Wendell Krossa
The Human Spirit: An Ideas Page (ideas express our values, embody
our identity, and shape our goals and responses to life)
Apocalyptic, Then and Now
The Weather is Just Fine
Halting The Human Enterprise
The Litany is a Lie
A Bit More With Rees
Crimes Against Life
A Grand New Narrative
Communications With Bill Rees
From Corruptors To Creators
Get Your Story Right |
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(Note: A new extremist religion/ideology is taking hold in public consciousness across the world. This new religion has a grand myth or narrative with which it hopes to shape human consciousness and thereby enslave the human spirit. This religion exhibits many of the basic themes and drives of previous religious movements- an unchallengeable truth impervious to scientific fact, the demand for a strictly constrained and regulated lifestyle in accordance with the core beliefs, an orientation to fear as a basic motivation, and so on. The material below outlines some of the basic features of this new environmental religion and points to facts that counter its central themes.) Full Article |
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Life will only get better, much better The Genius of the Western Tradition (the fount of modern prosperity) The success of Western prosperity and progress can be traced to two prominent features in Western history (specifically English history)- the restraint and legal limitation of the state/government and the legal protection of individual freedom and rights (the rights to property, protected investment and invention, production and trade, among other features of free enterprise). These two features have been best expressed in the classic British liberalism of the 17th and 18th Centuries or in what is known as the Libertarian tradition (see, for instance, Libertarianism by David Boaz). Trends in Environmental Thought Over the past year I have had an interesting back and forth with a former professor of mine, Bill Rees of UBC (former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning). Bill is the father of the ecological footprint theory and considered one of Canada’s leading environmentalists. He travels the world lecturing on environmental issues and is an influential thinker in the environmental movement. It is helpful, therefore, to note the direction his thinking is taking. Bill Rees on Eco-violence This material was posted on the Environment Canada website http://www.ec.gc.ca/seminar/WR_e.html. First Bill’s address then my response below and then some more back and forth. Our Ecological Footprint: When Consumption Does Violence, Bill Rees Bill Rees Conversation Wendell - In fact, I do know quite a bit of the science and on that basis can say that the interview in The Australian was somewhat naive on such simple things as the assumption that 'warming' or 'climate change' moves in lock step with carbon emissions. No climate change scientist of whom I am aware would make such an assumption. In any case, here's an alternative description that may be of interest, particularly for its distinction between multi-year ice (this tracks long-term changes) and seasonal ice (this tracks short-term, i.e., annual, conditions). In short, don't let short-term observations fool you (or the Australian). The lags in the system are sometimes 20-60 years so we may cross a threshhold long before there is any physical evidence. Bill, And if we follow the longest term records (paleo-climatology) then this caution to not be fooled would apply equally to warming alarmism. Glaciation has extended far South and melting has entirely freed the North of ice. I remember those stumps of tropical trees discovered in the Arctic. |
The Latest Articles
Free Markets and Socialism
Life Will Only Get Better
The Genius of the Western Tradition
My Theory of Everything
Milton Friedman
The Way of The Cell
Valuing Humanity
Anthropic Principle
Behe On Mutation
Bloom On Mind
Bob's Table Talk
Breech On Story
Conversations On Consciousness
Margulis On Aquiring Genomes
Penrose On Conciousness
Post On Denny Doherty
Post On Conciousness
Privileged Planet
Quantam Enigma
Restoring Human Story
Shaping Human Outlook
CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE REVISITS 16TH CENTURY BATTLES - Robert D. Brinsmead
Climate of Fear - Dr D Weston Allen
Valuing Humanity
Exchange With Bill
Rees
Apocalyptic
and Climate Change-Robert Brinsmead
A Brief Summary of Apocalyptic Mythology
Don't Fear a Warmer World
The Story of Life-Up or Down
Notes on Apocalyptic
Optimism/Pessimism
Dawkins On Delusion
The Century of the Gene
Demski on Information Theory
Chalmers on Consciousness
The Ideological and Religious Beliefs of Environmentalism Environmental extremism is stirring hysteria across the world and pushing governments everywhere to adopt policies that could seriously damage economic growth and development. It has terrorized governments into spend money that very likely will do little or nothing to slow the natural cycles of climate change. This money could have been better spent on programs that would help citizens adapt to change. There is also the issue of wasted human potential in the diversion of research to what may prove to be largely a non-issue (the CO2 relation to warming).
The growing and potentially damaging influence of environmental extremism makes it important for the rest of us to understand something of the range of ideas/beliefs that have shaped this movement.
I would first make the disclaimer that not all environmentalists hold to all of the beliefs listed below and not all environmentalists are extremists or zealots. In fact, most people are natural environmentalists in that they want clean water, clean air, clean surroundings, and lots of wilderness or nature for recreational and other purposes. Most people are not against nature or the environment and would prefer to tread lightly on the Earth. It helps to distinguish this widespread natural environmentalism that most of us advocate from the extreme variety that denies clear-headed science in the interest of propagating distorting ideology or fundamentalist-like beliefs. Also, it is important to not give ground to people who claim to be the sole defenders and saviors of nature and who set themselves in opposition to the rest of humanity as being people who don’t appreciate nature as much as they do. See full essay here: Beliefs of Environmentalism
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The Defamation of Humanity Most of us have come up with some favored explanation for the root causes of extremist violence; our attempt to make sense of this historical surge of insanity. I would suggest that the death cult behind such violence finds its sustenance in large part from a profound defamation and devaluation of humanity. This defamation of humanity is rooted in varied lines of thinking from our mythological past. For instance, there is the belief in an original Golden Age or perfect and pure beginning. An original paradise and the apparent decline of life from this original paradise. John Pfieffer in his book Explosion noted that this belief may have been related to a time when food was more plentiful before an oncoming Ice Age engulfed early mythologists. Another line of thought that contributed to the defamation of humanity was the creation story of some prominent early cultures and the claim that humanity was made partly from a demonic substance. An example is found in the Sumerian tradition which provided a version of human creation that stated man originated from two sacrificed Lagma gods. “But it adds this aggravating element: Kingu, despite his having been one of the first gods, became the arch-demon, the leader of the troop of monsters and demons created by Tiamat. Hence man is made from a demonic substance, the blood of Kingu…We can speak of a tragic pessimism, for man seems to be already condemned by his own origin” (Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1, p.73). A further Sumerian contribution to the defamation of humanity was the belief that humanity was created to serve the gods. The above ideas were combined in the later belief that humanity was responsible for the decline of life from its original perfection. Humanity was responsible for the departure of the gods and the subsequent disaster that was left in their wake. Humanity was responsible for the cosmic separation of humanity from divinity. Humanity had screwed everything up. Centuries later Zarathustra (Zoroaster) drew these lines of thought together in his theology of hate toward fallen humanity as the enemy of God and good. His mythological system promoted an intense emphasis on the fallen nature or sinfulness of humanity and in so doing it profoundly defamed humanity and fostered despair about the human future. He proclaimed the will of God was to engage in holy war to punish and eliminate the enemies of God. He portrayed people as disobedient wretches destined to burn in a final fiery conflagration. Is it any wonder that these ideas have subsequently led many devotees to believe that the destruction of another human person is the ordained will of God... (From page 4 of same essay) Add to this the insight from Brinsmead that Jesus conflated the two great commands (love God, love neighbor) into one new command- love one another. He rejected the vertical to focus solely on the horizontal. We will never fully engage genuine freedom until we liberate people from all vertical authorities, whether religion, God, science, the state (government), nature or whatever else people try to exalt above humanity. Only when we remove ultimate authority from on high and locate it in average people, only then do we properly honor humanity and set people free to explore their fullest potential. Consciousness makes each one of us a free individual in control of our own destiny. No one is to be subject to anyone else, or anything else. Sheehan urges us to reconsider the name God as no longer being about divinity in heaven but as being a marker for the infinite potential of conscious humanity. He suggests that God without reserve or expectation of return has actually lent his name for this purpose. God has disappeared into humanity in order to focus on human need, want, and potential. He says, “What really needs love, care and reassurance, what really requires respect and attention, is not God (who is doing quite well, thank you) but humankind”. Charles Templeton put it more bluntly in stating that God was not some pathological Idi Amin-like character demanding constant attention and worship (Farewell To God). This new perspective on divinity overturns millennia of religious devotion to something above humanity. See full essay here The Defamation Of Humanity
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Green assault on freedom Green fanaticism (environmental extremism or eco-fundamentalism) continues to gather steam and may now be posing a more serious threat to human freedom than Islamic fundamentalism. It exhibits features that are typical of all fanatical movements: a closed and unified body of truth (much like Constantine’s demand for a consensus body of truth to establish political harmony in the Roman Empire), a refusal to countenance dissent (labeled as heresy with a corollary endeavor to discredit/destroy the infidels), and pushing ahead with a coercive attempt to change public behavior no matter what the damaging consequences to human life and freedom. Green religion cares not a whit what the cost may be to millions of hardworking families across Europe or the wider world. The ideal of restoring some imagined Edenic natural condition takes precedence over human well being. In fanatical movements, some higher ideal always takes precedence over the needs of real people. Countering such extremism requires appeal to the more humane impulses of people and a renewed presentation to the public of the basic features for maintaining a truly human society and the evidence we have that these features have worked well in resolving the varied issues societies have faced over the past several centuries. These core features would include such things as protecting individual human freedom, respect for the freedom of the other, a rational approach to understanding problems, protecting property rights, and letting free market forces work without excessive government intervention and regulation. We saw these great principles first expressed in the free enterprise system that emerged out of 17th and 18th Century British liberalism (which eventually morphed more into economic libertarianism). The genius of this liberal movement was in its response to oppressive monarchal power and arbitrary elite interference. This led the liberals to advocate for limited government and the protection of individual rights and freedom. This advocacy culminated in the development of the first service state in England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (representative government that protected individual rights such as property). This, in turn, led to the amazing burst of wealth creation which began in the mid 18th Century and then became more pronounced at the beginning of the 19th Century when GDP rates began to rise after millennia of almost no movement upward (see William Bernstein’s Birth of Plenty for detail). People began to invent, create, and invest with a new sense of protection for their efforts. The outcome of protecting human freedom and thereby unleashing human potential was the massive wealth creation of the 19th and 20th Centuries and all the benefits that have followed this outburst of plenty: improved health, the doubling of the human lifespan (rightly called the greatest human achievement ever), less onerous employment, more leisure time, better communication and transportation, improved environmental conditions, a decrease in violence and war; in summary, better living conditions all around. And despite these amazing advances we have only begun to tap into the infinite potential of liberated humanity. Others have affirmed that human freedom as expressed in market forces has resolved all sorts of potential resource and environmental crises (e.g. see Wilfred Beckerman’s treatment of sustainable development and resource issues in A Poverty of Reason). Free market mechanisms such as pricing, unhindered by government interference, will lead to feedback signals, shifts to substitutes, diversified exploration, technological progress, and major shifts to compensate for potential problems. But for a system of human freedom to work we need to trust the fundamental impulse of people to improve their situations and to create something better. We need to trust ordinary people to act responsibly and to cooperate in order to promote stability and peace. We need to understand that human society is based on trust and this is evident in the almost miraculous emergence of what is called spontaneous order where people granted freedom to order their own affairs have come up with a better system of order for complex society than any order ever imposed top-down by governing authorities. Allowing this bottom up order to emerge and develop requires that we trust ordinary people and their potential to create something better. See full essay here Green Assault On Freedom |
2006 Essays
Understanding The Human Spirit: The new universe story and the search for a more humane future
Viktor Frankl has argued that the primary impulse of humanity is the impulse to find meaning. He ranked this before the drives for sex or power. I would elaborate that the primary impulse of humanity is not just to find meaning but to find meaning in something more humane. We all want something better for ourselves, our families and for humanity in general. And most of us do what we can to improve our lives and work to create a better future free of vengeance, violence, poverty, war, disease and other forms of suffering. In our myriad endeavors to create a better world, we are expressing the foundational human impulse to find meaning in a more humane existence. This fundamental search for meaning in a more humane world is perhaps the best way to understand the human spirit.
The endeavor to create a better world manifests the latest stage in the rising trajectory of life. In this rising trajectory, life has advanced irreversibly from chaos to increasing order and organization. It has moved from simplicity of forms and systems toward increasing complexity of forms and systems. In its most advanced stage yet, that of conscious humanity, life has moved from primitive barbarism toward the miracle of civilized society. In this movement of life from something barbaric toward something better we see the maturing of the human spirit.
The most prominent viewpoint of human history- Fall/apocalyptic- has profoundly distorted our perception of the direction of life with the view that life is a regressing and descending trajectory heading toward catastrophe and ruin. Fortunately, discoveries over the past few centuries have exposed the distortion of Fall/apocalyptic mythology and revealed that life is actually a rising trajectory characterized by endless improvement, development, and advance. We now have an entirely new understanding of life and a new story of the universe.
It is critically important that we understand the difference between these two basic viewpoints (Fall/apocalyptic and the new universe story) because they have a profound impact on our basic orientation or attitude toward life. For this reason the following essays return frequently to the nature of Fall/apocalyptic and the true nature of life in the universe. In doing this, I am arguing for the triumph of hope over fear.
Consequently, this page reviews the emergence and development of the conscious human spirit, the liberating discoveries made by humanity over the past few millennia, and some of the major ideas/ideals that have impacted the development of the human spirit. It is about the ongoing human search for meaning.
My thanks to a number of writers listed below for permission to include their material on this page.
New Series - Rethinking the Spiritual
1. Introduction |
Essays on Human Consciousness, Fall/Apocalyptic, and The Universe Story
 a Drawing by Henriot from 'L'Illustration' |
Essays on The Human Spirit, Human Life and Spirituality
Email
To Joshua Ben Adam Society
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Eliade on Mythologizing Ancestors Crichton on Fear |
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Modern parables and
short stories- the following stories present a variety of ordinary
but unique people and their responses to the unexpected in life. They chose
to respond, not in terms of conventional forms of behavior, such as punishing
payback, but rather to transcend these conventional responses in order to
respond more humanely. Their responses manifest the fundamental nature of
conscious life as supremely humane.
 "Join the Crowd (Undertow)" Jen Drummond |
Other Projects of Interest
Environment and Economics
- The Environmental Optimist - Robert Brinsmead - Blame The Sun - Ian Clark - Global Warming - David Bellamy - The New Totalitarianism - Wendell Krossa - Putting Global Warming Into Perspective - Wendell Krossa - Arctic Meltdown - Wendell Krossa - The Maunder Minimum and Climate Change - www.stsci.edu - Climate and Carboniferous Period - Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective - Michael Crichton Speech - Russian Scientists Say No to Global Warming |
Autobiography - Leaving My Religion
- The authors experience of growing up in Evangelicalism, subsequent disillusionment,
and eventual abandonment of the religious viewpoint
War and Peace
- The Peace
Revolution - Douglas Todd
- Repugnance Grows Over Violence - Kelly Patterson
- Crime Facts Are A Downer For Doomsayers
Other Links of Interest
Great New Story - www.greatnewstory.com The Human Security Center - www.humansecuritycentre.org Centre For Restorative Justice at Simon Fraser University-http://www.sfu.ca//crj/ Community Justice Initiatives (Fraser Region)- www.cjibc.org Deep Humanity Institute- www.deephumanity.org L.O.V.E. (leave out violence)- www.leaveoutviolengce.com |
 artist unknown |
The Historical Jesus versus The Christian Christ- see also www.greatnewstory.com for more material on the Historical Jesus
The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam - Robert Brinsmead Essays on The Historical Jesus versus The Christian Christ |
Liberating The Human Spirit
As noted above, this site looks at the history of emerging human consciousness and its ongoing endeavor to understand the universe and the meaning of life in this universe. To properly do this, we need to look at the most fundamental ideas that have shaped consciousness and its historical development. This leads us directly to Fall/apocalyptic mythology which has had a more profound and enduring influence on human thought than any other body of ideas in history. This primitive system of ideas has long been the main impediment to the further advance of human understanding and the full liberation of the human spirit. Fall/apocalyptic is essentially a mythology of hate and despair. It undermines hope and promotes endless fear with its related tendency to violence.
| The main themes of Fall/apocalyptic mythology are as follows: |  artist unknown |
- The world has fallen from an original perfection or paradise.
- Since the Fall there has been a progressive degeneration of life.
- Humanity has become defiled, impure and even demonic.
- People have become separated from the spiritual (as well as separated from one another).
- There now exists a fundamental opposition between initiated insiders and deceived outsiders.
- People are obligated to join the true way of salvation (this commonly involves some form of asceticism or denial of life) and convert outsiders.
- The world will be purged and paradise restored by means of a future apocalyptic destruction (humanity will be punished and destroyed).
These themes shaped the primitive mythologies and were later embodied in the core ideas of the great salvation religions of both the Western and Eastern worlds. And even with the decline of religion in modern societies the Fall/apocalyptic perspective continues to profoundly impact the modern worldview. It is evident in the environmental movement with its themes of humanity as a cancer on the globe, the regression of life from a more pristine original state, and coming environmental destruction. Even cosmology, in the past century, was governed by this paradigm of meaningless reality facing eventual collapse and destruction.
The themes of Fall/apocalyptic mythology have burdened human consciousness with unnecessary fear, hopelessness and despair. Fall/apocalyptic thinking has also generated more opposition and violence than any other body of ideas in history. This is due to the direct link between despair/fear and aggression/violence. Fortunately, the discovery of the new universe story now exposes this mythology as an entirely mistaken perception of reality. We know now that life in the universe is profoundly oriented to creative growth, ongoing development and progressive advance to ever higher stages. And human life in particular has been able to break free of the endless historical cycles of tribal exclusion, opposition and revenge to find liberation in forgiveness, cooperation and mutual love. People have found better ways of relating to one another than the domination employed by primitive life forms. With these discoveries, human consciousness has been liberated to find entirely new ways of understanding existence. It has been liberated from fear and despair to find hope and a more humane future.
In order to make continued progress toward that better future that we all want, we need to understand the underlying themes that have given rise to Fall/apocalyptic mythology. But even more important, we need to recognize the inherited emotions and drives that produce such ideas. This is the ultimate casual origin that we need to understand and deal with in order to free ourselves from the remnants of Fall/apocalyptic thinking. This page, with its varied essays and stories, speaks to the fundamental outlooks of hope and despair and their impact for good and bad in human history.
Click for extended Introduction
| Contact Wendall Krossa: wkrossa@shaw.ca | ContactWebmaster: webmaster@wccportal.com |