It’s important to realize — and allow for that realization to deeply sink into the forefront of one’s conscious mind — that organized religions attract psychopaths to leadership positions.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
That's a fair point. All organizations and hierarchies are prone to attract psychopaths (or lesser deviants). I believe that is partially because the cost of heading organizations is the self imposed cost of caring about the people you lead, and for those who really don't care about other people that becomes much less of a cost, as it is one they cannot make themselves pay. Basically all upside for them, because the goal of the organization and the responsibilities of a leader are irrelevant to that cast of mind.
Very interesting observation. Plus, as L. points out I believe, many religious people are much more accepting and willing to tune out bad traits if the person says the right things and they accept the person as "one of us". As in, "he has accepted Jesus, so he's saved" ergo he can't be a psycho.
That's a very useful observation itself. I wonder if religions with more restrictive behavioral requirements are less prone to that as a result, due to it being more costly to say the right thing. There is an argument in the economics of religion that more restrictive rules lead to a positive selection effect to keep free riders out. The Amish, for example, provide a lot of "club goods" to co-religionists so keeping out the free riders is very important. On the other hand, the Amish reportedly have problems with certain behaviors due to the difficulty of punishment; they don't do corporal punishment, and if someone openly repents that it supposed to be the end of the matter. A psychopath (or someone who just recognizes that repenting every time they get caught gets them off) would have an easier time avoiding punishment there, but then again with so many strictures would quickly develop a record of transgression. Forgive and forget wouldn't work there, but forgive and remember and possibly expel later might work. (The Amish might be a bad example too due to how fluid their groups are, and how flat the hierarchy. A more hierarchical religion with at least semi-professional priesthoods and dedicated houses of worship/things requiring donation of money might be a crucial threshold after which psychotics become a real problem.)
A line of thought, and of non-thinking, runs from Friedrich Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" to the events of the late 19th c to the chaos of our time. Destructive forces, present throughout evolution, have been helped along by advances in weapons of war, from the industrial revolution to the 21st century's environmental, political and sociological breakdowns.
It seems that as long as kings, emperors and popes ruled kingdoms and empires, life for most people may have been short and by modern standards brutal, but the rise of democracies bred evils in different forms.
A dominant theme in the writings of The Federalist Papers was the awareness of the need to prevent political factions from overwhelming democratic majorities, overrunning the new American democracy itself. They were astute to attempt to prevent the rule of factional party politics, but was it naive on their part to believe in the possibility of a common good? They cannot be faulted for not envisioning how societies would evolve.
We however are naive if we don't see that class structures that "kept the peace", that prevented bloody revolutions or re-established peace and quiet after revolutions, always required an oppressed class, or to use a less Marxist vocabulary, peasants and with seafaring traders the inevitable oppressed colonized groups. The enslaved people in the American colonies or the destruction of colonized peoples worldwide allowed for a naive view of the inherent potential for justice to rule within a democracy of agreeable white male property owners, farmers and factory workers, as one example of argumentative men sweating out a way to live with the greatest reward for each self-made man.
Nationalism of the sort that led to the assassination of the late 19th c Tsar Alexander (a liberal autocrat who had freed all Russian serfs), which led to the most vicious pogroms and the Russian Zionist reaction, the nationalist fervor that triggered the Great War of the 1910's with the assassination of Austrian royalty were born obviously out of rebellion against authority, rebellion fueled by beliefs in self-actualization. In 18th c France and the American colonies, rebellion was aided by guns and ideas. By 1900, humanity had ever bigger and better bombs, naval and then air power.
In my humble opinion, capitalism and even empire building ultimately benefited mankind, but democracy as an ideal is of no merit without the knowledge of good and evil within a religious context. The Founding Fathers of the Baby United States were Deists, not Christian, not in any sense other than maybe the name of a new American church name .
In Judeo-Christian Theology, God created evil, as noted in the Biblical Book of the Prophet Isaiah,
chapter 45 verse 7:
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things". The concept does not mean that God is evil. It is understood by the faithful that God is good, that Creation is good, and, that in giving mankind free will, the option to rebel against the goodness of God necessitates the existence, the possibility of the opposite of the nature the goodness of God, the opposite of God's will, that is, evil.
In modern democratic parlance, what's good for you might be evil for me and vice versa and therein lies the rub for modern man for whom morality is relative. I intuitively think that this relativism arose not only from Nietzsche's summation of the Enlightenment but out of humanity's need to grapple with the kind of warfare waged in the trenches of World War I between nations that were related to one another through centuries of royal weddings, the destructive forces poured down upon civilian populations in the Second World War and the genocide of European Jews by the Third Reich.
In an ironic twist of fate, democracies have led to the kind of death on the rampage in American cities, destructive forces waiting to implode in European cities, held together by a hair's breadth of common decency in Britain which is imploding politically. What is the common denominator between the unemployed former citizens of French colonial Africa in the suburbs of Paris and the homeless addicts in cities on the American West Coast? How can the British PM's plan to transport many 1000's of migrants to a Rwanda that can receive only a few hundred be the best of miserable options?
Humanity stands on the threshold, in my opinion, of the central challenge of evolution: will we survive through mutual cooperation or will the few survive while recycling dead organic human matter, ever seeking habitable planets in outer space? Or will we be destroyed as the earth grows hotter and agriculture continues to fail? Are we really alone in the universe with no return to Noah's Ark? Can the ancient wisdom texts, including the foundations of religions, give guidance to humanity as we seek to find common understandings of good and evil, affirmations of life and well being even if that would require an acknowledgement of a higher power, a higher love and a higher perception of reality than that which mankind has created since the time that, as Nietzsche had said, "God is dead and we have killed him"
Gnosticism proposes salvation as achievable through knowledge. To that one may easily ask, "how has that worked out for ya? How has that worked out for humanity over the past 2000 to 5000 years?
I don't think that first sentence is accurate. Gnosis is not simply knowledge, it is a type of knowledge. A gnostic might argue that Jesus had that knowledge, as have any number of saints and mystics. It arguably worked out quite well for them. But it is a type of knowledge that the vast majority of humanity shows no interest in.
Agreed that it is not simply knowledge. But theology as I understand it, teaches that salvation in the spiritual sense is via a higher power that dwells within the heart of man by invitation. It is not something attained through intellectual or other mental endeavor, otherwise man would simply be saving himself through self actualization. Considering documented sources along the lines of philosophy and literature, we have not succeeded very well as societies nor have saints outnumbered the mentally ill and personality disordered of which you spoke so well in the podcast I just listened to.
Admittedly my understanding is based on having graduated from an evangelical Biblical Christian college a lifetime ago, having been raised in a totally secular Jewish, European-American, WWII refugee home, and having spent the intervening decades as a soprano in Episcopal church choirs and as a member of 12-Step programs. I try to bring my experience together with my graduate level history studies of Britain and Russia and things do seem to fall into place nicely in my old age, although I cannot say for certain whether or not we are alone in the universe. As I experience life and a loving higher power, whom I choose to worship through imbibing Biblical texts, I would say we are not alone. I have not yet figured out where 50 thousand years of human fossil remains fits in with the Bible's 5000 plus years since Genesis but I try to have a sense of humor and let go and let God. I have certainly experienced miracle upon miracle throughout these years of faith as well as unfathomable suffering, but I see with old age what seems to work for people over the long haul. And what works for them, what heals the sick is then imbibed by my saying yes that is real. It just has not arisen through philosophy or even religious thought alone. It is ignited by a divinity, not an idea.
Interestingly though the subject of ponerology as I am hearing you and reading online has a profound connection to the experience of life affirming faith. What you are bringing to light online is of vital importance to human survival and I appreciate and respect the ethical foundation of these studies.
I was surprised at how much time you spent with Versluis on fiction work; TVs, movies, novels. My initial impression from this was that you can't really take this subject seriously. I see this in people in their 40s and 50s and it is a bit disturbing to me (I am nearly 70). I could be wrong about that.
This basic problem with Gnosis is: How much knowledge can be obtained, and how widely can it be applied? We have figured this out as it applies to the physical sciences and engineering. But not as it applies to human psychology, sociology and the creation of "better societies." Part of the problem is: How can you prove something to someone when they can't just observe it in the physical universe; when it's a secret? You have to start with a certain amount of willingness, and then an ability to trust your own perceptions about what you see when you bother to look.
In its best aspects, "metaphysical" gnosis is just a natural extension of Science, using a new set of research tools that allow you to look for information that could not be detected using other tools. This was the approach of Hubbard and is currently what Courtney Brown says he is doing. Are these researchers mentioned by Versluis? If not, why not?
For a more gut-wrenching look into the world of "magic" we have Dena Merriams's books. She uses meditation, and so her findings are not as deep as those of Hubbard and Brown. But she remembers times when magic was very real.
I think that the desire to "fix society" is separate from interest in the "secrets of the universe." But where you have those together, they will tend to strengthen each other, as we all know that secrets really exist. We have all indulged in creating and keeping and revealing secrets. How would life be different if we could not keep any secrets from each other?
I'm glad you're looking in this direction, because though ponerology is a kind of phenomenological reality that needs more attention., it exists in a bigger context. If there weren't people on this planet who wanted to live happy and crime-free lives, who would care whether the world was ruled by criminals or not?
It’s important to realize — and allow for that realization to deeply sink into the forefront of one’s conscious mind — that organized religions attract psychopaths to leadership positions.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
That's a fair point. All organizations and hierarchies are prone to attract psychopaths (or lesser deviants). I believe that is partially because the cost of heading organizations is the self imposed cost of caring about the people you lead, and for those who really don't care about other people that becomes much less of a cost, as it is one they cannot make themselves pay. Basically all upside for them, because the goal of the organization and the responsibilities of a leader are irrelevant to that cast of mind.
Very interesting observation. Plus, as L. points out I believe, many religious people are much more accepting and willing to tune out bad traits if the person says the right things and they accept the person as "one of us". As in, "he has accepted Jesus, so he's saved" ergo he can't be a psycho.
That's a very useful observation itself. I wonder if religions with more restrictive behavioral requirements are less prone to that as a result, due to it being more costly to say the right thing. There is an argument in the economics of religion that more restrictive rules lead to a positive selection effect to keep free riders out. The Amish, for example, provide a lot of "club goods" to co-religionists so keeping out the free riders is very important. On the other hand, the Amish reportedly have problems with certain behaviors due to the difficulty of punishment; they don't do corporal punishment, and if someone openly repents that it supposed to be the end of the matter. A psychopath (or someone who just recognizes that repenting every time they get caught gets them off) would have an easier time avoiding punishment there, but then again with so many strictures would quickly develop a record of transgression. Forgive and forget wouldn't work there, but forgive and remember and possibly expel later might work. (The Amish might be a bad example too due to how fluid their groups are, and how flat the hierarchy. A more hierarchical religion with at least semi-professional priesthoods and dedicated houses of worship/things requiring donation of money might be a crucial threshold after which psychotics become a real problem.)
A line of thought, and of non-thinking, runs from Friedrich Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" to the events of the late 19th c to the chaos of our time. Destructive forces, present throughout evolution, have been helped along by advances in weapons of war, from the industrial revolution to the 21st century's environmental, political and sociological breakdowns.
It seems that as long as kings, emperors and popes ruled kingdoms and empires, life for most people may have been short and by modern standards brutal, but the rise of democracies bred evils in different forms.
A dominant theme in the writings of The Federalist Papers was the awareness of the need to prevent political factions from overwhelming democratic majorities, overrunning the new American democracy itself. They were astute to attempt to prevent the rule of factional party politics, but was it naive on their part to believe in the possibility of a common good? They cannot be faulted for not envisioning how societies would evolve.
We however are naive if we don't see that class structures that "kept the peace", that prevented bloody revolutions or re-established peace and quiet after revolutions, always required an oppressed class, or to use a less Marxist vocabulary, peasants and with seafaring traders the inevitable oppressed colonized groups. The enslaved people in the American colonies or the destruction of colonized peoples worldwide allowed for a naive view of the inherent potential for justice to rule within a democracy of agreeable white male property owners, farmers and factory workers, as one example of argumentative men sweating out a way to live with the greatest reward for each self-made man.
Nationalism of the sort that led to the assassination of the late 19th c Tsar Alexander (a liberal autocrat who had freed all Russian serfs), which led to the most vicious pogroms and the Russian Zionist reaction, the nationalist fervor that triggered the Great War of the 1910's with the assassination of Austrian royalty were born obviously out of rebellion against authority, rebellion fueled by beliefs in self-actualization. In 18th c France and the American colonies, rebellion was aided by guns and ideas. By 1900, humanity had ever bigger and better bombs, naval and then air power.
In my humble opinion, capitalism and even empire building ultimately benefited mankind, but democracy as an ideal is of no merit without the knowledge of good and evil within a religious context. The Founding Fathers of the Baby United States were Deists, not Christian, not in any sense other than maybe the name of a new American church name .
In Judeo-Christian Theology, God created evil, as noted in the Biblical Book of the Prophet Isaiah,
chapter 45 verse 7:
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things". The concept does not mean that God is evil. It is understood by the faithful that God is good, that Creation is good, and, that in giving mankind free will, the option to rebel against the goodness of God necessitates the existence, the possibility of the opposite of the nature the goodness of God, the opposite of God's will, that is, evil.
In modern democratic parlance, what's good for you might be evil for me and vice versa and therein lies the rub for modern man for whom morality is relative. I intuitively think that this relativism arose not only from Nietzsche's summation of the Enlightenment but out of humanity's need to grapple with the kind of warfare waged in the trenches of World War I between nations that were related to one another through centuries of royal weddings, the destructive forces poured down upon civilian populations in the Second World War and the genocide of European Jews by the Third Reich.
In an ironic twist of fate, democracies have led to the kind of death on the rampage in American cities, destructive forces waiting to implode in European cities, held together by a hair's breadth of common decency in Britain which is imploding politically. What is the common denominator between the unemployed former citizens of French colonial Africa in the suburbs of Paris and the homeless addicts in cities on the American West Coast? How can the British PM's plan to transport many 1000's of migrants to a Rwanda that can receive only a few hundred be the best of miserable options?
Humanity stands on the threshold, in my opinion, of the central challenge of evolution: will we survive through mutual cooperation or will the few survive while recycling dead organic human matter, ever seeking habitable planets in outer space? Or will we be destroyed as the earth grows hotter and agriculture continues to fail? Are we really alone in the universe with no return to Noah's Ark? Can the ancient wisdom texts, including the foundations of religions, give guidance to humanity as we seek to find common understandings of good and evil, affirmations of life and well being even if that would require an acknowledgement of a higher power, a higher love and a higher perception of reality than that which mankind has created since the time that, as Nietzsche had said, "God is dead and we have killed him"
?
Lobaczewski would agree with you re: democracy. He's got another book where he deals with these issues called "Logocracy."
I have just ordered the book and am going through the previous workshop recordings
'these Voegelinian “anti-Gnostic” authors on the putative right' huh :)
"archons of darkness or hostile beings that would seek to subjugate the world" you say? ;)
Gnosticism proposes salvation as achievable through knowledge. To that one may easily ask, "how has that worked out for ya? How has that worked out for humanity over the past 2000 to 5000 years?
I don't think that first sentence is accurate. Gnosis is not simply knowledge, it is a type of knowledge. A gnostic might argue that Jesus had that knowledge, as have any number of saints and mystics. It arguably worked out quite well for them. But it is a type of knowledge that the vast majority of humanity shows no interest in.
Agreed that it is not simply knowledge. But theology as I understand it, teaches that salvation in the spiritual sense is via a higher power that dwells within the heart of man by invitation. It is not something attained through intellectual or other mental endeavor, otherwise man would simply be saving himself through self actualization. Considering documented sources along the lines of philosophy and literature, we have not succeeded very well as societies nor have saints outnumbered the mentally ill and personality disordered of which you spoke so well in the podcast I just listened to.
Admittedly my understanding is based on having graduated from an evangelical Biblical Christian college a lifetime ago, having been raised in a totally secular Jewish, European-American, WWII refugee home, and having spent the intervening decades as a soprano in Episcopal church choirs and as a member of 12-Step programs. I try to bring my experience together with my graduate level history studies of Britain and Russia and things do seem to fall into place nicely in my old age, although I cannot say for certain whether or not we are alone in the universe. As I experience life and a loving higher power, whom I choose to worship through imbibing Biblical texts, I would say we are not alone. I have not yet figured out where 50 thousand years of human fossil remains fits in with the Bible's 5000 plus years since Genesis but I try to have a sense of humor and let go and let God. I have certainly experienced miracle upon miracle throughout these years of faith as well as unfathomable suffering, but I see with old age what seems to work for people over the long haul. And what works for them, what heals the sick is then imbibed by my saying yes that is real. It just has not arisen through philosophy or even religious thought alone. It is ignited by a divinity, not an idea.
Interestingly though the subject of ponerology as I am hearing you and reading online has a profound connection to the experience of life affirming faith. What you are bringing to light online is of vital importance to human survival and I appreciate and respect the ethical foundation of these studies.
I was surprised at how much time you spent with Versluis on fiction work; TVs, movies, novels. My initial impression from this was that you can't really take this subject seriously. I see this in people in their 40s and 50s and it is a bit disturbing to me (I am nearly 70). I could be wrong about that.
This basic problem with Gnosis is: How much knowledge can be obtained, and how widely can it be applied? We have figured this out as it applies to the physical sciences and engineering. But not as it applies to human psychology, sociology and the creation of "better societies." Part of the problem is: How can you prove something to someone when they can't just observe it in the physical universe; when it's a secret? You have to start with a certain amount of willingness, and then an ability to trust your own perceptions about what you see when you bother to look.
In its best aspects, "metaphysical" gnosis is just a natural extension of Science, using a new set of research tools that allow you to look for information that could not be detected using other tools. This was the approach of Hubbard and is currently what Courtney Brown says he is doing. Are these researchers mentioned by Versluis? If not, why not?
For a more gut-wrenching look into the world of "magic" we have Dena Merriams's books. She uses meditation, and so her findings are not as deep as those of Hubbard and Brown. But she remembers times when magic was very real.
I think that the desire to "fix society" is separate from interest in the "secrets of the universe." But where you have those together, they will tend to strengthen each other, as we all know that secrets really exist. We have all indulged in creating and keeping and revealing secrets. How would life be different if we could not keep any secrets from each other?
I'm glad you're looking in this direction, because though ponerology is a kind of phenomenological reality that needs more attention., it exists in a bigger context. If there weren't people on this planet who wanted to live happy and crime-free lives, who would care whether the world was ruled by criminals or not?
https://phrasegenerator.com/academic