The God Complex

Today I want to talk about how we humans can look at something, and have completely opposite reactions. I think we all want to figure out why our culture is divided right down the middle about everything. We live in paradise but we are acting like we are confined to an insane asylum.

• How many ways can we define freedom?
• We argue over what food we should eat, 
• How we should raise our kids. 
• Should trust vaccines?
• Is there a difference between illegal and legal immigration?
• We live in an undecided and confrontational culture. 

I know I have trouble understanding people who want to tell me 

• How much soda or butter I can consume, 
• How much money I can make, 
• If I can hunt, fish or eat meat, 
• If and where I can fly my flag  
• My affinity for cars is evil

I find it inexplicable that those same people think 

• The party that freed the slaves is a threat to America's freedom 
• Successful people are the ignorant ones! 

Just watch nighttime talk shows and the hosts, people like Bill Maher, Jimmy Kimmel or Trevor Noah will say something derogatory about the intelligence of conservatives every single night!

“It just so happens that almost every talk show host is liberal and that’s because it requires a level of intelligence...”                         - Jimmy Kimmel

I think Jimmy Kimmel proves my point about liberal arrogance...

• One by-product of Freedom is choice. 
• In our 21st century world, we are literally buried in CHOICES. 
• That leads us to a conflict.  
• It has become a burden to understand differences. To recognize distinctions.
• Political correctness implies we have to be inclusive and non-judgemental. 
• But making choices require awareness and education, and WORK

In America we have more choices than anywhere else in the world. But that sometimes results in disagreements too..

• Some people don't want to do the work to become informed
• They want all of us to operate in unison. 
• Which relieves them of responsibility and for them that represents freedom.

I call that Free Dumb, with a B. Because consensus is essentially Mob Rule. Just because everybody agrees on a course of action doesn't make it the right choice.

We have been so fortunate to live in an era of enormous abundance, so in many cases the impact of making poor choices is small. 

• The value of learning, understanding and differentiating has been marginalized. 
• Our society has lowered standards, lowered expectations, lowered demands on our citizens. 
• Many simply don't see any reason to vote, for example. 
• Some see no reason to attend church, to participate in their children's school events, to get involved in local government.

• The growing consensus is that it is better to live in the moment 
• Do what feels good and to party non-stop
• As long as we don't exclude anybody, what could go wrong?
• Many prefer to spend their time doing things that have no real consequences. 

For that half of the population, being involved means tracking celebrities, sports teams, or running in a marathon. This is, after all, their choice. They find community affairs annoying and a waste of time.

We have lowered our expectations of students. By  that I mean modern public schools almost universally incorporate the pedogocical template of progressive outcome based student-centered teaching promoted by John Dewey and John Rousseau in the early part of the 20th century. 

The idea that teachers should not just transfer information, they should facilitate thinking. It had noble goals of producing critical thinkers that could solve problems and also collaborate with others to find solutions.

A reasonable and objective goal. But over nearly a century, the concept has morphed.

Where the noble educational experiment went wrong was: 

• Giving teachers the inclination to facilitate social reconstruction. 
• To impart information and suggestions to "fix" social disorders like racism, homelessness, and economic disparity. 
• Schools were suddenly in the business of reprogramming students to achieve specific political and social goals.

The concept was called Progressive Educational Theory.

• Since the early 1900's, our school system has become infected with a God Complex. 
• One generation after another thinks it is the smartest and most moral of them all. 
• That it is their duty to spread the Gospel of Social Reconstruction 

• Progressive curricula pushes competitive ideas and teaching concepts aside. 
• It dismisses religion as simple superstition and pushes global humanism
• It embraces "settled" science as the enlightened answer to life's challenges. 
• It teaches children that they are the center of the universe

We should not be surprised that so many people suffer from extreme narcissism.

• Progressive thinking promotes moral relativism. 
• That all answers are partially correct 
• That right and wrong are relative to the situation. 
• We can even choose to decide what is true and what isn't…

• It is popular to suggest that truth and values are relative. 
• That what one person claims is good, another proclaims as bad. 
• Black is white and white is black, or, it could be vica versa! 
• Being judgemental is often hurtful because it marginalizes other people's points of view.

A perfect example of this happened recently when NY Senator Chuck Shumer speaking about two conservative justices potential rulings against abortion legislation, Schumer said "You will not know what hit you, if you go forward with these awful decisions." Chief Justice Roberts called the comment a threat.

When Trump previously criticized Justice Sotomayor for a "terrible and inappropriate statement" about him, Democrats screamed bloody murder. Trump definitely used strong language but it was criticism. 

Schumer clearly threatened Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Democrats can't differentiate between threatening language and critical language.

• This is the behavior of an adolescent. 
• An immature person who gets overly defensive and sensitive to adult criticism. 
• Where does it all end? 
• The concept of commonality is under assault...and a big part of that is the bifurcation of our common language. 

This is another byproduct of Progressive thinking, and years of Progressive teaching techniques. That is something academics call "existentialism". Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality.

I quote:
"It places the primary emphasis on students’ directing their own learning. Students search for their own meaning and direction in life as well as define what is true and what is false, what is pleasant and satisfying, what is unpleasant and dissatisfying, and what is right or wrong. The goal of an existentialist education is to train students to develop their own unique understanding of life." 

And to develop their own definitions of words, 

• Their own historical perspectives, and their own moral standards. 
• This has become especially common since the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement in the 60's, 
• A confused psychological conflict is permeating our culture.  

• By diminishing standards, and abandoning traditional definitions, the value of choosing the right from wrong is diminished. 
• When the distinctions between good and bad are blurred, indifference becomes the default choice. 

Take Marriage for example. 

• There is no longer a standard by which marriage is measured or practiced. 
• We know Marriage is not dead because some people are marrying their pets!

We are suffering from an epidemic of indifference and apathy, and dare I say IGNORANCE. How can that be after 100 years of existential progressive advanced social engineering? 

Since recorded history, humans have fought over one primary conflicting value: 

• Who is going to run the country? 
• How do we make the trains run on time? 
• By which management system should we operate? 
• Top down management (collectivism) or bottom up management (individualism)? 

We sometimes confuse the forces behind the conflict with religion, politics, tribal or family wars, but the real reasons are always the underlying issue of which ideology will rule our daily lives. Like all conflict, the battle is always over CONTROL.

This is equally important in personal relationships as it is community operations.

So here we are, living in the Golden Age of Earth's existence. 

• We have plenty of food, and live longer than ever
• There are no megalomaniacs slaughtering millions of people. 
• America is the richest society in history. 

And we are all undecided about Capitalism or Communism. Which system works the best?

And you and I want to know how some people still think Communism is a good thing?

I proposed a theory in my most recent book...The Illusion of Knowledge: Why So Many Educated Americans Embrace Marxism.