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 Biblical Festival of Succot (“soo-KOTE”) contains inspirational messages for the freedom lovers of today. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks presents many of them in his commentary on the holiday:
https://www.rabbisacks.org/ceremony-celebration-family-edition/succot-family-edition/#in-a-nutshell
To start, he points out the “back to nature” character of the festival:
“It is a festival of simple things. It is, Jewishly, the time we come closer to nature than any other, sitting in a hut with only leaves for a roof, and taking in our hands the unprocessed fruits and foliage of the lulav, the etrog, twigs of hadassim and aravim.”
According to one source, these practices keep us humble. They help us avoid taking things for granted — especially our freedom:
“Rashbam (Rashi’s grandson) says the succah was there to remind the Israelites of their past so that at the very moment they were feeling the greatest satisfaction at living in Israel – at the time of the ingathering of the produce of the land – they should remember their lowly origins. They were once a group of refugees without a home, never knowing when they would have to move on. The festival of Succot, according to Rashbam, exists to remind us of our humble origins so that we never fall into the complacency of taking freedom, the land of Israel and the blessings it yields, for granted.”
The festival also emphasizes the importance of being courageous even when feeling insecure:
“The succah represents the courage the Israelites had to travel, to move, to leave security behind, and follow God’s call, as did Avraham and Sarah at the dawn of our history. According to Rabbi Akiva the succah is the temporary home of a temporarily homeless people. It symbolised the courage of a bride willing to follow her husband on a risk-laden journey to a place she had never seen before – a love that showed itself in the fact that she was willing to live in a hut, trusting her husband’s promise that one day they would have a permanent home.”
Most wondrous of all, the holiday promotes feeling joy and remaining faithful, even in times of uncertainty and instability:
“What is truly remarkable is that Succot is called, by tradition, zeman simchateinu, ‘our time of joy.’ That, to me, is the wonder at the heart of the Jewish experience: that Jews throughout the ages were able to experience risk and uncertainty at every level of their existence and yet they were still able to rejoice. That is spiritual courage of a high order. Faith is not certainty; faith is the courage to live with uncertainty. Faith is the ability to rejoice in the midst of instability and change, travelling through the wilderness of time toward an unknown destination.”
These lessons can help us persevere in our defense against the encroaching tyranny of the Technocrats. Yet as Rabbi Sacks describes, the holiday also presents insights that can be applied to the Technocrats themselves. They can be seen in the rabbi’s overview of Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes that is read at this time. The book is understood to be a deep reflection about life by King Solomon, one of the most wealthy and powerful rulers of his time.
For example, the global elites who want to own everything, so the rest of us can “own nothing and be happy,” can actually end up very unhappy:
“Of all the festivals, Succot is surely the one that speaks most powerfully to our time. Kohelet (which we read on Succot) could almost have been written in the twenty-first century. Here is the ultimate success, the man who has it all – the houses, the cars, the clothes, the adoring women, the envy of all men – who has pursued everything this world can offer from pleasure to possessions to power to wisdom, and yet who, surveying the totality of his life, can only say, ‘Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.’”
In their attempt to make life all about what they need, and what they want, the Technocrats can end up pretty desperate and lonely:
“Kohelet’s failure to find meaning is directly related to his obsession with the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’: ‘I built for myself. I gathered for myself. I acquired for myself.’ The more he pursues his desires, the emptier his life becomes. There is no more powerful critique of the consumer society, whose idol is the self, whose icon is the ‘selfie’ and whose moral code is ‘Whatever works for you.’ This is reflected in today’s society that achieved unprecedented affluence, giving people more choices than they had ever known, and yet at the same time saw an unprecedented rise in alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, stress-related syndromes, depression, attempted suicide and actual suicide. A society of tourists, not pilgrims, is not one that will yield the sense of a life worth living. Of all things people have chosen to worship, the self is the least fulfilling. A culture of narcissism quickly gives way to loneliness and despair.”
In bitter irony, those who seek to replace the simple wonders of life with technological marvels, will eventually seek liberation from the overly-complex world they have created:
“By the end of the book, Kohelet finds meaning in simple things. ‘Sweet is the sleep of a labouring man. Enjoy life with the woman you love. Eat, drink and enjoy the sun.’ That, ultimately, is the meaning of Succot as a whole. It is a festival of simple things…
“It is a time when we briefly liberate ourselves from the sophisticated pleasures of the city and the processed artefacts of a technological age, and recapture some of the innocence we had when we were young, when the world still had the radiance of wonder.”
I will add this:
It is very clear that the Technocrats are causing horrific damage as they try to impose their transhumanist ideology on the masses. Multitudes of people — especially women and children — are getting killed and injured. Governments are being corrupted. Privates properties are being confiscated. Justice is being perverted. And so justice must be restored, with every perpetrator of evil prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
At the same time, we can feel sorry for these people. The lessons of Succot reveal how sad and pathetic their lives have become. They live contrary to every principle the Bible teaches us about living in God’s world. How much mercy He shows them in His judgement will be up to Him.
We can certainly pity them, as we punish them for their crimes.