I spent a few years reading a lot of True Crime books, especially those
by Ann Rule, a woman who knew and worked with Ted Bundy, and who
discussed with him how the police were searching for a serial killer --
who turned out to be Bundy. I was puzzled by first-degree murderers, and
most especially by serial killers, whom to me made no sense at all.
What I found is what I will call, for want of a better word, a Story.
But then, apparently, everything is a Story: they have a beginning, a
middle, an end, and a meaning. But this particular Story about all
serial killers goes like this: I am a malign, grandiose god without a
conscience. Underneath all that grandiosity is an enormous amount of
hate and envy. I project my problems onto others, and murder them in
hopes of removing my hate and envy.
Their attempts to fix themselves never work, no matter how many times
they repeat them. That makes their Story a very bad one indeed. It
reminds me of that half-joking definition of insanity: "Trying the same
thing over and over even though it never works."
After thinking about this problem for a long time, I refined the Story
to this: I am grandiose; you are devalued. I project my problems on you,
scapegoat you, then human-sacrifice you.
That Story exists in every human being, in greater or lesser degree. It
is a very bad Story, and one that I think is the cause of most of the
problems in the world. Indeed, it's the best explanation I know of for
human evil.
Bits and pieces of that Story exist in various myths (when I use the
word "myth" I don't mean "not true"; I mean "universally true"). The
story of the Garden of Eden is one. Adam blames his problems on Eve,
then Eve blames her problems on the serpent, which is a symbol of hate and envy.
That is a profound story. It impresses me immensely. Whoever wrote that
story knew exactly what they were writing. How they knew, I don't have a
clue. But they knew that envy leads to scapegoating. At first I thought
the whole sequence was: envy leads to scapegoating which leads to human
sacrifice.
The clearest expression of that sequence I have encountered is in Ayn
Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." It could be used as a textbook on
psychopathology. Rand, who was an exceptionally disturbed woman, split
her characters into her grandiose heroes and her devalued looters and
parasites. All the world's problems (all evil, actually) are projected
onto her looter/parasites, who are then scapegoated and human-sacrificed
in a John Galtian orgy of destruction.
The book is actually the psychology of a serial killer mapped onto a
novel. It is a microcosm (one person or one novel) used to explain a
macrocosm (entire societies). From the novel I able to refine the
sequence even further: Hubris (the old Greek name for grandiosity) leads
people into splitting other people into all-good and all-bad. All evil
is projected onto the all-bad, then they are scapegoated and
human-sacrificed.
The all-bad, in addition to being devalued, is also seen as an
exaggerated threat. It explains why in "Atlas Shrugged" her looters and
parasites are devalued as "subhumans" living in a "hell," yet somehow
they have gained control of the world. The word to describe this is
"paranoia," a condition that Rand was diagnosed with.
So, after several years, I was able to refine the Story to this: the
main problem of the human race, its worst sin and probably the only true
crime that exists, because it is the basis of all others, is hubris.
Hubris, or what the Bible calls "pride," is the sin of Satan, who
thought he could overthrow God and take his place. Underneath it lies
envy and hate. In that hubris people split others into all-good and
all-bad. Of course, to them, they are the good ones, and other people,
the bad. Not just bad, but subhuman, even non-human. To maintain their
"goodness," people must project their envy and hate -- what they call
"evil" -- onto others, see them as an exaggerated threat, become
paranoid about them, then scapegoat and human-sacrifice them.
Let's take that Story and apply to the current wars. Some, people, say
former President (who was, and still is, tongue-tied and brain-tied), claimed the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked because we are "good" and they are "evil." It's not that simple, except in the fantasy world of the blind leading the blind.
A better explanation is that our enemies hate and envy us because we are
strong and they are weak. They think they are Good, and we are Evil.
They projected their problems onto us, scapegoated us, and
human-sacrificed all those people in the WTC and the Pentagon. Because
they envy us, they wanted to "bring us down," and that is exactly what
they did with those three buildings.
But why do they hate and envy us instead of admire us? As the Greeks
noticed thousands of years ago, admiration is the benign form of envy.
Shouldn't they admire us instead, and want to emulate us?
They hate us because we are using the same Story they are. We are using
the same Story against them they are using against us. As I said, that
Story exists in all people. That's why the story of the Garden of Eden
is universal -- I will deny my responsibility for what I've done and
blame it on you. I am the victim, even if in reality I'm not.
The United States has decided it is Good and others are Evil. Look at
the abuse heaped upon Germany and France because they disagree with us.
It's almost as if those countries are considered evil and cowardly.
("French rifle for sale: never fired, only dropped once.")
When the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked, of course it had to be
because we are Good, and they, being Evil, hate us. Instead, the truth
is that the U.S. had been bombing and blockading Iraq for ten years,
leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, supporting
Israel and ignoring the Palestinians, and had troops stationed in Saudi
Arabia.
It wasn't only because of envy we were attacked; it was also an attempt
to draw us into a guerrilla war, to bleed us dry of blood and treasure,
so we would withdraw from the Islamic world. But envy, I am convinced,
was a large part of the attack.
The United States sees the rest of the world as an exaggerated threat.
It's paranoia. I suspect that's what all empires are based upon, in
large part. We must dominate the world because they want to destroy us
because we are so good and strong, and they are sniveling envious
weaklings! So, we have to have some 750 military bases in three-quarters
of the world, making us an empire not of colonies but of military
outposts.
As proof, I've had more than one person tell me, "Islam is going to
conquer the world! We have to stop them!" To which I respond: you are
exaggerating the threat. You're paranoid. With what are they going to
conquer us? They have no armies, no navies, no air forces. All the
Islamic countries combined have an economy less than that of Spain.
They're a thousand years behind the West, and always will be. (And yes,
I do know there are Muslims who think they are going to conquer the
world. Pinky and the Brain thought they were going to conquer the world,
too. That particular problem can be easily solved by changes in
immigration policy.)
I wouldn't say the U.S. exactly envies all that oil in the Middle East. I
think a better word is "covet," because the area has more oil than we
do. We covet their oil, saw ourselves as Good and them as Evil when we
were attacked, projected all problems onto them to maintain our illusion
of purity, scapegoated them, and are now human-sacrificing them.
And they are trying to do the same thing to us. And therein lies the
problem: each side is saying, "We are Good, and you are Evil." Not just
saying it, but convinced of it.
Hubris on top, hate and envy underneath. Split everyone into grandiose
and devalued, project evil onto others, scapegoat them...and then
slaughter them.
Gary North, in his article, "Libertarian War Cannibals," quotes one of
his respondents: "American lives are more valuable than foreign lives.
One American life is worth more than 1 million foreign lives."
One million evil, subhuman foreigners in trade for one American. The
first thing I thought: what if that American is Richard Simmons, or
worse, Michael Bolton? But this man's hate-filled, and envy-filled, view
is based on the belief, we are Good and they are Evil, indeed non-human.
Project all problems onto the "evil," scapegoat them...then
human-sacrifice them, even if it's a million (since some 3,000 Americans
died in the WTC, this comes to three billion foreigners). However, the
measure we use to judge others is the measure they use to judge us. Tit
for tit. What we do to others they will do to us. If we tell them we can
kill one million of them, they will return the favor.
I am going to quote Freda Utley's comment at the beginning of Gary's
article, because it says exactly what I'm saying:
"It is conducive to spiritual satisfaction and self-respect to view past
or present enemies as the only transgressors against the laws of God and
man. To admit that the capacity for evil is inherent in all mankind
would destroy our sense of superiority. So we have gone far toward the
adoption of the Nazi theory of 'racial' differences, and have ourselves
assumed the position of a superior or master race."
That's a good definition of mass hubris: people believing they are "a
superior or master race." Necessarily it means those "outside" the race
are non-human. That's been the history of the world: all tribes have
called themselves "the People" or "the Human Beings." Those outside:
non-People, non-Human Beings. And, to some, more than one million
non-People aren't worth one People.
Hubris is bad enough for an individual. It's far, far worse when it
afflicts entire societies. And it reaches its peak when people believe
society and the State are the same thing. The word for that is
"fascism": everything, as Mussolini said, inside the State, nothing
outside. When that happens there will always be orgies of destruction.
That was the history of the 20th century, which was the century of
worship of the Idol of the State.
And idols, of course -- like Moloch -- are always hungry and always need
human sacrifice.
When Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the Temple he also drove out
those who sold pigeons for sacrifice to God. We may snigger at people
who sacrificed birds, but it was a lot better than a thousand years
before, when babies were rolled into the flame-filled stone belly of
Moloch.
Europe after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the start of World War
II in 1914, enjoyed a century of peace. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who
has influenced me more than I can say, claimed that peace was due to two
things: mature monarchies and mature Christianity.
But with the overthrow of the both of them in the early 20th Century we
entered into the worship of the State, a worship that led to up to 200
million people being sacrificed in various wars. At least Lenin,
Trotsky, Mao Tse-Tung, Stalin, and Hitler had the decency to be
atheists.
Two thousand years ago we had it down to sacrificing birds. Two thousand
years later we had retrogressed into sacrificing people by the hundreds
of millions, not to a god but to the state.
Now, today, in the 21st Century, we've retrogressed even further, and
are now at the point where some people conflate society, the State and
God. In Jerry Falwell's mind, they are the same thing, which is why he
writes articles such as, "God is pro-war." He has no idea what he is
saying, or to what his beliefs will lead. He has forgotten the
Commandment which reads, "You will not use God's name for vain causes."
The State indeed is the vainest of causes.
I try to look for first causes, for the root of the problem. The
beginning of the Story, as best as I can tell, is based on hate and
envy. But what is the end of the Story?
The Greeks saw it as hubris (grandiosity) to ate (a madness in which
wrong appeared as right) to nemesis (destruction). The Bible claims,
"Pride goes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction."
That, in some form or another, will be the end of the story. It won't be
of the U.S., because countries always survive. It will be, if anything, of
the idol known as the federal government (which is no longer a
government, but a State), because of its hubris that leads it to believe
it can invade countries and remake them in its idolatrous image, its
insane inability to tell right from wrong, its hysterical paranoia that
leads to 85-year-old grandmothers being searched at airports, and its
unshakable belief that it has the right to human-sacrifice any number of
innocent foreigners.
