re: #90 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut

The transition speed required of individuals to keep up with changes to the world in which, say: sex can be purely recreational, and that we have the material goods to meet caloric needs (and thus the lack of food has nothing to do with the ability to produce) - yeah, I guess we are in a world that is as best described by “Fordism” - and so on, is causing some in our society a great deal of angst at the deepest level.

We are biologically hard wired to reproduce and to bond emotionally with a few, close people, and to treat the “others” as possible threats. Thousands of years of “culture” have partially overcome that, but change comes slowly.

Here is a news story from CBN today, promoting YEC:

New Creationism Evidence Found On American Soil

The geologist in that video is in full denial of the science of geology and geophysics. The question is, why? The answer I settled on is that his religious beliefs are too important in assuaging the deep anxiety of mortality and thus it is better to believe a beautiful lie than embrace a painful truth.

This human mechanism (of embracing what reassures us), I propose, lay behind so much of the atavism we see, not just YEC.

Beck can sell his hate because his audience has a desperate need to feel better - better about themselves, and to believe they are better than those others. So much of this atavistic audience already find themselves at a disadvantage against the highly educated and successful “elite”, and part of this racist outbreak I propose has as much to do about station in life as it does race.