the false religion

In response to this:

2015 ACT Arts Fund successful applicants

• Aspen Island Theatre Company: $18,793 to assist with costs of the creative development of a new theatre work, 'Kill Climate Deniers'.

I was very rude (seriously!):

I came across an interesting article from invisibleserfscollar.com on the theory behind modern education practices. It should have been obvious to anyone not in a coma that children are taught the ideological views of their teachers. But the educational theories and the policies that follow, being enforced as part of the curriculum, takes this danger that has always been with us to a new height. In essence, education is no longer developing an individual (ability to think, knowledge, ability to learn, literacy, etc.). No, now it is:

“In the socio-cultural perspective, learning takes place as individuals participate in the practices of a community, using the tools, language, and other cultural artifacts of the community.”

Ah, that word "community"! Every good and positive word in the language has been corrupted, but few so much as this one. "But surely being part of the community is good!" you might say. My answer: only when it can be a free choice. The difference between a good community and a bad one is that good ones are optional - we join them because they nurture us and give us an opportunity to nurture others. Bad ones, like the ones all our children will soon be subjected to, are compulsory. Fall in love with an unapproved man in the middle east? You get murdered. Now, want to be a rugged individualist in the 'enlightened' west? You become stigmatised as a sociopath who won't cooperate and "participate in the practices of a community." Over-dramatic? Don't laugh. That just demonstrates you haven't paid the least attention to what is going on around you.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we are committed to the Principle of Goodness as a critical necessity for getting out of our current morass of bad policies and directions. I'll point out one critical reason why the Principle would hinder this totalitarian socialisation of children: there is a gap, a space, between being good and being evil.

Future generations will certainly think people of today have gone cold stark raving loony. "Nature" used to be a highly respected scientific journal. Their recent behaviour in the "climate change" arena has trashed their reputation, possibly for good.

Wattsupwiththat brings us the news that Nature is about to put out a special journal to be called "Nature Climate Change". About the list of climate blogs Nature acknowledges, Anthony Watts writes:

I note RealClimate, Climate Progress, Stoat (William Connolley of Wiki fame), and even the paid Hoggan public relations firm “DeSmog Blog” are listed.

I reckon that skeptical sites like WUWT don’t rate with Nature, even though we have more traffic and reach than those blogs. I suppose that speaks to the tone of this new journal before it is even published.

What caught my notice, though, was this little gem in "Nature's" instructions to authors:

The Science Museum, dilapidated remnant and travesty of the imaginative Great Exhibition conceived by Victoria's Prince Albert and others, has humiliated itself thoroughly in front of the world by supporting the "Climate Change" fraud. On their website, they splash the usual rubbish and offer readers a chance to COUNT ME IN (or OUT) of leveraging the Government to sign up to wrecking the western economies at the Copenhagen summit.

Those who have taken a look at the background materials on this site will know that one of the dangers I see threatening humanity is a widespread psychological malfunction I have called the false religion. This isn't a religion in the old sense, it has no personal god, it isn't an overt competitor with other religions. Indeed, believers in normal religions often are also believers in the core doctrines of the false religion. In fact, because we are immersed in the false religion from birth (it having now taken over as the unofficial religion of the state), we all probably have been suckered by one or another of its beliefs, even if we saw through most of them and even if we later wised up when we looked closely at the evidence.

Perhaps Jung understood it in talking about an expansion of the ego - a belief that the individual, or the human species, has infinitely perfectible nature and powers, instead of being limited, as are all creatures, by the restrictions of our evolution, our environment, and our instincts. The framers of the American Constitution also understood it when they designed a structure that could work in spite of human frailty, rather than gambling on a mass spiritual transformation. So it clearly is a mistake to think the false religion has a single, identifiable manifestation. Human hopes and dreams can outrun reality in a thousand different ways - and how hard it is to reign them in when they are framed in words that uplift the heart and enthuse the spirit, even as they guarantee that the hopes must end in disappointment and tragedy. The false dream can infect any group or any organisation, and it does infect many, all at once. Over the top? Too alarmist? The following video was put together by a black person, Kevin Jackson of theblacksphere.net, so if you want to accuse me of racism for the following, please don't bother. It scares me, and it should scare you too.

If the poor Brits don't have it bad enough with their loopy Met Office, now the supposed bastion of careful thinking and good science, The Royal Society, goes completely off the rails. They want to spray pollution (real pollution, not carbon dioxide plant food) into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet: