The Unconditional Human Spirit

There is no greater contradiction in the history of human thought and communication/writing than the epitome oxymoron of “Jesus Christ”, the merger of two profoundly opposite persons and messages. What led to Paul burying the diamonds of Historical Jesus in the “d___, m___, s____, and g______” (Jefferson and Tolstoy’s terms) of the New Testament Christology? The forensic work has been done by historians and theologians and Bob Brinsmead presents that research with his own brilliant summary conclusions in two new essays on bobbrinsmead.com. This is some of the best of the “Search for Historical Jesus” (taken up by the “Jesus Seminar”) and “Q Wisdom Sayings” research.

This is all critical to human construction of narratives, complexes of ideas/beliefs, that guide human thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors. This is especially critical to how we treat differing others/”enemies”. History is replete with episodes of the barbarity of how people have treated fellow humans, too often incited by primitive ideas that validate the worst of behaviors. Until we go after the ideas/beliefs responsible for driving so much inhumanity, we will only repeat such eruptions of barbarity, as the military guy warned after the crushing of ISIS in 2014 in Syria.

And the ideas/beliefs responsible for validating such inhumanity are common to all the major religious traditions, and similar themes have been embraced by contemporary “secular/ideological” systems of belief.

See new material below on Grok 3, Elon Musk’s new baby.

I urged our discussion group to play with it: “Hey all, how about some fun with Grok 3, pushed by Musk as the best AI out there.

“Note below my queries about alarmist climate narratives (below the opening stuff on Hellenism shaping Christianity) and what appears to me, to be Grok’s biased leaning toward alarmist accounts in climate science. Grok appears to be a smarty pants at excuse-making for the alarmist take.”

Insert: Note how Grok persistently ends his/her/it’s comments with a wrapping-up statement of typical alarmist pessimism that is a denial of the previously presented information. So typical of alarmist denial. I think Grok is more biased by apocalyptic mythology than he/she/it is willing to acknowledge.

The more I pester Grok with climate questions, the more I see a clear bias toward climate alarmism narratives in his/her/it’s responses, meaning Grok has been deformed with the apocalyptic fallacy like most other human thought and narratives, past and contemporary. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Note below some comment on the US pushback against the European shift toward Soviet-style totalitarianism (i.e. the J. D. Vance speech), as well as comment on the partisan politicization of US justice.

When considering the issues here below, first set aside the simple-minded dualism of “atheism versus religion”, as if that were the actual alternatives. That is a dead approach to working through these issues.

Better, as my paraphrase of Mao goes, “Let (8 billion) flowers bloom.” C’mon, we are a creative bunch. We can do better than that dualist extremism that distorts the issues entirely and locks people within limited and false contrasts.

And props/kudos to all those people comfortable to remain within a religious tradition for whatever reason (i.e. sense of family, community, shared enterprise, etc.), people who have found ways to ignore the darker stuff in their traditions and focus on the good elements and thereby moderate their positions. Go my friends and family, go.

So, a sincere “Clap, clap, clap” to all moderation of religion projects. As Jefferson and Tolstoy said, “Pull the diamonds out of the dung”. Like Jefferson’s abbreviated New Testament that tried to include only the original teaching of Historical Jesus. An original version of the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research, the closest that we get to what the man actually taught.

See Bob Brinsmead’s comment below in relation to his latest essay on the Hellenization of Christianity.

Some excerpts from Bob’s comments:

“The Christianity built on the Christ myth which has been the central plank of Christian civilisation is not a friend of democracy, rights of women, or emancipation of slaves, opposition to divine right of kings. For over a thousand years, lay persons were not allowed to read the Bible and some of the first people who insisted this was a human right and had a copy of the Bible in their house were in danger of being put to death…

“Just as the 18th century was about to dawn, a young student by the name of Akenhead was hung in Scotland, the home of the Enlightenment, because he dared to suggest that Moses did not write the first five books of the OT. There was no religious liberty in Protestant- founded America until the Declaration of Independence and the forming of the Constitution of the US guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion and the separation of church and state which thereby became the pioneer in liberal democracy… Read the rest of the opening comment here

Fighting the ‘Paragon’ (ultimate example, epitome) of all monsters… a bit of autobio, Wendell Krossa

“Fighting a personal monster”, or “How monster theology works monstrously deforming influences on people”. A personal experience in religion, firsthand exposure to “bad religious ideas”.

Note, in particular, the quotes further below from psychologist Harold Ellens on how monstrous views of deity deform human consciousness and life, even dangerously so. Historian Richard Landes, among others, has also detailed the destructive outcomes of bad theology on entire societies, notably in the themes that drove/validated Marxism, Nazism, and are now shaping and validating environmental alarmism.

This is a bit of my experience of the dehumanizing dark side of an institution that most people across history have framed as ultimate Good. Through my struggle with the religious monster, I was motivated (survival desperation) to eventually discover the Palestinian sage’s stunning new theology- i.e. his insight that there is an inexpressible no conditions love behind reality and life.

That discovery shaped my subsequent life purpose- i.e. the “Daddy” thing I do on this site, telling everyone that its ultimately going to be alright, for everyone. There is no real ultimate monster.

Intro notes on a basic outline of common human story:

Joseph Campbell’s outline of the “hero’s journey or quest” illuminates some fundamental features and struggles of all human lives. Here is my paraphrase of that framework and how it appears to have worked throughout my personal life story.

As Campbell notes, we go out into life on an adventure, a journey of discovery to understand what it means to be human on this planet. To learn something and to work out the meaning and purpose of our lives.

And in our journey, we face a monster, an enemy (or multiple enemies/monsters). The enemy/monster should not be framed in terms of our fellow human beings. To focus our fight on differing others as “enemies/monsters” is to miss the real point of our quest. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Useful notes/insights from sages for understanding religious commonalities and claimed differences:

John Dominic Crossan was right to state that it is “unethical” to call someone else’s myth “fiction”, and then claim that yours is “history”, if both of you are holding the same fundamental myth. This would include Christians claiming the virgin birth myths of Ceasars/emperors were false, when Christianity had itself borrowed such claims to frame its Christ myth- i.e. the mythology of gods impregnating women to birth great men. So also resurrection themes descended from traditions such as the Egyptian mythology of Isis and Osiris.

The charge of “unethical” applies also to similar claims made regarding varied other shared core themes/myths of the world religions. The other guy’s beliefs are “fiction”, while mine are “history”. Look carefully at the core themes behind the diverse expressions of beliefs from tradition to tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births

https://www.thenewsminute.com/features/shared-myths-jesus-time-miraculous-birth-stories-common-kings-and-emperors-54776

Note: I am giving some more time to the interest from Islamic countries… Is that citizens with VPNs who can get around state censorship? Or state actors? I will let that play out a bit more…

Contact: wkrossa@shaw.ca

Soon coming– Bob Brinsmead’s latest writeup on how Hellenism, from the time of Alexander the Great, began to shape the consciousness and narratives of the world, mainly the West. Brinsmead does a brilliant job showing how Plato’s approach to reality shaped the Christian approach to the Bible- i.e. that Plato’s invisible Forms were the Real and the patterns/shadows of this world just pointed to that greater Reality that was invisible to us.

That became the way in which Christians viewed and read the Bible and Paul’s Christ myth. Everything that happened before, i.e. in the Old Testament, were just patterns that pointed to the Real Form of the invisible Christ and his sacrifice to pay for sin. The outcome of embracing Plato’s approach? Nothing in this world really matters except, with Paul, to be focused on attaining salvation with the Christ in the next invisible world. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Topics below:

On the claims of Christianity and Islam to “Represent/fulfill” that wisdom sage? Not if you ignore his core message and themes. More on the shared “bad ideas” in the major religious traditions.

And the “holy shitoli” presentation of Javier Milei at Davos. That is what courage and common sense looks and sounds like. The “Populism” that he speaks to is commoners pushing back against dominating elites who have abandoned common sense Classic Liberalism and persistently try to re-establish the elite/commoner divide in societies.

Then see below the Ken Haapala summary of the William Happer presentation on the warming influence of CO2. That warming influence is now “saturated” and increasing levels of CO2 will not contribute much, if anything, to any more warming.

Further, the warming that we have had so far (1.2 degree C over past century) has been beneficial to all life. And the rise in CO2 has also been beneficial to all life. We need more of both to get back to the optimal, natural levels for most of the Phanerozoic history of life, when all life flourished with more of its basic food and warmth- i.e. CO2 in the multiple-thousands of ppm, and temperatures up to 10 C warmer than today (i.e. the Eocene “mammalian paradise” of some 55-33 million years ago). The oceans did not “boil” and the planet did not ignite on fire in that world that was entirely free of ice for over 80% of its history.

Why did the oceans not “boil” (an ignorant alarmist exaggeration)? Because that extra heat energy is transported via ocean and atmospheric convection currents to the colder polar regions to naturally warm those areas and benefit life there. The media hysteria over melting ice and faster Arctic warming is a denial of natural states and climate processes. See the research on the natural factor of “meridional transport”, that Javier Vinos argues is the main influence on climate change. He posts his reports on “co2coalition.org” and “Wattsupwiththat.com”.

Sample of Vinos’ reports:

https://co2coalition.org/news/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-parts-i-ii/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/01/tom-nelson-interviews-javier-vinos/

Why do elites like Mark Carney have such difficultly grasping this basic science of climate presented by experts like atmospheric physicist Happer and others?

The conclusion from Happer’s research? There is no scientific reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. There is no “climate crisis”.

More on site themes: Wendell Krossa

Is there any greater cultic delusion today than “Lets destroy human civilization (i.e. degrowth, de-development, decarbonization) to “save the world” from an imagined climate apocalypse with no science to affirm it. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Soon coming- More on atmospheric physicist William Happer’s excellent research on the warming influence of CO2. His conclusion from the evidence- “There is no climate crisis.” And our response? “Do nothing.”

And Javier Milei’s refreshingly blunt takedown of destructive ‘Wokeism’ at Davos recently. He presented a defense of freedom that few can match today. Amazingly, the WEF collectivists invited him back after a similar speech last year to tell them to their faces that their bad ideas are destroying Western liberal democracy.

Further, more coming on why Christianity does not represent Historical Jesus, and why Islam is not the “fulfillment” of the actual message and person of Historical Jesus. Yes, Islam does “fulfill” varied features of Jewish Christianity such as the rejection of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin (his redemptive death), the rejection of his virgin birth and divinity, the embrace of Jewish water purification, abstention from alcohol and pork, and so on. And Islam “fulfills” varied elements of Paul’s Christ mythology- i.e. judgment and severe punishment for refusing the message/messenger (i.e. hellfire), and the demand for obedience and submission to God, etc. But these features contradict the actual Jesus of history. Much like Paul’s “Christ-ianity” contradicts the message and person of Jesus.

The point of “Carney barker for a cult” below? Despite clothing himself with “highly experienced international financial expert, highly educated, etc.”, the new wannabe emperor is nakedly a cultic extremist, no different from all religious extremists across history who fell for crusades of primitive apocalyptic hysteria. As historian Richard Landes stated in his recounting of apocalyptic millennial movements like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism (“Heaven On Earth”), the leaders have all been just “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. That applies to all today who embrace “climate alarmism”.

Mark Carney may take a scrap of comfort from the fact that Stephen Hawking also fell for Chicken Little climate alarmism over the last two years of his life. He engaged “end of days” date-setting, initially proclaiming the end in about a 1000 years (2016), then logarithmically dropping to the end in just 100 years from either AI Terminators or climate change (2017). The next year, had he lived and continued his logarithmic pattern, he would have dropped to apocalypse in 10 years. Still just enough time to exit the planet before being humiliated by reality as all apocalyptic prophets are eventually exposed. Because apocalyptic has a 100% historical failure rate. Apocalyptic consistently makes fools of the otherwise brightest people. Look at what it did to Chicken Little. Sheesh, eh.

https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-1000-years-2016-11

https://www.wired.com/story/stephen-hawking-100-years-on-earth-prediction-starmus-festival/

Now posted below– Mercy toward opponents/enemies enrages some people. They detest efforts to “normalize” their opponents and vilify those who refuse to join them in demonizing and dehumanizing their opponents. What is this psychopathology of outrage at any mercy, kindness, generous forgiveness and inclusion being shown toward differing others?

It is deeply rooted in history as illustrated by, for example, Historical Jesus omitting the “divine vengeance” element in his reading of Isaiah 61, an omission that incited his fellow Jews with murderous rage. They then tried to try to toss him off a cliff. Moderns today similarly exhibit the same furious outrage at mercy toward opponents/enemies. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Further below– “Some things that Michael Schellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Mike Benz, Jimmy Dore, and many others have exposed regarding elite manipulation of our liberal democracies over past decades…”

The outline of “common elements” below helps to understand what has happened in varied liberal democracies across the West- i.e. the elements that have facilitated a leftward shift, as in Canada under Justin Trudeau. Is this due to new generations of young people emerging from universities indoctrinated by Woke Progressive leftism of an extremist variety? Hence, the 50% of young people today who affirm that socialism/communism should be embraced to organize our societies. What role does the psychopathology of “left-wing compassion” play in this shift? As in the narcissistic impulse to virtue-signal unconcerned for the actual outcomes of the ideology and policies that you promote? These new graduates then populate all the main institutions/agencies of our societies- business, government, media, even intelligence agencies.

Note: Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist Gad Saad states that destructive socialist, and other ideas, were breeding over the last century to finally come to fruition on university campuses. We have all watched these ideas pushed across our societies in the lunacy of the Woke Progressivism of the last 10 years. Host Brian Kilmeade responds that the current surge of populism pushback against Woke is not a Republican resurgence but more the resurgence of common sense across Western democracies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI1_pvSQb9M

Coming soon– How the Jewish Christian priest Waraqa mentored Muhammad over 45 years to embrace the fundamentals of Ebionism. Waraqa was the Ebionite priest in Mecca, cousin to Muhammad’s first wife Khadija.

Muhammad embraced the basic themes of Waraqa’s gospel to the Hebrews (an earlier version of the gospel of Matthew) and Waraqa’s God. But while acknowledging his debt to the earlier “book”, he failed to embrace the moderating message of Historical Jesus that was a critical element of early Jewish Christianity.

This is my response to the Piers Morgan interview of Jordan Peterson, and others, where panel members argued points for which religion was better- Christianity or Islam, among other topics related to the British ‘mass rape of children scandal’ recently publicized by Elon Musk. The discussants missed the fundamental point that all three Western religions share the same fundamental themes of their inheritance from Zoroastrianism. They are all much more alike than different from one another. Read the rest of the opening comment here

After the “here we go again” attack in New Orleans… Wendell Krossa

The military guy, following the 2014 eruption of ISIS violence in Syria, urged this- “You can crush these episodes of violence with military force, but they will just keep erupting until you go after the ideas that drive them”. But that will require the approach of going to the very root contributing factors and many people shy away from what has been presented to them by religious traditions as “blasphemy, heresy…”, as in tackling the prominent religious themes of our world religions.

Historian Richard Landes stated this just below, following his detail on how apocalyptic millennial themes drove Marxism to murder 100 million people last century, and Nazism to start a war that resulted in the murder of 50-60 million people, and before his chapter on environmental alarmism as another mass-harm crusade driven by the very same apocalyptic millennial ideas…

“The study of Nazism’s appeal, of Hitler’s charisma, belong to the field of millennial studies, whether one wishes to designate Hitler’s efforts as religious or millennialism as having secular variants. Only then can we identify the key problems of how movements go from the margins to the center of a society/culture, how they pursue their millennial goals, and how they respond… to cognitive dissonance, frustration, and failure… (Hitler) is not so much the measure of the unthinkably, the impossibly evil, as he is the measure of how, with modern technology and an only partially developed civil polity, a nation, a people, seized by, ridden by a millennial passion, can become one of the great dealers of death in human history” (end of ch.12).

His point? Until we deal with the religious ideas that drive such madness, we will only see further such eruptions of madness. Again, those root contributing factors.

Where are these apocalyptic millennial ideas protected and promoted today? They continue to dominate the major world religions, as well as dominate “secular/ideological” versions like climate alarmism conjoined to the neo-Marxism of Woke Progressivism, and are also promoted by the Hollywood public story-telling machine where apocalyptic millennialism dominates movie narratives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films

I would add to Landes’ research, that at the core of apocalyptic millennial mythology is the most critical of all religious ideas- i.e. the cohering center that is threat theology, the myth of an angry God who promises to punish and exterminate people with violent destruction. And consider psychologist Harold Ellens’ point that such a deity, held as ultimate ideal, then incites and validates the same punitive, destroying violence in followers. “We all become just like the God that we believe in” (Bob Brinsmead).

I repeat these comments because few have stated the issue better than Ellens. Here below psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo is quoting Ellens in his book “Cruel God, Kind God”…

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.

“As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”. Read the rest of the opening comment here

This site starts the new year continuing to expose the real meta-monster behind many of the eruptions of violence in human societies, behind the varied crusades for totalitarianism, whether religious or secular. They are driven by the same complex of mythical themes that have always been the main monster of humanity, our real enemy, from the very beginning of early humans creating myths to respond to their primal impulse for meaning and purpose. Wendell Krossa

This is about probing what it is that deforms human narratives, consciousness, personality, and at scale, entire societies. That same complex of mythical themes that drove Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism (and also drives neo-collectivism as in the Neo-Marxism of far left Woke Progressivism and DEI).

More on the quest of this site to understand the ideas/themes that shape and drive human behavior, especially to understand the ideas that validate the behaviors that are destructive to human well-being, and at-scale, destructive to entire societies.

I have a bent, like many others, to join endeavors to “save the world”. I want to look at problems and try to understand what is behind them, what are the root contributing factors. I do this with varied public issues and problems, like the climate alarmism panic of the past three decades and its destructive decarbonization plan. What the hell is this really about? What drives this “madness of crowds” episode?

My interest in root contributing factors to public crusades like climate alarmism arises from long-ago experience in my family religion- Evangelical Christianity. That experience provided me the insight of feeling firsthand the impact of “threat theology” religious beliefs, to feel, with the immediacy of personal experience, how such “cruel God” theology deforms human personality with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, nihilism, and violence. Yes, violence.

I get how religious ideas of an angry God who threatens to punish us with apocalypse and hell, how such themes incite the survival impulse. And that survival desperation renders many susceptible to salvation schemes. It disables people to the cowering state of not even questioning the destruction of their society that is required to “save the world”, because they are promised utopia just beyond the destruction of the world. Think of average good Germans during the Weimar years as they were primed with the apocalyptic millennial vision of the Nazis. And think, similarly, of how we have been primed with the apocalyptic millennial vision of climate alarmists over the last three decades.

My personal experience of the harmful influence from the more destruction oriented religious themes helped me to appreciate how primitive apocalyptic millennial ideas carry good people along till they will embrace policies and crusades that harm themselves and others. It’s the religious-incited desperation for salvation. It’s the “fear=control” formula of totalitarians. Scare people and then you can manipulate them to embrace your salvation schemata. Read the rest of the opening comment here

See below Jordan Peterson’s interesting analysis of Justin Trudeau and the psychopathologies of narcissistic, even psychopathic leadership.

We hear interesting commentary today on the revival/return of religion as many are recognizing that the atheism of the past few centuries has left some kind of mental/emotional hole in human spirits- i.e. the recognition of something missing in our endeavor to be human, something fundamental to the human impulse for meaning, purpose, Wendell Krossa

On the title above. My response to the too common polarized options that we present to people. Either this or that. Simple-minded dualisms of entirely opposite things. Is this some residual influence from Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism of good versus evil? Some “archetypal” leftover in the collective unconscious?

Note this, for example, from Free Press, typical of this line of argument…

“How Intellectuals Found God: Almost 150 years after Nietzsche said ‘God is dead’, some of our most important thinkers are getting religion. Peter Savodnik meets the new theists”, Peter Savodnik, Dec. 28, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-intellectuals-found-god-ayaan-hirsi-ali-peter-thiel-jordan-peterson?utm_campaign=email-post&r=vl4wv&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

But much of the contemporary return to religion just revisits and re-embraces what has been handed down to us from a primitive past, without critically analyzing what was valuable in religious traditions and what was wrong, what was the “psychopathology” in the mix. Read the rest of the opening comment here

See below a revised reposting of “Hating that ‘some people are better than others'”, on the Lex Fridman interview of Jordan Peterson re the “spiritual” basis of human equality.

See also new comment on “The single most important thing that we will learn in life, the single most important thing that we will ever do, the single most important contribution that we will ever make to peace and order in the world…” (“Greatest”? When talking about transcendant realities, superlatives are justified.)

This good commentary from Matt Taibbi– “Thankfully, Some Things Never Change: A few reflections on an extraordinary year, as we give thanks and burn the Yule log”, Dec. 24, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/thankfully-some-things-never-change

Matt rehashes some of the madness that we have lived through over the past decade but concludes, “Mad scientists who think they can redesign human experience are always undone by eternal truths that arrogance won’t allow them to grasp, one being that life isn’t so bad”.

Speaking of madness, former leftist/Democrat Dr. Drew Pinsky

Dr. Drew in just 2 mins, or so, nails mainstream media for propagandizing people to excesses of hysteria and delusion over the past 8 years, to the point that people have become literally mentally ill, losing rationality. He says this madness peaked with Covid. So, deal with these people, says Drew, with “compassionate firmness”. Don’t argue with them as you are not dealing with rationality.

The Woke Progressives driving the hysteria, delusion, and dividing the country have been like a cult, says Drew, and cults separate families, demanding that people should not associate with their families at times like Thanksgiving, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7GcjQGSje4

Varied new scientific reports are confirming that CO2 levels are already “saturated”, a physics term meaning that further increases in atmospheric CO2 will contribute little or nothing to any possible further warming. And the current levels are highly beneficial to plant growth and crop productivity.

“Science Shock: CO2 is good for the planet, peer-reviewed studies suggest”, Chris Morrison, Daily Skeptic, Dec. 24, 2024

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/24/science-shock-co2-is-good-for-the-planet-peer-reviewed-studies-suggest/

Morrison says, “None of this work will be reported in the mainstream since it disrupts a ‘settled’ climate science narrative tied to the political Net Zero fantasy.’

He adds that CO2 levels were much higher in the past and all life flourished.

As always, my conclusion from such evidence- There is no scientifically justified reason to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies, to embrace the mass-harm of Green extremism.

Main site theme: “Don’t be afraid its going to be alright.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

More on the larger social issue of the elite/commoner divide in our societies, Wendell Krossa

The struggle for freedom from domination is fought and won most critically inside each of us. The “Hero’s quest” struggle against our real enemy- i.e. most notably or critically, the “evil triad” of inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others. This affirms Solzhenitsyn’s point that the real battle of good against evil runs through the center of every human heart. We win the great battles of life by first taking care of what is wrong inside each of us. Not “sinfulness”, but residual things from our animal past.

And at some level of consciousness most of us feel these things naturally, i.e. the desire to be free of what we sense is subhuman- those animal impulses inside us- and to experience what it feels like to be truly human, fully human. We get this at some level of consciousness, what we call the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.

Honing a bit more the focus to the real nature of the human struggle for freedom…

The real battle of good against evil takes place at the most fundamental of levels, as a battle against the bad religious ideas (religious ideas as ultimate ideals) that have from the beginning validated our worst impulses. Some call them “archetypes”. And they tell us that the archetypes reside in the human subconscious and emanate their influence from there. Hence, the 95% of human behavior that is subconsciously initiated. So they say.

Moving along… Probing or looking past the societal level of our daily lives. (“Societal level”? The struggles between varied groups in public- i.e. society-level battles over differing ideologies, beliefs, policies, etc.) Read the rest of the opening comment here