A Christian Nation

[trenton]

I just watched a video that helped me to confront some of my deep fears regarding religion.  I have grown by watching this 30 minute documentary.

Self reflection

I tried to figure out why I was so scared of religion.  I considered the possibility that I was projecting and I was in denial of the similarities I have with the people in this video.

When visiting a variety of spiritual schools in the past, I recognized that I resonated with values such as truth or God.  I still did not want to join any religion and this led to inner confusion and conflict.

I paid attention to how spiritual truths could easily be used to manipulate people.  These deeper truths are very effective at getting people radicalized because it can easily be mixed with falsehood in order to deceive people.

While watching the people in this video, I saw how delusional people became.  They became sucked into white nationalism.  I realized that I could be slowly indoctrinated into a toxic ideology so long as it mixed deeper truths with it.

I am now oddly peaceful because I recognize that I am susceptible ideological corruptions.  I could be one of the people in this video.  I could be extremist who becomes a suicide bomber.  My fear is reduced and I have become more capable of love.

Politics

This video can be used to understand what we are up against in the United States.  Some people will never be convinced that Trump lost the election.  At least not easily.

Trump ran on anti corruption.  This is one of the few spots in which Trump supporters could be worked with.  These people may support term limits, anti gerrymandering, potentially anti lobbying, and other anti corruption efforts.

These Windows of opportunity could be used to slowly reprogram some people.  If they are not reprogrammed completely, at least it would steer them away from the most toxic ideologies.  If this fails, then we will need to wait for toxic worldviews to die off, allowing evolution to progress.  

Religion

do you think there is anything that could be done to work with the dangerous religious ideologies?  If they had the chance they would put the bible in every public school.  I can't see any window of opportunity that would pull these people away from this.  So far Satanists are keeping them back by arguing that their religion should be taught in public schools as well.

[trenton]

I would like to add that nationalism can be used to deceive people.

If you romanticize your own nation, this can be used to justify great evils as well.  This is similar to religion because of the many falsehoods you could easily convince people of if you mix it with deeper truths.  

This is how appealing to a person's values may be more effective than actually making a logic argument.  It demonstrates how deeply emotional the human psyche is, and it can easily be used to make us overlook toxic lies and hurt people.  This is an interesting connection.

[Heinrich Faust]

Religion and nationalism are often a good match because they both attract stage blue people.

[trenton]

@Heinrich Faust I noticed that.  They both centralize a person's culture above the rest of the world.  The dangers of ideologies that we resonate is that it turns off our scepticism because of our biases.  It makes us defensive and can make us live in denial of what our cause is doing wrong.

It is very easy to criticize people you disagree with because of how their biases are seen through.  The people we agree with are the most dangerous, and we may need to deliberately step up our skepticism to counterbalance this phenomenon.  That is not to say we should be cynical, but that we should really compare the claims of ideologies with our experiences to see if they are true for us.  If they are not, then they must be maintained through unconsciousness.