LSP54: Why Hatred Is a Free Will Choice - And Why Everyone Needs to Face the Truth About Hatred

 

It's common these days for spiritual leaders of all stripes to speak eloquently and volubly of love's power to heal the world. We're especially keen to talk about the power of love after we've been asked to deal with yet another horrific attack on innocent people, such as the recent gun attack at Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida  or the van attack in Toronto. When our fellow human beings choose to behave like monsters, we're quick to respond by sharing thoughts and prayers on social media, holding candlelight vigils, and making donations on crowd-sourcing sites. This is all well and good. What I don't see is a willingness on the part of influential commentators to ask why the violent perpetrators felt such hatred towards others and why they thought it was okay to act on their hatred. I don't see people asking what hatred is and why we're seeing a resurgence of this beastly human emotion throughout the world.

It's not good enough to sweep these questions under the carpet by proclaiming that hatred is simply a void in a person's head where love should be, as if it's not the hate-filled person's moral responsibility.

Hatred is not a lack of anything. Hatred is a moral choice. And unless a person can demonstrate that his/her biological brain has been catastrophically damaged by a head injury or a psychotic break or a viral attack or mercury poisoning or severe dementia or something else along the lines of an extreme physiological force, that person is responsible for the choice to hate others. 

As with all major meta-choices in life, hatred is a learned behaviour that evolves over time. You don't suddenly wake up one morning and decide to hate everyone whose name starts with a "J" (unless, as mentioned in the paragraph above, you've experienced a traumatic brain injury). Hatred is way of coping with a life you just don't like, a life that doesn't match what you believe you're entitled to. Hatred rewrites your brain's moral code and gives you permission to override the quiet whispering of  your soul's inner voice (that is, your conscience).

Irrefutable proof that hatred is a moral choice is found in the history of slavery among human cultures throughout time, region, and religious tradition. No one of conscience could ever believe that slavery is acceptable to God or the soul. Yet countless millions have persuaded themselves that slavery is a morally acceptable way to take what they think God owes them. Shown here is part of an Egyptian wall painting on display at the British Museum, London, UK. Photo credit JAT 2024.

Here is my working definition of hatred: Hatred is the choice to project your own personal responsibility onto somebody else so you don't have to deal with the consequences of your own thoughts, feelings, or actions. 

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own lack of happiness.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own selfishness.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own status addiction.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for your own lack of self-knowing and self-love.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you've made a mistake.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you're not special and you're not chosen and you're not "better" than anyone else.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people for the rage you feel when someone tells you you're not perfect and you're never going to be perfect.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people because you don't think you should ever have to deal with your own feelings of shame or guilt.

Hatred is the choice to blame other people when you realize you haven't yet achieved your "rightful" place as a saviour, Messiah, or enlightened teacher of justice and mercy, a place you're so certain you deserve.

Hatred is an inevitable consequence of your own belief that you already know yourself so well that you couldn't possibly fool yourself into believing things about yourself that simply aren't true.

In short, hatred is your brain's way of trying to prove to itself that you're a really nice person who's trying to save others when, in fact, you're a mean, nasty person who's narcissistic and selfish and refuses to take personal responsibility for your own choices and beliefs and attitudes towards others.

Among the narcissistic self-delusions that create no end of human suffering are these:

• a belief that you're incapable of making mistakes because you have all the right education and all the right knowledge
• a belief that you're better than other people because you have the only correct ideological understanding of the universe
• a belief in the superiority of your own mental processes because your logic is obviously impeccable
• a belief that you deserve to feel moral outrage if anyone suggests you should feel shame or guilt about the choices you've made (including religious choices)
• a belief that you're using all your exquisite knowledge and specialness and logic to save other people from their own stupidity (though you probably realize you shouldn't say this part out loud)

Hatred is a terrible force, and it creates indescribable suffering in the world, but it exists only because individual human beings and certain communities allow it to exist.

It exists where individuals and ideological communities refuse to be honest with themselves about what human beings are capable of when they embrace a loving and humble relationship with God and with themselves. 

Of course, the choice to love with humbleness and courage is also a choice. Love and hate are at opposite ends of the free will spectrum. But the great thing about free will is that you can change your mind about the kind of person you want to be. Even if your family, religious community, or social community have encouraged you to be a person who hates, you can always decide you no longer want to be that person. You can decide to learn -- to remember -- how to love.

A particular passage in the New Testament summarizes these thoughts beautifully. The passage I'm thinking of is found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-8a, so it's long been attributed to the apostle Paul. I'm pretty certain, however, that this short and timeless ode to Divine Love was written by Jesus and later stolen by Paul as part of the latter's ongoing efforts to make his teachings seem more closely aligned with those of Jesus.

It goes like this (using the NRSV translation, mostly):

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have piety, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. 

What love looks like: Light, openness, shared space, healing beauty, one well of water that quenches the thirst of all people equally. Shown here is the well in the cloister garden of Westminster Abbey, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

LSP51: Do You Agree with Pope Francis on the Question of Hypocritical Catholics Versus Atheists?

Last week, Pope Francis made international headlines when he criticized hypocrisy among Catholics who rigorously observe Catholic rituals but don't apply Christian virtues to their daily lives. This in itself wasn't an original insight, as anyone who knows the Bible can tell you. What attracted attention was Pope Francis' decision to quote this modern sentiment: "But to be a Catholic like that, it's better to be an atheist."

So is Pope Francis right? Is it true that atheists are capable of leading more virtuous lives than people who believe in God? Are atheists generally less hypocritical than Christians?

First, I want to be clear about the definition I'm using for atheist. I'm not talking about the people who are troubled by doubts and questions about God and who therefore aren't sure which direction to take; I'm talking about the people who are no longer troubled by such doubts or questions because they've a made a clear and conscious decision to reject the notion of a living God.

In my experience, it's the people who are most conscious about their decision to reject God who are the most hypocritical individuals I've had the misfortune to meet.

A few years ago, I worked for such a person, a store manager who was the boss from hell. For the purposes of this essay, I'll call her Celia.

Celia was a woman in her 40's who had worked in retail for many years. She was also, as voiced almost from the moment I met her, a passionate advocate of progressive values and human rights legislation. She claimed to be a person who wouldn't tolerate the slightest form of injustice. As an avowed atheist, she proudly spoke with righteous logic about the many harms caused by organized religion. She was, in short, the very model of a virtuous Canadian atheist.

But Celia had a dirty secret. She was profoundly hypocritical. She used her position as a retail manager not to lift others up through positive relationships but to bash other people down through a particularly insidious form of schadenfreude that loves the law but not the spirit of the law.

Celia lived to find fault in others so she could judge them as unworthy citizens who had committed crimes and deserved to be punished, all in the name of righteousness. So, instead of doing her job as manager, she would sit in the back of the store and obsessively watch the store's security cameras so she could catch small infractions of the "rules." She would make new rules, fail to communicate the new rules to staff members, punish us for breaking the rules, then set aside the new rules and replace them with more new rules the next day. She seemed unaware of how fickle and unprofessional and downright nasty her actions seemed to the rest of us. Meanwhile, she was so busy hunting down criminals, she wasn't leading the sales floor, or organizing stock, or promoting good relationships among staff so the store could operate efficiently and compassionately. She was just . . . dedicating herself to her "higher calling," her calling as a righteous warrior.

She was living in her own little world of purity and justice, and, from her point of view, she was righting a whole series of terrible wrongs. So she felt justified in firing anyone who didn't meet her standards, which was pretty much everyone. (After a while, I started keeping a list.) At any given time, she had a "favourite" employee and a "probational" employee, though you could quickly and quixotically fall from being favoured to being hated. One by one, she pushed us under the bus. I knew my time was coming to an end when she'd already fired everyone else who had given her "just cause." I was frantically looking for another job, but I wasn't fast enough. She'd set her vigilante sights on me. I got the boot because I dared to say in private to some other employees what I thought of her treatment of us. One of those employees was foolish enough to trust Celia's words about fairness and justice, and told Celia what I'd said. That employee didn't last much longer there than I did.

Celia's real problem was that she lacked any sense of true humbleness (with the meaning I've written about in previous posts). She was deeply narcissistic and absolutely certain of her "right to be right" (a brain issue I've also written about). She couldn't tolerate her own mistakes, so problems and doubts and questions always had to be somebody else's fault. 

Not only were the mistakes not her own, but she devoutly believed that all errors should be eradicated through the humanistic "religion" of perfection. Within this widespread human belief system of virtue, it's axiomatic that permanent perfection can be achieved through the proper application of human logic, law, justice, purity, and holiness. Once stupid superstitions like faith in God are eradicated, there's room for clever humans to get on with the task of building perfection. Those who achieve perfection are virtuous. Virtue confers authority. And authority grants the certainty to set yourself above the laws of justice that normal people (like employees) have to follow.

What laws are better, you ask, than the laws of fairness and common sense and personal responsibility and empathy? Why, the laws of self-justification, of course.  

Naturally, Celia was an expert at self-justification.

What Celia believed in was not justice but pure System 2 thinking and pure System 2 folly. Over the years -- perhaps as the result of a difficult childhood -- Celia had trained her brain to place less priority on the valuable input of her brain's System 1 processing system. She didn't want to feel empathy for others (because System 1 empathy, trust, and faith, unlike System 2 agreeableness, sometimes lead to emotional pain). She didn't want to feel humble. She didn't want to ask difficult questions about God. Or do the hard work of coping with her own messy System 1 sense of meaning. Most especially, she didn't want anyone else to tell her what to do or how to do it. She wanted control. She wanted to be in charge of the rules so she could change them at will and have a sense of power over others. She wanted to say she's a virtuous person without having to give up her "right to be right," her right to be happy in whatever way she damn well pleased.

In short, she wanted an excuse to proclaim herself a righteous warrior without ever having to do the hard work of loving your God and loving your neighbour as yourself.

She's an atheist because the atheistic worldview (with its suppression of System 1 brain input) gives her permission to be a controlling, narcissistic, unloving hypocrite who speaks volubly about justice and mercy but who actually prefers to terrorize others through her actions.

One aspect of being a cataphatic nature mystic is the sensitivity one develops to metaphors from nature. So when I went through my photo files to find an illustration to describe what it feels like to be attacked by an atheist, this photo, from a particularly nasty February 2015 storm, jumped out at me. The cold and vicious winds drove their payload of snow so strongly at every target that even the vertical bricks of my neighbour's house weren't spared. My personal faith is as sure and steady as these bricks, but when an atheist chooses to attack . . . it feels as if I've been blasted by calculated waves of pure, cold, logical hatred. Photo credit JAT 2015.

 

I've encountered a number of atheists who will resort to ad hominem attacks on people of faith at the slightest provocation, including the mere mention of God. Atheists who go on the attack (and many of them seem to believe it's their moral duty to attack) don't just argue on the grounds of logic or science but find it very easy to slip into hate-filled diatribes about the idiocy of anyone who trusts in God. The viciousness of an atheist in hot pursuit of a faith-based target is a scary sight indeed. (Survival of the fittest, no doubt?)

I agree with Pope Francis that all atheists will go to heaven, and I agree that all atheists should be treated with dignity and respect because they're human beings and children of God just like everybody else.

But this doesn't mean I find the moral choices of atheists acceptable.

There's no virtue to be found in an atheist's "right to be right." And atheists aren't less hypocritical than System-2-dominant Christians (that is, the Catholic hypocrites Pope Francis has complained about). The only way for any of us to stop living as hypocrites is to embrace the full capacity of our human brains -- to learn what it means to love and forgive and learn and grow at the deepest levels of heart combined with mind combined with soul combined with body on an ongoing basis till the day we die.

If you think you can do all this without asking God for help, you must really think highly of yourself.

LSP33: Dual Process Thinking and the Soul

The new year started out for me with laughter, excitement, and awe when I stumbled on a BBC Future article about religion and the human brain that confirms much of what I've been writing about for years.

The article, by Rachel Nuwer, is called "Will religion ever disappear?" I recall noticing the title when the article first appeared on December 19, 2014, but I was too busy to stop and take a look. On January 2, though, I somehow ended up there -- almost 10 years to the day since the Christ Zone model of consciousness was first laid out for me in the course of my daily mystical conversations with the soul who once lived as Jesus.

In her article, Nuwer asks whether the rise of atheism around the world will inevitably lead to the death of religion and spirituality. Her conclusion, based on research from experts in psychology, neurology, history, anthropology, and logistics, is that "religion will probably never go away." The reason? The reason boils down to "a god-shaped hole [that] seems to exist in our species' neuropsychology, thanks to a quirk of our evolution."

This "god-shaped hole," which we're always trying to fill with meaning and purpose, springs from the scientific reality that human brains seem to use not one but two basic and distinctive forms of thought. Researchers from social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology refer to this in broad terms as "dual process theory." Recent fMRI studies show that specific brain areas are used to process information from the first system and different brain areas are used to process information from the second. Sometimes these two systems are in competition with each other.

The two basic forms of thought are creatively referred to by researchers as "System 1" and "System 2." Me, I call these two processing systems the Soul Circuitry and the Darwinian Circuitry.

Researchers agree that System 1, which seems to be much older in evolutionary terms, is oriented towards intuition, morality, recognizing patterns in the world around us, and seeking meaning and relationships. System 2, which is actually much newer, involves conscious reasoning and careful application of logic. 

I learned this week that dual process theory has been around for a long time among modern psychologists. But somehow I missed it. I've known for several years about some early theological references to the "two-part brain" -- for instance, soon after Jesus explained the Christ Zone model to me, I saw the significance of his use of the rare term "dipsychos" (double-minded) in James 1:8; and later I noted Augustine of Hippo's description of himself as a man torn by the conflicting impulses of two different minds. But I had no idea that my painstaking efforts in the past 10 years to understand the brain-soul nexus were being paralleled in psychology research labs around the world (albeit while skirting any reference to "soul").

That's why I started to laugh when I read the article. When you`re dealing with angels on an everyday basis, timing is everything.

Successful religious architecture appeals to both System 1 and System 2 in the brain. St. Pancras, in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England, echoes the emotional tones and colours of the haunting hills of Dartmoor. Photo credit JAT 1997.

Even if you're an atheist, and you don't agree with me that System 1 is a 3D analogue for the unique emotional and creative needs of the soul, you still can't avoid the scientific reality that your brain is wired to WANT morality and values. System 1 exists whether you like it or not, and it's an essential part of a healthy brain.

It`s a scientific fact that if you don't give System 1 something useful to do, it will give you feedback whether you like it or not. As Nuwer says, "Similarly, many around the world who explicitly say they don`t believe in a god still harbour superstitious tendencies, like belief in ghosts, astrology, karma, telepathy or reincarnation. 'In Scandanavia, most people say they don`t believe in God, but paranormal and superstitious beliefs tend to be higher than you`d think,' [Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia] says. Additionally, non-believers often lean on what could be interpreted as religious proxies -- sports teams, yoga, professional institutions, Mother Nature and more -- to guide their values in life . . . 'People seem to have this conceptual space for religious thought, which -- if it`s not filled by religion -- bubbles up in surprising ways,' [says Justin Barrett of Fuller Theological Seminary]."

The scientific reality of System 1 is something that has to be factored into any decision you make about your personal spiritual practices. You might like to believe you can rise above all that System 1 nonsense of intuition, morality, recognizing patterns, and seeking meaning and relationships. You might like to believe you can replace emotion and intuition with pure reason and logic at no cost. The cost, however, will be very high: you'll be forcing your brain to ignore the decision-making wisdom of huge hunks of your brain.

I find it easier, more logical, and a lot more fun to live my life by using my whole brain and allowing myself to trust the scientific concepts explained to me by my angels instead of relying on superstition, sports scores, entertainment news, and paranormal "reality shows" for my sense of wholeness and meaning.

God bless my angels for insisting I read the news from reputable, reliable new sources.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

LSP30: Spirituality: Don't Let It Become Your Personal Addiction Playground

I wrote the following paragraphs in response to a question posted recently in an online spirituality forum. The question was, "Why must those who claim to be Spiritual be so afraid of honest debate?"

Honest debate is a good antidote for the problems created by top-down philosophical authority (a.k.a. Revelation). But first it's helpful to understand the obstacles that get in the way of honest debate.

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It's easier to see the effects of status addiction in spheres of life such as politics or business, as highlighted in a recent Atlantic article by Jerry Useem about the "power paradox." But the same thing happens in spiritual and religious circles because, like it or not, we only have so many brain networks. The biological networks you use to build knowledge, authority, relationships, and organizational planning in the business world are the same networks you use to build knowledge, etc., in the religious or spiritual world. You can't separate the networks (though many unethical spiritual teachers will tell you you can). So if you're vulnerable to the problems of addiction -- especially status addiction -- you're not immune to the problems caused by too much power or too much infallibility in the spiritual world. Like everybody else, you have to deal with the biology God has given you -- not the biology you'd like to think you have. Photo credit JAT 2017.

Another point to consider is the neuroscientific perspective, since a person who's on a spiritual path is still a human being who's dealing with all the realities of biology, chemistry, and physics. 

The human brain is vulnerable to addiction issues. (Actually, many other species are vulnerable to addiction issues, too, but this isn't the place for that discussion.) Addiction issues can really get in the way within spiritual circles, especially when the "drug of choice" is status.

Status addiction is a physiological addiction -- a biological addiction -- that's no different (as far as the brain is concerned) than better known addictions such as alcohol or substance abuse. It hasn't been examined much in scientific studies. I hope this lack of scientific interest will soon change.

Status addiction often expresses itself as the "Right to Be Right" -- a psychological need to present a belief or an opinion as a "universal truth" that can't be challenged. This status-driven "Right to Be Right" is often seen in both scientific and theological circles, where the payoff for being "right" can be quite large. (Note that acquiring money isn't the key issue here; acquiring status points is the goal, so an ascetic who's given up all his or her money and belongings can still be suffering from a self-devouring status addiction.)

When a status addict's "Right to Be Right" is challenged, he or she will respond as all addicts do (until they begin to confront their personal addictions): they'll do whatever they have to do to protect their daily "fix."

I've had personal encounters with a number of status addicts who've chosen the spiritual world as their personal addiction playground, and let me tell you -- it ain't pretty when you confront them.

As with any form of addiction, a Twelve Step Program could prove very helpful for dealing with the intense cravings of status addiction and the unloving behaviour that often results.

Hope this helps.

Blessings,
Jen