Hate is fear and fear is hate. Without fear hate would just be contempt and dismissal, but you can't be contemptuous of people who you wrongly or rightly perceive as being better-off than you are (which, in the case of Jews, is highly variable, there are definitely some Jews who are rich and powerful, but I've also heard repeatedly that most Jews are poor and powerless.) For that reason I don't think you can stop people from hating things, since I think people are just like "man, my life sucks, why? Oh, maybe it's the Jews, maybe it's black people, maybe it's women, maybe it's LGBTQ+, I just need a scapegoat," but you can make hate less effective. Mostly, I think some people will always just make enough bad choices of their own free will it pulls them into evil, essentially, but the impact of their actions can still be minimized even if they're personally miserable. I think the important thing to understand is that they are personally miserable. It's basically Yoda's quote about fear leading to hate and suffering and the Dark Side, that's basically how it actually works minus the part about the Dark Side being real.
True, but I think that's also all kind of related anyway. I think everyone is kind of going to endure "trauma" and that's kind of what we need Christianity for, that's earnestly what turned me to Christianity over all these other religions that might or might not be true and that I didn't want to become an archaeological expert to try to distinguish between toward the end of last year in the first place. That's how I really see the difference between Christianity and other religions, because in Christianity it's about how you're going to get pushed down but you get back up. Jesus was crucified and rose. Jonah was in the whale and left. Job was punished for no crime as a test and then rewarded, etc. I think the test is kind of that bad things will happen to everyone, but if you're a good person you get rewarded if you pass the test, that's how I see Christianity now. And the Bible does say that whoever loves God should not have fear, because love and fear are mutually exclusive. So if people don't have God and they should really know better (so maybe not babies or the really ignorant people living in remote places, but maybe they secretly have ways of knowing some things about God without the Bible but not communicating it anyway) I think yeah that's kind of demonic. Reminds me of one of the other things you talked about in another post, the idea you become what you worship. To me all the other things people worship are like demons, and people become those in a way, so of course they're afraid of God then. And if you worship God you basically become the Logos too and that's just a mainstream idea very few people would disagree with, ironically especially not Catholic or Orthodox people but not old-school Protestants (who incidentally are often the mainline ones: Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, etc.) either.
So that's how I view fear in light of how I view Christianity in general, as well as how I was convinced of Christianity without using the lens of academic history. I still agree it's a historical religion in the sense it historically happened, but too often people seem to turn that into worshipping history and historians which I think is a problem, isn't part of Christianity that it has to be all things to all people to be effective? I quite like that I basically used something more akin to natural history and reconstructing to figure it out since that came naturally to me, and other people came to believe in it for various other things like Genesis 1 basically being an accurate description of how the Universe was made (though that doesn't distinguish between Christianity and Judaism plus you still need to explain Genesis 2, but it's really impressive once you notice that they knew light was around before the Sun due to basically the Big Bang, or that plants were around before animals and, fish were around before land animals, etc.)
Yeah that's a long-ish message but that's still the only way I think the idea of fear can really be understood in light of the Bible.
Not everyone is going to endure the kind of intense, violent, fear-you-are-going-to-die trauma which produces PTSD like I have and that I suspect causes others to become the kind of intense antisemites that would commit crimes.
Maybe. That seems reasonable. But I do tend to think if people have bad stuff in their hearts they cause more problems, which is probably not the same as PTSD but they still attract negative things of various stripes toward themselves. For example, let's say someone is mean to you, and you're scared that if you're not mean back you're being taken advantage of so you be mean back. Then people decide they don't want to merely reciprocate, they want to one-up you so you want to one-up them. Then eventually you're just in a race to act like Satan himself out of a paranoia that otherwise people are going to hurt you. I think that's behind most of the evil in the world to be honest and you just need to decide what point you're going to break things off at. That's probably not fear-you're-going-to-die trauma and that's true, but even spoiled brats act like that and probably especially spoiled brats act like that. I often treat Elon Musk as a case study for exactly that reason, his dad was extremely abusive to him but that doesn't make him innocent, two wrongs don't make a right and all that, he basically just turned around and did the exact same thing to other people. Earlier this year I watched Citizen Kane because I wanted to study the psychology of someone who would sue over a movie and I decided William Randolph Hearst was almost the same person as Elon Musk. It reminds me of what Carl Jung said, healthy people don't torment others, only the tormented become the tormenters. Or W. H. Auden, those to whom evil is done do evil in return (with the caveat that you're supposed to break the cycle and that's the whole purpose of Christianity.) But I'm sure different kinds of bad experiences lead to someone becoming a Citizen Kane compared to a skinhead and that's important, so maybe I oversimplified somewhat in my description.
Hate is fear and fear is hate. Without fear hate would just be contempt and dismissal, but you can't be contemptuous of people who you wrongly or rightly perceive as being better-off than you are (which, in the case of Jews, is highly variable, there are definitely some Jews who are rich and powerful, but I've also heard repeatedly that most Jews are poor and powerless.) For that reason I don't think you can stop people from hating things, since I think people are just like "man, my life sucks, why? Oh, maybe it's the Jews, maybe it's black people, maybe it's women, maybe it's LGBTQ+, I just need a scapegoat," but you can make hate less effective. Mostly, I think some people will always just make enough bad choices of their own free will it pulls them into evil, essentially, but the impact of their actions can still be minimized even if they're personally miserable. I think the important thing to understand is that they are personally miserable. It's basically Yoda's quote about fear leading to hate and suffering and the Dark Side, that's basically how it actually works minus the part about the Dark Side being real.
I’ve come to suspect that a lot of that fear comes though a) untreated trauma, and b) degrees of demonic possession.
True, but I think that's also all kind of related anyway. I think everyone is kind of going to endure "trauma" and that's kind of what we need Christianity for, that's earnestly what turned me to Christianity over all these other religions that might or might not be true and that I didn't want to become an archaeological expert to try to distinguish between toward the end of last year in the first place. That's how I really see the difference between Christianity and other religions, because in Christianity it's about how you're going to get pushed down but you get back up. Jesus was crucified and rose. Jonah was in the whale and left. Job was punished for no crime as a test and then rewarded, etc. I think the test is kind of that bad things will happen to everyone, but if you're a good person you get rewarded if you pass the test, that's how I see Christianity now. And the Bible does say that whoever loves God should not have fear, because love and fear are mutually exclusive. So if people don't have God and they should really know better (so maybe not babies or the really ignorant people living in remote places, but maybe they secretly have ways of knowing some things about God without the Bible but not communicating it anyway) I think yeah that's kind of demonic. Reminds me of one of the other things you talked about in another post, the idea you become what you worship. To me all the other things people worship are like demons, and people become those in a way, so of course they're afraid of God then. And if you worship God you basically become the Logos too and that's just a mainstream idea very few people would disagree with, ironically especially not Catholic or Orthodox people but not old-school Protestants (who incidentally are often the mainline ones: Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, etc.) either.
So that's how I view fear in light of how I view Christianity in general, as well as how I was convinced of Christianity without using the lens of academic history. I still agree it's a historical religion in the sense it historically happened, but too often people seem to turn that into worshipping history and historians which I think is a problem, isn't part of Christianity that it has to be all things to all people to be effective? I quite like that I basically used something more akin to natural history and reconstructing to figure it out since that came naturally to me, and other people came to believe in it for various other things like Genesis 1 basically being an accurate description of how the Universe was made (though that doesn't distinguish between Christianity and Judaism plus you still need to explain Genesis 2, but it's really impressive once you notice that they knew light was around before the Sun due to basically the Big Bang, or that plants were around before animals and, fish were around before land animals, etc.)
Yeah that's a long-ish message but that's still the only way I think the idea of fear can really be understood in light of the Bible.
"To me all the other things people worship are like demons, and people become those in a way, so of course they're afraid of God then."
This is correct.
Not everyone is going to endure the kind of intense, violent, fear-you-are-going-to-die trauma which produces PTSD like I have and that I suspect causes others to become the kind of intense antisemites that would commit crimes.
Maybe. That seems reasonable. But I do tend to think if people have bad stuff in their hearts they cause more problems, which is probably not the same as PTSD but they still attract negative things of various stripes toward themselves. For example, let's say someone is mean to you, and you're scared that if you're not mean back you're being taken advantage of so you be mean back. Then people decide they don't want to merely reciprocate, they want to one-up you so you want to one-up them. Then eventually you're just in a race to act like Satan himself out of a paranoia that otherwise people are going to hurt you. I think that's behind most of the evil in the world to be honest and you just need to decide what point you're going to break things off at. That's probably not fear-you're-going-to-die trauma and that's true, but even spoiled brats act like that and probably especially spoiled brats act like that. I often treat Elon Musk as a case study for exactly that reason, his dad was extremely abusive to him but that doesn't make him innocent, two wrongs don't make a right and all that, he basically just turned around and did the exact same thing to other people. Earlier this year I watched Citizen Kane because I wanted to study the psychology of someone who would sue over a movie and I decided William Randolph Hearst was almost the same person as Elon Musk. It reminds me of what Carl Jung said, healthy people don't torment others, only the tormented become the tormenters. Or W. H. Auden, those to whom evil is done do evil in return (with the caveat that you're supposed to break the cycle and that's the whole purpose of Christianity.) But I'm sure different kinds of bad experiences lead to someone becoming a Citizen Kane compared to a skinhead and that's important, so maybe I oversimplified somewhat in my description.
Ditto
Show us your work? I wasn't be critical
Anybody with a sense of humor likes good cartoons, all kinds of cartoons.
Its one if the great things about cartoonists , SATIRE, POKING FUN,
My work is all over our pages. Maybe you should try looking for it.
Excellent Work Mike
https://open.substack.com/pub/godofthedesert/p/since-i-was-asked-so-politely?r=1m97im&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
My wife's family were one of the thirteen and a half million Ethnic Germans that had to flee for their lives in 44-45
There were anywhere between a million to two and a half million deaths.
Cartoon that Mike
Excuse me?
Your make it so easy
To whine
OK, you two. Looks like just a miscommunication. Nothing to argue about. Thank you both for your support. ;-)
Seems like you're really good at it.
What exactly is your goal here?
I despise Bill Maher. I have a political cartoon I did a long time ago about him.
Show us please
Why? So you can whine more?
OK Mike, go ahead and post some of your work for Mark and the rest of us to enjoy!
Can't post pics in the comments. I'll put together a post later.