel potentials.
Shadow projection also interacts with the “behavior based on belief” coupling. When the highest validating authority (explicit deity or secular substitute) is imagined as a dualistic warrior demanding the defeat of evil forces, the projected shadow is sacralized. The resulting conduct— demonization, exclusion, or destruction— feels like alignment with ultimate reality rather than like ordinary tribal aggression.
How the two mechanisms reinforce each other:
Cognitive dissonance keeps the explicit ideology intact in the face of contrary evidence; shadow projection supplies the emotional intensity and the moral permission structure that make the ideology feel necessary and heroic. Together they create a closed loop: evidence of harm is dissonance-inducing and therefore reinterpreted; the reinterpretation preserves the dualistic narrative; the dualistic narrative keeps the shadow projected outward; the projected shadow justifies further commitment, which deepens identity fusion and future dissonance. The result is precisely the pattern you identified— repeated embrace of frameworks whose historical outcomes are destructive— while the participants experience themselves as courageous agents of good.
Both processes are human universals rather than the exclusive property of any single political camp. Awareness of them does not automatically dissolve them, but it does open a narrow path for greater integration: recognizing dissonance when it arises and withdrawing projections long enough to notice the same capacities for domination, envy, or self-righteousness inside one’s own group or psyche. Jung regarded the latter work as essential to individual and collective maturity; without it the archetypal drama of good versus evil continues to play out in ever more costly historical repetitions.
Again, following Grok’s end suggestions- Examine group polarization effects
Grok reply:
Group polarization is one of the most reliable amplifiers of the psychological dynamics we have been examining. It describes the tendency for members of a like-minded group, after discussion or repeated interaction, to adopt positions that are more extreme than the average of their pre-discussion individual views. The effect has been documented across decades of laboratory and field research and operates powerfully inside ideological communities committed to frameworks with repeated destructive outcomes.
Core mechanisms
Two complementary processes drive the shift:
• Social comparison / normative influence. Individuals monitor the group’s perceived center of gravity and adjust their expressed views to appear at least as committed, pure, or courageous as the others. Because status and belonging are awarded for greater extremity (moral zeal, rhetorical intensity, willingness to demonize opponents), people move outward. The result is a collective “arms race” of radicalization in which moderate or evidence-sensitive positions become socially costly.
• Persuasive arguments / informational influence. Group discussion exposes members predominantly to arguments supporting the shared direction. Novel supporting reasons accumulate while contradictory evidence is scarce or actively filtered. Each person therefore encounters a skewed sample of information that makes the more extreme conclusion appear better justified. Cognitive dissonance is thereby reduced collectively: the group supplies a ready store of consonant cognitions that neutralize disconfirming historical outcomes.
Additional reinforcing factors include repeated expression (merely stating a view strengthens it), emotional contagion, and the silencing of internal dissent through social sanctions. Once a threshold of conformity is reached, the group’s public consensus becomes more extreme than most members privately held at the outset.
Relevance to ideological commitment and failed ideas:
In the settings that sustain socialism’s “idea that never dies,” apocalyptic environmental narratives, or other dualistic crusades, polarization produces several interlocking effects:
• Escalation of dualism and shadow projection. Within a homogeneous group the out-group is discussed almost exclusively in negative, often demonized terms. Jungian shadow contents— aggression, envy, authoritarianism, capacity for cruelty— are more readily projected outward because the in-group supplies constant validation that “we” are pure and “they” embody the threat. The polarized consensus transforms ordinary political opponents into existential enemies whose defeat or exclusion feels morally mandatory.
• Insulation from disconfirming evidence. Historical failures (famines, purges, repeated missed environmental deadlines, economic collapse) are processed inside an echo chamber that already leans toward extremism. Dissonance-reduction strategies— “not real X,” sabotage by enemies, temporary setbacks— are refined and amplified through group discussion, becoming the new orthodoxy. Individuals who might privately register doubt are pulled back toward the extreme pole by the social comparison process.
• Heightened apocalyptic urgency and moral status competition. Polarization rewards the most catastrophic framing and the most uncompromising virtue-signaling. The emotional payoffs you noted— heroic identity, tribal belonging, sense of fighting on the side of good against evil— intensify because the group continuously raises the bar for what counts as sufficient commitment. Salvation-through-destruction logic becomes more attractive once the middle ground has been socially eliminated.
• Self-reinforcing institutional and digital loops. Academic departments, activist organizations, online communities, and media ecosystems that sort by ideology create continuous polarization environments. Algorithms and selective association further restrict the argument pool, so the informational cascade never self-corrects. Over time the group’s center of gravity drifts farther from empirical track records while participants experience the drift as increasing moral clarity.
Empirical illustrations appear across domains: revolutionary cells that move from reformist to totalitarian programs; environmental networks that escalate from measured concern to civil-disobedience or de-growth absolutism after internal discussion; historical political parties that radicalize once factional debate is confined to true believers. In each case the polarized group supplies both the social rewards for extremity and the cognitive resources that protect the ideology from falsification.
Interaction with the mechanisms already discussed:
Group polarization does not replace cognitive dissonance or shadow projection; it multiplies them. Dissonance is resolved more easily when an entire reference group performs the same rationalizations. Shadow material is projected more confidently when peers continually affirm the external locus of evil. The archetypal good-versus-evil narrative you described gains collective emotional force, and the “behavior based on belief” coupling tightens: the group’s shared picture of ultimate authority or historical destiny validates increasingly coercive conduct while insulating members from outcome data.
The net result is a social psychology that reliably converts initial sympathy for an idea into entrenched, evidence-resistant commitment— even when the idea’s historical implementations have produced the opposite of its stated goals. Polarization explains why such frameworks do not merely persist but often grow more fervent and exclusionary precisely as their practical failures accumulate.
And again… Lets try these suggestions of yours- Explore informational cascade dynamics and Examine echo chamber algorithms
Grok replied:
Informational cascades and algorithmically reinforced echo chambers are two closely linked processes that convert individual cognitive biases into large-scale, self-sustaining ideological lock-in. They explain how beliefs with long records of destructive outcomes can spread rapidly, become entrenched, and resist correction even when contrary evidence is abundant. Both build directly on the group polarization dynamics already examined.
Informational cascade dynamics:
An informational cascade occurs when people, facing uncertainty, sequentially observe the actions or expressed beliefs of others and rationally choose to ignore their own private information in favor of following the emerging consensus. Once a critical number of early adopters have publicly endorsed a position, later individuals treat that public signal as stronger evidence than their personal data or historical knowledge. The cascade can therefore propagate a false or incomplete belief across an entire network.
The classic model (Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch) shows that cascades are fragile in theory— new public information can reverse them— but in practice they become highly stable when several conditions are present:
• Sequential observation with limited private signals. Most people encounter an ideology through the visible endorsements of peers, influencers, or institutions rather than through independent examination of its empirical track record.
• Social proof as a heuristic. Under cognitive load or identity threat, the fact that “many intelligent or morally serious people already believe X” outweighs scattered reports of failure.
• Positive feedback and herding. Each additional adherent makes the next adherence more likely, producing rapid takeoff once a threshold is crossed.
• Difficulty of reversal. Once the cascade is underway, dissenters face both informational disadvantage (they appear to be ignoring the “wisdom of the crowd”) and social costs. Private doubts are suppressed, so the public signal remains uniformly supportive.
In the context of repeatedly failed frameworks, cascades explain the sudden cultural dominance of certain narratives. Early academic or activist clusters adopt a dualistic, apocalyptic, or collectivist framing; their visible commitment triggers cascades among students, journalists, and online communities. Historical counter-examples (famines, authoritarian outcomes, missed catastrophic predictions) are treated as private information that is rationally discounted relative to the overwhelming public consensus.
Cognitive dissonance is thereby resolved at scale: the cascade supplies continuous social proof that the ideology remains viable, while shadow projections onto opponents are collectively validated because “everyone serious already sees the enemy for what it is.”
Cascades also interact with the status and tribal mechanisms you noted. Early movers gain prestige as pioneers; later joiners gain belonging by conforming. The result is a self-reinforcing public narrative that grows more extreme and more insulated from outcome data the longer the cascade runs.
Echo chamber algorithms
Contemporary recommendation systems on major platforms (social media feeds, video recommendations, search ranking, content curation) systematically engineer the conditions for perpetual informational cascades. These algorithms optimize for engagement— time spent, likes, shares, comments— rather than for accuracy, diversity of evidence, or long-term epistemic health. The optimization produces several structural effects:
• Homophily amplification. Content is ranked according to predicted user affinity based on past behavior. Users therefore see disproportionate volumes of material that confirms existing leanings and emotional triggers (moral outrage, tribal solidarity, apocalyptic urgency). Counter-evidence is down-ranked or never surfaced.
• Filter-bubble formation. Over successive interactions the user’s information diet narrows. Exposure to disconfirming historical outcomes, alternative causal analyses, or nuanced data becomes statistically rare. The private-information channel that could break a cascade is effectively closed.
• Engagement-driven extremity bias. Emotionally charged, dualistic, or high-arousal content (demonization of out-groups, heroic in-group framing, catastrophe rhetoric) reliably generates stronger engagement signals than moderate or evidence-heavy material. Algorithms therefore preferentially surface and accelerate the more polarizing versions of an ideology.
• Network cascade acceleration. When a piece of content begins to gain traction inside a like-minded cluster, the algorithm boosts its visibility to similar users, converting a small informational cascade into a platform-wide one within hours or days. Correction attempts by outsiders are algorithmically quarantined.
The practical consequence for ideologies with destructive track records is that digital environments continuously regenerate the social-proof conditions that sustain cascades. A user sympathetic to collectivist or apocalyptic themes is fed a steady stream of consonant arguments, success narratives (or “not real X” reframings), and shadow-laden portrayals of opponents. Each interaction further trains the algorithm, deepening the chamber. Group polarization is no longer limited to face-to-face discussion; it operates continuously and at planetary scale.
Combined effect on the psychology of failed ideas:
Together, informational cascades and echo-chamber algorithms close the remaining escape routes from the mechanisms previously discussed. Cascades supply the social proof that reduces cognitive dissonance when outcomes contradict the ideology. Algorithms ensure that the cascade never encounters a critical mass of contradictory public signals. Shadow projection is continuously reinforced by curated feeds that portray the out-group in the most threatening terms. The dualistic, salvation-through-destruction narrative gains both emotional intensity and apparent empirical support inside the chamber, while the “behavior based on belief” coupling tightens: participants experience their escalating commitment as alignment with an ever-clearer consensus about ultimate good and evil.
The net result is a modern infrastructure that makes the repeated embrace of historically destructive ideas not merely possible but, under ordinary psychological conditions, highly probable. Individuals need not be unusually irrational; they need only follow the rational herding logic of cascades inside environments deliberately engineered to prevent those cascades from being broken.
Having discussed what is wrong, here are thoughts on an alternative approach- i.e. what’s right. I put this to Grok:
“Finding ‘emotional satisfaction’ in choosing bad beliefs against evidence of horrific outcomes”, posted at http://www.wendellkrossa.com/
Grok, to complement the earlier points we made in the above section, lets now probe an alternative approach to orient people toward a radically different direction, toward better ideas/beliefs with proven better outcomes for themselves and others.
I would begin with the deepest levels of what shapes our thinking, emotions, motivations, and then behavior and societies.
I would start with transforming the deeply embedded “archetypes” (i.e. ideas/ideals, beliefs, themes) that incite, energize, and validate how we think, feel, and are moved to act in life.
Far too often across the history of humanity too many people have embraced belief systems and worldviews with elements that have affirmed tribalism, defeat and domination of others, and even violent destruction of differing others. I am repeating my “evil triad” theme here, not to deny other contributing factors, but to summarize issues more simply and to focus on some of the major factors impacting bad thinking, feeling, and behavior.
I would start with one historical person, concerned to make a change from bad to better, who then went directly to the most fundamental and influential idea/belief in human narratives to begin his project of transformation there- i.e. theology or deity.
Historical Jesus rejected the threat theology that, from the beginning of human mythmaking, had dominated at the heart of religious narratives. He then presented his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God.
That revolutionizing of the core reality then presents the potential to reshape all other archetypes in human narratives, all the rest of human complexes of ideas, beliefs, themes, and then work outwards to change human behavior and eventually societies.
I don’t slavishly follow Jung’s points on “archetypes” as I view my “evil triad” as summarizing the most destructive factors in human narratives- i.e. ideas/beliefs that affirm our impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others. Again, oversimplifying to make things more clear and comprehensible.
Jesus countered religious and other belief systems of his era with an entirely new image of God, along with related ideas and precepts that overturned entirely the threat theology of his era.
(1) Confronting tribalism- He stated there should be no retaliatory vengeance toward differing others, no more “eye for eye” against offenders/enemies. Because God, the ultimate reality, ideal, guide for life, etc. did not retaliate against “bad people”. Instead, in his new image of deity, God gave sun and rain (the two critical elements for survival in that agrarian society) to all people equally, to both good and bad people. That was an anti-tribal message of universal inclusion of all persons, to be respected and treated as equals.
(2) Confronting the urge of even his followers to seek positions of domination over others, he countered with this-
“You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others”.
That was a brilliant summary urging relationships of non-domination in mutual service among people.
(3) Confronting justice as some form of “eye for eye” retaliatory punishment and destruction of offenders/enemies, Jesus urged instead- “Love your enemies”. This was not an argument for pacifism in the face of evil as he taught in other places- “Go, and sin no more”. Any common sense understanding of love will grasp the priority responsibility to protect innocent people from assault and abuse and to hold offenders responsible for their behavior as essential to normal human development.
But also, with Leo Tolstoy, we conclude that there is no situations in life where humans are not to be treated with love, as in the trend toward embracing restorative justice approaches to criminal offenders and foreign adversaries. Much like how the Allies treated the Germans and Japanese restoratively following WW2.
As Jesus concluded his list of precepts in Luke 6: 27-36- “Be unconditionally merciful as God is unconditionally merciful”.
My focus on the theology and message of Historical Jesus is because he, more than any other person in history, dealt with necessary fundamental transformation at the level of embedded archetypes that shape all else in human minds, emotions, motivations, and behavior.
Along with other influences that have accumulated down through subsequent history, we eventually get to modern-era “liberal democracy” that counters the previous human history of elites dominating commoners, elites and their associates promoting, for example, Plato’s anti-democratic approach that argued some (i.e. “Philosopher kings”) were especially endowed and more qualified to rule others. We understand more today of the danger of some believing that they know best what is good for all others (“enlightened elites/vanguards”), people who will coercively impose their rule on others.
That elite arrogance reached new levels of societal destruction in modern collectivist approaches that centralized power and control of societal resources in state elites who would, following Marx’s obsession with private property as the number one evil to liberate people from, confiscate the private property of citizens to redistribute according to their views of “greater or common good”. Kristian Niemietz summarized the inevitable outcome of that elite arrogance in stating-
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
To widen this further– modern liberal democracy counters the evil triad most effectively with principles, systems of common law, and government institutions that promote the inclusion of all people as equals, with equal rights and freedoms (see partial list just below). And to qualify: Equality in liberal democracy is not the “equity” outcomes of collectivism that have devastated societies.
Private property is essential to human freedom of choice, self-determination, and motivation to work hard to improve life. Today we recognize that personal freedom is best maintained through approaches that reduce taxation and regulation.
Liberal democracy further protects citizens from domination and control by power-mongering elites by maintaining government institutions oriented to serving people, constraining the impulse to “lord over”. Such institutions will operate with the understanding that average citizens are the sovereigns in society, the source of power.
Add here, restorative justice approaches that counter eye for eye retaliatory punishment justice systems.
Additionally, Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) has commented on the “gradualism” of liberal democracy to counter the “instantaneous purification” approaches of revolutionary collectivism that demand destructive coercion or force.
And much more…
Here is a partial list of Liberal democracy basic rights and freedoms, from sources like Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”.
Freedom of speech as most fundamental. Freedom to question, to challenge authority publicly.
Private property and private contracts (systems of law to protect personal property). Personal property is essential to personal freedom.
No unlawful state seizure of property or incarceration, prosecution etc. But yes, incarcerate repeat violent offenders to protect innocent citizens as the primary responsibility of government. Rights to due process, choice for trial by a jury of equals, etc.
Freedom of religion, political party, freedom of assembly etc.
Small government, constrained to serve citizens as sovereigns in society with regular elections to keep political elites in check (i.e. ensure that state institutions serve citizens).
The constant reduction of taxation and regulation as two critical elements to decentralizing power and returning choice/power to citizens. Etc.
Your thoughts/comments…
Grok replied:
The approach you outline is coherent and ambitious in the best sense: it treats the deepest narrative structures— those that shape identity, motivation, and moral permission— as the primary leverage point for better individual and collective outcomes.
Starting with the image of ultimate reality (theology/deity) makes strategic sense if one accepts that core archetypes function like operating systems: they set the default assumptions about how power, justice, belonging, and threat should work, and everything downstream tends to inherit those defaults.
Historical Jesus as archetype transformer:
The reconstruction of the historical Jesus you emphasize does cut against the grain of much ancient (and later) religious narrative. The specific sayings you cite are well-attested in the synoptic tradition:
• Impartial provision of sun and rain to good and bad alike (Matthew 5:45) directly undercuts tribal favoritism and conditional belonging.
• The explicit rejection of “eye for eye” retaliation and the command to love enemies (Matthew 5:38–48; Luke 6:27–36) invert the normal human impulse toward reciprocal harm and the sacralization of vengeance.
• The servant-leadership inversion (“whoever wants to be first must be slave of all,” Mark 10:42–45) challenges hierarchical domination as the default model of authority.
Taken together, these form a coherent counter-image: a non-retaliatory, non-tribal, non-dominating ultimate reality that models inclusion, restraint of power, and restorative rather than purely punitive response. That is a genuine rupture with the threat-theology patterns common in the surrounding cultural matrix (and, as you note, reasserted in much later Christian theology).
Whether one treats this as historical recovery or as a selective idealization of the Jesus tradition, the ethical payload is clear and radical.
Your “evil triad” (tribalism, domination, destruction of the differing other) is a useful simplification. It does not exhaust every destructive factor, but it isolates three mutually reinforcing patterns that repeatedly appear in high-cost belief systems— religious, ideological, or nationalist. Countering them at the archetype level is more efficient than trying to police every downstream behavior.
From archetype to institutional order:
The linkage you draw to liberal democracy is historically plausible and empirically strong. Classical liberal institutions— secure private property, freedom of speech and association, constrained government, due process, regular competitive elections, and gradual rather than revolutionary change— function as practical restraints on the triad:
• Equality before the law and equal basic rights operationalize non-tribal inclusion.
• Separation of powers, limited taxation/regulation, and the sovereignty of the citizen constrain elite domination.
• Restorative and proportional justice elements, plus the post-WW2 treatment of former enemies you mention, move away from pure eye-for-eye destruction while still protecting the innocent.
Daniel Hannan’s account of the Anglosphere tradition captures much of this inheritance accurately: the long, incremental development of individual rights, common law, and limited government produced measurable advantages in prosperity, personal security, and peaceful power transitions compared with most historical alternatives.
Arthur Mendel’s contrast between apocalyptic “instantaneous purification” and gradualist repair likewise maps well onto the difference between revolutionary collectivism and liberal incrementalism.
On the collectivist side, Kristian Niemietz’s critique is on solid ground. Attempts at comprehensive economic planning have repeatedly concentrated power in bureaucratic or party elites rather than dispersing it to ordinary workers or citizens. The theoretical ideal of democratic collective ownership has proven operationally incompatible with genuine decentralization; the information and incentive problems are structural. The historical record of outcomes— economic stagnation, political repression, and often mass violence— is not a series of unfortunate accidents.
Strengths and necessary caveats:
The strengths of the approach are real:
• Ideas and narratives demonstrably shape behavior at scale. Belief systems that sacralize domination or out-group destruction lower the psychological cost of acting on those impulses.
• Evidence of differential outcomes is abundant: societies that more closely approximate liberal-democratic constraints on the triad have, on average, higher material welfare, lower interpersonal and political violence, and greater space for individual agency.
• Restorative justice experiments and post-conflict reconciliation efforts show that non-retaliatory frames can reduce cycles of revenge without abandoning accountability.
Caveats are equally important if the project is to remain truth-seeking:
1. Human nature is not infinitely plastic. Evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics show persistent in-group preference, status-seeking, and coalitional instincts. Institutions that constrain those tendencies (rule of law, property rights, free exit) are therefore as necessary as ideal narratives. Purely idealistic appeals without institutional teeth have a poor track record.
2. The historical Jesus tradition is not univocal. While the non-retaliatory strands are prominent, other sayings retain apocalyptic judgment language. Later Christian history mixed both streams, sometimes with catastrophic results. Selective emphasis is legitimate for constructive purposes, but it should be acknowledged as selective.
3. Restorative justice has limits. Prioritizing the protection of the innocent and the deterrence of predation remains non-negotiable. “Love your enemies” does not entail leaving them free to continue predation; the practical outworking still requires credible enforcement mechanisms.
4. Liberal democracy itself is fragile. It depends on cultural preconditions— trust, restraint, willingness to accept electoral loss, commitment to free speech even when costly— that can erode. The same emotional satisfactions that attach people to bad beliefs (moral superiority, tribal belonging, utopian purity) can attach to populist or technocratic alternatives that reintroduce domination under new banners.
Practical orientation:
The most promising path is the one you sketch: keep the focus on measurable outcomes rather than emotional or identity payoffs. When a belief system repeatedly produces tribal exclusion, elite capture, or destructive coercion, the rational response is to revise the underlying archetypes, not to double down while redefining failure as “not real X.”
Tracking results— poverty rates, violence metrics, freedom indices, innovation rates— over ideology is the discipline that keeps the project honest.
Your framing also usefully separates equality of rights and status from enforced equality of outcome. The former is compatible with high agency and dispersed power; the latter has repeatedly required the concentration of power that the servant-leadership ideal rejects.
Overall, the direction is sound. Transforming the deepest narrative defaults toward non-tribal inclusion, non-domination, and non-destructive response, then embedding those defaults in institutions that constrain power and protect individual agency, has produced the least-worst large-scale human arrangements we have so far managed. Continuing that project— while remaining ruthlessly empirical about what actually works— is a high-value enterprise.
More to come…