The Unconditional Human Spirit

Section topics: The myth of pristine nature defiled by corrupt humanity (nature becoming trapped in dead-ends); The meta-myth fallacy of too few resources, too many people; Decline or Rise: The actual trajectory of life; Short version of Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives; and more…

Read this article from Spiked and get a sense of the madness that is climate alarmism. It is the world’s latest eruption of apocalyptic hysteria gone completely mad with politicians, media, celebrities, and other prophets trying to outdo one another with bizarre descriptions of the looming “end-of-days”.

Climate Derangement Syndrome

Note this link to data on the 96% decline in climate related deaths over the past century when we had a mild 1 degree C of warming. Remembering that 10 times more people die from cold every year than die from warmth, perhaps the correlation speaks to the benefits of warming, among other things.

Global yearly climate-related deaths

Another bad idea infecting public consciousness (add this to the list of 18 bad ideas below)

A notable theme from primitive mythology that persists today in environmentalism or Green religion- i.e. the belief that nature began as a pure, innocent, noble reality (original paradise) that has been “defiled and corrupted” by fallen, evil humanity. Hence the contemporary project of environmentalism to protect nature from humanity, to prevent human engagement with nature and human use of natural resources. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: Climate briefs; Notable features in human worldviews; Mendel on Vision and Violence; Narratives of despair; CO2 facts; and more…

Site project: Countering narratives of fear, narratives of despair, affirming hope/love based on good evidence of life improving on all fronts.

Galileo’s version of confirmation bias: “People tend to refuse to consider evidence, if what they might discover contradicts their beliefs.”

We are watching the eruption of obsessive-compulsive pessimism and nihilism on a world-wide scale today. Each new climate COP (Conference of the Parties) unleashes a renewed frenzy of beating apocalyptic into public consciousness with the same old prophesies of “last chance… final tipping point…”, with dates set for the “end-of-days”.

Climate alarmism has developed as another apocalyptic cult that zealously tries to panic populations toward ever new crescendos of unhinged hysteria. Every twitch in nature- e.g. too much heat/too much cold, too much rain/no rain, wildfires, and more- is obsessively seized upon as evidence to affirm the mind-emptying mantra of “human-caused climate change” that alarmists claim is becoming an “existential crisis and catastrophe”. Everything happening in nature that is divergent from normal patterns is proclaimed, with irrational exaggeration, as “the worst on record” and promoted as evidence of looming apocalypse. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: The true state of life on Earth; Beating a mantra into public consciousness; The unproven assumptions of climate alarmism; Patterns in alarmism movements; and more…

Here’s one from Wattsupwiththat.com… “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool”, George Orwell.

Quotes from Richard Landes’ Introduction to Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, on apocalyptic millennial movements. Point? Climate change alarmism has become the latest apocalyptic millennial movement.

Apocalyptic millennial movements foresee some catastrophic end to life, a necessary violent purging of some “evil” (CO2, greedy humanity in industrial society), before a new world (millennium, utopia) can be established or a lost paradise restored.

Landes’ comments…

“The Nazis were a millennial movement… millennial as a belief in a radically transformed future for all mankind… the secular is merely another clothing that millennialism has taken… and Nazism is as much a New Religious Movement as a new political one… Hitler was one of the most powerful and paranoid messiah figures that history has ever produced… the German response to him was a classic, if tragic, case of violent millennial enthusiasm… Democracy, Scientific Utopianism, Nationalism, Communism, Zionism, Nazism, Environmentalism are forms of millennial thinking, partly secular, partly still profoundly religious.”

“To the pessimists, the world and humans are so permeated by evil that terrible catastrophes must come to annihilate the evil at the dawn of the new world. Extremists of this school foresee immense violence and human destruction, they tend to view things dualistically, seeing everyone as part of the forces of “good” or “evil” with no middle ground… nothing can motivate more powerfully than apocalyptic beliefs”.

“We have reason to fear the apocalyptic believers- they believe we hate and want to destroy them, and their violence is, in their minds, purely self-protective, when it is not world saving…. Totalitarianism is the desperate effort of a millennial movement that has taken power to force the creation of the perfect world… millennialism can be the most violent and destructive force in history”. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Site topics: Resurging collectivism; The anti-liberalism of modern Liberalism; Presentism; The tragedy of being carried away by ‘crowd madness’; Hold something fundamental; Basic issues of the climate debate; and more…

Contact: wkrossa@shaw.ca While this site is copyrighted material, feel free to copy and share.

Important climate fact: 15- 20 times more people die every year from cold than die from warmth: (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm or https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673614621140?via%3Dihub) And you are afraid of more warming? A couple of more degrees warming in a still abnormally cold world will not be “catastrophic warming” but will benefit all life.

The arguments in the comment below are not intended to downplay the obligation to care for and use resources responsibly, conserving them for future generations. The comment is intended to counter the irresponsible fear-mongering over population growth and environmental issues. My comment is a counter to doom narratives that ignore the human success in caring for world resources and creatively finding alternatives to scarce resources. The true state of life is a narrative of hope. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Topics below:

Summary list of ‘Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives’ (full version in sections further below)
Main points of the climate debate- evidence versus alarm (Conclusion: There is no “climate crisis”)
Meat creating mind? How? And evidence, please.
The single most profound statement ever made takes us to the height of being human (i.e. “Love your enemy”)
Changing meta-narrative themes
“Heat or cold? Which is worse? (the Northwest heatwave of June 2021)
Nature knows best? Then why does it become trapped in dead ends?
Also a reposting of “The true state of life on Earth” and “Patterns in alarmism movements” further below.
At the bottom of this section- Pushing past tribalism, re-affirming cooperation, and “Presentism” as the fallacy that contemporary events (e.g. extreme weather events) are the worst in history because we experience them firsthand.

Ideas

A prominent complex of ideas/themes has been repeated all across human history and across all the cultures of the world. These ideas/themes are primitive mythical creations that do not express the true state of things but profoundly distort reality and life. Nonetheless, they continue to dominate human consciousness and narratives.

These themes have long dominated mythical/religious systems of belief. They are now also embraced in “secular” ideological belief systems and are even found in “scientific” versions. But at core they are the same old primitive ideas as ever before.

They are tackled on this site because they have long deformed human consciousness and life with unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, despair, depression, and violence.

Old story themes, new story alternatives, Wendell Krossa

1. The myth of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality. Contemporary “secular” versions of judging, punishing deity include “Vengeful Gaia… angry Planet/Mother Earth… retributive Universe… and karma”.

Alternative: The new theology of deity as a stunningly no conditions reality (no conditions love).

2. The myth of a perfect beginning (Eden) and a God obsessed with perfection, enraged at the loss of perfection, and demanding punishment of imperfection.

Alternative: The world was purposefully created as originally imperfect in order to serve as an arena for human struggle, learning, and development. Deity has no problem with imperfection. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: Notes on theology; Love as ultimate reality, ultimate meaning; Climate updates; An anti-fear project; Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives, and more…

A further explanation on humanizing deity theories:

Just a note on why I include the feature of “domination” (i.e. God as Lord, King) among the barbaric features that must be eliminated from a truly humane God theory (theory of ultimate reality, theory of ultimate meaning/purpose). Domination/subjection forms of relating are common to brutal animal existence. Animals relate in domination/submission relationships, usually with weaker animals subjected to an alpha male or female. Religious traditions have embraced such forms of relating as fundamental to their ultimate ideals and authorities- their gods. See, for example, Alex Garcia’s book ‘Alpha God’.

In addition, one of the first mental creations of early humans was the myth that people were created to do the work of the gods, to serve the gods. That early myth enforced the perception that humans were to be subject to the gods, to be subservient to deity.

Critical to emerging human development was our eventual understanding that enlightened, mature people would relate to one another as equals, not as superiors to inferiors. We now understand that true human greatness is about treating all as equals, and not intervening, overwhelming, controlling, or dominating others. Not violating the freedom and self-determination of others.

Historical Jesus got this right when he reasoned with his followers who wanted positions of authority over others. His response: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” True greatness and glory was in serving, not ruling. This humane principle used to be the understood and accepted mandate of politicians in democratic societies.

Consequent to understanding the nature of truly humane forms of relating, we can reason that a truly humane God, a truly loving deity, will relate to all as equals, not as inferiors, subjects, or servants. A fully humane God will relate horizontally to humanity, not vertically as a superior. Relating vertically as a dominating superior would be inhumane and unloving.

Add here Charles Templeton’s point that someone demanding dominance, and attention and praise on pain of death for refusal, would be an Idi Amin-type character (see his book “Farewell to God”). Yet we project such nonsense onto the ultimate Good and Love that is God???

A side note: While life is replete with hierarchical organizations, it is possible to relate within such structures as authentic humans. Those in supervisory positions can express equality with others in the way that they relate to and treat others in lower positions. For example, by honoring the input of others on decisions that impact them. This is important because self-control and self-determination are critical to human health.

Putting something before or above people

I have just watched “The Crown” (Netflix) on British royalty. It reminded me of an old insight that Bob Brinsmead shared with us decades ago- that whenever we put loyalty to something else above people, to something other than people, whether loyalty to law, to a religion or belief system, to God, to an institution, to a nation state or an ideology, to an ethnic group or race, then people tend to be ignored or abused.

People that were loyal, first and foremost, to the monarchy and its archaic traditions/protocols/rituals, people that put the monarchy first, then crushed and destroyed real people around them. Such loyalty led superiors to stifle the diverse personalities, emotions, and expressions of inferiors.

Our primary loyalty, our only loyalty, must always be first to real people and their individual needs, not to something above people that takes priority over them and their needs.

Bob Brinsmead

“There are some things Love (agape) cannot do. Therefore, there are some things God cannot do. “It is impossible for God to lie” is an example. In personal relationships there are some things that Love, along with its corollaries of wisdom and justice, that one cannot do. God cannot build Rome in a day because Rome implies a human culture, the formation of a collective character, the development of a language etc. God has entered a partnership, a covenant with his creation and therefore God is limited by the principles of freedom involved in that relationship. So God is not going to intervene as we might want him or even expect him to intervene. I could tease this out, but I suggest the propositions you repeat are not a watertight logic as those who advance these either/or propositions think they are.”

“It comes down to a question of whether love is worthwhile. Life is about the receiving and giving of love. The truth is discovered by getting involved and doing it. It’s a precious gift that took a long time to make and is very precious. Creation (not yet finished) has been a labour of love, and not without pain and suffering. No such thing as the Creator bringing creation to pass without a lot of time and effort. The Creation science wants us to believe God did it in the blink of an eye – easy stuff! The narrative functions with the image of an absolute Dictator Deity using unfettered omnipotent, omniscient, etc. powers, and based on a very wrong concept of God having dominion and requiring of all absolute unquestioning obedience – as the old Calvinists used to say, ‘perfect obedience to every decree to the utmost degree.’ Sounds like the ultimate subjection of the subjects to me.”

Love as Ultimate Reality, ultimate meaning Wendell Krossa

I embrace the view that there is an inexpressibly wondrous love at the core of reality and behind all life. And that love is the meaning and purpose of the cosmos, the world, and conscious human life. We are here to learn love, to exhibit love, to experience love in all the diversity of human stories and experiences. Love is all.

I base my conclusions on several points of reason:

1. Love is our highest and most meaningful ideal. It is the fundamental defining feature of what it means to be human. It is the best and highest thing that we know.

2. Historical Jesus argued that God was love of an unconditional nature. That central insight is expressed in his statement: “Do not engage eye for eye response to offenders, but instead love your enemy because God does, giving sun and rain to all alike” (Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 6:27-36). God was unconditional love. That was Historical Jesus’ greatest contribution to the history of human spiritual insights. (Note: Hist. Jesus appears to point to deity as unconditional reality. Whether he actually does or not, matters little. I do not regard him as some final authority. It is my conclusion.)

Unfortunately, the New Testament authors, shaped by Paul’s thinking, then distorted and buried that unconditional insight with a retreat to the highly conditional and retaliatory Christ of Paul (i.e. “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish and destroy all who do not believe” Paul’s gospel). The religion of Paul’s Christ myth was created as just another conditional tradition with correct beliefs to be an included insider/true believer, proper rituals, demanded sacrifice/payment, and righteous lifestyle necessary to identify oneself as a “saved” insider of the religion (versus “damned” outsiders).

All such religious conditions were backed with severe threats to those refusing to embrace the conditions- notably, temporal and eternal punishment and destruction. See Paul’s warning to the Corinthian Christians that God was punishing them with sickness and death as retribution for their sins. It would get worse as Paul warned in Romans 12:17-20. Ultimate and eternal vengeance was coming.

3. God as unconditional love is the central discovery of a modern spiritual experience movement- the “Near-Death Experience”. Many of those accounts detail an encounter with a Being of love/light so stunningly unconditional that it is inexpressible in its infinite transcendence and wonder. With that love there is no judgment, no condemnation, no exclusion of anyone, no demanded sacrifice or payment, no punishment or destruction. No conditions at all. None. That means no religion too.

Hence, my conclusion that all are safe in that love, in the end. All are included in that love.

(Note: Any advocacy for no conditions deity raises questions regarding how order and morality can be maintained with such an ultimate ideal. Hence, the following qualifier.)

Qualifier: Ultimate safety and inclusion for all does not mean excusing bad behavior here and now. There are social and natural consequences in this world and that is critical to healthy human development. All of us must learn to be fully responsible for our choices and actions and the consequences for others. People unable or unwilling to control their worst impulses should and will be restrained and even locked up. But that criminal justice response must always be restorative/rehabilitative, as much as possible.

Leo Tolstoy- “The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are circumstances/conditions when they may treat their fellow beings without love, but no such circumstances ever exist.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: Speculation on death; Monstrous ideas; Two basic approaches to organizing human societies (collectivism and the individual approach); Pushback against panic-porn; The profound contradiction between Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth; Why I reject panic over rising CO2 levels; and more…

Who said that to live life properly and fully each of us has to personally resolve the issue of death and our natural fear of death? The comment below continues the general anti-fear tone of this site as this applies to all facets of human life.

Speculating on the “unknowable” (countering the ultimate fear- death) Wendell Krossa

(Note: There is unhealthy speculation, and there is healthier speculation, more humane forms of speculation. But we all speculate in varied ways, especially in regard to the great questions that are related to our fundamental impulse for meaning/purpose.)

Recently, I have been hearing people making the comment that “we don’t know what happens to us when we die”. Yes, in some sense that is true. Or maybe not.

It depends on how much credit we give to first-hand witness testimony. Certainly, it appears more rational to state that we have no idea what happens at the point of death. But is contemporary rational (as too often defined by materialist dogmatism) the only approach that gets us to what is most true, especially in regard to the great questions that science has no way of answering? While I affirm rationalism/empiricism generally as the most important stance to take in regard to most issues in life, with regard to the death issue it may be helpful to remain open to other approaches to getting answers, notably being open to the insights from our fellow human beings, insights from personal experience. Read the rest of the opening comment here

“Apocalyptic mythology has always made fools of normally bright people”.

Fascinating report on the possible origin of Covid:

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

Note: Martin Seligman in ‘Learned Optimism’ noted the post-WW2 reaction in US academia to “Boosterism”- the enthusiastic promotion of something. Academics came to believe that pessimism was deep, while optimism was shallow.

Science facts: Keep the larger paleo-climate context in mind in order to understand the “true state of things.” Wendell Krossa

Some interesting research has shown that the previous interglacial, the Eemian of some 130-115,000 years ago, was at least 1 degree C. warmer than our current Holocene interglacial. Others, like Patrick Moore, say the Eemian was 2-4 degrees C warmer. Both of the previous two interglacials were warmer than our Holocene interglacial. We are on a long-term cooling trend.

Add here that the warmer interglacials that punctuate glaciations also experience repeated episodes of warming and cooling periods. There is no such thing as stasis in climate. There are numerous natural shifts in climate that occur in cyclical patterns over decades, centuries, and millennia. Before blaming humanity, we ought to educate ourselves regarding these facts.

Over the 10,000 years of our interglacial there has been a long-term cooling trend with regard to the warm periods of our interglacial. The Holocene Optimum (roughly 7000 to 3000 BCE) was at least 1 degree warmer than our current modern warm period. Some say the Holocene Optimum was 3 degrees C warmer but that may refer to different local situations during that time. And the Roman (250 BCE to 400 CE) and Medieval (950 to 1250 CE) warm periods were at least 1 degree C warmer than today.

Over the last 5000 years since the Holocene Optimum ended, we have been on a long-term cooling trend, the “Neo-Glacial Period”. Each warm period is now cooler than previous ones. We are on a long-term climate trend that is declining toward a cooler future, not warmer. Cooling, not warming, ought to be our greater concern. After all, 15-20 times more people die from cold every year, than die from warmth.

Qualifier: Being a polite Canadian (“Sorry, eh”) I am conflicted over using potentially offense-inciting terms like “insanity, lunacy, craziness”. But how else to describe what is happening with climate alarmism today? Sorry, eh. But…

Stand back and observe...

Stand back for a moment and survey the public scene today, notably the alarmist movement that hysterically claims we face an existential “climate crisis”. Try to get some sense of the profound irrationality that has possessed so many people, irrationality that stems from the apocalyptic-porn narratives that now dominate the worldviews of many scientists, celebrities, politicians, and members of news media. A daily outpouring of madness.

The very basic food of all life- CO2- has been in historically short supply, at dangerously low levels in the pre-industrial era. Some 20,000 years ago it even dipped below 200 ppm, down to 185 ppm, just 35 ppm above the level at which all plant life dies- 150 ppm. Life on Earth was suffering from a long-term “CO2 starvation era”. See Patrick Moore’s excellent treatment of this paleo-climate history in his latest book “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom” and his excellent essay on the same topic at-

http://ecosense.me/ecosense-wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CO2-Emissions.pdf

Now that CO2 has slightly recovered to 400-plus ppm, the planet has greened immensely, adding green vegetation equal to twice the size of the continental US over the past 40 years. However, CO2 is still far below the healthier levels of most of past history when CO2 was in the multiple-thousands of ppm. Life thrived during such eras. CO2 was at 7000 ppm during the Cambrian Explosion when the proto-forms of all modern life emerged. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: The two fundamental narratives of life- old and new; The true state of life on Earth (main indicators); Celebrating CO2; Messing with politics, again; Messing with religion, again; Patterns in alarmism movements; Short list of Old Narrative Themes, New Story Alternatives; Science and speculation (human spirituality).

Quote from “Messing with religion, again” below in this section: “‘Love your enemy because God does’. The single most profound statement? Yes, because it takes us to the absolute height of being authentically human or humane. It takes us to unconditional love.”

Site projects: Wendell Krossa

This site responds to the absurdly exaggerated narrative of “climate crisis” and the destructive policy responses crafted by alarmists to save the world from that imagined apocalypse.

Yes, climate change is occurring. But the increased warmth (1 degree C. over the past century) has been beneficial to all life in our abnormally cold world where 15-20 times more people die from cold every year, than die from warmth.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/20/cold-weather-deaths/27657269/

Quote from above link: “The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.”

The further predicted 1-2 degrees C of warming will also be beneficial to life. For over 90% of the past 500 million years our world has been entirely ice free and life has flourished during such times where average temperatures were around 19.5 degrees Centigrade, not the average 14.5 degrees C of today’s ice-age era.

This site joins the challenge to the insane policy responses that are being pushed through by governments to solve the non-existent climate crisis. No policy has been more destructive than “decarbonization” that has already harmed the poorest people the most with rising energy/electricity costs. The worst is yet to come. Watch the rolling blackouts in California and unstable grids in Germany and Britain. These jurisdictions burden consumers with much higher electricity costs compared to other areas (e.g. Germans pay three times as much as Americans, Californians pay twice as much as other states).

This site also probes the mythology that still dominates human narratives today, narratives like climate alarmism, which has become more and more oriented to primitive apocalyptic themes. You see the eruption of this apocalyptic nonsense when climate alarmists repeatedly set dates for the end-of-days. The end never arrives because the narrative of “existential crisis” is anti-science and false. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Section topics: Science and theology (climate alarmism and the Green movement in general are “profoundly religious movements” and must be responded to at that level); Climate complexity; Panic-porn; Excerpts on the radiative influence of CO2; Good fear, bad fear; Patrick Moore on the Agenda of fear; Bill Rees still pushing limits fear, and more…

Below is a reposting as climate alarmists continue to stir hysteria over natural climate change…

A brief summary of the basic issues of the climate debate (list of alarmist claims/facts just below)

These cover areas of disagreement between alarmists and skeptics.

Skeptics do not deny climate change but know that credible evidence challenges the extent of the ‘manmade’ element. Good evidence shows that we contribute very little to Earth’s Carbon cycles and that CO2 contributes very little to climate change in general (“A bit player”). Further, more warming and more CO2 will not be catastrophic to life but will be mostly beneficial, as increasing CO2 levels have already resulted in a significant greening of the planet with a 10-15% increase in green vegetation over just the past 4 decades. The outcome of this greening has been much more food for animal populations and increased crop production for humanity.

The climate issue concerns the future of our children and our civilization. Climate alarmism has become an apocalyptic movement that demonizes the basic food of all life- CO2- and wants to diminish that food supply with a destructive ‘salvation’ plan- “save the world” by decarbonization. That will be “The suicide of industrial civilization”, according to Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and former MIT professor.

Posts on climate- evidence versus alarm

The following points are taken mainly from the “alarmist claim rebuttal update” posted at Wattsupwiththat.com Jan.14, 2021 https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/ef-cpp-alarmist-claim-rebuttal-overview-021118.pdf. Other sources are from ‘Everythingclimate.org’ and other sites.

1. Alarmist claim: We have just experienced the hottest years on record.

Fact: For most of the past 10,000 years it has been hotter than today (i.e. Holocene Optimum, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period). The hottest years of the past century were in the 1920s and 1930s. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Topics below: Climate basics; Courage in the face of crowd madness; Secular? Scientific? (the basic themes of primitive apocalyptic have been embraced in contemporary environmental alarmism); Analyzing an issue, solving a problem- more on the primitive apocalyptic mythology behind Green religion/climate alarmism; Buried Jesus and the ongoing domination of apocalyptic mythology in Western consciousness; The prominent features of apocalyptic; Baggot on Mass (materialism and the nature of physical reality); Main features of human story.

Note: The ‘climate change’ alarm is a tangled mix of climate science, politics, economics, and religion/mythology. Confronting and solving the issue involves embracing all these elements.

Another: Embracing the primitive myth of apocalypse in today’s dominant ideology of Declinism is not progressive thinking. Declinism is the belief/ideology that life is declining toward something worse, toward some great collapse and ending. Apocalyptic declinism is a regression toward primitive mythical/religious thought at its worst and is a close-minded denial of the evidence on the amazing progress that life is making on all fronts (see, for example, Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, Humanprogress.org, and many similar sources).

Secular? Scientific?

A repeated argument on this site is that environmental alarmism is a profoundly religious movement, and a very primitive form of religious extremism and crowd madness, though its advocates/proponents may present themselves as modern, scientific, and even secular/atheist.

The basic themes that drive contemporary alarmism are mythical themes that differ very little from the ancient and primitive expressions that we find in early apocalyptic mythology. Those ancient themes have been given new expression with contemporary definitions, categories, and terminology. But the core ideas are just the same old, same old primitive thinking of past millennia.

Note these similarities between ancient mythology and contemporary “secular” alarmist ideology:

1. Ancient myth: There was an original paradise or perfection (Sumerian city of Dilmun, Eden).

Modern secular version: The past wilderness world was better, an earlier paradise world.

2. Ancient myth: Fallen, sinful people ruined the original paradise (Enki in Dilmun, Adam in Eden).

Modern secular version: Corrupt, greedy humanity has ruined the original paradise of a past wilderness world.

3. Ancient myth: After the “Fall”, life became corrupted and was heading toward apocalyptic disaster (e.g. the Zoroastrian vision of a corrupted world heading toward looming apocalypse, a vision that has shaped the Western religions).

Modern secular version: Life has become worse and is heading toward looming collapse and catastrophic ending (Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”).

4. Ancient myth: The threat of apocalypse demands the violent purging of the threat to life (the “evil” corrupting thing in the world) in order to save the world. This also relates to the felt need to make a sacrifice to appease angered deity.

Modern secular version: We must save life from the corrupting threat that is industrial civilization (“population bomb”, too many longer-living people indulging over-consumption, enjoying the good life and modern technology too much). Today the coercive purging of an evil threat is seen in the push for rapid decarbonization (i.e. purging the “evil” pollution that is CO2). This is the “secular” sacrifice of moderns, giving up the good life in industrial civilization out of a felt need to appease for wrongs done.

5. Ancient myth: After the apocalyptic purging of the world, the lost paradise will be restored, or a new perfect world created.

Modern secular version: By limiting human population and purging the world of destructive industrial civilization, then we may restore the lost wilderness world, and install a new millennial paradise. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Same old patterns: There is a direct line from correlated causal factors to related responses. Apocalyptic-scale alarms incite survival fear in populations. Exaggerated fear leads to irrational acceptance of mythical apocalyptic scenarios and embrace of related harmful salvation schemes. The feature of “imminence” in apocalyptic scenarios, with dates repeatedly set just years or decades ahead, heightens fear and pushes populations to abandon democratic processes and embrace totalitarian solutions. Nothing is too crazy when you are told that you must help “save the world”… or else “we are all going to die” because the end is nigh.

Note on the true state of life: End-time dates are repeatedly set, and then reset again and again (goal posts repeatedly moved back), because the end never arrives. The rising and improving trajectory of life and human civilization refuse to cooperate with apocalyptic madness. Life is never perfect, and many problems remain to be solved, but over-all there is improvement across history, progress toward something better and not decline toward something worse. Human goodness and creativity continues to make life on this planet ever better. See ‘Humanprogress.org’ among other sources.

Good news update: https://notrickszone.com/2021/02/24/nasa-vegetation-index-globe-continues-rapid-greening-trend-sahara-alone-shrinks-700000-sq-km/?mc_cid=f8831d8b9b&mc_eid=bbd9cad85f.

Question: Why are the Greens not celebrating the massive greening of our planet? During this “CO2 starvation era”, with a small rise in basic plant food over the past century (increased atmospheric CO2), plant life is once again flourishing. And so animal and human life also benefits and flourishes. However, as was more common over most of past history, plants prefer CO2 levels in the 1000-1500 ppm. Those are more optimal and healthy levels.

Section topics:
– Super-predator gods
– Human story in Campbell’s “Hero’s journey” framework
– Illustrating madness movements in Manoboland
– Indur Goklany- there is no climate emergency.
– Rethinking drugs and addiction.
– Madness movements.
– The paleo-climate big picture for understanding climate issues.
– A list of Alarmist claims versus facts.
– There is a logarithmic decline in the warming influence of CO2 with increasing atmospheric levels (overturns the alarm over rising CO2 levels).
– 18 prominent myths and alternatives in theology/spirituality (the larger mythical background of contemporary alarmism movements like environmental alarmism).
– “Both-sideism” or Independent status.
– Bill Maher and self-awareness

More re site Project: Countering fear, exaggerated and unnecessary fear, notably, the fear some great metaphysical threat behind life, most commonly expressed through myths like apocalypse.

There is an ultimate meaning issue behind much human fear over history. It has to do with how early people, moved by their primary impulse for meaning, understood reality and life and explained that via their myths (systems of belief/meaning). The ancients struggled to understand and explain the obvious imperfections of the world (natural disasters, disease, animal predation and human cruelty) and the consequent suffering from that imperfection. Their solution was the creation of a complex of ideas that have continued to shape human understanding into the present in both religious and “secular” versions. And many of these primitive themes continue to incite unnecessary alarm in populations.

The central theme of early human narratives, the single most prominent pathology that has dominated human consciousness across history, has been the myth of some greater punitive, destroying Force or Spirit that punishes humanity through the natural world. This anti-human myth has deformed human consciousness with fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, and despair.

Bette Midler (Feb. 2021) offered a recent example of this still common belief in divine retaliation through nature- https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bette-midler-texas-outages-god-punishing-ted-cruz-john-cornyn. She may have been joking somewhat, with only a smidgeon of truthiness, but her comment voiced, once again, the oldest and most destructive religious belief in our history- that of angry, vengeful gods punishing imperfect humanity. Read the rest of the opening comment here