Intro:
There are legitimate forms of fear that we tolerate because they keep us alive as we navigate our life stories. Like when we walk near a cliff on a hike along some mountainside. But then there are added illegitimate fears that darken and enslave our minds, fears based on manufactured bad ideas that others use to manipulate and control people, notably the ideas of apocalyptic narratives that exaggerate and distort natural elements till they become outright lies. Those fallacies have been used to frighten many into embracing salvation through destruction schemes like Net Zero decarbonization.
This site exists to counter bad ideas that must be defeated in order to liberate us from falsely-based fears, none more destructively false than apocalyptic themes that exaggerate natural elements of life to apocalyptic scale and then manipulate frightened people to embrace irrational salvation schemes that destroy life and societies. Salvation through destruction.
Spark for the comment below:
I listened to Joe Rogan and a guest bemoan the sad state of life and musing that the future looked bleakly bad. It sparked the thought of how destructively the apocalyptic narrative has impacted people, the belief that all is going to hell in a handbasket.
Joe Rogan Experience #2544 – Chris Williamson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh8FkZaQ06I&t=174s
Re-instating the theology of rage to energize destruction of differing others, Wendell Krossa
A recount of the man who defeated of the idea of divine rage/vengeance theology but was followed by another man who soon reinstated divine rage/vengeance theology. They constructed two entirely contrary narratives with contrary outcomes.
Some prep points: We become just like the God that we construct to believe in. We mimic what we project onto the ultimate Idea/Ideal that we embrace. This is the result or outcome of responding to our primary impulse to meaning and purpose. The lesson is be careful what you project onto your ultimate Ideals to then guide, energize, and validate how you behave and live.
But before moving into my new comment I descended a bit down this rabbit hole with AI. I posed this to AI Overview, Google’s AI. Note that my later comments further below were written before I engaged AI on this apocalyptic stuff just below. Also note that AI Overview uses some of the terms and points from my site. That is from previous interaction with these varied AI platforms. They remember previous discussions and back and forths.
I asked Google AI (i.e. Gemini): “Fear often manifests in rage.”
AI Overview responded…
Fear often manifests in rage because anger acts as a protective shield, turning the helpless feeling of a threat into a powerful urge to fight. Both emotions share the same survival system in the brain, but rage feels safer than vulnerability.
Why Fear Turns to Anger
• Loss of control: Fear makes you feel weak, while rage makes you feel strong.
• The brain’s alarm: The Amygdala triggers a fight-or-flight response for both feelings.
• Quick defense: Attacking feels safer than running away or admitting fear.
(End of AI comment)
I then followed with this as AI asked what I wanted to probe next:
I see this in relation to apocalyptic alarmism narratives that incite fear and rage in people to eliminate what they are told is the threat to their world- notably the salvation through destruction or apocalyptic millennial themes that historian Richard Landes noted as driving Marxist revolutions, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism movements.
AI Overview’s next reply:
You are referencing a core thesis of historian Richard Landes in his work Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience. Landes argues that seemingly secular political and social movements often operate as hidden “apocalyptic millennial” movements, using the exact psychological architecture of religious doomsday cults to drive human behavior through fear and rage.
When a society adopts an apocalyptic framing, the biological “fear-to-rage” response is amplified to a civilizational scale.
The Mechanics of Apocalyptic Alarmism
Landes maps out how these movements bypass rational thought by following a predictable “apocalyptic curve”:
• The Withering Critique: The movement begins by declaring that the current world or system is utterly corrupt, evil, and unsalvageable.
• The Imminent Cataclysm: Prophetic alarms are sounded. Society is told it is on the absolute brink of total destruction (e.g., the capitalist collapse in Marxism, racial contamination in Nazism, or ecological collapse in extreme environmental alarmism).
• Salvation Through Destruction: The psychological trick hinges on convincing people that the only way to birth a perfect world (the “millennium”) is to completely destroy the current one.
• The Identified Threat: To turn fear into actionable rage, the movement identifies a specific, tangible scapegoat— the “threat to their world”— that must be ruthlessly eliminated (e.g., the bourgeoisie, the Jews, or modern industrial civilization).
The Danger of “Active” Millennialism
Landes distinguishes between passive apocalyptic belief (waiting for a god to end the world) and active millennialism, where humans believe they must be the agents of purification.
Because the stakes are framed as absolute survival versus total annihilation, normal moral guardrails are discarded. The fear of death or ruin transforms into a self-righteous rage. Under this collective mindset, total intolerance, censorship, and violence are no longer viewed as sins; they are reframed as holy, necessary duties to save humanity.
Would you like to analyze how specific rhetoric in today’s media mimics this curve, or examine Landes’s concept of “catastrophic re-entry”— what happens when the apocalypse fails to occur?
(End of AI comment)
My next query: Both would be interesting- analyze how specific rhetoric in today’s media mimics this curve, or examine Landes’s concept of “catastrophic re-entry”— what happens when the apocalypse fails to occur.
AI replied:
Part 1: Media Rhetoric and the Apocalyptic Curve
Modern mass media leverages the biological fear-to-rage pipeline by clothing historical apocalyptic archetypes in modern, secular language. To maintain high audience engagement, media narratives follow the apocalyptic curve:
[ Enthusiastic Launch ] –> Driven by hyper-moralized, urgent rhetoric (shifts to)…
[ The Point of Imminence ] –> “We only have X years left to act!” (shifts to)…
[ Disappointment / Delay ] –> The deadline passes; reality does not bend (shifts to)…
[ Catastrophic Re-entry ] –> Rage turns inward or outward (scapegoating)
1. Linguistic Hyperbole (The “Enthusiastic Launch”)
Media platforms replace normal descriptive language with existential, binary alternatives.
• The Rhetoric: Issues are no longer “problems to manage” but “existential threats” and “points of no return.”
• The Shift: In climate coverage, the term “global warming” shifted to “climate change,” then “climate crisis,” and now “climate emergency” or “global boiling.” This linguistic escalation mimics the prophetic awakening— the sense that the old language is too blind to see the coming wrath.
2. The Shrinking Horizon (The “Point of Imminence”)
An apocalypse requires a ticking clock to force people out of rational deliberation and into survival-driven rage.
• The Rhetoric: “We have 12 years to save the planet,” or “This election is the last stand for democracy.”
• The Shift: Putting a hard date on the future forces absolute compliance. If the world is ending in a decade, normal democratic processes (like compromise, cost-benefit analyses, and debate) are reframed as dangerous delays pushed by “deniers” or “traitors.”
3. Totalizing Scapegoating (The “Identified Threat”)
To activate rage, fear must be given a human face. The media constructs a stark binary between the “Children of Light” (the saved) and the “Children of Darkness” (the damned).
• The Rhetoric: Grouping political or cultural opponents not as people with different economic theories, but as “monsters,” “fascists,” “deplorables,” or “eco-terrorists.”
• The Shift: Nuance is treated as complicity. If you question the methods of the movement, you are accused of actively causing the apocalypse. This shifts the focus away from the complexity of the problem and toward the moral purification of eliminating the target group.
Part 2: Richard Landes’s “Catastrophic Re-entry”
What happens when the prophecy fails? In Heaven on Earth, Richard Landes explains “catastrophic re-entry”— the disorienting, painful crash back into “normal time” when the predicted cataclysm or utopia fails to materialize.
When millions of people have traded their morals, savings, and relationships for an apocalypse that doesn’t happen, they experience intense psychological whiplash. They rarely admit they were wrong. Instead, they double down using several distinct strategies:
1. The “Baseless Hatred” Pivot (Scapegoating)
As Landes notes, when hopes are high or when disappointment sets in, “all resentment against dissidents is justified”. The believers convince themselves that the prophecy failed only because a hidden enemy sabotaged it.
• Historical Example: When the Marxist global worker revolution failed to materialize after WWI, Bolshevik leadership did not question Marxist theory. Instead, they blamed “kulaks,” “bourgeois wreckers,” and internal traitors, launching the Red Terror to purify the ranks.
• Modern Application: If a specific climate deadline passes without the oceans boiling, the movement rarely reassesses its models. Instead, rage is directed fiercely at “fossil fuel shills,” “corporate greenwashers,” or passive citizens whose lack of compliance supposedly delayed the salvation.
2. Moving the Goalposts (Apocalypse Delayed)
Instead of abandoning the belief system, leaders simply calculate a new date.
• The Psychology: Leon Festinger’s famous study on cognitive dissonance showed that when a doomsday cult’s prediction fails, the core group often becomes more zealous. They claim their faith and actions bought the world a little more time, or that the calculation was slightly off, pushing the deadline out another ten years.
3. Homicidal/Suicidal Frenzy
In the most extreme cases of active millennialism, when the gap between the promised “Heaven on Earth” and reality becomes too wide to bridge, the movement turns completely destructive.
• The Destruction: If the world refuses to be saved, believers decide it deserves to be punished. Landes points to historical tragedies like the Xhosa Cattle-Slaying (where a whole society destroyed its own food supply waiting for a miracle, resulting in mass starvation) or modern doomsday cults. The rage originally intended to build a perfect world collapses into a desperate desire to watch the unrepentant world burn.
The Takeaway
Apocalyptic movements are “sometimes magnificent, but always doomed”. By understanding the “apocalyptic curve,” you can recognize when media narratives are no longer trying to inform you, but are instead trying to pull you into a state of survival-driven rage to force your absolute compliance.
Would you like to focus on a specific historical case study from Landes’s work, such as the French Revolution or the Xhosa Cattle-Slaying, to see how this played out in real life?
(End of AI)
My next:
The French Revolution would be interesting to focus on as Marxists revered that as a model of “secular modernism” where Landes exposed their follow-up movement as profoundly religious and shaped by primitive apocalyptic millennial mythology.
AI responded:
The French Revolution is arguably the ultimate blueprint for modern “secular” active millennialism. As Richard Landes points out, while the revolutionaries claimed to be champions of pure reason, science, and modern secularism, they actually hijacked the psychological architecture of primitive apocalyptic mythology.
When Karl Marx and later Vladimir Lenin looked back at the French Revolution, they revered it as the first grand smashing of the old world. But they missed— or willingly ignored— the fact that the Jacobins had not escaped religion; they had simply created a new, hyper-aggressive, secularized doomsday cult.
Here is how the French Revolution perfectly rode Landes’s Apocalyptic Curve into a catastrophic re-entry of blood and terror.
1. The Enthusiastic Launch & The Totalizing Critique
Before 1789, France was framed by radical thinkers not just as a country with bad fiscal policy, but as an unsalvageable swamp of corruption. The Monarchy and the Catholic Church were cast as total darkness.
When the Revolution erupted, it wasn’t viewed as a mere political reform; it was treated as Year One of a completely new creation (the literal birth of the millennial kingdom).
• The “Secular” Myth: The revolutionaries abolished the Christian calendar. They replaced it with a new revolutionary calendar starting at Year I.
• The Underlying Mythology: This is a classic primitive apocalyptic move— time itself is broken, the old world is dead, and human history is restarting from scratch. They even turned churches into “Temples of Reason” and worshipped a personified goddess of Liberty, replacing old gods with new, untouchable idols.
2. The Imminent Threat and the Transformation of Fear to Rage
By 1792, the Revolution faced internal peasant revolts and external wars with European monarchies. The psychological tipping point arrived: The collective fear of losing the “New World” transformed into a manic, paranoid rage.
Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins weaponized this fear to create the Committee of Public Safety. In an apocalyptic worldview, there is no such thing as an honest disagreement; there is only absolute good and absolute evil.
• Anyone who questioned the economic chaos or the speed of the revolution was no longer just a citizen with a different opinion— they were an existential threat to human salvation.
• To save the utopian future, the “Children of Darkness” (aristocrats, moderate revolutionaries, hoarding peasants) had to be completely eliminated.
3. Salvation Through Destruction: The Reign of Terror
Landes notes that active millennial movements believe humans must be the violent agents of purification. Robespierre famously explicitly linked virtue and terror, stating: “Virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent.”
The guillotine became the holy instrument of purification. In the apocalyptic mindset, the mass executions of the Reign of Terror were not seen as crimes, but as a painful, necessary surgery to remove the “cancer” of the old world so the new world could live.
4. The Catastrophic Re-entry: Thermidor and the Whiplash
The apocalypse, of course, failed to arrive. Cutting off thousands of heads did not fix the economy, end the wars, or make people perfectly virtuous. Instead, the gap between the promised utopian “Republic of Virtue” and the miserable reality of daily paranoia became too wide to bridge.
This triggered the Catastrophic Re-entry:
• The Turning on the Prophets: In 1794, the revolutionary apparatus turned inward. The very fear and rage Robespierre stoked was directed back at him. He and his allies were sent to the same guillotine they used to purify France.
• The Exhaustion and Dictatorship: When a doomsday prophecy fails, society experiences severe psychological exhaustion. The French public, burned out by years of apocalyptic hysteria and hyper-moralized rage, completely abandoned the utopian dream. They craved order at any cost. This whiplash directly cleared the path for the rise of a military dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Marxist Inheritance
When Marx later studied this, he stripped away the religious terms but kept the exact same apocalyptic framework. He claimed that the “Bourgeoisie” was the final evil, the “Proletariat” was the saving force, the “Revolution” was the imminent cataclysm, and the “Communist Utopia” was the millennium.
By refusing to see the French Revolution as a cautionary tale of religious hysteria disguised as secularism, the Marxist movements of the 20th century were doomed to repeat the exact same curve— leading to their own catastrophic re-entries in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Maoist China.
Would you like to explore how Landes compares this Jacobin-Marxist lineage to the rhetoric of today’s eco-apocalyptic movements, particularly regarding how they view democratic compromise?
(End of AI comment)
My next:
Yes- explore how Landes compares this Jacobin-Marxist lineage to the rhetoric of today’s eco-apocalyptic movements, particularly regarding how they view democratic compromise.
AI replied:
In Heaven on Earth, Richard Landes establishes that modern eco-apocalyptic movements are the direct cultural descendants of the Jacobin-Marxist lineage. By analyzing how these movements structure their rhetoric, Landes highlights a core, dangerous feature: an inherent hostility toward democratic compromise.
In normal civil society, democracy is a “positive-sum” game relying on patience, incremental negotiation, and the acknowledgment that political opponents have a legitimate right to exist. An apocalyptic movement, however, breaks this framework completely.
The eco-apocalyptic movement treats democratic compromise not as a virtue, but as a form of treason, using the exact psychological mechanisms pioneered by the Jacobins and Marxists.
1. The Rhetorical Continuity: From Class to Climate
The Jacobin-Marxist lineage and modern eco-apocalyptic movements share an identical underlying narrative structure, simply substituting the core entities to fit the era:
Element- The Jacobin Lineage; The Marxist Lineage; The Eco-Apocalyptic Lineage
(a) The Paradise (Millennium) element- The Jacobin lineage: The Republic of Pure Virtue; The Marxist lineage: The Stateless Communist Utopia; The Eco-apocalyptic lineage: The Pristine, Balanced Planet
(b) The Corrupting Evil element- The Jacobin lineage: The Monarchy & Aristocracy; The Marxist lineage: The Bourgeoisie & Capital; The Eco-apocalyptic lineage: Industrial Civilization & Carbon Emissions
(c) The Imminent Doom element- The Jacobin lineage: Tyranny & the Death of Liberty; The Marxist lineage: The Inevitable Collapse of Capitalism; The Eco-apocalyptic lineage: Planetary Annihilation / “Global Boiling”
(d) The Purification Method element- The Jacobin lineage: Terror & the Guillotine; The Marxist lineage: Violent Revolution & Purges; The Eco-apocalyptic lineage: Dismantling Industrial Systems & Rapid De-growth
Because the eco-apocalyptic movement adopts this absolute framing, it inherits the same intolerance for dissent that stained its historical predecessors.
2. How Eco-Apocalyptic Rhetoric Rejects Democratic Compromise
Landes warns that when anthropogenic global warming is viewed through an active millennial lens rather than a sober scientific one, democratic processes break down in three specific ways:
“Apocalyptic Time” Destroys Democratic Patience
Democracy is naturally slow, frustrating, and bureaucratic. Landes contrasts “owls” (who record and accept normal, slow-moving historical time) with “roosters” (apocalyptic prophets who scream that time is running out).
• The Eco-Rhetoric: “We only have a few years left to save humanity.”
• The Rejection of Compromise: If a comet is hurtling toward Earth, you don’t form a bipartisan committee to debate tax subsidies for rocket fuel; you command absolute action. By convincing followers that the apocalypse is imminent, eco-alarmism frames democratic debate, economic cost-benefit analyses, and legislative compromise as dangerous, homicidal delays.
Disagreement is Re-framed as Moral Depravity
In a healthy democracy, a disagreement over energy policy is treated as a conflict of interests or priorities (e.g., balancing economic stability against environmental protection). In the Jacobin-Marxist-Eco lineage, everything is moralized.
• The Eco-Rhetoric: Opponents are labeled “climate deniers”— a term deliberately chosen to echo the moral infamy of Holocaust denial— or “corporate eco-terrorists.”
• The Rejection of Compromise: You can compromise with a political adversary who has a different economic theory. You cannot compromise with an existential threat or a “monster” who is actively destroying the future of the human race. This eliminates the middle ground entirely.
The “Vanguard” Mentality Excludes the Working Class
Just as the Jacobins believed they represented the “General Will” of France and the Bolsheviks acted as the “Vanguard of the Proletariat”, eco-apocalyptic elites view themselves as a enlightened priestly caste acting on behalf of a blind public.
• The Eco-Rhetoric: The belief that ordinary people are too uneducated, brainwashed by consumerism, or short-sighted to make the “right” choices.
• The Rejection of Compromise: When policies like aggressive carbon taxes trigger massive working-class pushback— such as the Yellow Vest protests in France— the movement’s leaders do not compromise. Instead, they view the working class’s desire for affordable fuel and driving as selfish and unenlightened. Because they believe they are saving the world, they justify bypassing democratic consensus entirely via judicial activism, international decrees, and executive mandates.
The Warning
By using the fear of an ecological apocalypse to incite rage, modern movements run the exact same risk as the Jacobins of 1793. When you convince a population that total salvation is just around the corner if we ruthlessly dismantle the current system, you pave the way for an authoritarian “re-entry.”
When society realizes that the utopian, carbon-free paradise cannot be achieved overnight without mass poverty, the movement’s rage rarely turns inward to correct its own models; instead, it looks for saboteurs, demands harsher top-down controls, and abandons democratic principles completely to force compliance.
(End of AI Overview)
Moving into my previous comments (previous to engaging the AI above)…
Apocalyptic is the most destructive idea in history, according to Arthur Mendel’s excellent “Vision and Violence”. I see the destructive outcomes everywhere. Example: Just this morning while walking up the mountainside behind our place I listened to Joe Rogan and his guest Williamson bemoan the sad state of life and the apparent bleakness of the future, though with Rogan one is never sure how much the element of comedic exaggeration is in the mix of his conversations. He is, after all, a comedian.
But the “woe is us” tone of their conversation sparked the recognition of how many others do take seriously the constant battering of public consciousness with apocalyptic-themed narratives, i.e. that we corrupt and evil humans have ruined a better past and everything is now going to hell.
One of the more damaging outcomes of the apocalyptic fallacy is the fatalism and resignation that is induced in populations where people give up on life, feeling that its hopeless anyway. Then you get couples refusing to have children because they believe they would be raising them in a world about to soon end. That is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy effect.
Far worse, apocalyptic narratives generate nihilism where people become energized to join destructive crusades to “save the world”. Motivated by their fear of the “imminent” end of the world and return to chaos, and indoctrinated with the fallacy that western liberal democracy civilization is the great enemy that is destroying humanity and life, they align with crusades to overthrow this civilization. The most notable ongoing crusades of the past century have been Marxist/collectivist, environmentalist, and theocratic Islam crusades all committed to the destruction of liberal democracies.
The alternative to apocalyptic madness came from the stunning rupture of the core element in the apocalyptic complex of ideas- i.e. that of an angry God who threatens to punish bad people by destroying everything in the world, burning up the entire human race and all life in a fit of unleashed rage. Historical Jesus rejected that core theology of enraged divine vengeance outright by refusing to read this statement in his first public speaking event at a synagogue- “The day of vengeance of our God”. He ended his speech on the previous note- “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”.
Then seeing that his audience of loyal Jews did not fully grasp his main point, he continued, presenting his new unconditional theology with two illustrations of God’s unconditional inclusive love of even enemies by sending the revered Jewish prophets Elijah and Elisha to outsiders of Israel’s religion and culture (Luke 4). That enraged the audience and they tried to murder him but failed. They got the point that he was rejecting the Jewish God of retaliatory vengeance against their oppressors/enemies, that he was rejecting traditional eye for eye justice and advocating for unconditional love of enemies.
In following speeches, notably those recorded in Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6, Jesus outlined more thoroughly his new theology that rejected outright the long unchallenged tradition of theology of angry, vengeful, destroying deity that dominated all ancient mythologies and religions.
He stated that there should be no more eye for eye retaliation against enemies and outsiders. Instead, people should love their enemies because God does. The evidence of that universal, inclusive, unconditional love was seen in the fact that God does not angrily retaliate with eye for eye justice to punish and destroy bad people, but instead gives sun and rain to both good and bad people alike, equally so.
The anti-apocalyptic theme in that statement of Jesus is that a God who does not retaliate with eye for eye justice will not then retaliate with the ultimate manifestation of eye for eye that is the apocalyptic punishment and destruction of the entire world. That conclusion is included in the statement that God unconditionally forgives and loves all humanity as evident in giving sun and rain to both good and bad people.
That stunning new Jesus’ theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God reverberated throughout the region of first-century Israel stirring intense fear and vengeful animosity among, especially, the religious leaders who got the point that Jesus’ rejection of a fear-based theology would undermine their power over the population of faithful Jews. They had long understood the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control” and benefitted from that by manipulation and control of submissive followers.
The restoration and promotion of rage/vengeance theology…
Then Paul emerged two decades later with his new movement of “Christ-ianity” that promoted his new “Christology”, the Hellenist myth that merged the person of Jesus (not his message) with his Christ. With his Christ message, Paul revived the themes of angry, vengeful deity threatening to punish and destroy unbelievers through the natural world (i.e. I Corinthians statements on God punishing Corinthian’s sin with sickness and death), apocalypse, and then afterlife hell.
Paul continued his restoration of enraged and vengeful, destroying deity in his letter to the Romans:
“Leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord”.
That summary of his retreat to enraged God theology was in addition to earlier statements in that letter- “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people”, etc.
Add these statements from 2 Thessalonians 1: 7-10-
“Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, shut away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”.
John in Revelation then builds on Paul’s theology and Christology to present the epitome of divine rage vented in destroying apocalypse and eternal hell threats-
“(Christ) judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire… He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood… 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… he has this name written: ‘KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS’…”.
This is followed with the threat of unbelievers being “thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”
Paul restored the fear of angry and violently destroying deity as a dominant religious theme that would cow people to submit unquestioningly to his new deity and religion. He stated in his letters, “knowing the terror of the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:11)… every knee will bow (Philippians 2: 10-11)… we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10: 5)”, etc.
His restoration of “terror of Lord” theology cowed people to embrace his salvation through apocalyptic destruction narrative that became the most dominant influence on Western consciousness and narratives, in both religious and secular/ideological variants (e.g. James Tabor in “Paul and Jesus”). And the outcome? Paul’s apocalyptic millennialism has incited and validated repeated violent crusades to destruction across western civilization, notably through Crusades, Inquisitions and persecution of heretics, apocalyptic madness outbreaks, contemporary Marxist revolutions, Nazism, theocracy offspring like Islam, and in environmental alarmism crusades based on the same salvation through destruction framework/narrative.
All this madness in western civilization originated from Paul’s original burying of the diamond theology of Jesus under his Christ myth distortion (Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s point, among others).
The Jesus themes affirmed an anti-apocalyptic worldview with his stunning new core theology of divine love behind the natural world (i.e. “sun and rain freely and generously given to all, both good and bad”). Jesus’ theology was entirely contrary to previous theologies of threatening deity punishing imperfect people through nature (i.e. through natural disaster, disease, accident).
The Jesus’ theology and message emphasized the universal inclusion of all people, equally. Add his themes of non-domination in human relationships (i.e. no lording over others but mutual serving of one another). And his non-punitive treatment of human failure- “No more eye for eye retaliation toward offenders but love your enemy”- a new restorative justice with the qualifier for offenders to “Go and sin no more”.
His theology and core themes eventually affirmed the basic principles and institutions of liberal democracy civilization that promotes the same basic freedoms and rights of all people equally along with affirming institutions that are oriented to restraining elite/bureaucratic power and serving citizens.
The point here is that we do have the powerful alternative theology that instills and inspires hope, that energizes us to keep working to improve what we have already created in liberal democracy civilization.
Our hope is based on the stunning new theology of fundamental goodness at the core of all of life. Add that the Ultimate Reality (deity, God) has incarnated in all humanity, equally, as inseparable from our common human spirit. See also Bob Brinsmead’s essays along this line on his Substack and website:
https://bobbrinsmead.com/blog-section/
The incarnation of God in humanity points to the fundamental goodness of humanity and this basic human goodness is evident in the gradual improvement of life across past millennia that has become especially evident over recent centuries. Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) speaks clearly to the “gradualism” that improves life.
Others like Julian Simon, add to the evidence that life is not declining to a worsening state as apocalyptic narratives claim but is actually rising and improving. The evidence on human progress and the overall progress of life is overwhelming as amassed by Simon (i.e. “Ultimate Resource”), Humanprogress.org, and others.
Our hope is soundly evidence-based and that should energize all of us to keep plugging away and contributing our bit to the larger whole of the human adventure of leaving an animal past and becoming mature in human liberal democracy civilization. The trajectory of humanity and life is rising gradually toward something better, against the lies of apocalyptic narratives that focus on aberrations, outliers, brief downturns and setbacks in longer term trends, extreme events, etc. The apocalyptic mind exaggerates such natural things to apocalyptic scale, thereby distorting the true state of life, the actual trajectory of life.
Added note:
Just as that first synagogue audience of Jews was enraged by Jesus’ new theology so also Paul felt that same rage at a God of merciful and unconditional love as evident in the statements of his anger such as in Gal.1:8-9 where he damned James and Peter for not embracing his vengeful, destroying Christ myth. He vented the same projected rage elsewhere, projecting it out onto deity in his statements on “the wrath of God and coming destruction toward any who dared question his Christology”. He reversed the breakthrough new theology of Jesus, retreating back to ultimate eye for eye vengeance manifest in divine threats of apocalypse and hell. Paul took rage to eternal and ultimate scale in the never-ending wrath of God and Christ vented on unbelievers cast into the eternal lake of fire.
More Inserts and Added notes...
Share wealth more, Wendell Krossa
Let me clarify that my general defense of liberal democracy as the best that we have come up with to “do the most good to the most people” (Milton Freidman) is not a defense of everything that we see coming out of capitalist systems where powerful actors often gain wealth via advantages that are not made available to all citizens. An oft-cited example: Nancy Pelosi enriching herself in politics with insider knowledge, etc.
For example, I lean toward Frank Stronach and Conrad Black’s comments that companies need to do better at sharing the wealth they create with their employees, whether through sharing stock ownership with employees, or permitting employees to take part in decision making. These are ways that can incentivize employees to work to ensure their company succeeds as they will directly benefit.
Their point is that the wealthier must do more to increase the incomes of those in the lower and middle-income percentiles of our societies in order for those people to achieve what previous generations were able to accomplish in terms of home ownership, etc.
They are suggesting ways to counter the trend of recent generations now turning to socialism in response to their inability to achieve what their parent’s generation achieved.
AI Overview
In a National Post column, Conrad Black affirmed Frank Stronach’s corporate philosophy. Recalling a discussion with the Magna International founder, Black noted that mandatory employee stock holding periods successfully turn workers into “cooperative capitalists” aligned with management rather than adversaries.
Key Takeaways on Wealth Sharing
• The Stronach Formula: Frank Stronach’s historic corporate framework allocated portions of pre-tax profits toward shareholder dividends, employee stock grants, research, and management participation.
• Aligning Interests: Black acknowledged that requiring employees to hold their stock allocations for a set duration creates true workplace partners in profitability.
• Broader Economic Context: Both figures have debated structural changes to corporate incentives and tax systems to improve productivity and broad-based worker stakes.
(End of AI Overview)
“How to fix our broken tax system: We need to incentivize our most successful capitalists to participate in job creation and the fight against poverty”, Conrad Black, Jul 11, 2026
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-how-to-fix-our-broken-tax-system
Also…
“Frank Stronach fears we are heading towards socialism if the government doesn’t (encourage) companies to share profits with workers.”
“Frank Stronach: Narrowing the gap between rich and poor: The core challenge we face is how to create more wealth while at the same time ensuring that it is spread more evenly throughout the economy”, Frank Stronach, Jul 18, 2023
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/narrowing-the-gap-between-rich-and-poor
Then also impacting the critical housing affordability issue, there are the corrective measures of properly limited immigration. Add also the critical removal of the excessive burden of, notably, municipal regulations that hinder the building of more housing, regulations that limit densification with indiscriminate one-size-fits-all laws. Further, there is the significant hindrance to affordable housing from the tax and development fees loaded onto house prices.
This is the general advocacy to get the government out of people’s lives, to let citizens and their businesses solve the problems that arise in our societies.
It is not the government’s role to solve all such issues as affordability and housing ownership. It is a priority right of free citizens to create the businesses, jobs, and wealth of societies. As Ben Carson said in an interview during his 2016 presidential run, government should get out of the way of citizens. Government’s role is to create an environment in which businesses can flourish, and that requires low taxation and decreased regulations, the two critical factors in returning power to the people.
Stronach’s point was that if businesses do not share more, then new generations will turn to socialism for help and surveys affirm this shift of young people toward socialism to get what they now believe that they can’t access through capitalism.
The inevitable outcome of a shift to socialism? Everyone loses, including businesses that refused to share more. All is destroyed as socialism has long historical record of repeated destruction of societies. Note Venezuela as a latest example of socialism taking what should have been a most prosperous society and turning it into another “hellhole” outcome. Kristian Niemietz added Venezuela to the list of 24 repeated socialist failures over the past century or so.
The centralizing of power and control in states does not solve problems that should be and can be solved by free citizens. Centralizing power/control in state bureaucracies inevitably shifts societies toward totalitarianism. That shift toward state domination and control is best avoided by decentralizing power and control among free individuals and independent companies competing among themselves (Frederik Hayek’s argument).
Concentrating power and control in state elites and bureaucrats not only corrupts but perhaps worse, it attracts psychopathic types who seek the opportunity for power/control to abuse subjected citizens (Jordan Peterson’s argument).
We won’t solve the problems of affordability or housing (i.e. accessing more wealth) through the centralizing approaches of big government or socialism that put more power and control in the hands of state elites and bureaucrats often with no business experience, and equally often holding anti-business ideologies and attitudes. That approach inevitably results in increased taxation and regulation that burdens and blocks citizens and businesses whose role is to create the jobs and wealth of a society.
Notes on Shoutout and Superlatives
A qualifier on religion: Wendell Krossa
A shoutout to all the good religious folks in the great religious traditions who have found ways to focus on the better elements of their belief systems (i.e. picking and choosing), orienting their minds to ideas/beliefs that focus them on unlimited forgiveness, universal inclusion, unconditional love, etc. and thereby enabling them to ignore any darker, harsher elements of their traditions (i.e. the threat theology stuff).
This site is not “anti-religion” or “religio-phobic” in the sense that I appreciate immensely religious family, friends, and others and affirm what they have found in their traditions to encourage basic human goodness.
This site is about sorting through what ideas/beliefs affirm our better impulses as distinct from other ideas/beliefs that incite the worst in us all.
Further, freedom of religion is foundational to a free, peaceful, and orderly society even as we maintain the critical separation of religion and state, to protect all differing others, equally.
This site does advocate for the strikingly non-religious message and theology of sages like Historical Jesus. “Non-religious” because stunningly unconditional. Non-religious for advocating universal inclusion, non-dominating relationships, non-punitive justice, etc.
And a pat on the back for our atheist friends for contributing their helpful criticism of what has gone wrong with religious traditions. Their important voices must also be protected and heard in liberal democracies.
In the end, we are all equal members in the one human family and all return to the same place of origin in ultimate Love.
“Superlatives”: Synonyms- “Unsurpassed, unrivalled, exceptional, etc.” and mine- “transcendently/inexpressibly divine”
Superlatives fail to express the inexpressible nature of these realties listed below, the transformations in human understanding that are involved, and the far better outcomes in life and society, Wendell Krossa
(1) The greatest, most horrific monster ever- i.e. the threat theology of angry, threatening, punishing, destroying deity that still dominates the world religions, and has also been embraced by the “secular/ideological” offspring variants of our modern era, whether framed as some secular deity like Vengeful Gaia, angry Planet, angry Mother Earth, retributive Universe, payback karma, or some unconscious “Force, Field”, or principle like “Self-Organizing Principle”, etc.
“Dominates secular/ideological offspring”? Yes, as the ultimate Archetype of the human subconscious, threat theology continues to shape most other elements of human thinking, feeling, motivation, and behavior. Why do you think the great fallacy of apocalypse continues to dominate modern minds?
(2) Most horrifically destructive outcomes across human history- i.e. the millennia of monster deity theology at the core of “salvation through destruction” narratives (i.e. also known as “apocalyptic millennialism”) has incited, energized, and validated tribalism, domination, and violent destruction through repeated theocracy crusades, religious wars, inquisitions and persecution of unbelievers, and in the modern-era it has functioned as a main driver of the mass-death crusades of Marxism, Nazism, contemporary theocracy, and environmental alarmism.
(3) Single most heroic quest/project/protest/adventure in history- i.e. to courageously and directly confront and defeat the monster God of threat theology. The Historical Jesus confrontation of this greatest ever monster, confirmed his protest and transformation of threat theology as the greatest demonstration of heroism against the ultimate monster.
(4) Most profound thing ever spoken- i.e. to present a stunning new theology as alternative to monstrous threat theology and thereby redefine the ultimate creating/sustaining reality as no conditions love. That was the ultimate breakthrough to finally present the true nature of the core of all reality, the Source of all reality, that which sustains all material and “spiritual/metaphysical” in existence.
(5) The greatest possible liberation and transformation of human consciousness, human knowledge and understanding, narratives, theology- i.e. what Historical Jesus effected through his unconditional theology and message.
(6) Outcomes of that new understanding of ultimate reality- i.e. that “stunning new theology” offered the most transformative potential to promote fully humane societies through liberal democracy with its basic principles/laws/institutions that affirm universal inclusion of all equally, non-dominating mutual service, and humane justice as restorative. The profoundly humane theology of Historical Jesus holds the potential to reshape fundamentally new ideas/ideals/archetypes to energize people to fulfill the human exodus from animal reality and enhance progress toward maturity in liberal democracy civilization.
Insert from recent Gutfeld show:
“Socialism is just taking stuff from other people… and it makes everything worse”, Kat Timpf of Gutfeld
Socialism/collectivism does not explain or offer policy detail on “how to create wealth”. It tends more to exhibit the Cluster B impulses to envy, grievance, and projection that eventually shifts into high gear on aggression and violence to enforce its central project of redistribution through state takeover of private businesses (i.e. initially, programs of “nationalization” then followed by the full-on “Great Leap Forward” collectivization of the means of production).
Greg Gutfed! Show 8/20/26 FULL END SHOW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RGmrmNg3vk
My response to Timpf’s point- Ben Carson during his 2016 run for president summarized it best when asked about the role of government. He said that government should function “to create an environment in which private business can flourish”. That involves primarily lowering taxation and regulations.
More coming…