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Margaret Anna Alice's avatar

Excellent article, James, and a great companion piece to my “Anatomy of a Philanthropath” series (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams).

The only fault I can find is you missed a golden opportunity to use “philanthropath” :-)

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Copernicus's avatar

“ ideas are important”

A number of years ago I read a book describing worldviews. A major tenet of the book is that “ideas have consequences.”

Your post here is very good and especially because you rightly state that ideas are important. It is not the level of zeal, per se, but what that zeal is willing to do or not do for the sake of its goal. What is the zeal directed toward?

Clearly Farmer Bill and his ilk are anti-human. They are not governed by any glimmer of Judeo-Christian worldview that values humans - every single one - as a sacred creation made in the image of an almighty God. Actually, they have set themselves in the position of god of the universe.

That is an idea and it has consequences.

They have their belief system and are living in righteous accordance with that system.

What we need is a fundamental upending of people’s worldviews. Far too many people who call themselves Christians went along with this anti-human crap {pardon my language, I don’t normally speak this way} of the last two years, because they somehow have been brought up to believe that safety and compliance are the noblest ideals, that harming kids for the sake of adult needs is okay (hello, abortion, and no, I am not starting a discussion about that, but abortion is always prematurely ending the life of a child for some purpose determined by the adult), and that we can somehow continue to function as a society while engaging in very anti-human behaviors such as obscuring our faces and isolating our non-sick selves and staying inside away from God’s good creation.

It’s not just Farmer Bill but so many seemingly (until now) ordinary, harmless-appearing neighbors and co-workers and friends.

Ideas matter. Ideas have consequences.

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