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  or the van attack in Toronto. When our fellow human beings choose to behave like monsters, we're quick to respond by offering our thoughts and prayers on social media, hold candlelight vigils, and make 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 perpetrators in question 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 fault.

Hatred is not a lack of anything. Hatred is a choice. And unless you can demonstrate that your biological brain has been catastrophically damaged by a head injury or a viral attack or mercury poisoning or something else along the lines of an extreme physiological force, you yourself are responsible for your choice to hate others.

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 believing that happiness is more important in your life than meaning; that morality is and should be fluid because our genetics demand we survive at all costs; that status acquisition is a true measure of why you're worthy of worship; that self-knowing is dependent on measures of happiness instead of measures of meaning.

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.

Among the 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; a belief that you're using all your exquisite knowledge and specialness and logic to save other people from their own stupidity (though you usually have the sense not to say this part out loud).

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.

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 (including many religious and spiritual traditions, not least several branches of Christianity and most branches of Buddhism) refuse to be honest with themselves about what human beings are capable of when they embrace a loving and humble relationship with both God and with themselves as souls-in-human-form. 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. Choose one or the other because you can't have both

. 

What love looks like: lots of open space. The well in the cloister garden of Westminster Abbey, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

What hatred looks like: lots of rigid words. It's your job to listen to what your preachers tell you and decide for yourself whether the words you're hearing come from a place of love or a place of hatred. Don't be fooled by hatred masquerading as a promise of salvation. Photo credit JAT 2016.

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.

Amen.

LSP53: Why the Practice of "No Right and No Wrong" Hurts Your Brain and Damages Your Empathy

The dispute began with this small saying posted over a photo: "Forgive people in your life, even those who are not sorry for their actions. Holding on to anger only hurts you, not them."

The first person to reply didn't want to talk about forgiveness or holding onto anger. He wanted to dismiss both of these important emotional and spiritual issues by playing the trump card of "non-judgment." So he said, "I would suggest that learning and practising NON-judgement would eliminate any and all need for forgiveness and lead to a more loving and peaceful world."

His definition of "non-judgment," as revealed by a later comment, is this: "These days, I tend to ask myself just one question about any event that I see - 'Would I like to see that in my autobiography.' NO judgement of 'right' or 'wrong', 'good' or 'bad'. It just IS and it is up to me to decide how to respond - or not respond."

A forgiving brain reminds me of this modified photo of the Lady Chapel ceiling at Westminster Abbey, London, England. Forgiveness is strong and orderly, but also organic, layered, and subtly interconnected. Photo credit JAT 2023.

 
He was not all pleased with my first response to him, which went like this: "It's true that those who practise non-judgment see no need for forgiveness. It's also true that those who practise non-judgment believe firmly that this will lead to a more loving and peaceful world. However, there's no evidence that non-judgment actually creates what it claims to create. What it seems to create is rampant narcissism, self-entitlement, morality that's "convenient" and changeable depending on the circumstances, and a diminished sense of personal responsibility."

Among other things he said to me, he demanded backing for my comments. So although it's unlikely anything I offer in the way of research will interest him, I decided this would be a good time to talk about why the current practice of non-judgment (as defined above) is harmful to the brain and why it leads to widespread narcissism, self-entitlement, fluid morality, and a diminished sense of personal responsibility.

First, I'd like to make it super, ultra-clear that when I'm talking about the practice of non-judgment, I'm not in any rejecting the practice of trying to see your fellow human beings through the loving eyes and ears of kindness, compassion, inclusiveness, and equality before God. Obviously, it's a good thing to try to see the best in everyone. And, obviously, it's a good thing to help others on the difficult and confusing journey of trying to be the best self one can be as a human being.

The spiritual practice of non-judgment, wherein nothing is deemed to be either "right or wrong," "good or bad," is the specific practice I'm objecting to. According to this belief system, things just "are," and you're not supposed to have an opinion about them one way or the way. 

You may decide that a particular choice isn't a good one for you -- for example, you may decide not to copy the choices of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock -- but you're really not supposed to have an opinion one way or the other on what Paddock did. As teachers such as Neale Donald Walsch and Eckhart Tolle would have it, Paddock was following a false mental construction or offering resistance to life. No one who has accepted the teachings of non-judgment would want to do such a violent, unloving thing, say these teachers. But now that he's done it, there's no need to forgive Paddock, because in order to forgive him, you'd first have to decide his actions were immoral. And that would be a judgment.

So yes . . . it makes perfect sense within the non-judgment belief system to say that forgiveness isn't needed.

Unfortunately, the brain science says otherwise.

The human brain is a vast assortment of neurons and glial cells and networks of connectivity and neurotransmitters and so on, with current estimates of the total number of neurons now standing at 86 billion accompanied by about an equal number of glial cells.

For many decades in the twentieth century, the belief that the adult brain couldn't grow new neurons was scientific dogma -- and vigorously defended dogma, at that. Despite some early evidence to the contrary, it wasn't until the late 1990's that researcher Elizabeth Gould was able to convincingly overturn this longstanding tenet of neuroscience. Today, a mere 20 years later, no reputable researcher would deny the brain's remarkable ability to reshape itself by building new neurons, building new networks, and dismantling cells and connections that are no longer needed. The umbrella term for this malleability is neuroplasticity and the process of growing new neurons is called neurogenesis.

The important point here is that until doctors and other medical professionals began to understand the full potential of neuroplasticity, many of them based their practical care decisions on false beliefs about the brain. Patients who could have benefited from care regimens designed to encourage the brain to repair itself were instead being told nothing could be done. Patients in need of neurological help didn't receive the therapy they needed, not because of a lack of care and concern but because of a lack of proper understanding of how the biological brain actually works.

The same thing has been happening in spiritual and religious circles. Certain beliefs and spiritual practices are being recommended in the well-intentioned belief that such practices will help people create a more loving and peaceful world. But if these practices interfere at a biological level with the brain's ability to exhibit traits such as empathy, altruism, gratitude, forgiveness, trust, love, and sense of meaning, then we need to be honest about these practices and revisit their usefulness for those who seek healing and deeper relationships with themselves, each other, and God.

Fascinating new research supported by the use of brain scanning technologies has revealed that the brain contains multiple networks -- like highly specific paths or roadways -- that connect certain regions of the brain to produce specific human traits. New networks are being suggested and theorized about all the time, so it's not possible for me to include a comprehensive list, but we now have data to point to the default mode network; the interoception network; the salience network; and the theory of mind network, to name a few. Networks aren't separate from each other and tend to overlap at certain key "hubs." But without these networks, we wouldn't be able to process, regulate, and put into action the complex thoughts, emotions, memories, skills, and perceptions that make us human in a broad sense and also in a unique individual sense.

The brain's networks are so complex that there's always a struggle to keep them in balance. Sometimes an area of the brain is overactive (which affects any networks the area is connected to) and sometimes an area is underactive (which also affects any relevant networks). In addition, entire networks can become dysfunctional, which can become quite serious from a medical point of view because of demonstrated links to specific neurological and psychiatric disorders. The dorsomedial default network, for example, which is supposed to help the brain regulate pain perception, self-knowledge, empathy, and person perception (among other traits) is implicated in a number of major disorders when the links in the network become damaged or are shown to be metabolically overactive or underactive.

In other words, when a network is working in balanced and healthy ways, we can expect to see outward signs of that inner healthy balance. When a person's dorsomedial default network isn't suffering from the insults of illness or injury or genetic factors, for instance, we can expect to see a person who has empathy for others, appropriate responses to pain, and no significant social and communication abnormalities. But with damage to this network comes suffering. Depression, autism, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder have all been linked in various ways and in varying degrees to dysfunctions in this network.

And then there's the brain network involved in making moral decisions. Yes, I'm afraid to say there really is such a thing. This network, which uses the temporal-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the middle temporal gyrus (as well as a few other regions), uses the same brain areas that are involved in both theory of mind and empathy. The health and the interconnectivity of these brain areas determines your ability to make moral decisions, your ability to empathize with others (an emotional trait), and your ability to process the more abstract and cognitive aspects of social skills (theory of mind) -- all three at one time. These three important aspects of humanity are interconnected and, despite what you've been told by certain spiritual teachers, can't be biologically disconnected from each other. Nor should you want them to be. These traits reinforce each other and lead to wise decisions that balance both your emotional reasoning skills and your cognitive reasoning skills. It's win-win when you balance your heart and your mind.

If, on the other hand, you train your brain through the practice of non-judgment to ignore your natural, built-in, hard-wired ability to make moral decisions, you'll be rewiring your brain. (It's the use-it-or-lose-it aspect of neuroplasticity, which allows you to change your brain architecture over time through the repeated application of certain free will thoughts and practices.) Unfortunately, this will also impair your brain's ability to feel empathy and your ability to process the cognitive aspects of your relationships, since both of these traits rely on the brain areas harnessed by moral reasoning -- the areas you just intentionally hacked to bits. Lack of moral reasoning and lack of empathy go hand in hand. And it should go without saying that a person who has lost the ability to feel empathic care for others becomes, at the very least, narcissistic, self-entitled, and unable to override his or her own emotional egocentrism.

And, for those who still don't believe forgiveness is necessary, the neuroscientific evidence gets worse. Several recent papers on the neuroscientific basis for forgiveness reveal that granting forgiveness activates the same brain areas as moral cognition, empathy, and theory of mind social reasoning. In addition, there's evidence that the practices of gratitude and altruism, with their links to moral choices and actions, also use some of the same brain areas.

Like the unfolding of individual blossoms on a single orchid stem, the brain's ability to manifest certain soul-based traits such as morality, empathy, and forgiveness depends on a small number brain regions that are linked to each other and produce these traits in sequence. Photo credit JAT 2022.

So there's no getting out of it. You're born with a brain that comes with its own internal software packages for morality, empathy, social cognition, forgiveness, gratitude, and altruism, all of which are biologically intertwined and all of which help you be the most loving person you can be as a human. The trick to not losing any of these desperately needed traits is to treat them as a "package deal." Each time you practice one of these spiritual skills -- which means you're activating and strengthening specific brain areas -- you make it easier for your brain to navigate the other skills in the package.

It's the package as a whole that gives us the tools we need to bring love and peace into the world. So do your spiritual brain a favour. Strengthen the best attributes of your brain so you can go out there and make a difference in the world. Learn from the mistakes made by people such as Stephen Paddock, find the courage to forgive them, and then take the time to teach yourself and others how to be the person you really want to be.

You'll be surprised at what you can do when you learn to use your brain wisely.

LSP52: The Twelve Days of Faith

It's often suggested in our culture today that religion and faith have little relevance and don't contribute much to our lives.

Well, if you believe it's not important to have a healthy brain, then I suppose you're right to pour contempt on those who can feel God's presence in their lives. But there's a cost to scorning faith, as so many today are discovering.

If you want to have a life filled with love and meaning and purpose, you need a healthy, balanced brain. And in order to have a healthy, balanced brain, you need faith.

Faith -- which I'm defining as a relationship with God that endures in the absence of sacred texts -- is nothing like the superstitious mumbo jumbo it's claimed to be by those who have never felt faith. Faith is a deeply enriching emotional experience that adds clarity, common sense, patience, and humour to our otherwise confusing human lives.

Faith changes the brain. It calls on the brain to wire itself in ways that promote the best and most mysterious aspects of human existence, aspects such as empathy, creativity, openness to change, and the quest for meaning -- in other words, what we call the "heart." Faith tells your brain you want to be in relationship with God and with all Creation. This in turn prompts your brain to spend time, energy, and biological resources on the task of building the networks that let you feel these life-changing connections.

As it turns out, these are the same brain networks you depend on for feeling good not only about God but about yourself and other people in your life. Same brain, same networks, same feelings of empathy and love. Jesus has said to me, "Love is love is love." This seems to me an apt way to understand how the brain actually processes the remarkable experience of agape -- the selfless and transformative love we feel when we set aside our fear and narcissism and choose relationship with God instead. It's all mushed together into certain brain networks that we can't separate no matter how much we'd like to. You can certainly try to separate them -- many people have been certain they can overcome the brain's natural Dual Process blueprint through the application of logic alone -- but you'll eventually start to feel dissociated from your own empathy and sense of meaning (if you can still tap into your heart at all).

Herewith is my updated version of the well-known (but sometimes not so well-loved) Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It's all about the ways in which faith can give you a lasting set of gifts -- not on the outside but on the inside, where nobody can take them away from you. These gifts of faith are all part of the brain package you need if you want to be able to love God and love your neighbour with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your courage. Please sing along if the spirit strikes you!

The Twelve Days of Faith
(presented in reverse order to minimize the torture):

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true faith gave to me:
Twelve shades of Meaning
Eleven kinds of healing
Ten ways o'giving
Nine ways o'learning
Eight ways o'hearing
Seven tales a'reading
Six songs a'singing
True Empathy
Four mysteries
Three deep dreams
Two hugs from God
And a Heart and a way to be.

May God bless you and may God's loving presence light your way this day and always.

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 popular 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 an atheist is capable of leading a more virtuous life than a person who believes 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 they should turn in; 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 a married mother of three, and she had a special love for nature photography. She was also, as voiced almost from the moment I met her, a passionate advocate of progressive values and human rights legislation, a person who wouldn't tolerate the slightest form of injustice, and an avowed atheist who 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 example 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 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, and there was no salvation for 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 mistakes could be eradicated and that permanent perfection could be achieved through the proper application of human logic, law, justice, purity, and holiness -- with she herself, of course, being an excellent example of how to bring about a state of permanent perfection without relying on stupid superstitions like faith in God.

Well, guess what, folks. What Celia believed in, and what Celia lived by, was 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 stop accepting 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 hurt from within). She didn't want to feel humble. She didn't want to ask difficult questions about God and do the hard work of coping with messy System 1 meaning and purpose. 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 eradication of System 1 brain input) gives her permission to be a controlling, narcissistic, unloving, hypocrite who speaks volubly about justice and mercy but actually prefers to terrorize others through her action.

I've encountered few atheists who will not resort to ad hominem attacks on people of faith at the slightest provocation (that provocation often being the simple wearing of a cross or the simple mentioning 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 stupidity 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?)

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.

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 (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 (System 1 and System 2 balanced in harmonious ways), 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.

LSP50: Where to Draw the Line on Free Speech? Conscience in the Identity Politics Debate

On this morning's National Post website (February 18, 2017), there's a commentary piece with this headline: "Where to draw the line on free speech? It needs to be guided by judgment and conscience, not rules." The author, Andrew Coyne, raises some good points about mutual obligations in a democratic society such as Canada's. He points out that "the spirit of free speech" is important, that "free speech exists, as a legal guarantee, in part because of the foundation of social values in which it is embedded."

What the author doesn't address in his very reasonable piece about free speech is the underlying crisis our society currently faces with regard to conscience. Conscience -- the source of our ineffable and awe-inspiring courage and inner strength -- is quickly and efficiently being killed off in our society. Without conscience, we simply aren't able to understand our mutual obligations, let alone grasp the meaning of "the spirit of free speech." Without conscience, we don't have the courage to recognize and confront hatred. Without conscience, we stagger from crisis to crisis and hurl cliches instead of insight at complex issues. Without conscience, we can't hold the line against any of the philosophical movements designed to eradicate differences between individual human beings and their neighbours. Without conscience, we start to believe there's only one right way to be: our way or the highway.

In short, without conscience, people aren't able to be the loving and potential-filled individuals we're capable of being.

 

The foundation of social values in which "the spirit of free speech" resides is due in large part to the long arc of Christian values that have slowly evolved over the centuries. Despite a history riddled with Christian leaders who perpetrated mistakes and terrible abuses (some of which have been acknowledged and atoned for), one important aspect of Christianity (and Judaism before it) is the strong emphasis placed on women's worthiness before God. You can't have a fully functioning human conscience unless you're willing to trust that God does not place men above women in Creation or in human society. Shown here is "The Vision of the Blessed Clare of Rimini" by Francesco da Rimini (prob. about 1333-40), on display at the National Gallery, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

In place of conscience, without much awareness that what we're doing is dangerous to our longstanding sense of social values, we're tacking together a murky blend of laws, ideologies, logic, and dualistic right-and-wrong morality that currently masquerades under the noble banner of identity politics. Identity politics purports to be a salvific trend which will add to our foundation of judgment and conscience once we totally accept and absorb and see the wisdom of the myriad small but necessary laws that must be put in place -- just temporarily, of course -- to protect certain individuals who believe it's their RIGHT to never feel offended and never feel challenged in their personal beliefs. Identity politics is an ideology designed to give people permission to stop listening to their own conscience and to listen instead only to the System 2 pleasure and happiness networks of their own human brains. The strategy can be summed up in this way: if it gives you a brief neurological high, it's great; if it demands you do the hard work of understand and accepting your neighbour (or yourself!), it's not only awful and unfair, but should be made illegal.

We've seen its ilk before under other names, names such as fascism and totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism of any stripe. These philosophical movements may appear different in the specific political and economic laws they apply to their citizens, but one thing they all have in common is the methods they use to eradicate conscience among their citizens. Once you kill off conscience in the majority your citizens, of course, you can do pretty much anything you like, as successful tyrants such as Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and Mao have shown us.

Regimes such as these -- along with many others now and in the past -- start by trumpeting their claims for Truth. (Obviously, they're not going to tell you it's really a Big Fat Lie.) Next they bombard you with a constant stream of words and speeches and polemical essays filled with countless "wisdom words" (e.g. peace, justice, liberty, sacredness, oneness) to try to force their way into the System 1 networks of your brain -- the networks that are responsible for important emotional and spiritual traits such as empathy, courage, trust, love, morality, fidelity, curiosity, patience, and openness to change. These networks are programmed to respond to cues around relationships and learning and purpose, so they're vulnerable to attack through heart-based words (as every spin doctor in history has figured out).

I should stop here and point out that System 1 (what we tend to call "the heart") is one of two major processing streams used by the brain. The other is System 2 (what we tend to call "the mind"). Researchers in Dual Process Theory, which posits the operation of two different yet equally important processing systems in the brain, are starting to see both the benefits and the pitfalls of having two brain systems with different priorities that can, under certain circumstances, start to compete with each other -- a problematic situation that all too many people today have experienced firsthand.

Once the non-empathetic but highly logical and fiercely dogmatic leaders of a ideological movement have forced their way into your brain's System 1 networks, they start to chip away at your own natural, built-in sense of self. They try to make you doubt your sense of self. They try to make you doubt that you should even have a sense of self. They try to force relativism on you and they try to force determinism on you (both at the same time!). They tell you there's no such thing as free will (i.e. a conscience through which you can apply your empathy and courage and other System 1 traits). They tell you that because people have no conscience and no free will, chaos will ensue and everyone will become traitorous and cannibalistic zombies who will attack you on the street and rape you and murder you. (Of course, these things won't happen if you and your neighbours have a conscience and know how to use it, but what the heck, who needs the truth about conscience when they're shovelling out their Big Fat Lies?)

Once you start to believe these lies, your brain will start to rewire itself to reflect your new beliefs. (This is the principle of neuroplasticity at work, and it's the scientific reality that explains how ideologies can reshape your brain if you're not careful and if you're not paying attention to what you're putting in your brain.) Your brain will try to do what you've told it to do -- it will start to demolish network connections that deal with System 1 emotional and spiritual priorities, and it will try to strengthen connections in the cortical layers that deal with logic, rules, competitiveness, agreeableness, neuroticism, schadenfreude, status, and happiness (which is not the same thing as meaning or purpose). You'll turn yourself into a member of a hive mind, or, as Star Trek writers describe it, a member of the Borg Collective, or, as Battlestar Galactica writers would say, a Cylon who's going backward instead forward in his or her relationship with Creation and God.

This doorway originally served the narthex of a 19th century Ontario church. Eventually the staircase that led to the door was entirely removed. You can still see the doorway, but you can no longer reach it. This is what can happen to your conscience if you allow System 2 ideologies to dominate your brain. You can still see the words that describe your conscience, but you can no longer access the feelings that accompany a fully functioning interior doorway to wisdom. The part of you that's supposed to express independent free will and conscience becomes all show without actual function. Feelings of depression and anxiety often soon follow.

After you've turned yourself into a member of the hive mind comes the brilliant prestidigitation through which the ideological leaders, who with one hand have stripped your brain of its ability to "know where to draw the line," mercifully offer you with the other hand the blueprint you need in order to become a happy and productive member of society. It will be a pure System 2 blueprint, of course, with eradication of anything resembling free will, conscience, empathy, openness to change, plus all the rest of the amazing human traits you're truly capable of if you're using all the potential of your brain instead of just your System 2's rigorous logic, obsessive organizational skills, and narcissistic perfectionism. And the System 2 blueprint will be presented to you as a salvific act of self-transcendence intended to create more justice and more righteousness for the lowly and the victimized in your society. But really the blueprint is just about the need for certain System 2-dominant brains to compete, to gain power and status, and to take pleasure from the suffering of others who have lost their own ability to tell right from wrong. Tyrants thrive where human hearts suffer.

It's a form of spiritual rape. To enter somebody else's brain and intentionally try to strip away their core sense of self and their access to their own free will and conscience is an unspeakable act of violence.

If we really want to have a society that understands "the spirit of free speech" and the meaning of mutual obligations, we must do everything in our power to raise our children so their brains can process and balance both System 1 and System 2 priorities -- and be able to tell the difference between the two. Only when individuals grow, maintain, and cherish their personal sense of conscience can we act together to recognize tyranny in all its insidious forms.

Conscience is our true protection against tyranny.

LSP49: Humanity's Search for Meaning in the 2016 U.S. Election

This post has gone through a lot of changes since I first wrote it just after the 2016 U.S. elections. But instead of deleting the entry, I've decided to use the changes as an example of this maxim: "How you do anything is how you do everything."

 

In 2021, after I moved into a new home, I discovered this plaster plaque had snapped in half during the moving process. I reminds me of what happens inside the biological brain of someone who has abandoned his or her own conscience. Angels stop gathering with you. Angels still love you and forgive you, but angels aren't obliged to help you if you're voting for the world leaders who know only Hate. Angels have Free Will, too. Photo credit JAT 2021.

 

Addendum March 1, 2025:  I wrote this short piece for an online forum. It expresses how I'm feeling about the current U.S. political swamp, so I'm adding it here. For context, I'm writing about the disastrous Oval Office meeting that took place between Trump 2.0, Vice-President Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28, 2025.

So yesterday afternoon, I decided it would be nice to lie down on my sofa and have a bit of a rest after lunch. The sun was peeking out after a long, heavy, winter rain, and I thought, "Yes, it can't hurt to have a nap."

And while I was sleeping, Trump and Vance decided it was a good time to try to wreck the whole world.

I'm tired of hearing Trump say he wants the war in Ukraine to end because "millions of people of dying." If he cared at all about the lives of regular people, he wouldn't have chosen the dogs of hellfire to be his closest advisors.

The lies, the hypocrisy, the projection onto others of all his own venom -- these are the traits of a human being who has given up any semblance of decency, compassion, courage, and self-awareness.

Some commentators have suggested it would have been better if the conversation between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vance had taken place behind closed doors. I disagree. Bullies, narcissists, and psychopaths adore secrecy, because secrecy allows them to deny they ever violated anyone.

Because it was all caught on film, individuals can now decide for themselves what they saw, what they learned, and what side of the debate they resonate with. Regardless of what one believed the day before yesterday about these three men, there's no unseeing the real intents that emerged in the Oval Office yesterday.

It's better that we know and keep remembering what we all saw (even though it's triggering for far too many people).

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Addendum posted November 2, 2024: Today, I'm doing something I've never done before. I've decided to delete the entire post I originally wrote on November 11, 2016. I'm deleting it because the election campaign of 2024 has taught me that vehement supporters of Donald Trump are willing to embrace any lies he tells them. These supporters have abandoned their own conscience and their own inner voice. They've decided they shouldn't have to take personal responsibility for their own choices. Many seem happy to follow any conspiracy theory rather than do the hard work of finding meaning through the Soul's courage.

If I leave the original post intact, it will be misused. And those who want to misuse it will get away with it because far-right Trump supporters aren't interested in the moral code taught by Jesus. They're trying to grow a very different kind of religious tree, one rooted in purity, piety, and perfection. They believe the glorification of Trump will bring about some sort of utopian restoration. They believe all their lies and all their violent, misogynistic rhetoric are justified because their goal is so worthy.

They are wrong.

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Addendum posted January 3, 2024: Because of recent changes in how individuals tend to read online posts and use -- or rather, misuse -- posts (by taking bits and pieces out of context and using catchy phrases to support their personal crusades), I want to say right up front, before you get to the paragraphs I wrote in November 2016, that I do not support former President Donald Trump in any way on any topic. Nor am I likely to ever change my mind. He is a coward -- a bullying, narcissistic, selfish coward.

In 2016, I didn't have the evidence to support or condone a flat out, across the board denunciation of the personality and policies of Donald Trump. But since the January 6, 2021 violence on Capitol Hill, Trump has, through his own words and actions, provided abundant proof about the kind of man he really is. Today, I wouldn't vote for him if he were the last person in Christendom.

Following this addendum is the post I originally wrote over seven years ago. You can decide for yourself whether Trump believes he's been elevated to the status of God.

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Addendum posted January 13. 2021: It's been a bit over 4 years since I wrote this post, and, during this time, a lot has changed. The entire world has been dealing with the unexpected travails of the novel coronavirus we call COVID-19. And the United States has again struggled with an election where a man named Donald Trump has forced a debate about the soul.

I'm writing this addendum on the day the U.S. House of Representatives is going to vote on a motion to impeach Trump for inciting insurrection. I hope the vote succeeds.

Over the past four years, Trump has shown with increasing clarity that he has no courage. He doesn't have the courage to listen to his own soul, let alone the souls of millions of Americans who needed a courageous leader during the 2020 pandemic, but instead found themselves saddled with someone who could only think about his own loss of Happiness when he lost the fall election.

On the plus side, people from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been appalled by the barrage of lies spewed by Trump and his closest supporters, lies that directly incited violence on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. America has been forced to see the ugly side of rhetoric, personality cults, and dualistic political mongering -- all negative aspects of System 2 when left unchecked by System 1.

It's a lesson we all should have learned from 20th century history, but apparently we needed a refresher. 

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LSP48: Parable of the Rift-Sawn Wood

Parable of the Rift-Sawn Wood
 

The ticket window of King Station as seen from the ticket master's side (King City, Ontario). According to the historical plaque, King Station, first built in about 1852, is the oldest surviving train station in Canada. It's built entirely of wood, though some sections have been repaired, as seen here. Photo credit JAT 2016.

 
Once upon a time, there was a judge who lived in a small community. Although the judge had no particular claim to either humble kingship or wise judgeship (his training having been in other disciplines altogether), no error of word or grammar or logic or math could escape his perfect eye. Flaws in the words of others shone forth as brightly to him as the sun in the noonday sky, and so, over time, he became a protector of sorts, demonstrating to his little flock the dangers of ill-proved words. He took pride in his calling as upholder of the One True Truth.

One day, during a harsh drought, he decided to build a wooden courthouse at the top of the hill so his humility, stability, and permanence could be draw others into the fold of the One True Truth. This, he was certain, would help them cope during their travails.

“I will build a courthouse to rival the halls of Solomon,” he said with unwavering dedication. “Those who enter will find only justice. But,” he continued, “the courthouse must mirror to everyone the perfection and permanence of my judgments, so every piece of wood you bring to me must be sawn so the blade runs perpendicular to the rings of springwood and summerwood. These planks are the purest and strongest. No others will do for our courthouse. Discard all the rest.”

Each piece of wood was brought to the judge for his inspection. He turned each plank this way and that, peering at the rings from all directions, seeking only those boards that mirrored the timeless alternating pattern of springwood and summerwood, springwood and summerwood. He chose each piece with exceeding care.

As the floor and pillars of the courthouse slowly grew, so too did the piles of discards at the base of the hill. In one pile lay the boards that showed small knots, for the judge found evidence of branching deeply troubling and not at all reflective of humility. In a second pile lay the boards and burls that showed curved lines or cupped profiles or uneven grains, for the judge found irregular patterns toxic to his quest for stability. In a third pile, which was by far the largest, lay heaps of tangled roots and rugged, timeworn chunks of bark, for the judge found these ugly and unusable in a courthouse constructed to honour the teachings of the One True Truth.

At last all the trees in a wide radius had been cut down and the courthouse was complete. The judge nodded in satisfaction at his unobstructed view. The building was perfect, right down to the bold name Justice chiselled throughout. But it needed one final touch. This he accomplished himself. In the very centre of the structure, he placed a raised swivel chair upon which he could turn in every direction to see approaching newcomers. Each word they spoke, each point of logic they raised, came easily to his eyes, and made him shake his head in sadness when he saw the knots and burls and roots they carried. According to his duty, he took all newcomers on a tour of his courthouse, patiently showed them the perfection of his planks, and, though it pained him to do so, eventually sent each one away in tears to seek unblemished pieces of the One True Truth.                               

One autumn day, after a particularly cold, wet spring, and an even colder, wetter summer that had ended the drought, one of the judge’s followers came rushing in. “Sire,” said the follower (for his followers admired him and thought his mastery over words and logic made him wiser than Solomon), “sire, the rains have caused a terrible mudslide. The rain has poured down the hill and taken all the soil with it. A dangerous river, filled with rampaging branches and roots, has suddenly materialized. The town has been swept away. The roads are destroyed. The fall crops are gone. There is nothing to eat. You and I are the last survivors.”

The judge nodded sadly but wisely. “It was meant to be, my faithful friend. There’s nothing we could have done to prevent this tragedy.”

“What will we do?” said the follower. “How will we survive?”

The judge thought long and hard for several minutes. The answer came to him in a flash of brilliant light, the same flash he always saw when he studied the impoverished words of others. “We’ll take the wood from the courthouse and build ourselves a raft. We’ll travel. We’ll teach. We’ll save. You and I have been blessed with survival because we alone understand the meaning of the One True Truth, which is pure permanence from pure impermanence, pure freedom from pure determinism, pure justice from pure logic.”

The follower happily obeyed, and soon pillars and lintels had been torn down and refashioned into a raft. In many places, the word Justice peered up at them from the perfectly sawn planks.

“What shall we call our raft now that it’s finished?” said the follower. “Shall we call it Justice?”

“I think not,” said the judge. “You and I have transcended the simple justice of this courthouse. From this moment on, we will name our craft after the greatest law of universal determinism. We will call it . . . Mercy.”