Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
The men and women of today who take a stand for freedom, are blessed with a magnificent Super Power. This power guarantees victory.
It guarantees that Good will triumph over evil.
It guarantees that Light will overturn darkness.
It guarantees that the world be redeemed.
This power is so strong, that it can enable us to overcome every setback; every failure; and every defeat in every arena, from the cultural to the political. We simply have to choose to use it.
What is this “secret sauce;” this “magical potion” that is guaranteed to help us not only survive, but thrive in spite of the hardest problems and harshest circumstances?
It is the power to choose our own thoughts; to decide how we respond to our plight in the world, even when cruel tyranny surrounds us at every turn.
In his commentary on Parashat Vayigash called “Reframing,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shows us how people from Biblical times up to the present have used this God-given power to persevere, and turn the odds in their favor.
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayigash/reframing/
In modern times, Viktor Frankl deployed this Super Power to persevere in the midst of one of the most horrible events in human history: the Holocaust:
“… Viktor Frankl… did so under some of the worst conditions ever endured by human beings: in Auschwitz. As a prisoner there Frankl discovered that the Nazis took away almost everything that made people human: their possessions, their clothes, their hair, their very names. Before being sent to Auschwitz, Frankl had been a therapist specialising in curing people who had suicidal tendencies. In the camp, he devoted himself as far as he could to giving his fellow prisoners the will to live, knowing that if they lost it, they would soon die.
There he made the fundamental discovery for which he later became famous:
“‘We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’
“What made the difference, what gave people the will to live, was the belief that there was a task for them to perform, a mission for them to accomplish, that they had not yet completed and that was waiting for them to do in the future. Frankl discovered that ‘it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.’ There were people in the camp who had so lost hope that they had nothing more to expect from life. Frankl was able to get them to see that ‘life was still expecting something from them.’ One, for example, had a child still alive, in a foreign country, who was waiting for him. Another came to see that he had books to produce that no one else could write. Through this sense of a future calling to them, Frankl was able to help them to discover their purpose in life, even in the valley of the shadow of death.”
Frankl managed to change his emotional response to his tragic plight, by mentally rising above the situation:
“The mental shift this involved came to be known, especially in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as reframing. Just as a painting can look different when placed in a different frame, so can a life. The facts don’t change, but the way we perceive them does. Frankl writes that he was able to survive Auschwitz by daily seeing himself as if he were in a university, giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp. Everything that was happening to him was transformed, by this one act of the mind, into a series of illustrations of the points he was making in the lecture.
“’By this method, I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.’
“Reframing tells us that though we cannot always change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we can change the way we see them, and this itself changes the way we feel.”
Reframing was not a new technique: the Biblical Joseph had deployed it throughout his life journey. He was thus able to see his own struggles in a larger picture:
“Yet this modern discovery is really a re-discovery, because the first great re-framer in history was Joseph, as described in this week’s and next’s parshiyot. Recall the facts. He had been sold into slavery by his brothers. He had lost his freedom for thirteen years, and been separated from his family for twenty-two years. It would be understandable if he felt toward his brothers resentment and a desire for revenge. Yet he rose above such feelings, and did so precisely by shifting his experiences into a different frame. Here is what he says to his brothers when he first discloses his identity to them:
“’I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life… God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.’” Gen. 45:4-8
Doing so allowed him to do achieve his purpose in life:
“And this is what he says years later, after their father Jacob has died and the brothers fear that he may now take revenge:
“’Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as He is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.’ Gen. 50:19-21
“Joseph had reframed his entire past. He no longer saw himself as a man wronged by his brothers. He had come to see himself as a man charged with a life-saving mission by God. Everything that had happened to him was necessary so that he could achieve his purpose in life: to save an entire region from starvation during a famine, and to provide a safe haven for his family.”
Reframing is the eternal key to changing our world for the better:
“This single act of reframing allowed Joseph to live without a burning sense of anger and injustice. It enabled him to forgive his brothers and be reconciled with them. It transformed the negative energies of feelings about the past into focused attention to the future. Joseph, without knowing it, had become the precursor of one of the great movements in psychotherapy in the modern world. He showed the power of reframing. We cannot change the past. But by changing the way we think about the past, we can change the future.
“Whatever situation we are in, by reframing it we can change our entire response, giving us the strength to survive, the courage to persist, and the resilience to emerge, on the far side of darkness, into the light of a new and better day.”
I will add this:
No doubt, reframing sounds easier said than done. It is easy to feel intimidated and even paralyzed with fear, in the face of the daily onslaughts by the evil oligarchs; the corrupted world government officials; the depraved corporate captains; and the ranks of cowardly technocrats carrying our their orders. It’s easy to wonder how the heck we are going to beat these guys — aren’t they much more powerful than we are?
Yes, they have power; but we have Super Power. We have the mental ability to JUST SAY NO to subservience. When we do this, we make our victory — and their defeat — a sure thing. And they know it. That’s why they spend so much time and energy trying to convince us that resistance is futile; and keep trying to manipulate our minds and bodies with AI and biochemicals and other weapons of coercion.
They know that when we decide to defend our God-given freedoms, it is game over.