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 Jewish holiday of Passover is known as the “Festival of Freedom.” With such a theme, you can imagine that it has much to teach us today as we fight to defeat the tyranny of the transhumanist technocracy.
For example, guidance about preserving freedom can be found in the ritual of the Seder, the family meal that takes place in the evening. Central to this event is telling the story of the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery, to become a nation built on freedom. In his commentary of Parashat Bo called “The Story We Tell,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shows us how telling such stories keeps freedom alive in the hearts and minds of the generations.
https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/bo/story-we-tell/
Telling the freedom story is so important, that it is the first commandment Moses related to the Jewish people as we were about to achieve our freedom:
“It remains one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature. Moses is addressing the Israelites just days before their release. They have been exiles for 210 years. After an initial period of affluence and ease, they have been oppressed, enslaved, and their male children killed in an act of slow genocide. Now, after signs and wonders and a series of plagues that have brought the greatest empire of the ancient world to its knees, they are about to go free.
“Yet Moses does not talk about freedom, or the land flowing with milk and honey, or the journey they will have to undertake through the desert. Instead, three times, he turns to the distant future, when the journey is complete and the people – free at last – are in their own land. And what he talks about is not the land itself, or the society they will have to build or even the demands and responsibilities of freedom.
“Instead, he talks about education, specifically about the duty of parents to their children. He speaks about the questions children may ask when the epic events that are about to happen are, at best, a distant memory. He tells the Israelites to do what Jews have done from then to now. Tell your children the story. Do it in the maximally effective way. Re-enact the drama of exile and exodus, slavery and freedom. Get your children to ask questions. Make sure that you tell the story as your own, not as some dry account of history. Say that the way you live and the ceremonies you observe are ‘because of what God did for me’ – not my ancestors but me. Make it vivid, make it personal, and make it live.
“He says this not once but three times:
“’It shall be that when you come to the land which God will give you as He said, and you observe this ceremony, and your children say to you, ‘What does this service mean to you?’ you shall say, ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and spared our homes.’” Ex. 12:25-27
“’On that day you shall tell your child, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt’” Ex. 13:8
“’In the future, when your child asks you, ‘What is this?’ you shall tell him, ‘With a mighty hand, the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the land of slavery.’” Ex. 13:14
Exactly why is telling the group’s freedom story so important? Because it helps each person identify as an essentially free person:
“Why was this the most important thing he could do in this intense moment of redemption? Because freedom is the work of a nation, nations need identity, identity needs memory, and memory is encoded in the stories we tell. Without narrative, there is no memory, and without memory, we have no identity. The most powerful link between the generations is the tale of those who came before us – a tale that becomes ours, and that we hand on as a sacred heritage to those who will come after us. We are the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and identity begins in the story parents tell their children.
“That narrative provides the answer to the three fundamental questions every reflective individual must ask at some stage in their lives: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? There are many answers to these questions, but the Jewish ones are: I am a member of the people whom God rescued from slavery to freedom. I am here to build a society that honours the freedom of others, not just my own. And I must live in conscious knowledge that freedom is the gift of God, honoured by keeping His covenant of law and love.”
When our children and grandchildren know who they are and why, they are prepared to meet the challenges of the future with confidence:
“… We are social animals. We cannot live without identities, families, communities and collective responsibility. Which means we cannot live without the stories that connect us to a past, a future and a larger group whose history and destiny we share. The biblical insight still stands. To create and sustain a free society, you have to teach your children the story of how we achieved freedom and what its absence tastes like: the unleavened bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery. Lose the story and eventually you lose your freedom. That is what happens when you forget who you are and why.
“The greatest gift we can give our children is not money or possessions but a story – a real story, not a fantasy, one that connects them to us and to a rich heritage of high ideals. We are not particles of dust blown this way or that by the passing winds of fad and fashion. We are heirs to a story that inspired a hundred generations of our ancestors and eventually transformed the Western world. What you forget, you lose. ..
“With the hindsight of thirty-three centuries we can see how right Moses was. A story told across the generations is the gift of an identity, and when you know who you are and why, you can navigate the wilderness of time with courage and confidence…”
I will add this:
You can now see why I interview the freedom fighters of today, and post their interviews on the Gallery of Freedom Fighters. I am creating a living history of today’s fight for freedom. The stories encourage others to join the fight, and will inspire future generations to continue it.