Positive and negative relationship patterns
USA: red and blue
Reciprocated antipathy: loving the self, but not the other
Red: the God Bless the USA Bible
Blue: Trump’s victory and the 1660 Restoration
John Milton
Paradise Lost: God versus Satan
Who is on God’s side? … Who on Satan’s?
Non-reciprocation: negative towards positive
Is God good?
Is Satan bad?
Paradise Regained … Is Jesus good?
Beyond binary thinking
Upcoming: four questions about violence: the Reith lectures 2024
Last week: love all always
Faith v science
Mysticism
Religion: Making the World Better?
Appendix: Still counting; Oklahoma vote; born-again vote
Positive and negative relationship patterns
First consider just one individual A and their relationship with themselves. For simplicity consider just two possibilities: the relationship may be positive or negative. For example an individual may have positive self-esteem or negative self-esteem.
Now consider two individuals, A and B. Consider the relationships which A has with themselves and with the other, B. In addition to what was said in the previous paragraph, the relationship of A with the other, B, may be positive or negative.
Combining the two paragraphs there are four patterns for A’s relationships:
positive with A, and positive with B; [1]
positive with A, and negative with B; [2]
negative with A, and positive with B; [3]
negative with A, and negative with B. [4]
And similarly there are four patterns for B’s relationships:
positive with B, and positive with A; [1]
positive with B, and negative with A; [2]
negative with B, and positive with A; [3]
negative with B, and negative with A. [4]
Combining the four patterns for A with the four patterns for B gives sixteen pattern combinations.
One of these sixteen patterns is the combination which we discussed last week, referred to as reciprocated positivity … or Love All.
Pattern [11], all positive
A is: positive with A, and positive with B;
B is: positive with B, and positive with A.
Another of the sixteen patterns is a combination that might be referred to as reciprocated antipathy (or self positive, other negative … or loving the self but not the other). It is this combination which we shall focus on in the later sections.
Pattern [22], reciprocated antipathy
A is: positive with A, and negative with B;
B is: positive with B, and negative with A.
There are two other reciprocation patterns: reciprocated self-negativity [33]; and all negative [44]:
Pattern [33], reciprocated self-negativity
A is: negative with A, and positive with B;
B is: negative with B, and positive with A.
Pattern [44], all negative
A is: negative with A, and negative with B;
B is: negative with B, and negative with A.
These are the four reciprocation patterns. With sixteen possible patterns, this leaves twelve non-reciprocation patterns. They come in pairs: [12] and[21] are the same only with A and B switched; [13] and [31]; [14] and [41]; [23] and [32]; [24] and [42]; and [34] and [43] like wise.
USA: red and blue
On the campaign trail four years ago in 2020, Joe Biden offered a vision of the country as united, not divided:
“I'm running as a Democrat but I will govern as an American president," Biden said. "No red states, no blue states, just the United States.”
[Obama said the same thing when he and Biden were running for a second term in 2012.]
Note: in the USA red is Republican and blue is Democrat; but in the UK red is Labour and blue is Conservative.
Reciprocated antipathy: loving the self, but not the other
This week it is the notion that Biden rejects that we wish to consider, the notion that there is a division in society between red and blue. Red is positive about itself and negative about Blue. Blue is positive about itself and negative about Red. In general the notion is that what is happening is that each is side is “loving the self but not the other”.
Biden himself engaged in such a view. During the campaign each side shouted “garbage” at the other and Donald Trump even had a photo shoot in a high-vis orange jacket driving a garbage truck.
Red: the God Bless the USA Bible
Oklahoma is a red state, with Trump receiving more than twice the votes received by Harris: Trump 66.2%; Harris 31.9%. Nationally, the group with the highest percentage vote for Trump was white born-again or evangelical Christians – 81% of them voted for Trump. (See Appendix).
Lee Greenwood sings God Bless the USA:
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KoXt9pZLGM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_the_U.S.A.
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma State superintendent of public instruction, wants there to be the Trump-endorsed God Bless the USA Bible in state classrooms.
https://godblesstheusabible.com/
Walters has announced a new Office of Religious Liberty and Nationalism.
In other words he is positive about the USA self … but he is negative about the other. He refers to his opponents as “so far woke that they have no common sense” “come from a left-wing ideology that they believe pornography is OK in kindergarten but not the bible … a Marxist mob … who want our kids to hate our country.
“Teach Bible or face my wrath, says schools chief.” The Times, November 26 2024: 30.
Brad Onishi, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism.
https://www.bradonishi.com/books/
https://www.usfca.edu/faculty/bradley-onishi
Blue: Trump’s victory and the 1660 Restoration
Ryan is correct in numbering Marxists amongst his opponents – at least in the case of Keith Flett …
… One view of Trump’s victory is to see it as a victory for the reactionary right (the other) at the expense of the radical left (the self). So it can be compared with other instances such as the 1660 Restoration. Appropriate lessons can then be drawn:
“The 1660 Restoration and the lessons of defeat. Keith Flett considers how the return of the monarchy after Cromwell offers lessons for a left facing the return of Trump showing that radical traditions endure despite reactionary victories.”
Morning Star for Peace and Socialism. November 19 2024: 9.
In his book The Experience of Defeat, the Marxist historian Christopher Hill … was interested in the radicals that had supported the revolution and how they came to terms with events after 1660, in particular the poet and radical activist and thinker, John Milton.”
John Milton
The poet John Milton (1608-1674) was cited in Sunday’s Observer, Monday’s Times and Tuesday’s Morning Star (November 17, 18 and 19) …
John Milton published Areopagitica in 1644 and Paradise Lost in 1667. In his lifetime, 1608-1674, Milton lived under three kings – James I, Charles I (beheaded) and Charles II – and Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate (1653-1659) and experienced the English Civil War (1642-1651) and the Restoration of 1660. The King James Bible was published in 1611 and the revision to the Book of Common Prayer in 1662. In the introductions to both, the Church of England sets itself against others such as Catholics and Protestants … the Bible referring to “Popish Persons” and “self-conceited Brethren”.
Paradise Lost: God versus Satan
Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem consisting of twelve books:
.(1) Overview: Satan rebels against God and is driven out of heaven. Satan persuades man to disobey God and so man is driven out of Paradise …
… Satan and his angels are in hell and hold a council.
.(2) Satan’s council considers a battle to regain heaven but, learning that a new world with new creatures has been created, Satan goes on a journey to investigate it.
.(3) God sees Satan’s journey and anticipates Satan’s success; and the Son of God offers to ransom himself. Satan approaches earth.
.(4) Satan hears Adam and Eve discussing the forbidden fruit on the tree of knowledge. He tempts Eve in a dream to eat the fruit.
.(5) Eve tells Adam about her dream and the angel Raphael warns Adam about Satan.
.(6) Raphael tells Adam about the battles in heaven between God and Satan and how Satan was cast out of heaven …
.(7) … after this, God decided to create a new world and sent his son to create it which he did in six days.
.(8) … the conversation turns to the motion of the planets … and to the relations between man and woman.
.(9) Satan enters into the serpent and persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve tells Adam and he decides to share Eve’s fate.
.(10) God sends his Son who sentences Adam and Eve. Sin and Death come to the world. Satan returns to Hell and reports his success. Adam and Eve repent.
.(11) God expels Adam and Eve from Paradise. An angel shows Adam the future misery of man up till the time of the flood.
.(12) The angel describes the coming of the Messiah, his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension …. And the corrupt state of the Church till his second coming. Adam and Eve, submissive, are led out of Paradise.
[The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 1946; 1960. Paul Harvey.]
Who is on God’s side? … Who on Satan’s?
Hymn: Who is on the Lord’s side?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfunlcqcBXA
Trump and his God Bless America Bible, Putin and his Patriarch, Netanyahu and Hamas, all of them, all in their very different ways seem to say that they are on God’s side …
Joe Moshenka has written a review of Orlando Reade’s book on John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The epic poem has been invoked by many writers and interpreted in a variety of ways. Parallels have been noted with contemporary situations and identifications are made with God and with Satan.
Was it the liberated Black Haitians or their former masters who were “like the infernal spirits”? Was Milton a symbol for the individual lives crushed by the modern prison industrial complex or for the forces doing the crushing? Malcom X read Paradise Lost against the grain capturing something of Milton’s own internally divided energies, Malcolm X rejecting western civilisation.
What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost. Orlando Reade. Jonathan Cape: 2024.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459410/what-in-me-is-dark-by-reade-orlando/9781787334878
Review: “Paradise as a place for fools and freedom lovers. … thoughtful study of John Milton’s famous work, through the eyes of readers ranging from Malcolm X to white supremacists, shows how it has provoked an extraordinarily wide range of responses and interpretations.” The Observer, The New Review, November 17 2024: 40.
Non-reciprocation: negative towards positive
The conflict between God and Satan has the pattern of reciprocated antipathy, Pattern [22]. We now turn our attention to one of the non-reciprocation patterns, negative towards positive, whereby A is negative to B despite B being positive to A.
Pattern [23], Negative towards positive
A is: positive with A, and negative with B;
B is: negative with B, and positive with A;
Is God good?
In referring to God here, I have in mind God, the Bible and God-in-the-Bible. For those who worship God, God is good. Even for those who do not, God might be thought of as good because of his advocacy of moral codes such as the ten commandments … or because those who worship God are seen as good people.
However there are criticisms of God. Steven Pinker presents a seven-pages long critique of the Hebrew Bible, saying it is a celebration of violence. Pinker cites violence of humans towards one another in the Bible and also violence by God against humans. The latter violence against humans includes cases where humans are positive towards God, namely Pattern [23].
“The Hebrew Bible” pp 6-12 in The Better Angels of Our Nature. The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. Steven Pinker. Allen Lane: London. 2011.
Turning to Milton’s epic poem:
“Despite its lack of influence, certain critics view Milton's God [by William Empson] as by far the best sustained work of criticism on the poem by a 20th-century critic.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Empson
“Milton’s God”, William Empson:
“The first thing we need to recognize, because modern Christianity goes to extreme lengths to hush it up, is that the moral character of God had become very hard to defend, and that this was widely known, by the time Calvin and Luther had followed Aquinas. Milton was struggling to defend God. He says in the De Doctrina that some unnamed opponents who believe God caused evil practically make God the Devil, and later he merely asserts that the relevant Bible texts must not be interpreted literally (my pages 206-7). The doctrine of Free Will needs to be restored, he says (p. 202), to quiet “the outcry against divine justice.” My opponents think I present Milton as a rude man blaspheming before a pious audience; he thought of himself (wrongly perhaps) as trying to answer people who were denouncing God.”
Is Satan bad?
If God is good and if Satan is against God, then Satan is bad. On the other hand, if God is bad and Satan is against God, then it may be that Satan is good.
It should be noted that the account in Milton’s poem is at variance with the account in the Old Testament. Whereas Satan is one of the main characters in the poem, he is almost absent from the Old Testament, appearing on only three occasions. Most dramatically Satan persuades God to allow him, Satan, to inflict various harms on Job to test Job’s allegiance to God. Again Pattern [23]. Satan successfully tempts God. Notice that here God and Satan are not in conflict, rather they are cooperating in order to inflict harm on Job.
Paradise Regained … Is Jesus good?
Some feel that the negative God of the Old Testament is replaced by the positive “loving” Christ in the New Testament as instanced by the injunction to love one’s enemy and by the Sermon on the Mount …
Milton’s Paradise Regained concerns Jesus going into the wilderness and being tempted by Satan - unsuccessfully…
Having criticised the Hebrew Bible, Steven Pinker is no less critical of The Roman Empire and Early Christendom. He is perplexed that a violent event like the crucifixion should be central to a religion. (Op. cit. pages 12 to 17).
The parable of the sheep and the goats tells us about the day of judgment: people will be divided into two groups: the good will go to heaven: and the bad, who have committed sins, will go to hell.
This is akin to Pattern [22], reciprocated antipathy.
Matthew 25, 31-46.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgqjgdm/revision/5
Beyond binary thinking
“A complex and ambiguous figure … a delicate balance between hagiography and iconoclasm”
Gods and people are in one of two groups. Gods and people are either good or bad. That is binary thinking. Instead, in the flurry of different opinions, how might we view any one individual? It might be appropriate to see an individual as a complex and ambiguous figure. In such a case, an account might appropriately strike “a delicate balance between hagiography and iconoclasm”. This is how Joe Moshenska expressed it in his review in The Observer of Orlando Reade’s What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost. See above.
Getting away from the simplistic
“[Gwen Adshead spoke] at a lecture organised by The Forgiveness Project, a charity that promotes alternatives to revenge.
“It is about getting away from the simplistic ‘He is bad and evil and there is nothing more to be done about this’,” Adshead says of its work. “But also challenging the idea that revenge is the only option after you have been injured or violated.”
Upcoming: four questions about violence: the Reith lectures 2024
My psychologist friend Dennis Bury has drawn my attention to this year’s Reith lectures which are highly relevant to our discussion of violence in the Bible. The lectures address four questions:
Is violence normal?
What is the relationship between trauma and violence?
Is there such a thing as evil?
Can we change violent minds?
Gwen Adshead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Adshead
Upcoming: Tuesday 3, 10, 17 December, 9am; Monday 30 December, 12.04; 2024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/broadcasts/upcoming
Last week: love all always
GO TO: Love all always
Faith v science
“Call a truce in faith v science, pleads Pope’s eyes on the sky. They ask completely different questions, the director of the Vatican Observatory …”
The Times, November 18 2024: 27.
“Faith and Reason. The Vatican astronomer makes a powerful case for religion and science.” Editorial.
The Times, November 18 2024: 27.
Mysticism
On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy. Simon Critchley. Profile. 2024.
Review: “In the presence of a higher power. This attempt to explore transcendent experience provides an interesting overview of Christianity’s great outliers.” Rob Doyle. The Observer, The New Review, November 17 2024: 43.
Religion: Making the World Better?
The above writing is a continuation of earlier work on religion:
Online book, first draft, 13 April 2024. (67 pages).
Religion: Making the World Better?
Part 1: Easter 2024 (23 pages)
Part 2: Religion and Mathematics (44 pages)
Appendix: Still counting; Oklahoma vote; born-again vote
Election results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
"2024 Presidential Election Results". Associated Press. November 29, 2024.
The voting ended on Tuesday 5th November but the counting was still continuing and the final results not yet available almost four weeks later on Friday 29 November. [???] Some of the early discussion had put Trump well ahead but, three and a half weeks on, his lead is down to 1.6%. The size of Trump’s vote and of his lead and the size of the error in the opinion polls is now slightly less than had been originally stated.
… On November 7th I reported the results as
“Trump gained 50.8% of the vote and Harris 47.5%, Trump ahead by 3.3% [these are the earlier figures, not the final results]”
[99.7% of votes counted; 50.0% for Trump v 48.4% for Harris, a difference of 1.6%;
to the second decimal place: 49.84% v 48.26%; d=1.58]
Oklahoma is a red state, with Trump receiving more than twice the votes received by Harris: Trump 66.2%; Harris 31.9%.
Nationally, the group with the highest percentage vote for Trump was white born-again or evangelical Christians – 81% of them voted for Trump. (See table below).
How social groups voted
How social groups voted in previous elections is discussed in Chapter 2, pages 20 to 24, and in Chapter 3, pages 14 to 23. A helpful display of the results for 2016 is given in Table 8, page 23, Chapter 2.
2 Election, 2016: Trump v Clinton .
3 Social space, 2020: Trump v Biden .
A similar presentation is given for 2024 in the table below. It looks at the percentage vote for Trump in each group. The main basic variables are: military service, no college education, white, male.
Table How social groups voted, 2024
% Trump
81 white born-again or evangelical Christians
68 men no degree
64 military service ….. MILITARY
62 no college ….. EDUCATION
62 women no degree
59 white men
55 white ….. ETHNICITY
55 associate degree
54 men ….. GENDER
54 Latino men
53 age 45-64 ….. AGE
52 white women
52 not gay etc … NOT GAY
51 $30k<50k ….. INCOME
50 some college
49 $50k<x<$100k
49 age 65+ AGE
48 college grad men
47 no military service
46 age 30-44
45$100k<x<$200k
45 <$30k
45 Hispanic
45 other sexð
44 women ….. GENDER
44 bachelor degree
44 >$200k ….. INCOME
42 age 18-29 ….. AGE
39 college grad women
39 not white born-again or evangelical Christian
38 Asian
37 advanced degree ….. EDUCATION
37 Latino women
20 black men
12 black ….. ETHNICITY
12 gay etc. ….. GAY
7 black women
THE END