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Hrvatski Noahid:
Moreover, Abraham Maslow’s vision for third force psychology, and in his final years an even more exciting fourth force, underlies the optimistic tones now taken by mainstream psychology. Indeed, the focus of third force psychologists on values, needs, and self-actualization is one of the pillars of the modern self-help movement, forms standard knowledge for psychology undergraduates, and will mark important waypoints on the reconstruction of psychology and the blueprint of global utopia in the second section of this document. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 77)

Hrvatski Noahid:
One of the most famous philosophers of recent memory is Friedrich Nietzsche, whose aggressive style, bombastic claims, and prescient analysis have made his intellectual legacy one of the most compelling in the Western canon. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche’s scathing critiques of traditional European value systems, and grave concern at what would come to replace them, represent one of the most insightful diagnoses of Western metaphysical ailments ever to be produced.

Indeed, throughout many of his works, Nietzsche is primarily concerned with values, the metaphysical beliefs that drive them, and their resulting expression in societies. One of his most provocative concepts, later appropriated by the Nazi regime, was the übermensch or “overman”, someone who determined and pursued their own values through force of will. A person who failed to do so was, in Nietzsche’s opinion, doomed to nihilism and decadence – a self-destructive lifestyle.

One of Nietzsche’s main targets of criticism was Christianity, which he correctly intuited to lack a coherent metaphysical substructure for the values it had imposed on Europe for centuries. Writing in the wake of Darwin’s discoveries, as well as the momentous 1860 exchange between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley on the topic of evolution, Nietzsche foresaw what he called the death of God – the collapse of a widespread belief in Christianity, as well as the propagation of atheistic and nihilistic value systems throughout the void that would be created:

“Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him… What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Although Nietzsche’s fictional and poetic expression of these ideas can make it challenging to grasp their full meaning, his primary concern with the nineteenth-century collapse of Christianity is the resulting metaphysical and moral degeneration he foresaw in its wake. The “festivals of atonement” and “sacred games” alluded to in The Gay Science turned out to be nothing of the sort, with orgiastic destruction made the rule in Japan’s Unit 731, the Soviet gulags, and the Nazi death camps throughout the twentieth century. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 78)

Hrvatski Noahid:
Given these atrocities and the consistent patterns which give rise to them, one of the most pressing questions for many modern thinkers is how modern humans are so susceptible to genocidal behavior, both in the context of religious and secular belief. While many thinkers within the Western dream attribute such phenomena to inescapable problems with human nature, the reality is that the cascade effects of Christianity, modern European statecraft, the Industrial Revolution, mandatory state education, and psychology have whipped Westerners into valuing self-sacrifice and social belonging over their own self-interests, which Nietzsche described as a slave morality. Moreover, the cascading metaphysical mistakes made by Western intellectuals over the last two millennia have corrupted the public’s self-understanding, causing large segments of the population to become decadent and preoccupied with self-destructive goals.

In a remarkable point of consilience with the Biblical scriptures he despised, Nietzsche correctly intuited that the West’s faulty belief systems were idols, something that he made explicit in the title of one of his more famous works. In a Biblical sense, an idol is commonly associated with a statue of an alleged divine entity that receives veneration or offerings in return for blessing. Strictly speaking, this classification would include everything from Buddha statues that receive token veneration to the statues of Mary popular within Catholicism. However, in ancient times, and particularly in the Near East, the most popular idols included Moloch and Baal, both of whom were venerated through gruesome forms of child sacrifice:

“And to the children of Israel, you shall say: Any man of the children of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among Israel, who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall pelt him with stones.”

Although it may seem difficult to believe given the natural bonds that exist between parents and their offspring, the slaughter of children, virgins, and other blameless group members was a feature of ancient civilizations. Indeed, monuments to Aztec bloodshed serve as tourist attractions in Central America, uncovered burial pits in Carthage provide similar memories of darker times, and evidence even exists to corroborate Biblical accounts of pagan child sacrifice in the Levant.

For most Westerners, far removed from the worship of statues and the outright slaughter of innocents, the mindset behind such a practice and its relation to present circumstances can be difficult to understand. However, there are several clues hidden throughout the scientific, historical, and religious record that provide hints as to why child sacrifice was so popular cross-culturally, and why similar patterns continue to manifest in Western society in the form of gender-affirming care and other destructive practices. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 78-79)

Hrvatski Noahid:
The first clue comes from Jewish oral history, which relates that serving these idols provided followers with an incredible high. The second comes from an obscure-yet-influential book by neuroscientist Julian Jaynes which reveals links between the brain’s intuitive right hemisphere and the speech areas of the brain, which Jaynes believed facilitates not only the modern phenomenon of “inner voices” but also gave many ancient people an actual voice in their heads which became attributed to gods or deities.

There are also social factors at play in the phenomenon of child sacrifice, including the human propensities to comply with authority and fit in with the crowd. Insights from the Milgram experiment and other documented atrocities in modern history, including the murder of Jewish children by German policemen against their better instincts, strongly indicate that social pressures can override even the natural human instinct against murder and the natural protective instincts healthy parents have for their children. Moreover, the well-known bystander effect, which illustrates how the human desire to blend in with the crowd can take precedence over self-preservation, is another demonstration of the power of social influence.

Although a comparison of religious and secular sources is not always an easy endeavour, the consensus between rabbis and neuroscientists is that the statues themselves had no real power and were not physically communicating with their carved mouths. Indeed, this can be seen plainly in Jewish scripture, which elevates its criticism of idolatrous practices to satire:

“Neither do they know nor do they understand, for their eyes are bedaubed from seeing, their hearts from understanding. And he does not give it thought, and he has neither knowledge nor understanding to say, ‘Half of it I burnt with fire, and I even baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and ate. And what was left over from it, shall I make for an abomination, shall I bow to rotten wood?’

As all sources concur, the idols of Baal and Moloch may have had physical statues to embody their concepts, but they were ultimately just voices in people’s heads – bad metaphysical conclusions that influenced human behavior. The same is true for transgender ideology, which has been extraordinarily successful in getting the Western public to accept spurious claims about biology, psychology, and anthropology. While the transgender science now clouding Western judgement is extraordinarily more sophisticated than tribal beliefs about deities, the fact that both phenomena can be observed to operate according to similar patterns indicates that the ideologies of the post-Darwin Western world, known broadly as the isms, may also be a form of idol. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 79-80)

Hrvatski Noahid:
Despite the West’s sophisticated technologies, as well as important civilizational advancements like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, the sobering reality is that Western civilization is much closer to barbarism than it would care to admit. With only one in four American university graduates considered literate, many Western adults unfamiliar with the arrangement of the solar system, approximately one in ten children confused about their gender, and very little understanding of the “science” that holds modern societies together, the average Westerner lives in a world as confusing and arbitrary as any Canaanite barbarian.

Enmeshed in an extremely complex set of systems and unable to properly distinguish between the consequences of systemic decisions and the effects of natural events, the average Westerner must rely entirely on networks of journalists, experts, and other authorities to understand what is happening in the world. This dangerous situation is reminiscent of the European Dark Ages, where priests with exclusive access to Christian scriptures enjoyed a monopoly over much of Western thought, and tremendous influence over feudal governments as well.

Although the scientific literature that constitutes today’s holy scriptures is, in theory, accessible to any layperson curious enough to find it, most people lack the technical skills to properly interpret such works, and many also lack the critical thinking skills required to synthesize the information and form an independent opinion. In combination with the rise of social media and the popularity of thinkers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Jordan B. Peterson, many Westerners have split themselves into various ideological tribes with modern-day prophets and oracles at the helm. Many social media influencers have built their careers solely on interpreting and contextualizing events for their viewers, indicating the tremendous need for understanding in the contemporary climate.

The problem with this situation is that none of the ideological groups involved in the West’s ongoing “culture war” have a correct understanding of the problems they are trying to solve. On one hand, the Marxists who adhere to metaphysical principles like equity and intersectionality have misdiagnosed the suffering of the modern West and are naively attempting to systematize the whole world in response. The established powers, represented generally by Christian conservatives and “classical liberals” like Gays Against Groomers, have their own metaphysical problems which they are unwilling to examine. All the while, state education systems continue to simplify childhood, the corporate machine continues to optimize for growth, and the average person becomes more hopeless, helpless, and frustrated. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 80-81)

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