Section topics: Patterns in alarmism movements; State of Climate 2021, “A systematic review of climate trends and observational data by an eminent climate scientist has found no evidence to support the claim of a climate crisis”; Notes on the panic over giving everyone freedom of speech; John McWhorter on Woke Racism (Third-wave anti-racism is not Martin Luther King’s anti-racism and is harmful to blacks); The problem with mythical and religious explanations of greater or ultimate Reality (a defense of the “spiritual” as critical to the human search for meaning); Doug Murray on War on the West, and more…
More on ‘The big picture perspective’ of this site, Wendell Krossa
Mythical and religious narrative themes have dominated human consciousness across history and shaped all other thinking in societies, even purportedly non-religious thinking. And this influence of mythical/religious thinking has continued unabated into the present world. Note, just for one example, Einstein’s repeated religious responses to Niels Bohr in their back-and-forth discussion of quantum mechanics (source: “Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the great debate about the nature of reality” by Manjit Kumar). None of us is as “secular, materialist, scientific” as we like to imagine we are. (Note particularly Einstein’s traditionally religious ideas as per his comments that “God does not play dice with the universe… God does not use telepathy…” etc.)
Mythical/religious thinking has profoundly shaped the ideology of Declinism, the most dominant worldview in the modern world- i.e. the belief that life is becoming worse, a notable theme in environmental alarmism, climate alarmism, Woke Progressivism in general, etc. (See Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”). Declinism is an essential element in the primitive mythology of apocalyptic.
This site offers some liberating responses to the inherited mythical/religious themes that have too long dominated human worldviews/narratives and consciousness. See “An adventure/quest for ultimate freedom” (“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives”) in a section below.
The alternatives offered, from human insight across history, point to a radical reshaping of humanity’s dominant mythical/religious/secular narratives. The point of such fundamental alteration of narrative themes is the liberation of human consciousness and emotion at the most profound levels of perception, including the level of subconscious ‘archetypes’ (i.e. primal impulses and related validating ideas).
More on ‘Patterns in alarmism movements’, Wendell Krossa
For decades environmental alarmists have battered public consciousness/populations with apocalyptic alarm scenarios affirmed with end of world dates. That panic-mongering has inflamed and spread the survival impulse in populations, the desperation to live. Frightened populations have then been rendered susceptible to irrational salvation schemes like rushed decarbonization that will destroy societies and take us back to primitivism. (Note the absence of serious public debate on how exactly the rapid shift to renewables might work, and the real costs involved, the environmental damage, and the lost opportunities from resources shifted away from things that people currently need like cheap, secure energy supplies.)
Alarmists have propagated the narrative that the “evil” force bringing on the end of the world is industrial capitalist society dependent on fossil fuels and this evil threat must be purged in order to “save the world”. Further, the evil threat must be purged immediately as the apocalypse is always “imminent” (i.e. usually prophesied as just years or decades up ahead with the “final tipping point… last chance” date endlessly reset as the end-of-days never arrives and instead life, overall, continues to improve.).
Apocalyptic imminence demands coercive policy responses, because normal democratic processes are too dangerously slow and won’t enable alarmists to save the world in time.
Normal democratic processes encourage questioning of the alarmist apocalyptic narrative, debate over factual evidence on issues like climate change, and rational opposition to the proposed irrational salvation projects.
Alarmists claim that such debate and challenge are murderously dangerous when the end is so nigh. Hence, coercive and even violent force is then legitimized by alarmists (eco-terrorism) in order to save the world. Questioning/debate are framed as the “denial of the (alarmist) truth”. Counter evidence from skeptics to the apocalyptic narrative is “misinformation/disinformation” that will grease the slide to the end of the world. So “deniers/infidels” (“They don’t believe in climate change”) must be censored, silenced, banned, their reputations destroyed, and they fired from jobs and fully eliminated from the public space.
It has been stunning to watch this “creeping totalitarianism”, clothed in robes like “climate crisis”, now erupting openly and widely across the West and mainly from what we once considered the “liberal” side of society. “Liberal” previously understood as openness to diverse views, inclusion of such diversity, zealous to protect the rights and freedom of all, generously merciful toward differences, etc. In a word- Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy.
Climate fact: Cold kills up to 20 times more people every year than warmth does. Cold is the greater threat to life, not warming.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/20/cold-weather-deaths/27657269/
“State of the climate 2021”– a report by University of Oslo professor emeritus Ole Humlum (posted on “Global Warming Policy Forum” website, also known as “Netzerowatch.com”)
Press release: Empirical observations show no sign of “climate crisis” (April 2022)
“A systematic review of climate trends and observational data by an eminent climate scientist has found no evidence to support the claim of a climate crisis.”
“In his annual State of the Climate report, Ole Humlum, emeritus professor at the University of Oslo, examined in detail patterns in temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans together with trends in climate impacts. Many of these show no significant trends and suggest that poorly understood natural cycles are involved.
And while the report finds gentle warming, there is no evidence of dramatic changes, with snow cover stable, sea levels recovering, and no change in storm activity.
Professor Humlum said:
“A year ago, I warned that there was great risk of using computer modelling and immature science to make extraordinary claims. The empirical observations I have reviewed show very gentle warming and no evidence of a climate crisis.
GWPF director Dr. Benny Peiser said:
“Its extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis. Year after year our annual assessment of climate trends document just how little has been changing in the last 30 years. The habitual climate alarmism is mainly driven by scientist’s computer modelling rather than observational evidence”.
The rational conclusion from the evidence that Peiser and Humlum noted? There is no scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
Good one from Terry Corcoran (Financial Post) on the CBC’s leftist/Woke bias, financed by Canadian taxpayers.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-you-pick-the-old-cbc-or-musks-new-twitter
Quotes from Corcoran article:
“Among leftist hysterics over Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, one of the standouts has been Canada’s own national broadcaster. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship news show, The National, opened Monday night with a report that portrayed Musk’s move as a harbinger of ideological bias and warped perspectives. This from one of the most warped and biased media in Canada…
“When it comes to amplifying and distorting information, few media can top the CBC. Through The National, other television shows and the network’s radicalized radio operation, Canadians are constantly being bombarded by one-sided distortions on every tweak of the news flow. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered an oil price panic, CBC radio called in radical U.S. environmentalist Bill McKibben to tell listeners that “fossil fuel and despotism often go hand in hand.” In passing, McKibben took a shot at Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. “People like Jason Kenney have been keeping us hooked on fossil fuel for decades”….
“One could, and somebody should, write a book about the CBC and its rampant promotion of leftist, interventionist and woke perspectives on Canadian and global affairs. Having biases and points of view is the right of media in a free-speech nation. But when the bias is owned, controlled and funded by the government, that’s a different story. On climate, to pick one example, the CBC has officially adopted as a motto the government’s view. In Our Changing Planet, the CBC has issued a guide to its journalists to push a climate crusade against fossil fuels and other aspects of human action that are seen as environmentally destructive….
“If Musk can introduce important reforms that will make Twitter a more open place where free speech is the first principle, where open debate and confrontation are possible, he will have advanced the cause of freedom of thought and expression. If people know that Twitter is the home of free debate, discussion and open conflict, the media world will be a better place.
“For Canadians, it may well mean being able to choose between the old CBC, where other voices are stifled and non-existent, and Twitter, where debate and contrary views are its reason for existence.”
Jordan Peterson and Rex Murphy similarly comment on the CBC’s leftist/Woke bias.
Notes on the panic of many over giving freedom of speech to their opponents, Wendell Krossa (from my “independent” or Classic Liberal perspective)
This example from Washington Post columnist Max Boot:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-twitter-jeff-bezos-washington-post
“I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter,” Washington Post columnist Max Boot tweeted. “He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
Similar panic over giving opponents freedom of speech has been expressed by other “liberals”, i.e. that restoring free speech to Twitter is “racist… the end of democracy… etc.”- notably, Sonny Hostin and Joy Behar of The View, and Joy Reid on MSNBC. President Obama also stated the same concerns over free speech given to opponents and argued for more ‘content moderation’, in a presentation at a forum on “misinformation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w6cXkO6ZIc .
The lack of awareness and even arrogance in such “liberal” comment is stunning. To believe that you alone have the right views and positions for democracy to survive and that those who disagree with you are a “threat to democracy”. And you want to censor and decide for all what they should hear and coerce disagreeing others into silence by censoring their expression in public forums.
These comments reveal an apparent complete lack of understanding of freedom today among many so-called liberals. They appear to have lost comprehension of what liberalism, Classic liberalism, should be about- i.e. defending diversity, maintaining tolerance of diverse opinion, encouraging the inclusion of all, encouraging robust disagreement and public debate, and more.
Many of today’s liberals now advocate that only their views should be aired in public and disagreeing others censored, silenced, banned, and fully cancelled. That is a disturbing unleashing of the totalitarian impulse. It has nothing to do with Classic Liberalism. And it is being affirmed widely today by these so-called liberals that leftist Jimmy Dore (YouTube) rightly stated have now become “highly illiberal”.
This is so stunning to those of us concerned about maintaining freedom. And these people resort endlessly to the smear of “racism”. All disagreement with their views is dismissed as “racist”. That is how varied commentators are describing Musk and his advocacy for free speech. “Racist”. There, now you are vilified with one of the worst pejoratives so we need not discuss things further with you. You are discredited and have no right to further expression of your views.
Why such hysterical fear of freedom? Of the free speech of others? Is it, as some suggest, because these liberals cannot then control all speech, they can no longer enforce only their views on all others. Fortunately, many people on both sides still value freedom for all and are welcoming Musk’s liberation of Twitter.
It has been rightly stated that the most dangerous people in society are those who think they alone know what is right for all others and will coerce others to submit to their positions. The lack of awareness of how dangerous such thinking has become, is disconcerting, as it opens the door to totalitarian control.
Who decides what is “misinformation, disinformation, propaganda”? Which side of the political/ideological divide in our societies can be trusted to make such judgments?
Many on both sides today recognize that Twitter and other social media have been censoring the conservative side more and more over past years, with liberals now mainly responsible for silencing their opponent’s views.
Again, I am independent (liberal on social issues, Classic Liberal or “libertarianish” on economic issues) but with many others on both sides I recognize the partisan unfairness and real danger to democracy from this one-sided “contemporary liberal” censoring of opposing views.
See the number 1595 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience for a good discussion of the basic issues of free speech by former ACLU director Ira Glasser. Available for free on Spotify.
Black professor of linguistics, John McWhorter, (for those discounting all white input on race issues) has a book on “Third-wave anti-racism” called “Woke Racism”. Along with others, he notes that today’s Third-wave anti-racism now defines an entire group of people pejoratively- i.e. whites generalized as all oppressors (a feature of Critical Race Theory). That pejorative generalization of a group of people by their skin color is itself the essence of all forms of racism. Claiming to be the new “anti-racism”, Woke Racism then actually advocates a new version of racism. This new Woke anti-racism is quite opposite to Martin Luther King’s movement (“second-wave anti-racism”) that advocated against evaluating and discriminating against people according to the color of their skin but instead advocated for evaluating everyone according to the content of their character. (“First-wave anti-racism” was Lincoln’s struggle in the mid-1800s)
Doug Murray in his new book War on the West makes similar points:
He says, “Only a few years ago… outside of academic circles and racist organizations, it was deemed discourteous to lump people together and dismiss them simply because of the color of their skin. An earlier generation had come to the sensible conclusion that dismissing people, vilifying them, or generalizing about them simply because of the color of their skin was the definition of racism. And racism had become viewed as among the ugliest of human evils. Fail to take people into account as individuals, and we knew where it could lead: to the horrors of the mid-twentieth century (i.e. Nazis), to the nightmares of Rwanda and Bosnia at the end of that century.
“The lesson had seemed clear: treat people as individuals and reject those who would try to reduce them to membership of a group they belonged to solely by accident of birth. The message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to have triumphed.”
But as Murray notes, this all changed in the early twenty-first century as race came again to dominate our perspective on others with whites being subjected to generalization, vilification, and dismissal that no other group would be subjected to.
Murray notes an example of non-white racism in that the Chinese refer to whites with the pejorative that devalues them all as “ghosts”, a subhuman species. That, he says, is also racism by any definition.
Book recommend: Doug Murray’s War on the West
Amazon blurb:
“China has concentration camps now. Why do Westerners claim our sins are unique?
“It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world.
“In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia?
“It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. Dictators who slaughter their own people are happy to jump on the “America is a racist country” bandwagon and mimic the language of antiracism and “pro-justice” movements as PR while making authoritarian conquests.
“If the West is to survive, it must be defended. The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself.”
The problem with mythical and religious explanations of greater or Ultimate reality, Wendell Krossa (a defense of the “spiritual” but not the religious versions)
Mythical and religious traditions emerged during the childhood era of humanity when human understanding was still primitive and elementary. Mythical/religious traditions become projects of projecting the basest features of existence onto ultimate realities and authorities- the gods. The result was the projection of subhuman features out to define greater or Ultimate Reality/deity. That severely deformed the human impulse for meaning (i.e. the human endeavor to understand and explain reality, to make sense of things).
For example, early humans projected onto the earliest gods the features of (1) tribal discrimination and exclusion (true believers favored, unbelievers rejected), (2) domination/subservience relationships (humanity created to serve the gods via subservience to priesthoods/religious authority), and (3) divine justice as punishment/destruction (e.g. apocalypse, hell). These inhuman features have continued to define religious deities, along with contemporary “secular” versions, till today. But we are now a more mature species and we need to put away childish things.
As noted, the above features, and many more, have long been entrenched in our great religious traditions, and their God theories. There has been little serious effort to challenge or dislodge the core pathology that has been passed down to us from the ancients. Ongoing reform in religion must become a more thorough project that includes these fundamental features of deity as they still influence so much else in life and society. We understand now that bad ideas produce (incite, guide, validate) bad behavior in people. This is due to the long history of people basing their behavior on their beliefs regarding ultimate realities and authorities (i.e. the nature or character of their gods). People have always become just like the gods that they revere and follow.
Note, for example, the ongoing destructive influence of the nihilistic apocalyptic pathology (God as violent destroyer of all). This primitive mythology is now expressed through environmental alarmism scenarios with their consistently harmful salvation schemes that lead to destructive outcomes (i.e. rapid decarbonization to stave off “the end-of-days” around 2030).
There will always be profound mystery to theology, as there is about all reality, and that cautions us against dogmatism in our theological/spiritual speculations. In addition, any theological speculation must include the framework of the latest discoveries from science, while also noting on the science side (that claims to be more rational) the persistent tendency of materialist scientists to also cross the science-philosophy boundary into metaphysical assumptions (e.g. multi-verse theory, among other speculations. See Sabine Hossenfelder’s “Lost in Math” or Jim Baggott’s “Farewell to Reality”, among others).
The long-term and widely embraced conclusion of humanity that there is a “spiritual” reality is a fully coherent and rational conclusion about reality and life. I do not accept the materialist argument that humanity needs to grow out of or move past the spiritual element in humanity, as with the suggestion of a frustrated atheist, “Let’s get rid of all this metaphysical bullshit”. Our project should be to reframe it all with an orientation to more humane features while affirming and guarding the science/philosophy and state/religion boundaries. Recognize that you are not going to eliminate the primal human impulse to meaning as expressed across history in the religious impulse and the human speculation re greater realities and purpose in the cosmos and life. Better, understand this meaning impulse, work with it, and just make sure that it is oriented to fully humane features, including the rational discoveries of science.
(Insert note: While acknowledging that the spiritual plays a crucial role in human meaning/purpose issues, a healthy orientation ought to be toward full “here and now” involvement with life- i.e. to improving life in this world. The practical, real-world outcome of ideas is the true test of the goodness or usefulness of ideas.)
The human meaning impulse as expressed in spirituality, and spiritual beliefs, has always been something inherent to conscious human awareness. Even the Neanderthals exhibited such awareness as seen in burial site evidence (i.e. items included supposedly for an after-life journey).
It has long been the argument of this site that thorough long-term problem solving should also deal with the human meaning impulse and the meta-narrative themes that express and affirm such meaning. Pathology still dominates at this basic level in public consciousness. And while scientific evidence is always crucial in the problem-solving mix, such evidence does not sway many people toward more rational views due to their deeply held spiritual beliefs. This applies to both sides as secularist/materialist types often hold speculative philosophical beliefs just as dogmatically as religious people hold their religious beliefs. Both sides are a mirror image to one another, despite the materialist belief to holding the rationally superior position.
The above comments are not to disparage our atheist friends who have contributed so much good input to the project of challenging archaic religious beliefs. But their alternative, notably the more dogmatic forms of atheism, will never resonate with most of the human population. A better alternative is the more moderate “atheism”, as some call it, that has been more about the exchange of old unworkable/discredited gods for new ones- i.e. new god theories or ultimate meaning theories- that are more attuned to modern sensibilities regarding humane reality.
Now a change of scenery for a while: However, I am still going after those basic ideas/themes that have caused so much misery across history- a sample would include the themes of tribal exclusion (the “us versus them” small band mentality that denies human oneness), domination of others that denies the self-determination of free others, and the punitive treatment of the failures of others. These themes, and the impulses they validate, undermine humanity’s defining feature- love- and our embrace of those features renders us petty and subhuman. They hinder our quest to become the heroes of our stories that we ought to be, preventing us from becoming mature persons that “tower in stature” as fully humane.
I offer the material in other sections below on the basic features of human life story with no defense for my affirmation of the existence of a reality that humanity has long understood as “deity”. However, my belief in the great mystery of a creating Source, while embracing metaphysical speculation, is entirely ‘non-religious’ (i.e. contrary to religious understanding of deity).
An insert Qualifier: Why broach the subject of deity in a contemporary world tired of “God-talk”? Because deity has long been the embodiment of humanity’s highest ideals and it continues to serve, for most people, as their highest authority. “Most people”? Yes, the 85% of humanity that still affiliate with a world religion, with most of the remaining 15% also holding varied “secular” versions of deities (i.e. Gaia, Universe, Mother Earth, karma) though claiming status as “unaffiliated” with a major religion (i.e. “spiritual but not religious”).
The more straightforward rejection of deity by some does not liberate them from the primal human impulse for meaning and the human desire for ultimate answers. More dogmatic forms of materialism/atheism appear to lead some people to conclude that they have shifted to fully “secular” versions of ultimate reality. But their versions of ultimate realities, and overall worldviews, are still framed by the same old themes that have dominated primitive deity theories across history.
We all orient our primal impulse for ultimate meaning somewhere, in some ultimate reality, whether in deity theories, or quantum physics, or new “secular/scientism” gods like “Self-Organizing Principle”. Richard Dawkins locates his impulse for meaning in natural selection (i.e. his statement in ‘The God Delusion’ that “Natural Selection is the Source of All Enlightenment” and he projects his natural selection to cosmic or ultimate scale). Note how people across the human spectrum project god-like capabilities onto their new ultimate realities, capabilities that are quite similar to the features of traditional deity theories.
The ultimate meaning impulse takes us somewhere speculative because vacuums of nothingness simply don’t work (too incoherent, irrational, and absurd). So try to deny long-standing realities if you wish but the natural impulse that they respond to and fulfill will find expression somewhere. And nothingness explains nothing.
Further, the tackling of God theory on this site is a continuation of a larger project to probe the root causal or contributing factors of problems, a most serious problem today being the persistence of apocalyptic hysteria and its highly destructive outcomes, notably the apocalyptic expressed in climate alarmism and its decarbonization salvation scheme, the project to overturn industrial/capitalist civilization. That is destructive apocalyptic primitivism at its worst.
Now back to the gods…
To begin, I affirm the foundational common belief of humanity from the earliest emergence of human consciousness in our species- i.e. the belief that we belong to some greater surrounding invisible reality that very much influences/determines how we live in this material reality. You see this fundamental belief in greater reality in the earliest human writing and mythologies, and even in prehistory art (e.g. John Pfeiffer- ‘Explosion: An inquiry into the origins of art and religion’).
People from the beginning have intuitively understood that surrounding greater reality was more than just energy, force (quantum force-fields in modern theory), or natural law. Greater creating and sustaining reality (Source) was understood from the beginning to be of the nature of Consciousness, Mind, Spirit, and therefore, logically, Self or Personhood.
Where the ancients went wrong (and where I part with them) was in projecting out the basest of animal features to define the greater reality, features like tribal exclusion (deities that favored true believer insiders versus unbelievers/outsiders), deities that related to humanity in domination/subservient forms of relating (i.e. deity as lord, king, ruler, with humanity “created to serve the gods”), and deities that meted out justice as punitive destruction (i.e. deity as ultimate judge and punisher, destroying people in apocalypse and hell). Such features became the foundational themes of later world religions with Zoroastrianism, for example, shaping Judaism, then Christianity and Islam. The base themes of the ancients continue to dominate human minds today and define contemporary “secular” deities like vengeful Gaia, retributive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, and payback karma. The age-old sacred has now been reframed as “secular” for the modern world. But the basic themes of modern versions are often just the same old mythology as ever before.
We can do better. We need to bring deity theories up to date with fully humane features that are more suited to modern sensibilities, and modern awareness of what is humane/inhumane.
It is particularly important to humanize deity theory because (as noted above) across history the reality of God has always been viewed as the highest ideal and authority of humanity. Add here the natural human impulse to base our behavior on our beliefs, to model our lives according what we believe is the divine ideal. This makes it critical that we ensure that our highest ideal and authorities are fully humane. A long-standing argument of this site is that nothing humanizes deity more than the feature of unconditional love. None of the world religions, while claiming to represent God to humanity, has ever communicated this core feature of deity to humanity.
Too much religious reform is little more than defensive tinkering at the periphery, unwilling or afraid to challenge and change core themes. Most religious reformism does not go to the core idea of deity, the idea that dominates and shapes all else in religious systems. And hence, religious pathologies (bad religious ideas) continue to infect and deform contemporary human consciousness.
Catching a totalitarian in his own contradictions… (my paraphrase of Peterson)
Jordan Peterson podcast with Douglas Murray at
In a recent podcast Jordan Peterson interviews Douglas Murray on his new book “The War on the West”. Jordan makes the insightful comment, which even Marxists affirm, that it is widely agreed by all that slavery is wrong. And slavery is wrong, Jordan argues, because the individual should be sovereign and able to make free and unconstrained choices that are not subject to the arbitrary will of another. This has to be the fundamental assumption of anti-slavery projects.
But to affirm this you have to believe there is such a thing as the individual and that the individual is sovereign and valuable in some fundamental sense. And as Jordan adds, contrary to the Marxist/collectivist narrative in their War on the West, this belief in the individual has been most clearly expressed Western culture, the very thing that modern Marxists, along with a wider spectrum of collectivists/Progressives, are trying to destroy and replace with a new collectivism.
Marxists (self-proclaimed experts in “contradictions” as per their narrative on capitalism) do not recognize the stunning contradiction involved in their own rejection of slavery (again, slavery being something that they also affirm as wrong). Slavery is most essentially a violation of the sovereignty of an individual, the violation of an individual’s right to be free of control by the will of others. This affirmation of individual freedom must necessarily include a rejection of the centralizing control of populations by collectivist elites.
And as Jordan has noted, this individual freedom has been expressed most successfully and powerfully in the West that Marxists and others have declared war on.
Collectivism is a straightforward rejection of the sovereignty of the individual for the supremacy of some collective (mislabelled as “greater good, common good”). Collectivism is essentially a form of collective slavery as was proven in the diverse collectivist projects of the past century, all surviving only for limited time periods by violating the fundamental sovereignty of individuals through widespread coercion of populations.
Added note on oppressors/victims: Murray adds that in a strange twist on how former oppressed people often exchange places and become the new oppressors, so many today claiming victimhood use that claim to become bullies and exert domination over others via such claims.
Another: “Marxists reject the individualism at the heart of Western culture not realizing that is a rejection of the very individualism that must be at the heart of rejecting slavery in general”, Jordan Peterson.
Murray on the human hesitancy to change beliefs, even in the face of clear contrary evidence
Doug Murray on a recent Joe Rogan Experience (episode 1807) referred to a study that found very few people will change their views on things even when confronted with good evidence to the contrary. They continue to hang on to indefensible beliefs. We are not as rational as we like to think we are, says Murray.
I thought of his comments in relation to the worldwide belief in Declinism ideology and related apocalyptic mythology- the most dominant beliefs today. Declinism promotes the narrative that life is becoming worse (the world is becoming worse) and heading toward some great catastrophe, collapse, and even ending. This is an entirely false view of life because a continually growing library of amassed evidence shows that, despite ongoing problems, there is notable progress on all the main indicators of life on Earth (See the evidence on the main indicators of life in sources like Humanprogress.org, or the studies of researchers like Julian Simon, Greg Easterbrook, Bjorn Lomborg, Indur Goklany, Ronald Bailey, Matt Ridley, Hans Rosling, Desrochers and Szurmak, among others).
The evidence challenges the doubt and despair pushed endlessly by alarmist media that continue to mislead and traumatize public consciousness with hysterically exaggerated panic-mongering. Their deformation of public awareness is most notable in their incessantly hysterical promotion of climate alarmism despite evidence that shows there is no “climate crisis”. https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/empirical-observations-show-no-sign-of-climate-crisis/
Murray suggests that people resist changing their opinions in the face of good evidence due to the potential for hurt pride (i.e. feeling unable to humbly admit that they have been wrong). A few have managed the courage to overcome the sense of wounded pride, like Gaia creator James Lovelock who admitted late in his life that he had been wrong about climate alarmism. He came to realize that climate was just doing what climate always “naturally” does. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134092/Gaia-scientist-James-Lovelock-I-alarmist-climate-change.html
People hold a deep emotional attachments to their beliefs, beliefs that have often been inherited from historical religious traditions. These beliefs have now been given “secular”, even “scientific” affirmation in movements like climate alarmism. They are beliefs that are deeply rooted in human subconscious and hence the newer “secular/scientific” versions of such beliefs resonate as true.
Apocalyptic is most notable here. It is found in the earliest of human mythologies, both Western and Eastern (i.e. Sumerian, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, etc.). Apocalyptic distorts reality entirely, it distorts the actual improving trajectory of life with a contrary and false narrative that life is declining toward disaster. Yet apocalyptic is still widely embraced by many today as unquestionable truth. Just watch the major public story forum, Hollywood, pumping out a never-ending stream of apocalyptic-themed movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films
You are offended by things others say.
Well, suck it up, buttercup. Your feelings are hurt. But just “sucking it up” is hard for hyper-sensitive Woke activists. Aside from a self-created sense of victimhood, many embracing Woke extremism have developed a dogmatic intolerance of differing others because they have convinced themselves that the other’s comments are not just offensive but are intolerable “racist hate speech” and threaten their health and safety, even their very lives. Wokesters have convinced themselves that the contrary opinions and speech of differing others are endangering their lives, the comments of others are “life-threatening”.
Such exaggeration of threat from differing others then pushes Woke activists toward extremist intolerance of difference. Because the differing views of others are not just robust democratic diversity, but are dangerously life-threatening, so then logically those differing others must be censored, banned, and even completely destroyed/cancelled. That intolerance based on exaggerated threat is an eruption of dangerous totalitarianism. It involves exaggerated demonization of contrary opinions, along with the dehumanization of the differing other (a few examples- the claim of View cohost Sunny Hostin that Republicans are all “crazies”, and “racist” threats to democracy, or Joy Behar’s ludicrous statements that if the Republicans win the mid-term elections it will mean “the end of democracy”, or Joy Reid’s smearing of all who disagree with her positions as “racist… white supremacist”, etc.).
The other side engages similar exaggeration of threat and dehumanization of opponents. We can all do better.