We Need Science, Materialism, Worldliness and Secularism

This is right from the lips of the Divine Couple to our ears--if we would but listen: the Good Couple admire, enjoy, and encourage human culture to be widened and deepened by the presence of capitalism, materialism, physicalism, scientism, worldliness and secularism. 

Now the mainstay of a reformed earthly culture would be one where holiness, otherworldliness, immaterialism, faith, prayer, and miracles are very prominent in the lives of the people.

Evil is fanaticism, totalism, one-dimensionality. There can be where there is too much emphasis on religion--say in a theocracy.

Dennis Prager is really down on secularism now, but I have to disagree with this fine man, a bit. We need secularism and worldliness to keep our faith healthy and multifaceted.

The Fabian Revoutionaries

 

 

 Stephen Hicks, in his warnings about the Marxist roots of postmodernist undermining of America, and Mark Levin's dire shouting in American Marxism that the revolutionaries are overthrowing America, have awakened us to the fact that the postructuralist/neo-Marxist mass movement now on aggressive march across America must be stopped cold.

One way to restore America and make it great again is to remember how Eric Hoffer in The True Believer suggested how citizens being subjected to mass media and federal BIG LYING, indoctrination brainwashing and gaslighting techniques and campaigns,  citizens can be sustained to withstand the separating them from their government, values and culture so they will submit willingly even enthusiastically to the Great Reset.

Here is what biographer Tom Shactman wrote of Hoffer in Schactman’s biography on Hoffer, Page 76 and 77 (Shactman above noted that true believers had become deracinated and willing to join any passing mass movement, and Hoffer was trying to say mass movements sometimes are reformative not bad and revolutionary under a humane leader like Lincoln. Hoffer in the following quotes suggests how to strengthen citizens against mass movement pressures and this is relevant today for our citizens to push back against the current Marxist/postmodernist mass movement out to destroy and end America.): "Hoffer stressed that a democratic society must be home to both the majority who were content with the present--the 'well-adjusted' autonomous individuals who in a crisis would band together and leap to defend their society--and to the leavening of malcontents, the incipient true believers who were needed to point up society's faults. He also suggested how an individual could avoid becoming a true believer: through cultivating self-confidence, pride in one's skills, a sense of individuality, and "a dispassionate attitude towards the world.' He also suggested that groups such as the best unions could take collective actions that bred 'stability and permanence,' thereby preventing their society from succumbing to the lures of true believership."

We want American citizens to be individuator/anarchist supercitizens that realize that inherently evil elites--like all people are wicked--are inherently attracted to amassing power to themselves as they oppress, abuse, tyrannize and exploit the masses under their thumbs. We need skeptical, optimistic powerful, logical, engaged, fearless citizens to run society and give their bosses their marching orders.

Hoffer's suggestions in the quote above provide us with idea for how the average supercitizen to ward off becoming a true believer.

We want each supercitizen to know and communicate that elitism is preferred, but only each maverizer developing his mind and skills in an excellent way. 

Elites as holders of power and wealth are undesirable and socially dysfunctional.

Failure

 Tom Schactman, an Eric Hoffer biographer, on Page 76 of his biography about Hoffer (American Iconoclast The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer) wrote that: " Hoffer's exaggeration quotient was more obvious in such lines as, 'Failure in the management of practical affairs seem to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs . . .'"

I have two reactions. I have very mixed feelings about Shactman. I do not trust him completely, He understands Hoffer to some degree, and to some degree I dislikes him and does not understand him. He admires Hoffer, but in part disapproves of him.  I sense that Shactman thinks Hoffer is racist, or not a good man, not as wise or truthful or original as he claims. I deny all these assumed accusations of Hoffer's character and nobility. Shactman misconstrues Hoffer's exaggerating as lying and self-indulgent ranting, and it is neither. Part of what seemed to offend Shactman about Hoffer may have been Shactman's recoiling against Hoffer's extroverted, sometimes loudmouthed, bombastic expression of opinion.

Hoffer exaggerates (not in truth content) but his exaggeration is more a rhetorical device to drive home the point that he is making, for the sheer artistic expression, and somehow Hoffer moderate ontology requires paradox (expressed as exaggeration) to capture how complex life is.

My second reaction is to pinpoint Shactman's own example of Hoffer's distorting the truth or exaggerating: "Failure in the management of practical affairs seem to be the qualification for success in the management of public affairs."

Dennis Prager and many modern conservatives decry public experts (Well-credentialed and specialized so everyone assumes they are the educated elite to run every aspect of society, allowing citizens increasingly little freedom to manage their own affairs in their own bumbling, amateurish way.)--public employees and their consultants--for wrecking everything they touch.

Somehow their failure or lack of experience, skill, competence, and success in practical matters and in the world of business makes them fit to run society. Common sense would seem to indicate that if one cannot even run one's own affairs well, that should be the red flag for one's inability and unworthiness to run society. It is not: these fools are running society into the ground through their control, operating and directing the public institutions. They are stupid, arrogant, dishonest, mean, evil and arrogant. 

That is the gist of what Hoffer was describing above with his exaggerative tone, words, and prose.

 

Genesis 41: 37-40

 Joseph brilliant and accurate interpretation of Pharaoh's dream so impressed Pharaoh that the latter selected and promoted this Hebrew slave to run the entire kingdom on the Pharaoh's name, because he so trusted him. Joseph, with God's favor upon him, would do very well in the world as a blessing from God because Joseph was such a fine and upright young man. His remarkable promotion and drastic improvement in his lot does indicate that all things are possible with God.

Read this quote from The American Family Bible: "This advice pleased Pharaoh and all his officials. 'Could we find another like him,' Pharaoh asked his officials, ' a man so endowed with the spirit of God?' So Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Since God has made all this known to you, no one can be as wise, and discerning as you are. You shall be in charge of my palace and all my people shall dart at your command. Only in respect to the throne shall I outrank you."

Let me share the same quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And the thing was good in the eyes of the Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in who the spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God has showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Thou shall be over my house, and according unto thy word, my people shall be ruled: only in the throne shall I be greater than thou."

May you go forth in life endowed with the spirit of God, a bit like the great Joseph, so that fine things will come your way.

Genesis 41: 14-16

 Pharoah in ancient Egypt was troubled by rich, vivid, disturbing dreams and all the summoned sages and magicians of Egypt could not interpret his dreams. So as was suggested, it was mentioned that Joseph the imprisoned Hebrew youth could interpret dreams. Let me quote the The New American Bible: "Pharoah therefore had Joseph summoned, and they hurriedly brought him from the dungeon. After he shaved and changed his clothes, he came into Pharaoh's presence. Pharaoh then said to him: 'I had certain dreams that no one interpret.  But I hear it said of you that the moment you are told a dream you can interpret it. 'It is not I,' Joseph replied to Pharaoh, 'but God who will give Pharaoh the right answer.'"

Joseph is right with God, and totally honest, so he gives God the credit for interpreting dreams accurately because God is truth, so God always has the right answer or interpretation. To Joseph's credit he realized that and immediately gave credit to where it was due -with Yahweh--in public. May you rely on God for detecting the best solutions, and then praise God openly as the source of your wise choice.

Now, here is that same quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): "Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.  And Joseph answered Pharaoh saying, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.'"

Genesis 40:8

 Joseph was in prison in Egypt when two imprisoned court officials had dreams that no one could interpret. Here Joseph's answer to them, from The New American Bible: " . . . They answered him, 'We have had dreams, but there is no one to interpret them for us.' Joseph said to them, 'Surely, interpretation comes from God. Please tell the dreams to me.'"

God can interpret dreams because God is the source of objective truth, and his preferred human contact, Joseph, is blessed for his faithfulness, piety and probity, with unique insight into meaning apprehension for dreams and likely discovering patterns of any kind.

Here is that quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to God? tell me them, I pray you."

RULE XII

 On Page 355 of his book, BEYOND ORDER 12 MORE RULES FOR LIFE, Jordan Peterson lays out this rule: "Be grateful in spite of your suffering."

He goes on: "However, even though I regard the inevitability of suffering and its exaggeration by malevolence as unshakable existential truths, I believe even more deeply that people have the ability to transcend their suffering, psychologically and practically, and to constrain their malevolence, as well as the evils that characterize the social and natural worlds.

Human beings have the capacity to courageously confront their suffering--to transcend it psychologically, as well as to ameliorate it practically."

Jordan like me is not an easy optimist, but he is an optimist when the smoke has cleared. We can be grateful to be alive, and to be given life by God, and an opportunity, despite our challenges and afflictions, to improve our lot, and make the world a little better place, to assist the Good Spirts in making earth just a bit more heavenly.