Monday, October 17, 2022

Minds Wide Shut and Knives Wide Out

We’ve all seen people cover their eyes when frightened, a seemingly infantile defense mechanism. 

Similarly, we’ve all seen progressives close their minds when overwhelmed with affect, whether it is fear, hatred, envy, anxiety, or pride. Turns out these two types of closure -- of eyes and minds -- are neurologically related, or we don’t have a post.

Now, all animals -- all living beings, I suppose -- have defense mechanisms, except they are on the purely biological level. In fact, every thing an organism does is in order to either defend or perpetuate itself. Only human beings can transcend this narrow repertoire of behaviors and enter an immaterial world of truth, beauty, virtue, and other transcendentals. Of note, each of these latter is an end; they are pursued for their own sake, not “in order to.” 

Wait. Wouldn’t the pursuit of truth, for example, be in order to develop technology? Not fundamentally, because truth must first be pursued in a disinterested way, from which technology may or may not emerge. Once truth is attached to a passionate interest, it usually goes off the rails. To cite one example, 
Lysenkoism was a political campaign against genetics and science-based agriculture, rejecting natural selection in favor of a form of LamarckismIn time, the term has come to be identified as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.
More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned (Wiki).   
So obviously, the persecution of those professing climate realism or gender sanity or human biology is nothing new. 

Another example is the Aryan Physics of national socialism: 
with the rise of Nazism, Albert Einstein’s physics faced hostility and was attacked on racial grounds. That assault was orchestrated by two Nobel laureates in physics, who asserted that stereotypical racial features are exhibited in scientific thinking. Their actions show how ideology can infect and inflect science (https://metode.org/issues/monographs/einstein-and-nazi-physics.html).  
Now, way back when I was a functioning psychologist, I had this idea that all psychological defense mechanisms are but sublimated forms of physical acts such as covering one's eyes, playing dead, regurgitating, attacking, running away, etc.   

For example, think of the millions of Democrat women of both sexes who are “triggered” by this or that harmless “threat.” What’s going on here? Clearly something analogous to prey in the presence of a predator — say, a rabbit triggered by a coyote or bird by a cat. 

If only all Democrats identified as trans-prey, the world would be a better place, since we actually have no intention to eat them. 

But the most dangerous are the predators -- or, to be perfectly accurate, these vulgarian bullies who project their unconscious prey into others while consciously identifying with the predator, whether the prey are J6 election justice protesters, pro-life activists, gender-sane parents, Covid “vaccine" realists, etc.

It is a banality to point out that the identity politics of the left revolves around an intergroup competition for victim status, which results in a race to the bottom to determine which race or gender or perversion is more pathetic. As such, it would appear to be a contest to identify the most harmless prey (and implicitly their predator, which is easy, since it is always white male Christians). 

This itself is filled with irony, and shows how the most un- and anti-Christian among us partake of Christian values in order to empower themselves. What I mean is that Jesus taught a truly revolutionary doctrine that inverted the values of the world and exalted the meek, the poor, the humble, the persecuted, etc. Last I checked, no one prior to Jesus promulgated such an anti-predator and pro-prey doctrine.

But the doctrine was not intended to elevate the prey to predator. Nevertheless,  fake predatory Catholics such as Brandon, Pelosi, and Sandy Cortez, prey on everyone from babies in the womb to police on the beat to dwellers of their inner cities.

Psychoanalyst James Grotstein wrote of Jesus’ identification with the paschal lamb,
reminiscent of the ancient Jewish custom of choosing a “scapegoat” or ram to sacrifice. One particular aspect of this custom is of note: the members of the congregation, in effect, projected their sins into the goat or lamb, which was then taken into the wilderness and allowed to be preyed upon by predators. (emphasis mine).
Hmm. I’m trying to figure out how this is different from Democrats projecting their sins into us as justification for preying upon us, but I don’t see any difference, except that no redemption or atonement results from the practice. 

Rather, it is circular and must be repeated ad nauseam. Conversely, the whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice is that it is one-and-done, and results in man’s freedom from the need to engage in human sacrifice.

I could go on, but at this point I would just advise reading Gil Bailie’s Violence Unveiled and God’s Gamble for the rest of the story.


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