Exploring human nature and Christianity
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Aristotle was a Greek polymath who came to the conclusion that the world consists of four elements; fire, earth, water and air. While he may have misidentified the true elements the universe consists of, he did identify the four states of matter that the universe consists of. In addition to water, earth, air, and fire being able to represent the four states of matter, they have also been able to represent different types of personality and government as displayed by the tv show ‘Avatar the Last Airbender,’ and the sequel series, ‘The Legend of Korra.’ For many months I have tired figuring out the implications of the states of matter from a social aspect trying to determine what exactly they represent form a macro scale such as what type of government they represent. I believe I have finally figured out what they truly represent and I believe what they represent is where the rights of individuals come from.
Fire represents plasma, the state of matter that has the most energy and makes up the stars, electricity, and fire. Plasma molecules are basically ionized gas molecules, which causes the separation of the electrons causing the molecules to move more rapidly than the other states of matter. Fire personality types, are often characterized as being passionate, volatile, authoritative, and achieving.
The Fire nation in ‘Avatar the Last Airbender,'(ATLA) fire-benders are characterized by having desire and will. Overall the fire mentality is that rights only belong to those who have power much like how plasma molecule movement is because of energy. This can be seen all throughout ATLA. Iroh even though he was seen as a strong competent leader for most of his life was seen as a disgrace and for the most part and outcast after he abandons a war after the death of his son, Zuko’s (the prince of the Fire Nation) father completely rejects him because he perceives him as weak and disrespectful, and in the series finale the Fire Lord tells the Avatar he is unworthy to live in his world because of his weakness.
In our own world, this mentality can be reflected in the Japanese Empire (which acted as inspiration for the fire nation). The Imperial Japanese were guided by the philosophy, that they were the superior Asian civilization and therefore they should conquer all of Asia. This of course justified them stripping the rights of millions of Asians by killing, raping, and enslaving millions of them.
Overall, the rights of man will be taken away in a fire society for the sake of progress and power. If this means suppressing other cultures and letting people starve to accomplish it, then it will be done. Just as plasma molecules movement and direction is dependent on energy, rights in a fire society are dependent on the individual’s status.
Water represents liquid. Liquid molecules are somewhat connected to each other so they will all tend to flow together. Water personality types are passive, introspective, empathetic, and intuitive.
In ALTA/ ‘The Legend of Korra’ (TLOK), the water tribe is described as adaptable with a strong sense of community. Overall the water mentality is that rights come from the permission of the collective much like how the movement of water molecules tends to be dependent on the flow and direction of the fluid. The water villain in TLOK, creates a group called the Equalists. They are non-benders seeking equality for all by causing all benders to lose their power. Their leader however is secretly a water-bender, but he does seek to bring equality to all and believes he is acting based off the will of the collective.
In our own world, the idea that rights come from the collective was seen with the French Revolution. France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man states, “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.” This seemed like a good idea considering how horrible the commoners were treated by the wealthy in France, however the revolution had won chaos ensued. The French revolution leader Robespierre was soon killed and Napoleon seized power and brought back authoritarian rule to France.
Overall, the rights of man will be taken away for the sake of equality in a water society. If this means forcibly taking away wealth from the rich to be redistributed then so be it even though this has been continually proven not to work. As the movement and direction of fluidic molecules is dependent on the movement and direction of the majority, rights in a water society are only there with the permission of the collective.
Earth represents solid. Because of the lack of energy, molecules in a solid don’t move or move very little and are packed very tightly together. So if they were to move it would have to be either from an outside source physically forcing them to move in a specific direction (such as throwing a rock), or an increase in energy which would cause the molecules to separate (such as ice melting). Earth personality types are characterized as persistent, enduring, loyal, and at times superficial.
In an earth society, the rights of man come from the permission of the government. There were three earth despots in ATL and TLOK. The first was Long Feng who secretly ruled over Ba Sing Se. He would do this by continually placing security and safety above the freedom of citizens even if this meant literally brainwashing citizens to convince them they’re safe and that there wasn’t a war occurring. The second was the Earth Queen who forcibly indoctrinated her air bending citizens into the military and as the character Bumi pointed out that in her particular society it was her right to do this. The third was Kuvira who at first was only tasked with restoring order to the Earth Kingdoms, but instead decided to form a totalitarian Earth Empire in order to prevent chaos from returning.
As we’ve learned recently and as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out in the video above, there is a powerful positive correlation between believing in authoritarianism and prevalence of infectious diseases. Just look at what’s occurred since COVID-19. In Hungary a formerly democratic country the Prime Minister gave himself emergency powers effectively turning it into an absolute authoritarian state. China finally illegally took over Hong Kong with most of the world barely saying a thing. Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Oman, and Iran all banned newspapers saying it can “transmit the virus” even though there is no evidence to support it. Even in the United States with a virus with a 99.7% survival rate they forced millions of people to go out of work and continually use it as a reason to prevent people protesting for the right to work (but protesting saying America is evil is apparently fine).
Overall, the rights of man will be taken away for the sake of security in an earth society. As molecules of a solid’s movement are dependent on some outside force, the rights of man in an earth society are only allowed with the permission of the government.
Air represents gases. Gases are fluidic like liquids, but with more energy the molecules have more separation and are more free moving and independent of each other. However because of continual collisions of other molecules, the molecules direction is somewhat dependent on the movement of other individual molecules. Air personality types are peaceful, free, detached, and intellectual.
The one Air villain both series was Zaheer; an anarchists. He killed the earth queen saying she had no right to take away the freedoms of her citizens. He went on a mission to rid the world of all governments. Unlike the earth societies who believe people are inherently evil and are in need of government to provide security, Zaheer believed people in their natural states are peaceful and that man only owes allegiance to himself and the ones he loves.
In our own world, an air society would be a society that lives in anarchy. In recent history, the only country to truly be anarchic was Somalia. During this time international aid group Médecins Sans Frontières that the level of daily violence was “catastrophic.” In 2000 only 21% of the Somalian population had access to drinking water, and had one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Piracy was also very common during this time and has steadily declined over the years.
Overall, in an air society freedom is most important and no one has the right to enforce their will on another individual. The only problem is, without any government there’s no real way to enforce this. Just like air molecules, your free and independent until you collide with someone else.
In “The Right Side of History,” written by Ben Shapiro, he specifically points out that the reason the French Revolution failed and the American Revolution succeeded was because The French Revolution said rights came from permission of the collective but the United States Declaration of Independence says that The crucial section of the Declaration says:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
How are rights coming from God different from the air philosophy? Because God declared that we were created in his image and are therefore sacred. The Air philosophy understands the importance of freedom, but without the recognition of the sanctity of people and that men are capable of evil and require the possible punishment of loss of rights if they interfere with the sacred rights of other individuals, there is no true freedom.
This also allows for a balance of all of the elements. Fire and water are directly in conflict the same earth is in conflict with air. Too much emphasis on equality and it can prevent the progress of society as a whole, or too much emphasis on progress can create massive inequality. The same with freedom and security, too much security leads to little freedom and too much freedom can lead to not enough security. The United States has done its best to try and create balance with all of these elements with just enough security to not overly infringe on freedom.
We haven’t always been the best as providing equality, but we still have gotten to a point that we’re considered the least racist white majority country in the world while while allowing fairly equal opportunity by practically guaranteeing a path to the middle class if a person graduates High School (although we could do better with this by allowing school choice), gets a job, and doesn’t have a child out of wedlock. Often today people confuse the importance of equality of outcome over equality of opportunity causing the current disparities. We also have made immense progress from creating the greatest economy in the history of man, having the highest number of nobel prizes along with most summer Olympic Gold medals, and we were the first country to send a man to the moon. I believe we were able to do this because we weren’t founded by an ethnicity or race or religion, but on a set of values that worth and rights come from God and those rights are therefore inalienable and must be respected.
The current crisis in our country isn’t about racism, colorism, sexism, or another group identified by the BLM website, its about where rights come from. The BLM is specifically wanting to destroy the police (you can’t have a proper conversation on needed police reform while screaming defund the police and abolish the police), as Bret Weinstein pointed out on Joe Rogan they are attacking STEM/science, and Western civilization itself. It’s one thing to destroy Confederate statues (I could even get behind that), but to destroy the statue of George Washington who freed his slaves and had admiration for the Black Americans who fought in the Revolutionary war? To destroy the statue of Ulysses S. Grant who helped defeat the confederacy, was the President who oversaw Reconstruction with the first Black American politicians, and who took military action against the KKK? Or destroy the statue of Abraham Lincoln that was paid for by freed slaves while elderly Black Americans attempt to defend it? As it says in ‘1984’ by George Orwell:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
The idea of white privilege itself for example, is saying an individual can be judged based off their membership of a collective. This philosophy is the exact philosophy that “justified” the Rwandan genocide of millions of Tutsi, the relocating of Kulaks which lead to the deaths of over 6 million Ukrainians, and the killing of millions of Jews. You may not think that the BLM movement is going to lead to this, but I’m sure they thought something similar and it doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people heading the BLM movement (not necessarily all of them) are being lead by the exact same philosophy.
This is also about power. In a sense, they are taking rights away from individuals with the claim that they have a right to do so in the name of “the collective” or in the name of “social justice.” Even on the BLM website it specifically says they are seeking “collective freedom” not individual freedom. And even though with the innocent name “Black Lives Matter,” which has the facade of promoting the sanctity of man, they are in fact doing the opposite by reducing the importance of the individual to promote the importance of the collective.
I have specifically attempted to make a list showing how different the BLM movement is from Martin Luther King Jr. who lead the civil rights movement and Frederick Douglas who helped lead the emancipation.
Believes Black Lives matter
BLM Unclear. Many Black Americans who believe differently from the BLM movement haven’t been treated well.
MLK Yes
FD Yes
Equality for All
BLM Unclear
MLK Yes. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”
FD Yes. Firm believer in the equality of all peoples, be they white, black, female, Native American, or Chinese immigrants.[11]
Believes in peaceful Protests
BLM Somewhat. Many BLM activists have condoned the violence even though it was primarily committed by white people (about 90%) and it has especially hurt low income communities predominantly populated by Black Americans.
MLK Yes. Staunch supporter of peaceful protests so that when police would attack them it would help justify their cause.
FD Yes
Pro Segregation
BLM Yes. Demands of CHAZ/CHOP include all black patients must only be treated by black doctors and also created a Black only zone.
MLK No
FD No
Supports Women’s Rights
BLM Yes
MLK Yes
FD Yes. Staunch supporter.
Supports Christianity
BLM No. Have seen multiple cases of Leftists criticizing Churches for not being “anti-racist” enough or for daring to pray for the police.
MLK Yes
FD Yes
Wanted to “disrupt Western-prescribed nuclear family structure ”
BLM Yes. Exact quote from BLM website.
MLK No. Started a nuclear family.
FD No. Started a nuclear family.
Supports the Democratic Party
BLM Yes. Donations go to Act Blue.
MLK Neutral
FD No. Registered Republican.
Believes Israel is evil
(It’s not, every offer Israel has been given for the establishment of Israeli and Palestinian borders, they have accepted and the Arab World has rejected)
BLM Yes. Accuses Israel of being an “apartheid state” and “committing genocide.”
MLK No. “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist…Israel is on of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”
FD Not applicable. Died before creation of Israel.
Marxist
BLM Yes. Co-founder Patrisse Cullors is a self proclaimed trained Marxist. They are also continually using identity politics which is the Marxist strategy.
MLK No. According to biographer and personal friend “not a Marxist bone in his body.”
FD No. Classical liberalism.
Believes Constitution Insures Rights of all people
BLM No
MLK Yes
FD Yes
Overall the biggest difference between BLM and Frederick Douglas/MLK however is their view on the United States. Frederick Douglas and MLK continually made the argument that the constitution was always intended to extend to all Americans even if America often fell short in the ideals it was founded on. The BLM activists have argued that the United States was instead founded on racism and oppression so it therefore was never meant to not be racist. And that’s what Marxists do, they create an us vs them mentality and propose the only solution is to tear everything down.
What is quite possibly the most reprehensible proposition of the BLM movement is the tearing down of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family,” when so many problems the Black community are suffering are because of women having children out of wedlock. Children from single parent homes are 5 times more likely to commit suicide, 6 times more likely to be in poverty, 9 times more likely to drop out of High School, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.
It’s hard to say what can be done. It’s not exactly like the passion behind the movement is completely unjustified. The fatherlessness of the Black American community that lead to the current socioeconomic disparities was caused by the welfare state with Liberal politicians specifically going to Black communities with the thinking they were helping, and also in part by Nixon’s war on drugs. Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman even said:
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities……We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
There are also some police reforms that could be made such as no longer having qualified immunity, no longer having police unions, and having more training. In addition, school choice and the dissolution of teacher unions would allow Black Americans to not be forced to go to horrible schools and incentivize schools to become better.
It’s also very difficult to oppose a group that is literally called “Black Lives Matter.” Anyone who even remotely tries criticizing this movement get labeled a racist. Even being silent about the movement get you labeled as a racist. But the thing is, by targeting the police they’re only targeting a symptom of the problem not the root cause. Along with the lack of true leadership and the adoption of Marxism this movement is only going to cause more destruction for everyone. The movement has even taken on an almost religious like aspect in which everything being blamed on racism. I even debated a person on why the mortality rate with pregnant Black women and Black babies is higher with her saying it was because of systemic racism, while I pointed out arguably the biggest factor is that Black women are far more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy (about 50%) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1595019/. I’ve tried talking to others too but the movement in a sense is attacking logic facts itself. As linguist and historian John McWhorter said to Bret Weinstein, all that matters is being anti-racist. This means logic and facts don’t matter, you can’t have a conversation about this with someone who is Black and uses their personal experiences as proof (which I have personally seen on Instagram) or someone who is convinced all the problems in the United States are because of racism. So what can be done?
I sincerely disdain how much are founding fathers are being attacked right now. I understand they weren’t perfect, but I don’t think what they accomplished can truly be overstated. I understand the inclination to want to demonize individuals who owned slaves, but the honest truth is there isn’t a person on earth who is descended from slaves or slaveholders. To continually demonize individuals based on obvious atrocities that at the time were socially acceptable (even though a lot of the founding fathers truly were against slavery even if their actions didn’t always reflect it) and to therefore conclude that they are therefore evil and shouldn’t be listened to is a very wrong thing to do. Statues erected for individuals such as Jefferson and Washington were never meant to represent their perfection, but to represent the good they achieved in their lives that allow us the freedoms we enjoy today. To people who continually demonize the Founding Fathers for owning slaves, what makes you think you would be so different? If you were in that time with the means to acquire slaves in a socially acceptable setting, what makes so sure you wouldn’t? Do you really think that you are that much better than your ancestors who committed the same practices?
The concepts present in the Constitution that the Founding Fathers understood and were able to craft is insanely admirable. Because as I mentioned above they made the rights of man inalienable and made it the role of the Government not to determine those rights nor take away those rights but preserve them put us on the path of becoming one of the freest most prosperous countries in the world and allowed us to become one of the first to abolish slavery. They also in their wisdom recognized the importance of separation of powers making almost impossible for one man to have too much power. Such concepts baffled the French Revolutionists which ultimately contributed to its ultimate failure. In addition, even though we are one of the youngest countries in the world we have the oldest active constitution in the world because it was so well crafted.
Arguably the two pillars that helped establish the Untied States, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They along with Ben Franklin wrote the Declaration of Independence and both served as Presidents. Even though both were scholars of law, history, and philosophers like Montesquieu, John Locke, and Rousseau they both lived relatively simple lives on farms. After Adam’s presidency he went back to his farm and continued to work on it till he died (without slaves). In retirement, Jefferson pursued science and natural history through research, invention, and experimentation. Even though these individuals were close friends, they held very different beliefs.
While Adams was a Federalist, he was far more of a moderate than Hamilton. In addition while Jefferson was a bit more progressive and supported the French Revolution, even he abandoned support once it became clear how much of a failure it was. Even though both men had starkly different beliefs, through logic, reasoning, and love of country they were able to have healthy debate to create the country that we have today.
I think today more than ever we need another Adams-Jeffersonian like duo. Bret Weinstein on the Joe Rogan podcast suggested a dark horse duo. Two moderates from both parties who are reasonable, and patriots run for office. Brett’s suggestion was Andrew Yang and Admiral William McRaven. Honestly this duo would probably work great but arguably a better one would be Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi Gabbard. I believe even though they believe in lot of different things, as Dan Crenshaw himself said, they are capable of true discussions. I created a petition explaining more here http://chng.it/7MyqFVKf. Here’s a petition for the other duo https://www.change.org/p/american-citizens-draft-andrew-yang-admiral-william-mcraven-for-a-2020-independent-ticket-unity2020. We need a resurgence in unification and patriotism to reestablish the importance of what this country truly represents and bring us back from the brink of darkness. Because the path we are currently on could truly end with the deaths and suffering of millions.
On May 20, 2020, George Floyd a black American who’s own brother said was a gentle giant and man of peace, was tragically killed by a police officer in Minneapolis Minnesota. By kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes as the other officers watched Mr. Floyd tragically died. What separates this event from other cases of police brutality against Black Americans, is the fact that this case is so clear cut. Any way you look at it, what happened was horrible and the cop who murdered George Floyd and the cops that stood by and watched are guilty and no one seems to be disputing that.
What followed George Floyd’s death however was violent and destructive protests all throughout the country from Seattle to Miami. While many protestors are good just individuals, many are brutal anarchists responsible for the destruction of businesses of hard-working Americans along with violent beatings and deaths of others. The biggest problem with the riots was, we were all in agreement. No one thought George Floyd’s death was justified. Police have continually come out and said the actions against George Floyd are inexcusable. President Trump came out saying what happened was a tragedy and the police officers who were there were going to be investigated. Even though the murderer is in jail, and the witnessing cops were fired the riots still continued.
Some may think the destruction that has followed George Floyd’s death is the result of horrid racism that has plagued the United States. Reports however seem to indicate that the ones responsible for the actual violence and destruction are not the local Black Lives Matter activists, but out of town ANTIFA militants (more info here https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-antifa-will-be-declared-terrorist-organization). People are continually releasing videos of random piles of bricks popping up in downtown areas. This far-left extremism is not being driven out of a desire for justice for George Floyd or justice for disenfranchised Americans, but the philosophy of Neo-Marxist Postmodernism.
ANTIFA itself simply stands for anti-fascism. While there are disputed definitions of Fascism, it is generally seen as a far-right authoritarian form of government that emphasizes strength, national superiority, and violent exclusion of minorities for the benefit of the majority. Fascism is the same political ideology of Mussolini ruled Italy, Franco Spain, Peron Argentina, Imperial Japan, and most famously, Nazi Germany.
While opposing fascism seems simple and moral enough, the problem with ANTIFA is not only how they try to do it, but what they want to replace it with. Most of ANTIFA aren’t just opposed to pure fascism, but conservatism, capitalism, and the United States itself. They also want the current system of government replaced with either communism, socialism, anarchy, or a hybrid. Why is this wrong? Because conservatism, capitalism, and the United States aren’t inherently evil but are in fact forces of good, and communism/socialism bring destruction and chaos wherever they’re implemented.
It may seem a little conspiracy-like to say that ANTIFA is the one causing the damage, the media is supporting them, and that George Soros (the head of the Democratic party who funded Hillary Clinton, Obama, and currently Joe Biden) is funding ANTIFA and wants this destruction. One of the biggest voices for these ideas is Candace Owens. She became a Trump supporter shortly after attempting to create an anti-bullying startup that would utilize technology that would’ve discovered internet trolls and bullies. The result was being harassed online to stop by “white supremacists” and only to learn that those “white supremacists” weren’t real people but instead bots created by the Left who didn’t want to get discovered (more details on the story in the video above). Whenever she tries to claim George Soros is awful and wants socialism so he can stay rich watch everyone else to suffer, she is called “anti-Semitic” which is ironic considering even though he’s Jewish he supports programs that want the destruction of Israel such as BDS (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions), I’lam (a Palestinian media center which accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing), and more.
George Soros himself escaped Nazi Germany and since then has become one of the wealthiest men in the world, and specifically funded an organization called Open Society. Quotes from Open Society that were leaked according to city-journal.org, include funding Black Lives matter with the intention causing more blacks Americans to die because of “de-policing” and further divide the country. He also very much promotes socialism going as far as to praise China according to https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-truth-about-george-soros-is-damning-enough/ saying China has “a better functioning government than the United States.” Overall he supports ANTIFA, because as he was quoted by Newsweek in 2006 (full article here https://www.newsweek.com/soros-american-fallibility-110647), “the main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States.”
G.K. Chesterton has a metaphor describing the difference between leftism and conservatism. If you go out into a field and see a fence if you are a leftist your first instinct is going to be to tear it down. If you are a conservative, your first instinct isn’t to tear it down but to first figure out why it is there and then decide whether it should be taken down. The ideas the United States was founded on are very important and divine ideas. It’s founded on the idea that value and rights come from you being a person and nothing else, it emphasizes the needs of the individual over the collective (which involves freedom of speech and the right to bear arms), and that the role of government ensures you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There, of course, have been times when these ideals weren’t upheld such as when George Floyd was murdered, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t being upheld for the general population or that because they sometimes aren’t upheld the United States is evil and not founded on those values. As I talked about in my last blog, just because a system doesn’t work at 100% efficiency doesn’t mean you should get rid of it to replace it with a different one because no system works at 100% efficiency according to the second law of Thermodynamics.
The question shouldn’t be why bad things have happened in the U.S., but why we’ve been able to reduce it so much. Pretty much every society has a history of slavery including countries in Africa and some countries today still practice human trafficking such as Pakistan, Russia, and India. But we were one of the first to get rid of it and even though the British technically did it first, they were able to because the government “compensated” slaveholders for their “loss of property” whereas the U.S. fought a brutal civil war and demanded the slaves gain compensation. In the words of Ronald Reagan “No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than the living Americans the Americans living in this land today.”
Vladamir Lenin once wrote a book titled, ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ however this couldn’t be further from the truth. In the words of Dr. Stevie Davis, “While capitalism is based on voluntary exchange that benefits all parties involved, imperialism is based on exploitation and the exercise of political power, generally backed by a military force.”
For example, let’s say Bob grows apples and Joe makes soap. In capitalism, each party agrees on a trade of goods that is beneficial for each party, Bob gets some soap, and Joe gets some apples. If this were imperialism, Bob would beat up Joe, steal most if not all of his soap, and demand more for the next time he comes. While European powers played with this idea thinking it would be beneficial, in the long run, it is not. Because either Joe will no longer be able to produce soap, or he fights back and refuses to do business with Bob. Either way, Bob can no longer get any soap.
In communism, on the other hand, a third party would get involved and demand most of the apples and soap from both Bob and Joe saying it needs to be distributed to everyone. Or in the case of the Soviet Union with the Kulaks (wealthy Ukrainian farmers), the third party claims Bob also got his apples illegitimately and sends him to the wilderness to die (which happened to the Kulaks being sent to Siberia), and then Joe starves to death because Bob is dead and can’t get him any apples (which happened to 6 million Ukrainians). So while Lenin claimed imperialism is heightened capitalism and communism is the answer, in reality, capitalism is in opposition to imperialism, and communism can be just as destructive as imperialism if not more so.
As Larry Elder says in the video above, in many ways the United States has grown far less racist over the past years especially compared to 1960 when 60% of Americans would never vote for a black president and in 1958 only 4% of Americans approved of Black and White marriage compared to over 87% today. Sociologist Orlando Patterson of Harvard concluded the United States is the least racist white majority country in the world with a better record of protecting minorities than any other society, and offer more opportunities to blacks than any other society including African societies.
For Black Americans being targeted more by cops it turns out they are disproportionately targeted more at traffic stops, but part of this is because Black Americans statistically tend to break more traffic laws such as forgetting a drivers license, not wearing a seatbelt, or speeding. The NIJ even reported that 3/4 Black Americans who get pulled over admit they were committing a traffic violation. Black Americans also commit 50% of all homicides in the country (mostly black on black) even though they only make up 13% of the population.
Also, a study done by Roland G. Fryer, Jr from Harvard yielded that cops were less likely to shoot Black Americans (https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/fryer_police_aer.pdf). So what about George Floyd and the others? It’s not that racism doesn’t exist in this country or that cops don’t make mistakes, but we need to keep in mind it’s individual instances not a statistically significant targeting of Black Americans. According to the Washington post in 2019, 9 unarmed Black Americans were killed by police. As tragic as those deaths were, 9 out of a population of over 40 million Black Americans, is far from a statistically significant trend.
The reason Black Americans tend to commit more crimes is in part because of the breakdown of the family. There is a positive correlation between the rise of crimes committed by Black Americans and the government incentivizing women to have children out of wedlock. Tupac Shakur (one of the greatest rappers of all time) even said part of the reason he went into gangs is that he wanted the security and mentorship his life was lacking because he didn’t have a father.
Of course, another theory on why the Black American community commits more crime is because the U.S. has systemically targeted non-white groups and keep them in poverty. The problem with this is the fact that Asian Americans are in the top 1% in this country and within the last 100 years, they were locked in internment camps. You could then argue that it’s the U.S. specifically targeting the Black American Community to keep them in poverty causing them to cause more crime. The problem with this theory is the fact that immigrant Black Americans from the West Indies, Africa, Central America, and South America are disproportionately better off than native Black Americans (evidence for this can be seen here https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/04/09/chapter-1-statistical-portrait-of-the-u-s-black-immigrant-population/). Because of this, it’s reasonable to postulate that the problems the native Black American community is suffering are cultural and not because of systemic racism.
I think the best thing we can do is when clear injustice has occurred such as against George Floyd, is to peacefully protest demanding justice not use it to judge the rest as evidence that the United States is systemically or institutionally racist, or use the event as a justification to spread damage and chaos. Like Lil Wayne (some good rap music) said “I think when we see these situations, I think we also have to understand that we have to get very specific, we have to get so specific. And what I mean by that is we have to stop viewing it with such a broad view, meaning we have to stop placing the blame on the whole force and the whole everybody of a certain race or everybody with a badge. We have to actually get into who that person is. And if we want to place the blame on anybody, it should be ourselves for not doing more than what we think we’re doing.”
The alt-right (also called alternative right and the far-right just as ANTIFA is called the far-left) is an extremist conservative movement made up of Nazis and white supremacists in the United States. While ANTIFA and the Left demonize them and accuse non-Alt-Right conservatives of being part of the Alt-Right or being Nazis, there’s actually more in common with ANTIFA and the Alt-Right than you might think as explained by Michael Knowles in the video above. They both are for authoritarianism, the difference lies in what results in authoritarianism with a Leftist government using their power to enforce equality with the possible punishing of the historic oppressors, and Alt-Right authoritarianism enforces inequality such as Jews and Gypsies serving Nazi Germany or Koreans serving Imperial Japan. Both groups believe in the idea that the collective is more important than the individual and is obsessed with group identity politics. Both also reject God, ANTIFA, and Left reject God due to nihilism and the idea that “religion is the opioid of the masses” and the Alt-Right rejects God because they reject Christianity’s inclusivity of all races.
As evil as the Alt-Right is, I would argue ANTIFA is still far more dangerous for three reasons. First, the Alt-Right is incredibly small with very few adherents, while ANTIFA as displayed in the news has been able to spread chaos in some of the biggest cities all across the country. Second, the Alt-Right also hasn’t caused all that much damage with Alt-Right groups like the KKK killing less Black Americans in its lifetime than Black Americans die from other Black Americans every 6 months. Third, it’s pretty easy to distinguish the Alt-Right from other conservatives. The chances are your average American conservative isn’t racist, isn’t authoritarian, and believes the emphasis should be on the individual over the collective. However, distinguishing ANTIFA from the rest of the left and the Democratic party is a little more complicated. You would think the easiest way to try and distinguish ANTIFA from the Left would be that ANTIFA condones violence but the rest of the Left doesn’t. Yet all you can see on the internet or social media are people condoning the destructive acts of the protestors and sending money to bail them out. The beliefs are also fairly similar including the conflicting message of promoting anarchy and socialism with Democrats saying how people’s problems are the fault of the government, but the solution is more government. As dangerous and abhorred as the Alt-Right is, ANTIFA are the ones causing the country to burn at the time of me writing this post. However, as dangerous as ANTIFA is, it is still just a symptom of the underlying disease of Postmodernism.
Following the dark ages, came the philosophical movements of enlightenment and Modernism. In the Christian pursuit of truth, people began to instead of relying only on the teachings of the Church, began seeking what they believed to be the truth. This movement lead to scientific discoveries for how our universe works instead of just blind religious conjecture. I would argue modernism is far more Christian than pre-modernism because I believe God demands we come to our own conclusions and not just do what he wants, but understand why we should. Seeking truth, taking on individual responsibility, and having courage are the noblest and Christian pursuits a person can undertake and those are the qualities that defined modernism.
Modernism also helped lead us to what the United States is today (at least before coronavirus). Through the emphasis on Modernism, the United States became the freest most economically successful society in the history of man, and countries that adopt the same ideas end up becoming more prosperous.
Following World War 2, came the beginnings of post-modernism. Dr. Jordan Peterson is arguably one of the greatest critics of Postmodernism today. As said by Dr. Peterson, the first claim of Postmodernism is technically correct which is there is an infinite number of interpretations of a finite number of ideas. The problem is Postmodernism says each of those interpretations is equally viable. So in a sense, Postmodernism is based on the ideas that there is no truth, you can’t be held responsible for your actions meaning there is no free will and nothing you do matters anyway.
These folks form the current Far Left, including those who would be described as communists, socialists, anarchists, Antifa, as well as social justice warriors (SJWs). These are all very different groups, but they all share a postmodernist ethos. — Michael Aaron
Considering the foundations of post-modernist thought, you may be wondering how Neo-Marxism and ANTIFA are based on the same philosophy. I believe the reason is that when you get rid of all the facts and logic what are you left with? Emotions. And Neo-Marxism, socialism, and communism as destructive and dangerous as they are, have roots in compassion and lacing higher value on emotions than facts. That’s why with people like Ben Shapiro who try to combat leftism through facts and statistics, get labeled a Nazi (which is weird for Ben to be called because he’s an orthodox Jew).
I also believe another reason ANTIFA and neo-marxism were able to rise was because of the lack of responsibility. Post-modernism makes it so that nothing you do matters and that you aren’t responsible for your actions. So the idea that the government can take responsibility for you is very appealing. This way when bad things happen you can always just blame the government or the vague institutions or 1%.
A huge problem with Neo-Marxist Postmodernism is the fact that the fight never actually ends. Even though the evidence points toward the U.S. not being a racist country (even though it does have some racist people), people still say the U.S. is racist and horrible. Even though the homosexual community has been given practically everything they could want, the fight still goes on with fighting for proper trans-gender pronouns. So the fight never actually ends, because in Postmodernism that all there is. No replacement of a system with a new one, just a continual war against whatever system happens to be in place. And there’s never any appreciation or gratitude for the sacrifices made to get where things are now which are by almost any estimate considerably better than what was 100 years ago.
Christian philosopher Ravi Zacaraias said that Postmodernism origins go back much further; to Genesis 3:4.
“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Believing you know more than God, is a recurring sin throughout the Bible that is met with great disdain from God. When Peter believed he knew better than Jesus saying he won’t die, Jesus responded with “Get behind me Satan.” Ravi Zacharias also said, when all ideas are equal in value, humans are no longer equal in value. When you reject the true divine superiority of God’s truth, you devalue human life and bring about chaos.
Ultimately Postmodernism should be rejected because certain truths need to be upheld such as the importance of truth itself. You can also look back and see that the societies that adopt Western values are the ones that are the most prosperous from most Europe, to Botswana in Africa, to Panama in Central America, and Israel in the Middle East. You can also look back and see that Marxism does not work and leads to death and destruction in every country it’s been practiced in. For those who claim the Nordic countries are socialist, any expert or politician there will look at you confused and say that they’re in fact capitalist. The truth is, while all people are equal not all ideas are.
In my blog posts, I often site the work of individuals associated with the Intellectual Darkweb such as Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Debra Soh, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As the name implies, it is mostly rooted in the idea of the statements and research of intellectuals being censored or attacked, due to the fact that they contradict the Neo-Marxist Postmodern narrative. Even though members may be very different such as Sam Harris being considered one of the “Four Horseman of Atheism,” Jordan Peterson giving 2-hour long lectures on the Bible, and Ben Shapiro being an Orthodox Jew, they all believe in the idea of freedom of speech, sharing ideas, and coming to conclusions based on facts and reasoning. Even though the Left continues to push a narrative that they rely on facts and tolerance, people like the members of the IDW prove this to not be true. Even though none of these people share beliefs of the Alt-Right and many of them are continually attacked by the Alt-Right, in an attempt to discredit them the Left continually associates them with the Alt-Right. Hopefully, through the continual work of these individuals and others like them, we can fight against Postmodernism and restore the importance of basing decisions not on emotion, but on truth.
The riots happening as I write this, are occurring because we no longer value truth or the pursuit of what is meaningful. We should always fight injustice wherever it may be, but we need to understand what injustice we are fighting against. To find the truth, we need the conservatives to remind of us of the ideas that work, and liberals to present new ideas that may work better. If we continue to misdiagnose the problem, we’re never going to find the solution.
Jesus Christ is arguably one of the most influential people to have ever lived. To this day the Bible is the most bought book in the world. Even though almost everyone in the world has heard of Jesus, he is often misrepresented and the significance of what he truly represents can be an incredibly difficult concept to grasp.
In one of my previous blogs, https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/08/15/the-significance-of-dragons/ I explored depictions of dragons throughout various cultures and how while they may be portrayed very differently across various cultures, they still carried universal truths such as being an embodiment of chaos. The idea of a heroic “Christ-like” figure fighting the dragon of chaos is also a motif that can be found in many different cultures. What is even more interesting though is, how many are often associated with lightning, are the son of the head deity, and are fighting a dragon-like creature that embodies chaos. The association with lightning, I would guess is because lightning for most of history was seen as this mysterious power that came from the sky, so it doesn’t seem like too much of a leap to associate a destructive power coming from the sky with a God. What’s interesting though is how dependent our current society has become on what lightning consists of; electricity. And interestingly enough if electricity were to theoretically disappear than the chaos (the dragon) would become rampant throughout society.
Above you can see four different lightning deities that were found in modern day Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, India, Lithuania, and more. All of which were Gods of storms, but the similarities don’t stop there for some of them.
Above is Thor (the Norse and Germanic God of thunder), who was the son of the God of Gods Odin, fighting Jormungandr. It’s said in Ragnarök, during the end time’s Thor will slay Jormungandr and die shortly after due to being poisoned by him.
Above is Indra (an ancient Vedic deity of storms in Hinduism, a guardian deity in Buddhism, and the king of the highest heaven in Jainism) who fought against Vritra who represents drought and was fought by Indra because he was keeping water from the people. According to Max Muller, Both Indra and Thor are storm gods, with powers over lightning and thunder, both carry hammer or equivalent, for both the weapon returns to their hand after they hurl it, both are associated with bulls in the earliest layer of respective texts, both use thunder as a battle-cry, both protectors of mankind, both are described with legends about “milking the cloud-cows”, both are benevolent giants, gods of strength, of life, of marriage and the healing gods.
In Japanese Mythology, Susanoo-no-Mikoto is a kami (a spirit with divine powers in Shintoism) who i associated with the sea and storms. He is also the son of the Shinto God Izanagi (who gave birth to the many islands of Japan). Above is Susanoo slaying Yamata no Orochi, the 8 headed and 8 tailed Japanese dragon/serpent. Susanoo encounters Orochi after being banished from heaven and is called by the two Earth deities to fight Orochi to save their eighth daughter from him.
In Greek/Roman mythology there are three different instances of the slaying of some sort of serpent/dragon. There is Zeus/Jupiter (Greek/Roman God of thunder) slaying Typhon (the embodiment of chaos) as shown above. There are also stories of sons of Zeus/Jupiter slaying serpents/dragons. Apollo (son of Zeus/Jupiter) the God of music and the sun slays a massive serpent shortly after being born. There’s also the story of Heracles/Hercules (half-human son of Zeus) slaying the hydra (a dragon with multiple heads).
Obviously, there’s a lot of stories and I could continue for a lot longer, but arguably the oldest one there is, which inspired a lot of the stories from above, is bellow.
In Mesopotamian/Babylonian/Assyrian religion there is Marduk and Tiamat (featured above). In Mesopotamian mythology, there were two-parent Gods Abzû the God of freshwater and Tiamat the Goddess of chaos and saltwater. Tiamat is also closely related to the Hebrew word tehom which refers to the deep formless waters the earth was before God created the earth we have now, Genesis 1:2 “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” There are said to be two sides of Tiamat, the kind mother who with Abzû gave birth to the Gods, and the monstrous serpent who is the embodiment of chaos. After the Gods are born, Abzû declares war on them believing they will destroy him (similar to Greek/Roman mythology where the Titan Cronos overthrew his father Uranus and Zeus overthrew his father Cronos). After Abzû is defeated, she declares war on the Gods to avenge her husband. She is then defeated by the later generation God, Marduk (who like Zeus is closely associated with Jupiter, becomes the ruler of the God’s after overthrowing the former rulers, and is the God of storms). Marduk then formed the heavens and the Earth from her divided body.
As I pointed out in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2020/03/29/the-importance-of-truth/, God used the word or logos to bring being to chaos and as it’s said in the book of John, Jesus is the embodiment of the word. So as Marduk confronted Tiamat creating the heavens and the Earth, in a similar way when the word was spoken (in a sense Jesus confronting chaos) all of creation came into being.
So you may be wondering, what makes Jesus different? Thor died after his final battle like Jesus died after his, Susanoo was sent from heaven just as Jesus was, and there have even been books written comparing Jesus’ similarities to the Egyptian God Horus. If all of these above heroes have so many similarities to Jesus why should Jesus be more relevant? Well the simplest and most obvious distinction, is unlike all of the other figures Jesus was an actual person. There’s not a credible historian who would deny Jesus was a person who once lived. The Roman historian Tacitus who had every reason to have disdain for Jesus confirms that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate (the Koran denies that Jesus was executed) and he would’ve even made a note indicating whether the information is unreliable or not but he made no such indication. American scholar Bart D Erhman says the collection of snippets from non-Christian sources may not provide much information about the life of Jesus, “but it is useful for realizing that Jesus was known by historians who had reason to look into the matter. No one thought he was made up.” The mere fact that Jesus was a person who lived, makes him far more significant than any other mythological deities he’s been compared to.
Some have theorized that perhaps Jesus didn’t actually die but instead was only thought to have been dead so that’s how he was able to survive. However as pointed out in John 19:34, when his side was pierced to confirm he was dead “blood and water came out.” In severe cases of cardiac arrest which can be caused by stress and/or myocardial infarction (caused by lack of oxygen which Jesus was experiencing on the cross), the heart can literally burst. In addition, the lack of oxygen Carbon dioxide builds up in the blood, resulting in a high level of carbonic acid in the blood. The body responds instinctively, triggering the need to breathe. At the same time, the heart beats faster to pump available oxygen. The decreased oxygen causes damage to the tissues and the capillaries begin leaking watery fluid from the blood into the tissues. This results in pericardial effusion (build-up of fluid around the heart) and pleural effusion (build-up of fluid around the lungs). So the fact that the book of John specifically references a rare but medically sound phenomenon consistent with what Jesus was experiencing and the people of the time weren’t aware of this type of medical phenomenon, indicates what was written was something that was actually observed. Because of this, we can reasonably conclude Jesus did, in fact, die during a Roman conducted public execution.
Some have also theorized that Jesus was never resurrected but instead his followers just took his body and lied about it. Even if you disregard the supposed 500 witnesses recorded in the Bible (because it is admittedly biased and there’s no real way to reasonably prove this) that observed Jesus after his death, there are still plenty of other factors that indicate Jesus was indeed resurrected. If the disciples were making up the story, why would they say women were the first to see Jesus? During this time women weren’t held in as high of a regard as others so to make the story more credible they would’ve said men saw Jesus first. The fact that they specifically said women saw him first indicates that they indeed did not make it up, and they all did see Jesus after he had already died.
One other explanation that could account for this though, is the fact that when someone dies, it isn’t uncommon for those who loved that person to see them after they have passed. Even if you were to come to this conclusion it still doesn’t explain one thing, Paul. Paul was the perfect person to become an apostle. Unlike the other disciples, he was a well-educated Pharisee, lawyer, Roman citizen, and had been intensely persecuting Christians believing he was doing the will of God. Besides, unlike the other apostles, he never truly met Jesus so you couldn’t say he was seeing a loved one who had already passed. Paul had every reason not to ignore the revelation he received that showed him Jesus’ crucifixion, but instead of ignoring it, he became one of the most fervent of the apostles. Traveling the world, going to jail, and living in horrible conditions all in the name of spreading the news that Jesus died for our sins, was resurrected, and was God.
Another major difference between Jesus and the above heroes he has been compared to is the overall example he left. For centuries, the Jews believed the Messiah that would come would be the Messiah that would drive out the Romans and reestablish Israel. As it says in Isaiah chapter 9:6-7 (KJV):
6 For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon His Kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
So what they expected with Jesus, was something like the heroes from above. A mighty warrior wielding power. But that’s not what Jesus did. Instead, he came and acted as the suffering servant. This of course was prophesied in Isaiah 53 (the forbidden chapter of the Hebrew Bible). As it says in Isaiah 53:3-5 (KJV):
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
Appreciation is arguably one of the basest needs human beings have. Heroes receive praise and appreciation. Just look at the photos above depicting those figures as heroic deities slaying great monsters. That kind of thing is what tends to first come to mind when you think of a hero. But Jesus during his greatest act, did not look like a hero and received no praise during it. As it is prophesied in Isaiah, he died for our sin’s and we gave him no praise for it. He came to tell us the truth and we rejected him for it.
My favorite movie of all time is “The Dark Knight,” and one of the most common recurring themes is the idea that Batman isn’t a hero. When the Joker demands Batman to reveal his identity or people will die, despite people hating him for it he refuses to do it. When allowed to kill the Joker, to be like a “hero” and slay the agent of chaos, he refuses to do it. In a different movie it’s revealed Batman refuses to kill the Joker not because of it would be too difficult, but because it would be too easy. He believes holding up his moral code is too important to compromise. And in the end of “The Dark Knight,” Batman takes the blame for the crimes of Harvey Dent so that Gotham wouldn’t be plunged into chaos by having all the work Harvey Dent did to save the city become undone. Even though Batman saved Gotham, he received no recognition and was hunted down like a criminal.
Jesus died for our sins, not for praise or some other reward, but because it was the right thing to do. Because what it means to be a Christian, isn’t to be some hero or to do take the easy path. What it means to be a Christian is to be like Jesus and try to do what we can to make the world a little better and serve others. Not for praise and not because it’s easy, but because it is the right thing to do.
I once had a conversation with a Christian Scientist. In Christian Science, they don’t believe Jesus to be God, and instead, believe we’re all rays coming from the sun and Jesus is the brightest ray coming from the sun. From what I understand, they see Jesus as a perfect state of being that can be achieved by anyone. I find this to be a very dangerous thought. The moment you believe you are perfect, you can do anything. Figures who saw themselves as perfect were able to convince many people to commit atrocities. Jim Jones proclaimed himself as the messiah, and then convinced his more than 900 followers dead, 304 of them children. Philippians 2:6 (KJV): “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;” Paul continually spoke of Jesus’ divinity yet Jesus being God and Man spent his time serving not serving himself. He even pleaded with God before his crucifixion asking if there was another way but still said: “not mine but your will be done.”
Also once you somehow come to the conclusion that you have “reached perfection” than what will allow you to continue to grow? Every mistake you make after (which your pretty much guaranteed to do) will just be ignored because hey, you’re perfect. You don’t need to fix anything. You can’t do anything wrong. I feel like sometimes people just kind of see life as like a tv episode. Like you make a mistake then you fix it and then everyone lives happily ever after. Well, what happens after the happily ever after? Are you really just going to keep making the same mistakes and expect things to be ok?
People today think that because being a Christian (or being Christ-like), is impossible and doesn’t alleviate all the suffering, it should, therefore, be abandoned. People see to think the same thing about Western values too. But it’s like Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other form of government.” The second law of Thermodynamics states that there is no perfect system and that the universe continually goes toward chaos. Often in Thermodynamics class, I would have to solve problems by figuring out which system has the highest efficiency. It was never about finding the one had that had 100% efficiency because it doesn’t exist. It was about finding the one that has the best efficiency. From what we can conclude, Christianity doesn’t eliminate suffering, but coming to the conclusion that it is inevitable and that it can be mitigated by being a better person by serving others and pursuing a higher ideal seems to work better than the alternative. It’s not an accident that the hero of Christianity is a suffering servant because life is suffering.
Of course, suffering does occur no matter what, even when it’s not our own fault. A lot of people seem to think if they just had enough to be content such as living at home safely with all needs being met that they would be happy but it doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Mere existence and being is suffering.
What’s interesting as well is that suffering also seems to produce success. A possible indicator of being a successful person is losing a parent before the age of ten. There’s a beautifully dark idea from a show I love called “The Magicians,” and that is; magic comes from pain. I believe this is true. Artists are often tortured people but when they are creating their art they are able to transcend their suffering. Living in a world with problems to solve, allows people the chance to find purpose and fulfillment and in that fulfillment, suffering can be temporarily transcended. Jesus made beauty out of suffering, by dying for us and allowing us be with God by giving his life. By following his perfect example, we should be able to do the same.
One of the greatest ideas that the United States was founded on was the idea that freedom is more important than security. It was also founded on the idea that the role of the government is to help ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Protests are happening all across this country during this pandemic because people believe the freedoms being sacrificed do not justify the risks. While there are irresponsible protestors such as the ones with guns, the ones demanding dumb things like haircuts, and the one’s mocking nurses are undercutting the overall message, but it doesn’t change the fact that suffering is ensuing because of this lockdown. When people can’t work, they’re more likely to become depressed and they’re more likely to take out their frustration on other people. Suicide rates are rising and according to the Washington post, the emotional distress hotline calls have increased by 1000%. Domestic violence is also rising according to The Economist. Experts in Australia are predicting more people are dying from suicides from the lockdown than the actual virus. I don’t deny the danger of the virus but the fact that there is such a high survival rate for those who are young and don’t have an underlying condition, means we should be able to practice proper social distancing while exercising our inalienable rights.
People have a strong need for meaning. Do you know why this virus outbreak happened? All the evidence seems to point that it broke out from a horribly maintained lab in China. Why was it horribly maintained? The same reason Chernobyl was. People in countries in communist countries just don’t care. There’s an old communist Russia joke, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” They don’t have the rights that so many people in the U.S. take for granted. If I wrote this stuff in China I would be either imprisoned or killed (just like many people who tried telling people about the coronavirus in China). People need freedom and meaning and without it life becomes hell. When people don’t care, things get bad. Just as they are right now.
Of course, sometimes horrible things happen even if you are doing everything right. I have a friend who became an atheist and she said she stopped believing there could be a good God because her friends who were both children got cancer and died. It would be one thing if the children her horribly killed because God allows free will. This, however, was natural causes. I’ve thought about it for weeks and the only remotely justifiable conclusion I can come up with is, where is the line. We do seem to view the death of children as especially horrible because children tend to be more innocent and lack moral responsibility. So let’s say kids 5 and under shouldn’t die from any disease, so once they turn 6 they can? 7? 8? Where is the line? The truth is the loss of all life is tragic but our mortality and knowledge of it are what make life meaningful. It’s why we don’t just waste our time doing drugs or watching tv. We know our time is limited and that idea drives us in believing that we shouldn’t waste our time. That we should do what we can to try and make the world a little better because of our presence.
Of course, these still may not be satisfying answers for someone who has lost someone close and at times the suffering feels like more than you can bear. But God isn’t indifferent to our suffering. Even though Jesus knew he was going to bring Lazarus back to life, he saw his friends mourning over his death and Jesus wept. And there remains the bright idea that at the end of this journey, at the end of all this suffering, we can rest in heaven.
One of the many ideas Jesus represents, is the idea of making order out of chaos. We are created in the image of God, with the same intention of creating order out of chaos. Life may be suffering, but in this life we can at times transcend suffering by pursuing the higher ideal Jesus represents with the hope that when we leave this world to rest, we’re leaving it a better place.
A few months ago at Northwest church Lynwood Washington, the preacher gave a sermon where he said we live in a world that pushes everyone to find their way be an individual. What the Bible teaches though is to be who you are with the limitations of being Christ-like. It seems like today there is a very negative connotation to any form of constraint or limitation. In a lot of ways there are great advantages to the lack of limitations we have. We can stay in contact with anyone at anytime from anywhere in the world, we have access to almost limitless information to the point that you can spend an entire lifetime studying just one subject, and if you live in a metropolitan area, you have practically limitless food option from Thai to Ethiopian. The Bible is rejected because it seem’s as if it’s rules and demands are too strict and now churches are becoming more and more lax. It makes sense considering how strict the church use to be, but I believe the overcorrection and lack of limitations is causing more damage than we think, and we’ve come to no longer appreciate the advantages limitations can bring.
What seems to be the overall consensus for the most sought after and admirable form of whisky (or whiskey in Ireland and the U.S.), is Scotch whisky. Despite being one of the most popular forms of alcohol it has to adhere to some of the strictest rules.
The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 dictate certain rules for what qualifies as scotch. Scotch whisky must:
When I visited Scotland, I got to go to a distillery and talk with scotch experts to learn a fair amount about scotch. Despite these restrictions that all distilleries must adhere to, there’s an incredibly high amount of diversity. Scotch can vary in taste depending on where it’s distilled from, such as scotch from islands tending to taste salty, lowland scotch tending to be soft and toffee-like, and highland scotch tasting fruity or nutty. It can taste completely different depending on when it’s being drunk whether it been aged longer or it just being consumed during a different season. It can change on how the barley was broken down into malt such as peat malt (common in Islay) makes the scotch much smokier compared to non peat or low peat malt. The restrictions also allow for experimentation with very specific aspects. For example, the barrel being used could’ve previously held sherry, wine, rum, or bourbon, each offering a different flavor profile. Even different types of oak can yield different flavors with American oak imparting mellow and soft favors, European oak imparting spicy bitter flavors, and Japanese oak imparting sandalwood and coconut flavors.
Distilleries around the world even attempt to emulate these restrictions. In Japan, distilleries attempt to emulate scotch to the point that they’ll only use barley from Scotland. Despite these restrictions, Japanese whisky is considered some of the most expensive and coveted in the world. Westside distillery in Washington, instead of following the American traditions of creating bourbon and rye whiskeys, instead choose to make scotch like whiskeys. They have won dozens of different awards and are recognized as one of the best distilleries in the country.
In our current world of massive amounts of information, it caused academics to change to where instead of being Greek polymath being versed in science, philosophy, and literature, you can spend your entire life focusing on just one thing from microbiology to Shakespearean literature. For example, say someone finds a group of experts and asks them all, “I’m sad, how do I not be sad?” A nutritionist would say it’s because of their diet and the solution would be to eat fewer carbohydrates, sugars, and processed foods. An exercise scientist will say it’s because they aren’t exercising enough, and that they need to do start incorporating workouts into their schedule. A sociologist may say it’s because of the social constraints created over time causing you to be oppressed. A psychologist may say it’s because of past unresolved childhood trauma. Who’s wrong? Probably none of them. People are too complicated for there to be just one simple answer to life’s problems. It’s not that the fact that we have so much information about distinct subjects is a bad thing, it’s just sometimes we can focus so much on one subject, it prevents us from seeing the whole picture.
I once heard the argument that it may be a factor in the decline of Christianity too. For example, a biologist may say because of the overwhelming evidence for evolution there can’t be a God, while a physicist may say because of all of the infinite factors that allow us to actually exists there’s can’t be intelligent design. A philosopher may say because you can get almost the same benefit from any major religion, there really isn’t any reason to adhere to one of them, while a historian will say how the Bible has incredible historical merit that books like the Quran lack (more evidence on this can be found here https://www.summit.org/resources/videos/historical-reliability-quran/?_bta_tid=40204719825476443239369041021154187221675865505606910440566115625549965419995499439391278008625822876169). Without a more rounded education, there isn’t as much communication and bridges between these fields that allows there to be discussion to find the answers to everything. When I was a senior in college working on an engineering team with mechanical, computer, and other biomedical engineers, I still needed some experience in mechanical, electrical, and computer to be able to contribute and understand what my teammates were working on. While it’s amazing that we are continually gaining more and more information on subjects, we need to remember to have a broader scope because the world is complicated and to try and understand it requires a diverse amount of knowledge and understanding.
In the pursuit of fighting rules and limitations, things such as femininity and gender are seen as nothing more than constraints that are currently being fought against by individuals all over the country. In the Rubin Report above, former sex researcher Dr. Debra Soh wrote a paper based on solid science that children should not undergo sex changes because the gender dysphoria they are suffering may not be permanent and that it’s actually more likely they are just homosexual and that they’ll outgrow their feelings of wanting to change genders. She even says she has gay male friends that are really glad they’ didn’t grow up in today’s world because they may have become females even though they comfortable just how they are now. In the pursuit of being “progressive,” people who are suffering a terrible illness are told they should just embrace changing gender when the science seems to show it really doesn’t help with the underlying psychological problems and may in fact only make things worse.
Another thing discussed is the attack on masculinity and femininity. As discussed in the video women are seemingly attacked for being traditionally female because they need to survive in a man’s world. It also seems as if things that were traditionally seen as feminine are attacked such as the idea of having babies. The interesting thing is, in the Nordic countries which are considered the most egalitarian, gender differences didn’t decrease they increased. Women were far more likely to pursue traditionally female roles such as nursing and teaching while men were more likely to pursue traditionally masculine roles such as engineering and being CEOs. I’m not saying that men have be masculine or women have to be feminine, but I believe the idea of attacking men and women who do embrace their respective traditional roles is very toxic and unproductive. Women shouldn’t feel like they have to be masculine to gain respect or worthiness and women shouldn’t feel bad for wanting kids.
Traditional masculinity also seems to be continually attacked as well saying how most of the problems from today are because of the patriarchy. Larry Elder, a libertarian attorney argues that one of the biggest problems for men today is that they growing up without a dad. A kid raised without a dad is 5/10 more likely to be poor and commit crimes, 9/10 more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail. He also argues it’s increased because there are economic incentives for women to stay single and raise children by themselves. It seems like one of the most important people can have, is a parent who lays down specific rules and limitations that allows people to properly develop in a way that allows them to be successful functioning individuals. I do recognize that this can be taken too far to the point of totalitarianism or having a father with so many rules and discipline that the child cant function properly, but it seems like having no rules can be just as damaging. I think that people can behave the same way as a good scotch. Abiding by a limited set of limitations but still blossoming into a successful individual.
In the episode ‘House Rules,’ of the Cartoon Network show ‘Regular Show,’ the main characters stumble into a world where rules don’t exist. At first, they think that there is some rule against rules, but once everyone in the realm turns on them they learn there isn’t a rule against rules. Once they discover that, they can introduce rules it creates almost a vacuum effect and every rule no matter how arbitrary takes effect on the entire realm. Like in the Regular Show episode, arbitrary rules are continually being introduced such as referring to people by the proper pronoun or needing to check your privilege. This continual creation of new arbitrary rules hidden under a facade of tolerance, as I discussed in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/, is, in fact, a new form of totalitarianism.
As pointed out in both Rubin Reports above, anyone who is not white and is strictly part of the left is labeled as a horrible racist. Even though the left claims to be tolerant it’s ironically become increasingly less tolerant. As pointed out in the first Rubin Report video, in the name of keeping diversity Harvard is discriminating against Asian students because even though they get higher SAT scores, Harvard will not let them in to keep increase diversity.
People tend to feel the need for individuality. One of the primary aspects of life is figuring out who you are. The idea os just being one of a million grains of sand on the beach or just one of a billion stars in the sky can fill us with dread. We tend to need to feel like the world is different because of our presence. So it makes sense that you’d want to throw off societal constraints and totalitarianism in the pursuit of your individuality. As I discussed in my post, https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/12/06/two-forms-of-evil/, too much totalitarianism causes people to longer have any individuality. But I think it may be a good thing to start thinking that living under the constraints of being Christ-like can not only still allow for individuality but protect it. Being Christ-like sets limitations that make you the best you can be by loving your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39) and truthfully conducting yourself (John 14:6 I am the way, the truth, and the life). The truth is, the vacuum effect will cause ideas and values to come into your life, but this way truly is an individual who is thinking for yourself and not some group because you are taking in the idea that your value and the value of other stems from you being a being created in the image of God. And that can never be taken away from you. As I’ve said before, true Christianity isn’t about blindly following rules, it’s understanding why those rules are in place. And as evidenced by my last blog where I showed how prosperous countries tend to be when they do take on Judeo-Christian values. Like with scotch, even when you do take on the mission to be more Christ-like, you still have a vast amount of room to be a truly unique individual that does benefit the world in a meaningful way.
Today, truth seems to be something that is losing significance. Doctors seem to find what gender a person identifies as, as more important than what gender they genetically are and therefore medically require treatment as, people continually seem to be believing in the concept that the earth is flat despite the scientific and mathematical data, and churches continually seem to find it to be more important to be politically correct than to stand up for what is right.
As the video above explains, we are currently living in a crisis of distinguishing fact from theory. I believe part of this is the fact that we have access to almost unlimited information which allows us to learn things from how to make sushi to government conspiracy theories. While it can be a great thing that we have access to so much information, the problem is we don’t know what to do with all of it, and it can often be difficult to discern fact from fiction.
There’s also the fact that truth can be difficult to find as the video points out because so many questions can be asked, that it takes a very long time for one thing to be explained. This is a problem that is being found in science, religion, and politics. There’s also the fact that flat earthers argument depends less on proving their own theory but showing doubt on other theories which again is being done in things such as religion showing how there are bad Christians or “flaws” in the Bible therefore it’s wrong.
This can be seen with religion as well. People now can be exposed to thousands of different religions and interpretations of those religions. More and more today people won’t even identify a particular belief they adhere to and just say they are either agnostic (a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God) or spiritual. I’ve even heard people say, “I don’t treat people good because of some religion, I treat people good because I’m not an a**hole.” What a lot of people don’t understand though, is the fact that the morality we currently have in place in Western society is due to Judeo/Christian ethics and Greek reasoning.
The video above is probably one of the best videos that can be found on the internet. There’s a lot of things important ideas in this video but one of the most important ones is the foundation of Western society being rooted in Judeo/Christian ethics and Greek reasoning. Socrates the father of philosophy is often referred to as someone who set up the foundations of Christianity because he concluded that there must only be one God by realizing the idea that there are multiple God’s isn’t very logical because there has to be some sort of deity that came before all of them that they all came from that must be more powerful and must be the only one worth serving.
From what can be observed about history, there are two types of societies that arise out of atheism. There is the conclusion that there are strong and there are weak, and that the weak should die so the strong can grow stronger. Which is the basic belief of fascism which justified the Nazis’ slaughter of millions of Jews, Poles, and other groups, and the Imperial Japanese slaughter of millions of Chinese and the slaughter and enslavement of thousands of Koreans. The other conclusion that can come from atheism is that all people are equal and the need to enforce equality is paramount which is the belief of communism. This lead to even more deaths than both World Wars combined with possibly 100 million people being killed all in the name of creating equality. Western societies are based on the teachings of God, which includes the need for pursuing the truth and having an emphasis on personal responsibility for your actions and freedom of speech. It also places an emphasis on the individual, not in a way that is selfish and focusing on oneself but focusing on others. “The Gulag Archipelago,” was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who spent years in a Soviet work where people would often be worked to death. He wrote that the reason people suffered so much was because people just kept lying to each other.
“And the lie has, in fact, led us so far away from a normal society that you cannot even orient yourself any longer; in its dense, gray fog not even one pillar can be seen.” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)
While no Western Civilization is perfect, they have been a force for more good and have created better lives for people than any other society in history. The ten most developed countries in the world according to World Population Review can be seen below.
All of these countries are considered Western countries.
Even Hong Kong and Singapore were former British colonies and have blended Eastern and Western ideas to form two of the most prosperous civilizations in Asia. Israel which is considered a Western-influenced country has the strongest economy and highest development out of all of the countries in the Middle East.
Panama is arguably the most U.S. influenced country in Central America, and it has the strongest economy and highest development index in all of Central America.
Botswana, a former British colony is now a capitalist country with the oldest Democracy in Africa and is considered the most prosperous and least corrupt country in all of Africa. They’re also 73% Christian.
Of course Western-countries have histories of being cruel and oppressive like any other civilization. But what makes Western civilization different is the ability to self correct. The British Empire had slavery, than William Wilberforce made it his mission to spread the truth that slavery was evil and got it abolished. The United States didn’t allow women to vote, then classical feminists spoke out and got the legislation to change to allow women to vote. What is happening now though as discussed in the video, is there’s this continual need for change that there’s no appreciation for the good that Western-civilization represents.
My argument here isn’t to say that non-western countries are bad, not even all other religions because religions like Sikhism for example, also emphasize the value of life (but again this belief comes from Judeo/Christian values). But what I am trying to point out is the success that occurs from civilizations that take on Judeo/Christian ethics which doesn’t seek to silence people but has them take up the responsibility of actively seeking the truth to hold the government and themselves accountable so that society doesn’t grow stagnant but continually grows and gets better. People today seem to continually attack Western civilization as oppressive and evil but the thing is you could say that about almost any civilization. What makes Western civilization not as horrible is the emphasis put on individual responsibility and free speech, so that the truth may be found. In the Wisecrack video, it says how modern science is created by coming up with a theory and doing everything you can to disprove it and improve it. I believe Western civilization functions the same way in continually trying to seek the truth, improve, and have an emphasis on the importance of the individual which is what allows Western civilization to be so successful.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is a former Islamic Somali immigrant who is known for critiquing Islam it to Nazism and authoritarian communism. One thing she comes out and says in the video above is while Western civilization certainly has it’s flaws, if you outright compare it to political Islam it is far superior. Islam is very specifically quashes reform and freedom of speech and any Muslim who tries calling for reform is killed and forgotten. She even mentions in the video that one of the greatest advantages of Christianity is the separation of Church and state, and it’s ability to reform over time. When the Catholic church was gaining too much power, the Protestant reformation occurred. When people of different Christian denominations were facing discrimination, they were able to immigrate to the New World where they were able to practice their respective beliefs.
If it really is true that Western civilization is so great despite it’s flaws, why do people lack the conviction to proclaim it? As pointed out in the video part of it may be Western civilization’s association with white supremacy. This isn’t a flawed conclusion because the far right certainly claims to be very patriotic even though they commit acts that really aren’t American. The idea that any group is somehow inferior to another is directly contrary to the core of Western values, which is that all have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
I believe another reason is because there can be a strong arrogance in thinking what you’ve grown up in is somehow morally superior to everyone else. As I pointed out in my first blog https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/07/09/the-danger-of-calling-oneself-good/(opens in a new tab) there can be a very serious danger in calling yourself good because it allows you to do horrible things. At the same time though, I don’t believe it’s a logical conclusion to reject values you have just because it was what you were first introduced to. My youth minister when I was in High School felt that way about Christianity because he had grown up in it and hadn’t known anything else. So what he did was he spent time studying every religion and still came to the conclusion that he didn’t just want to stick with Christianity, but Church of Christ itself. The reason who chose to stay a Christian, was because he saw a trend with all of the other religions. Most religions are about focusing on yourself and becoming the best person you can be and as a bi-product, this will help others. Christianity teaches the inverse, you should focus on others and as a bi-product this will make you a better person.
The same way the flat earth belief is gaining popularity is the same way anti-western society is gaining popularity. The thing is the flat earthers aren’t actually proving the earth is flat, but instead just showing why the Earth may not be round. The same thing is occurring with the far Left. They really aren’t showing some other viable answer, in fact by attacking Western-values such as freedom of speech they’re just causing the creation of a society where truth isn’t valued and all that matters is rebelling and protecting feelings.
To combat this, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out, we need to stand up for what we represent and understand that there are political philosophies that are worse. You don’t hear about people swimming from Florida to escape to Cuba, you don’t hear about people escaping Nordic countries to get to the Middle East, and you don’t hear about people fleeing Panama to go to Venezuela. While societies do have problems, they should be fixed through the scientific method of making logical amendments, not adopting a whole different ideology.
John 1:1 (NIV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The word being referred to is the logos. Logos according to Glossary PBS, is a Greek term used to refer to a universal divine reason, immanent in nature, yet transcending all oppositions and imperfections in the cosmos and humanity. An eternal and unchanging truth present from the time of creation, available to every individual who seeks it. As it is said in John, Jesus is the Logos made flesh. In Genesis, God uses logos to create everything. Dr. Jordan Peterson refers to this idea in the Rubin Report video above as, into the potential, you speak the truth and what comes from that is good, and Ben Shapiro expands on this saying like what makes a good glass, is the ability to hold water, what makes a good human is the ability to use reason to pursue virtue and change the world around them for the better which is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus went throughout Israel spreading the truth and helped people become more virtuous.
Throughout the Bible, God uses various individuals to promote the truth when there is an absence of it. In northern Israel, Hebrews continually turned away from God and worshiped Baal. God sent Elijah to remind them who the true God was and even mocked the priests of Baal because Jehovah was the only true God. Jesus came into the world as the literal embodiment of the logos and spoke the truth to everyone and called out the hypocritical Pharisees.
As I mentioned in my blog https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/12/06/two-forms-of-evil/, what people will do is instead of confronting the world with truth, they force the world to try and adhere to their views. Even in the wisecrack video above, flat earthers in their documentary carry out experiments that successfully prove the earth is round yet they still reject this idea. The left-wing psychologists who believe gender is a social construct, did psychological studies in the Scandinavian countries which are considered the most egalitarian in the world thinking because of this differences in men and women would decrease only to find the opposite to be true and that men were more likely to take on traditionally masculine jobs and females were more likely to take on traditionally feminine jobs and they try to suppress this information because it goes against the idea that gender is a social construct. In politics people today find it more important to attack Donald Trump for calling the coronavirus the Chinese virus ignoring the fact that the Chinese government are evil authoritarians who have slaughtered millions of their citizens, locked up and oppressed thousands of Uyghur for their beliefs in Islam, continually oppress Hong Kong citizens for trying to exercise their freedoms they’ve had the privilege of having for decades and actively suppressed information on coronavirus’ existence for months and allowed millions of people to leave China knowing many of them carried the virus, currently causing the deaths of thousands of people all over the world and causing the world economy to come to a complete halt.
A wise man once told me, that one of the most frequent mistakes made by Christians is reading the Bible for what they want it to say, not for what it says. People continually do this today not just with the Bible, but with statistics in general. Just look at coronavirus. The media made a big deal out of it in the beginning even though it was only affecting people who were older and/or had underlying health conditions. Then people wanted to make it seem like it’s not dangerous because the flu kills more people, which may still be true but from what we can tell corona can infect people much faster than the flu. Because of the fear that came from coronavirus, grocery stores ended up being depleted of resources. Because of a lack of fear of coronavirus, people haven’t practiced social distancing and have allowed it to spread even more.
What there needs to be more of today isn’t just truth, but a better understanding of when the truth is presented to us. And not to try and see the truth for what we want it to be, but for what it actually is. Is the coronavirus dangerous and killing thousands of people? Yes. Coronavirus live reports over 30,000 people have died from it as of now. Are you going to die from it? There’s a good chance you may not. Coronavirus live reports over 142,000 have recovered. Overall the best thing people can be doing right now is trying to stay informed, practice social distancing, and remember that this like everything else will pass.
One of the first points made in the Rubin Report video is the increasing idea that people seem to be putting more of an emphasis on sympathy and that anyone who opposes them is therefore unsympathetic, and even more so if you are an individual than you are unsympathetic toward the collective. As Ben Shapiro points out in the video that his slogan “facts don’t care about your feelings,” doesn’t mean feelings don’t matter, but that it’s more important to orient yourself in the world based on facts and logic. As I talk about in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/, political correctness isn’t about truth but instead about trying to feel good.
I think another possible reason why today’s emotions may be preferred over truth is the fact that truth can be very hard to find and takes a lot of work. Even if you do find the truth what will happen is you then have to give up an idea that you previously had and people identify with their ideas so much that if you give up one of them it almost like a piece of yourself is dying. But as said in the Rubin Report video the alternative, is that there is no truth or meaning. And this has caused an existential dread leading to an increase in suicide and senseless mass shootings.
In the book “Church of Cowards” by Matt Walsh, it’s discussed how Churches today continually favor the idea of being “politically correct” and feeling good instead of standing up for the truth and what is right. He even gives a scenario where Christian hating extremists come to the United States intending to kill Christians, only to find people who attend services that appear to be more like rock concerts and individuals who have such a lack of conviction they weren’t even worth killing.
Another idea that is discussed, is the idea of belief vs faith. People today may believe in a higher power but it’s harder to find people who act differently because of it. People who are willing to make changes to the point that they stand out amongst people. It even says in the Bible that demons believe in God and that there will be those who come to the father claiming to have been Christian but God will respond saying, “I know you not.”
I believe, one of the reasons for this leniency is an overcorrection from the rigidness that was originally rampant throughout the Church. I believe this rigidness was rampant to the point where no one wanted to attend. With the new leniency people attend, but it’s become lenient to the point that there’s practically no real commitment that needs to be made. I remember as a kid, I used to attend a fun Church youth group but it was all just games. It was fun but there was no serious truth to be found or conviction to be made.
I believe another reason is it is the result of an overcorrection due to how the Bible was originally taught. Dr. William Lambert, a preacher at a church I attended while attending college gave an anecdote that almost perfectly displays why this problem is occurring.
There’s a man who has never really liked church, but his friends attend and one day they convince him to come. He begrudgingly agrees and during service, the preacher gives a sermon about how he was sinful and going to hell. The man left angrily thinking it was a horrible idea. Some time passes and the man’s friend’s convince him to give church another try. This time it’s a different preacher but the message is the same; that he was sinful and that he was going to hell. Only this time instead of leaving angrily after service the man walked up to the preacher shook his hand, thanked him, and gave him some money to take his wife out to lunch. The friends confused asked the man what had changed since the message was the same. The man replied,
“When the first preacher told me I was going to hell, he said it like it was something that filled him with pride. But when this preacher told me I was going to hell, he said it like it broke his heart.”
When it comes down to it, it isn’t just what information is being presented, it’s how it’s being presented. For a long time again as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out in the Rubin Report video, people used to preach the religion as a duty that you had to do. While these are things you “have” to do they’re also things that you’d ultimately be better off doing. Instead of living a life of lies and meaningless nihilism, you could be continually striving for the truth and being better and fulfilling the God shaped hole in your heart. Personally I don’t want anyone going to hell. I don’t want people living bitter unhappy lives. I want people to be trying to the best they can not because they have to but because they want to and know that it would be better.
Often when a person is clearly shown how they are wrong, they will double down and hold on to their original beliefs. The man in the video above didn’t go about bringing KKK members to the light by telling them how they are horrible racists, but by treating them as human beings and finding common ground. The truth today I believe is often overlooked not just because people don’t want to believe it, but because people who have tried bringing it have done so not out of a place of love, but out of a need for superiority. This the problem which arises with theocracies. The Spanish Empire conquered and killed natives with the idea that they were doing it for God, and modern Islamic states force their citizens to be Islamic and say death to America claiming it’s out of service to Allah. To really allow people to find the truth you can’t force it upon someone, you can only help them find the path, but they need to decide to go down it.
We’re living in a very difficult time. We’ve come close to an all out war in the Middle East, we’re living in the worst global pandemic in living memory, and despite all of this, instead of people coming together it seems like people are just being driven further apart. In this time of uncertainty and anxiety, we need to remember that we as people and the truth will prevail, and we can’t forget how important it is to continue learning and staying in touch with friends and family. And keep in mind, the coronavirus got this bad because the Chinese government lied to the world silencing people who would’ve warned us months in advance, and knowingly allowed thousands of carriers to leave and infect the world. And we allowed it to happen ourselves because we kept lying to ourselves about what the Chinese government really is and have allowed them to continue to gain power and influence.
First off, when I say “American” I mean someone who is a citizen of the United States. I’m aware you could be from Belize, Brazil, or Canada and be able to call yourself an American and be correct in doing so. It’s just calling someone a “United Statesman” or something just sounds weird. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of anti-US sentiment. Criticizing the United States saying how we have only brought pain and suffering to the world and talking about how we’re horrible racists. What’s really appalled me recently though is how people have reacted to the death of the Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. I have seen friends of mine on Facebook and Instagram share posts about trying to reach out to Iran for peace or saying how he wasn’t that bad and how it was unprovoked. The Qasem Soleimani was an evil man who killed innocent Iranians and Iraqi, killed American soldiers and planned on killing more, and was viewed as an enemy of the United States and a terrorist for decades. Below is a video from an Iranian immigrant speaking out on how Qasem Soleimani was a monster and despite what the media is making it seem like, Iranians and Iraqi are celebrating his death.
In addition, I believe the members of the Iranian government to be an abhorred malevolence. They use Islam to force their citizens to do whatever they want and kill anyone who opposes them. When Iranians and Iraqi attempted to have peaceful protests, Qasem Soleimani killed them. I even had a friend who’s dad was originally from Iran who ended up hating religion so much because of how its treated in Iran, he refused to let his family go to church. Not just mosque, church.
There’s also an idea that we really don’t do any good in the world. This is addressed quite eloquently in episode 5 of season 2 on “Boston Legal.” In the episode, the US is being sued for cutting funding from a clinic in foreign country for promoting abortion which caused a woman to lose her baby. The following are the closing argument from both sides (keep in mind the show is over a decade old and some statements are no longer accurate).
Donny Crane: “This case is not about abortion. It isn’t about freedom of speech. It isn’t even about what foreign policy the United States chooses to conduct. This case is about hypocrisy and the arrogance of power. Now, under the laws of the United States, abortion is legal. But we tell other countries that if they want USAID, they cannot perform, encourage, or even mention abortion. We look the world in the eye, and say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” It’s the very essence of hypocrisy. So, the clinic that Kavita Pokharel went to had had its funding cut off by a USAID representative who mistakenly believed that a poster in the clinic advocated abortion. Now she had been to the clinic before, and everything had been fine. She had the reasonable expectation that the clinic
would continue to function. How could she? How could anyone be expected to know that United States policy is as changeable as the political winds? A political hack made a brutal, thoughtless decision that could not be appealed. And Ms. Pokharel’s baby died. At a time when we’re trying to spread democracy around the globe, let us show the world that we are not hypocrites. Let us show the world that when the government of the
United States makes a horrible, tragic mistake, the courts of the United States will make that government pay for it.”
Alan Shore: “I’d like to begin with a cheer. We’re number one! We’re number one! We’re number… It’s not much of a cheer. It’s repetitive and rhythmically uninteresting. But it does succinctly apply to our country, and has for quite some time. In fact, we’ve been number one so long that the rest of the world has come to rely on us. And we don’t let them down. We’re the world’s largest donor of development assistance. All in all, as a
nation, we donate over fifty-five billion dollars a year in foreign aid. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, everything is about money. But, we must never forget that there is a terrible human tragedy at the center of all this. Ms Pokharel lost her child. The loss of any child’s life is an incalculable horror. It is for that reason that I would ask you to award the plaintiff piles and piles of money. After all, we have so much to give away. Why not? Piles and piles. Thank you.
Oh, come to think of it, maybe we don’t have that much to give away, do we? Our national debt is now over eight trillion dollars. Eh, who cares? Give ‘em piles, anyway. What the hell? Never mind that we have thirty seven million people living below the poverty line right here at home. What does it matter that our own literacy rate doesn’t even rank in the top fifty countries? Just keep shelling out the foreign aid. Does it really bother anyone that we don’t have the resources to help the Katrina victims? Of course not! What’s really important is that the United States continue to be that big ATM machine to the world, doling out wads of cash to every country who wants it. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, never mind that we don’t have it. These other nations, they’re entitled, aren’t they? Even the ones who vilify us for protecting their freedom. By the way, listening to plaintiff’s counsel, I couldn’t help but concur how horrible we Americans are. Okay, so we donate fifty-five billion dollars a year in foreign aid. But then, we impose certain conditions on those gifts. Imagine our awfulness! And here, my God, we promise money to a clinic so long as they promise not to promote abortion. So they did. How dare we not give them the money just the same? We should have given them that and then some. We have the duty to provide these hand-outs. We have an absolute duty, because we are the United States of America. And these other nations, well, they’re entitled, whether they keep their promises or not.”
If all of this is true why is there so much hatred for the United States within our own borders? I’m hoping to explore that a little, along with what it means to be a member of the United States as well as the cultures that make up the United States.
While the U.S. has certainly committed some atrocious acts from genocide of Native Americans in California to starting stupid imperialistic wars such as Iraq and the Spanish American war, we have also done some amazing things. We sent a man to the moon, we invented the internet, and we’re the only country that truly fought and won our freedom from the British Empire based on the idea that all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As pointed out in the video above we may not be as deserving of the title “greatest country in the world,” anymore because we’ve betrayed those values. We sacrificed basic liberties in the pursuit of security, we promote the idea that value comes from whoever you identify as not because you’re a person (as I discussed in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/), and as specifically pointed out by the video and show as a whole, one of the biggest reasons for this is because we don’t get properly informed. Without being properly informed we can’t properly hold politicians accountable for their actions. Instead of just caring about providing information most news medias just care about fulfilling a political agenda. As I talked about in, https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/164151038/posts/206 we’re no longer treated as if we can think for ourselves and come to our own conclusions and freedom of speech is no longer honored as much as it should. The United States and the history of the world itself can be summed up as a struggle of ideas. Chaos vs order, traditional vs progressive, agreeable vs assertive, what are the right ways of acting? It depends. That’s why it’s so important we be given all of the information and be allowed free speech so we can determine what to do for each respective situation.
When people criticize the United States, they often try to compare it to the Nordic countries such as Denmark. Denmark has healthcare for all citizens, pays its citizens to go to college, has a $20 minimum wage (keep in mind it’s one of the most expensive countries in the world), 33-hour work week, and is also considered one of the happiest countries in the world. So why can’t the United States be more like Denmark? When I traveled there and spent a couple days in Copenhagen, it became perfectly obvious why the United States can never be Denmark.
One of the manny thing I noticed about Denmark was a strong sense of unity. They’re an old, relatively small, and low populated country. The United States on the other hand is very ununified (as I explain bellow), is the third most populated country in the world with over 328 million citizens (over 58 times the population of Denmark), and is also the fourth biggest country in the world (Denmark is the 133rd). Denmark also has one of the strictest immigration policies in the world, whereas the United States is not only first in immigration, but has a higher immigration population than the next 4 countries combined (and that’s just legal immigration). It’s not that this is bad, immigration is one of the defining features of the United States and if you’re a U.S. citizen, unless you’re 100% Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Native Alaskan you’re descended from immigrants. The problem is more the idea that people think we can keep up this immigration and then provide all of the services Denmark offers to whoever comes legally or illegally.
Theres also a massive personality difference between most Americans and Danish. The tour guide I had while visiting for example had a degree in Chemistry, yet he had to be okay with his finances being almost completely dependent on tips given at the end of the tour. There is also a Nordic lifestyle known as “hygge.” What it means is a lifestyle not focused on work or making money, but on contentment and simple things in life like going to a coffee shop with friends. While this particular lifestyle isn’t nonexistent in the United States, its just people here tend to put a strong focus on work advancement and making money while almost never just being content.
I once watched a video comparing the U.K. and U.S. versions of “The Office.” There was a very specific scene that’s in both versions where the boss begins dancing in a very silly and immature way, where the difference lies though is in his employees’ reaction. In the British version, the employees seem uncomfortable and the whole situation seems very awkward. In the U.S. version however, the scene is very bright and fun and the some of the employees end up actually joining the boss in the dance. The person who made this video implied the reason was because, the people of the United States are descended from the optimists. The people who left everything they had ever known because they thought life could be better. A fair amount of the people in Europe are the ones who were fine staying and being content with what they have. While there may be a general lack of contentment in the United States which can lead to misery, it also is responsible for a lot of good in the world. The United States is ranked first in nobel prize winners, first for summer Olympic Gold Medals, created the internet, and was the first country to land a man on the moon.
The “American Dream,” is the idea that anyone can come to the United States and through hard work become successful. Jay Z started his life out on the streets of New York, today he is considered one of the greatest rappers of all time (one of my personal favorites), is one of the wealthiest men in the world, and is married to Beyonce who is considered one of the most beautiful and beloved women in the world. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved to the United States from an abusive home in Austria and became one of the most recognizable actors in all of Hollywood and the governor of California. Ben Franklin, an American polymath, and founding father is arguably the best representation of what an American should be. He was the youngest son of 17 children who ran away from home to become a printer and publish his writings. He eventually became a wealthy newspaper owner, a renowned scientist, and philosopher, and was ambassador to France and President of Pennsylvania.
While it can be rare for the “American Dream,” to come true for people it is possible and it is able to occur in the United States because we have an economy where you can truly move up if you put in the work (a lot of work) and have the drive. While people continually criticize the top “1%” (and some actually do deserve criticism), the idea that people can get to the top is what helps fuel people in the United States. In Denmark, income inequality is the third-lowest in the world, but again part of this is because people don’t focus on getting to the top they focus on “hygge.” It’s not that this is wrong in fact it’s very admirable and seems to work in Denmark. It just couldn’t work in the United States because it’s contrary to the American dream.
In the book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America, award-winning author Colin Woodard identifies 11 distinct cultures that have historically divided the US. Two he didn’t include which I’ll attempt to talk about are Hawaii, and the southern portion of Florida.
Yankeedom
Yankeedom was first settled by radical Calvinists and is defined by valuing education, citizen participation, and intellectual achievement. They are also comfortable with government involvement. Politics in the country are also primarily a conflict between them and the Deep South.
New Netherland
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New Netherland was first founded by the Dutch and is defined by being “materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience,” according to Woodard. They tend be very commercial and a close ally to Yankeedom. As I mentioned in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/09/08/the-mortal-remains-an-exploration-of-human-nature-and-morality/, there’s a psychological correlation between openness to experience and liberalism. Both New Netherland and Yankeedom are high in both.
Midlands
The Midlands are the “swing region, that was originally settled by English Quakers. Large portions of swing states such as Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio are a part of the Midlands. Politics tend to be more moderate and government regulation is opposed. Overall they are a welcoming middle class society.
Greater Appalachia
Greater Appalachia was settled, by immigrants from war-ravaged borderlands such as Lowland Scotland, Northern England, and Northern Ireland. They value personal sovereignty and individual liberty and are “intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike.” They tend to ally with the Deep South however only to oppose too much influence from the federal Government.
Tidewater
Tidewater was settled by the young English gentry that started as a slavery embracing feudal society. They place a high value on tradition and authority.
Deep South
The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was meant to be a West Indies type of slave society. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation that threatens individual liberty. They tend to be higher conservative politics, which comes with phycological correlations of being less open to new experiences, and being higher in conscientiousness (hence the rigid social structure).
The Spanish Caribbean (Southern Florida)
The southern portion of Florida is a part of the Spanish Caribbean which is ethnically and culturally distinct to the rest of Florida which belongs to the Deep South. Miami is known as the capital of Latin America. It consists of immigrants not just from close Caribbean countries such as Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Cuba, but immigrants from all of Latin America. They even have schools that only teach in Spanish. Like other countries in the Spanish Caribbean, it doesn’t have an especially well defined culture, partly because the Spanish Caribbean countries haven’t had independence for as long as the other nations, and because it consists of such a high blending of various cultures. Politically however they tend to be more liberal.
New France
New France, received a high amount of French immigrants from Acadia Canada, following British occupation. It’s considered one of the most liberal areas in all of the United States. Its people are consensus driven, tolerant, and comfortable with government involvement in the economy.
El Norte
El Norte is a culturally Hispanic area that consists of the borderlands of the Spanish-American Empire. The region values independence, self-sufficiency, and hard work above all else.
The Far West
The Far West was develop mostly by industry controlled by the East. Far West inhabitants are typically more conservative and resentful of the East that controlled them.
The Left Coast
The Left Coast was settled by the Appalachian Midwesterners and the Yankeedom New Englanders creating a hybrid of “Yankee utopianism and Appalachian self-expression and exploration.” They are also known as the closest ally to Yankeedom.
First Nation
First Nation consists Alaskan natives who have tribal sovereignty. While the land area is huge the population is under 300,000. For more information on Alaska and Alaska Native check out my Instagram post bellow.
Hawaii
Like South Florida, modern Hawaiian culture is defined by mass immigration. During the sugar plantation era of Hawaii, mass immigrations came from China, Japan, the Philippines, and Portugal. As I discussed in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/08/15/the-significance-of-dragons/, the Native Hawaiians have a strong reverence for nature and the Hawaiian islands. This has lead to a strong distrust of U.S. mainlanders due to a lack of respect for sacred Hawaiian sites. At the same time there is a strong U.S. patriotism as well with a lot of the natives due to the attack on Pearl Harbor and manny native Hawaiians fighting in World War 2. Politically Hawaii tends to be more liberal and has had a democratic majority in all but one election. For more information on Hawaii, check out my Instagram post bellow.
While the United States is filled with a large variety of cultures and beliefs, what it means to be an American is that all human life is sacred and all the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The United States was founded on the idea that the proper way to live is to take individual responsibility and to live with freedom. Of course, this isn’t always an idea people love. When Israelites got their freedom, not long afterward they wanted to return to slavery. It can be difficult to strive for freedom and personal responsibility, but it’s also more meaningful, and it is what has helped allow the United States to have the greatest economy the world has ever seen.
In the ‘Lord of the Rings,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien, the primary antagonist is the dark lord Sauron. Sauron is a powerful being who seeks to have control over the entire world and have domination over all life. While most people are familiar with Sauron, thanks to the LOTR movies, what only the book readers know is that there was a dark lord who not only preceded Sauron, but was also his master. That master was Melkor (also known as Morgoth). Unlike Sauron, Melkor didn’t seek to rule over everything, but to destroy everything. I believe that these two motivations represent two of the greatest forms of evil. A need to control reality, and trying to destroy reality. These also represent the extremes of the Yin Yang, extreme order and extreme chaos.
Both evils have relevance with what Buddhism defines as the three poisons, represented by a pig, snake, and rooster. The pig represents “raga,” which is associated with unending greed without regard for others. The snake represents “dvesha,” which is associated with aversion and wrath. The rooster represents “moha,” which is associated with pride and delusion. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering and the source of it is desire. While I don’t entirely agree with desire being the root of suffering, the desires of people who exhibit traits of the three poisons certainly bring about a lot of suffering. Genghis Khan in his pride, wrath, and greed created one of the largest empires the world ever knew while killing around 40 million people in the process. Osama Bin Laden in his disregard for others, anger, and delusions killed 2,996 people on 9/11. It certainly takes a certain arrogance to think you know better, and that reality should submit to your will or should be destroyed. It also takes a certain motivation or wrath to pursue it, and great greed to continue pursuing it.
When I was a sophomore in High School, I learned about the Rwandan genocide. It started when Belgium had ruled over Rwanda and they created two classes of people, Hutus and Tutsi. These classifications were created based on trivial superficialities, such as nose size and skin color, but the reality was that the only way you could tell which group a person belonged to was by their identification card. During most of the occupation, the Tutsi were the ruling class. Catholic missionaries began to see how underprivileged the Hutus were, and how they were at fault. In response, they began educating them, causing a rise in upper class Hutus. Soon after independence, a revolution took place that saw the Hutus taking power. After the Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana, was assassinated, Hutu extremists began a mass genocide against the Tutsi and any Hutu who supported them. It’s estimated that about 70% of the Tutsi population was killed, which was between 500,000-1,000,000 innocent people. For a long time I wondered why this could have happened. What could motivate people to commit such a meaningless senseless slaughter of men, women, and children. Now, I think people just wanted to find something to blame for the miseries of life, and those men decided it was the Tutsi. It’s like Doc Holiday in my favorite Western ‘Tombstone,’ says.
Wyatt Earp: “What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?”
Doc Holliday: “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.”
Wyatt Earp: “What does he want?”
Doc Holliday: “Revenge.”
Wyatt Earp: “For what?”
Doc Holliday: “Bein’ born.”
The motivation of these people is a anger at reality that drives them to do atrocious things.
Totalitarianism is defined as a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial, requiring complete subservience to the state. One of the best depictions of this type of evil is in the book ‘1984,’ by George Orwell. The setting takes place in a dystopian future where war has caused the whole world to fall into multiple totalitarian societies. Everything everyone does is for “Big Brother,” who is always watching. One of the most insidious things Big Brother demands is not just servitude, but to have his word be seen as more important than logic itself. This is depicted by the primary character being brainwashed into thinking 2+2=5. It may seem minute, but logic is one of the most fundamental reasonings we act upon in life. The specific thing is, 2+2=4 isn’t some abstract concept or something that hasn’t been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Because 2+2 always equals 4. Saying 2+2=5 is as illogical as saying the sun is darker and colder than the moon. In every way, this is false just like 2+2=5. The novel makes it clear though that logic and truth aren’t important. The only thing that matters is what Big Brother tells you.
Big Brother also takes control over the protagonist’s will by using his fear of rats to break him and force him to give up his free will. The character enters a state of utter helplessness and dependency because he really doesn’t have a choice but to submit to Big Brother, and die saying he loves Big Brother.
In bioethics, when learning debating topics such as abortion and individuals being in a vegetative state, it demands an understanding of what life and personhood even mean. A substance is a living thing, such as a plant or human. It has an internal essence that defines it and orders its change. An object such as a robot, on the other hand, lacks an internal essence that allows it to change. Of course, sophisticated androids can be created, but there is still a clear external force that has caused it to come to be. Humans and even animals can display clear personality traits that aren’t necessarily developed from the external environment, but come from something internal. However, in a totalitarian society, individuality can become suppressed to a point where it almost can no longer be identified. In a totalitarian state, all that matters is serving Big Brother. In the book, the protagonist’s free will and individuality by the end is so suppressed, he ends up no longer being an individual who wishes to rebel against Big Brother. Instead he becomes someone who truly believes that 2+2=5 and that he indeed does love Big Brother. So in a sense, because totalitarianism suppresses the inner essence that has something be classified as alive, it can be argued that those who live in a true totalitarian state and enter a state of being as the main character of ‘1984’ did, are no longer living beings, and in addition, no longer have personhood.
A rebuttal for this argument could be, we already base our actions on sources external stimuli, but the difference is the plurality of sources. When you become a true servant of Big Brother, you longer do things based on multiple external things, but just one external thing; Big Brother. The main character Winston, use to base his decisions on multiple factors like love, logic, and morality, but by the end of the novel, all of his decisions are based on immediate survival from Big Brother. Even wolves who base all their actions on survival still have some free will in how they survive. Maybe a wolf feels he’s not getting enough food so he decides to challenge the leader to get more, or maybe he’s fighting and losing and can decide whether it’s worth it or not. In a ‘1984’ society, you don’t get to move up the hierarchy without permission from ‘Big Brother.’ Even a tree grows dependent on multiple factors from wind, sunlight, other trees, etc. But for a person truly living in a ‘1984’ society, the only factor that matters is Big Brother. Basically, all you are is a cell in a body and if you are perceived as a cancer, you get cut out.
This idea can also be supported by observing Nazi Germany. The Nazis were extremely health conscious and seemed to treat Germany as if it were one living organism with “alien people” such as Jews and Romani and “weak people,” such as those with disabilities, were nothing more than diseases that would infect Germany.
Totalitarianism can be found throughout history such as fascist states like Nazi Germany which caused the deaths of over 11 million. Historians estimate Totalitarian Communist states caused more deaths than both world wars combined at over 100 million people. As I mentioned in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/, philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that current political correctness is an even more dangerous form of totalitarianism because while it’s just as controlling, it has such a pleasant facade its much hard to fight against. While it may seem like a stretch that current far-left politicians are as bad as Big Brother, as shown in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/, they are trying to control free speech and trying to make themselves the sole source of morality. Just over the past couple days, my mother and I were in a hotel where she was watching Fox news, and the channel changed on its own to CNN after about 20 minutes on manny occasions. No matter what political party you believe in, there is no justification for this blatant control over exposure to information. Social media websites have been known to suppress conservative posts as well. Much like how Big Brother forces people to see him as the ultimate source of logic, politicians today try making themselves out as the sole source of morality and companies such as cable and social media are helping.
Totalitarianism isn’t exclusive to governments like North Korea, but can be found in people as well.
“If someone defines you, even in subtle ways, they are pretending to know the unknowable. There is a quality of fantasy to their words and sometimes to their actions. Even so, they are usually unaware of the fact that they are playing “let’s pretend.” They fool themselves and sometimes others into thinking that what they are saying is true or that what they are doing is right. When people “make up” your reality—as if they were you—they are trying to control you, even when they don’t realize it. “—Evans, Patricia (2009), Controlling People (p. 58). Adams Media.
While in some ways it may be perceived as innocent, having a boyfriend or girlfriend get mad at you for not texting back soon enough, or having a friend who yells at you for not taking their advice, it’s still a form of totalitarianism even if it is on a much smaller scale. As stated above, to be considered living requires an internal inalienable essence. If this is taken away, then in a sense you are no longer living. I’m not saying you should never change for someone, in fact, change another defining attribute of a substance, (a car being an object can never change on its own while even a tree can) but that change must be decided. Change is also important for relationships, that way people can get along better together. The key is work. People need to be patient with each other and understand that all people are equal, because no one should be enslaved by someone else.
People have continually tried to justify totalitarianism. The main argument for extreme order is that it prevents chaos. The show ‘The Mandalorian,’ takes place after the death of Darth Sidious (seen above), and it seems like the galaxy is just now in a state of chaos, and the new government is ineffective. Darth Sidious in ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’ even said,
“Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy. And, we shall have peace.”
So it begs the question, is peace worth totalitarianism? This has even been addressed with God. Something that turns manny people away from God is the idea that an all powerful all good God could allow such horrible things to happen. Often one of the most used example is the raping of a child. So how can God allow such terrible things to occur? In my philosophy class in college, we addressed this issue with the question, can love exist without free will? If everyone knew beyond all reasonable doubt that an all powerful being existed and would send you to hell if you don’t obey him then there would no longer be any atheists. But that’s not what God has done. God allows us to have free will because he wants us to choose to serve him. If we just chose God purely out of fear, then it isn’t true love. The protagonist in ‘1984’ dies saying he loves Big Brother, but because his free will and personhood have been taken away, is it really love? When people logically and knowingly choose to love someone it becomes real and meaningful. If God were a true totalitarian despot, then no one could truly love God. As stated in https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/10/19/political-correctness-and-how-it-threatens-our-culture-and-affects-christianity/, Israel translates as struggles with God, and the true people of God are those who struggle with him and choose to serve him through logic and reasoning, not people who try forcing their own will on reality or people who submit to the will of others without question. So to answer the question, I don’t believe totalitarianism is ever justifiable. Ideas such as not having moral responsibility and having safety in exchange for freedom may seem tempting, but free will and moral responsibility are what make us human. As said by Benjamin Franklin,
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
If you really want to read some messed up stuff, look up notes left by school shooters. Individuals who have looked upon society and reality and decided to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner against it.
Here are some some quotes from school shooters (full notes link bellow).
Harris: We need a #$@%& kick start. If we have a @$%#* religious war — or oil — or anything. We need to get a chain reaction going here. It’s gonna be like $%&* Doom man
— after the bombs explode. Tick, tick, tick, tick . . . Haa! That #$%&* shotgun [he kisses his gun] straight out of Doom. Go ahead and change gun laws — how do you think we got ours?
The boys talk about starting a revolution of the dispossessed.
Harris: We’re going to kick-start a revolution.
They discuss coming back as ghosts to haunt the survivors, to “create flashbacks from what we do and drive them insane,” Eric tells the camera.
Harris: You guys will all die, and it will be %&$*# soon! I hope you get an idea of what we’re implying here. You all need to die! We need to die, too! We need to $%#&* kick-start the revolution here!
Klebold: The most deaths in U.S. history.
Harris: [kisses his shotgun] Hopefully.
Klebold: We’re hoping. We’re hoping. I hope we kill 250 of you. It will be the most nerveracking 15 minutes of my life, after the bombs are set and we’re waiting to charge through the school. Seconds will be like hours. I can’t wait. I’ll be shaking like a leaf.
Harris: I hope people have flashbacks. [making shooting noises while aiming his shotgun] Isn’t it fun to get the respect we’re going to deserve? We don’t give a $%#& because we’re going to die doing it.
NIKOLAS CRUZ: Hello. My name is Nick and
I’m gonna be the next school shooter of 2018.
My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and
a couple tracer rounds. I think I can do — get
done.
Location is Stoneman Douglas in Parkland,
Florida. It’s gonna be a big event. And when
you see me on the news, you’ll all know who I am
(laughing). You’re all going to die. Pew,
pew-pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Ah, yeah. Can’t
wait.
Of all the lives in this world, apparently mine is the only one that’s meaningful. And that’s the truth . . . when you look at people today, you only see empty bodies, all dressed up and dolled up to the max but that is only the shell. Inside, it is empty. We only live to produce ourselves. We downright market ourselves. Every person wants to sell the product “I” as something wonderful, and because one person is dumber than the other, it works great.
Whoever doesn’t want to go along with it, stands alone. I say: “&$% you!”
Why do people have such a hard time taking things the way they are, I mean why don’t my parents, my aunt, or whoever else accept my Mohawk? Why do people not accept my appearance? They think to themselves: “Why can’t he run around normally?” But can you tell me what “normal” is? Is there a book or a homepage somewhere that commands you to act normal, including an explanation on what “normal” is? HARDLY LIKELY! SO, STOP
WITH YOUR HARDCORE CONSERVATIVE Attitude and finally accept that: “Normal” is I! Everybody defines “normal” differently, everybody defines it for himself or herself!
Is it too much to ask to be left alone? Are we condemned today, if we don’t want to know anything about anything, but rather want to live OUR lives? Yes! Because then the $%#@ cops come and bag you up! Own opinion . . . hasn’t been allowed anymore for a long time.
Miserable state! Miserable planet! Miserable life!
After people reject reality there seems to be two primary outcomes these individuals want in the world. Either they want reality to fall into chaos, or to no longer exist.
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes theorized that if rules weren’t enforced and people had t live in constant fear, their true nature would be revealed which would be nothing more than brutish monsters doing whatever it takes to survive. This follows very closely to the philosophy of the Joker from ‘The Dark Knight.’ One of the things that makes the ‘The Dark Knight,’ so captivating is the struggle between Batman and Joker. They are both fighting for the same thing; Gotham’s soul. The outcomes they want though are drastically different. Batman believes Gotham is worth saving and that order should be imposed to protect the good people. The Joker like Thomas Hobbes believes humans are inherently evil and that the laws people enforce are nothing more than a joke and that Gotham should exist in a state of chaos. Alfred explains his motivation well in this quote,
“…some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”- Alfred Pennyworth ‘The Dark Knight’
It certainly seems like certain individuals who have committed mass killings to have very similar mentalities. Some of the justifications people have used for school shootings include that it’s just a natural selection or to start a revolution believing chaos to be the path to a better world. As pointed out in the ‘The Dark Knight’ though, there isn’t any true logic behind a desire to want chaos. Like I discussed in my last blog https://basichumanity.home.blog/2019/11/01/watchmen-and-the-exploration-of-heroes-and-philosophy/, a few of the primary characters like Thomas Hobbes, believe humans are inherently evil. Rorschach and Ozymandias in response to this attempt to try and reduce it using their respective philosophies, but The Comedian, on the other hand, embraces it and decides to only make things worse. Because of the chaos that can ensue from the evil of man and the seeming randomness of the universe it may seem like the right thing to do is either totalitarianism to reduce the chaos, or embracing the evil we are and live in anarchy. However, I don’t entirely believe though that chaos reveals that our true nature is evil. Just look at how people respond in crises. In the summer of 2018, I was living in my hometown of Redding California when the fires were ensuing. I had dealt with fires my entire life but had never seen anything as bad as what I saw in the summer of 2018. There was so much smoke you could barely see the sun, each morning my car would get a new layer of ash, gas stations were running out of gas from people trying to leave, and many friends of mine lost their homes and everything they owned. In this chaos did I see the evil of man? No. I saw people riding bikes on the side of the road giving out free pizzas to families, I saw people open up their homes to people who either lost their homes or were told to evacuate. Sure I heard stories about people taking advantage of the situation to steal from people, but for the most part, what I saw was the decency of man.
In Sikhism, there is the belief that humans all contain the spark of God that just needs to be fanned into a flame. I think with all the horrible things we see and experience it causes us to forget that while people are capable of great evil, we are also capable of great good. At the University of Freiburg Germany, Markus Heinrichs and Bernadette von Dawans conducted a study indicating that when men are put in a stressful situation, and the results showed the participants were more likely to cooperate. Researchers believe this is because we are fundamentally social creatures. A study by Benjamin Converse and colleagues at the University of Virginia found that feeling out of control (through a reminder of one’s mortality) leads to greater generosity and helpfulness. So why do we think differently even when the evidence shows we’re more likely to display human decency in the face of chaos? Perhaps it’s the same reason news channels are more likely to exaggerate chaos and horrors then good, because we’re more likely to respond to it and pay more attention to it. If you have a brand new beautiful car and it gets the smallest scratch on it, all you are going to see is the scratch. We instinctively lock on to the bad because it’s a defense mechanism that has helped us survive.
Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the bad, Jokers exist in our world too, such as the school shooters mentioned above. But we shouldn’t let this distract us from the fact that when shown adversity, humans generally are more likely to be good than evil. As taught by Sikhism and the Bible, all humans are sacred and have a spark of God inside them that can never be forgotten.
The other evil certain people want for humanity, is neither chaos nor order, but total decimation. In the cartoon, ‘Adventure Time,’ the Lich encounters a being who is able to grant him one wish. His wish was simply the elimination of all life. The Lich will only do something if it will help him in his quest to eliminate all life. It sounds like the Columbine shooters, who are quoted above, went into that school with the desire for everyone to die, including themselves. The ultimate root of this idea, that nothing is better than something, is the idea that the suffering of the world is so great, that everything would be better off not existing. While few people are quite as extreme, the idea that nothing is better than something is prevalent today. Women are deciding to not have children because of climate change, people find the idea of a mass lowering of the human population has a viable solution, and suicide rates are continually rising in the United States even though they are falling in other countries.
A big factor in depression today, and the idea that reality should be rejected, is social media. One of the shooter quotes above justified his actions by the fact that people today are hollow, fake, and care only about superficial materials. There also seems to be a link in social media causing social isolation due to the fact that everyone pretty much just post the highlights of their lives, making their lives look perfect.
I would argue that another one of the greatest detriments to society are advertisements. The key to advertising isn’t selling an item, but selling the idea of happiness and that it can be obtained through purchasing something. The idea that happiness can be obtained through God or self reflection simply doesn’t make money. Many have bought into the lies from advertising like the newest phone, car, or a psychic reading can make you happy.
For starters, one of the biggest arguments against nothing over something is the idea that all life is sacred. Everyone is a being made in the image of the creator of everything. All human life should be respected, including your own.
While there are a great number of superficial and hollow people that may make it seem like a “revolution” is the solution, the superficiality of this world isn’t the true reality and the solution for that kind of problem is never violence. Hollow superficiality is loud and prevalent due to superficial influencers and terrible shows, like the Jersey Shore and Family Guy, but there is still true meaning in life that can be found. Dr. Jordan Peterson often points out in his lectures, that the amazing thing is that he is giving long college level lectures on philosophy and psychology, yet millions of people are listening. There’s also incredibly complex shows such as ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Game of Thrones,’ (first four seasons) that are immensely popular. In addition, once ‘Game of Thrones’ started going down in quality and became a dumbed down stereotypical fantasy, people called them out on it and showed outrage for it. People really are smarter than we think, and truly are craving something more meaningful and thought provoking then what things like advertisers are trying to sell.
A rarely spoken truth about nihilism and cynicism is that it can be just as ignorant as naivety. While there is superficiality, it isn’t the reality for everyone. While people do cause great damage we also can cause great good. While life can have great suffering, it doesn’t overshadow the great joy that can be found in life. Believing that everything is horrible, that humanity is worse than ever, and that the world is going to end is just as naive as thinking nothing is wrong in the world.
People should also not stop having kids because they believe the world is going to end from global climate change. Over a hundred years ago, sickness was rampant in cities due to horse manure. Schools had to be closed down and people were dying with no end in sight. Then the car was invented, which allowed all of that to end. The next problems will be solved as well, through human innovation, not through less people. The world has arguably seen more technological advancements over the past hundred years than the rest of human history combined. The solutions to our problems tend to be things we don’t even think of. When science fiction writers before the car wrote about the future, they wrote about mechanical horses. When ‘Back to the Future’ was made, they predicted we’d be able to video chat with anyone in the world, but not through devices that can be stored in pockets. More and more advancements are continuing all the time, especially now that communication can occur with individuals anywhere in the world within seconds. The idea that the world is going to end is far from a new one, but with all the information we have, the likelihood of it occurring is decreasing all the time.
A big problem with a lot of the non divine theories on the existence of the universe involves the idea of something coming from nothing. One of the most supported non divine theories for how the universe came to be is the Multiverse Theory. The theory goes that the reason we live in a universe so intricate, with the infinite factors that allow life, is because there are an infinite number of universes, and we happen to be in one of them that allows us to exist.
The thermodynamic problem with the Big Bang Theory is that it violates the first two laws of thermodynamics. The first law states that matter and energy can neither be destroyed nor created. The way the Big Bang Theory goes is that something did come from nothing, and if this is true then it means the first law of thermodynamics was violated. The second law of thermodynamics states that everything always goes toward disorder. For the order we have now to come from a chaotic event such as a Big Bang is illogical.
Basically the Big Bang is the equivalent of dropping a bunch of car pieces from a building and a car being formed at the bottom. The Multiverse Theory, however, allows this to happen because the car is being thrown down an infinite number of times so at some point a car would be formed. However according to the second law of thermodynamics, even if you had an infinite number of times to create a car this way, the car still wouldn’t be made because the universe is always going towards disorder not order.
When you read the book of Genesis in the Bible, you see that the world was chaotic and was nothing more than a formless body of water. Yet what happened was God spoke a word, or the logos (another name used to refer to Jesus), or the truth and from that, order was created. When we see most forms of order and drastic difference today, it can usually be attributed to intelligent design. Look at dogs for example. A maltese would never exist if it weren’t for human involvement. While the two dogs seen above have the same ancestors, they look almost nothing alike. Yet through human intervention, the maltese was created. Over time, certain dogs stopped having pointed ears, because they felt less stressed, due to human companionship and certain dogs being bred together to allow them to have the function and forms they have today. The same thing happens with the idea of creating a car. The only real way a car can be put together, is for someone to put it together. So from most things we observe, order comes not from chaos but from intelligent design.
An ethical problem that can occur with the idea of infinite universes is an existential belief that everything we do is meaningless. In ‘Justice League Crisis on Two Earths,’ when an evil version of Batman discovers that there are infinite Earths, his response is to destroy them all. His reasoning behind it is it would be the only action a person could take that would actually make a difference. In ‘Rick and Morty,’ one of the central themes in there being infinite universes, is that it makes all actions meaningless. So Rick, the smartest man in the universe, instead of using his intellect to help people, mostly uses his intellect to humiliate people, acquire meaningless items, and solve trivial problems, like getting his grandson out of doing homework.
Solomon, one of the greatest Kings of Israel, wrote in Ecclesiastes that despite all his wealth, wisdom, and accomplishments, it was all meaningless. Solomon ultimately concluded that meaning comes from fear of God. As C.S. Lewis described this fear, he said it’s not the same fear one would have of a tiger, but a fear that comes from love. The idea that we know that what we do actually matters, and that the creator of the universe loves us and cares about what we do, creates meaning.
In addition, the idea that there will someday be an end to the suffering, and after death there won’t be eternal nothingness, but something more and that there is a reward we can receive if we do good in this life, is something that people should find very comforting. And that an end to suffering, and experiencing eternal paradise, can be given to anyone if they just do what they can to be the best they can be.
There seems to be a belief that evil is stronger. That decency can be a weakness. But if you look at things from a macro perspective, it’s clear the inverse is true. The only totalitarian states left (North Korea and Eritrea) are both ranked very low in human rights, also like when Somalia was in a state of anarchy, everyone struggled to survive. Afghanistan, the fourth most corrupt country in the world, is considered the least developed in the world. Norway, the most developed country in the world, is ranked the seventh least corrupt country in the world. Germany and the United Kingdom, both considered in the top ten for most powerful countries, are both ranked eleventh least corrupt countries. Success doesn’t stem from backstabbing and control, but from cooperation and unity. While at times things such as totalitarianism, anarchy, and a complete end to suffering in this life may at times seem justifiable, they never truly are.
‘Watchmen,’ was a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and visuals done by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins released by DC comics. It’s in Time’s List of the 100 best novels. Unlike other comics at the time, this played a satirical show the heroes as complex flawed characters instead of morally righteous ones. In addition to having multiple other comics come from this, ‘Watchmen’ also has a movie adaptation, and currently, HBO has a ‘Watchmen’ series that takes place after the events in the novel. They all have different motivations and philosophies that they use to interact with the world. Also, almost every superhero has no actual powers all except Dr. Manhattan who has almost unlimited powers. The setting is New York City during the 1980s. Thanks to the help of two superheroes, the United States won the Vietnam War and Nixon has been president well past two terms and the Cold War continues to escalate with the whole novel having a feeling that human extinction from nuclear war could occur at any moment. The Government has also passed a law called the Keene act saying heroes must either retire or work as government agents. All retire except for Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian who become government agents and Rorschach who ends up becoming a vigilante outside of the law and is the primary protagonist.
Rorschach (Walter Kovacs) is the primary character of the novel. He is a detective vigilante who works outside the law and has a strict code of never compromising and punishing evil no matter what. As reflected by his mask, he sees the world in black and white. His mask and name are based on the rorschach test which is a test done by psychologists to analyze the mental state of patients by their interpretations of inkblots. This also reflects his belief that meaning comes from what we impose as can be seen from his quote,
“Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves; go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.” – Rorschach Watchmen by Alan Moore
He comes from a very broken home being the son of a prostitute who physically abused him. He was inspired to being vigilante work after hearing about how a woman was raped and with multiple witnesses observing and doing nothing. The event that he claims caused him to truly become Rorschach and begin killing criminals instead of sending them to prison, was a case that occurred late in his career when he was attempting to find a kidnapped young girl, one to find that she had been killed, butchered, and fed to dogs. The trauma this event had on him is reflected in his speech. Every time Rorschach is shown speaking after this event he no longer uses complete sentences. He’s arguably the most mentally unstable of the group and finds torturing people for information to be fine along with killing criminals. He also kind of picks and chooses what he finds right and wrong sometimes. He mocks Ozymandias for selling action figures of himself, and praises the Comedian as an American hero and deems his attempt to rape a woman a temporary moral lapse. He also has a very dismal view of people believing humans to be savage creatures that are the cause of evil in the world.
The novel follows Rorschach as he attempts to investigate the death of the Comedian a fellow superhero. At the end of the novel, Rorschach and other heroes discover that it was Ozymandias who killed him because he had discovered his plan. The plan is to end the war by creating an alien-like creature and teleporting it to New York killing millions and convincing both the U.S. and Soviet Union that there is an alien threat and that they need to unite to fight it. The heroes fail to stop Ozymandias and peace ends up occurring just as he planned. Because of this all of the heroes agreed to remain silent about it to prevent the save the world from entering nuclear war. Rorschach though refuses to keep it secret and says he was going to tell everyone because he refuses to compromise even in the face of armageddon. To prevent the truth from being told, Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach.
Rorschach’s philosophy was deontology, meaning all that matters is doing the right thing not the consequences. While this philosophy may sound good on paper, in practice it isn’t always the best. As demonstrated in the novel, Rorschach was so committed to upholding justice, he was going to send the world back into war and risk armageddon. In our world, this philosophy can be seen as ineffective by looking at the history of the drug trade. The United States thought if Pablo Escobar was taken out the drug trade would end, only to learn that right after his death the drug trade was bigger than ever because it had been taken over by his smarter competitors. Nowadays the government is more likely to allow cartels to exist but be intensely monitored, because they know if they eliminate one cartel, a new one they know less about will take its place.
‘Ozymandias’ itself is the name of two related sonnets published in 1818 written by English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ozymandias was the Greek name of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II who Watchmen Ozymandias (or Adrian Veidt) often compared himself to. One of the major themes of the poem is the inevitable decline of rulers with their pretensions for greatness. Ramses II of Ramses the Great, and is considered the greatest, most powerful, and most celebrated ruler of the Egyptian Empire. By the time he died Egypt was large and prosperous and contained many memorials made in his honor and many of his predecessors took his name out of reverence. Adrian has similar goals of wanting to leave a lasting impact on the world and takes a lot of inspiration from him and Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great was the Emperor of the Macedonian/ Greek empire and had made most of his conquests at a very young age.
Adrian was born to rich parents who died when he was very young. When they died he gave up all of his inheritance to prove he could make his way. He then followed the footsteps of Alexander the Great to learn from his example and was inspired afterward to become the superhero Ozymandias. Throughout the novel, he is called the smartest man in the world being very gifted intellectually. Partly because of his intellect and the knowledge brought from the existence of Dr. Manhattan, he was able to pave the way for advanced genetic engineering. He is also the most physically capable of the non-powered heroes being able to defeat all of the others with ease and being shown as so physically gifted he can catch a bullet. The only hero who defeated him was the Comedian in his younger years but when Adrian would confront him about knowing about his plans many years later Adrian killed him with ease. The event that inspired Adrian to begin working on his plan to “save the world,” was when Captain Metropolis (a first-generation hero) called all of the main characters together to form a group and combat crime. This ended abruptly when the Comedian chastised Captain Metropolis for being naive saying all of the vigilante stuff was nothing more than playing Cowboys and Indians with the threat of nuclear annihilation looming and ends the meeting by saying “Soon Ozymandias here will be the smartest man on the cinder.” This inspired Adrian to begin his plans. He retired from being a superhero not long after and helped fund his plans by creating one of the most wealthy companies on the planet by selling action figures of himself and using his intellect. In the end, his plan reaches fruition with the deaths of millions and peace being brought to the world.
Like in the poem however Adrian ends up revealing while he seems to be trying to do the right thing for the world, (he even made himself look at the pictures of every single person who would die because of him before doing it) he reveals he did it because he wanted to make a lasting impact on the world. While he seemed almost like a hero he truly was motivated by his egomania and the belief that he was superior to everyone else and that he was the only one worthy enough to take on the moral burden he laid upon himself. Despite appearances, at the end of the day, he was a self-serving attention-seeking narcissist.
Adrian’s philosophy was utilitarianism. The main principle of utilitarianism is to act in a way that produces the most happiness. Unlike deontology, the consequences are the only thing that matters not the means. Because of this, philosophically Rorschach and Ozymandias are opposed because their philosophies are opposed. One of the main problems of utilitarianism is like in the way Ozymandias had done it, it reduces people down to just numbers. Whether the millions who died by his hand were young, old, criminals, civilians, or any other factors, became completely irrelevant. Things such as morality, truth, and individual freedoms become irrelevant to utilitarianism. But the thing is these are the things that make us human. If we ignore things such as morality and individual freedoms, we become nothing more then androids crunching numbers into a calculator to try and determine what we do.
Dr. Mahattan is the only character with superpowers. Compared to other comic book characters ever created, he is arguably the most powerful. His powers include being able to have full control over the four fundamental forces. The four fundamental forces being gravity (the weakest force but with the longest range being dependent on mass and is only an attractive force), weak nuclear force (has a much shorter range and is the force responsible for nuclear decay), electromagnetic force (which is responsible for electricity, magnetism, and light), and strong nuclear force (the force responsible for keeping the nuclei of atoms together). This alows him to manipulate matter in a way that he can turn oxygen into gold or metal into glass. Dr. Manhattan also exists outside of time and space, meaning he can teleport anywhere at any time such as Mars (where he spends a lot of time), and experiences his own past, present, and future simultaneously. He is somewhat limited however because he can’t see the future for everyone only himself and Ozymandias was able to prevent him from uncovering his plan by making his vision more difficult by using tachyon particles (hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light).
Before becoming Dr. Manhattan, Jon Osterman was convinced by his father that he needed to study nuclear physics after the bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He ended up earning a Ph.D. in atomic physics and befriends fellow researcher Wally Weaver and ends up dating fellow researcher Janey Slater. One day Jon left Janey’s watch he was repairing in an intrinisc field experiment test generator and when he goes in to retrieve it, he ends up being locked in the chamber and was seemingly disintegrated. A few weeks later after reconstructing himself he appears again as Dr. Manhattan. His powers change him immensely causing him to become increasingly detached and lose his almost all of his humanity. He also exhibits Schizoid personality disorder which is characterized by reclusiveness. It can be said he’s not even human at all after his transformation especially because of this. One of the primary qualities of humans is a dependency on other humans and need for social interaction. The fact that Jon no longer had this can have him be seen as no longer human.
After Jon Osterman’s transformation, he becomes a nihilist who believes since life isn’t a definitive quantifiable concept it’s meaningless. Nihilism is the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless. The Comedian pointed out his lack of morality in Vietnam. After the Comedian shot a pregnant woman for cutting his face with a broken bottle,he tells Jon how he could’ve stopped it with ease but instead just stood there and did nothing. Jon also pointed out that none of the events that happen in the novel including the death of millions had no real effect on the universe as a whole. From Dr. Manhattan’s perspective this view of nihilism makes sense since all he sees wherever he looks is a collection of particles weather its a mountain on Mars or Viet Cong Soldiers.
As I learned from my physics professor in college, there can be a certain arrogance that comes with a knowledge of physics because unlike all of the other sciences, what’s taught in physics can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt and doesn’t change over time the way other sciences can. For the biological sciences, things are changing over time. Organs that were previously seen as useless turn out to be important, nutritionists use to argue carbs were good and fats are bad now it’s the opposite, and research on the microbiome is changing all of the time. In physical sciences, though we’ve used math to prove the speed of the earth around the sun, the gravitational constant on Mars, and that time slows the faster an object moves. However, for some physics has convinced them that nihilism isn’t the answer and that there must be something more. If any of the values of the fundamental forces were different there would be no life on earth. The second law of Thermodynamics states that the universe is always going toward disorder yet the world is filled with the order such as the earth having the perfect rotation, tilt, and distance from the sun to sustain life. And if water didn’t break so many rules such as the fact that it’s one of the only compounds where its solid form is less dense than its liquid form, there would be no life on earth. Because of these impossible odds and the fact that life does still exist gives a lot of reason to think there is something more out there.
Another reason for Dr. Manhattan’s nihilism is his perception of time. While he can see the future somewhat he feels powerless to do anything about it. In his own words, he sees himself as a puppet who can see the strings. This one of the reasons nihilism can appeal to people because if everything is predetermined and we’re powerless over what we do and what happens, it means nothing we do matters.
An obvious problem with the nihilistic approach is it means nothing we do matters and we therefore have no purpose. This of course can be very depressing. Major sources of meaning that can be inferred from the Bible are the importance of our actions, the importance of relationships, and the importance of fear in god. If the telling of creation is seen as a Hebrew poem, it means the meaning of the poem comes from the middle of the poem which would be the fourth day of creation. On the fourth day of creation God created the sun, moon, and star which are suppose to indicate times of work and rest. So one of the main messages from this is the importance of work and resting. Psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson often talks about how people who take his message of taking responsibility to find meaning in life, because of him go to him and thank him all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJp813tGH4
In this video, Dr. Peterson gets emotional explaining how after his talks fans will come up to him and tell him how is message of taking responsibility has changed their lives and has done nothing but good in their lives.
In Genesis 2:8 God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Helper which comes from the Hebrew word “ezer” which can literally be translated as vitally important. Meaning if Adam didn’t have Eve he would have died. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness?language=en On the TED talk done on the longest study ever done asking a group of men questions over they’re entire lifetimes to learn what makes a happy life. According to the study, the people who did the best were the ones that leaned to relationships with family, friends, and community.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon like Dr. Manhattan seems to be disenchanted with life and believes its all meaningless. Where they differ is Dr. Manhattan doesn’t believe there is a God, and Solomon believes meaning comes from a fear of God. God himself represents a true way of living and being the best you can possibly be. Instead of being nihilistic thinking morality is just an abstract concept Solomon believes morality and meaning stem from the all-powerful being who created everything.
The Comedian (Edward Blake), unlike the other main characters, was also a member of the first superhero group known as the Minutemen. Unlike other heroes, Blake was in it for money and fame and was known in his early career to beat up thieves on the streets and steal their money. He was a member for a few years until he was forced to leave after he attempted to rape a fellow member. Afterward, he ended up working closely for the government being trained in spec ops. When the Keene act was initiated forcing heroes to either go into retirement or act as government agents, he decided to work for the government especially Nixon (who he supposedly helped by covering up the watergate scandal and assassinated John F. Kennedy for). As a government agent, he and Dr. Manhattan helped fight in the Vietnam War. The origins of his persona are explained by the quote,
“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense” – The ComedianWatchmen by Alan Moore
The Watchmen novel itself starts with his murder. He was killed by Adrian because he ended up discovering his plan to kill millions of people. When he found out he ended up being traumatized by it being driven to talk about it with a former arch-enemy balling and crying admitting he had done terrible things but never anything as horrible as that.
The Comedian’s philosophy was absurdism. Absurdism is the belief that the efforts of humanity to find meaning or explanation is futile. As said in the picture of him, he understands that humans are capable of horrible things and are nothing but savages and he’s just indifferent to it. Rorschach’s reflection on his death was,
“Edward Morgan Blake. Born in 1924. Forty-five years a comedian. Died 1985, buried in the rain. Is that what happens to us? A life of conflict with no time for friends … so that when it’s done, only our enemies leave roses. Violent lives, ending violently. Dollar Bill , The Silhouette, Captain Metropolis … we never die in bed. Not allowed. Something in our personalities, perhaps? Some animal urge to fight and struggle, making us what we are? Unimportant. We do what we have to do. Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together … he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That’s why he was lonely.” – Rorschach Watchmen by Alan Moore
There’s plenty of evidence supporting The Comedian’s philosophy of the savagery of humanity. Of all the animals in the world, none of them kill as many of their species as us. All the archeological evidence points toward the first cause of death for a human was murder by another human (even the Bible supports this). In the twentieth century, we nearly ended it all in nuclear annihilation over some differing ideologies. And in the Watchmen comic the only thing that prevented it all was the deaths of millions and lie to keep everyone from going back to wanting to kill each other.
Then again, maybe we aren’t the savages we think we are. We didn’t blow ourselves up and the fall of the Soviet Union happened partly because of the book the ‘Gulag Archipelago,’ which made people realize they needed to take on individual responsibility and stop allowing the horrors that came from the communist regime to persist. Millions of people didn’t need to die to prevent nuclear destruction. And look at the world today. Despite what the media may say there has never been a better time to be alive. Absolute poverty is declining so exponentially the UN predicts it will be gone within a few decades, there are more fat people than starving people, violence is continuing to decline, instead of the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer the middle is continually growing, glaciers that were predicted to be gone by now are still standing, and people are turning out be a lot smarter than we thought using the internet to listen to university level podcasts and watching complex shows like ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Breaking Bad.’ Perhaps we are better than we think we are and perhaps this will only continue to be true. While we do indeed have the capacity for great evil, we still do have the capacity for great good as well.
The first Silk Spectre was Sally Jupiter who was a member of the Minutemen and was motivated more by fame and attention then actually helping people. The second silk Spectre, was her daughter Laurie Juspeczyk who was trained from a very early age to be a hero and was forced into the life by her mother.
Ideologically the two women are very different. Sally Jupiter was ashamed of her Polish ancestry and changed her last name from Juspeczyk to Jupiter. Laurie on the other hand, was proud of her heritage and changed her last name to Juspeczyk. Sally loved being turned into a sexual icon and took pride in being featured in a pornographic book. Laurie held nothing but disgust about her mother being treated that way and that her mother forced her to wear revealing costumes.
The novel focused more on Laurie and occasionally showed Sally as an older woman who had retired to Hollywood. She like Nite Owl, decided to retire from crime-fighting after the Keene Act. The novel starts with Laurie and Dr. Manhattan being romantically involved. When she breaks up with him because she feels he’s no longer human, he ended up losing his last attachment to humanity. Laurie then becomes romantically involved with Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) and they decide to become heroes again and end up saving a bunch of people who were dying in a building burning down then break Rorschach out of prison. Soon after that she and Dr. Manhattan have a debate on whether humanity is worth saving. Dr. Manhattan ultimately becomes convinced not because of Laurie’s words but the revelation she comes to that her father is the Comedian, the man who attempted to rape her mother. This causes Dr. Manhattan to see the value in life.
“And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle.” ― Dr. Manhattan Watchmen Alan Moore
Laurie helped Dr. Manhattan realize that every human being is a miracle, it can just be hard to remember. There are 7.7 billion people in this world and each one is a miracle and each one is sacred. People seem to place a higher value on pets then humans and people seem to justify the idea of genocide if it would save the environment. In addition, society has become almost numb to tragedies like suicide and mass shootings because we’re exposed to it through the media almost constantly. The truth is all life is sacred and according to the Bible, each soul as more value than the sum of everything else in the world and that’s not something we should forget.
The first Nite Owl was Hollis Mason, one of the first vigilantes who was previously a police officer who wanted to do more. Unlike the other heroes, Hollis wasn’t motivated by psychological problems like Hooded Justice and Mothman, money like the Comedian and Dollar Bill, or fame like Silke Spectre. Instead he sincerely just wanted to help people. Captain Metropolis noted that he was an “old school” crimefighter and a real “Boy Scout.” After retirement, he ends up writing a book exposing who his fellow Minutemen were acting as a voice of reason showing who they really were.
Dan Dreiberg became the second Nite Owl. After Hollis retired, Dan went to him asking permission to continue the Nite Owl legacy and Hollis couldn’t refuse being impressed by his technology and ideas. They ended up becoming close friends following. Unlike Hollis, Dan relied less on physical prowess and more on his self developed technology. Like Hollis, Dan was friendly, didn’t suffer from any severe psychological issues, and wasn’t motivated by fame or money. He instead just wanted to do the right thing.
When the Keene Act was enacted Dan retired and looked back on his time as dressing up and fighting criminals as silly. Despite this, he seems to miss it, which inspires him and Laurie to come out of retirement, dress up in their old costumes, and save people from a burning building. Sadly coming out retirement inspires a group of thugs to find Hollis and beat him to death, (which could be the author’s way of saying old school ethics are no longer relevant in the current world). After the attack on New York and heroes confront Adrian, Dan and Laurie leave going to hiding and once again becoming costumed heroes that fight crime.
Both Dan and Hollis were idealists. Idealism is the practice of forming or pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically. While it may seem like a great philosophy other characters didn’t think so. Adrian even chastised Dan as a child for his ethics believing them to not be enough to make a difference. While it may seem like in the grand scheme of things one person being good isn’t enough to make a difference. But what if it doesn’t need to? There’s a story about a beach that was covered by starfish who were slowly dying.
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?” The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.” “Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…” I made a difference for that one.”- THE STARFISH STORY – ORIGINAL STORY BY: LOREN EISLEY
Maybe that’s all it takes. While Dan didn’t save the world, he was able to save the people in the burning building. Even Hollis was able to help people in his early career even if he was a hopeless idealist. Maybe it’s not the big acts of power that save the world, but the small acts of kindness done by everyday people.
On October 20, 2019, HBO released its first episode of a Watchmen show. It takes place after the events of the comics with the primary antagonists being cops who are forced to work in secret and wear costumes so they aren’t discovered, and a terrorist group that wears Rorschach masks. While I was looking forward to this show for months I was immensely disappointed to find out that the group who wear Rorschach masks (the 7th kalvary with is a reference to General Custard’s 7th calvary that fought in Little Bighorn) are nothing more than white supremacists.
The intro of the show is of the Tulsa Race riot which is considered the worst incident of racial violence in history and the show itself takes place in Oklahoma much like that event. While I think it’s good that this event is being brought to light because it was something that had been almost completely forgotten for decades, I don’t feel like this is something that belongs in Watchmen.
The riot itself occurred during a time when Jim Crows laws were still intact (even though they were being fought against) and civil war and slavery were still in living memory. The location it happened in also was in what was referred to as “Black Wall Street,” because for the first time African Americans were making a lot of money because of the oil industry. It also happened in a newly created state who historically consisted of a large population of Native Americans who owned slaves themselves, and white people who supported the South during the Civil War.
So my main problems with this show making race the primary conflict is I simply don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it was almost 100 years ago today, and quite frankly, a conflict between racists and non-racists is just not philosophically interesting. The Watchmen comics raised questions like “Is it worth killing millions of people to save billions?”, “Is the truth more important than peace?”, “Is life nothing more than a highly overrated phenomenon?”. To put it simply I don’t think a lot of people wake up every day wondering whether they’re going to kill people of a different race or not. Because of that, this show disappointed me. But who knows maybe the show will be about more than that and honestly I’m fine with the protagonists fighting racists as a side conflict, but because they’re representing themselves with one of the most identifiable characters from Watchmen who represented deontology, it’s just very disappointing and I feel like this group could’ve represented something more interesting and having them just be hateful racists makes them completely unidentifiable and makes their cause nothing more than hateful bigotry instead of something greater than the character Rorschach actually represented.
The only real ideological similarity between the 7th Kalvary and Rorschach is they’re both extremely conservative and anti-liberal. However, the fact that the 7th Kalvary are racists makes their cause something people can’t get behind or see the merits of making it seem like being conservative equates to being a hateful racist bigot. At least with Rorschach while it was obvious he was flawed and very mentally unbalanced, his outlook on life was somewhat understandable and even honorable making his outlook at least worth appreciating. Instead of trying to create a thought-provoking show, HBO Watchmen appeals to our base instincts for a return to tribalism, and to blame the miseries of the world on a specific enemy.
I’m not the only one with these thoughts. While the critics are raving about the show, the audience is disgusted. Here are some quotes from fans.
“Bland and boring. Nowhere near as captivating as the graphic novel, or entertaining as the film. Even the creator Alan Moore said it was rubbish. If you want a decent graphic novel adaptation watch “The boys” on Amazon prime. I’m actually shocked HBO green lit this, they usually have good judgement. Long story short, it’s a yawn! Fans of the graphic novel and right to be dissatisfied with this.” – Rotten Tomatoes user
“It has nothing to do with the watchmen movie or the comics whatsoever. Im from eastern europe and im sick of seeing american liberal fantasies in almost every movie and show this days.” – IMDb user
“In addition to obvious references to current American political atmosphere, which everyone is tired of, the pilot can’t seem to decide if it wants to be political drama, satire, social commentary, or comic book entertainment. It weirdly mixes old and new tech, it weirdly mixes old and new culture, it doesn’t explain things and behaviour that simply doesn’t fit. You are left wondering when, where and why, but with a bad taste of current reality in your mouth. It reminds you of heavy history in one scene, then tries to be funny in the next. Characters are not developed, you are expected to figure them out on the fly. If a sense of mystery was the intention, it turned out to be more like a puzzle you have no motivation to put together. Funny though, because choice of actors is good, dialogue is decent and production quality is good. It’s just not mixed and baked well.” – IMDb user
“Terrible show, turn the one character from the movie (Rorschach) who wasn’t willing to turn a blind eye to using an act of force to make the world chose peace through fear to a white supremacists symbol who use fear a weapon. Its just bad writing, especially disappointed because I loved the movie and how it showed the weakness\flaws in super heroes and instead its this preachy s**t.” – Rotten Tomatoes user
Does racial violence still occur today? Of course, it does. On September 6th, 2018 Botham Jean, a 26-year-old black man originally from Saint Lucia who graduated from the college I attended (the private Christian college Harding University) was shot in his own apartment by an off duty white female police officer. I remember the day the news came out while I was at Harding teachers kept canceling classes because they couldn’t stop crying. My Facebook feed was flooded with older friends of mine saying how he was an amazing loving person who use to lead singing in Harding chapel and that they were devastated to hear that he had gone. Some of my most liberal and conservative friends alike continually shared the same posts demanding justice for Botham’s killer. Because of the situation of his death, it inspired protests and accusations of racial bias. When the trial occurred and when Botham’s brother was allowed to talk, he said he wants the same thing that Botham would’ve wanted. Which wasn’t to have Amber Guyger sent to jail, but to have her become a Christian. He then got up and hugged her. At the end of the trial, she was found guilty, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and given a Bible by the judge. It may seem like this wasn’t justice, and that if the roles were reversed the perpetrator would’ve suffered a harsher punishment. The people who participated in the trial ultimately didn’t make it about racism or vengeance, but about love and forgiveness. I think that’s the way to combat racism. Not shows that cause white guilt and make people want to revert to tribalism, but everyone uniting and becoming more Christ-like. Choosing love and forgiveness instead of anger and vengeance.
In conclusion, ‘Watchmen’ brilliantly holds a light to the human condition, superheroes, and the varying philosophies people use throughout their lives. While people are certainly capable of great horrors, we can’t forget that human life is still sacred and capable of great good as well.
For most of my life I had written South Park off as a mindless comedy that was in the same category as Family Guy. Recently I began watching the show and learned that I was wrong. While it still had what I saw as very distasteful humor, to still put it in the same category as Family Guy was a mistake. Family Guy is poorly written, evokes no contemplation, and has no other objective than making you laugh either through meaningless interchangeable jokes or depressing nihilism. South Park on the other hand, especially with their later seasons, does an amazing job of reflecting on our culture and calling out everyone. Christians, Atheists, Republicans, and Democrats alike all are called out by the show. Season 19 is arguably their best one, because of how the entire season brilliantly reflects upon political correctness (PC), gentrification, and advertisements, not only showing the effects of each but how they are related.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, PC is a term used to refer to language that seems intended to give the least amount of offense, especially when describing groups identified by external markers such as race, sexual orientation, culture, and gender. What’s interesting is while it seems to have a huge hold over our culture with laws and politicians using it to seem more appealing, only about 8% of which fall under the extreme left category with less than that falling under the category of far-right who they claim are ruining the country. 80% of Americans believe political correctness has gone too far and 10% of Americans didn’t understand the question. The people who don’t believe political correctness has gone too far are almost exclusively white, who make over $100,000 a year (which is something South Park alluded too by making all of the PC practitioners be white males).
The thing about PC is while it claims to be helping victimized people, it has very little to do with social justice and more just trying to feel good. Everyone hates bullies. So when someone attacks a bully, not only does it make the attacker look good, it makes them feel good. Part of the problem is in a lot of ways the people the PC claim to be fighting against don’t exist. As stated above the people who make up the extreme right and are bigoted racists make up a very small portion of the population. Milo Yiannopoulos (a homosexual alternative right advocate) said in his interview with Jordan Peterson that the LGBTQ community has been given pretty much everything they could want. They have same-sex marriage, a pride month, and Caitlyn Jenner (who was also on season 19 of South Park) a former man who became a woman has been continually hailed as a hero. Instead of celebrating and acting like the war is won, as Milo points out they’re now fighting language such as transgender pronouns. It’s not even the LGBTQ community however that is attacking language. Because it can hurt feelings, people can’t say lots of different things. This was continually pointed out in South Park season 19 by the PC advocates continually attacking people not because they would do or say anything truly offensive, but because it can be perceived as offensive. But the thing is it’s not being done to fight bigotry, but instead, it’s just being done to make whoever is saying it feels like a hero who is fighting the horrible enemy who has been deemed as the “tyrannical western patriarchy” where all the problems of the world stem.
The prevention of being able to have free speech is one of the primary reasons political advocates and intellectuals are continually criticizing PC. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek even argues that political correctness is nothing more than a more dangerous form of totalitarianism. He goes into more details here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNbWGaaxWM. One thing he points out about PC is like in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia, PC gives the illusion that people don’t know the proper way to act and need to learn from the state. What makes it more dangerous than Nazi Germany and Communist Russia is with those countries it was clear they were evil. However, with PC while it is just as oppressive it has such a facade of salubriousness people can’t realize it.
Also, while PC gives a pleasant illusion of helping the disenfranchised and oppressed, it isn’t any less racist than what has been practiced before. This another thing Slavoj Žižek points out in the video saying how blatant racism has just been substituted for patronization. 90% of Native Americans even think PC has gone too far. The thing is the people who are seen as “victims” only have value if they take on the victim role. In a Slavoj Žižek he tells a story about how an African American philosopher he admired was taking part in a political conference, and how far left white liberals were giving speeches on how white people are awful and have done such horrible things, and the philosopher began to speak saying how African Americans have done terrible things as well. After he said this the liberals just looked at him and looked completely appalled. South Park season 19 shows this as well through a disabled kid named Jimmy. In the show one of the PC advocates becomes outraged because of the use of the word “retarded” in the school paper and threatens to hurt the person who allowed it to appear, only to find out it was Jimmy. Jimmy responds by saying he isn’t offended by the word and he felt it was more important, to tell the truth, and use the word the student he had interviewed used then to try and suppress it. Not long after, Jimmy and the PC advocate became enemies because Jimmy refused to take on the victim role the PC advocate wanted him to take on and he used the newspaper to call out the PC advocate and his PC brothers for just using PC as a way to get with girls.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson continually criticizes the Left and Political Correctness because it’s causing a return to tribalism. He goes into more detail here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerFihalHxs, but one of the main points he has is with the current system, the value of people no longer comes from an individual manner but instead from a collective manner. Value stems from your gender, race, or political views not from who you are as an individual. He even goes on to say that one of the worst parts of this system is there’s no longer free speech, because as he puts it, “When you speak, all you are doing is playing a power game on behalf of your group.”
The thing is it’s tempting to return to tribalism. Humans have a desire to feel accepted by their peers. When I went to college, almost everyone was a part of a fraternity or sorority club. It was a lot of fun I’m still close friends with a lot of the people who were in my club and it was fun having cheers, winning in sports against other clubs, and having a feeling of belonging. While this wasn’t inherently bad, there were some bad parts of it as well. Certain clubs would have stereotypes and be judged because of that, there would be petty rivalries between certain clubs, and some people would only associate with people from their club. It all feels good though because in our earliest days we were apart of tribes because that’s how we would survive, and being a part of a “tribe” today evokes those addictive primal feelings. I’m not saying being a part of a group is bad, I’m just saying it gets bad when you begin to lose sight that people aren’t just a member of a group but are instead unique individuals
As stated above, a lot of what political correctness is about is feeling good by fighting some oppressive enemy. The truth is, the far Left has deemed Christianity as the enemy. I listened to Ben Shapiro’s podcast where he analyzed a recent Democratic debate and they seem determined to take away tax breaks from churches who refuse to accept LGBTQ. I’ll admit, Christians in the past have used Christianity to justify terrible atrocities from slavery, to massacring Native Americans, to have the Church (not God the Church) be the ultimate ruling authority. But these things aren’t Christian and are instead human. While there are some Christians who say hateful bigoted things such as “God hates gays,” the majority have no problem with people having their own beliefs. But what is happening is Christian beliefs are being attacked because they’re seen as hateful and bigoted because they believe some practices like same-sex marriage are wrong. During ancient times most societies would say that the monarch was made in the image of the Gods. What separated Judaism was the idea that it wasn’t just a ruler who was created in the image of God, but all humans. Everyone is uniquely individually crafted by God in his image. The United States was even founded on this idea and was an attempt to separate from the ideas of royalty and servants. This country was founded on the idea that your value doesn’t come from your race, religion, gender, or political beliefs, but instead, your value comes from God.
Christianity is also being fought against, because of the increasing mentality that morality shouldn’t stem from God or “a thousand-year-old book”, but should come from the state. Like Slavoj Žižek points out in his video, the government isn’t just controlling you, it’s controlling what you think is best for you. What’s happening is this return to tribalism is having people think they should no longer think on an individual level but instead just rely upon the beliefs of whatever tribe you are a part of whether that’s Democrat or Republican. True Christianity isn’t like this at all though. In a talk between Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, it’s pointed out that Israel means, “struggles with God,” and they conclude that the true chosen people of God aren’t the ones who just listen to and obey the rules, but the ones who understand the rules. God isn’t some tyrant you can’t question. In the Old Testament, people are allowed to ask him questions. The only time someone is truly rebuked for trying this is Job. This isn’t because he asked a bad question, but because in his asking it he implied he knew more than God which of course is impossible and wrong. When Thomas asked if he could feel the wounds of Jesus to know it was him, Jesus allowed him to.
In conclusion, instead of continuing to divide and acting as if there’s an enemy out there that needs to be stopped and relying on truth from some governing body, we should take more steps to think rationally and unite with everyone despite our differences. We should seek truth by having conversations, research, and listening to all of the arguments so you can come to your own rational and well thought out conclusions. Perhaps you can also read the Bible. Whether you’re a Christian or not, the Bible has more wisdom than any other book there is and studying it can hopefully help you remember that you have value as an individual and no one can take that away.
‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ is a Netflix original by the Coen Brothers (who also did ‘The Big Lebowski’) that consists of six different short films that take place in the old West. The sixth film is known as ‘The Mortal Remains,’ which consists of five primary characters who each offer differing insights into human nature and morality. The characters consist of a trapper who lives in the wilderness and is lacking in social skills, an older Christian woman who has a self-righteous pretentious attitude, a Frenchman card player who is charismatic and has a looser outlook on morality, and a pair of bounty hunters. The pair consists of an Englishman who acts as a distracter and his Irish partner who acts as the muscle. Most of the film consists of the characters on a carriage on their way to Fort Morgan in Colorado conversing with each other.
The trapper tells the fellow passengers about his life in how he lives out in the mountains for the most part alone except for a few years when he had a Hunk-papa Sioux female companion. While they had each other’s company, communication between them was extremely limited due to neither knowing the other’s language yet they would still be capable of communicating primarily through the use of tone and facial expressions. His experiences lead him to the conclusion that people are all alike all over the world and about as simple as animals. While people are certainly not as simple as animals there is still a definite universalness with certain human aspects. For example, his comment on how he and his companion were able to talk even though they couldn’t understand each other’s words is very significant. According to Dr. Albert Mehrabian, 55% of all human communication is nonverbal and 38% is through vocal elements (only 7% is done with words). Some researchers conclude that this is partly why isolation may be more prominent since one of the most common forms of communication today is texting which is almost completely limited to words. While texting has evolved over the years with certain rules developing allowing emotions to be conveyed such as exclamation points indicating excitement and capital letters indicating anger, along with the inclusion of emojis to allow people to somewhat show facial expressions, it’s still overall a fairly ineffective form of communication. Because so many elements of communication are still missing from texting it causes a lot of messages to be completely misinterpreted. Also, studies seem to indicate because a text can’t include elements such as tone, facial expressions, and body language it causes texts to not nearly hold as much emotional weight. This is the reason people who attempt to conclude issues through texts often feel unresolved. While people are certainly not simple, there is certainly a universality in our need not just for companionship, but true communication even if it is without words.
The woman rebukes the idea that people are like animals immediately, saying how there are two kinds of people. Each person in the carriage gives their respective answer for what these two kinds of people could be. Most of the classification on some level involves the big five personality traits. The traits being openness to experience (inventive vs traditional), conscientiousness (organized vs disorganized), extraversion (extrovert vs introvert), agreeableness (friendly vs challenging), and neuroticism (nervous vs confident).
The Frenchman’s answer for what the two kinds of people might be are lucky and unlucky. While this is open to interpretation and seems outside of our control, there is a significant psychological difference between those who perceive themselves as lucky vs those who see themselves as unlucky. British psychology professor Richard Wiseman did a research study on the differences between these two types of people. The study found that the “lucky” people smiled twice as often compared to the unlucky ones, scored significantly higher on extroversion, and made eye contact twice as much. Wiseman explains that their sociability allows them to connect with more people allowing them to have more opportunities, therefore increasing their “luck.” The self-identified “unlucky” people, on the other hand, scored twice as high in neuroticism meaning their anxiety prevented them from being able to make as many connections. Another experiment conducted by Wiseman revealed the “lucky” people were far more observant and optimistic being able to see the good in situations instead of just the bad.
Often people like to think luck is something that is just cards dealt with us that isn’t exactly in our control. My uncle who is a pretty decent poker player who has played and won poker tournaments in Reno and Las Vegas once told me the least important thing in poker are the two cards in your hand. The best poker players tend not to rely on pure luck, but instead on reading people and statistics. I have a cousin who plays poker as living in Los Angeles, and he relies upon off playing game theory strategy to bid his time and anticipate his opponent’s moves which allows him to win games in the long run. In the statistical study [Cigital] 100M Hand Analysis Report Mr. Paco Hope, and Mr. Sean McCulloch Ph.D. revealed that statistically of the 103 million hands observed, the five winning cards only won 12% of the time. So while people may face bad odds and some people are given great chances, a person’s success in the long term comes from who they are.
The Irishman offers the answer of hale and frail (strong and weak). While this could be based solely on physical strength, even in the wild this tends to involve confidence and agreeableness instead of just brute force. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KujmrcF0ZxU does an excellent job of showing how much fearlessness and confidence will take you even against animals. It shows a man being charged at by a gorilla and not moving a muscle. Instead of the gorilla taking him down he stopped just before he could hurt him and backed away. Two characters that come to mind for representing strength and weakness are Tywin Lannister, and his father Tytos Lannister the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series by George R. R. Martin. Tytos was the high lord of a kingdom called the Westerlands and he comes from the richest family in the country. His nicknames included the laughing lion (the lion is the symbol of House Lannister), the toothless lion, and the weak lord. He was known he be a good, patient, and kind man but also incredibly weak. People would mock him openly and he wouldn’t retaliate and they would borrow large sums of money knowing they never had to pay for it. Having to grow up in this situation seriously affected Tywin causing him to become the stark opposite of his father. One of his nicknames later in life would be known as The Great Lion of the Rock and he would be distinctly known as someone who seldom smiled having grown up to mistrust them. Even when he was young, his father was bullied into having his only daughter be married to someone not nearly good enough for her and Tywin voiced this clearly in defense of his sister to no avail. After Tywin grew older and got back from war, learning more about what it means to be a lord he began to take more control. When he got back home he demanded the debts owed to his house be paid causing the two second most powerful families in the Westerlands to rise in rebellion. In response, Tywin killed every member of their houses from the adults to the children completely wiping out both families from the face of the planet. This would then get the attention of the King allowing Tywin to become the hand of the King and be known as the most powerful man in the seven kingdoms.
It’s sort of a matter between being liked and respected. People liked Tytos but no one respected him while everyone respected Tywin but very few liked him, even his children didn’t like him. In the end, Tywin’s downfall was caused by the serious neglect of his children and never allowing them to live their own lives. There’s certainly a balance to agreeableness. People need to not be so staunch that your children despise you, and to not be so passive that you’re a complete pushover.
The trapper’s suggestion for separating people is trapper and townsman. A more common version of this distinction that children learn very early on is the man who lives on the farm vs the man who lives in the city. The best and arguably most common representation of this in the world today is conservatism (more common in rural areas) vs liberalism (more common in cities). In the TED talk, ‘The moral roots of liberals and conservatives,’ the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores what differentiates people who identify as liberal and people who identify as conservative. For personality traits, liberals tend to score much higher in open to experience meaning they are more likely to embrace new ideas, while conservatives tend to score much lower on openness to experience meaning they prefer tradition. As the title implies, the speaker talks about five different ways moral judgments are made and how conservatives and liberals have different interpretations of them. These five different ways moral judgments are made are, harm/care (caring about each other as a species), fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty (a unique aspect of humans is we all form groups but unlike animals it isn’t dependent on genetics), authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. For conservatives, all five of these are considered moderately important however for liberals their focus is almost exclusively on harm/caring or fairness/reciprocity. Liberals tend to want fairness for the impoverished even at the risk of chaos, while conservatives place more value on tradition. This is a separation between yin and yang, with yin being chaos and yang being order. But the thing is both are important. If you have just yin then you’re left with complete anarchy, but if you have just yang then you have a 1984 like a society where no one has any freedom. Both of these things are essential for society. It’s like a lamp, fire if left unchecked just spreads chaos but if it’s given just enough structure like being put in a lamp, then it can help light the way toward the future. We live in a world of extremes where there are extreme liberals and extreme conservatives who both hate each other and think the other is responsible for everything wrong with the world. But the truth is both are necessary for the survival of humanity and perhaps instead of being at each other’s throats, people should focus on the positive aspects of both to continue progressing as a people.
The woman’s categorization of humanity is “upright and sinning.” While she more meant this as simply good and evil if the literal interpretation of these words is used it can reveal a very deep and accurate depiction of humanity. The word Sin itself is a Greek archery term meaning to miss the mark. To not be aiming correctly. The psychologist Jordan Peterson continually points out in his lectures that life is suffering. Because of this, we have two possible responses, to try and increase or try to reduce it. In Genesis, the first two sons of Adam and Eve rare Cain and Abel. They’re both requested by God to give their best to him as a sacrifice. Abel who raises animals gives God the best he has to offer to consist of the choicest livestock, and Cain who is more of a farmer just gives some fruit. God rewards Abel and sees him as his favorite and he rebuked Cain for not giving his best. Cain, as a result, kills his brother. In Proverbs 6:17-19 there are specific qualities God is said to detest and Cain in some form had taken on all of them except one. “Haughty eyes” being prideful and having a sense of superiority. Cain believed somehow his gift not being enough would still allow him equal treatment or that he could get away with not doing his best. He believed he knew more than God himself in thinking somehow his judgment was unjust. “Lying tongue”, Cain did this immediately after God confronted him asking if he knew where his brother was. He lied saying he didn’t know when in reality he had just killed him. “Hands that shed innocent blood,” the text gives no indication Abel had done anything wrong or was even remotely deserving of what Cain did to him making his murder indeed the first shedding of innocent blood. “A heart that devises wicked schemes,” for a murder to be truly seen as murder, there has to be preconceived intent by the perpetrator and Cain displayed this intent by asking Abel to go into the fields where he could murder him in private showing how Cain had a heart that devised wicked schemes. “Feet that are quick to rush to evil,” Cain certainly did not waste too much time to contemplate what he would be doing, instead it seemed like evil Cain rather quick to him whether it was killing his brother or lying to God. “A false witness who pours out lies,” this is the only sin Cain didn’t. Lastly, “A person who stirs up conflict in the community,” through all of his actions a lot of conflicts were stirred up in the community. Adam and Eve lost two of their sons, and Cain along with his wife was forced to wander and form another community altogether. We all are Cain and we all are Abel at different times, but it is ultimately our choice who we want to strive to be more like.
Of course, there is some ambiguity with the story as well. It doesn’t explicitly state Cain’s gift was that horrible plus it’s not like he didn’t even try. Dr. Jordan Peterson explains that this ambiguity is important because sometimes in life we do try to do our best but bad things still happen. Life is suffering and we have a choice on how we can respond to it. In “The Dark Knight,” one of the greatest movies ever made, this idea is explored through the characters, Batman and Joker. They are both characters who have suffered, for Batman it was losing his parents right in front of him, and for the Joker it’s not exactly clear because he keeps changing the story but it’s clear he has still suffered. Their responses, however, are completely different. While the Joker responds by spreading, even more, suffering throughout Gotham, Batman tries to reduce it. This is our decision as well. Suffering is an inevitable part of life, but it is our choice on we respond to it and who we want to strive to be more like. Cain or Abel, Joker or Batman.
After listening to the woman’s outlook on humanity the Frenchman scoffs and rejects it thinking people are too complex to be put into two categories (while he put people into two categories it was based on outside events not on who people are). He better explains his position by telling an anecdote about a time when he was playing cards with a friend. What happened was he had a bad hand and folded but a friend of his wanted to keep going, but he had to leave to attend an affair. So he asks the Frenchman if he could play for him since they know each other so well, but the Frenchman responds by saying he doesn’t know him to a degree that he could play his hand. A person’s response to their hand comes from a deep core in who a person is and no one except the person at that moment knows how to respond. This is a better way of looking at people because no one person truly falls into just one of the above categories and while there are some universalities with all people, we are far too complex and contradictory to be seen as simple as animals. A podcast I listened to recently which was a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Milo Yiannopoulos had Milo saying how he was full of contradictions. He was a homosexual of Jewish descent married to an African American man, yet he’s an alt-right advocate. He is happily married to an African American man, yet he’s against gay marriage. He even noted that these humorous contradictions are what makes him think that there is a God because for a person to exist and have such contradictions gives the implication of intelligent design. Even when God began creating everything we know every day during creation, his creations would get more and more complex. Since we were the last things he created it would mean we are the most complicated creations on earth. And there’s other evidence for this as well. We’re self-aware, each individual has complex emotions and motivations that no other person could truly understand, and we’ve created societies where we no longer have just hunter-gatherers but instead people can make survive by playing poker or writing blogs.
Studies seem to indicate that for children, it’s almost impossible for them to not put people in either a good or bad category. Even as adults it can still be difficult to remember that even though people do bad things it doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person and the opposite is true as well. Hitler never drank and was a vegetarian but I don’t think many people would call him a good person. People are very complex, and to assume things about them by putting them in a category can often prevent people from knowing the truth about them.
The last person to give his insight on humanity is the Englishman. He says the woman is right and that there are only two types of people, dead or alive. What he’s saying is it doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, or what’s happened to you, because in the end, everyone dies. Death has always been an idea that has held a lot of power over human beings. Almost every action we take is to avoid it. We get jobs so we can pay for necessities to not die, we get into relationships so we can have kids so we can live on through them, and some of the businesses that make the most money are the ones that take advantage of us after we have lost a loved one. This isn’t something we understand though. The Englishman even explains this. As stated in the beginning the Englishman and the Irishman are bounty hunters, and the Englishman explains how he got his latest victim was by telling them the story of the Midnight caller. The story is pretty simple it involves him imitating someone knocking on a door and saying,
“Someone is outside! Knocking! Oh
who can it be! Don’t open it,
Mother—what living thing would be
out in such a storm!”
He then explains why this works by saying,
“You know the story, but people
can’t get enough of them, the
familiar stories, like little
children. Because they connect the
stories to themselves, I suppose,
and we all love hearing about
ourselves, over and over. So long
as the people in the story are—us,
but not us. Not us at the end,
especially—the Midnight Caller
gets him, never me… I’ll live
forever…”
The idea of living forever however doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people are so terrified of death that they don’t even live. But a lot of the times we still think like those who fall victim to this story. Death finds them, but never me.
The Bhutanese, who are said to be some of the happiest people in the world say that one of the secrets to life is to think about death for at least five minutes every day. Americans live in a world where we are constantly exposed to advertisements making us only think about the moment and have become increasingly atheistic thinking this is all there is, making the idea of thinking let alone talking about death a total taboo. But the Bhutanese insist that this is wrong and we shouldn’t let the fear of death control us and should instead be prepared about death because in the end, we all die. When we think about things that terrify us, they begin to lose power over us. This doesn’t even need to be death but could also be traumatic experiences as well. In addition, a 2007 study, University of Kentucky psychologists Nathan DeWall and Roy Baumesiter divided several dozen students into two groups. One group was told to think about a painful visit to the dentist while the other was told to contemplate their death. Both groups were then asked to complete stem words, such as “jo_”. The second group was far more likely to construct positive words, such as “joy”. The research experiment concluded with, “death is a psychologically threatening fact, but when people contemplate it, apparently the automatic system begins to search for happy thoughts”. So while thinking about death may seem uncomfortable and taboo there are clear benefits to doing it. Death is an inevitable part of the human condition and the idea of acting as if it does not cause it to have power over us and can prevent us from living to our full potential.
Many insights in humanity are made in this short film, whether it’s our universalities, our complexities, or the fact that we are all mortal. Understanding our differences, similarities, complexities, and mortality can help us as we go about our lives.
Basic Humanity 
