Leszek Kolakowski-The Sacred and Profound
October 31, 2015 Leave a comment
“We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”
– Leszek Kołakowski, Polish philosopher and historian of ideas
Resident Evil: Redistribution
October 25, 2015 Leave a comment
It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all, you won’t be free
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
“Society” (originally by Jerry Hannan); Copyright: Record High Publishing, Bike Music
~~~~
“Materialism, sometimes called naturalism, is the belief that matter — molecules in motion — is all that exists. Everything else: mind, consciousness, spirit — must somehow be reduced to the orchestrated firing of neurons.”
-Tom Bethell, senior editor of The American Spectator from Darwinism and Materialism: They Sink or Swim Together
~~~
Living in a Materialist’s World
Have you watched the “The Real Housewives of Entrenched Materialism”? How about “American Democratic Greed is Good?”
The word “materialism” is a broad range category label. The word covers our known physical universe: the 118 known chemical elements that make up earth and those that make up our bodies. The word is hard science evocative and yet has been used to promote social ends by physical reductionists: Marx’s dialectical materialism along with Social Darwinism. As a hardcore metaphysical scheme, materialism presented solely by scientific fact is believed to be all the truth you need to know while ignoring theism altogether. As transformed into an ideology by evil men using a hammer and sickle formulation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, Lenin, Marx and Trotsky could “justify” class struggle.
These days the class struggle continues. The word’s now inferred meaning is typically approbated to denounce Wall St. “fat cats” by Leftists (Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, et al) who want to bring the 1% to their knees with inordinate taxation (so as to enable Social Democratic redistribution or materialism as agreed upon consumer envy. Ergo, we are all to become “fat cats” until the money runs out).
Leftists hate Wall St. “greed”. They want to create a more palatable shared widespread greed.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, is egalitarian when it comes to creating Unitarian greed:
“Bernie Sanders says it’s not just Wall Street and corporate America that would pay more if he’s elected president: All workers would face a slight payroll tax hike.
The Vermont senator who’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the across the board increase would come as part of his push to guarantee paid family leave.”
Sounds so benign and reasonable, doesn’t it? Tell me. Why does government need to “interpret” your money and your life decisions?
“…He acknowledged that tax would apply to everyone.
“Yes, it would,” he said. “But it would mean that we would join the rest of the industrialized world and make sure that when a mom has a baby, she can, in fact, stay home with that baby for three months rather than go back to work at the end of one week.”
Sanders, who has been elected to the Senate as an independent, has advocated for several other new taxes to pay for his potentially pricey policy proposals.” (Emphasis mine)
Bernie Sanders, Greed Monger
Sanders is, of course, goading the Me Generation, in the midst of unprecedented wealth:
“What do students value, and are those values any different from those of previous generations? … [studies of] students…reveal further characteristics that distinguish Generation Me from prior cohorts. A consistent trend in these data is the decline in interest in abstract and intellectual concerns and the increase in practical and materialistic ones.” –Jean M. Twenge, The Rise of Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest, The State of the American Mind by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Belllow, copyright 2015 Templeton Press (emphasis mine)
So, how about we remain free and act not like the rest of the industrialized world and pay for our time off ourselves without middlemen exacting their overhead fees?
Why is mom working? If she is married then likely her family needs a second income. Payroll taxes and government mandated health care come out her check. If she is a single mom, then likely she needs to work and/or wait upon government assistance. Payroll taxes and government mandated health care come out her paycheck. The idea that a materialist ridden government will be altruistic towards you with your own money is utterly absurd.
If Bernie Sanders is sounding so generous with your own money then why not let us each keep more of it? Why doesn’t he tell government to get out of our pockets instead of deeper into them?
Well, if he did that then he couldn’t run as a Democratic Socialist and bureaucracy wouldn’t get its controlling “share” of your money and life.
Now tell me, why can’t people take off work and spend time with their families. Is it because they do not have enough money? How does taxing people more solve this problem?
This, my friends, is the essence of democratic socialism – fixing problems created by government (excessive taxation in this case) with more government (excessive taxation). Aren’t we already being forced to pay Federal, State, Medicare and Social Security taxes along with an Obamacare SCOTUS “mandated” (read coerced) health insurance?
Did you receive a raise this year? If you did then Sanders wants to take away 0.2% of that increase to finance just his family leave policy, a policy that you could finance with your own untaxed money.
Why is government involved in your quality of life decisions beyond national defense? Are you not able to govern yourself and your time and money? Or is it that you hope that someone else under coercion from the government will pay for your quality of life decisions? Now tell me. How do singles benefit from a Family Leave Policy or men in having to pay for maternity care or breast exams? These “bennies” are political handouts to certain focus groups (read special interest groups) in return for votes, nothing more. Big Brother does not care about you or the unintended consequences of myopic thinking.
Like “Participant” trophies given to children who played in inter-city sports competitions their parents paid the fee to join, so Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders wants to award citizens “trophies” from a coerced offering of your tax monies-your gold earrings. Bernie Sanders and those like him have decided that you and your husband are not smart enough to manage your own money and affairs. You get the booby prize instead!
The Booby Prize!
How about we cut out the middle-men altogether and spend our time and own money on our own family instead of sending our money through a labyrinth of government money laundering sieves which only shower havoc on families and small businesses, to name two prominent victims. Such a process leaves “we the people” with pennies on the taxed dollar. This “policy” makes no sense in any way, shape or form. But, people buy into the nonsense because its sounds socially and paternally idealistic.
~~~
Resident Evil m-Virus (“m” for Marx)
The Resident Evil Virus (the one that kills the host; the one created by Umbrella Collective) as mutated…
According to Karl Marx, “Rousseau correctly described the abstract idea of political man as follows:
“Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men.”
All emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relationships to man himself.” (emphasis mine)
–Works of Karl Marx 1844, “On The Jewish Question”
Golden Calf created from gold earrings melted down.
Here we see the recreation of man as materialism’s Golden Calf and the ideological assumption of Communism or what I call “Resident Evil: Redistribution.”
Karl Marx wanted to abolish all personal property and all religion to establish an anthropocentric materialist utopia. Now consider that redistributive taxation is removing your personal property and giving it to the Collective. And, I don’t have to tell you that Theism is being abolished, with Marx’s beyond-the-grave-blessing, under the guise of separation of church and state. Theism is being replaced by scientism, “the metaphysical belief that science tells us all that can be known or is worth knowing.” (-John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in the Quest of Truth)
Both acts are Karl Marx inspired dialectical materialism.
~~~
“The richness of human life only begins to make sense if mental experience is more than epiphenomenal froth on the surface of a purely materialist reality. If we were simply machines, human discourse could be no more than automatic mouthing, with no true exchange of rational argument taking place.”
-John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in the Quest of Truth
~~~
Our exponentially growing government does not want competition from you or from your business or from your religion. Those in power want utter social control. Do you realize this?
We can see this in the Social Democrat’s penchant to control your money, your words and your guns. We are moments away from unmitigated tyranny. There are people rallying the flag for tyranny in its most beguiling form: “Social Democracy.”
And while Europe has decided to accept paycheck tyranny in the form of Social Democracy they have done so in order to have government be the treasury that supplies their material needs. By believing that their greed is justified because it is socialized they have signed on to the government broker’s whole life enslavement policy – “a greed with which we have agreed.”
Contrast that statement against the following:
“Watch out,” he said to them, “and beware of all greed! Your life doesn’t consist of the sum total of your possessions…Don’t be anxious about your life – what you should eat; or about your body — what you should wear. Life is more than food! The body is more than clothing!…Which of you by being anxious can add a day to your lifetime?…Yes: where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.”
-Jesus, from Dr. Luke’s Gospel account.
~~~
Consider the following statements:
“Of course many supporters of European integration have an ideological dislike of competition…For many Euro integrationists, much of the appeal of the project lies in the fact that it is an alternative to the “jungle capitalism” that supposedly defines the United States.” (emphasis mine)
-Daniel Hannan, British MEP, “The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America.”
“All too many confuse a market economy with consumerism, seeing a buy-buy-buy mentality as the outcome and goal of economic liberty. But consumerism is the muddled idea that only in having more can we be more. Rather than the Cartesian formulation, “cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”), some have come to believe that shopping is the proof of existence: “Consumo ergo sum.” Consumerism is wrong not because material things are wrong. Consumerism is wrong because it worships what is beneath us.”
And,
“The problem isn’t just a numbers game, and it can’t be solved by simply tweaking this or that budget line, or wringing a little waste out of the system here or there. What threatens to bring freedom to an end is that we have forgotten the end of freedom, in the other sense – its aim and purpose.
The confusion is all around us. Liberty is confused with license, cronyism with capitalism, mere schooling with education, Social security with genuine intergenerational solidarity, and real social responsibility with taking money from one group and giving it to another – and never mind the cultural devastation wrought upon the recipients by this Orwellian form of “welfare.” We have come to believe that the government is a Good Samaritan.” (emphasis mine)
-the Rev. Robert Scirico, “Defending the Free Market: the Moral Case for a Free Economy”
~~~
A stone’s throw away…
October 17, 2015 Leave a comment
Have you heard the true story?
a Palestinian rock and firebomb thrower
I am guessing you haven’t. I did not until now.
Amid the Middle East terrorist tempest and menacing misinformation, evils generated by anti-Israel forces, the vitriolic cries of haters hope to discharge any goodwill towards Israel. Their vituperous discharge also comes in this form – Palestinian rock and firebomb throwers.
—What kind of person would want this small child to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers?–
https://twitter.com/saidshouib/status/655398329191260160
~~~
Have you heard the true story?
Giving up Everest to save a life
“With just 300 meters to go before reaching the peak of Mount Everest, Israeli mountaineer Nadav Ben-Yehuda saw a Turkish climber lying unconscious in the snow, and in an instant gave up a lifetime’s dream to save his fellow climber’s life.”
Israeli Everest climber saves Turkish ‘brother’
Israeli gives up on Everest summit to help Turkish climber
I came across this story as I read Dr. Amir Aczel’s book Why Science Does Not Disprove God.
From Chapter 12, The Limits of Evolution:
“…So truly altruistic behavior—which we know has existed in the world since time immemorial—is not well explained by evolution.
An example that, to use one of [Richard] Dawkins’s favorite expressions, “deals a knockout blow,” to evolution as an acceptable explanation for altruism is the following. In May 2012, several groups of individuals attempted to climb Mount Everest, as happens every spring. One of the climbers, a young Israelis, was well on his way to the top when he came across a fallen Turkish climber who had lost his face mask, his oxygen supply, and much of his equipment. He clearly was going to die very soon because the extreme cold and oxygen-poor air near the summit.
The Israeli, who was in excellent shape and about to achieve a lifelong dream he had been training for all his life, stopped immediately and spent several hours helping the disabled Turk get back down the mountain. He saved the Turkish climber’s life, at a loss of three of his own fingers and four toes to frostbite, and also lost the chance to make it to the summit of Everest.
Turkey and Israel have been political enemies since the Turkish-led flotilla in May 2010. There was no love lost between these nations. The Turkish flag, with its star and crescent, was visibly sewn on the climber’s outfit, so the Israeli saw it.
Other climbers had given up the Turk for dead…”
Nadav Ben-Yehuda Everest-climber
NADAV BEN-YEHUDA and Aydin Irmak
~~~
Have you heard this true story?
“This is my command: love one another, in the same way that I have loved you. No one has a love greater than this, to lay down your life for your friends.”
-Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel according to eye-witness John, chapter 15, vs. 13.
A stone’s throw away…
…from a summit, from an enemy, from exclusion or embrace.
Added 10-18-2015:
https://twitter.com/dunn_martin/status/651987053488373760
Credits:
NADAV BEN-YEHUDA and Aydin Irmak 370. (photo credit:Nitzan Arny/Israeli Embassy in Nepal)
Israeli mountaineer Nadav Ben-Yehuda arrives back in Israel after the heroic rescue on Everest. Photo by Yehoshua Yosef/Flash90
Gender In, Gender Out?
October 11, 2015 Leave a comment
From the perspective of having worked with a para-church group that has ministered to free people from the cycle of homosexuality, I would like to address a concern of mine…
Recently I saw a huge sign outside a mega-church that offered a “Biblical” approach to gender. The wording was directed at teenagers. Though seemingly innocuous this is a type of inferred legalism.
When a Church or seminar group puts the word “Biblical” in front of its messaging it is clearly inferring that this is the domain of Christians, that this is what a Christian in this subset must do or be. 
But desired male and female “characteristics” or conformism should never be taught as gilded pages of Scripture lifted out and fashioned into tablets of “Biblical” mandates. One may say that these approaches are just “guidelines” but the word “Biblical” in front of something conveys the idea of de facto Sola Scriptura truth.
As mentioned, in the past I have been around and served in a para-church ministry based on what was termed “gender symbolism issues” (a cautious reference to Carl Jung). The speaker’s main thrust was to employ an admixture of psychology terms, quotes of the Inklings and of Scripture with the application of soul-healing prayer. It all sounded good to me at the time.
Within this context seminar leaders and counselors urged attendees to pray and ask God for the “True Masculine” and the “True Feminine.” But, these prayers, of course, will not be answered because there is no such thing. The best a man or woman can ever become is being Spirit-filled. It was out this time that I came to realize how insidious this kind of psycho-spirituality was.
It is not hard to understand the Christian Church trying to stabilize the culture surrounding it. But, in this case, it is doing so by adding unnecessary “traditions” onto the message of the Gospel. By placing added strictures and burdens regarding the masculine and the feminine, the Christian Church removes itself from the Gospel and becomes, in a sense, the fashion police.
Recall the early Christian Churches of Jerusalem and Galatia which demanded that new Christians follow the strict tradition “soaked” Law along with the teachings of Jesus? Today’s church in similar manner, as I see it, is seeking to propagate men and women of the “Biblically” masculine or feminine tradition. It would appear that the Christian church is in the process of “canonizing” romantic notions of what they consider to be masculine and feminine qualities.
As a former student of Moody Bible Institute and over the course of a lifetime having read through the Bible several times I have yet to find any description of “Biblical” manhood or womanhood.
What is written are what characteristics a man likes about a woman (see Song of Solomon and Proverbs 31) and what characteristics a woman likes about a man (see Song of Solomon). None of these “characteristics” – physical and pragmatic – carry the moral weight of the Ten Commandments. These “characteristics” should never be used to propagate more sons and daughters of the “Biblically” masculine and feminine.
I believe that the Church with regard to its “genderfication” of males and females has become a stumbling block for the weak.
There are those in the church who are perfectly comfortable conveying the macho role that men play in on TV. And there are some in the church who base gender roles on the corn-fed lyrics of country music. There are women’s conferences about “Biblical” womanhood based on Proverbs 31. And there are many more instances of role play.
I have no problem with role play. Role play is a given in relationships. But I have a problem with a rite of conventionality outside of conforming to the image of Christ. This statement may be too much for some people in the church, I understand.
Yet, the weak, the searching, may easily stumble when such stereotyping is placed askance to their faith.
One could say that Proverbs 31 was written by patrician authors who imagined the qualities of an ideal woman to be in relationship with or for King Solomon’s court. Proverbs 31 definitely speaks of a pragmatic woman and not of a physical woman, as does Song of Solomon. (Platonic men would later consider woman’s physical beauty a type of entrapment and something to avoid.)
But in this day and age Christian men also enact Proverbs 31, do they not? Should we delineate gender based on Proverbs 31? My answer is “No.”
Why create extra yokes called the “Biblical Masculine and Feminine” to be placed on people’s necks? Isn’t a “Biblical” manhood and womanhood referenced only at the conjunction of men and women? And, isn’t marriage of man and wife the nexus that is the positive anti-thesis to same-sex anomalies.
Now it is common knowledge that people do not like ambiguity. We demand black and white. We demand inerrancy. And, we demand “Biblically masculine and feminine” males and females. Our minds are wired to alert us to any differences to a norm. When a perceived threat to a norm occurs we seek to reconcile things as quickly as possible.
Any ambiguity comes off as a potential threat to our understanding of how life should be. As related to gender we tend to overemphasize male and female “roles” in order to reduce our anxiety over ambiguity. Here it is, I believe, that some of the fear of non-conformity has grown out the Christian Fundamentalist movement that was raised up in the early twentieth century against the threat of Liberal theologian’s textual infractions. The Conservative Christian world sought to tighten its reins on what is and isn’t “Biblical.” And in so doing it is also now putting a noose around each gender.
Yet, there is no gender typecasting or stereotyping in Scripture, only sacrosanct relationships established and reinforced. And, more importantly, the message of the Gospel offers everyone freedom from fear. This includes freedom from the fear of the ambiguous and the unknown, whether the fear is of material nature or of the fear of gender “status.”
We should not live with the fear of the not being able to follow the letter of the Law and especially as conjoined with the added impedance of “Biblical” gender.
The current falderal about “Biblical” manhood and womanhood are gooey sentimental and romantic notions mandated under the banner of the “Biblically” acceptable. Let’s not go there. Let’s not make the freedom and fun of romantic role play into religious rule pretense. Let’s be free to be men and women without the yoke of the man-made gender laws placed on our necks. And then, perhaps, homosexuals will then feel free to come home and find new hope under the roof of Christ-like relationships.
In my estimation the best how-to books to lead a Spirit-filled life are the Bible and My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Forget the OTC self-help books and seminars on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You would be wasting your time and money. Worse, you would most likely seek to adapt to someone else’s notion of what it is to be a man or a woman. Run from this nonsense. GIGO.
~~~
“Jewish Wedding” by Jozef Israels (Dutch, 1824-1911)
The closest we come to “Biblical” manhood and “Biblical” womanhood in the Bible, as I read it, is within the Apostle Paul’s circular letter to the churches at and around Ephesus (Ephesians chapter 5). It is there that he instructs Christians as to how men and women should relate to each other and he does so with equanimity and, more importantly, in the context Christ and His Bride, the Church.
Paul’s circular letter should be read in the context of Ephesus being the protectorate of the Temple of Artemis aka Diana. “There was no other Greco-Roman metropolis in the Empire whose ‘body, soul and spirit’ could so belong to a particular deity as did Ephesus to her patron goddess Artemis.” (Oster 1990:1728) Many in the Greco-Roman world came to Ephesus take part in the seductive sexuality of Diana’s worship, worship which included prostitution. Adored as life givers women were given inordinate prominence. As such, they were placed above men.
Sadly, so many sermons and books and seminars parse out “wives submit to your husbands” and “husbands love your wives”. As I see it, Paul wrote to these churches – churches situated in the context of the worship of the female deity Diana, and specifically this passage to promote a Kingdom view of women as opposed to the Artemis view. In the Spirit’s way, Paul let it be known that women were not to be placed on a pedestal as an idol or to be used– not as a Madonna or as a whore.
Paul writes to the Ephesian church outlining a Kingdom of God view of relationships. Husbands are to love their wives and not submit to prostitutes. Wives are to submit to their husbands and not to those who would put them on a pedestal to worship or in a bed as a prostitute. Paul advances the true characteristics of Kingdom of God people: concomitant respect and love of husband and wife.
More than any pretense of “Biblical” gender teaching, the Scriptures order our relationships as it orders our loves: Love God with all your heart, mind, body and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.
Husbands who love their wives love their closest neighbor and are in fact submitting to the Lord within her.
Wives who submit to their husbands submit to their closest neighbor and do so out of love for the Lord within him.
This gamboling of submission and love resembles, I imagine, the relationships of the Trinity and Their dancing embrace.
Indulge me:
~~~~
Related:
Here’s what culture says: 27 Ways to Be a Modern Man
Added:
Scans prove there’s no such thing as a ‘male’ or ‘female’ brain
Elysium Laundromats
October 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Elysium Laundromats 
When you live alone
It all comes together
At the Laundromat.
Money-grubbing washers,
Flippant dryers,
Crossword puzzlers and
The carnival ride centrifuges waiting for my quarters.
The envoy of filth makes a “final” appearance,
Only to be immersed in the clean waters of
Anabaptism.
O, fountain of youth,
You left me alone and
Benched,
Among the churning kilns.
© Cindy Wity, 2015, All Rights Reserved
The Atheist Delusion and the Art of Incomprehensibility
September 25, 2015 Leave a comment
The Moral Mixups of an Angry Atheist
“The “New Atheism” movement was launched as a direct consequence of the attacks of September 11, 2001.”
This is the opening statement of the Prologue from Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir D. Aczel, PH.D.
According to Dr. Aczel, religion and the acts of militancy creating the carnage of the 9-11 attacks are the raison d’etre for the New Atheists and for their haranguing believers in a God:
“New Atheism is combative, aggressive, and belligerent against people of belief. Its proponents hold that religion is evil, and they state this belief loudly and clearly. Whether they are scientists or not, the new atheists frequently employ science as their tool.”
If you have listened to talks or read the books by the New Atheists Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, among others, you might come away with the conclusion that science had disproved a need for God.
Restating Dr. Aczel in a familiar art format, the New Atheists have created a collage of “supporting” scientism. First they used bits and pieces of biology and evolution that were familiar to them. Then, they pasted on clippings of quantum mechanics theories. And now they are using a splatter technique, throwing infinite unknown universes with their infinite probabilities at the canvas to finish their collage.
All together I would call this hodgepodge work of Pop Art “The Atheist Delusion”.
The New Atheist’s debate diatribes, their dysfunctional use of science, their avoidance of archeological findings and their animus towards believers in a God are addressed by Dr. Aczel in his book.
From the Introduction, we read of Dr. Aczel’s authenticated cri de coeur:
“The past few years have seen the rapid growth of the idea that God and Science cannot possibly coexist….The purpose of this book is to defend the integrity of science.” (emphsis added)
Dr. Aczel knows first-hand the New Atheist’s agenda via debating with them:
“And these New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett”—are bound together under a powerful common purpose, and continually reinforce each other. The problem with the science in the books and lectures of the New Atheists is that it is not pure science—the objective pursuit of knowledge about the universe.” Rather, it is “science” with a purpose” [I call it “scientism,” as do others]: the purpose of disproving the existence of God.” (emphasis added)
~~~
Something to think about:
What do the ancient Greek “atomist” philosophers (circa 460-270 BC) like Epicurus and Democritus and the On Origin of the Species author Charles Darwin and the New Atheists have in common?
There are at least three issues that frame the writings and dialog of each subset:
1-All of them had the notion that no Supreme Being would exist that would allow judgment and eternal punishment. For example…
Charles Darwin: “I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as divine revelation”; “The plain language of the [biblical] text seems to show that men who do not believe and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” -Chapter Eight, “Triumph and the Reversal of Natural Selection”, Darwin: Portrait of a Genius by Paul Johnson
The New Atheists, speaking as gods, posit that no Supreme Being would ever judge mankind or let evil enter our world. (They are OK, though, with an Epicurean “free will” attenuated by evolution and Social Darwinism and with ignoring murderous dictators, genocide, eugenics, abortion, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc.-all the “damnable” by-products of atheism and Social Darwinism.)
2-All of them used unscientific analogs and personal anecdotes (feelings) to create their “empirical” disavowal and disapproval of God’s existence. There are too many references to list all of them here.
From Paul Johnson’s biography:
“The trouble with [Darwin’s] Descent [of Man] really starts in chapter 5, “On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilized Times.” It is a mass of generalizations.”
According to historian Paul Johnson, Charles Darwin made statements in The Descent of Man and elsewhere that would be considered highly racist, chauvinistic and speculative today.
“Like Dawkins, Hitchens also uses anecdotes from his own life to illustrate the overwhelming viciousness he sees in all religions:” (Dr. Aczel goes on to quote Hitch’s church memories.)
Feelings and sentimentality do not a scientist make.
The New Atheists, from railing on and on about the Crusades and Catholic Priest child abuse to denigrating Mother Teresa to childhood church memories, hope to poison the well of Living Water that a Samaritan women would drink from.
3- None of the above studied anthropology, metaphysics, archeology and mathematics. Instead, they read the tabloids. They wanted to know what people thought about them. Darwin held off publishing On Origin of the Species due to his concern over public opinion.
For your consideration:
Dr. Aczel states that atheism began with the “Atomist” philosophers. This is not so. Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon. The Epicureans mentioned above believed in Roman and Greek deities, to be sure, but they felt that those deities where busy off somewhere else and were always angry with mankind anyway. So, they chose to ignore those gods.
One final note about the book:
Dr. Aczel, as his book clearly reinforces, reasons scientifically that there is a God-in the “broadest possible sense.” But, Dr. Aczel makes no claim saying that God is a personal God or, say, as Francis Schaeffer, founder of L’Abri said in his writings and lectures that, “God is Infinite-Personal”. Dr. Aczel’s book, one could say, is purely academic…and scientifically supports Theism.
Amir D. Aczel holds graduate degrees in mathematics. He is also the author of Fermat’s Last Theorem. In Why Science Does Not Disprove God he notes a significant array of distinguished scientists interviewed in the process of writing his book. And, here are the chapter titles to pique your interest:
Prologue: The Birth of the New Atheism
1-The Coevolution of Very Early Science and Religion
2-Why Archaeology Does not Disprove the Bible
3-The Revolt of Science
4-The Triumphs of Science in the Nineteenth Century
5-Einstein, God, and the Big Bang
6-God and the Quantum
7-The “Universe from Nothing” Deception
8-And on the Eighth Day, God Created the Multiverse
9-Mathematics, Probability, and God
10-Catastrophes, Chaos, and the Limits of Human Knowledge
11-Between God and the Anthropic Principle
12-The Limits of Evolution
13-Art, Symbolic Thinking, and the Invisible Boundary
14-Engaging the Infinite
15-Conclusion: Why the “Scientific” Argument for Atheism Fails
~~~
Added 9-26-2015:
Below, the Hebrew King David (c. 1040–970 BC) speaks about a morally perverse person, an ungodly person, and one who disregards God and any thought of moral adjudication (see above for the modern folly version by the New Atheists). David is not talking about theoretical atheism. The Apostle Paul later references Psalm 14 in his letter to the Roman church (Chapter 3) when talks about the nature of sin:
“For the choir director: A psalm of David. Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!” Psalm 14:1
~~~
Cartoon from: http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-moral-mixups-of-an-angry-atheist-125221/
Darwin’s Myopia, Our Dilemma
September 12, 2015 Leave a comment
Darwin’s Myopia, in excerpts:
“Once, Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelly “gave me great pleasure” and “I took intense delight in Shakespeare.” -Charles Darwin
~~~
“In his old age Darwin admitted, “I have lost the power of becoming deeply attached to anyone.” He assured Tennyson that there was nothing in his theories to prevent anyone believing in a supreme being. But he did not think about God or the possibility of an afterlife. He closed his mind to speculation about the infinite and concentrated on worms. One is tempted to feel that he deliberately shut his eyes to the ultimate consequences of his work, in terms of the human condition and the purpose of life or the absence of one.” Paul Johnson (emphasis added)
~~~
“It is hard to believe that Darwin himself would have accepted this huge, bottomless emptiness of life. Or, rather, perhaps because he felt it yawning, he averted his eyes from the big issues and focused them on the small: climbing plants, orchids, insectivorous plants, worms. The truth is long before he died, he had lost control over his own theory. The point at which he lost control can be precisely identified. It was when he decided that natural selection, to be of internally coherent, has to be comprehensive and universal. But if this is so, then there is no essential difference between man and any other animal. The differences, however obvious and seemingly enormous, are of degree and not of kind.”
Paul Johnson (emphasis added)
~~~
Enter the paradox, missed by Darwin: “It can more easily be grasped if we see natural selection as destructive as well as constructive-and not only destructive but self-destructive. Once natural selection had created man, it was in its own danger zone. Human beings think…are conscious, and self-conscious.
It is at this stage in evolution that natural selection falters and ceases to work with all its previous triumphalism and certitude.” (emphasis added)
~~~
The above quotes are taken from Historian Paul Johnson’s insightful biography Darwin: portrait of a genius Copyright © 2015
From Johnson’s concise, detailed and deliberative biography we learn that Charles Darwin inherited genius stock-“a classic case of genetic inheritance”. We read of Darwin’s luminous and wealthy patriarchs-of his paternal and maternal grandfathers and of his father. We learn of Darwin’s moneyed care and education upbringing. Self-education would soon become a way of life for Darwin.
Darwin married a godly wife, Emma Wedgwood, a “clever, educated, equable, hardworking, industrious, economical, and, not least, sensitive” woman. Together they had many children together.
Darwin, a lover of botany and the author of On the Origin of the Species, we are told, never involved himself with the study of anthropology. He also never regarded math to any usable extent. Statistics were never his bailiwick.
It is likely that Darwin never met up with and had never studied the Christian Monk Gregor Mendel’s foundational work, a well-read paper on genetics in 1866 and a writing that would support natural selection. Mendel’s pea hybrid work would give birth to the science of genetics.
Darwin, during his Beagle voyage focused on botany, insects, flora and fauna in general and the facial expression of savages such as those of Tierra del Fuego. At home he read the local press. He was deeply concerned about how other people viewed everyone else, scientists in particular, who differed from what he considered church dogma..
Darwin’s s fear of being ostracized on earth with his published work coupled with his revulsion of any thought of eternal ostracization-punishment in hell forever-kept Darwin spiritually self-ostracized from the Creator. He turned away from God and turned inward with a self-defensive mode of living.
At one point Darwin, we read, became enthralled with Thomas Malthus’ theory of overpopulation, an unsubstantiated and later refuted theory. Malthus’ theory would become lifelong dogma for Darwin. At the same time Darwin also denied any Christian accounting of creation.
“Ever since he became a systematic naturalist, Darwin had been an evolutionist. That is, he dismissed the account of Genesis of the separate creation of the species by Yahweh as symbolic and not to be taken literally. They had some way evolved. There was nothing new, surprising or alarming in this.” Others before him held similar views. See Chapter Three, “The Loss of God.”
In the chapter titled “Evils of Social Darwinism” Paul Johnson postulates, and I agree with his assessment, that a hybrid of natural selection-Social Darwinism-has led to all manner of evil: “Those who studied progress were hugely attracted by Darwin’s notion of natural selection as a relentless self-driving machine, “daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation…silently and insensibly working…at the improvement of each organic being…” Darwin’s words “Struggle” and “Survival” would later be found in the works and placards of atheists and agnostics and of German philosophers. The words would be used to secure featherbedding in the humanist realm of law as well as in sociology, psychology and psychiatry. Culture would make the leap of Social Darwinism.
“Struggle” and “Survival” would be the seed words for the monstrous propagandized outgrowths of Fascists and of Socialists and of a Hitler and Marx and Engels and for the crushing rollout of Stalinist Communism.
These same words were used to foment the works of Francis Galton and his sterilization eugenics program, a program practiced in many nations!
Under such a program it would be decided by someone(s) who was “desirable” or “undesirable”. If a person was found “undesirable”, then that person was “unfit to procreate” and then sterilized. Soon, the same eugenics process would be used to decide which races were “unfit to live.” You can take the thread of thought from here.
Today, Progressives want to define life: who is “fit to live” and who is “unfit to live” (e.g., abortion, death panels); who is to benefit and who isn’t to benefit (class and race warfare). Here’s a sample of the Progressive’s rejection of anything that might rattle their cages, written by an apparent Epicurean atheist:
The website Slate, a website where myopia studies itself in the mirror; where intelligence and moral absolutes proudly go to be reprogrammed into “who’s the bigger hypocrite” moral relativism, has a review of Johnson’s book by Mark Joseph Stern.
Incidentally, Slate provides its sycophantic readers with atheistic Progressive hubristic feel-good dispersions and mostly Turkish Delight.
The article written by “red in tooth and claw” Mark Joseph Stern apparently hoped to incite a circle of atheistic humanist commentator wagons around the theory of evolution by using a well-known electric atheist prod-a rant that desperately wanted make the point that the “Bible is wrong”.
Stern wanted to protect the atheist’s raison d’etre-a material world without moral agency (read accountability) and certainly one without Absolutes. A Darwinian Social scientism in lieu of God is more to their liking, more controllable and less scary.
Though mostly accepting of historian Johnson’s overview of Darwin’s life and work, Stern’s feathers are ruffled by Johnson’s interpolation of Darwin’s natural selection. He ends his piece with reassuring hubris: “But no thoughtful reader could possibly tolerate Johnson’s stunning intellectual dishonesty.” The article:
~~
Well, think again Mark Joseph Stern. In fact read the book again. See that in no way does Paul Johnson dismiss or “smear” evolution or natural selection (you stated this in the subtitle of your article).
At the end of the book, Johnson does extrapolate what he sees as the ideological outcomes (Social Darwinism, humanism, nihilism, eugenics, etc.) of Darwin’s natural selection theory, a theory deliberately configured apart from God-consciousness as it was detached from Mendel’s foundational statistics experiments over time. (By way of information, before Darwin someone else would coin the phrase “survival of the fittest”.)
As can be seen by reading Slate and other smug ideological publications, Social Darwinism is now an applied theory that will abide no reference to mankind as created by God. Instead, Social Darwinism must abide with “the will to power”. Slate readers, I fear, would hate the correlation between God and man as much as they do their own shadows (i.e., Paul Johnson’s revelatory deductions) cast on cave walls.
Our Dilemma:
Do we take to heart and flesh the words of Slate and the Progressives and let Social Darwinism and materialism define our lives? Do we, in the same vein, live like animals and subvert reason while claiming “science made me do it” and continue to make “unnatural selections (e.g., homosexuality, abortion)?
Or, do we return to our Creator?
I commend Paul Johnson’s book to you. Read it and discern for yourself.
I believe in God as a theistic evolutionist.
~~~
Other Christians who think like I do regarding Creation:
“Even before Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, many Christians had already accepted an old Earth. One of the first supporters of evolutionary science in America—Harvard biologist Asa Gray—was a devout Christian. Conservative theologian B. B. Warfield also accepted the science of evolution, and both he and Asa Gray rejected the idea that evolution leads to atheism. Even the authors of The Fundamentals, published between 1910 and 1915, accepted an old earth. It wasn’t until a century after Darwin that a large number of evangelicals and fundamentalists began to accept the combination of flood geology and 6-day creation promoted by Seventh-day Adventists.” –How have Christians responded to Darwin’s “Origin of Species”? (emphasis added) Copyright © 2015 The BioLogos Foundation
“Given the stark difference between evolution and six-day creation, many people assume that Darwin’s theory shook the foundations of the Christian faith. In truth, the literal six-day interpretation of Genesis 1-2 was not the only perspective held by Christians prior to modern science. St. Augustine (354-430), John Calvin (1509-1564), John Wesley (1703-1791), and others supported the idea of Accommodation. In the Accommodation view, Genesis 1-2 was written in a simple allegorical fashion to make it easy for people of that time to understand. In fact, Augustine suggested that the 6 days of Genesis 1 describe a single day of creation. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) argued that God did not create things in their final state, but created them to have potential to develop as he intended. The views of these and other Christian leaders are consistent with God creating life by means of evolution.” –How was the Genesis account of creation interpreted before Darwin? (emphasis added) Copyright © 2015 The BioLogos Foundation
A Post as Lovely as a Tree?
September 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Trees
By Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~~~
Good. I’ve brought you back in time to grade school and to poem recitals mumbled and fumbled on a small wooden stage festooned with branches, hot klieg lights, coaching teachers and anxious whispering parents ready to breastfeed sweet flowing praise into their little sapling.
Snap! Now, follow me to…
Saturday, in beastly 90 degree Northern Illinois late summer heat, I decided to trek once more through my childhood and teenage and adulthood forest. I call it “my forest” because I like to think of it as “my Illinois” before “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
-From Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”
Start the music: As I walked through the “most ancient of conditions” those formative memories of my youth, Joni’s song resounded in some distant glen, somewhere within the silent swish of stately trees and near the stealing bases Blue jays and close to the ever-present droning life support system of the Illinois Toll Way.
A “tree museum”? Now I have to rest from my labors and ponder: after all the recitals and all of the seasons of my life, does my life’s mustard tree end up in the same place as it has for these trees-in a tree museum?
One good thing: it is clear to me that when I die I am recycled. You know, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. But this parking lot to parking lot stuff has got to stop. A bittersweet experience, this “tree museum” business is, on Labor Day weekend.
Encompassing the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois is industry and business of mankind’s doing. I expect that. I just didn’t want all that.
I want Illinois, Northern Illinois back. I want “The Prairie State” back.
So, I came. I saw trees and tall grass. I smelled musty earth and cedar mulch and the decay of rotten wood. I sweated profusely to feel alive once more within the epiphany of nature.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see ’em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And they put up a parking lot
…
Hold on to your charm bracelets! Without further ado, here is a portion of my photographic record of The Trek (looking for Ents, basically, to resolve the pavement problem).
Here’s what a photographer might say: “These photos were taken during hazy midday. I prefer morning or late afternoon lighting because the contrast is more interesting and diffuse.”
As you will see, I’m no Ansel Adams or Elliot Porter but I am a visual learner. So…
… sweat glands and all I focused my attention on flora, glen and meadow, Ash, Maples, Oaks and, well, you go there. And, besides, interior forest pictures are well lit during midday. That’ll be my excuse. (Please forward all complaints about out-of-control pavement to your congressman.) Let’s WordPress on. (No parking lots were abused in this filming.)
The Morton Arboretum’s Visitor’s Center
The Morton Arboretum’s Visistor Center w/restaurant facing Meadow lake
A view across Meadow Lake towards the Visitor’s Center
Interior Forest #1
This little fellow wouldn’t give me his name. He had a mouthful of acorn.
Woodland Trail #1
Acorn on the lookout for squirrels.
Berries du jour
Trail #2
Open prairie meadow
Meadow
Meadow flora
Illinois-Wilderness at Your Doorstep
Woodland Interior #1
Woodland Interior #2
Avant garde tree
Woodland Interior #3
Spot the Spider?
Mushrooms a la dead tree
Forest glen #1
Forest glen #2
Morton Arboretum brochure
Fall fashion?
Forest flora
Wetlands
Homage to Eliot Porter
“No Running”
Bugs have “The Right of Way”
“If a tree falls in the forest…”
Japanese tree? How multicultivating!
Stonehenge Green?
Jesus: “I am the True Vine and you are the branches.”
Tanyosho Pine-Japanese Red Fir
“A Walk In Paradise Garden”
In case you missed plastic during this montage here is a Lego Bird scuplture by Sean Kenney.
More plastic…
~~~
Unions, Socialism and RoadKill?
September 19, 2015 Leave a comment
Just the other day I was verbally assaulted with socialism.
Per my usual workday I was taking the morning commuter into downtown Chicago. As I stand in the train’s vestibule I visit with my fellow travelers. Our conversations run the gamut of silly to bordering on the unspoken: politics, religion and money.
Well, just as I mentioned, I was slimed by socialism.
As I was talking with my friends a guy comes into the vestibule to wait out the rest of the ride. He was apparently eager to get off the train and light up a smoke.
Victory cigarettes
Wearing a chartreuse tee-shirt of a union pipefitter (seen around Chicago) and with a pack of smokes in his one breast pocket, this guy proceeded to let us know that he arrived.
One of our group asked him where he worked and what he did. (We usually try to engage everyone who ‘visits” the vestibule.)
The guy mentioned that he was working in a building downtown “putting in 24” pipe.” He spoke with the raspy demonic-sounding voice of a heavy smoker.
Then, without prompting and like striking flint, he said, “I hate corporate America. I hate the rich, highly paid CEOs. Who needs gold toilet seats?!” “You think union workers get paid a lot. You should see what they take out of my paycheck!”
“OK?” I said to myself. Well, here we go again: typical union griping, now on a Thursday morning.
I have heard the same sort of discontent (putting it nicely) from union postal workers, train conductors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, service workers-from all of them. And, whether the gripe is about pay grade, work time, pecking order, vacation time, labor management (a partial list of complaints, to be sure) I have heard it all. Union people have left their destiny in the hands of others in hopes of being insured against unhappiness. Guess again. Socialism takes regular drawdowns on your account of happiness.
I have heard the same sort of morbid discontent as campaign vote pandering. It slips off the politician’s tongues (here paraphrased) as “zero sum anthropogenic poverty caused by the rich and CO2”, “…limited pie…”, “…we need unlimited government…”, and (verbatim) “Fair share”; “The 1%”.
Victory Gin
All such materialism driven policies enacted to “unionize” society, in my estimation, reduce life to a boring unromantic dystopia. In other words these politicians want you to, “go drink your 1984 Victory Gin and be happy. We will take care of you. Do what you were told with what we gave you. There is no romance in Socialism so don’t even think of love, only of sex.” (Hah, imagine Hollywood under socialist financial constraints! Morally, Hollywood is already dependent on the lowest common cultural denominator.)
I decided not to talk to the union guy unless others broached a response and decided to go there. I could tell by his demeanor that this guys’ mind was probably as darkened as his lungs must be.
He went on to speak about his working on and off again depending on … when work is made available to him…through the union. Months would go by until he got a call.
Then he spoke of his heart’s desire: “My precious!”-The long awaited-for pension. With wide-eyed craving he spoke of his retirement: “Only six more years of this stuff left.”
Unions have a unique way of making people ache for the ring of retirement. I’ve seen it firsthand. It comes, I believe, from the on and off nature of union work along with boredom and plenty of worrisome smokes in between, a situation this guy and others let others control. Socialism is losing control of your life while waiting for the day you can retire and live off your meager pension and then, likely, smoke and drink yourself to death within a short time. Union-socialism roadkill. I’ve seen it over and over.
At this point I wanted to ask him who runs his pension and ask if it was invested in something more than a saving account making 0.01% interest or a CD making 0.09 % interest. Or, was his pension invested in equities and bonds, more appreciable (and risky) financial vehicles.
One could easily figure that the “highly paid” union lords control his pension (and get their cut) and that the union pension fund itself is managed by outside financial managers who manage stock and bond purchases of the union’s pension fund.
The “highly paid” overseers of his pension as fiduciaries must look at the composite financials of companies with stock and bond offerings to determine the best option to apply to a conservative pension, to have it grow while minimizing risk.
Obviously this union guy knew pipefitting and welding. But he did not know finances let alone how to find work on his own. He, instead, left others in charge of providing him work and with overseeing his “precious” pension.
Right then and there I wanted to say to this guy that when you leave your life in the hands of others they will charge you for their effort, including “highly paid” labor leaders (e.g., Richard Trumka).
-“Scores of union leaders earn six-figure salaries”
Here’s the arrogant and petty AFL-CIO union thug Richard Trumka tweeting his call for “two minutes hate” directed at Gov. Scott Walker who is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race:
“Highly paid” CEOs are charged with managing a company so as to make its value grow and to make its stockholders happy with the company’s prospects for future earnings. The company’s worth must appreciate in value. And when a company’s stock appreciates in value many people benefit. This includes employees who receive stock as a bonus. Pension funds invested in such a company’s stock also grow in value. Somehow I think any such statement to him would not meld with his union-socialist-collectivist way of life. He would go into Elizabeth Warren override.
I left out this: companies run by “highly paid” CEOs hire people and pay them to function within the company. Together CEOs and the people make the company profitable or otherwise. The people are free to stay or move on depending on their satisfaction with any number of things including pay, management, location, etc. “Highly paid” CEOs increase value. Collectivist governments, socialist governments and unions depreciate value-especially, your value, via coercive egalitarianism.
Those of us in the Kingdom of God must not take the wide way that is offered to us either by a self-described socialist such as Bernie Sanders or by a self-described “Christian” magazine called Sojourners which uses the banner of “social justice.”
Government is not altruistic. Government could never hit the moving “socially just” target without being totally controlling. Government can never offer a hurting person what a Good Samaritan can-one on one help. Government is impersonal, indifferent, insouciant.
And, as we have seen, redistribution of our wealth, filtered through the labyrinth of government funnels, distributes only fractional amounts of money to people government cannot even begin to keep track of and large amounts just to make bureaucracy function. Socialism burgeons while you diminish.
The unions, the Collective, Progressives, liberal “Christians” and even Pope Francis want “Social Justice”. What is this carrot on a stick dangled in front of us?
~~~
I have written elsewhere about this subject before. When I have I’ve turned to the parable of the Good Samaritan to make the point that we need to be involved in one another’s lives personally (like our Savior) and NOT via the million degrees of separation known as bureaucratic “Social Justice.”
The Rev. Robert Sirico, “American Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute”, provides us with clear-cut insight into the bureaucratization of “good intentions” versus the personification of good (good becoming man):
“The Marxist political analysis that remains popular (if now usually disguised) in many universities and even seminaries, tends to pit the poor against the rich—it’s all about class warfare and alienation. The alternative vision that I have been trying to paint in these pages is beautifully distilled in the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has held a persistent fascination for the religious and non-religious readers alike. Of course, like all parables, its primary meaning is Christological and moral, rather than political. But it’s also possible to discern other messages in this story.
In Luke’s Gospel, a Samaritan man (someone on the margins of Jewish society in this period) stops to help a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. When the Samaritan comes upon him, he helps the beaten man from his own resources. Even when the Samaritan has to delegate the care to the man for a time to an innkeeper, he promises to pay the innkeeper back. The Samaritan was on the scene to see and understand the fallen man’s specific needs—he was the man’s “neighbor”—and he went about meeting those needs. From this standpoint, the Samaritan might be justly described as the principle subsidiary in action. Notice, too, that he would have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the injured man if he hadn’t first possessed enough personal wealth to hire services of the innkeeper. Lady Thatcher’s memorable insight about this text is to the point: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”” (emphasis added)
Passage from “Why Smart Charity Works—and Welfare Doesn’t”, “Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for the Economy” by Rev. Robert Sirico
Rev. Sirico recommends reading “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” by Theodore Dalrymple. I have read it and recommend it as well.
~~~
Added 9-20-2015:
It’s “1984” all over again…
“Within the book [George Orwells’1984], the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” (emphasis added)
“Ostensibly, [Emmanuel] Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
Union members, as with so many others of the media-collectivist-“It takes a village…” persuasion make use of the “Goldstein Effect”, a term coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
As mentioned above the effect is a means of scapegoating but it is also a means of psychological distraction and redirection.
The subverted thinking of the union member as revealed in my anecdote above is directed with anger at the “highly paid CEOs” and therefore away from the ”highly paid’ labor leaders and away from the “highly paid” Big Brother candidates those “highly paid” labor leaders support. The “enemies” generalized and amorphous existence is a product of the media’s PC Ministry of Truth, the collective’s means to larger-than–life vilification.
[The] “Goldstein Effect”, [is] described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
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Filed under Culture, Economics, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with 1%, AFL-CIO, CEOs, Goldstein Effect, progressivism, redistribution of wealth, Ricard Trumka, socialism, unions